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
Depression: A Different Perspective
I have recently come across an interesting paper: How to Understand and then Escape from Depression. It’s written by Saul Youssef, a professor of physics at Boston University. The central theme of the paper is that persistent or chronic depression is caused by “…an unconscious withdrawal of participation in a person’s own internal decision making… Continue Reading
Antidepressants: Drugs, Not Medication
On April 7, John Read, PhD, a psychologist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, published a short article on Mad in America. The title is: Largest Survey of Antidepressants Finds High Rates of Adverse Emotional and Interpersonal Effects. The article presents the results of a survey conducted in New Zealand and published online in… Continue Reading
Peter Kinderman in Scientific American. An Important Milestone!
On November 17, Scientific American published on its MIND blog website Why We Need to Abandon the Disease-Model of Mental Health Care, by Peter Kinderman, PhD. Here are some quotes: “The idea that our more distressing emotions such as grief and anger can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses is pervasive and seductive…. Continue Reading
Evolution Or Revolution?
On July 22, Just Another Word Press.com site ran an article called Evolution not revolution: My thoughts on the DCP’s call for a paradigm shift. The website is owned and operated by MTAS Psychology, an agency providing psychological therapy and expert witness services in Manchester, UK. The article is unsigned. The primary focus of the… Continue Reading
Blame the Clients?
On June 6, I wrote a post titled Psychiatry DID Promote the Chemical Imbalance Theory. The article was published on Mad in America, and generated a number of comments on that site, five of which were from TherapyFirst, who in his first comment identified himself as Joel Hassman, MD, a practicing psychiatrist. Dr. Hassman did… Continue Reading
Drugging Toddlers for Inattention, Impulsivity, and Hyperactivity
On May 16, the New York Times ran an article titled Thousands of Toddlers Are Medicated for A.D.H.D., Report Finds, Raising Worries, by Alan Schwarz. Here is the opening sentence: “More than 10,000 American toddlers 2 or 3 years old are being medicated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder outside established pediatric guidelines, according to data presented… Continue Reading
Another Critique of the Schizophrenia Diagnosis
In January 2014, the journal Research on Social Work Practice ran a special issue called A Critical Appraisal of the DSM-5: Social Work Perspectives. There are fifteen articles on this general theme, and together they present a wide range of arguments against the DSM system. Social workers represent the numerically biggest group of mental health… Continue Reading
‘ADHD’ and Dangerous Driving
In 2006, Laurence Jerome, a Canadian psychiatrist, and two colleagues wrote a paper titled What We Know About ADHD and Driving Risk: A Literature Review, Meta-Analysis and Critique. It was published in the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in August, 2006. The primary result of the meta-analysis was: “Current data… Continue Reading
Psychiatry Fights Back – With More PR
About six months ago, I wrote a post called Health Care Reform and Psychiatry. In that article, I gave a brief account of the APA’s Council on Communications, and I expressed the belief that the council seemed more concerned with PR (in the most tawdry sense of the term) than with any serious examination or… Continue Reading
The Perfect Psychiatrist
On March 19, a new article was posted on Aeon Magazine. It’s titled A Mad World, and was written by Joseph Pierre, MD, who works in Log Angeles as a psychiatric practitioner and professor. Dr. Pierre has authored more than fifty papers, and has received several awards. He has lectured nationally and internationally, and would,… Continue Reading
Benzodiazepines: Disempowering and Dangerous
I recently read an article by Fredric Neuman, MD, Director of the Anxiety and Phobia Center at White Plains Hospital, NY. The article is titled The Use of the Minor Tranquilizers: Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin, and Valium, and was published in June 2012 by Psychology Today. Thanks to Medicalskeptic for the link. Dr. Neuman opens by… Continue Reading
Involuntary Mental Health Commitments
The recent publicity surrounding the Justina Pelletier case has focused attention, not only on the spurious and arbitrary nature of psychiatric diagnoses, but also on the legitimacy and appropriateness of mental health commitments. It is being widely asserted that these archaic statutes are fundamentally incompatible with current civil rights standards, and the question “should mental… Continue Reading
Drugging Our Children: A Book Review
The 2012 book Drugging Our Children: How Profiteers Are Pushing Antipsychotics on Our Youngest, and What We Can Do to Stop It, is edited by Sharna Olfman PhD, and Brent Dean Robbins, PhD. It is a collection of ten articles, plus an Introduction and an Afterword by Sharna Olfman. Here are the chapter titles,… Continue Reading
Life Is Bipolar
I am a 30 year man who finally realized a few months ago (after finding this website) that he is not mentally ill but just an adult who often acts like a child. I dabbled with some “official” drugs (meaning prescribed) in the last few years when I was first diagnosed with depression (was put on anti… Continue Reading
ADHD: Are We Helping Or Harming?
In November 2013, the British Medical Journal published Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: are we helping or harming? by Rae Thomas, PhD, Psychologist, Australia; Geoffrey K. Mitchell, MB BS, FRACGP, PhD, Professor of General Practice, Australia; and Laura Batstra, PhD, Psychologist, Netherlands. The article is part of a series on the dangers of overdiagnosis. Here are some quotes:… Continue Reading
Recovery Model: A Reader’s Story
Very interested to read some of your very clearly reasoned, explained and referenced posts. I am familiarising myself with the status of the Recovery Model of mental health for my new job and have repeatedly come across critiques of modern psychiatry and the DSM diagnosis. I am encouraged by this line of questioning because I have 7… Continue Reading
Is Psychology Going the Way of Psychiatry?
On January 7, Maria Bradshaw, co-founder of CASPER, published an interesting article on Mad in America. It’s called Prescribing Rights for Psychologists, and it suggests that psychology as a profession may be falling into some of the same errors that enmire psychiatry. Maria makes some very compelling points, and focuses particularly on the fact that… Continue Reading
Understanding Human Behavior
A couple of months ago I wrote an article concerning ECT which generated some controversy. One of the issues that came up was the relationship between biological explanations of human activity and more global explanations, which, for want of a better term, I’ll call person-centered explanations. Any human activity can be viewed from different levels… Continue Reading
Schizoid Personality Disorder
There’s a new entry on the Tell Your Story section of my website. The author, who wishes to remain anonymous, tells how during his teenage years, his social skills were poor, and he met the criteria for schizoid personality disorder, the essential features of which are social isolation and emotional detachment. Here are two quotes:… Continue Reading
Mental Illness: A Man-made Monster
I found the above image online yesterday, at the site The Things We Say. Mental illness is also man-made. It is the invention of psychiatry – their spurious medicalization of all significant problems of thinking, feeling, and/or behaving. Its purpose is to legitimize the prescription of dangerous psychotropic drugs to as many people as… Continue Reading
The Disease-Centered Model Vs. The Drug-Centered Model
Joanna Moncrieff is an eminent British psychiatrist, a founding member of the Critical Psychiatry Network, and the author of several papers and books, including The Myth of the Chemical Cure and Bitterest Pills. I have discussed both of these books on this website, and I recommend them highly. Dr. Moncrieff speaks out clearly and fearlessly… Continue Reading
Protecting the Children
I’ve recently read an article called Safeguarding a Generation of Children from Over-diagnosis and Prescription of Psychotropic Drugs. It’s written by Dave Traxson, who works as an Educational Psychologist in the UK, and is posted on the DxSummit website, an online platform for rethinking mental health, a forum in which the concepts underlying pharma-psychiatry… Continue Reading
The Allen Frances – Lucy Johnstone Debate
On October 28, Allen Frances, MD, Chairperson of the DSM-IV task force, published an article on Psychology Today. It is titled Does It Make Sense To Scrap Psychiatric Diagnosis? and is essentially a response to the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology’s (DCP) call to abandon the medical model in situations where it is… Continue Reading
A Psychiatric Case Study. A Sad Story
One of the criticisms that I routinely make of psychiatry is that its primary agenda during initial evaluations is the assignment of a “diagnosis,” and that ongoing “treatment” consists of 15-minute “med checks,” during which drug regimens are changed and adjusted. The essence of my criticism is that this kind of approach inevitably oversimplifies human… Continue Reading