Is Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) Effective?

ECT, or shock treatment as it’s sometimes called, is a controversial topic. Adherents describe it as safe and effective; opponents condemn its use as damaging and ineffective. But it is still widely used in the US and in other countries. The treatment consists essentially of passing sufficient electricity across the brain to cause a seizure. Clients are anesthetized during the process. It is used primarily in cases of severe depression. Typically, shock treatment is administered twice a week until the depression remits or until no further improvement is noted in two successive sessions. Most courses of treatment involve about eight sessions. ...

November 21, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD

The Bitterest Pills, by Joanna Moncrieff: Another Book Worth Reading

Dr. Joanna Moncrieff is a UK psychiatrist and a founding member of the Critical Psychiatry Network. In 2009 she wrote The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment. Her latest book, The Bitterest Pills, was published earlier this year, and is about neuroleptic drugs (the so-called anti-psychotics). You can get an idea of the tenor and scope of the work from the table of contents: Curse or Cure: What Are Antipsychotics? Chlorpromazine: The First Wonder Drug Magic Bullets: The Development of Ideas on Drug Action Building a House of Cards: The Dopamine Theory of Schizophrenia and Drug Action The Phoenix Rises: From Tardive Dyskinesia to the Introduction of 'Atypicals' Looking Where the Light Is: Randomised Controlled Trials of Antipsychotics The Patient's Dilemma: Other Evidence on the Effects of Antipsychotics Chemical Cosh: Antipsychotics and Chemical Restraint Old and New Drug-induced Problems The First Tentacles: The 'Early Intervention in Psychosis' Movement The Antipsychotic Epidemic: Prescribing in the Twenty-first Century All is not as it Seems There are 39 pages of references at the back. Here are some quotes: ...

November 19, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD

Depression Is Not An Illness: A New Website

I’ve recently come across a new website that is challenging the illness approach to depression. It’s depressionwars.com and is written by Char Leander, an industrial sociologist. Char became interested in this topic when she saw “…the epidemic of emotional disorders in the workplace.” She also recounts some personal experience with depression. Here are some quotes from her November 11 post Fight Back Against Depression: "You have to fight back against depression as disorder! The walls of depression may be high, but higher still are the invincible mental walls erected around the concepts of disorder, mental illness, and disease." ...

November 14, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD

Causes of High Mortality in People Labeled 'Mentally Ill'

ANOTHER VIDEO FROM DR. LIEBERMAN On October 28, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, President of the APA, made another video. This one is titled An Important Look at Mortality in Mental Illness: A Decade of Data on Psychotropic Drugs, and was made for Medscape. You can see the transcript at the same site. Medscape is a web resource for medical practitioners. The video is Dr. Lieberman’s commentary on an article that appeared in JAMA Psychiatry online on August 28: Comparative Mortality Risk in Adult Patients With Schizophrenia, Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Participating in Psychopharmacology Clinical Trials, by Arif Khan, MD, et al. ...

November 12, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD

Care For Your Mind (CFYM): A New Advocacy Group

On September 27, Psychiatric Services, a journal of the APA, published an article called Blog Brings Doctors, Patients Together to Address MH Issues. It was written by Vabren Watts, a Psychiatric News Journalist. The article is a booster piece for the recently-formed CFYM (Care For Your Mind): "…an online forum for people with mood disorders—along with their families and psychiatrists—to discuss the mental health care system and changes that may affect them under health care reform." ...

November 9, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD

The Dangers of SSRI's

SSRI’S AND SUICIDE Bob Fiddaman has a post up today called MHRA Consultant Calls for Antidepressant Use in Young. The article highlights some of the dangers associated with SSRI’s, and also describes some of the attempts to suppress or discount the significance of this information. Apparently in 2010, Swedish psychiatrist Göran Isacsson, MD, PhD, published a paper in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. The piece was titled Antidepressant medication prevents suicide in depression, and reported that of a group of 1,077 depressed people who had committed suicide, only 15.2% had measurable amounts of antidepressants in the blood stream at the time of the suicide. ...

November 7, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD

Dr. Lieberman Pursues JFK's Vision

On November 1, Psychiatric News published 50 Years After: Will We Realize JFK’s Vision for Mental Health Care? Psychiatric News is an APA publication, and the piece was written by APA’s President, Jeffrey Lieberman, MD. Dr. Lieberman begins by reminding us that in 1963, President Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act (CMHA) into law. Dr. Lieberman points out that the CMHA: "…was intended to set the foundation for contemporary mental health policy, one premised on the establishment of community-based care as an alternative to institutionalization." ...

November 6, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD

The Galvanizing of a POOR HISTORIAN

In hospital ED records from 2007, there is a mention made by a doctor who was dictating his activities, observations of and involvement with me during 5 hours, that I am a"poor historian." Ironically, I have to this day never met with or even seen this doctor, and vice versa. The conclusion was followed by a little post-script stating that he wouldn’t know me from Adam if he saw me, despite having written the entire account of me from the first person perspective. Really, I provided very little history, because I wasn’t really asked, (something I figured was attributable to the hospital records department having in its own filed the most substantial majority of records and historical accounting from me, having been in an adult intensive outpatient program for two years, following a month long inpatient procedure, and after the two years of intensive, was still an outpatient scheduling check-in and progress check-up on a more casual schedule over six months … right up to the day that all information pertaining to me became non-existent, and new diagnoses, and history of the new diagnoses were filled in. I was not, however, even examined under any terms that might pass for making an effort to actually determine a diagnostic impression, no evaluation nor anything close was performed, but my previously [assumed] diagnosis for which I had been seeing a private doctor regularly, being monitored on medications and therapy for Bi-Polar II (actually it was never diagnosed, I was being treated for “target symptoms,” which were actually the result of a tardive syndrome induced by olonzapine -cycling between moderate to mild akathisia and fatigue resulting from it) , but records would have shown enough target symptom treatment to inform that I was Bi-Polar II. Bi-Polar [any] was R/O in the newly made that day diagnoses: Psychosis NOS R/O BI-POLAR, and Schizophrenia with history of Schizophrenia (that was the info written in by the phantom Doctor who divined these from no disclosed resource (perhaps Spiritual PhytoEssencing that randomly penetrates his 5th and 6th Chakra in the form of Sound-Thought Ethereal Essence guiding his knowledge, or maybe he was told to write up something for em stat purposes only w/o any responsibility for or contact with the patient, as he noted at the end). It’s curious that in my medical history and records, it was first recognized that I am a “Poor Historian.” What makes me a poor historian in effect today (my records and history are so toxic and viral, far beyond errors, that to allow for them to be transmitted to any new health provider w/o undergoing a major audit and revision into something that seems like it can pass meaningful use muster, would probably direct a well-intentioned but lethal course of treatment, in addition to being a DANGER TO SHIPPING). ...

November 5, 2013 · A reader

Dr. Lieberman and '60 Minutes'

On October 23, Psychiatric News (the APA’s media outlet) ran an article titled ‘60 Minutes’ Interviews APA President on Schizophrenia. The article was written by Mark Moran, a Psychiatric News reporter. The piece opens with a quote from Jeffrey Lieberman, MD (President of the APA): "'60 Minutes' showed a genuine interest beyond simply producing what was expected to be a popular segment and indicated a desire to do follow-up reporting on psychosis and violence." ...

November 4, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD

Protecting the Children

 I’ve recently read an article called Safeguarding a Generation of Children from Over-diagnosis and Prescription of Psychotropic Drugs. It’s written by Dave Traxson, who works as an Educational Psychologist in the UK, and is posted on the DxSummit website, an online platform for rethinking mental health, a forum in which the concepts underlying pharma-psychiatry are questioned and challenged. Here are some quotes from the article: "I view the trend towards mass medication of children with mind altering and potentially toxic drugs and ‘drug cocktails’ as a form of psycho-economic imperialism. By that I mean that young peoples’ developing minds are being colonized, using biochemicals, for huge commercial profit and in effect, increased social control. This has resulted from carefully constructed ‘business plans’ in boardrooms which some years ago saw the population of children in the western world as a great market expansion opportunity. The pharmaceutical companies have reaped the huge financial rewards of this rich and very bitter harvest ever since." ...

November 3, 2013 · PhilHickeyPhD