Challenging Western-Centric Child Psychology: An Interview with Nandita Chaudhary

5
Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Nandita Chaudhary about children’s lives across cultures, the problems with global aid agencies and their interventions, psychology’s bias in the study of children, the limits of attachment theory and more.

NIMH’s It-girls: The Genain Quadruplets and the Whiteness of Psychiatry

10
The poster-children of psychiatric genetics, who endured abuse throughout their lives, were also the product of a racist culture.

Giving Caregivers a Platform: Elianna, Mother of Brandon

8
An interview with Elianna, who lives in Colorado with her son, Brandon, 34. His many diagnoses and misdiagnoses include autism and schizophrenia.
A collage depicting cut-up photographs of David Carmichael and his son Ian, Lindsay Clancy and her children, and a bottle of pills spilling out

SSRIs, Lindsay Clancy, and Me

14
Sharing the similarities between Lindsay Clancy's homicidal episode and my own will hopefully help prevent rare SSRI-induced suicides and homicides, including mass shootings.
Hands of mother and baby closeup

Mad/Cripistemologies of Pandemic Parenting: Insights for Our “Post-COVID-19” Present

2
Respondents described the grief and rage associated with being socially isolated while healing from childbirth and caring for a newborn, in some cases, entirely on their own.

Screening for Perinatal Depression: An Effective Intervention, or One That Does More Harm Than Good?

2
Why does the U.S. describe perinatal screening as providing a proven benefit, while the task forces in the U.K. and Canada see no evidence of such benefit?

Problem-Solving Through Skills-Building: Motivating Kids to Change

1
Children can overcome all sorts of difficulties by learning specific behavioural or emotional skills with the help and support of their social network.
Jesse Kohler

Interview: The Need for Trauma-Informed Schools

16
CTIPP Executive Director Jesse Kohler answers our questions about the organization's new report and what the findings mean for families and communities.

The Nurtured Heart Approach Goes Mainstream: Research and Experience Support “Celebrating Greatness in Every...

23
The Nurtured Heart Approach represents a massive shift in thinking—about schooling, about children and how to raise them, about how we regard those with intensity, and about the medical model pathologizing them.
Silhouette of man and woman's handsin form of heart

Engaging “Madness”: A Guide for Significant Others and Families

12
Using personal stories from my own family, my new booklet Engaging 'Madness' paints a clear picture of what an alternative healing journey outside the biomedical paradigm can look like.

Medicating Preschoolers for ADHD: How “Evidence-Based” Psychiatry Has Led to a Tragic End

62
The prescribing of stimulants to preschoolers diagnosed with ADHD is on the rise, which is said to be an "evidence-based" practice. A review of that "evidence base" reveals that claims that ADHD is characterized by genetic and brain abnormalities are belied by the data, and that the NIMH trial of methylphenidate in this age group told of long-term harm.

Interview: Abuse and Neglect at Private “Troubled Teen” Centers

5
Parents, beware: Disability rights lawyer Diane Smith Howard shares disturbing findings on conditions at youth residential treatment facilities.

Interview: How Does Climate Change Affect Youth Mental Health?

7
Psychiatric epidemiologist Jennifer Barkin talks about her research on the traumatizing effects of extreme weather events on youth and how caregivers can help them build resilience.

Interview: Moving Toward a Human Rights Approach to Student Mental Health

1
Psychologist Jim Probert of the University of Florida's student counseling center explains why "Our goal is not to take the steering wheel out of the person's hands."

Interview: Is Forced Treatment Deterring Youth from Seeking Mental Health Care?

19
Researcher Nev Jones, Ph.D., talks about her study of youth hospitalized against their will, and how their experiences affected their attitudes about mental health treatment and providers.

The False Memory Syndrome at 30: How Flawed Science Turned into Conventional Wisdom ...

171
Soon after states finally began providing adults who remembered childhood abuse with the legal standing to sue, the FMSF began waging a PR campaign to discredit their memories—in both courtrooms and in the public mind.

Withdrawing Kids from Psych Drugs: Why, How, and When

12
Here are methods for reducing or eliminating a child's psychiatric medications that I have seen work well over years of supporting families through this process.

Supporting Children and Parents to Withdraw from Psychiatric Medication

13
The main problem with prescribing psychiatric drugs to children is that it hasn’t been very effective.

Monarch eTNS Inspires “Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children!” (SPAC!)

The FDA approval of the Monarch eTNS device is the latest form of psychiatric-inspired child abuse. If not stopped, it will afflict millions of children in unimaginably damaging ways. It has inspired us to form Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children (SPAC!) a new international advocacy organization.

Talking About Psych Diagnoses and Drugs: A Primer for Parents & Professionals

14
It is important to tell parents the truth about what can and cannot be known about their child. In this way, people come to appreciate that labels and treatments offered by psychiatric professionals are far from being grounded in hard science.
adverse childhood experiences

Adverse Childhood Experiences: When Will the Lessons of the ACE Study Inform Societal Care?

25
The ACE study tells of how adverse childhood experiences increase the risk of psychological and physical problems in adulthood. When will we start incorporating these findings into public health policy and medical care?
OCD worry monster

Helping Children to Overcome OCD: 6 Creative Strategies for Parents

35
Here, Dr. Ben Furman offers a creative approach to helping children who struggle with OCD. Explaining why behaviors like reasoning, reassuring, and superstitious rituals don’t work, he suggests engaging alternatives that teach kids how to manage their “worry monster” and make sense of their distressing experience.
school refusal

“I’m Not Going, You Can’t Make Me!”: A Community Approach to School Refusal

36
Consider an imaginary child called Jack who has been avoiding school as much as possible for a month. Standard practice would be cognitive-behavioral therapy or psychoactive drugs to help Jack deal with his anxiety. But what if Jack's social network instead mobilized to help him regain the role of student?
childhood bipolar

Childhood Bipolar Disorder, Deconstructed

29
Diagnosing children with juvenile or pediatric bipolar disorder is largely an American phenomenon. Do we actually have more “bipolar” children in the United States—or are we simply labeling more of them as such? If it is ever fair to call a child “manic,” isn’t the child’s environment the direction in which we should look?
helping children angry child

Helping Children With Angry Outbursts

8
Finnish psychiatrist Ben Furman reviews various non-drug therapies for children with aggressive outbursts of anger, including the Kids' Skills approach that he and social psychologist Tapani Ahola developed. These approaches focus on helping children come up with their own ideas for overcoming their problems with the help of family and friends.