Courtesy of yobluemama2 on Twitter, I’ve come across an interesting article. It’s called Psychiatric Drugs and Suicide, by Janne Larsson, a reporter. It’s posted on PsychRights.org, a law project for psychiatric rights. The article focuses on suicides committed in Sweden in 2006-2007, and the proportions of victims who had taken psychiatric drugs in the period prior to the suicide. The study also covers data from autopsy reports. Information for the study was gathered under Sweden’s freedom of information act. Here’s a summary of the main findings. ...

BACKGROUND A couple of days ago (June 12) I posted Autism Prevalence Increasing. The article drew attention to a post by Kelly Brogan, MD, called See No Evil, Hear No Evil which had appeared on Mad in America on June 9. Dr. Brogan’s article had cited an alarming increase in the incidence of autism over the past few decades, and mentioned some possible causative factors. I checked the figures against the DSM and CDC prevalence estimates and found they were broadly in line. I mentioned the possibility that diagnostic expansion, particularly as embracing milder presentations, might be a confounding factor, but that given the reported increase (1 in 5000 to 100 in 5000) over 38 years, I expressed the view that this was a bit of a stretch. ...

Last month (May 31), National Public Radio (NPR) ran an interview on Science Friday with Thomas Insel, MD, Director of NIMH, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, and Gary Greenberg, PhD, practicing psychotherapist. I didn’t hear the interview, but I have read the transcript. Doctors Insel and Lieberman were spinning the barrage of criticism directed at psychiatry in recent months, while at the same time clinging desperately to the notion that the problems that psychiatrists “treat” are real illnesses. It’s become a familiar theme, and there was nothing new. ...

On two occasions in the past week or so, I have been involved in discussions on the increasing prevalence of autism. In the more recent of these, the individual with whom I was talking expressed the concern that the recent DSM enlargement of autism disorder to autism spectrum disorder might be an APA-pharma designed artifact to draw attention away from the steady increase in the incidence of autism in recent decades. ...

It is well known that nutrition is important, and that a great many people today – of all ages – are not receiving adequate nutrition. It’s a huge subject, and is covered on lots of websites. A few days ago (June 7), there was an article on Mad in America called Can Psychosis be Treated with Nutrition? It was written by Bonnie Kaplan, PhD and Julia Rucklidge, PhD. The article is about a boy, whom the authors call Andrew (not his real name). He had some early developmental problems, and by age 10 was displaying hallucinatory and delusional behavior. He spent six months in a mental hospital, and was prescribed a wide range of psychoactive drugs, including neuroleptics. His overall level of functioning on discharge was about the same as it was on admission. ...

David Healy, MD, is a controversial figure. On the one hand, he is a fierce and determined opponent of the escalating use of antidepressant drugs. On the other hand, he is one of the world’s leading proponents of electric shock “treatment.” For the latter reason, I’m somewhat hesitant to quote his work, but he writes good anti-antidepressant articles, and his points are usually well-researched and compelling. I’ve recently come across an article called Prozac and SSRIs: Twenty-fifth Anniversary, which Dr. Healy wrote in February of this year. Here are some quotes: ...

BACKGROUND I recently received the following question from Disparity, on Twitter. "I'm interested in all your posts, but they're always telling us what mental illness 'isn't.' Do you have many on what it 'is'? I referred him/her to the post There are No Mental Illnesses and received the following reply: "I have read it a few times. I largely agree with it. But 'something' happens to people. Whatever the label." Questions of this sort arise fairly frequently, and I thought it might be helpful to write a post. WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE? ...

AN INTERESTING STORY Yesterday I came across the following on Twitter from Mental Health @Sectioned_. "I just met someone who told me their remarkable story about falling down the rabbit hole into psychiatric sectioning and forced medication. I listened with fascination to their intricate story in all its twists and turns, looping backwards and forwards with incredible details. The longer we spoke the more was revealed, the crazier and more believable it sounded. I was listening, probing for clarification, trying to grasp what happened and why. First the overview, then the highlights, then more details, expanding out, backing round, drawing me in. There were many parallels in our stories, and many contrasts. It reminded me why I don't really talk in detail about what happened to me: because, if you've not experienced it, it sounds unbelievable. Unless you've experienced the scorching reality of forced drugging, seclusion, assault by nurses and patients, it sounds like a mad fantasy. It's too far outside most people's realities for them to contemplate it being true, and so quietly assume you're deluded. So it smooths life's path to make light, to skirt over the details, to change the topic. And sometimes, sometimes, when I meet someone who's been through something similar, I listen to their story and realize I'm not the only one." ...

PRESIDENT’S SPEECH On June 3, President Obama delivered a speech on the expansion of mental health services. The occasion was the National Conference on Mental Health, which was held at the White House. "The truth is," the President told us, "in any given year, one in five adults experience a mental illness — one in five." In most human endeavors something is true only if it can be shown to be so. In psychiatry and politics, however, a statement becomes true if it's repeated often enough. For the past 60 years, the APA has been systematically expanding their diagnostic net until – surprise, surprise – it now envelops 20% of the population. With the lowering of thresholds in DSM-5, we can be sure that this number will continue to rise, and whoever is President then will be able to tell us that one in four of the population has a mental illness. Gosh! Note also that the President uses the term “mental illness” as opposed to “mental disorder.” The APA use the latter term in their manual to make the concept somehow more acceptable. But these “disorders” always morph into illnesses in application. ...

BACKGROUND On May 15, Peter Kinderman, PhD, of the University of Liverpool, posted an article on DxSummit.org. It was called So…What Happens Next? The gist of the article was that psychiatric “diagnoses” are conceptually spurious, unhelpful, and even hindersome in practice, and discourage practitioners from pursuing genuine explanations for the problems clients bring to their attention. It was an excellent piece, and I did a short post in which I recommended it strongly. ...