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Dear Bob-- Here's a story of stark contrasts. I saw a man for a physical recently, mid-50's.  He was the picture of health, on no medications...

This post is a bit different from my typical system sausage making pieces in that I would like to reflect on the Mad in...

Bob-- This is the twentieth letter that I'll be posting on your website. I thought I'd use the occasion to reflect on what I've observed...

The marketing departments of pharmaceutical companies focus in on the ring-bearers just as the Eye of Sauron focused in on Gollum and later Frodo. Once the Eye fixes on a ring-bearer, it hypnotizes him into submission. If any demur, it directs its Black Riders (Medical Academics) to enforce compliance with its Will.

Dear Bob-- As I share with patients my new perspectives on the ineffectiveness and potential harm of psychotropic drugs, I have found that many, even...

About a year ago I participated on a television panel which discussed the antipsychotic drugs and the massive settlements pharmaceutical companies paid out. A...

In June this year the BMJ published an article supposedly about how the Black Box Warning that antidepressants cause suicide had led to a drop in the use of the same antidepressants and an increase in suicides. The message was widely trumpeted in daily newspapers and other news outlets as well as the press office of Harvard University and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. In fact there had been no drop in the use of antidepressants and no increase in suicide rates or suicide act rates. The letters sent to the BMJ in response to the article wondering how such a shoddy piece of work could possibly have been published are worth reading – rarely is academic contempt so scathing.

Is the Food and Drug Administration violating its own mandate to approve safe drugs? That was the question that Donald Light, co-author of The...

Bob-- Today, I saw a very friendly, highly intelligent (she has a PhD in economics) and overweight 34 year old woman for a refill of...

Robert Whitaker’s book, Anatomy of an Epidemic, has provoked all manner of responses.  Some outraged, dismissive, but many supportive and relieved to hear the...

Senator Charles Grassley is upping the ante on the controversy surrounding the Vertex pharmaceutical executives who cashed in on overstated clinical trial data --...

Dear Bob-- I saw a very nurturing woman a few months ago, quite obese, for the symptoms of chest pain and fatigue. She had been admitted...

Bob- I saw a sixteen-year old girl for a sports physical today. She plays softball for the local high school and also is on the...

While some will frame Eleanor Longden’s story, told in her awesome TED video (which has now been viewed about 1/2 million times!), as the triumph of an individual struggling against “mental illness,” I believe the story might better be seen as a refutation of the whole “illness of the mind” metaphor, and as an indication of a desperate need for a new paradigm.

I was invited to give a Keynote Address at the 2012 Alternatives Conference in Portland Oregon, and I'm collecting your input on what I should...

I envision a world where there is no need for a mental health field/system because communities are strong and we have a holistic understanding...

Bob-- A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from the mother of one of my teenage patients, a 14 year old Chinese-american boy...

Bob-- Today, I saw a bright, athletic lacrosse player who is a high school sophomore. She was seeing me to follow up on a mild...

I’ve kept a deep, dark secret for almost 25 years. No one, other than a few therapists, has any clue that I attempted suicide when I was 26. Not one friend. Not one family member. Now, by “owning” what I did, I’m exposing more of my soft, vulnerable side, which is scary, but at the same time, it’s my most beloved side of myself.

Three weeks have passed since Mad in America’s International Film Festival took place at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, Massachusetts, USA. I’ve been spending a lot of time in solitude, reflecting and processing the whole thing, for in the Festival’s wake, I was taken over by a powerful, albeit interesting mix of great physical and mental fatigue and even greater emotional energy. Most importantly, what the Festival has set off in me is a resurgence of hope—hope for Mad in America’s future as an organization and an ever-growing space for people to come together in community, hope for this mission we’re on to transform the way the world makes sense of the experiences that get called “mental illness”, and hope in our collective human capacity for personal and collective transformation.

By 2002 GlaxoSmithKline had done 3 studies in children who were depressed and described all three to FDA as negative.  As an old post on Bob Fiddaman’s blog reproduced here outlines, several years later they undertook another study in children in Japan. (Editor's note: This is a re-print, by David Healy, of a post by Bob Fiddaman)