Psychology Today: “How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease”—Civil rights protesters were labeled schizophrenic

By the mid-to-late-1960s, however, schizophrenia was a diagnosis disproportionately applied to the hospital’s growing population of African-American men from urban Detroit. Perhaps the most shocking evidence I uncovered was that hospital charts “diagnosed” these African American men in part because of their symptoms, but also because of their connections to the civil rights movement. Many of the men were sent to Ionia after convictions for crimes that ranged from armed robbery to participation in civil-rights protests, to property destruction during periods of civil unrest, such as the Detroit riots of 1968. Charts stressed how hallucinations and delusions rendered these men as threats, not only to other patients, but also to clinicians, ward attendants, and to society itself.

Psychologist John Rosemond—Just because kids lack certain skills or are a bit different doesn’t make them “mentally ill”

Over the past 40 years or so, child advocates have given a good amount of lip service to the view that adults, especially educators, should respect children’s “individual differences.” In theory, this recognizes the fact that every trait is distributed in the general population in a manner represented by the bell-shaped curve. Whether the issue is general intelligence, sociability, optimism, musical aptitude, artistic ability, or mechanical skill (to mention but a few), relatively few people are “gifted” and relatively few people are disadvantaged. Whatever the characteristic, most folks are statistically “normal.” That is, they possess an adequate amount, enough to get by.

The Portland Press Herald: Psychiatric Drugging of American Children is Cause for Alarm

The use of powerful drugs to treat younger and younger patients has gone far beyond disturbing. The age of children being medicated with prescription psychiatric drugs is getting younger and more widespread every year. According to a 2010 study of data on more than a million children reported by American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s journal, the use of powerful anti-psychotics with privately insured U.S. children, ages 2 through 5, doubled between 1999 and 2007.

The London Times: “Brittany Murphy, Michael Jackson, Heath Legder… America’s fatal addiction to prescription drugs”

The biggest killer drugs in the States right now are legal and have been prescribed. Here’s how easy it is to score and to get hooked. I went to my appointment with “Dr C’ in Los Angeles with a shopping list of the most commonly abused types of drug: pain relievers, tranquillisers, stimulants and sedatives. Beforehand, a local addiction specialist, Bernadine Fried, had briefed me on how to approach your doctor like an addict and still come away with fistfuls of pills.

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