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Pigs in the Hospital: The Collapse of Venezuela’s Mental Health System

Mad in America

I n preparation for a course on clinical community psychology at my home university in Caracas, Venezuela, I stumbled upon a tweet from an anonymous student complaining about a family of pigs that had occupied the psychiatric hospitalization ward where he was supposed to develop his clinical training. His explanation left me distraught.

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Study Finds Over 25% of Antidepressant Prescriptions Given to High-Risk, Long-Term Users

Mad in America

A new article published in BMC Medicine finds that antidepressant use in two Scottish regions increased 27% between 2012 and 2019. The current work, headed by Vita Brisnik of LMU University Hospital, also finds long-term use of antidepressants (2 years or more) increased during the same time period.

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The Psychiatrist Who Got Hooked on Antidepressants — Now, He Helps Others to Quit

Mad in America

From The Times : “In 2019 Horowitz and Professor David Taylor, the director of pharmacy and pathology at the Maudsley Hospital in London (who went through his own ‘strange and frightening and torturous’ withdrawal), co-authored an article in the Lancet Psychiatry journal arguing that tapering should happen far more slowly than official (..)

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Giving Caregivers a Platform: Meagan, Mother of Matt

Mad in America

In October 2019, during Matt’s move to a new apartment, I observed that Matt was emotionally paralyzed, unable to pack from lack of sleep. Two weeks later, both the NP and Matt’s counselor called me and said they must drop Matt as a patient, recommending an outpatient hospital detox program and a “higher level of care.”

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Letting Go of Lithium

Mad in America

I felt like I had taken a magical pill to cure whatever might have been wrong with me… until I crashed, became paranoid and landed in the hospital. None of this sat well with me, but coming home from the hospital completely overly medicated and numb, I was in shock, disassociated, and unable to question the doctor’s theory.

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Prescription Drugs Are the Leading Cause of Death

Mad in America

3,4 This estimate was derived from a 1998 meta-analysis of 39 US studies where monitors recorded all adverse drug reactions that occurred while the patients were in hospital, or which were the reason for hospital admission. If we apply this estimate to USA, we get 315,000 annual drug deaths in hospitals. times as many.

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A Remarkable Feat: A Psychiatric Patient Changed the Law on Restraints

Mad in America

He was admitted to hospital several times and spoke openly about his experiences with the aim of improving the treatment that people with autism receive when they meet the psychiatric system. At the beginning of 2019, he was subjected to belt fixation at a psychiatric ward. This should be done in all countries.