On May 7, Allen Frances, MD, posted an article on the HuffPost site. The piece was titled Antidepressants Work, But Only For Really Depressed People. Superficially, the article presents itself as a call to limit the prescribing of the so-called antidepressant drugs to severe cases; but the piece can, I suggest, be more accurately characterized… Continue Reading
ADHD: The Hoax Unravels
At the risk of stating the obvious, ADHD is not an illness. Rather, it is an unreliable and disempowering label for a loose collection of arbitrarily chosen and vaguely defined behaviors. ADHD has been avidly promoted as an illness by pharma-psychiatry for the purpose of selling stimulant drugs. In which endeavor, they have been phenomenally successful,… Continue Reading
The Anorexia Nervosa Genetics Initiative
INTRODUCTION On March 27, 2014, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill published a press release titled Dr. Cynthia Bulik of UNC leads multinational anorexia genetics project. Cynthia Bulik, PhD, according to Wikipedia, is the “Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders in the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the University of… Continue Reading
The Sandcastle Continues to Crumble
Psychiatry is a hoax. Its fundamental concepts are spurious to the point of inanity. Much of its research is blatantly fraudulent. And its treatments are destructive, disempowering, and stigmatizing. Psychiatry has no coherent or logical response to the criticisms that it attracts, other than the repetition, mantra-style, of unsubstantiated assertions of safety and efficacy, coupled… Continue Reading
Cyber-Trolls, Site Disrupters, and Related Matters
To state the obvious, this is an anti-psychiatry site, and as such it attracts a fair measure of impassioned comment – some favorable, some unfavorable. From time to time the site gets “bombed”, by which I mean that someone who opposes my ideas “sits” on the site and expresses profound disapproval of anything and everything… Continue Reading
The Germanwings Crash: Flying Under the Influence
On March 24, 2015, a twenty-seven-year-old German pilot named Andreas Lubitz flew an Airbus A 320 into a French mountainside, killing himself and the 149 other people on board. Mr. Lubitz was co-piloting the flight, and he caused the aircraft to crash by locking the pilot out of the flight deck and setting the autopilot… Continue Reading
Allen Frances on Anti-Psychiatry
On February 22, Allen Frances, MD, published an article titled: Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry on the HuffPost Blog. The general theme of the article is that psychiatry may have some problems, but it is basically sound, wholesome, and necessary. Here are some quotes, interspersed with my comments: “Psychiatry used to be a biopsychosocial profession that allowed… Continue Reading
Allen Frances on the Benefits of “Antipsychotics”
On February 1, Allen Frances, MD, published an interesting article on the Huffington Post blog. The article is called Do Antipsychotics Help or Harm Psychotic Symptoms?, and is a response to Robert Whitaker’s post of January 27: “Me, Allen Frances, and Climbing Out of a Pigeonhole. This post, in turn, was a response to Dr…. Continue Reading
Psychiatry Bashing
Last month (February 2016), the British Journal of Psychiatry published an online bulletin titled BASH: badmouthing, attitudes and stigmatisation in healthcare as experienced by medical students, by Ali Ajaz et al. Here’s the abstract: “Aims and method We used an online questionnaire to investigate medical students’ perceptions of the apparent hierarchy between specialties, whether they… Continue Reading
Exploiting The Placebo Effect: Deceiving People For Their Own Good?
Readers may remember that a few weeks ago I became involved in an online debate with the very eminent and scholarly psychiatrist Ronald Pies, MD. That exchange was initiated by a post I wrote concerning a paper on the chemical imbalance theory that Jeffrey Lacasse, PhD, and Jonathan Leo, PhD, had published in the Behavior… Continue Reading
Gender Wage Gap and Depression/Anxiety
In their January 2016 issue, the journal Social Science and Medicine published Unequal depression for equal work? How the wage gap explains gendered disparities in mood disorders, by Jonathan Platt, MPH, Seth Prins, PhD candidate, Lisa Bates, PhD, and Katherine Keyes, PhD, MPH. All the authors work at Columbia’s Department of Public Health. Here’s the… Continue Reading
Allen Frances Seeks The Middle Way
On January 15, 2016, Allen Frances, MD, Professor Emeritus at Duke University, published an article on the Huffington Post. The piece is titled: Psychiatric Medicines Are Not All Good or All Bad. The article denounces both the “medication fanatics” who prescribe psychiatric drugs when they are not needed, and the “die-hard anti-medication crusaders who try… Continue Reading
Are ‘Psychiatric Disorders’ Brain Diseases?
Steven Reidbord MD is a board-certified psychiatrist who practices in San Francisco. He writes a blog called Reidbord’s Reflections. On December 12, 2015, he posted an article titled Are psychiatric disorders brain diseases? It’s an interesting and thought-provoking piece, with many twists and turns. Here are some quotes, interspersed with my comments and reflections. “Of… Continue Reading
Dr. Pies on the Dearth of Civility
On December 3, 2015, Ronald Pies, MD, published Campus Protests, Narcissism, and the Dearth of Civility on Psychiatric Times. The article is subtitled: What can we do, as a society, to reduce the levels of incivility and narcissism that appear to be on the rise? Here are some quotes: “…I believe we are witnessing the… Continue Reading
Robert Spitzer’s Legacy
Robert Spitzer, MD, the architect of DSM-III (1980), died of heart disease on Christmas Day, 2015, at age 83. Most major media outlets published obituaries in which Dr. Spitzer was praised on the grounds that he had brought scientific rigor to psychiatry by naming and defining the various psychiatric illnesses. Here are a few illustrative… Continue Reading
Bipolar 2 research
I am a 58 year old male. I was born into a dysfunctional family with issues of shame and guilt. I believe that this affected my psychological state. I had severe Asthma and I was unintentionally put in front of an open fire and out in a cold street in my pram where I was exposed to… Continue Reading
Psychiatry and Crime
In DSM-III-R, the APA defined a mental disorder as: “…a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in a person and that is associated with present distress (a painful symptom) or disability (impairment in one or more important areas of functioning) or with a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, disability,… Continue Reading
Psychiatry: A Protected Cartel
On December 27, 2015, Richard Lewis, a regular contributor to Mad In America, posted on that site Deafening Silence: What Happens When the Whistle Blows and Nobody Hears? Here are the first two paragraphs: “What happens when someone finally ‘blows the whistle,’ exposing potential harm and possible death caused by today’s mental health system? Is… Continue Reading
Allen Frances Still Trying to Excuse Psychiatry’s (and his own) Role in the ADHD ‘Epidemic’
On November 9, 2015, Allen Frances, MD, posted an interesting article on the Huffington Post’s Blog. The article is titled Why Are So Many College and High School Kids Abusing Adderall. The gist of the article is that the “excessive use of ADHD medication” is a more legitimate target for a war on drugs than… Continue Reading
My Response to Dr. Pies’ Response
On November 18, 2015, Dr. Pies sent his response to my November 17 article to MIA. MIA posted it, and forwarded a copy to me. It reads: “I have read Dr. Philip Hickey’s 8400+ word treatise, and I have only the following to say with regard to the two key points at issue: Notwithstanding my… Continue Reading
Dr. Pies Is Back
This morning, I received, by way of a forward from MIA, the following from Dr. Pies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I have read Dr. Philip Hickey’s 8400+ word treatise, and I have only the following to say with regard to the two… Continue Reading
My Response To Dr. Pies
In the October 2015 issue of the Behavior Therapist (pages 206-213), Jeffrey Lacasse, PhD, and Jonathan Leo, PhD, published an article titled Antidepressants and the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression: A Reflection and Update on the Discourse, I thought the article had particular merit, and I drew attention to it in a post dated November… Continue Reading
Dr. Pies Responds
On November 5, Kermit Cole, Front Page Editor at Mad in America, forwarded to me the following email which he had received from Ronald Pies, MD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From: Ronald Pies MD <[email protected]> Date: November 4, 2015 at 2:17:53 PM… Continue Reading
More on the Chemical Imbalance Theory
On October 23, 2015, Jeffrey Lacasse, PhD, and Jonathan Leo, PhD, published an interesting article on Florida State University’s DigiNole Commons. The title is Antidepressants and the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression: A Reflection and Update on the Discourse. Dr. Lacasse is assistant professor in the College of Social Work at Florida State University; Dr…. Continue Reading
Allen Frances Names and Shames the Power Players, but Not Himself
On October 13, 2015, Allen Frances, MD, published a post on his Psychology Today blog Saving Normal. The post is titled What Drives Our Dumb and Disorganized Mental Health Policies, and the subtitle is “Naming and shaming the power players.” The article has also been published in Psychiatric Times and the Huffington Post. Dr. Frances… Continue Reading
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