No one deserves to live with the stigma associated with a mental illness. The important thing that we need to do as a society is be more compassionate, more informed, more caring and more supportive of those with mental illness.

A full professional workup can help to differentiate demoralization from a major depressive disorder. Troubling moods can arise from a variety of contexts. They may indicate a major mental disorder, but could also represent reactions to life circumstances.

I asked more than a dozen expert psychiatric colleagues, and myself, the questions they most frequently receive about psychiatric medications from people who take them or their families. Here are a dozen of those many questions; the responses are mine.

by guest blogger Deirdre Imus, author and environmental health advocate Not long after the unfathomable events of December 14, 2012, unfolded at S...

The 5,000-word Times piece on the life and death by suicide of a young man, Richard Fee, addicted to Adderall (a form of prescription amphetamine), could represent a true thawing of what some feel has been a 20-year ADHD/Adderall Ice Age.

A Syracuse, N.Y. jury has awarded a $1.5 million medical malpractice verdict to the family of a man who committed suicide. I was the medical expert for the family.

Instead of persisting in pushing psychiatric drugs, health professionals and organizations around the world would do far more good by developing and supporting programs for psychiatric drug withdrawal.

Richard A. Friedman notes in a recent New York Times article that by any standards, atypical antipsychotics are overprescribed. But he leaves out two groups that are especially vulnerable to abuse by these chemical agents: the elderly and children.

I've never been against using medication in children. I am against a first and only use of medication in children who are minimally impaired. I believe first one must try to employ effective non-drug interventions of behavior modification and special education.

A recent blog of mine described how unethical and illegal drug company activities have driven the prescription of antipsychotic drugs to children. Now the "success" of this campaign has been documented in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

I have been on drugs for about six years, give or take. Prozac and Buspiron. Prozac for depression and Buspiron for its evil twin sister, anxiety. There were others, too. I can't remember how I got started on them -- well, we can surmise I was depressed.

Suicides and personal violence in the military have continued to escalate since some of us first began warning about these problems and their relationship to the simultaneously escalating prescription of psychiatric drugs to active duty soldiers.

In my experience as a psychiatrist, nearly everything we call a psychiatric symptom or problem, including insomnia, is in reality a signal that we have to face a new challenge in life.

Preventive psychiatry may someday be of significant service in reducing the burden of human suffering -- but only if it can be done really well. And the sad truth is that we don't yet have the necessary tools.

There were approximately 662,000 children in foster care in the U.S. in 2010. Now, there is a Government Accounting Office report confirming that foster children in five states are receiving shocking amounts of psychiatric drugs.

It has been apparent for many years that chronic exposure to SSRI antidepressants frequently makes people feel apathetic or less engaged in their lives, and ultimately more depressed.

The diagnosing of millions of children with ADHD in order to medicate them with stimulants and other psychoactive chemicals is an American tragedy, growing into a worldwide catastrophe.

Many tragic acts of suicide and violence could be averted by reducing or stopping the use of anti-depressant drugs, and by greater professional and public awareness of the dangers associated with these drug.

The judge declared in his decision, "His basic normalcy now further confirms he no longer poses a risk of violence to anyone and that his mental deterioration and resulting violence would not have taken place without exposure to Prozac."

Children with extreme degrees of impulsivity, distractibility and hyperactivity are easy to diagnose with ADHD. However because these behaviors vary (from none to many) in a bell shaped distribution curve, most of ADHD diagnosed in this country is of the mild variety.

The number of Americans who are diagnosed or diagnosable with a serious mental illness has skyrocketed. What is going on? Why are Americans suffering a mental health epidemic that is unique in the developed world?