Yasin Choudry, M.D.

Yasin Choudry MD To the Clinicians Who Already Know Something Is Missing This essay is not for patients, though patients are welcome to read it. It is addressed to the psychiatrists, therapists, social workers, psychologists, and trainees working inside the mental health system who have been quietly carrying something that does not have a name in their training. You know the feeling. A patient sits across from you, and you make the diagnosis, prescribe the treatment, and do e

What Genuine Healing Actually Requires Yasin Choudry MD A More Complete Model The previous four essays in this series have been a diagnostic exercise. They have examined what mainstream psychiatry sees clearly, which populations it consistently misses, how the system misreads adaptation as illness, and why an incomplete model applied at scale contributes to the epidemic it intends to address. A diagnosis without a treatment plan is incomplete. This essay is the treatment plan

Something is not adding up Yasin Choudry MD Why the Mental Health Epidemic Keeps Growing In the United States, spending on mental health treatment has increased steadily for decades. The number of people receiving psychiatric medication has grown significantly, access to therapy has expanded, and public awareness of mental health conditions is higher than at any point in recorded history. Stigma, while still real, has measurably decreased. Yet the epidemic keeps growing. Rate

Yasin Choudry MD What the System Calls Illness Is Often Something Else Entirely A woman in her mid-forties sits across from me. She has been in the mental health system for eleven years. She carries three diagnoses: major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and borderline personality traits. She takes two medications and has completed two courses, one of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and another of dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). By the system's own me

Why the DSM Cannot See Them Yasin Choudry MD 5 populations mainstream psychiatry misses In the previous essay in this series, I argued that mainstream psychiatry is not a broken system but an incomplete one. Built around a specific set of biological assumptions, tested on a narrow population, and calibrated to a particular picture of what mental illness looks like and where it comes from, it serves some people well and misses others in ways that compound over years and decade

The tools of mainstream psychiatry have saved lives. Lithium has prevented suicides. Clozapine has given people with treatment-resistant schizophrenia decades of functioning they would not otherwise have had. Antipsychotic medications, for all the controversy now surrounding them, have made it possible for people with severe psychotic illness to live outside institutions, to maintain relationships, to hold jobs. These are not small achievements. They are the product of decade

Child abuse and neglect are risk factors for both psychiatric and personality disorders Little is known about the developmental course of psychopathology among those exposed to childhood maltreatment Individuals who experienced childhood neglect and then later developed mental illness often show partial remission later in adulthood Individuals who experienced abuse, especially sexual and physical abuse often show up as antisocial and impulsive behavior in adulthood Bibliogra

Summary: The number of older adults taking at least three psychiatric drugs has doubled over the past decade, a recent U.S. study suggests, while the mental health crisis in the U.S. worsens. The number of annual doctor visits for patients 65 and over who take at least three psychiatric drugs surged from 1.5 million in 2004 to 3.68 million in 2013. This is not among patients with diagnoses like depression, anxiety, or insomnia, but rather in patients with no mental health dia