DAILY KOS Interview: Case Studies in Activism #67: Battling Big Pharma and Rehumanizing Mental Health Treatment
Why Do Some Americans Speak So Confidently When They Have No Clue What They’re Talking About?
The Harvard Business School (HBS) information session on how to be a good class participant instructs, “Speak with conviction. Even if you believe something only fifty-five percent, say it as if you believe it a hundred percent,” reports Susan Cain in her best-selling book Quiet (2013). At HBS, Cain noticed, “If a student talks often and […]
Greed and Hustle Have Become Virtues
New York Times “Room for Debate Question”: “Why We Like to Watch Rich People: Why do American television and movie audiences like to watch the antics and questionable behavior of the 1 percent?” The lives of the outlandishly rich are so unreal and so bizarre for most of us that watching their self-indulgence, careless spending, […]
10 Ways Mental Health Professionals Increase Misery in Suffering People
Decreasing suffering often means “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.” However, AlterNet’s recently republished Psychotherapy Networker article, “The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People,” authored by psychotherapist Cloe Madanes, instead appears to have afflicted many of the afflicted. Perhaps Madanes was attempting to afflict those comfortable enough to afford her and her professional partner […]
America’s Last Renegades?
The historic divide between the “respectable” vs. the “renegades” is the subject of historian Thaddeus Russell’s 2011 book A Renegade History of the United States, which argues that when renegade groups gain civil rights and social acceptability, they lose their renegade culture. At least one group of American outsiders, not discussed by Russell, continues to […]
NIMH Director Rethinks Standard Psychiatric Treatment for Schizophrenia
The director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) now recognizes what treatment reform activists have been talking about for years—people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses are a diverse group who need diverse approaches. NIMH director Thomas Insel recently acknowledged: It appears that what we currently call ‘schizophrenia’ may comprise disorders with quite […]
Why Drugging All Schizophrenics For Life Is Not the Answer
Fascinating research reveals that some people who suffer a psychotic break do better without a lifetime of medication. It is an amazing victory for mental health treatment reform activists and one investigative reporter. On August 28, 2013, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director, Thomas Insel, announced that psychiatry’s standard treatment for people diagnosed with […]
Interview with Marcos Guglielmetti: “Bruce Levine: A Dissident Psychologist”
The More a Society Coerces Its People, the Greater the Chance of Mental Illness
Throughout history, societies have existed with far less coercion than ours, and while these societies have had far less consumer goods and what modernity calls “efficiency,” they also have had far less mental illness. This reality has been buried, not surprisingly, by uncritical champions of modernity and mainstream psychiatry. Coercion—the use of physical, legal, chemical, […]
Living in America Will Drive You Insane — Literally
In “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” (New York Review of Books, 2011), Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, discusses over-diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, pathologizing of normal behaviors, Big Pharma corruption of psychiatry, and the adverse effects of psychiatric medications. While diagnostic expansionism and Big Pharma certainly deserve a large […]
