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The Dangers of Precision Medicine: Mental Health Is Not a Battlefield

Mad in America

Hailed as the future of mental health care, it conjures images of medical interventions as carefully planned and executed military operations, striking with lethal accuracy at the heart of mental suffering while minimising collateral damage. Photo by A.T.

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Power, Privilege & Controlling the Narrative: Vested Interests in ‘Mental Health’

Mad in America

It was written by David Hansen, a crisis worker at a person-centred, survivor-led mental health crisis service. I have tasked myself with mapping out my understanding of how therapy and mental health relate to politics. Mental health is also political. Is therapy political? Is therapy political?

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Mental Illness Prophecies Society’s Spiritual Sickness

Mad in America

W hat psychiatrists call mental illness has become very common in todays society. While mental illnesses, in some form or another, may have always existed, it is only recently that we have seen a dramatic rise in their prevalence, particularly in Europe, the United States, Australia and other western cultures.

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Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Six)

Mad in America

Schatzberg has served as a consultant to or received honoraria from Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Corcept Therapeutics, Forest Laboratories, Janssen, Eli Lilly, Merck, Mitsubishi Pharmaceuticals, Organon, ParkeDavis, Pfizer, Pharmacia–Upjohn, Sanofi, Scirex, SmithKline Beecham, Solvay, and Wyeth–Ayerst. 695 This is sickening.

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Is Madness an Evolved Signal? Justin Garson on Strategy Versus Dysfunction

Mad in America

You’re also an author, and you’ve written on topics such as aging, genetics, mental representation, biological functions, mechanisms in science, and the concept of information in neuroscience. So why do we call schizophrenia a mental disorder, but not believing in conspiracy theories?

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Undisclosed Financial Conflicts of Interest in the DSM-5: An Interview with Lisa Cosgrove and Brian Piper

Mad in America

Mad in America has previously examined the problems with conflicts of interest in research but this time we extend that to look at the potential effect of COIs on diagnostic tools such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). He wanted his friends to use this drug, he wanted his family members to use this drug.

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Heritability Explains Less About Mental Disorders Than You Think

Mad in America

However, mental disorders are not concrete things that can be found with a brain scanner or treated with medication like a bacterial infection with antibiotics. Much has already been written about these points, for example in my book on mental health and substance use (open access). In this sense, everything is somehow genetic.