Couch in Crisis

For those suffering from severe mental illness, this is the worst of times. Walk the streets of any city and you will find multitudes of the mentally ill left homeless to fend as best they can for themselves.

“Schizophrenia” is a name, not a disease. You are about to read the life story of a remarkable man who describes how he overcame poverty, orphanhood, and schizophrenia to become an author, an LCSW, a leader in the mental health advocacy movement, and an inspiration for many others.

There is no clear boundary separating religious and political extremism from psychiatric illness. One man's cherished belief is another man's delusion. More in this commentary.

The privacy and security of our offices-the therapeutic bunkers within which our wounded patient-warriors hunker down against an unseen enemy-is the fundamental first barricade between private sufferings and the potential for public humiliation.

Some inflexible anti-psychiatrists are blind ideologues who see only the limits and harms of mental health treatment, not its necessity or any of its benefits. More in this commentary.

In his blog for Mental Illness Awareness Week, NIMH Director Thomas Insel talks about the complexity of mental disorders and the need for scientists, clinicians, patients, and families to work together in searching for better treatment.

This is the fourth in a series of blogs devoted to our society’s shameful neglect of people with severe mental illness.

Leaders (and really that is all of us in one way or another) have the challenge of understanding and responding to future risk.

There is much concern about any breach at the White House: the most recent intruder could have been shot and possibly killed during his run. Why wasn’t he?

You don't need to be religious to say this prayer . . . do you?

The ISIS uniform is a particularly powerful weapon in its PR arsenal. . . an elegantly crafted blend of commando, ninja, and superhero. It is meant to inspire fear and trembling in its opponents, Arab or Western.

To me, the following psychiatrists were spectacular in their life work: they often ended it in a blaze of glory-- like the fall leaves -- before they fell silent on the earth.

Today's headlines about security breaches leave me wondering: how do we accurately assess our own security risk?

Do our fears prevent us from embracing a reverence of life -- all life -- as Dr. Albert Schweitzer advocated a century ago?

Have you heard of Psychiatrists for Environmental Action and Knowledge (PEAK)? There are ways for us to help treat climate instability and global overheating!

In the USA, we have drive-thru food, pharmacies, and banks. And now we have drive-thru viewing at funeral homes.

The news today is good for our mental health. More Americans have health insurance. One survey shows a drop in the numbers of those who've experienced serious psychological stress in the past 30 days.

"Go inward, so that you can go onward, and then upward." Here: two things that can help keep us happy.

Here's a fascinating study of consumer attitudes towards doctors among patients receiving antidepressants. The conclusions help us understand what goes wrong in the doctor-patient relationship and suggest steps needed to fix it.

Instead of a military search and destroy mission, this psychiatrist proposes a psychological search and revive mission.

What can we-the public and professionals-try to do to prevent suicide, ranging from our individual relationships to international relationships?

Racism in basketball . . . domestic violence in football. Does sports cause more psychological damage than benefits?

It should be clear that racism remains a major problem in the US-in sports, psychiatry, mental health treatment, and elsewhere.

The son of convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff died this week. As Andrew Madoff's death indicates, you don't stop being a father when your children are adults.

In fighting Ebola in West Africa, healthcare givers have knowingly put their own lives at risk. If that isn't following the medical ethics principle of putting the patient first, what is?

If there is an action that is further from sitting next to someone and trying to understand the psychology of their brain, it is standing next to someone and preparing to behead them.

People feel free to post comments on social media sites that they would never dare say to someone’s face. The cure, if only a partial one, is to get out of social media and to start living a real life. What is your opinion on this issue?

If we didn't so stigmatize the severely mentally ill, we would feel an urgent responsibility to rescue them immediately from prison and homelessness.

The “story behind the story” is not the over-prescription of antidepressants-though it happens-but the under-availability of optimal treatment.

Imagine an end to psychiatric episodes that threaten job and family, no more hospitalizations, and a chance for a long life not cut short by mental illness and its complications. What can we take away from the HIV/AIDS story for the treatment of mental illness?