Page 4 - From Mad News Today

I have spent several years of my life in various psychiatric institutions and have come to be seen as a chronic patient whose chances of recovery have not been considered very high. However, the predictions made at that time have turned out to be wrong. In this article, I will concretely list the things that have supported my recovery and those that have made it difficult.

How can we live a life that has more 'meaning' and 'purpose' and how can we become the best version of ourselves? In this theme we will look for answers to these questions. We can only achieve this by getting clearer who we really want to be and by becoming more aware of (and choosing) what is most important to us.

Now if it is the case that we are eating wrong, why doesn't everyone get sick in exactly the same way at the same time? This is how I think: we don't have the same experiences in life. We have not thought the same thoughts, experienced the same emotions/trauma

Provide human support and know what you are doing. With knowledge from researcher Anders Sørensen and experience from survivors, this year's Mad in Norway seminar gave hope to those who want to stop using psychiatric drugs. Here you get a summary and the opportunity to see the features from the seminar.

What could I ask him that had not been asked before or that he had not already written? It was the question I asked myself every time I considered the possibility of dialogue, a question that was formulated based on my admiration for Robert and his work. Finally, under the pretext of the research project “Processes of Deinstitutionalization of Madness”, I decided to propose this interview.

Even for severe depression, multiple studies have found that adding antidepressants to cognitive behavioural therapy does not result in better outcomes—psychotherapy alone is just as good in the short term. And therapy alone beats the drugs when it comes to long-term outcomes.

Finally, the study concludes that it is necessary for the University to turn to itself and question its current education practices. To this end, it is necessary to rethink the university structure, teacher training, curricula, physical spaces, cultural actions, interpersonal relationships, teaching methodologies, research and extension, as well as the very conception of knowledge and science.

I was a user of mental health services for 22 years and over 30 years I was developing a personal opinion, from which I maintain that psychiatry and psychology are pseudosciences that base their practices on morality and not on evidence and methodology as if other sciences do. Practices based on morality, which manage to modify behavior, happen both in sects and in many pseudoscientific practices such as psychology and psychiatry.

Psychiatrist Yousaf Raza details the problems with psychiatric health care in Pakistan and shows how to find a way forward.

The two days in Cork were thought provoking and inspiring. I hope other members of the CCrAMHP group (that I’m involved with in Lancaster) can attend the Critical Voices Conference next year. A number of us have been contributing to Asylum magazine. It would be great to run a Madzines workshop then, and to help to bring more creative approaches into the core of the conference.