Behavioral Healthcare recently published a two-part interview with author Robert Whitaker as well as an article about the Hearing Voices Network; and The New York Times ran an article highlighting the importance of peer support. The two-part Whitaker interview – by Bill Anthony, Ph.D., and Lori Ashcraft, Ph.D. – covers Whitaker’s thoughts about the effectiveness of psychotropic medications (among other topics) and includes a sidebar from a critic of his views.
Said Whitaker, “. . . [U]nfortunately I’m afraid psychiatry no longer knows how to get back on track with honest reporting of what it does and does not know, and honest investigations of psychiatric medications. . . . Ultimately, I think we need a new paradigm built on the framework of psychosocial and recovery practices.” The Hearing Voices Network story, published online, covers a presentation by Daniel Hazen, executive director of Voices of the Heart Inc., and Oryx Cohen director of the National Empowerment Center Technical Assistance Center. They offered strategies for handling the experience of hearing voices. “The notion that peer-led groups might help voice-hearers to tame and better live with their voices was, in the words of one local psychiatrist, ‘liberating,’ ” Behavioral Healthcare reported.
The New York Times article featured the story of Antonio Lambert, diagnosed with bipolar disorder and a co-occurring substance use disorder, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison when he was 17 years old. Today, Antonio trains peer specialists across the United States. The article – the last of a five-part series entitled “Restoring Lives,” about individuals with psychiatric diagnoses who are in recovery – quoted Larry Davidson of Yale University: “Peers are living, breathing proof that recovery is possible, that it is real.”
Sources: http://www.behavioral.net/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=9B6FFC446FF7486981EA3C0C3CCE4943&nm=Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=64D490AC6A7D4FE1AEB453627F1A4A32&tier=4&id=A5BC331586DC4D8B89B194044A0D83F1
http://www.behavioral.net/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=9B6FFC446FF7486981EA3C0C3CCE4943&nm=Archives&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=64D490AC6A7D4FE1AEB453627F1A4A32&tier=4&id=43C2D89CC0364CFA94916B05462A9556#sidebar
http://www.behavioral.net/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=64D490AC6A7D4FE1AEB453627F1A4A32&tier=4&id=2AD887EA1E4847C293174A191EAEA422
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/health/20lives.html?ref=health">http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/health/20lives.html?ref=health
Reposted at http://www.darkestcloset.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment