Steven C. Hayes – A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters
An interview with Dr. Steven C. Hayes about his recently released book, A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters, which uses the principles of acceptance and commitment therapy to help readers overcome negative thoughts and feelings, turn pain into purpose, and build a meaningful life.
Study: Antidepressants Linked to Higher Gestational Diabetes Risk
From CNN: “Taking antidepressants while pregnant may be associated with an increased risk of gestational diabetes, a new study suggests.
It turned out that the...
Functional Medicine: My Path Out of Psychiatry
My blood work indicated a host of issues that had been lurking under the surface of my “psychiatric diagnoses” for years. I’d seen various mental health professionals and none had recommended these types of tests, or stopped to think about any underlying factors, aside from the well-known “serotonin myth.”
Clinical Trials Show Antidepressants “Not Beneficial in the Long Term”
Clinical trials also consistently fail to measure and report long-term harmful effects.
A Doctor Cures His Bipolar Diagnosis Without Psychiatry: Review of ‘I’
I details what happened to Jeffrey Fidel when he quit psychiatric drugs and embraced an alternative, non-medical healing approach — a set of philosophical and spiritual teachings known as the Tao Te Ching and Hua Hu Ching.
Antidepressant-Induced Mania: When My Mind Became a Literal Hell
The amount of anxiety I felt on these medications — and for a couple of years after — was unfathomable. I felt as though I was trapped in an air-tight vat, constantly gasping for breath. And my thoughts were guided by my state of constant worry and panic.
Antidepressant Use Associated With More Violent Suicide Attempts
A new study found that taking an antidepressant medication was associated with a heightened risk of suicide using violent means.
Ben Furman – Understanding and Dealing With Adolescent Rage
A podcast interview with Finnish psychiatrist Ben Furman in which he discusses adolescent rage and how parents can come to understand and deal with teenagers and young adults who are angry and explosive.
Mad Pride Rises in Mexico
The Mad Pride movement continues to spread around the world, with a first-ever march in Mexico City.
Blaming the “Mentally Ill”: This is Hate Speech
As could be expected, in the wake of the mass murders in El Paso and Dayton, we have politicians such as President Trump and others such as E. Fuller Torrey blaming the killings on the “mentally ill.” We have heard this over and over again, and I think it is time to call this out for what it is: Hate Speech.
How “Safe Messaging” Gaslights Suicidal People
Suicide prevention constructs a reality in which the problems of suicide lie within suicidal people. Sanity is constructed around wanting to live, insanity around wanting to die. Within this paradigm, the suicidal person can never be trusted. They are fragile, vulnerable, demanding protection, surveillance, and management.
Why the Mainstream Media Has Failed to Tell Truths About Psychiatry
From Truthout: Several factors have combined to prime the mainstream media to embrace the conventional narrative and to discount research and critiques that challenged it.
An “Even-Handed” History of Psychiatry as Damning as the “Polemics”?
Where Professor Harrington's book seems to differ from books that others might call polemics is that she does not attribute nefarious motives to the psychiatric establishment. I worry that she underplays the ways in which the current model causes harm, but I support her suggestion for a retraction of psychiatry's scope.
Andrew Rich: “I Didn’t Know Stuff Like This Existed”
In this second part of MIA’s report on compulsory outpatient treatment orders, Michael Simonson tells of how he came to report on this topic, the results from MIA’s survey of people who have experienced such forced treatment, his interviews with several of the survey respondents, and more on Andrew Rich’s life.
Twenty Years After Kendra’s Law: The Case Against AOT
The proponents of compulsory outpatient treatment claim that it leads to better outcomes for the recipients, and protects society from violent acts by the "seriously mentally ill." Those claims are belied by history, science, and a critical review of the relevant research.
Talking About Psych Diagnoses and Drugs: A Primer for Parents & Professionals
It is important to tell parents the truth about what can and cannot be known about their child. In this way, people come to appreciate that labels and treatments offered by psychiatric professionals are far from being grounded in hard science.
Benzodiazepine Awareness 2019
A special set of interviews for W-BAD 2019. We speak with Project Manager for W-BAD Rocks of Kindness, Janelle. We also chat with physician and Director of the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition Christy Huff MD and we hear from Stephen Wright MD, addiction specialist and medical consultant to the Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices.
Being-Towards-Suicide
Is it not the very capacity for suicide that makes us human? This capacity, this freedom, of autonomy’s jurisdiction to extend to the outermost seconds of life, namely death, is an innate part of humanity and thus consciousness. Accepting death as a possibility embraces the finitude of our existence.
Inside an Online Charter School: Labeling Kids “Disabled” for Profit
I’d thought this teaching job would be my chance to make positive changes in children’s lives. But most of the recommendations in students' IEPs were related not to reading, writing, and ’rithmetic but to behavior control and obedience to adults. And the school seemed to be working very hard to prove that the kids were disabled and to get them certified as such.
A Guide to Long-Acting Neuroleptics: Education or Promotion?
The National Council for Behavioral Health has released a new pamphlet titled “Guide to Long-Acting Medications for Providers and Organizations.” By downplaying some aspects of the available science, the pamphlet implicitly acts as a promotional tool for the pharmaceutical industry.
The Pill Shaming Phenomenon: What’s It Really About?
At best, the underpinnings of the ‘pill shaming’ accusation are misguided. At worst, they represent a concerted effort on the part of the current power structure to use us against ourselves (and they don’t need any more help). It’s the same old story packaged up as if it were something new and ultra woke.
Madness, Sexuality and Legacies of Strategic Sanism
There has been little engagement between the survivor and LGBT movements despite a shared interest in critiquing and resisting the normalization project of the psy disciplines — that is, psychiatry and psychology’s clinical categorization of what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ or ‘healthy’ and ‘sick’. Why might this be?
“Three Identical Strangers” and the Nature-Nurture Debate
Three Identical Strangers is a riveting film describing the story of identical triplets separated at six months of age and reunited in early adulthood. Their story provides no evidence in support of the genetic side of the nature-nurture debate, but it does supply some evidence in favor of the environment.
Tom Paine, Christianity, and Modern Psychiatry
Early in The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine attacks the hypocrisy of religious professionals. If alive today, Paine may well have been even rougher on psychiatrists. He revered science, and he would have been enraged by professionals who make pseudoscientific proclamations.
Getting Pharma Out of Medical Education: An Interview with Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman
MIA's Gavin Crowell-Williamson interviews PharmedOut founder Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman about Big Pharma's influence on medical education.
