Alternative perspective on psychiatry's so-called mental disorders | PHILIP HICKEY, PH.D.
On October 31, 2016, the very eminent psychiatrist Allen Frances, MD, architect of DSM-IV, published an article on his Psychology Today blog, Saving Normal. The article is titled DSM-5 Diagnoses In Kids Should Always Be Written In Pencil. (The piece also appeared on the Huffington Post Blog on the same date.) The subheading is “Mislabelling… Continue Reading
CLARIFICATION This post is a critique of psychiatry’s spurious personality disorder diagnoses. It is neither a defense, nor a condemnation, of Mr. Trump. In my view, it is right and proper that we the people should comment freely on, and criticize, our political leaders, as we deem appropriate. But assigning spurious psychiatric labels is problematic… Continue Reading
On January 2, 2017, I published a short post titled Carrie Fisher Dead at Age 60 on Behaviorism and Mental Health. The article was published simultaneously on Mad in America. On January 4, a response from Carolina Partners was entered into the comments string on both sites. Carolina Partners in Mental Healthcare, PLLC, is a… Continue Reading
Actress Carrie Fisher died on December 27, 2016, at the early age of 60. In a 2001 article on Healthy Place, she was described as “Perhaps one of manic-depression’s best-known champions…” Here’s another quote from the same article: “I’m fine, but I’m bipolar. I’m on seven medications, and I take medication three times a day…. Continue Reading
On October 13, an interesting article was published on the Huffington Post Blog. The author is Jessica Gold, MD, a psychiatry resident at Stanford University; the post is titled Inpatient Psychiatry: Not all Needles, Drugs And Locks. The article is a personal experience/opinion piece, the gist of which is that people who criticize or condemn… Continue Reading
This morning I received an email from Oldhead, who has been active in opposing the Murphy Bill. Here are two quotes from the email: “As succinctly as possible — the main language from MURPHY (including AOT funding) has been consolidated with another bill, the 21ST CENTURY CURES bill, which is being introduced as a House… Continue Reading
Thirty-three years ago, in August 1983, an article titled Suicide Associated with Akathisia and Depot Fluphenazine Treatment appeared in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. The authors were Katherine Shear, MD, Allen Frances, MD, and Peter Weiden, MD. Here are some quotes, interspersed with my comments/observations: “Akathisia is a common and distressing side effect of neuroleptic… Continue Reading
On September 28, US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) introduced a bill in the Senate titled Veteran Overmedication Prevention Act (S. 3410). This is a companion bill to HR 4640, Veteran Suicide Prevention Act introduced in the House by Congressman David Jolly (R-FL) earlier this year. The objective of both bills is to combat suicide deaths… Continue Reading
INTRODUCTION Earlier this year, Alan Schwarz, an investigative reporter for the New York Times, published his latest book: ADHD Nation. The blurb on the jacket states: “More than 1 in 7 American children get diagnosed with ADHD—three times what experts have said is appropriate—meaning that millions of kids are misdiagnosed and taking medications such as… Continue Reading
Bonnie Burstow, PhD, is a faculty member at the University of Toronto, and an antipsychiatry activist. She writes about topics that include institutional ruling, resistance, and social change. On October 7, 2016, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto announced that they had established a scholarship for students doing theses… Continue Reading
On July 6, HB 2646 (the Tim Murphy Bill) passed the US House and was sent to the Senate. At the present time, a related bill is working its way through the Senate. This is SB 2680, The Mental Health Reform Act 2016. It is sponsored by Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Patty Murray (D-WA), Bill Cassidy… Continue Reading
On June 9, 2016, the very eminent psychiatrist Allen Frances, MD, published an article on the Huffington Post Blog. The piece was titled Trump Is Breaking Bad, Not Clinically Mad. The gist of the article was that, although the Republican presidential candidate has many flaws, he does not have a mental disorder. Here are some… Continue Reading
INTRODUCTION On Wednesday, July 6, the US House of Representatives passed a watered down version of HB 2646, the so-called Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. The bill, which is now a House Resolution, is usually referred to as the Tim Murphy bill, after its principle author, Representative Tim Murphy, PhD, who is also… Continue Reading
[Note: In this post, “APA” refers to the American Psychological Association] There is an article in the current (July/August) issue of The National Psychologist titled “Iowa becomes 4th state to approve RxP”. The author is James Bradshaw, Associate Editor. RxP is a commonly used abbreviation for prescription authority for psychologists. Here are some quotes from… Continue Reading
I know from my own experience and from emails I receive from readers that a great many non-psychiatrists who work in the mental health system have seen through the psychiatric hoax. These individuals, who are growing in number, realize that the problems for which clients seek help are not illnesses in any meaningful sense of… Continue Reading
INTRODUCTION On May 23, the very eminent psychiatrist Allen Frances, MD, published on the HuffPost blog an article titled Conclusive Proof ADHD is Overdiagnosed. The general theme, that various “mental illnesses” are being “overdiagnosed” is gaining popularity in recent years among some psychiatrists, presumably in an effort to distance themselves from the trend of psychiatric-drugs-on-demand-for-every-conceivable-human-problem… Continue Reading
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
