COMMONSENSE REBELLION

Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cincinnati, Ohio. His most recent book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite. Earlier books include Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic and Commonsense Rebellion. He is a regular contributor to CounterPunch, AlterNet, Truthout, Z Magazine and the Huffington Post, and has been published in numerous other magazines. Dr. Levine is on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, and he has presented talks and workshops throughout North America. His Web site is brucelevine.net

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. The Green Shadow Cabinet and a Mental Health Declaration of Independence

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May 21, 2013

Americans have increasingly lost community and autonomy, and have acquired instead the tyranny of institutionalization: domination by gigantic, impersonal, bureaucratic, standardized entities — visible in large corporations, the workplace, health care, schools, and much of our lives. This institutionalization has made many Americans feel small, isolated, helpless, scared, inattentive, bored, angry, alienated, and depressed.
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Categorized in: Blogs, DSM, Featured Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. CDC Reports ‘Substantial’ Increases in U.S. Suicide Rate for Middle-Aged Americans

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May 7, 2013

Between 1999-2010, the suicide rate among Americans aged 35-64 years increased 28.4 percent. Major U.S. mental health institutions emphasize mental health treatment as a solution. However, suicide, depression, and many other serious emotional difficulties can be most easily prevented by political courage and different public policies, not by medical treatments.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. Imperialist Psychiatrists, Psychopathic Corporatists —

But I Repeat Myself

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April 4, 2013

Journalist/humorist Jon Ronson’s TED talk “Strange Answers To The Psychopath Test” addresses the DSM, diseasing normality, faking mental illness, and the psychopathy of former CEO “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap. The Huffington Post, for their TED Weekends section, asked me for a reaction to Ronson’s talk—but then refused to print my blog because, a Huffington Post staffer emailed me, “the TED Weekends team said that the wording of the post was too strong.” Below is the original post.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Industry

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. The Systemic Crushing of Young Nonconformists and Anti-Authoritarians

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March 11, 2013

Huffington Post’s “TED Weekend” asked several of their bloggers, including myself, to respond to Philip Zimbardo’s TED talk on “The Psychology of Evil.” Zimbardo’s message about the systemic sources of evil and the value of deviants is a good one, however, I questioned the effectiveness of his solution. I believe that our young anti-authoritarians — our potential heroes — have far less of a need for Zimbardo’s hero courses in their schools than a need for help in battling against the systemic, authoritarian aspects of the institutions that rule their lives.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. Rejuvenating Abolitionism of Psychiatric Labels — Even Some Establishment Psychiatrists Embarrassed by New DSM-5

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February 10, 2013

When even some establishment psychiatrists are delegitimizing DSM-5, it becomes far easier to delegitimize psychiatric labels.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. What Happened After a Nation Methodically Murdered Its Schizophrenics? Rethinking Mental Illness and Its Heritability

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January 19, 2013

When we begin to question, we discover that (1) scientifically flawed research has been used to promote ideas around mental illness and its heritability, and (2) instead of focusing on nature vs. nurture causes of mental illness, it’s time to consider whether certain phenomena are really symptoms of pathology or instead are inextricable aspects of our humanity.


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Categorized in: Adult, Blogs, Children and Adolescents, Disorders, Featured Blogs, Schizophrenia and Psychosis, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. How 7 Historic Figures Overcame Depression without Doctors

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November 29, 2012

While Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway received extensive medical treatment for depression but tragically committed suicide, other famously depressed people—including Abraham Lincoln, William James, Georgia O’Keeffe, Sigmund Freud, William Tecumseh Sherman, Franz Kafka, and the Buddha—have taken different paths. Did those luminaries who took alternative paths and recovered really have the symptoms of major depression, and did their antidotes really work?
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Categorized in: Adult, Blogs, Depression, Disorders, Featured Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. Behavior Modification and an Authoritarian Society

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October 12, 2012

How, in a democratic society, do children become ethical and caring adults? They need a history of being cared about, taken seriously, and respected, which they can model and reciprocate. Today, the mental health profession has gone beyond behavioral technologies of control. It now diagnoses noncompliant toddlers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and pediatric bipolar disorder and attempts to control them with heavily sedating drugs. While Big Pharma directly profits from drug prescribing, the entire corporatocracy benefits from the mental health profession’s legitimization of conditioning and controlling.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. How Psychologists Meet the Needs of the “Power Structure”: A Talk at the Psychologists for Social Responsibility Conference

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October 1, 2012

All power structures throughout history have sought to use groups of people, especially among so-called professionals, who will control the population from rebelling against injustices. Power structures have used clergy—that’s why clergy who cared about social justice and who were embarrassed by their profession created “liberation theology.” Power structures have certainly used police and armies, as has been done throughout American history to try to break the U.S. labor movement. And the U.S. power structure now uses mental health professionals to manipulate and medicate people to adapt and adjust and thereby maintain the status quo, regardless of how insane the status quo has become.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs: A Sane Approach to Psychiatric Drugs

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August 29, 2012

Millions of people believe that psychiatric medications have saved their lives, while millions of others report that their psychiatric medications were unhelpful or made things worse. All this can result in mutual disrespect for different choices.  I can think of …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. Killed by the Huffington Post, Article Now on the Newsstands in Skeptic

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June 25, 2012

Now in the current issue of Skeptic, I have an article called “Depression Treatment: What Works and How We Know” (article rights owned by Skeptic but which I am allowed to republish on my web site). I thought that some …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Uncategorized

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better?

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May 4, 2012

Preface: Failing in my efforts to get this article published for the general public, apparently only here can I talk about a “cool subculture of anti-authoritarians” and how the Harrow study shows medication resisters have greater recovery.   Anti-Authoritarians and …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Popular

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. How the “Brain Defect” Theory of Depression Stigmatizes Depression Sufferers

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April 14, 2012

Viewing depression as a “brain defect” rather than a “character defect” is supposed to reduce the stigma of depression, according to the American Psychiatric Association, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, and the rest of the mental health establishment. …
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Categorized in: Adult, Blogs, Depression, Disorders, Non-Drug Approaches, Recovery/Empowerment, Rethinking Psychiatry/Medical Model

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. How Technology Worship Keeps Americans Ignorant about Depression Treatment

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March 26, 2012

Technology is worshipped in U.S. culture, but when it comes to transforming depression and emotional suffering, is this predilection for technology justified? Technology worship means a reverence for machines, manipulations, and manuals designed to control. It also means valuing the …
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Categorized in: Blogs

Bruce Levine, Ph.D. Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill

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February 26, 2012

(Note: Read Bruce Levine’s latest post: Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better? In my career as a psychologist, I have talked with hundreds of people previously diagnosed by other professionals with oppositional defiant disorder, attention deficit hyperactive …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Popular