Tag: Psychosis

A meta-analysis of known risk factors for psychosis finds elevated risk with the presence of childhood trauma, adverse life events, and affective dysfunction.

A free recording of last week's webinar anchored to Phil Borges' Crazywise, a documentary exploring alternative approaches to mental health, is now available. Over 4,000 people...

In my graduate education, we were taught how to deal with a wide variety of human troubles — but one big exception was psychosis! For that, we were told to send our clients to the psychiatrist.

A review article and meta-analysis of 18 articles published in the journal of Psychological Medicine reported effects of vitamin and/or mineral supplements on psychiatric symptoms in people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The study provides evidence of the beneficial effects of taking certain vitamins and minerals for improving symptoms associated with schizophrenia.

From BBC: RD Laing, Scotland's most famous psychiatrist who has been revered as the "high priest of anti-psychiatry," is the subject of a new film called Mad...

What if we took individuals who are experiencing emotional crises called 'psychosis' and offered them safe spaces of respite? Similar to the psychedelic trip, environment, supportive relationships, and interpretation of experience appear key to whether the experience of psychosis is transformative or destructive.

Finding myself intrigued by this man who'd never trained in psychiatry or psychology but who nevertheless worked effectively with people in severe distress using self-developed theories, I tracked Buhner down. I asked him to speak to me about these issues, and here is what resulted.

For aeon, Roberta Payne, a professor of literature and the author of Speaking to My Madness: How I Searched for Myself in Schizophrenia, writes...

We are here to challenge how this thing called madness and mental health is in fact a reflection and a relationship, to redefine how society responds, and to insist that in the definition of madness we also see a reflection of the society looking at it.

I was recently asked to contrast my views on psychosis and recovery with those offered by NAVIGATE, a US government (NIMH) sponsored program aiming to guide early intervention programs for psychosis. This inspired me to inquire into what NAVIGATE does tell people and families about psychosis and recovery. What I found, unfortunately, was quite disturbing.

Only two hours after we got home, Dan fearlessly told me of the suicide plan that he'd devised while in the hospital. He had all that time to think about it while nobody was listening. He'd lost his dignity, his identity and his place in society. He had lost the will to live.

The researchers find that the drug effects for reducing psychosis are small and that treatment failure and severe side effects are common.

The issue of how women in crisis are supported after a birth is personally relevant. One day I hope to have a child. As someone whose distress sometimes takes the form of psychosis, I was eager to connect with the stories of women who had trodden this path before me.

After working in the field, I have found that the majority of people in the mental health system are not getting adequate care like I received during my first psychotic episode. I was lucky enough to have a doctor who took a nontraditional approach to schizophrenia and worked with me on coming off of medications.

We need to learn to listen and respond in a caring way to the disturbed and disturbing voices within the population—to really engage with them, while also not believing any lies or distortions or letting destructive forces take over.

In this interview we will explore often-contentious topics including the non-validity of the biological model, the link between parenting problems and psychosis, and how best to help psychotic people who are fighting both emotional conflicts and a psychiatric system drugging them into silence.

A report conducted by UK-based researchers indicates that rates of psychosis tend to be higher in ethnic minority groups and in individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

I believe that an Intensive Psychotherapy can lead to healing and, often, a cure of psychotic states. By cure I mean the cessation of delusions and hallucinations, and a gradual titration off of antipsychotic medication, with the cure lasting—even without continuing psychotherapy.

In this second article, I will further analyze the reasons why the unevidenced biological-illness approach to “schizophrenia” has become so entrenched in our society. Most importantly, I will discuss hopeful alternatives.

In the New York Times Sunday Review, Irene Hurford, a psychiatrist, reflects on the ethics of forced treatment for psychosis. “As doctors,” she writes,...

As a psychiatric survivor who has personally experienced severe psychosis, my criticisms focus on the relative lack of attention to what psychiatric drugs actually are, and on the uncertain, contested nature of the supposed target of these drugs: “schizophrenia.” I will elaborate on each of these points with references, as well as highlighting alternative approaches to helping psychotic people.

A new review, published in Schizophrenia Bulletin, examines the effects of exercise on cognition in individuals diagnosed with 'schizophrenia.' The results of the meta-analysis...

As Burning Man nears its 30^th anniversary, USA Today has published an article attempting to explain how this still somewhat freakish event came into existence. I enjoyed the article, but as someone involved in the origin story it tells, I believe that an important piece is being left out. This relates to how misguided “mental health treatment” came close to disabling a key organizer of the early Burning Man. This piece is a fascinating tale in itself, but more fascinating when considered as just one example of how a flawed approach to mental health treatment forms a barrier to many forms of cultural evolution and renewal, with oppressive consequences for society as a whole.

In this month’s issue of the journal Brain a new study investigates whether the drugs prescribed to control seizures can increase the risk of...

In the mainstream, psychological difficulties are seen as “symptoms” of an “illness” or “mental disorder” and based on this the focus is put on suppressing them, either by using drugs, or shock, or by psychological interventions that also aim to “eliminate the problem.” Unfortunately, this mainstream approach often works poorly, and too often its main effect is to aggravate the problem, or to cause “collateral damage” as critically important parts of the person are suppressed along with the supposed “symptoms.” But if we want to replace the mainstream approach, we need a coherent alternative view.