Mad in America

Textbooks portray ADHD and schizophrenia as genetic disorders, despite the much stronger evidence for environmental factors in causing these experiences.

The “genetics of mental disorders” story told in Kolker's "Hidden Valley Road" involves omission and misrepresentation of genetic research.

The discrepancy between opinion and science is prevalent in psychiatric textbooks. The coming generations of healthcare professionals will learn a lot during their studies that is incorrect.

During my 2003 episode I received a series of ten shocks and at first they seemed to “magically” cure me. However, it only took a month for me to go back to feeling depressed and suicidal — again.

A psychiatrist obsessed with violence among the mentally ill, Torrey is dedicated to promoting involuntary hospitalization.

The psychiatrists broke my body and my brain and now they are washing their hands of me. When I think about what has been done to me and what has been taken from me, I can barely breathe.

It is possible to prevent and alleviate both depression and mania by managing the timing and intensity of exposure to light (and dark). I wasn’t sure these measures would work for me, but they did.

It is a futile exercise to rank depression pills based on flawed trial reports and—most importantly—when the patients prefer to be treated with a placebo.

Children can overcome all sorts of difficulties by learning specific behavioural or emotional skills with the help and support of their social network.

A roundup of Mad in America's most read blogs and personal stories of 2022 as chosen by our readers.

You are trained to trust a system, to trust a professional… But I was always following my intuitive self telling me that there was a way out of the madness and the labels.

We are living in challenging times. Every day we hear or read or hear stories...

We want to share conversation we had coming out of these events in the hopes it might help others explore how to keep growing emotionally in an uncertain and sometimes violent world.

In times of crisis, we are required to adapt to conditions of suffering to safeguard capitalist production. We are asked to adapt our flexible brains to a hostile environment, and the possibility of transforming that environment is suppressed.

I chair the Consumer Advisory Board for the NYC Department of Mental Hygiene (DOMH). And I can tell you firsthand: We were not consulted before this plan came to fruition.

Removing assumptions evoked by my family member’s diagnoses has transformed my understanding of their experience and increased my ability to arrive at solutions applicable to their expressed needs.

Studies with long-term follow-up show that psychotherapy has an enduring effect that outperforms pharmacotherapy. Psychiatry does not deliver what the customers want.

When popular websites, such as Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic, downplay the possible risks of antidepressant use in pregnancy, they are ignoring the evidence.

The ethics of data harvesting are murky and echo global concerns around the ways in which profiling technologies can be used to perpetuate discrimination.

Celia Brown, a psychiatric survivor and activist who was revered — even beloved — for her foundational and ongoing efforts in mental health advocacy and the peer movement, has died after a battle with cancer.

The Bartonella bacteria, which is almost always associated with chronic Lyme disease, can cause dyskinesia too and it looks and is experienced the same as “tardive” dyskinesia.

The number needed to treat with a psychiatric drug to benefit one patient is largely an illusion, because more patients are harmed than receive a benefit.

This is the schizophrenia game. It has been played for over a century, and it’s time to stop.

The stigma and discrimination I have had to endure due to my ‘diagnosis’ crushed my spirit and the dreams I had for my life. But the most devastating part of all is how it altered my relationship with my two sons.

Most available narratives are sad stories centred around the aspect of a disease, or terrifying tales about psychiatric treatment. But what if there is also something in between?