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It’s hard not to be enraged when your life is in shambles, you want nothing more than to get it back (and it’s happening barely, slowly, if at all), and you feel betrayed by the very people who you thought, at least at one point, meant to help you.

I ask you to vote against HB1386. I write with a moral obligation to inform you of research findings which were recently defended through the PhD Program in Environmental Psychology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Throughout this research process, I repeatedly gave examples of people who participated who were silenced and retaliated against for expressing their expert perspectives about the public psychiatric service delivery system. Of grave concern is that this silencing extended to people who were reporting abuse of people who were involved with the public psychiatric service delivery system.

The Hearing Voices Network is spreading in the United States… but not fast enough for my tastes. (The inactivity demanded by patience takes a ridiculous amount of energy to sustain.) In spite of being one of the more groundbreaking efforts to take hold in our country in the last several years, it’s still most often relegated to ‘balcony seating’ at public events and referenced only as an afterthought or honorable mention. (Never mind all the people in the mental health system who are left without options in the interim.)

When I was born, everyone was expecting me to have arms. The doctor's mind raced; how am I going to tell this mother and the father that their son has hands but not arms? If he's missing so much in his extremities, mustn’t he also be missing a mind? My mom looked into my eyes and knew - in a way that only mothers know - that I had a mind, and spirit.

So many people are feeling so hopeless these days. Sometimes I think twice before I turn on the radio. I don’t want to be reminded of all those being abandoned to their fate, in Aleppo and Mosul as well as other places ravaged by drought, famine and war. But the darkest stories are bearable if there is some ray of light at the end.

A psych hospital is like any other institution of total control. You have locked doors around you, there are guard-like mental health workers, and you only have so many ways to get by. Some people choose to sleep all the time. Some people choose to pace. And some people choose, given the right time and the right opportunity, to learn to steal or to get by in other ways.

It’s with great sadness that I am writing of the sudden and unexpected passing of my former husband and best friend Jane.

The new NICE depression guideline is a reflection of the field: you don’t really know what you’re doing, and you lack confidence that it’s doing any good.

Hey I did an interview this morning on WNYC about my new book, Maps to the Other Side, and told the thousands of listeners to check out the Mad in America website if they want strong and articulate views on what's happening in the world of mental health. I have this exciting feeling that the Icarus Project underground culture is breaking up out of the pavement and crossing paths with the mainstream. Check out the interview here and tell me what you think!

On 25 October 2013, the World Health Organization issued a press release promoting guidelines produced by the Patient-Reported Outcomes Safety Event Reporting (PROSPER) Consortium. The consortium aimed to “to improve [drug] safety reporting by better incorporating the perspective of the patient” with the aim of the guidance produced “to ensure that the patient ‘voice’ and perspective feed appropriately into collection of safety data.” Rather than 'quietly protecting the health of every person on this planet, every day' it seems clear that WHO is quietly protecting the interests of pharmaceutical companies and their advisors on planet 'profit from patients', every day.

When I became a case manager at a community mental health agency in Cincinnati, Ohio, I had a bachelor’s degree in journalism, 11 months of experience working in the advertising world, and 10 months of serving with AmeriCorps under my belt. I was not the most qualified person for the position, but I was hungry for experience in the mental health field, and I was determined to be good at the job. My supervisor said he hired me because he knew I had the interpersonal skills to do the work, and that he could teach me the rest. Two of the main axioms I learned as a case manager were that mental illnesses are due to chemical imbalances, and psychotropic medications are the solution. As a result, I spent an abundance of energy negotiating with my clients to take their meds or try new ones that the pharma reps encouraged us to promote.

You may watch a little eight-minute video message, below, that I sent this past Sunday, October 12, 2014, especially created to be shown during the gala dinner for the Mad In America International Film Festival. The festival brought together many movies that challenge the mental health industry. I wish I could have been there physically because this certainly was one of the main Mad Culture events of the season and many activists, film makers, and other creative folks were in attendance.

The Low Histamine Chef published a post yesterday: The vagus nerve inflammation connection. I was tickled to get a list of various self-hacks on how to stimulate the vagus nerve. Once the vagus nerve is stimulated we calm down! It’s like magic. The vagus nerve is implicated in all sorts of stress.

In the late 1990’s, the NIMH set out to provide the most extensive review ever conducted of the effectiveness of ADHD medications in children. It was known as the Multisite Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA study). In 1999, NIMH announced that after 14 months, well-constructed medication management programs provided better results than other treatments, including behavioral therapy. But the study was not over, and the tables started to turn. By the end of three years, medication not only provided no more benefits over other options, it actually predicted greater deterioration of symptoms.

As co-chair of the Diagnostic Summit Committee of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, I am pleased to announce that today we officially launch the Global Summit on Diagnostic Alternatives (DxSummit.org), an online platform for rethinking mental health. Our goal is to provide a place for a collegial and rigorous discussion of alternative ways to conceptualize and practice diagnosis. Today's launch is marked by the appearance of our first eight posts. These posts come from a variety of prominent people in the field, each offering a unique perspective on the current state of diagnosis and where we might take things as we move forward.

On Monday night, Irish television screened a documentary covering the events leading to the self inflicted death of Shane Clancy & the other young man he killed. In the documentary, psychiatrist Professor Patricia Casey is quoted as saying that she does not believe the SSRI Shane was taking played any role in the killings and that in her opinion they were caused by an undiagnosed psychiatric illness. Professor Casey did not meet Shane when he was alive. She has never spoken to his family, does not have access to his medical records or family history and has not spoken to his doctor.

When we are emotionally dysregulated or in an otherwise emotionally reactive state we act impulsively and without consciousness or interest about consequences because we want relief from that momentarily intolerable emotional state. We cannot imagine an alternative in that moment. Until consciousness comes to such behavior we effectively have no choice.

This week, MIA featured a news item regarding a recent “proof of concept” study conducted at Washington University of St. Louis to investigate whether nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, was effective in reducing symptoms of depression. Why is this a problem?

Let’s face it, as our kids slowly developing brains wrestle with behavioral and maturity issues while also trying to juggle expectations related to academic and social challenges, some of the behaviors they display can be quite concerning. Understandably, after trying what seems like everything in the books plus the kitchen, bathroom and laundry room sinks, caring and often exhausted parents are actively looking for help, resources and answers. But guess what? Without any need for pharmaceutical intervention or “drug therapy,” for centuries parents have been quite capable of helping challenged children overcome semi-annoying and concerning behaviors that some “experts” want to label today as symptoms of a mental disorder. Behaviors that a billion kids worldwide display every day.

Large numbers of studies are being conducted with many claiming internet use causes structural changes in the brain similar to those found in the brains of drug addicts. No snorting, smoking or injecting required. You just have to look at this drug for long enough and your brain is damaged. Is it possible your laptop and mobile phone are the crack cocaine of gadgets?

Hello and welcome to my inaugural blog! It's an honor to join the insightful and talented team of writers at Mad in America. This exciting opportunity is the perfect complement to my efforts to help kids worldwide live childhood drug-free.

Coercive situations like the one depicted in this blog subtly replicate older times when colonizers dominated Indian people using guns and ammo. In the contemporary times, oppressive mental health systems of colonizers use pills and labels to force-feed ‘civilizing’ principles. This intergenerational comparison might seem more intriguing if you consider that the psychiatric nurse in question was a Commissioned Corps officer in full uniform blues while meeting with this girl in the bunker-like Indian Health Service (IHS) clinic located along “Fort Road.” If you drive straight out along that road for 23 miles, you’ll end up on the park grounds of the actual historic fort where this girl’s ancestors were once bull-whipped for non-compliance.

This is a study of psychiatry. It is a study of an area officially a branch of medicine and overwhelmingly seen as legitimate, benign, progressive, and effective. But what if society had it wrong? What if this were not legitimate medicine? Dare we imagine a world where helping is not professionalized, where caring is not commodified. Where, in the spirit of community, we go about the business of life together?

He could have asked me if there was a specific event that had precipitated my suicide attempt. He could have asked if I had a history of trauma. He could have simply asked, “What happened?” “What are you feeling?” or “So what’s going on?” Nope. He chose to open our meeting with an accusatory remark about a make-believe eating disorder.

Parents encounter many obstacles when trying to secure adequate educational, medical, psychological, and social supports for their children. These “dense bureaucracies” hurt not just families, but everyone.