Police Interventions

In my wildest dreams, I could never have imagined being drawn into a story of intrigue involving my own government’s efforts to hide, from the public, reports of psychiatric drugs associated with cases of murder, including homicides committed by youth on the drugs. But that is precisely the intrigue I now find myself enmeshed in.

It would take decades before I recognized the trauma caused by repeatedly being separated from my mom when she was hospitalized. I grieved almost exactly the way children did who had lost a parent to death. Yet it was grief without closure because my mom was not dead, just... gone.

I’ve been arguing against calling this movement that I’m a part of a ‘peer’ movement for a long time. What has happened with Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has helped me to crystallize that point. If we do not see what happens to some of us in the psychiatric system as connected to what happens to others because they are black or because they are transgender or because they love someone else of the same expressed gender (or because they live in poverty, etc. etc.), then I’m not sure any of us really, fully understands what it is we are trying to accomplish at all.

Researchers explore pathways of healing racial trauma in Latinx immigrant communities.

Representative Murphy has released the second version of the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (H.R. 2646). Few can argue that the mental health system and the current approach towards helping individuals and families in crisis are abysmal. H.R. 2646 is an effort to create increased service provisions and to enhance interventions that many professionals, family members and service users alike believe to be effective. When people are desperate and suffering they do not wish to be told "Sorry, there's nothing we can do." And so, it is understandable and even laudable that so many support the proposals laid out in H.R. 2646. But the bill is based on distorted and faulty logic that misrepresents the research and evidence base. This is highly disconcerting. And so a collective of mental health professionals, mental health advocates, and persons with lived experience came together to produce the following documents in response to H.R. 2646.

Ethnographic research sheds light on extensive psychopharmaceutical use by soldiers in post 9/11 U.S. wars.

A recent editorial, published in BMJ, argues there is an increase in coercive measures in psychiatry that are damaging to individuals diagnosed with mental illness.

Researchers examine links between police victimization and psychotic symptoms in a topical new study.

Researchers argue that a structural competency and social determinants of health approach must be made central to psychiatry training.

A review of the literature demonstrates that coercive practices lack empirical support and violate human rights.

School discipline that punishes minor misbehavior may increase adolescents’ misconduct and lead to racial inequalities in school discipline.

Dear Reader, I am reaching out to you in the hope that you will get this message in time to act! Even if you only have time to read the first two sentences of this blog, please click here for instructions on how you can win the hearts and minds of our federal legislators and help them understand why HR 2646 – proposed by Rep. Tim Murphy and called the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act – is a bad bill

Rob Wipond reports on a constitutional challenge in British Columbia against a key component of the province’s Mental Health Act. “This case isn’t arguing...

Members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Psychiatry Products division go on the defensive in a new article, responding to concerns about the agency’s approval of digital aripiprazole.

Emotional support, religion, and searching for meaning are positively correlated with posttraumatic growth among prisoners.

Colorado police trained in crisis intervention infrequently use force or arrest individuals experiencing a mental health crisis and are likely to transfer individuals to a treatment facility.

Today, Hillary Clinton’s campaign released their plan for addressing mental health care in the United States. The plan calls for a full integration of...

The Grand Jury indictment on January 21st of a Georgia policeman for the felony murder of Anthony Hill brought national attention to the intersection of Black Pride and Mad Pride. Hill, who was black and a veteran, was murdered in March 2015 while in an extreme state or “mental health crisis.” He was naked and clearly unarmed when shot by a white policeman. The indictment brings attention to the failure of mental health care system in America.

This week a commentary, written by members of the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy and titled “Improving Long-term Psychiatric Care: Bring Back the Asylum” was published in JAMA Online. The authors recommend a return to asylum care, albeit not as a replacement for but as an addition to improved community services and only for those who have “severe and treatment-resistant psychotic disorders, who are too unstable or unsafe for community based treatment.” The authors seem to accept the notion of transinstitutionalization (TI) which suggests that people who in another generation would have lived in state hospitals are now incarcerated in jails and prisons. While I do not agree, I do find there is a need for a safe place for people to stay while they work through their crisis.

It is time to create an entirely voluntary psychiatric system. International conscience is clear. The singling out of people with psychosocial disabilities is not worthy of a free society. There are better, safer ways to address legitimate public needs.

How people are treated after being hospitalized can either help them to overcome the traumatic effects of coercion or make them worse.

In an effort to reduce coercion, researchers isolate associated factors including age, relationship status, location, and diagnosis.

The rate of incarceration for lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals is roughly three times that of the general population and they experience significantly higher rates of victimization and mistreatment in prison.

A new analysis finds multiple antecedents of refugee prejudice, including religiousness, conservatism, and education.

From Nature: There is virtually no scientific evidence indicating that addiction is a disease of the brain. Yet, the disease model of addiction is used...