An Interview with Jennifer Barkin, PhD
May is Maternal Mental Health Month. Although we tend to hear a lot about postpartum depression, our podcast guest points out that perinatal distress is really...
5 Alarming Facts About Stress Billings MT
Stress is a part of life to some extent. The problem is that everyone is stressed these days — and for a good reason! We’re constantly...
Sonic Doom: The Effects of Noise Pollution on Physical and Mental Health
From The Guardian: “Shortly after I sat down to read up on the auditory and non-auditory effects of noise on health in the Lancet, the drilling...
Allowing Human Nature To Work Successfully | Jean Liedloff
From ContinuumConcept.org: Jean Liedloff was a Manhattan socialite with a fascination for the wild. In the 1950s and ’60s, she made a series of expeditions to...
What It Really Means to Be Obsessive-Compulsive
Source: yokunen/Shutterstock
Have you ever heard or...
Is Mad in America Doing More Harm Than Good?
Editor’s note: The following is a dialogue between psychiatrist Jim Phelps and Robert Whitaker, founder of MIA. Dr. Phelps submitted a blog in response to Whitaker’s...
How Critical Race Theory Can Help Heal Generational Trauma
At Emory University, researchers conditioned male...
Psychiatry in Aeromedicine: Who Is Denied the Privilege of Piloting an Aircraft?
This is what the FAA’s Chief Psychiatrist wrote about me in 1992. That diagnosis is a wound that has festered for 30 years.
Modern airline travel is...
‘My Doctor Is Lacking Insight’: Alternative Experiences of Insight in Mental Health
From Psychiatry Is Driving Me Mad: “Insight in mental health is pretty much exclusively thought of as the insight or lack of insight in people with...
The Bear in the Classroom – Trauma-Informed Teacher
From Ransom for Israel: “Starting a new school year in a new town has given me the job of teaching those who work with my children...
Unity in Diversity: Rethinking Mental Health and Our Connection to Nature
We are not only in the midst of a climate crisis, but also a “mental health” crisis… though I use this problematic phrase with hesitation. Unsurprisingly,...
Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Cultivating the Superpower of Equanimity
Editor’s Note: This is the sixth in a series written by Sean Gunderson, who was detained by the criminal justice system for 17 years after receiving...
What Is the Role of the Prosumer in the Mental Health System?
First and foremost, I identify as a prosumer. As a prosumer, I have both lived and professional experience of the mental health system.
The term prosumer came...
Top Mental Health and Prayer Apps Fail Spectacularly at Privacy, Security
From Mozilla: “When it comes to protecting people’s privacy and security, mental health and prayer apps are worse than any other product category Mozilla researchers have...
ADHD: The Money Trail – Mad In America
In this country, we spend over twenty billion dollars a year drugging children for something called “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder,” or ADHD. For that kind of...
How to Distinguish Antidepressant Withdrawal from Relapse
In a new article in BJPsych Advances, researchers Mark Horowitz and David Taylor provide advice on how to tell the difference between antidepressant withdrawal and depression...
Do You Still Believe in the “Chemical Imbalance Theory of Mental Illness”? | Bruce...
From CounterPunch: “The jettisoning of the chemical imbalance theory should have been uncontroversial twenty-five years ago, when it became clear to research scientists that it was...
Thomas Insel Makes a Case for Abolishing Psychiatry
Thomas Insel’s book Healing: Our Path From Mental Illness to Mental Health is getting a fair amount of media attention, which could be expected given that...
The Abused Children to Bipolar Pipeline
When I think of my childhood, I think of fear. I think of the constant worry that something would upset my parents. I think of trying...
Right of People on Disability to Refuse Psychotropic Medications
From the People With Disabilities Foundation: “People With Disabilities Foundation obtained a judgment against the Social Security Administration (SSA) in federal court in the Northern District...
How Melissa Lucio Went From Abuse Survivor to Death Row
From The 19th: “Executions of women are rare in the United States — 17 in the last half-century, compared with more than 1,500 men — but...
That Time When the Psychiatric System Went Too Far…
From Dr. Joanne Cacciatore: “Yes, this time, the psychiatric system has gone too far. Again.
They’ve taken what is sacred and they’ve desecrated it.
A few very persistent...
Eugenics, Lobotomy, Risperidone: “Science” Gone Awry
I grew up in a suburb of Boston. My grandmother on my mother’s side of the family was a psychiatrist. I remember asking her when I...
A Tribute to Dr. Dean K. Brooks: The Fire Still Burns
Note of appreciation: I am indebted to Dr. Brooks’ three daughters, without whom I could never have written this tribute. They corrected many items and supported me...
Ending Coercive “Help”: A Review of “Reimagining Crisis Support”
Reimagining Crisis Support: Matrix, Roadmap and Policy by Tina Minkowitz
Just leave me alone!Please, please don’t leave me alone!
I have felt both ways, at different times, in...
An Open Letter to the Member Organizations of the Mental Health Professions
From the Coalition Against Medicalized Psychiatry and Psychology (CAMPP): “The mental health professions are in crisis. After more than two centuries of earnest efforts to discover...
An American History of Addiction, Part 10: My Strange Path to Recovery
I had entered into rehab with the belief that alcohol addiction (alcoholism) was the reason I ended up in the facility. However, during my first week...
Taking It Personally: Indignation as a Vehicle of Therapy | Alice Miller
From Alice Miller: Child Abuse and Mistreatment: “Reports on cruelty to children have been common knowledge for at least 20 years, yet there are still no...
Books Under Review: Spring 2022
Standing Still and Looking Back: A Memoir by Stuart Shipko (Independently published)
“I like to think of myself as a healer,” says Stuart Shipko in the introduction...
Are You Really OCD? | Psychology Today
Source: yokunen/Shutterstock
Have you ever heard or...
From Labeled to Healer: A Road Less Traveled
It is a beautiful road and satisfying journey from labeled to healing to healer. Yet after decades as a patient in the U.S. mental health system,...
Apples and Oranges in Peer Support Research
Do you skip to the conclusions section at the end of research articles?
We’re certainly at a crossroads now about the future of peer support, and everyone’s...
An Interview with Nicholas Haslam
Nicholas Haslam is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne. He is a prolific writer with nine books and around 270 articles to his...
A Profile of Mad in (S)pain
The following is a Q&A with the team members who edit and run Mad in (S)pain. Launched first as Mad in Hispanohablante in October of 2016,...
A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health
From Los Angeles Review of Books: “The importance of arriving at a political understanding of depression cannot be overstated. If the reader only takes one thing...
Interview with Sonja Styblo: Update on the Massachusetts Benzo Bill
On November 8, 2021, Sonja Styblo spoke to the Joint Committee on Mental Health Substance and Use and Recovery in Massachusetts legislature to lobby for the...
The Dramatic Results of John Weir Perry’s Diabasis House Program
Editor’s Note: Michael Cornwall originally presented this piece at the conference entitled “J.W. Perry and Analytical Psychology: Care and Compassion,” held by the Italian Center for...
‘I Felt Disillusioned and Abandoned’: Mental Health in the Medical Field
From The Seattle Times: “Like many newcomers , I had ambitions of helping others and society. These dreams were quickly dashed as I discovered a field...
The Grief Pill is Coming!
Ellen Barry set off a firestorm of commentary in her New York Times article titled, “How long should it take to grieve? Psychiatry has come up...
A Profile of Mad in Finland
Epiphany, revelation, a-ha’s. The people who run Mad in Finland have experienced profound awakenings in the course of their lives, moments of awareness when they understood...
Anesthetized – Mad In America
22 years old.
He comes into the room. I hear him, but I can’t move. I can’t wake up. I sense his presence with my whole body....
Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Calling in AIR Strikes
Editor’s Note: This is the fifth in a series written by Sean Gunderson, who was detained by the criminal justice system for 17 years after receiving...
Inquiry Investigates Deaths of 1,500 NHS Mental Health Patients in Essex
From The Guardian: “The first inquiry of its kind held in England is investigating the deaths of 1,500 people who died while being cared for as...
Tips for Families Dealing with Substance Use
Source: Fizkes/Shutterstock
As we discussed in Part...
Deaths of Despair: Why America’s Medical Industry Explains Working-Class Suicides
From The Guardian: “The US healthcare system is helping to kill people in staggering numbers. And when it isn’t driving Americans to an early grave, the...
A Profile of Mad in the UK
As is the case with all MIA affiliates, Mad in the UK seeks to challenge the existing power structure in psychiatry and prevailing beliefs. That is...
Is “Cry-It-Out” the Tip of a Dangerous Parenting Iceberg?
From Raised Good: “A recent study by a group at Murdoch University in Australia . . . has reignited the debate around the long-held recommendation of ignoring...
We Have Overwhelmingly Lost Touch With the Human Aspect of Medicine
From KevinMD: “The medical establishment has made wonderful strides in destigmatizing ‘psychiatric disorders.’ However, we have helped to create a devastating stigmatization of emotional distress. Somehow,...
Breaking Off My Chemical Romance
From The Nation: “ Horowitz’s experience sounded remarkably like that of others I talked to who’d been on antidepressants—and remarkably like my own. He went from...
The Power of Addiction and the Addiction to Power | Gabor Maté, MD
From TEDx Talks: “As a medical doctor, I work in Vancouver, Canada, and I have worked with some very, very addicted people. People who use heroin,...
A Guide for Significant Others and Families
About six years ago, I discovered the Mad in America website. That was eight years into the journey my wife and I have undertaken together to...
Rhythm Regulates the Brain: The Impact of Music (& More) on Mental Health
In a short article in The Underground Music Report, music therapist Molly Warren relates success stories from her work at a psychiatric hospital and residential treatment...
Trans-Generational Dynamics and Mental Illness: A Family Constellation
Family constellations are a fascinating, cutting-edge tool for exploring issues within family systems, groups, and individual lives. This unique way of working with the unconscious dynamics...
Why Do We Lock People Up?
In hundreds of cities around the world, angry mobs have blockaded government offices or parliaments, or even brought cities to a halt, protesting over rules...
Making Therapy Harder: When Corporate Forces Interfere with Therapy
From PsiAN (Psychotherapy Action Network): “Every therapist is familiar with therapy-interfering behavior (TIB). Historically the literature has focused on TIB in the client or patient, such...
Another Former Patient Sues Psychiatrist & TV Personality Keith Ablow
From The Daily News: “A New Hampshire woman who says she was treated by Dr. Keith Ablow for nearly a decade has now filed a malpractice...
Fifty-Eight Years Beyond the Community Mental Health Act, 1963
Advocacy for the caring of survivors of trauma and difference began much, much earlier than before 1963 when Kennedy passed the Community Mental Health Act. However,...
Antipsychotics Worsen Cognitive Functioning in First-Episode Psychosis
In a new study, researchers found that antipsychotics worsened cognitive functioning in people experiencing a first episode of psychosis. The researchers found that, while those taking...
Bodily Autonomy: Busting 7 Myths That Undermine Individual Rights & Freedoms
From the United Nations Population Fund: “The 2021 State of World Population report, titled My Body is My Own, marks the first time a United Nations...
ADHD Drugs Are Convenient to Get Online. Maybe Too Convenient
From Bloomberg Businessweek: “ joined Cerebral, Inc. . . . hoping to help address America’s mental health crisis at a company that promised the masses...
The Essential Role of an Enlightened Witness in Society | Alice Miller
From alice-miller.com: “Since adolescence I have always wondered why people take pleasure in humiliating others. Clearly the fact that some people are sensitive to the...
An Interview with Lynne Layton
Lynne Layton is a psychoanalyst in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and part-time assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. Holding a Ph.D. in clinical psychology as...
The Future of Mental Health Diagnosis Goes Beyond the Manual
From WIRED: “Do you have five or more symptoms of inattentiveness, including trouble staying organized, difficulty paying attention, and feeling easily distracted? What about five or...
The Forgotten People of COVID: U.S. Overdose Deaths Break All Records
From Dr. Suneel Dhand – MedStoic Lifestyle Medicine: “The enormous toll on people’s mental health over the last couple of years from our COVID-19 pandemic response...
Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Access to the Courts—A Right and Survival Tool
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a series written by Sean Gunderson, who was detained by the criminal justice system for 17 years after receiving...
Psychiatry Upgraded the Declaration of Independence
The Unalienable Rights: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
The original Declaration of Independence proclaimed that the pursuit of happiness is one of our natural rights,...
Illnesses or Loose Collections of Vaguely Described Problems?
On February 10, 2022, Joe Pierre MD, Chief Psychiatrist, VA West Los Angeles Healthcare Center, and Clinical Professor, UCLA, posted the following short entry on his...
The Censors Are Coming for Mental Health
In today’s open access to information, any amateur can stuff any claim with enough sweetened pie charts and cherry statistics to make any ideology appear appetizing....
Official Guidelines on Antidepressant Discontinuation Fail Practitioners and Patients
An article recently published in the journal of Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology reveals that the currently available Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) for tapering antidepressants fail practitioners...
Building Relationship with Ourselves and Others: The Five A’s
From PACEs Connection: “I recently listened to an interview featuring David Richo. He wrote a book several years ago, How to be An Adult in Relationships, in...
Spiritual Awakening: 23 Major Signs & Symptoms
From Lonerwolf: “Going through a spiritual awakening is one of the most confusing, lonely, alienating, but also supremely beautiful experiences in life.
. . . The unsettling and...
Columbia Psychiatry Chair Suspended After Tweet About Dark-Skinned Model
From The New York Times: “The chair of the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry was suspended on Wednesday, ‘effective immediately,’ after referring to a dark-skinned model...
How the Netflix Series “Atypical” Raises Awareness About Autism
by Sharlie Velasco, LCSW
According to the...
MIA’s Suicide Hotline Transparency Project
The “Suicide Hotline Transparency Project” was born out of the belief that creating transparency and public access around suicide hotline intervention and call tracing policies should...
Watch Now: ‘For Life’: A Mini-Opera on Psychiatry by Dawn Sonntag & Kermit Cole
A new 30-minute opera about a young man figuratively “lost in the woods” and his mother, wondering whether to trust the psychiatric system as represented by...
America’s Lack of Bereavement Leave Is Causing a Grief Crisis
From Business Insider: “In May 2020, Kristy’s world shattered the moment she heard a loud thump in the bathroom.
He’d been her partner for eight years. The...
Doctor Ordered to Undergo Psych Evaluation for Prescribing Off-Label Drugs for COVID
From the FLCCC Alliance: “By any measure of academic, clinical, or medical achievement, Dr. Meryl Nass of Maine is a physician of unassailable pedigree . ....
Depression: Compulsive Self-Deception | Alice Miller
From alice-miller.net: “In almost all cases of suicide, it is possible to establish that cruel childhood memories have either been denied completely or never identified in...
Why We Shouldn’t Push a Positive Mindset on Those in Poverty
From Psyche: “How do you improve your life? Many of us assume that flourishing in the face of adversity requires a certain kind of mindset. Believing in your...
Medicating Preschoolers for ADHD: How “Evidence-Based” Psychiatry Has Led to a Tragic End
In its May 25, 2021 issue, JAMA published a report on the comparative efficacy of two medications for treating preschoolers diagnosed with ADHD. Both methylphenidate and...
A Profile of Mad in Norway
Birgit Valla, the editor-in-chief and initiator behind Mad in Norway, knows that when it comes to mental health, her country has one of the most admired...
Susan Inman Is at It Again
Anyone who is part of, or even aware of, the psychiatric survivor movement in British Columbia will likely have heard of Susan Inman. Ms. Inman writes...
Fairness, Justice, and Childhood Trauma | Daniel Mackler
From Daniel Mackler/Wild Truth: “Children naturally, inherently have a deeply embedded sense of fairness. Even children who act in very unfair ways to others—often they know...
Are You ‘Mentally Ill,’ or Very Unhappy? Psychiatrists Can’t Agree
From The New Statesman: “In recent months there has been extensive coverage of an unfolding mental health crisis. Government figures suggest that, since the start of...
Why Is Psychiatry So Defensive About Criticism? Part 2
Continuing my response to a paper by Awais Aftab, MD, titled It’s Time for Us to Stop Being So Defensive About Criticisms of Psychiatry. I published...
As Conservatorship Abuse Gains More Attention, More Activists Speak Out Against It
From The Daily Kos: “Disability advocates in California have given their blessing to proposed legislation that would curb the power of conservators and promote less restrictive alternatives...
The Overprescribing of Psychiatric Medication
A live Town Hall featuring a special, private screening of Luna followed by a panel discussion
February 18, 2022
2:00-3:30 pm EST
We at Mad in America are pleased...
Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Earning the Right to Sleep on the Floor
Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series written by Sean Gunderson, who was detained by the criminal justice system for 17 years after receiving...
Put Psyche Back Into Psychiatry and Add Psychological Intimacy
At age eighteen, in the summer of 1962, after the last of a series of four minor traffic accidents as a passenger, my mind, not my...
Break Down. Wake Up. podcast – 012 – Listening to her Whole Self…Even the...
How coming to terms with her own relationship doubt and a part of herself she did not want to see brought an executive coach deep compassion...
Mother of 11-Year-Old Who Died by Suicide Sues Social Media Firms Meta, Snap
From The Washington Post: “The mother of an 11-year-old child, Selena Rodriguez, from Enfield, Conn. has filed a lawsuit against two social media giants, arguing a...
Crisis Text Line Shares Data With For-Profit Spinoff, Raising Ethical Questions
From Politico: “Crisis Text Line is one of the world’s most prominent mental health support lines, a tech-driven nonprofit that uses big data and artificial intelligence...
How to Raise Emotionally Intelligent Children
From TEDx Talks: “We’ve seen a steady increase in psychological distress among adults — in Australia and around the world. And I see this increase in...
Roll-out of 988 Threatens Anonymity of Crisis Hotlines
The new mental health hotline number “988” will roll out across America in July of 2022, pushed by hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding...
Why Is Psychiatry So Defensive About Criticism?
INTRODUCTION
On January 6, 2022, Awais Aftab, MD, a psychiatrist and clinical professor at Case Western, published a piece in Psychiatric Times. The title is It’s Time...
Identity Crisis: Navigating Biculturalism | Psychology Today
America is not a melting pot....
