There was an interesting article, Antidepressant regulations tightened following suicide, in the Copenhagen Post on January 7. Thanks to Mad in America for the link. It is reported that Danilo Terrida, aged 20, committed suicide in 2011 "…eleven days after he was prescribed antidepressants following an eight-minute-long conversation with a doctor." The doctor has been deemed responsible for the suicide by the National Agency for Patients' Rights and Complaints. According to its website: "The National Agency for Patients' Rights and Complaints functions as a single point of access for patients who wish to complain about the professional treatment in the Danish health service." ...

Very interested to read some of your very clearly reasoned, explained and referenced posts. I am familiarising myself with the status of the Recovery Model of mental health for my new job and have repeatedly come across critiques of modern psychiatry and the DSM diagnosis. I am encouraged by this line of questioning because I have 7 years experience with the Grow peer support program for recovery and personal development. Like many recovery programs, it largely ignores diagnosis, seeks to recognise and draw out the strength and human potential in all of us and has helped many people to dispense with meds altogether and live a productive, peaceful and happy life. In contrast I have found it heartbreaking to see the dehumanising “flattening” of friends when they have been heavily medicated or zapped. Learning how to constructively experience, integrate and grow from the disappointments and challenges of life has been preventative for me and taken me off the slippery path of unhealthy thoughts and attitudes. Professional therapists need to see psych patients as humans first with intrinsic value and untold potential. They need to see the purpose of medication as the end of medication. Thank you. ...

On January 7, Maria Bradshaw, co-founder of CASPER, published an interesting article on Mad in America. It’s called Prescribing Rights for Psychologists, and it suggests that psychology as a profession may be falling into some of the same errors that enmire psychiatry. Maria makes some very compelling points, and focuses particularly on the fact that psychologists have won prescribing rights in a number of jurisdictions, and are engaged in an ongoing effort to expand this aspect of their work. ...

A couple of months ago I wrote an article concerning ECT which generated some controversy. One of the issues that came up was the relationship between biological explanations of human activity and more global explanations, which, for want of a better term, I’ll call person-centered explanations. Any human activity can be viewed from different levels of abstraction. Suppose, for instance, that I am sitting in my living room reading a book. Then I put the book down, stand up, and go outside. If the question were to be asked: why did he put the book down and go outside? A wide range of perspectives and answers are possible. One could, for instance, focus on the fact that I am a biological organism, and one could develop a detailed and comprehensive flow sheet of every muscle movement, every heartbeat, every sensory input, neural impulse etc., that had occurred from the moment that I put the book down until I was standing outside. Such an account might be more or less detailed. There would, of course, be physical limitations on the amount of information of this sort that is attainable, but from a theoretical point of view, one could compile a detailed, complete, and accurate biological account of the actions in question. And such an account would be a valid response to the question: why did he put the book down and go outside. ...

Last month (December 2013) the American Journal of Psychiatry published Antidepressant-Induced Liver Injury: A Review for Clinicians, by Voican C.S. et al. The study was a literature search from 1965 onwards. Here are the authors’ results: All antidepressants can induce hepatotoxicity, especially in elderly patients and those taking more than one drug Liver damage is generally unpredictable and unrelated to dose Liver damage can occur within a few days of initiation Antidepressant-induced liver failure can be life threatening Antidepressants with higher risk for liver failure include: iproniazid, nefazodone, phenelzine, imipramine, amitriptyline, duloxetine, bupropion, trazodone, tianeptine, and agomelatine Antidepressants with lower risk: citalopram, escitalopram, paroxetine, and fluvoxamine Although an infrequent event, antidepressant-induced liver injury may be irreversible   ...

A short editorial piece by James Bradshaw in the current issue (Jan/Feb) of the National Psychologist discusses the trial of a 16-year-old male who killed four people and severely injured two others while driving under the influence of Valium (diazepam) and alcohol. He had stolen the alcohol from a store earlier, and his blood alcohol level was three times the legal adult limit. He was driving 70 mph in a 40 mph zone at the time of the incident. ...

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 from the fact that he is a major shareholder in a company that is developing a computerized assessment instrument. I ended the piece with a general criticism of psychiatry: ...

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 promoted by various bodies and agencies since about the mid-eighties. The idea is that one shouldn’t say “a developmentally disabled child.” Instead, one should say “a child with a developmental disability.” Similarly, a person should not be referred to as an “alcoholic,” but rather as a “person with alcoholism.” And so on. The idea is to avoid giving the impression that the individual is to be defined by the presence of a disabling condition. The individual is first and foremost a person, and the problem or disability is semantically tacked on to indicate that it is a quality of the person rather than the defining feature. ...

BOOK PREVIEW Richard C. Saul, MD ADHD Does Not Exist: The Truth About Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder Publication date: February 18, 2014 ************************ Those of us on this side of the psychiatry debate have been saying for decades that the condition known as ADHD is not an illness, but is rather an arbitrarily delineated cluster of vaguely defined problems that children have acquired in various ways. We have also pointed out that psychiatry's labeling of this condition as an illness is simply another instance of their inexorable turf expansion, and that their widespread drugging of the individuals so labeled is destructive and disempowering. And, also for decades, psychiatry has been marginalizing us as unscientific mental illness deniers, who seek to put the clock back and deprive people suffering from this “illness” of the vital “treatment” that they so desperately need. ...

On December 27, 2013, Connecticut State Police issued a 7,000-page, heavily redacted, report on the massacre that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School just over a year earlier (December 14, 2012). For the record, I have not read the 7,000-page report, but I have read the Wikipedia article Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, last updated January 4, 2013, and several media reports on the matter, including reports from the New York Times, the Hartford Courant, and the Washington Post. ...