Thinking differently about mental health

Looks beautiful in Colorado Springs where the 2011 NEI Global Psychopharmacology Congress has just been held. Not sure about the congress op...

Article in the Independent with this title . It mentions a debate between Ian Anderson (see previous blog entry ) and Irving Kirsch (see an...

An editorial this month in the British Journal of Psychiatry is entitled 'No psychiatry without psychopharmacology'. It suggests th...

I've just come back from Newcastle, where the Faculty of General and Community Psychiatry of the Royal College of Psychiatrists has been...

I have  joined the campaign to abolish psychiatric diagnostic systems like DSM called "No more psychiatric labels". There is an o...

 Stephen Stahl , whose Essential psychopharmacology book now has his name in the title, has a post on his NEI (Neuroscience Education Ins...

Not sure what prompted an editorial in the Guardian about R.D. Laing in its Unthinkable? series. The editorial makes reference to a product...

Thomas Insel in his NIMH Director's Blog  asks whether a neurological approach to mental illness is helpful. He admits it is an "NI...

I have already mentioned Bryan Lask in a previous post about eating disorders. He has responded to a Guardian leader about specialist tre...

My previous entry  implied that the 'Grand challenges in global mental health' initiative is a thinly veiled attempt to obtain fundi...

The Grand challenges in global mental health initiative reckons it has identified priorities for research in mental, neurological and subst...

Letter from Sami Timimi in response to BMJ news article about drug companies pulling out of neuroscience research. I've mentioned in ...

The New York Times Sunday review has an article by Peter Kramer ' In defense of antidepressants '. He finds it worrisome that antid...

I like to think of critical psychiatry as a broad church. For example, the last Critical Psychiatry Network conference I organised in Norwic...

The Royal College of Psychiatrists is doing a survey to look at people's experience of stopping antidepressants. This is to help produc...

Nice to see that the BMJ in its Views & Reviews series regards Arthur Kleinman's Rethinking psychiatry as a medical classic. I i...

A  book review of Anatomy of an epidemic is critical of Robert Whitaker for "settling for a simple but crude interpretation: those dr...

Thomas Insel, in his NIMH Director's blog , views clinical neuroscience as the answer to psychiatry's recruitment problem. The d...

Edward Shorter, in his response to an article by Thomas Szasz , says there are solid biological findings in psychiatry. Shorter, who I'v...

In a previous post I mentioned the idea of setting up an International Critical Mental Health Movement. Is there any momentum for this? I...

Kate Millett, the feminist and survivor of mental health services, at a seminar organised by Anthony Stadlen that I attended last Sunday, s...

As I mentioned in a previous post , reviewers have been critical of Richard Bentall's book Doctoring the mind for taking aim at child p...

In my previous post , I noted that reviewers of Richard Bentall's book Doctoring the mind , which I recommend on my Critical Psychiatry ...

A review in Psychiatric Services  is reluctant to recommend Richard Bentall's book Doctoring the Mind because it is said to be "i...

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) involves placing one or two thin wires into specific locations deep within the brain and then connecting the w...

Tim Thornton has posted a chapter on his In the Space of Reasons blog entitled "The recovery model, values and narrative understandin...

Catherine Zeta-Jones booked herself into a clinic for 5 days for treatment of her bipolar II disorder (see Guardian story ). I don't wa...

Two reviews in Psychiatric Services  recommend reading Robert Whitaker's book Anatomy of an Epidemic  even if it makes you angry and you...

Nada Stotland was the 2008-9 President of the American Psychiatric Association. She writes on Huffpost Health challenging "myths about...

Interesting seminar last week, which I attended, organised by Tony Stadlen, invited Vladimir Bukovsky, the anti-communist, to talk about hi...

The Guardian has published a map of GP antidepressant prescribing. Its article based on the data makes a lot of the finding that it tends...

A review in the Archives of General Psychiatry looks at the evidence for weight gain and changes in other cardiovascular risk factors caus...

I have mentioned a study in a previous blog entry that seemed to show that antipsychotic medication reduces brain volume. This study was re...

This post has the same title as the latest post from the Healthy Minds. Health Lives blog, my favourite for commenting on because it is pub...

Seroquel is the best-selling psychiatric medication in the US and, as pointed out in a feature in Medical Marketing and Media  (MM&M), i...

A Reuters report based on an article in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety  suggests atypical antipsychotics are overused. The article lo...

In an e-interview in The Psychiatrist , John G. Csernansky was asked what he saw as the most promising opportunity facing the psychiatric pr...

(With thanks to Adinah's post on ICSPP Discussion Group giving the link. See also her comment on another blog.)

In my previous post , I have gone on about the errors about the treatment of depression in the latest blog entry on the APA's Healthy M...

The latest blog entry from APA's Healthy. Healthy Lives., besides making the misleading statement that antidepressants work by increasi...

In my previous post , I mentioned that Thomas Insel, Director of NIMH, had noted that pharmaceutical companies are moving away from psychiat...

Thomas Insel, Director of NIMH, who I have mentioned in a previous post , has listed his top 10 research events and advances of 2010 on his ...