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
Dr. Pies and Psychiatry’s ‘Solid Center’
Ronald Pies, MD, is one of American’s most eminent and prestigious psychiatrists. He is the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Psychiatric Times, and he is a Professor of Psychiatry at both Syracuse and Tufts. I disagree with many of Dr. Pies’ contentions, and I have expressed these disagreements in detail in various posts (for instance, here, here,… Continue Reading
Mainstream Media Beginning to Criticize Pharma-Psychiatry
A few months ago, I became aware of various articles online that stated “Robert F Kennedy Jr. says 70% of news advertising revenue comes from Big Pharma”. In the articles there is a link to a May 18, 2015 video in which Jesse Ventura, former Governor of Minnesota, interviews Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on an… Continue Reading
The Link Between Psychiatric Drugs and Violence
One of psychiatry’s most obvious vulnerabilities is the fact that various so-called antidepressant drugs induce homicidal and suicidal feelings and actions in some people, especially late adolescents and young adults. This fact is not in dispute, but psychiatry routinely downplays the risk, and insists that the benefits of these drugs outweigh any risks of actual… Continue Reading
Integration of Physical and Mental Health
Integration of physical and “mental health” care has been a popular topic in psychiatric circles in recent years. During his term as President of the APA, the very eminent psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, made frequent references to this matter in his posts on Psychiatric News (the APA’s online newspaper). For instance, on December 6, 2013,… Continue Reading
Psychiatry and the Pressure to Prescribe
Hugh Middleton, MD, posted an interesting article on Mad in America, October 1, 2015. It’s called Hey; Don’t Just Shoot the Messenger! Dr. Middleton is a British psychiatrist who is a founding member of the Critical Psychiatry Network, and was a co-author of the cardinal paper, Psychiatry beyond the current paradigm. (2012). Dr. Middleton had… Continue Reading
The APA’s New Image
On April 25, 2014, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, then President of the APA, announced that the association had engaged the services of Porter Novelli, a prestigious PR company based in Washington DC and currently operating in 60 different countries. “Mindful of the continuing stigma associated with mental illness and psychiatric treatment, we retained an outside consultant… Continue Reading
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