Category Archives: Psychotropic drugs

Join us at our next meeting!

Posted on April 16, 2013 by | Leave a comment

April 17th, 7:00 PM

Coming Off Psych Drugs: A Meeting of the MindsComing Off
Psych Drugs

A Meeting of the Minds

 

Our April meeting will feature a new documentary film by Daniel Mackler.

More than half the film’s subjects have successfully come off a variety of medications, including antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, antidepressants, and benzos, and several participants give trainings on the process. Here they tell how they did it and they provide a philosophy and framework for coming off. Starring Will Hall, Oryx Cohen, Laura Delano, Chaya Grossberg, Daniel Hazen, Laura Van Tosh, and Spencer and Matt Ladner.  View trailer

Date: Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Time: 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Location: First Unitarian Church,  1011 SW 12th Ave., Portland, OR
Note: Laura Van Tosh is unable to attend this meeting as previously promoted.

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Posted in Alternatives, Psychotropic drugs

Rethinking Psychiatry Film Festival Opens with Mind Zone

Posted on January 23, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Opening night  Thursday, Feb 21, 2013

Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front LinesWe are proud and excited to kick off this year’s Rethinking Psychiatry’s film festival with the first public showing of the newly completed documentary, Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front Lines.

Mind Zone explores the controversies and challenges of keeping people in unhealthy places, of therapists as both healers and warriors. While public consciousness grows of the post-traumatic stress disorder and the alarming suicide rates among soldiers and veterans, the struggle of those attempting to diagnose and treat them has never been told. Mind Zone is their story.  

While making Mind Zone, director Dr. Jan Haaken, Portland State professor, clinical psychologist and documentary filmmaker was embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For the first time in history, the U.S. Army granted access to a team of filmmakers to document the challenges of maintaining mental and emotional healing on the front lines.

Dr. Haaken will introduce the film and answer questions afterwards.

Co-sponsored by

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Posted in Lecture Series, Psychotropic drugs, Veterans

Will Hall: Understanding Psychiatric Medications: a Harm Reduction Approach – Oct 21

Posted on October 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Will Hall - Portland Hearing Voices How can anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, and other drugs be used wisely?  What are the risks and benefits?  How can we collaborate effectively with prescribers, and what about reducing and discontinuing medications?  Come learn a pragmatic harm reduction approach that is neither pro- nor anti- medication, but instead based in mental diversity. Everyone is welcome: professionals, survivors, students, family, and anyone taking or not taking medications.

Event details…

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Posted in Events, Psychotropic drugs

Seminar: When Treatment Might Cause Harm

Posted on September 4, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Ron Unger LCSWPam Birrell PhD and Ron Unger LCSW present “When Treatment Might Cause Harm: Exploring Ethical Dilemmas related to Diagnosis, Drugs, and other Possibly Iatrogenic Aspects of Mental Health Care”

  • Eugene on 9/7/12
  • Portland on 9/14/12.

6 NASW CEU’s in ethics available.  Register early for the 3 week in advance “early bird” discount, or the scholarship offered to c/s/x!  See http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/home/

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Posted in DSM, Events, Psychotropic drugs

MOMS 100-mile walk July 23-24

Posted on July 19, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Cindi Fisher, founder of MOMS Movement

Two mothers, each with a child who was failed by the “standard of care” within the current psycho-pharmaceutical treatment model, will be walking 100 miles to shine a light on how our systems are broken and have failed us.

The walk begins in at the Portland First Unitarian Church, July 23 at noon.  From there, stops will include the Portland Oregon State Hospital, the Clark County Courthouse in Vancouver, and the Western State Hospital in Lakewood, Washington.

Download flier with complete details

Support this walk by making a tax deductible donation, and by joining these mothers in their walk.

For more information, contact Cindi Fisher,

Phone: 360-254-8703
Email: momsmovement@gmail.com
Website: http://www.mentalhealthrightsyes.com

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Posted in Children, Psychotropic drugs

The Relationship Between Medication and Veteran Suicide

Posted on June 15, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Dr. Peter R. Breggin, MDDr. Peter Breggin, MD was asked to testify before the U.S. House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on the link between antidepressants and suicide.  He provided a detailed analysis emphasizing the science that demonstrates a causal relationship between the newer antidepressants and the production of suicide, violence, mania and other behavioral abnormalities. He emhasized the considerable risk in giving these drugs to heavily armed young men and women.

The newer antidepressants frequently cause suicide, violence, and manic-like symptoms of activation or overstimulation, presenting serious hazards to active-duty soldiers who carry weapons under stressful conditions.  These antidepressant-induced symptoms of activation can mimic post-traumatic stress disorder, and are likely to worsen this common disorder in soldiers, increasing the hazard when they are prescribed to military personnel.  Antidepressants should not be prescribed to soldiers during or after deployment.

View video of Dr. Breggin’s testimony (26 min)

Written testimony: Antidepressant-Induced Suicide, Violence, and Mania: Risks for Military Personnel

 

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Posted in Psychotropic drugs, Veterans

Tagged

Rethinking Madness by Paris Williams PhD

Posted on April 24, 2012 by | 1 Comment

Rethinking MadnessRecent domestic and international research suggests that full recovery from schizophrenia and other related psychotic disorders is not only possible, but may actually be the most common outcome given the right conditions, a finding that flies directly in the face of the mainstream understanding of these confusing disorders.

In Rethinking Madness, Dr. Paris Williams takes the reader step by step on a highly engaging journey of discovery, exploring how the mainstream understanding of schizophrenia has become so profoundly misguided, while crafting a much more accurate and hopeful vision of madness. As this vision unfolds, we discover a deeper sense of appreciation for the profound wisdom and resilience that lies within our beings while also coming to the unsettling realization of just how thin the boundary is between so called madness and so called sanity.

“In Rethinking Madness, Paris Williams writes of how science, history, and personal stories of recovery from madness all tell of how the medical model of schizophrenia/psychosis is horribly flawed and needs to be fundamentally rethought. In a clear manner, he lays out the evidence for a ‘paradigm shift’ in our thinking that, at its core, would offer people who experience madness both hope and the knowledge that robust recovery is possible, and, with the right support, quite common. And as the personal stories in his book reveal, for some, a bout of madness can be a transformative personal journey.”  Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic.

Purchase book from Amazon.com
Rethinking Madness website
Live Webinar Friday, May 18 and Saturday, May 19, 2012

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Posted in Psychotropic drugs, Uncategorized

Dr. Harriet Cooke on KBOO

Posted on April 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Is it possible that the drug-based psychiatric care industry has actually fueled an epidemic of mental illness?

Dr. Harriet Cooke of Rethinking Psychiatry was the featured guest on Lisa Loving’s KBOO FM radio show on April 14, 2012.  They discussed the mental health industry and Robert Whitaker’s award winning book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.

Listen here

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Posted in Psychotropic drugs

Robert Whitaker at ISEPP

Posted on April 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Robert Whitaker defends Anatomy of an Epidemic

Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert WhitakerISEPP (International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry) is a non-profit research and education network focusing on the critical study of the mental health movement.  Robert Whitaker spoke at the group’s 2011 conference in Los Angeles.  He discussed attempts by certain psychiatric groups to discredit the research and conclusions he presents in his book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America.

Whitaker’s talk can be viewed here:

Robert Whitaker at the ISEPP 2011 Conference in L.A. (part 1)
Robert Whitaker at the ISEPP 2011 Conference in L.A. (part 2)

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Posted in Psychotropic drugs

Treating Depression: Is there a placebo effect?

Posted on February 20, 2012 by | Leave a comment

by Lesley Stahl for CBS News

Do antidepressants work? Since the introduction of Prozac in the 1980s, prescriptions for antidepressants have soared 400 percent, with 17 million Americans currently taking some form of the drug. But how much good is the medication itself doing? “The difference between the effect of a placebo and the effect of an antidepressant is minimal for most people,” says Harvard scientist Irving Kirsch. Will Kirsch’s research, and the work of others, change the $11.3 billion antidepressant industry?   View video

 

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Posted in Psychotropic drugs