Psychiatric News is the APA’s online bulletin. On Jan 15, it ran an article by Vabren Watts (an APA staff writer). The article is called APA Gives Schizophrenia Research Capitol Hill Spotlight. It is reported in the article that on December 12, 2013, the APA, together with the Congressional Neuroscience Caucus and the American Brain… Continue Reading
Dr. Lieberman Still Passing the Buck: Psychiatry Is Blameless
Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, has expressed concern about the rise in the number of people being assigned a “diagnosis” of ADHD. He has put up a video on Medscape, Explaining the Rise in ADHD. There is a transcript with the video. Dr. Lieberman is responding to a December 14, 2013, New York… Continue Reading
New President of Royal College of Psychiatrists: Priorities
The Royal College of Psychiatry is the UK equivalent of the American Psychiatric Association. On January 14, they announced that Professor Simon Wessely has been elected as their next president, and that he will take office on June 26, 2014. Dr. Wessely is an eminent psychiatrist who has been knighted by the Queen for his… Continue Reading
Training Of Psychiatrists: What The Future Holds
Joel Yager, MD, is a Professor of Psychiatry, University of Colorado at Denver School of Medicine. He started his career as a US Army psychiatrist in 1969, and has held a wide range of clinical and teaching positions in the intervening years. He has received numerous awards, including lifetime achievement awards from the National Eating… 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
Person-first Terminology Doesn’t Validate Psychiatric Diagnoses
On January 3, on CommonHealth I saw the following headline: A Phrase To Renounce For 2014: ‘The Mentally Ill’, written by Carey Goldberg. My first impression was that the author was debunking the concept of mental illness, but I was sadly mistaken. The theme of the article was the so-called person-first terminology that has been… Continue Reading
Dr. Lieberman on Value and Price: Psychiatry Continues to Side-step Criticism
Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, is the President of the APA, and every two weeks or so he writes psychiatric propaganda articles on Psychiatric News (the APA’s online bulletin). On December 26, his piece was titled APA Successful in Attaining Higher Work Values for Psychiatry. Here’s the first paragraph: “In an ideal world, value and price would… Continue Reading
Training the Psychiatrists of the Future (According to Dr. Lieberman): More Cheerleading
Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA and Chair of Psychiatry at Columbia University, published a post on November 26 on Psychiatric News. The article is called Training the Psychiatrists of the Future, and is co-authored by Richard Summers, MD. Dr. Summers is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. Drs. Lieberman and… Continue Reading
Causes of High Mortality in People Labeled ‘Mentally Ill’
ANOTHER VIDEO FROM DR. LIEBERMAN On October 28, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, made another video. This one is titled An Important Look at Mortality in Mental Illness: A Decade of Data on Psychotropic Drugs, and was made for Medscape. You can see the transcript at the same site. Medscape is a web… Continue Reading
Dr. Lieberman Pursues JFK’s Vision
On November 1, Psychiatric News published 50 Years After: Will We Realize JFK’s Vision for Mental Health Care? Psychiatric News is an APA publication, and the piece was written by APA’s President, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD. Dr. Lieberman begins by reminding us that in 1963, President Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act (CMHA) into law. … 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
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 New Holy Grail: Dysfunctional Neural Circuits
There’s a new article on Psychiatric News titled Change, Challenge, and Opportunity: Psychiatry Through the Looking Glass of Research. It’s dated October 17, and was authored by Steven Hyman, MD, and Jeffrey Lieberman, MD. Thanks to Mental Health Law on Twitter for the link. Dr. Lieberman is President of the APA. Dr. Hyman was Director… Continue Reading
Health Care Reform and Psychiatry
I recently came across an APA article titled Change, Challenge, and Opportunity: Psychiatry in the Age of Health Care Reform. It was co-authored by Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, and Howard Goldman, MD, PhD, and dated October 3. The article discusses the implications of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) for psychiatry, and also reviews progress of the… Continue Reading
A Proposed Mental Health School Program
On September 30, the Wisconsin State Journal posted an article online. It’s called County Executive Joe Parisi proposes new mental health program for county school district, and was written by Andrea Anderson. [Thanks to S. Randolph Kretchmar on Twitter for the link.] The gist of the article is that Joe Parisi, the County Executive of… Continue Reading
Psychiatry’s Spin on the Navy Yard Murders
Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, has written a guest post, In the Wake of the Navy Yard Shooting: A Way Forward, on EverydayHealth. Everyday Health Inc. is a media company which operates for-profit websites on health and related matters. It’s been confirmed that the Navy Yard shooter had been taking trazadone, an antidepressant… Continue Reading
Dr. Lieberman’s Latest
On September 12, Jeffry Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, posted an article on Psychiatric News titled IPS to Feature Patrick Kennedy, Celebrate Community Psychiatry. The article is a preview of an APA conference scheduled for October 10-13 in Philadelphia: “Transforming Psychiatric Practice, Reforming Health Care Delivery.” Dr. Lieberman tells us that he is very… Continue Reading
More Lame Excuses from Dr. Lieberman
It’s that time of the month, and Dr. Lieberman has written another post, Change, Challenge and Opportunity: Psychiatry in Age of Reform and Enlightenment, on the APA’s website, Psychiatric News. He tells us that these are changing times, and that he, for one, is choosing to see these changes as positive. He leads with a… Continue Reading
Psychiatry and Neurology – A Merger in the Works?
BACKGROUND Those of us on this side of the debate, who criticize psychiatry for medicalizing and drugging virtually every problem of human existence, sometimes ask the question: If all these problems are truly illnesses of the brain, then why are they not being treated by neurologists? The standard psychiatric response to this question has been: … 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
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
Psychiatry Has the Moral High Ground (According to Jeffrey Lieberman)
BACKGROUND As I suppose everyone knows by now, psychiatry has been on the receiving end of some very serious criticism in recent years. The criticism has come from many sources, including: survivors of psychiatric “treatment,” non-psychiatric mental health practitioners, journalists, the general public, and even from some psychiatrists themselves. The content of the criticisms has… Continue Reading
DSM-5: How to Salvage a Shipwreck
DSM-5 was published on May 18, 2013, amidst great criticism. The fundamental criticism was, and is, that the problems listed in the manual are not illnesses in any ordinary sense of the term. Other critics focused on the pathologizing of normality, the expansion of the diagnostic net by the lowering of thresholds, and the lack… Continue Reading
Psychiatry Still Doesn’t Get It
BACKGROUND On 3-4 June, the Institute of Psychiatry in London hosted an international conference to mark the publication of DSM-5. On June 10, Sir Simon Wessely, a department head at the Institute, published a paper called DSM-5 at the IoP. The paper is a summary of the conference proceedings, and also, in many respects, a… Continue Reading
Psychiatry Is Not Based On Science
On May 27, David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, wrote a piece on psychiatry called Heroes of Uncertainty. It’s an interesting and somewhat contradictory article. Here are some quotes: “As the handbook’s [DSM-5] many critics have noted, psychiatrists use terms like ‘mental disorder’ and ‘normal behavior,’ but there is no agreement on what these… Continue Reading