MIA Today

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Cochrane Recommends Antidepressants for Anxiety in a Garbage In, Garbage Out Review

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Cochrane's review of antidepressants for anxiety is misleading and harmful.
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Out of Sight, Out of Mind

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Society’s practice of physically segregating privileged people from those they deem to be “less than” has deep roots beginning with the treatment of madness.

They Called It Psychiatry – I Call It Punishment

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I was fighting something far more dangerous than madness — I was fighting a culture of fear and suppression masquerading as mental health care.
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Where Did All the People Go?

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The question that this history will try to answer is how Oregonian lives were affected by deinstitutionalization, in three phases.
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An Approach to Making Sense of Psychiatric Research

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I don’t consider myself a scientist in the usual sense, but I know a lot about what makes scientific findings more valid and useful.

Subpatterns: A Deeper Dive into Attachment Theory

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Psychological issues have their roots in childhood and are linked to the attachment patterns we develop early in life.

Art, Poetry, and Humor Galleries

View the artwork, poetry, and humor galleries and submit your work. Or visit the Arts Corner.A series of squiggles and disconnected lines in black ink on a gray background

Floodgates by Miles Harrop

RESEARCH STUDIES

Emma Burris from Barnard College is seeking participants for a survey on the direct lived experience of former adolescent psychiatric inpatients, with the goal of improving mental healthcare in a way that’s sensitive to service users’ experiences. Find out more about the project and complete the survey here.

Is Dialogue the Best Medicine? A Conversation With Jaakko Seikkula

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Jaakko Seikkula joins us on the MIA podcast to discuss how Open Dialogue came to be, the research that shows its positive outcomes, how psychiatry has failed to learn from Open Dialogue practice and more.
Simple single family house with words "Peer Respite " over the front door, with a sign hanging from the doorknob saying "Closed."

America is Legislating a Return to the Asylum, One Policy at a Time

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Federal and state policymakers across the partisan divide are defunding vital programs and rolling back policies and rights protections.
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Psychiatry Criticism Politics: When the Enemy of Your Enemy Is Not Your Friend

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Those who would like to abolish psychiatry in order to replace it with their own coercive, authoritarian policies are not friends.

“I Made it Through the Horrors of Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal” A Conversation with Comedian...

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Dex Carrington, AKA Jørgen Kjønø, is a Norwegian-American stand-up comedian and actor. He joins us on the Mad In America podcast to talk about his experience with Lyrica and Zyprexa, including a five-and-a-half-year taper after 10 years on the drugs.

ChatGPT Weakens Your Ability to Think, MIT Study Finds

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“This cognitive offloading phenomenon raises concerns about the long-term implications for human intellectual development and autonomy,” the researchers write.

Why Psychosis Is Not So Crazy: A Conversation with Stijn Vanheule

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Vanheule urges clinicians to listen for the structure in psychotic thought. He offers clinical examples that reframe hallucinations as a form of creative response to unspeakable dilemmas.

EDITOR'S PICK

The silent burden of emotional poverty in families with autism

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In families where a parent has autism (even if it's unnoticed), there's often an invisible tension. A tension that's barely seen, yet deeply felt. I call it "emotional poverty": a lack of genuine connection that deeply affects the lives of Co-drivers—the children and loved ones of someone with autism. This is my invitation to recognize this dynamic and find a language that makes it a topic of discussion.

When care becomes violence – psychiatry’s repressed responsibility

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In Swedish psychiatry, the blame for failures in care is often placed on the patients themselves - not on the system's own shortcomings. Diagnoses such as borderline are used to explain away abuse, neglect and violations in the name of care. In this opinion piece, psychiatric survivor Cat W highlights the need for a real shift in perspective: from symptoms of illness to an understanding of society and trauma. See the article here:

Clarifying and useful: About Divergence

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Both divergent and everyone else may need help understanding human play and life, writes Mad in Norway's book reviews. She praises Jonas Vennike Ditlevsen (pictured) for providing insight into the unspoken patterns of social interaction and communication.

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