Blogs

Essays by a diverse group of writers, in the United States and abroad, engaged in rethinking psychiatry. (The directory of personal stories can be found here, and initiatives here).

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Beyond the Pill Paradigm: Reclaiming Humanity in Mental Health Care

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By tackling social causes of distress along with personal support, we prevent suffering rather than just reacting to emergencies.
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Power, Privilege & Controlling the Narrative: Vested Interests in ‘Mental Health’

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Alienating someone from their own meaning-making is a violent action, but that's what happens when professionals use unscientific, decontextualised diagnoses.
Empathy concept with nurturing hands reaching down to sustain a sad young woman in deep depression sitting under a thunder cloud with crying emoticons, vector illustration

The Roots of Emotional Illness: Emotional Conditioning

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Psychodynamic psychotherapy gets at the root cause of the emotional distress—a person’s emotional conditioning in childhood.
A male doctor appears to scream in frustration. His glasses catch the light

Are Psychiatrists More Mad Than Their Patients?

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Misconceptions among psychiatric leaders are at variance with the scientific evidence. They suffer from a serious, collective delusion.

And You Thought They Were Side Effects: How Psychiatry Turned Chemical Disruption Into Medical...

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There’s no cure beneath the disruption, just a chemical hit that alters perception or behavior.
Photo of young woman in a therapy group

The Quiet Crisis in Mental Health: The Medicalization and Deskilling of Psychotherapy

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The focus on the "worried well" and the exclusion of the "mad" serves to legitimize psychiatric control and surveillance.

Jo Watson Interviews Cathy Wield, Author of “Unshackled Mind”

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It’s never too late to seek another explanation for the problems you’re facing, to change your mind and get your life back.
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America’s Unhealthy Relationship with Antidepressants

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Exhaustive research topples the conceptual house of cards in which the antidepressant hegemony resides.
Professional psychotherapist and patient in office, focus on hands with clipboard

The Moral World of Personality Disorder Assessment

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Professionals in the field must recognize psychiatry's connection to social norms rather than portraying it as a neutral branch of medicine.

Dreaming with Purpose: How the Mind’s Hidden GPS Can Guide Us Toward Personal and...

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By honouring dreams, we honour our innate creativity, our shared humanity, our capacity to reimagine reality.
Close-up of pill with smiley face on it. Woman's hand holding it toward the viewer

Behind the Smiles: Mental Health in South Korea’s High-Pressure Society

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South Korea ranks among the highest in the world for suicide, and its people are turning to psychiatric drugs in record numbers.
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The Mental Health System in the UK Failed Us

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The whole system is broken and I pray for my friends in Great Britain. They need a reform, not cuts or euthanasia.
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Lost in Psychobabble? Cut Through the Jargon for Real Mental Clarity

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The key to healing is to recognize that you are not dealing with a broken brain, but unlearning survival habits that no longer serve you.
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A Reflection on “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance”

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The act of diagnosis is so influential on a person’s sense of self that its limitations need to be repeated again and again and again.

The Curious Case of Empty Asylums and the Birth of Psychiatry

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Psychiatry has cut, burned, shocked, drugged, and subdued its way through history—leaving behind compliance, not cures.
Man on a white background reads the instructions for medicines. Male looks at the list and composition of the drug. The concept of home self-medication and the study of the properties of drugs

False Information in UK Package Inserts for Antidepressants About a Chemical Imbalance

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To state something that is blatantly false is not a “paradigm,” it is a lie, plain and simple.
Closeup of a researcher's blue-gloved hands counting money

Confessions of an Advertising Writer: How I Helped Pharma Sell Antidepressants

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As a former pharmaceutical ad writer, I not only witnessed the explosive growth in antidepressant drugs, I contributed to it.
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De-Meaning Psychotherapy: The New Psychiatric Critic

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I reject psychiatry. But I also reject the critic. In the final analysis psychiatric abolition must be a deeply personal act.
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Symptoms and Surface Psychology

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Given the lack of objective signs, surface psychology can only ever be the treatment of subjectively distressing symptoms.

Rethinking Mental Health in Ireland: Why Not a Trieste-Style Approach?

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Those with mental health difficulties continue to face systemic barriers to holistic, person-centred care.

When Narratives Clash: Unshrunk and The Cognitive Dissonance of the NY Times

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For the mainstream media, reviewing Laura Delano's memoir "Unshrunk" is an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
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Psychiatry: Medical Science of Mind or Moral Ideology?

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Psychiatry is a moral ideology, making and enforcing judgments about the appropriateness of people's experiences.
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What I Have Learned in Working With 300+ People in Their Journey of Tapering

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Tapering is stepping into each individual’s complex world of biology, history, psyche, circumstance, and tolerance for discomfort.
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Mad Camp Europe: My Journey from Ward Violence to Healing and Community

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If we want to advocate for a better mental health system, we have to integrate our own shame. And that is what happened to me at Mad Camp.
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From Public Service to Private Practice: The Collapse of the Social Work Profession

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Can we resist turning to private practices masked in social justice rhetoric as a substitute for genuine movement building and advocacy?