Improving Mental Health Outcomes: September, 2023 Report

Improving Mental Health Outcomes: September, 2023 Report

The mental health system’s standard treatments are colossally counterproductive and harmful, often forced on unwilling patients. The overreliance on psychiatric drugs is reducing the recovery rate of people diagnosed with serious mental illness from a possible 80% to 5% and reducing their life spans by 20 years or so. Psychiatric incarceration, euphemistically called “involuntary commitment,” is similarly counterproductive and harmful.

Improving Mental Health: What Works

The most important elements for improving patients’ lives are People, Place and Purpose. People—even psychiatric patients—need to have relationships (People), a safe place to live (Place), and activity that is meaningful to them, usually school or work (Purpose). People need to be given hope these are possible.

Voluntary Approaches

Voluntary approaches that improve people’s lives should be made broadly available instead of the currently prevailing counterproductive and harmful psychiatric drugs regime. These approaches include Peer Respites, Soteria Houses, Open Dialogue, Drug-Free Hospitals, Housing First, Employment, Warm Lines, Hearing Voices Network, Non-Police Community Response Teams, and emotional CPR (eCPR).

The above is the Executive Summary of Report on Improving Mental Health Outcomes, published September, 2023. Authors: James B. Gottstein, Esq.; Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD; David Cohen, PhD; Chuck Ruby, PhD; Faith Myers. Full report: https://psychrights.org/ReportOnImprovingMentalHealthOutcomes.pdf

IMHU.org has 40+ courses exploring these approaches. Our full roster is HERE.