Antidepressant Withdrawal: A Clinician’s Middle View
In the debate about antidepressant withdrawal, I present a middle ground, where the views of both sides are understood to have origins in wanting to help people.
The Superpowers of Sensitive People
From Greater Good Magazine: Sensitivity is the ability to "perceive, process, and respond deeply to one’s environment" and is exactly what our world desperately needs, argue the authors of a new book.
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Four)
On the failures of the publicly funded long-term studies and psychiatry’s fraudulent reporting of these results.
Animal Study Shows Impact of Prozac in Pregnancy on the Child
Researchers found that rats born to mothers given the antidepressant Prozac during pregnancy or breastfeeding exhibited varied behavioral and developmental effects, with implications for the understanding of antidepressant impacts during human pregnancies.
The War on Suicide Is Making Things Worse
While allegedly intended to help, institutionalizing people against their will does more harm than good. Psychiatric coercion is dehumanizing.
Inside the Psychiatric Hospitals Where Foster Kids Are a “Gold Mine”
From Mother Jones: Scandal-plagued health care giant Universal Health Services (UHS) profits handsomely off the failing American child welfare system.
It’s Time to Consign the “Selfish Gene” to the History Books | Jeremy Lent
From Salon: The trouble with the 'selfish gene' story is not just that it is scientifically flawed; it's also that it presents such an impoverished view of life's dazzling magnificence.
May Cause Side Effects–Radical Acceptance and Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: An Interview with Brooke Siem
Brooke Siem discusses her experiences of being medicated with antidepressants as a teenager, her withdrawal from a cocktail of psychiatric drugs and her debut memoir, May Cause Side Effects.
Dostoevsky: A Psychologist We Can All Learn From
Psychology has greatly broadened its scope since Nietzsche’s day and yet his implied criticism is one the discipline is still wrestling with.
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Three)
Psychiatry forcefully maintains its delusions, even when the most reliable science has shown that their beliefs are wrong.
The Troubled-Teen Industry Offers Trauma, Not Therapy
From The New York Times: Hundreds of thousands of young Americans have endured harms or assaults in residential boot camps, wilderness therapy and Christian and therapeutic boarding schools.
Why Failed Psychiatry Lives On: Its Industrial Complex, Politics, & Technology Worship
By embracing the widely popular technology-worship “religion,” psychiatry is permitted to ignore the reality that its repeated failures are evidence that its fundamental paradigm is misguided.
Psychiatric Patients Restrained at Sky-High Rates at This L.A. Hospital
From the L.A. Times: L.A. General’s Hawkins Mental Health Center has reported a restraint rate more than 50 times higher than the national average for inpatient psychiatric facilities.
Grant, Interrupted: An Introduction and Report Back from Oregon
We hope the Oregon Health Authority can overcome its critics and get back on track to doing what it set out to do: creating peer support respites led by grassroots groups.
People Not Professionals
From Aeon: Peer support provides a cathartic space for refuge that transcends the constraints of expert-delivered formal services in favor of a more equitable relationship.
Branding Diseases—How Drug Companies Market Psychiatric Conditions: An Interview with Ray Moynihan
MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Ray Moynihan about the marketing of disorders, broadening of diagnoses, and harmful treatments.
Reality According to Whom? Listening to My Wife—and The Problems with ‘Psychosis’
Sam Ruck shares an excerpt from his book "Healing Companions," which describes his life with, and love for, his wife and her “alters.”
In the Name of ‘Modernization,’ Newsom Admin. Wants to Disappear Unhoused and Disabled People...
From Disability Visibility Project: The CARE Act is predicated on a big lie perpetrated by policymakers and marketed to the public: that houselessness is caused by ‘severe and untreated’ mental illness and substance use.
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Two)
Peter Gøtzsche discusses how critics of psychiatry are silenced in top medical journals and in the media.
Neuroscientist Argues the Left Side of Our Brains Have Taken Over Our Minds
From CBC: "A way of thinking which is reductive, mechanistic has taken us over," says Iain McGilchrist. "We behave like people who have right hemisphere damage."
The Feeling Child | An Interview With Alice Miller
A good therapy should help the patient evolve from a "silent child" to a feeling and "talking child."
Reflections on the RADAR Study
We still do not have adequate data to guide us on how to best reduce relapse risk; however, I think there are reasons to taper slowly.
Beyond the “Chemical Imbalance” Theory: An Interview With Prof. Joanna Moncrieff
From Psychology Today/Justin Garson PhD: "I was surprised, first of all, by the level of public interest [in my paper debunking the serotonin theory of depression] and then by the defensiveness of the profession," says psychiatrist Joanne Moncrieff.
Survivors and Families Working Together For Change: A New Project
Based on his lived experience, Ron Bassman describes his efforts to create an educational and support program that links families with survivors.
“Functional Disorders”: One of Medicine’s Biggest Failures | Marion Brown
From The BMJ: Is this a cop-out for the medical profession? Surely we need to look at what may be CAUSING the mind/body system to malfunction, and not miss out the important question of ‘could it be the medicine’?
