At first blush the case of Esmin Green, a Jamaican immigrant who died unattended on the floor of a Brooklyn psychiatric emergency room, is outrageous. She’d been left in a chair in a waiting-room for 24 hours before falling off that chair and dying. It hardly seems possible that a patient requiring hospitalization would have […]

Over the last two weeks there have been a number of shooting-sprees across the US. The most recent was at Northern Illinois University. It turns out the shooter had been in treatment for a mental disorder:University Police Chief Donald Grady said Friday that Kazmierczak had become erratic in the past two weeks after he stopped […]

As I do most days I just did a Google News search on “bipolar disorder.” I noticed that most of the top-listed stories were about Britney Spears and her latest pathetic publicity stunt; I didn’t actually read the stories but from the headlines I surmise that rumor has it she’s bipolar.My first thought was, “Whew! […]

I came across a review at Slate, the online magazine, of a book on ECT, commonly referred to as “shock therapy.” It offered a view of ECT that one rarely sees anywhere else in the media; namely that it’s a powerful treatment for mood disorders, and that the visions of it that Hollywood has conjured […]

By now you’ve heard about the Omaha mall shooting; the perpetrator was said to have been depressed. The result of this is that people will associate atrocities like this, with depression … but without reason. The fact is that people with depression are no more or less violent than anyone else. In some cases, depression […]

With the holidays upon us, the mass media give us obligatory stories about depression and the holidays. This is both good and bad … it brings to people’s minds an important topic, but as with so much the mass media do, it can also propagate misinformation. This year, it seems the record is being corrected, […]

Canada recently began a deep analysis of its mental healthcare system (something the US desperately needs to do, too, but won’t, because the mentally-ill are not a political constituency that anyone in American politics cares about).
Some findings are now coming out, as a result, and they are interesting. The most notable finding is the relatively […]

Unfortunately, I have few answers to offer to all of the many problems I’ve cited above (in my initial series of posts which you can read, in order, at The Heart of the Matter). They’re beyond my expertise, and in most cases, are beyond anyone’s skill, at this point.My message is simple: Despite the problems, […]

Let’s get down to one of the most contentious aspects of mental health care in the U.S., today. Managed care was invented in the early 1970’s, as a way to hold down spiraling health-insurance costs. It has since become an institution all its own, a true driving force behind how mental illnesses are treated — […]

So far, you may think I’m in the “anti-psychiatry” camp, but I am not. By no means! For all of the problems with psychiatry I’ve pointed out so far, I think the anti-psychiatry folks are far more dangerous to those with mental illnesses, than even the worst psychiatrists.When I talk, here, about the “anti-psychiatry movement,” […]