Alternet.org, By: Bruce E. Levine, 09/19/2013
Fascinating research reveals that some people who suffer a psychotic break do better without a lifetime of medication. It was an amazing victory for mental health treatment reform activists and one investigative reporter: on Aug. 28, 2013, National Institute of Mental Health director Thomas Insel announced that psychiatry’s standard treatment for people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses needs to change. After examining two long-term studies on schizophrenia and psychoses, Insel came to what was previously considered a radical conclusion: in the long-term, some individuals with a history of psychosis do better off medication.
Insel finally recognized what mental health treatment reform activists and investigative reporter Robert Whitaker have been talking about for years—the research shows that American psychiatry’s standard treatment protocol has hurt many people who could have been helped by a more selective and limited use of drugs, and a more diverse approach such as the one used in Finland, which has produced the best long-term outcomes in the developed world.
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