Dr John Read @ReadReadj

@wisconsinhuman1 One wonders if anyone bothered to find out just how delusional his belief that he was about to be sent to what he thought was a boot camp was. And how might we understand his subsequent “delusional” belief, that the staff who gave him 500+ electric shocks were trying to kill him

Truly bizarre account of a man with learning difficulties given ECT, without his consent, 100 times a year for 5 years. Not as an example of reprehensible unethical conduct but as ‘precision medicine’ endorsed by ‘senior’ psychiatrists. Sickening. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Excited to share that the Journal of Medicine and Philosophy is going to publish a symposium on my book, Madness. The contributors include 3 philosophers and 3 psychiatrists, along with my response. Looking forward to the fireworks.

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My story below…

TheWanderer @nrbovee

a day ago

@DanielleGansky @theisabelb @ChrisWillx @_innercompass @ACE_CoalitionEd @Babygravy9 @RobertKennedyJr @SecKennedy @hubermanlab This is a really good documentary and is worth watching in its entirety. youtube.com/watch?v=xJs9lK…

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For years, critics of psychiatry were told they were denying science. Now prominent psychiatrists concede that psychiatric diagnoses are not objective disorders discovered in nature. So what now justifies psychiatry's jurisdiction over human suffering? psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-be…

Antidepressant withdrawal and online support 2025 update Last August, I pointed out that over 100,000 people were in Facebook groups trying to get help for antidepressant withdrawal, and that Surviving Antidepressants was getting over 200,000 visits a month. Less than a year later, that number has jumped to 156,261. Psychiatrists keep insisting withdrawal is rare or mild. But the sheer scale of peer-led support tells another story. Why are so many people turning to Facebook groups and forums instead of doctors? Because the professionals who prescribed these drugs aren’t equipped to help them come off. Still think withdrawal isn’t a major issue? #SSRIs #morethan2weeks #prescribedharm

Daniel Owens @dsowens17

2 years ago

Antidepressant withdrawal and online support We keep getting told that psychiatrists have never seen antidepressant withdrawal or that it is at best minimal. Online tells a different story. There are currently over 100,000 people in Facebook support groups desperately trying

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Highly recommend that people gaslit by their doctors about psych drug withdrawal grab some popcorn and enjoy this thread, in which Mark DEMOLISHES the arguments of just such a gaslighting doctor. Extremely cathartic.

Mark Horowitz @markhoro.bsky.social @markhoro

2 days ago

@RecoveryDoctor Precisely. if we don't know who needs slow tapering and who doesn't the precautionary principle dictates we should go slowly and speed up if there is no trouble and not the other way round. Like driving. I spent years trying to educate doctors about safe tapering, almost no one

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Why did the FDA approve the antidepressant, escitalopram, for anxiety in children, when it was found to be more likely to cause suicidality than relief from anxiety...? What kind of 'regulation' is this? Great piece by @markhoro 👇 mhorowitz.substack.com/p/why-did-the-…

Dr Rege continues to deliver an absolute 'Masterclass' in blaming patients and deflecting responsibility from clinicians and their treatments. "You can no longer work or function because of the harm done by the treatments I prescribed and/or stopped too rapidly. You seem to really have developed a weird fixation with this....you should be more chill about it. Actually that is another mental health condition..."

Harriet Vogt @harriet48293

a day ago

@Yrrepmot @Barbara45426641 Here’s another fabulous, sustained example of professional diktimhood in action.

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On how critical psychiatry has failed to change the brain-bias of mainstream psychiatry. Despite the supposed biopsychosocial approach, 'The message patients tend to hear.. is that a psychiatric diagnosis means there is something wrong with their brain'

Duncan Double @DBDouble

a day ago

Thinking differently about mental health: Has critical psychiatry failed? criticalpsychiatry.blogspot.com/2026/06/has-cr…

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Good to see the Australian magazine for GPs cover our new paper @newsGPau. Insightful comments about how GPs need to change their mindsets from GP Prof @WallisKatharine: ‘It’s going to require a turnaround to understand that it’s not relapse people experience, it’s actually withdrawal symptoms. ‘GPs are seeing people who are taking antidepressants every day – and it requires a bit of a shift to initiate that discussion with patients, “have they ever thought about stopping?”’ Link below

Very important to understand the following when you hear that the FDA has approved a new wonder drug for a mental health condition: “What many people and clinicians do not know is that the requirement of a “positive” trial does not mean that the drug is superior to placebo in a clinically meaningful way. Instead, the drug only has to be “statistically significantly” superior to placebo…Moreover, some drugs are approved despite there being more negative than positive trials.” In this blog, Martin Ploderl explains how the makers of escitalopram exploited this loophole, getting FDA approval for the drug as a treatment for adolescent anxiety despite the fact that it is more likely to make young people suicidal than it is to make them less anxious. madinamerica.com/2026/06/approv…

Approving a Drug for Children and Adolescents That Is More Likely to Induce Suicidality Than Relieve Anxiety Is Concerning By Martin Plöderl, PhD buff.ly/aaEbv2M

Dr Ploderl wrote a far more comprehensive blog on our paper about escitalopram approval for children. And included the difficulty of getting any work critical of psychiatric drugs published - even when the issues are obvious like in this approval. Link below

Mark Horowitz @markhoro.bsky.social @markhoro

a day ago

I wrote a brief blog about our new paper published criticising the FDA’s approval of escitalopram (Lexapro) for Generalised Anxiety Disorder in children and adolescents. The pivotal trial showed that the drug was more likely to make children suicidal than improve anxiety. The

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When people hear the mocking, defensive responses of psychiatrists on this platform to patient reports about harm from psychiatric drugs and withdrawal it can be demoralising and lead people to feel hopeless that things will ever change. But I lecture to hundreds of prescribers each month and on the ground people are much more reasonable and less ideological and defensive than the psychiatrists on here. I just leave some responses from last week from GPs in the UK as examples

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Article in JAMA on how over-diagnosis of autism is increasing and becomes 'a self fulfilling prophecy' and 'does not allow a child to develop their full capacity'. jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap….

I wrote a brief blog about our new paper published criticising the FDA’s approval of escitalopram (Lexapro) for Generalised Anxiety Disorder in children and adolescents. The pivotal trial showed that the drug was more likely to make children suicidal than improve anxiety. The approval needs to be reversed urgently and the FDA approval process revamped. Link below

It is a depressing comment on the nature of psychiatric science that our piece raising undeniable concerns about harmful effects of a drug in children and lack of benefits took two years to publish after multiple rejections by mainstream journals. In contrast papers reporting convenient results routinely 'exaggerate the results, interpret effects causally when this is not possible, or even pass peer review despite obvious errors and trustworthiness issues'.

Dr Joanna Moncrieff @joannamoncrieff

a day ago

This blog describes the difficulty of publishing 'inconvenient results' - in this case results that show a drug does more harm than good to children. madinamerica.com/2026/06/approv…

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it is relevant because you are claiming that RCT level evidence is required to displace a technique that is proven to be safe and effective (rapid, linear tapering). As this has not been proven (in fact it has been shown to be not effective for the majority of patients) the evidentiary threshold is lowered for displacement. There are cohort studies, biological plausibility and widespread clinical experience. You know there are no such studies and so in fact you are the person advocating for an unproven and risky approach to management. Perhaps you are not aware of the cohort studies. Here are studies that find that people who could not stop antidepressants with a traditional taper were able to come off with a gradual hyperbolic taper and experienced less withdrawal effects doing so: paperpile.com/shared/somcvEo…

"Joanna Moncrieff takes aim at the pervasive myth that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain." #depression #antidepressants youtube.com/watch?v=JFYHFW…