"Exactly. My sister told her GP she felt suicidal. The police took her away in hand cuffs.” so REALLY?? they tell us to be sure to ask for help. What do we do when there is no help available? Until we are, as a society, willing to answer that question people will continue to die without being offered a chance to share and thus process their pain. ...
Bipolar: contemplation about the psych label
I am life. I am psychedelic. I am kaleidoscopic. I am conscious. I am aware. I am silence. I am chaos. The term bipolar *disorder* attempts to diminish. Two poles? In a world of endless spectrums all interlacing into oneness? What nonsense. The term bipolar is attached to people like me. We frighten those "treating" us. We are sensitive, open, people in need of shamanic-like guidance.
A safe place to be…
Finding our own personal sovereignty towards an egalitarian society full of sovereign beings is what healing is all about. Authority over others is violence. All human beings need such support from the moment we are born. As we grow up we start giving it to ourselves and those around us too if we are pursuing health and well-being.
The apex and decline of evidence-based psychotherapy and psychiatry
By Brent Potter, PhD -- I am grateful to be alive during to see the apex and decline of evidence-based psychotherapy and psychiatry. Honestly, I didn’t think that I’d see anything like it in my lifetime. It was looking pretty daunting for a while, but we’re not only making substantial progress, but winning. -- Please don’t mistake me—we have plenty more to do. We’re not in the clear yet, but we’re light years ahead of where we were roughly 20 years ago. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Increased anti-depressant use strongly associated with rise in mood disorders || Robert Whitaker
By Robert Whitaker When I was researching Anatomy of an Epidemic and sought to track the number of people receiving a disability payment between 1987 and 2007 due to “mental illness,” I was frustrated by the lack of diagnostic clarity in the data. The Social Security Administration would list, in its annual reports on the... Continue Reading →
Finding the Gifts Within Madness
by Ron Unger When people are seeing the world really different than we do, it’s often reassuring to think that there must be something wrong with them – because if they are completely wrong, or ill, then we don’t have to rethink our own sense of reality, we can instead be confident about that own understandings encompass all that we need to know. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
A straight talking guide to psychiatric diagnosis
By Lucy Johnstone: A revolution is underway in mental health. If the authors of the diagnostic manuals are admitting that psychiatric diagnoses are not supported by evidence, then no one should be forced to accept them. If many mental health workers are openly questioning diagnosis and saying we need a different and better system, then service users and carers should be allowed to do so too. This book is about choice. It is about giving people the information to make up their own minds, and exploring alternatives for those who wish to do so. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Psychiatry retains power despite lost scientific credibility
Influential “thought leader” psychiatrists and major psychiatry institutions, by their own recent admissions, have been repeatedly wrong about illness/disorder validity, biochemical causes, and drug treatments; and also, in several cases, have been discovered to be on the take from drug companies—yet continue to be taken seriously by the mainstream media. While Big Pharma financial backing is one reason that psychiatry is able to retain its clout, this is not the only reason. More insidiously, psychiatry retains influence because of the needs of the larger power structure that rules us. And perhaps most troubling, psychiatry retains influence because of us—and our increasing fears that have resulted in our expanding needs for coercion. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
To those who claim we rant
Someone on Twitter challenged Kelly Brogan MD and I about her article about SSRIs yesterday. She said that she and I were "ranting" All my work is now motivated by the fact that I’ve worked with and corresponded with thousands of people who have been gravely harmed by psychiatry. The denial of the great potential for harm in psychiatry must end. The harming of so many innocent and vulnerable people must end. I’m happy to keep helping people find other ways until no one is being harmed any longer....what follows too are some of my tweets in response to this woman … [click on title to read and view more]
‘Borderline Personality Disorder’, the Failure of Psychiatry and Emergence
By Jacqueline Gunn, PsyD and Brent Potter, PhD This work stands out as distinct from all other books written on ‘borderline personality disorder’ and other so-called psychiatric diseases. We do not assume that BPD is what is outlined in the DSM and the literature on psychopathology. At no time do we refer to it as a diagnosis or psychiatric disease. This is why you will repeatedly see ‘borderline personality disorder’ in single quotation marks. It isn’t a thing, like a disorder residing solely in the brain organ of an individual. An individual only takes up possibilities disclosed to him or her by the cultural-historical environment. To say otherwise would be to say that the individual creates them out of nothing which, of course, would be absurd. Since distressing states of mind are variations of common human experience, they are expressed in typical ways. For these reasons, we do not consider ‘borderline personality disorder’ in a decontextualized fashion. … [click on title to read and view more]
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