Mad in America: 2018 by the Numbers

MIA Editors
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As 2019 begins, we at Mad in America are looking forward to continuing to broaden our efforts to provide informational and educational resources that will help our society “rethink psychiatry.” The start of the New Year also provides us with an opportunity to look back and tally up our efforts in 2018.

In editorial, we posted 250 blogs and personal stories, 240 items of science and research news, 294 pieces in our ‘Around the Web’ section, and five in-depth MIA Reports. We also conducted two surveys, one on readers’ thoughts on Mad in America and a second on patient experiences in America’s mental hospitals. Commenting on blogs remained as active and lively as ever, with over 1,000 comments made just during December. We also expanded our number of newsletter subscribers to 12,105.

 

On our podcast, we released 28 episodes during the year which were downloaded over 105,000 times. This included four special episodes devoted to World Mental Health Day and the Global Mental Health Summit and two episodes in our new Science and Pseudoscience series. We also added new episodes of Madness Radio, hosted by Will Hall.

 

On the website itself, we had a total of 1.4 million unique visitors, who viewed 3.5 million pages. Readers hailed from 229 countries or territories—nearly every country and territory in the world.

 

 

On social media, we added new followers on Facebook and Twitter and our YouTube channel also proved to be popular, with over 6,500 hours of video watched. In 2018, we launched three brand new video series, Brainsplain by Morgan Campbell, Parenting Today by Eric Maisel and Heather Juergensen and Science and Pseudoscience by Sharna Olfman.

 

Mad in America Continuing Education presented two new courses during 2018: Mad Studies and Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal part 2. Our new course, ‘What Would Real Informed Consent Look Like on Psychiatric Drugs?’ starts in early 2019. All told, more than 5000 “students” have enrolled in MIA Continuing Education webinars and courses.

We also launched a redesigned Parent Resources section with an associated closed Facebook group, and we plan to offer online support groups for parents in early 2019. We also published the first in what will be a series of guides to psychotropic drugs in children and adolescents, and guides to non-drug forms of care. Our first guide focused on the stimulant drugs prescribed for children with a diagnosis of ADHD or other behavioral disorder.

 

Finally, we launched two new global affiliated sites: Mad in Asia Pacific and Mad in the UK, which increases our total number to five. There are also new affiliated sites currently in preparation for launch during 2019. We created a new global news page with the hope of encouraging readers to visit our affiliated partner sites.

Thank You

We want to say thank you to all of our readers in 2018, and give a special thanks to those who provided us with financial support this past year. We hope that you will continue with your support in 2019 and beyond.

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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28 COMMENTS

  2. MIA changed my survey reply. I was incarcerated / tricked into going to the Lindner Center of Hope–not “Lindburgh Center”. It was my mom, Treon Christine, who tricked me into going there in January, 2012. I went because that was the first time my home was being invaded and I was being molested every night in my bed. It was/is done with anesthesia so I do not wake up.

    Treon is the same person who was negligent in my brain injury in 1966 when I was 18 months old. Her friend, Mrs. Moore, ran over me as she was backing her car out our driveway at 8550 Keller Road; Cincinnati, OH 45243. Treon has spent my lifetime gas-lighting me about her responsibility in that accident. She made certain that I wrote it was my own fault when I did my fifth grade autobiography. That was definitely gas-lighting.

    My home is still being invaded every night; and this has not stopped once (even if I travel) since January, 2012. This is beyond belief punishment for bad behavior in 1981. I have tried to apologize to anyone and everyone I may have offended; but nothing is working. If I offended you, please accept my apology.

  4. MIA’s biggest accomplishment of the year was convincing Steve McCrea to be the moderator. I think he’s too cautious sometimes (as I have with previous moderators as well) but he’s consistent, reasonable, and equitable. Hope I don’t jinx him with my support.

    Otherwise it seems that MIA still wants us to keep “rethinking psychiatry,” apparently convinced there’s something we’ve missed that might make it capable of being “reformed.” Regardless, MIA continues to provide fertile ground for nourishing true anti-psychiatry consciousness, and for that reason alone should be supported, if not completely embraced, by anti-psychiatry survivors and all others who want to throw of the yoke of psychiatric deception and coercion. Psychiatry is a branch of the prison system, not of medicine, and this understanding needs to be part of any strategizing on how to expose it and depose it. 🙂

    It should be an interesting year. Here we go I guess.

  5. Agreed Oldhead. Polishing turds is a more worthwhile activity than “rethinking” psychiatry, but at least MIA can help clear some ground for the more urgent work of antipsychiatry. Not too many people that I know of are trying to rethink chattel slavery or Nazi medical experiments. But it is true that Whitaker and MIA have done great work in exposing many of the lies that are inherent in the psychiatric regime. For this they are to be commended.

    • Hey littleturtle, If it’s about building a bio/psy/soc model, I wonder if other groups might be better at that than psychiatry. For example, a family doctor or internist could make sure there is no biologic issue happening, such as a nutritional deficiency or hormonal problem. Psychological issues may be better addressed through the individual working with their neighbours/loved ones/counsellor/coach etc. The social issues might be better dealt with through healthier and more equitable public policy. I have actually found psychiatry to be a huge distraction from these three issues that you mentioned. Perhaps it could reform, but I’m not going to be holding my breath on that.

      • Pretty decent and concise response to little turtle’s little bio/psy/soc mantra (no offense intended).

        As for “reform,” consider again the definition. Something can be subject to “reform” if it is initially legitimate or of value but has since been degraded or become out-of-date, and needs some upgrading and maintenance. But something based upon false premises is inherently illegitimate at its core, so there is nothing to “reform”; it doesn’t matter what “form” a pile of shit is molded into, its essence is the same.

  7. Thank you MIA for this profoundly needed mission to re-think psychiatry. The work and incredible information presented every day to investigate, educate and support is invaluable to very human being who must navigate this world. I wish MIA continued success and ever expanding readership and support in 2019.

  9. I have found this site to be extremely helpful on the journey to a better life and as a retired social worker it has helped me integrate and process what I was seeing and experiencing in the field.
    I would suggest that this site needs the perspectives of all involved because I think what we are dealing with is an octopus and it has many tentacles and is well hidden and very hard to either trap and or kill.
    One of the most interesting facts I read lately was the Newsweek article of the 2990’s which was part of a push for drugs campaign. This makes so much sense and yes not only did we buy into drugs as only true response ( and I was skeptical and still slid into the system for myself and others) and meds as the real true and only silver bullet.
    To undo this all will take years and probably decades. This is similar to sex abuse in institutions- the tentacles were allowed to grow and grow and grow unchecked.
    The issue of silence is important here. There are legal ways of silence and making victim’s voices totally taboo.
    If one knows about abuse, offenders at personal, community, institional systems do a great job and making sure silence is not only enforced but continued.
    There are layers of offending from both the for profit and non profit systems and most folks are caught but they don’t even know about the octopus they are feeding. This is true on both sides of the desk.

  10. That’s funny. My comment that I put here was quietly removed and I wasn’t even told. Of course this makes me even more convinced of what I am saying. I think MIA is great for helping people realize the truth about the mental health system. People learn here that they are not alone.

    MIA needs to honor the survivor voice more, and quit upholding MH professionals as the only experts. Sadly, the notion of their expertise is the underlying assumption here. It’s almost like the editors speaking out of both sides of their mouths. “Yes, MH treatment sucks, but their professionals STILL know better!” A lot of us are pissed off. I have reduced my participation at MIA for this reason.

  11. Gee, wouldn’t it be great if we had an antipsychiatry website and more antipsychiatry organizations? Unfortunately, I have my doubts that 2019 will become The Year of Antipsychiatry. I guess, when it comes to bursting that not so little “mental health treatment” system bubble, we’ve still got a little more work to be done. If there’s a resolution to be made then, may it be to push in that direction, and not stop until forced treatment is a thing of the distant past. So if this blog-post is about making money oppressing people, I’m not interested, however, if this blog-post is about liberating people from oppression, keep talking, I’m all ears.

  12. Now the site needs to transform into sensational media coverage of mental health and police encounter with the mentally ill, in the spirit of kelly thomas – video front page.

    and to start being aggressive like TAC, beat them at their own game. Get aggressive. We’re only preaching to the choir 98% of the time and enlightening someone 2% at best.

    aggressive journalism, social justice. no trying to reform psychiatry – this is war now. we know they will never change or reform or stop, and god damn it, TAC is putting google ads on MIA and anatomy of an epidemic.

    So while your way of doing things is preaching to the choir in hopes of enlightening some passer-byes, TAC is using your website and work against you – people coming across MIA are getting ads for TAC

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