This is an email I wrote to a friend who asked what it was like to experience the post benzo withdrawal. I don’t write much anymore, even emails to friends and family, so I figured I’d be economical and use this on the blog. I began the description: Have you tripped before? I often feel [...]
Have antidepressants turned an episodic illness into a chronic one?
March 18, 2010 By
Robert Whitaker continues the argument he started the other day on his new blog on Psychology Today. In it he asks the question posed in the title of this post. In his March 1 article in the New Yorker, Louis Menand wrote that the NIMH’s STAR*D trial showed that antidepressants produced a 67% recovery rate, [...]
Normality?
March 17, 2010 By
From Wish I Could Be There: Notes From a Phobic Life by Allen Shawn. The concept of normality is due for an overhaul. “Normality” is a relative term…Each human being is a peculiar balance of assets and defects, physical, psychological, sociological. When you see a person’s strengths, they are, by and large, eclipsing equally powerful [...]
Quote of the day ~ Thomas Merton
March 16, 2010 By
Some of us need to discover that we will not begin to live more fully until we have the courage to do and see and taste and experience much less than usual … And for a man who has let himself be drawn completely out of himself by his activity, nothing is more difficult than [...]
Tuesday media madness
March 16, 2010 By
From the news and blogs the last few days: How Loss Creates Depression And Growth – Fable – Good Fables — “The capacity to tolerate distress and efficiently develop greater internal resources creates the greatest possibility for posttraumatic growth. Posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic diminishment can co-exist.” Meet A Primary Care Doc Who Speaks For Glaxo [...]
Robert Whitaker has a new blog on Psychology Today
March 15, 2010 By
Robert Whitaker, author of the renowned book Mad in America, and Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America to be released in a month, now has a blog on Psychology Today. His first post on the new blog takes the New Yorker to task for [...]
Psych drugs damage ability to love/bond
March 15, 2010 By
Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who has looked at how antidepressants effect romantic love, falling in love and most importantly ongoing attachment. The conclusion being that the love response and the human instinct for attachment are profoundly messed up. Antidepressants don’t just create sexual dysfunction, they wreak havoc with the whole emotional system that creates [...]
Quote of the day — from The Sanity We are Born With
March 14, 2010 By
When you don’t punish or condemn yourself, when you relax more and appreciate your body and mind, you begin to contact the fundamental notion of basic goodness in yourself. So it is extremely important to be willing to open yourself to yourself. Developing tenderness toward yourself allows you to see both your problems and your [...]
Broken Soldier
March 14, 2010 By
With the video on youtube: Why are so many veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan psychologically damaged? Is it the natural trauma of war, or the product of military whose mission is to occupy and suppress the civilian population? Zollie Goodman recounts the racism against Iraqis imbued in his unit, while Kris Goldsmith reveals [...]
Rufus May in the New Zealand press today — nice story
March 13, 2010 By
“Former psychiatric patient-turned-psychologist Rufus May has been shaking up the treatment of mental illness by talking to the voices people hear.” Read the story here. I’ve talked about Rufus May on this blog before. The film he made for BBC can be seen in it’s entirety on youtube. It’s well worth a look if you’ve not [...]
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