The Mind Electric by ミラクルミュージカル (Miracle Musical)
[Seizure warning: flashing images]
Four New Studies Raise Concerns About Benzodiazepine-Related Harms
This week, Mad in America examines four new studies around harms linked to benzodiazepine use. The first finds that benzodiazepines are linked to increased...
What Psychiatry Missed: My Ferritin Level Was 6
No one told me that anemia could be contributing to the mental health issues that would not resolve. The providers put me on antipsychotics; meanwhile, my underlying iron stores remained depleted.
What We Seek in Therapy May be Lost to Time
Progress removes the conditions that made skills, relationships, meaning, and purpose necessary. A part of life ceases to be required.
Let There Be Light: Before Psychiatry Writes Its Next DSM
Very high prevalence raises a more fundamental question: Where exactly does the medical disorder end and ordinary human variation begin?
Is It Time to Rethink Psychiatry’s Diagnostic Bible?
The American Psychiatric Association is hard at work planning their next edition of psychiatry's "Bible," the DSM. According to one APA committee involved, the...
Marketing GLP-1 Drugs for Addiction: Why Critics Are Skeptical
The question surrounding GLP-1RAs is not simply whether they can change the brain, but whether that is enough to change the life around it.
What Psychiatry Missed: My Ferritin Level Was 6
No one told me that anemia could be contributing to the mental health issues that would not resolve. The providers put me on antipsychotics; meanwhile, my underlying iron stores remained depleted.
Don’t Let Barbie Out of the Glovebox – An OCD Account
It’s easy to cling to my diagnosis for comfort. In fact, externalizing obsessions the way you would an alien invasion or a metastasized tumor is a foundational part of OCD’s gold standard of treatment.
Meeting Persephone: A Katabasis of Bipolar Night
One doctor advised, “Do not listen to the voices!” Yet I yearned for them—the dreams, the poetic signs, the strange illuminations where the streets shed their names.
Marketing GLP-1 Drugs for Addiction: Why Critics Are Skeptical
The question surrounding GLP-1RAs is not simply whether they can change the brain, but whether that is enough to change the life around it.
Psychiatric Drugs and Violence: What Can Genetics Tell Us? A Conversation With Selma Eikelenboom
Brooke Siem speaks with Selma Eikelenboom, together they explore what questions her research raises about the relationship between psychoactive drugs, genetic variation, and violence.
Getting Rid of the Pain Before Answering Its Questions: Psychiatry’s Damage to Self and Culture
By answering questions that pain asks, one can rediscover one’s true self. If you get rid of pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it.
When Stopping Prescription Drugs Is Hard: Alicia Martin and the TaperMate Story
Alicia Martin is an Australian community pharmacist and the creator of an ingenious mobile app, TaperMate, which aims to help people with hyperbolic drug tapering and prescribed drug withdrawal.
Remembering Dory Previn: An Interview by Peter Sterling in 1974
Dory Previn was an American lyricist, singer-songwriter, and poet whose deeply personal work explored her struggles with mental health, including experiences of psychosis. In October 1974, she met with neuroscientist Peter Sterling for a candid conversation about her psychiatric treatment.
Around the Web
View the artwork, poetry, and humor galleries and submit your work. Or visit the Arts Corner.
Akathisia Is Real – A Collaboration by Akathisia Sufferers
Mad in Norway International Film Festival
Photos from the festival:
New in Poetry
The Arrogance of Man by Julia Caitlin Miller
Trigger warning: Brief mention of rape and suicide.
Thighs soaked in period blood
I spent eight hours, free bleeding
Part of it in restraints, after a
Flashback to...
Research Studies
Participants Needed for Research Study: Recently Discharged from a Psychiatric Hospital? A doctoral research study is seeking adults who have been discharged from an inpatient psychiatric facility within the past 90 days to participate in a confidential study about their experiences with mental health support after discharge. Email Sidney Hale at [email protected] if you’re interested in participating.
Research Participants Needed: Are You Reducing or Stopping a Psychiatric Medication? We are a research team at the University of Washington studying how people taper or stop psychiatric medications such as antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, and stimulants. If you are over 18 years old and currently reducing or stopping (tapering) a psychiatric medication, we would love to hear about your experiences. Click here to take the eligibility survey.
NEW POSSIBILITIES: CLINICIANS AND VOICE HEARERS REIMAGINE SUPPORT TOGETHER: October 13, 2026, 12PM EDT, online
AD4E ONLINE FESTIVAL – Friday 6th November. a day that challenges the culture of diagnosis and disorder, questions the pathologising of human distress, and lifts up voices calling for real change.
