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Alternative perspective on psychiatry's so-called mental disorders | PHILIP HICKEY, PH.D.

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You are here: Home / Archives for Psychiatric “spin”

Is Anti-Psychiatry Harmful?

January 13, 2021 By Phil Hickey | Leave a Comment

INTRODUCTION On September 9, 2020, Jonathan Stea, PhD, Tyler Black, MD, and Joseph Pierre, MD, published a piece on MedPage Today.  The article is titled Why Anti-Psychiatry Now Fails and Harms. Dr. Stea is a clinical psychologist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Calgary. Dr. Black is the psychiatric medical director of British… Continue Reading

Drs. Pies and Ruffalo Still Rattling Their Wooden Swords

July 28, 2020 By Phil Hickey | Leave a Comment

Ronald Pies, MD, and Mark Ruffalo, D Psa, were busy in June.  They published two papers in defense of psychiatry:  What Is Meant by a Psychiatric Diagnosis? (“Psychiatric diagnoses are not merely descriptive; they reflect genuine illness”); and Psychiatric Diagnosis 2.0: The Myth of the Symptom Checklist (“More on the meaning of psychiatric diagnosis”).  Both… Continue Reading

Allen Frances: Still Spinning the Story

April 24, 2020 By Phil Hickey | Leave a Comment

On March 4, 2020, the very eminent Allen Frances, MD, published an article in Aeon, which according to its About page is “a digital magazine, publishing some of the most profound and provocative thinking on the web. We ask the big questions and find the freshest, most original answers, provided by leading thinkers on science,… Continue Reading

Allen Frances and the Increasing Use of Antidepressants

October 30, 2018 By Phil Hickey | Leave a Comment

On May 16, 2018, the prestigious and venerable psychiatrist Allen Frances, MD, gave an interview to Christiane Amanpour on CNN.  You can see the video here.  It’s titled How Antidepressant Withdrawal “Can Trap People”. Here’s how the interview opened: CA:  “So you know, I just wanted to start by saying that who knew that antidepressants… Continue Reading

The “Essential Principles” of Psychiatric Practice: More Psychiatric Cheerleading

June 20, 2018 By Phil Hickey | Leave a Comment

In the May 2018 issue of Current Psychiatry, there’s an editorial by Henry Nasrallah, MD.  Dr. Nasrallah is a highly renowned psychiatrist, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal.  He is also chair of the St. Louis University Department of Psychiatry. Here’s the opening paragraph of the article. “As the end of the academic year approaches,… Continue Reading

Dr. Pies Defending Psychiatry’s Position on Auditory Hallucinations

February 23, 2018 By Phil Hickey | 2 Comments

On September 4, 2017, the very eminent and prestigious psychiatrist Ronald Pies, MD, published an article on Psychiatric Times.  The piece is titled: Hearing Voices and Psychiatry’s (Real) Medical Model.  Dr. Pies is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Psychiatric Times and a professor of psychiatry at SUNY and Tufts.  He has written extensively on psychiatric and other… Continue Reading

Rebranding Psychiatry

November 28, 2017 By Phil Hickey | 8 Comments

Or, how to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. INTRODUCTION In November 2017, the British Journal of Psychiatry published a guest editorial titled Shrink rethink: rebranding psychiatry.  The authors are Scottish psychiatrists Jim Crabb, MD and Neil Masson, MD, and Lee Barber, an advertising and marketing strategist.  Both Drs. Crabb and Masson practice… Continue Reading

Robert Whitaker Refutes Jeffrey Lieberman; But Is Psychiatry Reformable?

June 22, 2017 By Phil Hickey | 12 Comments

INTRODUCTION On May 5, 2017, Donald Goff, MD and seven other psychiatrists, including the very eminent Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, published an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry.  The title is: The Long-Term Effects of Antipsychotic Medication on Clinical Course in Schizophrenia. Here’s the abstract: “Concerns have been raised that treatment with antipsychotic medication might… Continue Reading

Nassir Ghaemi and The Psychological Fallacy

May 12, 2017 By Phil Hickey | 14 Comments

INTRODUCTION On August 8, 2013, the eminent psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi, MD, MPH, published an article on Medscape. The title of the piece is The Psychological Fallacy in Psychiatry. The article is almost four years old. Ordinarily I don’t discuss material this dated, but the content of this article is particularly important, and worthy of discussion,… Continue Reading

Mental Health First Aid: Another Psychiatric Expansionist Tool

January 23, 2017 By Phil Hickey | 16 Comments

On December 25, 2016, the Baltimore Sun published an excellent article titled Drug companies prey on children, by Patrick D. Hahn, PhD.  Dr. Hahn is an affiliate professor of biology at Loyola University, Maryland.  Here are some quotes: “I recently attended Youth Mental Health First Aid Training at a local public school. It was an… Continue Reading

The Biological Evidence for “Mental Illness”

January 10, 2017 By Phil Hickey | 61 Comments

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

My Response to a Defender of Psychiatry

December 6, 2016 By Phil Hickey | 31 Comments

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

Allen Frances:  Still Blaming Everyone But Himself

May 24, 2016 By Phil Hickey | 31 Comments

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

May 10, 2016 By Phil Hickey | 50 Comments

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

Allen Frances on Anti-Psychiatry

March 24, 2016 By Phil Hickey | 32 Comments

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

Psychiatry Bashing

March 7, 2016 By Phil Hickey | 12 Comments

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

Allen Frances Still Trying to Excuse Psychiatry’s (and his own) Role in the ADHD ‘Epidemic’

December 8, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 32 Comments

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

Allen Frances Names and Shames the Power Players, but Not Himself

October 29, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 54 Comments

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’

October 22, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 9 Comments

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

The APA’s New Image

September 25, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 3 Comments

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

Stigmatization of Psychiatry and Psychiatrists

September 7, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 16 Comments

On February 27, 2015, European Psychiatry published a paper titled EPA guidance on how to improve the image of psychiatry and of the psychiatrist.  The paper was authored by D. Bhugra et al.  EPA is the European Psychiatric Association.  Dr. Bhugra is a psychiatrist who works at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience, King’s… Continue Reading

Allen Frances Saving Psychiatry From Itself?

July 3, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 70 Comments

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

The Spurious Chemical Imbalance Theory is Still Alive and Well

April 27, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 37 Comments

On April 5, 2015, Scott Alexander, MD, a trainee psychiatrist, posted an article titled Chemical Imbalance on his website Slate Star Codex.  (The writer tells us that Scott Alexander is a blog handle and not his real name, but for convenience, I will refer to him as Dr. Alexander.) Dr. Alexander begins by noting that… Continue Reading

Psychiatric Diagnoses:  Labels, Not Explanations

April 2, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 67 Comments

On March 16, Ronald Pies, MD, published an article in the Psychiatric Times.  The article is titled The War on Psychiatric Diagnosis, and the sub-title synopsis on the pdf version reads:  “A recent report that argues against descriptive diagnosis in medicine is historically ill-informed and medically naive, in the opinion of this psychiatrist.” Dr. Pies… Continue Reading

Thomas Insel: “Are Children Overmedicated?”

February 10, 2015 By Phil Hickey | 60 Comments

Thomas Insel, MD, is the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health.  In June of last year, he published, on the Director’s Blog, an article titled Are Children Overmedicated?  The gist of the article is that children are not being overmedicated, but rather that there is an increase in “severe psychiatric problems” in this… Continue Reading

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Recent Articles

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The phrase "mental health" as used in the name of this website is simply a term of convenience. It specifically does not imply that the human problems embraced by this term are illnesses, or that their absence constitutes health. Indeed, the fundamental tenet of this site is that there are no mental illnesses, and that conceptualizing human problems in this way is spurious, destructive, disempowering, and stigmatizing.

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