Behaviorism and Mental Health

Live Video Chat: DSM-5

Phil — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:51:39 +0000

Today I received the following email from Emily Underwood, a reporter with Science Magazine. I am a reporter with Science magazine — after reading your Twitter feed and blog I thought you might be interested in a live video chat I’m hosting this week on the controversy surrounding the DSM V. My guests are Allen Frances of Duke [...]

Psychiatric-Pharma Business

Phil — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:21:41 +0000

GBI Research provides business intelligence reports based on “… the insights of key industry leaders to ensure you stay up-to-date with the latest emerging trends in your markets.” GBI stands for Global Business Intelligence. I’ve recently come across one of their releases titled Europe Adopting US Strategies to Diagnose and Treat ADHD. This is essentially a [...]

Where Do We Go From Here?

Phil — Mon, 20 May 2013 19:01:29 +0000

Peter Kinderman, PhD, published a very interesting post on May 15. It’s called So…What Happens Next? You can see it here. Dr. Kinderman is a former chairperson of the BPS’s Division of Clinical Psychology. That’s the same DCP that recently criticized psychiatric diagnoses and called for a paradigm shift. Here are some quotes from the [...]

Screening for Depression

Phil — Mon, 20 May 2013 03:55:18 +0000

Routine screening for depression sounds like a very good thing, and in fact it is recommended by NIMH, and by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (a division of the Department of Health and Human Services), and various other groups. Medicare will pay the total cost of one depression screening per year. But it [...]

DSM-5 Still Under Fire

Phil — Sun, 19 May 2013 03:30:03 +0000

Mental Health Europe (MHE) is a non-governmental organization “… committed to the promotion of positive mental health and well-being, the prevention of mental health problems, the improvement of care, advocacy for social inclusion and the protection of the human rights of (ex)users of mental health services and their families and carers.” It is composed of [...]

Neuroleptics for Children

Phil — Sat, 18 May 2013 14:10:16 +0000

Of all the evils perpetrated by American psychiatry in the past 60 years, the administration of neuroleptic drugs to children is arguably the worst. And it is a practice that is growing each year. The essential purpose of these drugs is to make people more docile and more easily managed by destroying brain tissue. The [...]

Different Perspectives

Phil — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:58:04 +0000

On June 1, 2012, I wrote a post titled There Are No Mental Illnesses. Yesterday a comment came in on this post. Here’s a quote: “When my brother was thirty years old, he started to see objects, which was far away, like hawk. His “mind” wanted to understand it, so he started to think he [...]

The Problem with DSM

Phil — Fri, 17 May 2013 14:45:03 +0000

There’s an interesting article in the NY Times Sunday review. You can see it here. It was written by Sally Satel MD, a psychiatrist, currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. The article is called: “Why the Fuss Over the DSM-5?” Dr. Satel’s central point is that psychiatrists only treat symptoms anyway and [...]

Thomas Insel’s Paper – Still Under Attack

Phil — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:27:34 +0000

It’s widely known that Thomas Insel, MD, Director of NIMH, recently proclaimed that the DSM’s diagnostic categories are invalid, and that this agency would no longer use these categories as the basis for research. But he went on to reaffirm his agency’s commitment to a biological model of “mental illness” and to funding research into [...]

Dr. Insel Changes His Mind

Phil — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:33:47 +0000

Well, as I guess everybody knows by now, Dr. Insel has changed his mind. On April 29, he stated that the weakness of DSM “…is its lack of validity.” He went on to express the view that his agency, NIMH, (the US government’s mental health research arm) “…cannot succeed if we use DSM categories…” You [...]