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
Allen Frances Saving Psychiatry From Itself?
On October 12, 2014, the eminent psychiatrist Allen Frances, MD, participated in a panel discussion at the Mad In America film festival in Gothenburg, Sweden. After the festival, he wrote an article – Finding a Middle Ground Between Psychiatry and Anti-Psychiatry – for the Huffington Post Blog, summarizing the positions he had discussed at the… Continue Reading
Allen Frances and the Spurious Medicalization of Everyday Problems
On April 5, Allen Frances MD, published an article on the Huffington Post blog. The title is Can We Replace Misleading Terms Like ‘Mental Illness,’ ‘Patient,’ and ‘Schizophrenia’ It’s an interesting piece, and it raises some fundamental issues. Here are some quotes from the article, interspersed with my comments. “Those of us who worked on… Continue Reading
The Dehumanizing Aspect of DSM
In January 2014, the journal Research on Social Work Practice published a special issue: A Critical Appraisal of the DSM-5: Social Work Perspectives. There were many excellent articles in this volume, some of which I have highlighted in earlier posts. One of the very outstanding articles is The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders… Continue Reading
More Psychiatric ‘Myth’ Debunking
On July 15, I wrote a post called Psychiatry Debunks the ‘Myths.’ In that article I focused on the myth-debunking of Cognitive Psychiatry of Chapel Hill, but in researching the topic for that post, I came across a psychiatry resident named Shan (no last name) who blogs on a website called Exploratory Encephalotomy. With regards… Continue Reading
Psychiatry Debunks the ‘Myths’
Psychiatry has always had its share of critics, but in the past two decades these criticisms have increased in frequency and intensity. Psychiatry’s underlying concepts are being denounced as spurious to the point of inanity, and its practices are being accurately and forcefully exposed as destructive, disempowering, and stigmatizing. Psychiatry has no rational or logical… 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
Thomas Szasz Refuted: I Don’t Think So!
On February 28, Awais Aftab, MD, a psychiatrist working in Qatar, published an interesting article on Psychiatric Times. The article, which is titled Mental Illness vs Brain Disorders: From Szasz to DSM-5, is an attempt to validate the concept of “mental illness” and, in particular, claims to refute the position of the late Thomas Szasz,… 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
Psychiatry Is Not Based On Valid Science
BACKGROUND On December 23, I wrote a post called DSM-5 – Dimensional Diagnoses – More Conflicts of Interest? In the article I sketched out the role of David Kupfer, MD, in promoting the concept of dimensional assessment in DSM-5, and I speculated that at least part of his motivation in this regard might have stemmed… 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
Dr. Lieberman and ’60 Minutes’
On October 23, Psychiatric News (the APA’s media outlet) ran an article titled ‘60 Minutes’ Interviews APA President on Schizophrenia. The article was written by Mark Moran, a Psychiatric News reporter. The piece opens with a quote from Jeffrey Lieberman, MD (President of the APA): “’60 Minutes’ showed a genuine interest beyond simply producing what… Continue Reading
Another Critique of Psychiatry’s Medical Model
I have recently read De-Medicalizing Misery [palgrave macmillan, 2011]. It’s a comprehensive collection of articles, edited by Mark Rapley, Joanna Moncrieff, and Jacqui Dillon. The table of contents provides a sense of the book’s scope. Table of Contents Carving Nature at its Joints? DSM and the Medicalization of Everyday Life, Mark Rapley, Joanna Moncrieff, and Jacqui… Continue Reading
The Stigma Attached to ‘Mental Illness’
On Monday, October 7, 2013, The Sun, a British tabloid newspaper ran the following headline: 1,200 Killed By Mental Patients. Shock 10-year toll exposes care crisis. It took up almost all of the front page. The headline precipitated a great deal of protest from politicians, advocacy groups, mental health professionals, and others. The general points… Continue Reading
The Concept of Mental Illness: Spurious or Valid?
On January 17, 2013, Peter Kinderman, PhD, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, wrote an article titled Grief and Anxiety are not mental illnesses. On February 4, 2013, Steven Novella, MD, wrote a critique of Dr. Kinderman’s article. On February 20, I wrote a critique of Dr. Novella’s article. And finally, on… Continue Reading
Jon Rappoport’s Blog
If you haven’t seen Jon Rappoport’s blog, please take a look. Here are two quotes from his September 22 post, Psychiatry targets college students for destruction: “The concept called ‘mental disorder’ is a sales pitch backed up by extraordinary PR, money, academic gibberish, and government-granted official status.” “People need to wake up to the fact… Continue Reading
Submitting Claims for Off-label Prescriptions to Medicaid May Constitute Fraud
In my view, one of the most destructive developments in psychiatry in recent years is the prescribing of neuroleptic drugs to children. Much of this prescribing is off-label, meaning that the prescribed use is not approved by the FDA. Off-label drug prescribing is legal, however. Once the FDA has approved a drug for one purpose,… Continue Reading
The Burden of Mental ‘Illness’
Thanks to Graham Davey and Richard Pemberton on Twitter for the link to an interesting article in the August 29, 2013 issue of the Lancet. It’s titled Global burden of disease attributable to mental and substance use disorders: findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010, and was written by Harvey A. Whiteford, et… Continue Reading
The Illness Theory Is Everywhere
A few days ago, there was an interesting item in the Dear Abby column of our local newspaper. Dear Abby is a general advice column written by Jeanne Phillips, and is widely read. The letter in question was written by “Sibling Standing By,” who described his/her 63 year old sister as someone who “…takes no… Continue Reading
Dr. Lieberman is Back
Courtesy of Carl Elliott via Twitter, I’ve recently read Dr. Lieberman’s latest post on Psychiatric News. It’s called – believe it or not – Time to Re-Engage With Pharma? dated August 1, 2013. And it’s classic Dr. Lieberman sleight of hand. His opening statement, for instance, reads: “Drug companies aren’t held in high esteem by… Continue Reading
Medical Model vs. Psychosocial/Behavioral Model
BACKGROUND Obviously there are many points of contention between mainstream biological psychiatrists on the one hand, and those of us who condemn this system as spurious and destructive. Much of what I’ve written on this website over the past four years has been an elucidation of these differences. Today I would like to focus on… Continue Reading
Dr. Lieberman Is Back! More Of The Same
Last week, thanks to a tweet from Ginger Breggin, I came across an article by Jeffrey Lieberman entitled Psychiatry: Nothing to Be Defensive About. Dr. Lieberman is president of the APA, and has gone on record more than once as saying that all these dreadful criticisms of psychiatry are very unfair, and that psychiatrists are… Continue Reading
Agitation and Neuroleptics
Sandra Steingard, MD, is a practicing psychiatrist who from time to time posts articles on Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America website. Dr. Steingard apparently prescribes psychotropic drugs in her practice, but she is by no means a pill-for-every-problem practitioner, and her articles are always interesting and thought-provoking. Dr. Steingard posted A Paradox Revealed – Again… Continue Reading
Psychiatry Is Intrinsically Flawed and Rotten
On Twitter yesterday, Robert Stamatakis commented: “I have to ask, I don’t understand. Do you work in the UK? Your descriptions of psychiatry are nothing I recognize. These descriptions of psychiatry are nothing like the practice I see on a daily basis.” I am certainly a very outspoken critic of psychiatry, and in that regard… Continue Reading
Psychiatry: The Science That Isn’t
There’s a very important article on Mad in America. It’s called Does NIMH Follow the Rules of Science? A Startling Study, by Niall McLaren, MD, dated July 9, 2013. Dr. McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist who has relentlessly combed the literature for proof of the fundamental psychiatric claim – “…that a full understanding of the… Continue Reading
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Next Page »