Free Republic

DURING 15 years of confinement in psychiatric institutions in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, Dimitri Gerasimenko was starved and repeatedly beaten. The indignities did not end with his death five years ago at the age of 30.Staff at the ramshackle asylum 50 miles from Bishkek, the capital, have never told his mother Raisa, 65, how he died. All her attempts to retrieve his remains have been met with prevarication, compounding her grief. “First I was asked for money if I wanted the body back,” she said. “Then I was told Dimitri had been sent to a medical academy. When...

Many patients at the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Institute, an 89-bed facility affiliated with Pennsylvania State University, suffer from schizophrenia, substance abuse, depression, or bipolar disorder. They cannot complete the "activities of daily living," the hospital’s inpatient clinic states. Some are "suicidal, aggressive, or dangerous to themselves or others." During their stay, which is often involuntary, patients participate in group counseling, learn strategies for stress management, have their medication adjusted, and interact with therapy animals. They can also partake in a less orthodox therapeutic activity: registering to vote. Located in a swing state that could decide the 2024 election, the hospital asks...

Russia 1 state television commentators propose a resumption of Soviet-era psychiatric practices in which anyone opposed to the regime would be subjected to psychiatric torture.

Bomb threats targeting synagogues and symbols of hate along Hawaii’s busiest roadway — the messages appear to be connected to a war 9,000 miles away. HONOLULU (Hawaii 7News Now) -- Bomb threats targeting synagogues and symbols of hate along Hawaii’s busiest roadway — the messages appear to be connected to a war 9,000 miles away. Along the H-1 highway by the Barber’s Point exit, one of the many places that have a swastika along with the star of David graffitied onto signs. Those symbols can be seen for about 10 miles along the H-1 heading into town. “We think of...

This is a 13 page read (see PDF at the article link) from the American Psychiatric Association. There are many footnotes at the end, so the read is shorter. Make sure you get to the part about hormones therapy and genital mutilation (they call it surgery) on page 8. Something that I think most will find interesting is the abuse of language. Things like ‘assigned gender’, ‘gender affirming surgery’, and ‘gender binary’ are all terms defined and used by the APA.

Sam Brinton, a non-binary former senior Department of Energy (DOE) official, agreed in court Monday to undergo a mental health evaluation as part of an adult diversion program. Brinton agreed to enter the adult diversion program during a remote Hennepin County, Minnesota, court hearing stemming from an airport baggage theft case. In October, police charged the former federal official with stealing a traveler's baggage worth a total of $2,325 from the luggage carousel at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport on Sept. 16 after flying in from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C. Under the adult diversion program, Brinton will...

In the least surprising clinical conclusion in world history, research published in the medical journal Transgender Health revealed the sizable mental health disparity between transgender and cisgender subjects:We performed a cross-sectional analysis of the prevalence of psychiatric diagnoses among transgender patients in clinical care using an all-payer electronic health record database. Of 10,270 transgender patients identified, 58% (n=5940) had at least one psychiatric diagnosis compared with 13.6% (n=7,311,780) in the control patient population (p<0.0005). Transgender patients had a statistically significant increase in prevalence for all psychiatric diagnoses queried, with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder being the most common...

Typically, in American schools, bullying is like the dark cousin to prom, student elections, or football practice: Maybe you weren’t involved, but you knew that someone, somewhere was. In 2011, President Obama spoke against this inevitability at the White House Conference on Bullying Prevention. “With big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune. I didn’t emerge unscathed,” he said. “But because it’s something that happens a lot, and it’s something that’s always been around, sometimes we’ve turned a blind eye to the problem.” We know that we shouldn’t turn a blind eye: Research shows that bullying is...

Authorities revealed Tuesday afternoon that the suspect who allegedly shot dozens of people at a parade on Monday had a history of run-ins with law enforcement officials. “I’m going to relay some information from two prior instances that occurred here in Highland Park,” Christopher Covelli, Lake County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer, said at a press conference. “The first was in April of 2019. An individual contacted Highland Park Police Department a week after learning of [the suspect] attempting suicide. This was a delayed report, so Highland Park still responded to the residence a week later, spoke with [the suspect],...

Obama Issues Executive Order for the government to use individual's behavioral data.

The brain is one of the mysteries of creation that we are only just starting to understand through science and medicine. As more knowledge about the mechanisms of the brain is uncovered, researchers are also constantly revising their theories about how it works. As we discussed in Chapter 3, an early theory was that depression was caused by a neurotransmitter deficiency in the brain. But science has moved ahead to understanding the brain as functioning primarily through connections between neurons, through how the brain gets wired and rewired, in a process called neuroplasticity. The brain is constantly changing and adapting,...

Switzerland has just legalized a new way to die by assisted suicide. The country’s medical review board has just given authorization for use of the Sarco Suicide Pod, which is a 3-D-printed portable coffin-like capsule with windows that can be transported to a tranquil place for a person’s final moments of life. Conventional assisted-suicide methods have generally involved a chemical substance. Inventor Philip Nitschke of Exit International told the website SwissInfo.ch that his “death pod” offers a different approach. “We want to remove any kind of psychiatric review from the process and allow the individual to control the method themselves,”...

“Pastors cannot be expected to have the same level of skill, training and experience as professional therapists,” said Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). “Pastors have a shepherding and counseling role to play, but should refer when people need the next layer of care. Pastors should also play a role in minimizing stigma around seeing therapists.” Several evangelical leaders noted that a key challenge for pastors is discerning when they have both the skill and the necessary time to help, and when they should refer. Most leaders indicated that pastors deal well with mental health issues...

According to a recent survey, more than half of child and adolescent psychiatrists in Britain report having been consulted by young patients distressed about climate change and the state of the environment. The alleged effects of climate change (or more exactly, thoughts about climate change) upon these children and adolescents include PTSD, phobias, sleep disorders, cognitive deficits, and feelings such as helplessness, hopelessness, grief, and anger. ... In this context, however, PTSD should surely stand for “pre-traumatic stress disorder”; that is to say children are being trained up so that, when they really do suffer from something rather than merely...

President Joe Biden announced his first political ambassadorships Tuesday, tapping former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to be the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Biden also tapped Morgan Stanley Vice Chairman Tom Nides to be ambassador to Israel. For representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization, Biden selected C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger, best known for landing a United Airlines flight on the Hudson River in 2009.... ...For the prestigious, ambassador-rank post of U.S. permanent representative to NATO, Biden has chosen Julianne Smith. A former deputy national security advisor to Biden when he was vice president, Smith also directed NATO policy at the Pentagon....

A Russian historian whose exposure of Soviet leader Josef Stalin's crimes angered state officials is due to begin enforced psychiatric testing this week amid fears he will be falsely declared insane, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Yuri Dmitriev, 61, is on trial in northwest Russia on charges brought by state prosecutors of involving his adopted daughter, then 11, in child pornography, of illegally possessing "the main elements of" a firearm, and of depravity involving a minor. Some of Russia's leading cultural figures say Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin's crimes - he found a mass grave with up...

Dr Grant Colfax, San Francisco's public health director, said the harm-reduction approach is widespread and based on decades of sound public health policy. 'Our focus needs to be on supporting them,' he said of the people who are isolating or under quarantine. For people experiencing alcohol withdrawal, the Department of Public Health calculates the minimum amount needed and delivers them with meals.

Yale psychiatry professor Bandy Lee has been raising concerns about President Trump’s mental health for over a year and suggested in a new interview that Trump should be physically contained for an “urgent evaluation” to determine his mental state. In a Vox interview published Saturday, reporter Eliza Barclay asks Lee, “Okay, so you’re calling for an evaluation; you’re serious about that. How could he possibly be evaluated, since it seems like he wouldn’t voluntarily do it?” Lee responded, “We encounter this often in mental health. Those who most require an evaluation are the least likely to submit to one. That...

A Yale psychiatrist named Bandy Lee has repeatedly claimed that Trump is mentally unfit for office. Democrats in Congress have even had official meetings with her. This woman has never even met Trump, but she feels perfectly fine offering her diagnosis, in a clear ethical violation of her profession. Now that Joe Biden has become an increasing cause for concern, due to his aging mind, Bandy Lee refuses to offer a diagnosis of Biden. Washington Monthly reports: Brandy X. Lee, one of the mental health professionals who has been very vocal about Trump’s unfitness for office, explained why a declination to...

Yale Medicine Professor of Psychiatry Bandy X. Lee claims that Speaker Nancy Pelosi has the “right to have [Trump] submit to an involuntary evaluation.” Professor Lee, of the Yale University School of Medicine, also serves as president of the World Mental Health Coalition. She has been a longstanding and outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, providing “translations” of his communications on her Twitter feed. Lee was also an editor on The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, and is part of a movement demanding that the Judiciary Committee bring a panel of mental health experts to join impeachment...