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On May 16, our human rights movement carried out 25 protests against shock treatment in 9 countries. It was very exciting to see both old hands and new leaders pulling together to make this happen. Now we can take advantage of this momentum to organize an ongoing structure that can carry out more actions like this and strengthen our movement. Congratulations to us!

In a recent Ted Talk, “Depression is a Disease of Civilization.” professor Stephen Ilardi advances the thesis that depression is a disease of our modern lifestyle. As an example, Ilardi compares our modern culture to the Kaluli people — an indigenous tribe that lives in the highlands of New Guinea. When an anthopologist interviewed over 2,000 Kaluli, he found that only one person exhibited the symptoms of clinical depression, despite the fact the Kaluli are plagued by high rates of infant mortality, parasitic infection, and violent death. Yet, despite their harsh lives, the Kaluli do not experience depression as we know it.

What's needed at this time are not glib, inane rejoinders, but an honest scrutiny by psychiatrists of their fundamental assumptions and methods.

In the "agreement for corrective action" against CAFE study coordinator Jean Kenney last week, the Board of Social Work cited Kenney's failure to respond to "alarming voicemail messages" from family members of Dan Markingson. Presumably, the Board is referring to a message left by his mother, Mary Weiss, which warned, "Do we have to wait until he kills himself or someone else before anyone else does anything?" The failure of Kenney and Stephen Olson to take the warnings of Mary Weiss seriously has been one of the most disturbing aspects of this case. In a deposition for the lawsuit filed by Weiss, Kenney was questioned about her response. Here is an excerpt. (The initial questions come from Gale Pearson, an attorney for Mary Weiss.)

Ultimately, the FDA Advisory Committee recommended approval of brexanolone by a 17-1 member vote. I was the only NO vote. I voted NO because as the sole Consumer Representative on the committee I didn’t believe the company had demonstrated that the potential benefits outweighed the potential for harm.

This week we launched PeerRespite.net, a website dedicated to information and resources regarding peer respites in the U.S. As part of the initiative, recruitment is open for the 2015 Peer Respites Essential Features Survey.

Many will direct their efforts toward repealing involuntary outpatient commitment statutes in their states—an extremely challenging and uphill battle—or reforming abuses. Their arguments will be strengthened immensely by the findings in MIA's report. What follows are suggestions about what kinds of interventions to consider.

Over 100 million people in the US suffer from chronic pain – defined as pain lasting longer than 12 weeks. Up to 80% of those sufferers are women, many of whom report having been repeatedly brushed off or referred out by medical doctors who could find no discrete medical cause for the symptoms they reported. Some patients report an even harsher finding by their doctors: “To the best of my ability to determine, your pain is not medical in origin. I believe you need to be evaluated by a psychiatrist or psychologist who is qualified in psychosomatic issues.”

Such interventions, the report says, "generally involve highly discriminatory and coercive attempts at controlling or 'correcting' the victim’s personality, behaviour or choices and almost always inflict severe pain or suffering."

There has been an enduring controversy over whether psychiatric medications can trigger violent actions toward others. A review of the FDA's Adverse Event Reporting...

To respond to controversy and resistance developing in response to the recommendation of Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan E. Méndez for an absolute ban on nonconsensual psychiatric interventions, I suggested to use June 26, the International Day in Solidarity with Victims of Torture, to raise awareness and support for the recommendations. What started out way more ambitious became a relatively informal call put out over email lists, Facebook and with the help of the Mad In America website, to MIA bloggers.

If you’ve spent any time in the public mental health system, you know that folks diagnosed or labeled as having serious mental illnesses are...

When I was locked in a psychiatric hospital, I wasn't able to have much of a conversation with my parents about what was going on. Phone calls were tense and filled with silence, and as I stood at the ward payphone I was so confused and frozen in fear that each call just confirmed to them how lost I was. Every day as a patient centered around the various prescriptions I was on, and like so many people suffering in a psychosis, helping me became a wait to "find the right combination of medications."

Mental health resilience is a function of a well-nourished brain. Even in our developed, western society, our brains are only marginally nourished, contributing to the epidemic of mental illness visible even before COVID-19 arrived on the scene.

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Mad in Sweden launches today. The number of people receiving a psychiatric diagnosis in Sweden has increased dramatically in recent years, and the need for alternative perspectives to today’s biomedical and pharmacologically oriented paradigm of mental health has never been greater.

Who were these people whose brains were used in Gandal et al.’s research? How did they live and die? How did the researchers gain permission to open their skulls and extract brain tissue for research purposes? For information on the samples, you have to take a look at every single study. Which is what I did.

Veterans of our mental health system know that seeking voluntary care is dangerous. We will organize and find our voice. People like Ms. Inman need to get out of our way.

By calling Trump 'crazy' for making wildly racist, sexist, and other hateful remarks and out-of-control tweets (among other things), you fail to actually promote an end to such violence and bigotry. Instead, you are simply asking that it be redirected to another group.

During World War II 2.5% of the world’s population died. Imagine a German youth of 18, A Russian youth of 18, a British youth of 18, an American Jewish youth of 18, a French youth of 18, a Japanese youth of 18. Think of the parents of each of these young men. Think of their grandparents. Think of their sisters, their younger brothers — think about everyone affected by that calamity. To say that the “mental health” of all of these people was affected by the fact of a world conflagration is to make a bad joke.

Most Americans would agree that we have problem with mental health in this country, but what many do not know when they consider that people who are in distress are not getting the help they need is that hospitals in this country are not giving people a choice when they are in the most need. This is based on laws that currently exist in 45 US States, which allow individuals to be petitioned into an inpatient psychiatric unit against their will if they are deemed to be a “danger to themselves or others.” I have worked for 3.5 years as a Peer Support Specialist within my local public mental health system, where I see this happen to the individuals I serve, on a regular basis. I myself have been forced.

This essay contributes a biologist’s perspective to identifying humanity’s fundamental needs in our necessary transition to a new world order.

What better way to keep people who have been dehumanized due to repeated traumatic experiences, and marginalized and stigmatized due their emotional distress, quiet and invisible than to do it legally and medically? Is there no better place to hide people who, when visible, are proof of social and psychiatric failure than in locked institutions? I have worked with many such individuals in the LA County Jail, and the locked inpatient wards, and in each case the institution’s process — although in compliance with legal and medical protocols — seemed to conspire to keep the individual powerless, medicated, isolated and confused.

Where Professor Harrington's book seems to differ from books that others might call polemics is that she does not attribute nefarious motives to the psychiatric establishment. I worry that she underplays the ways in which the current model causes harm, but I support her suggestion for a retraction of psychiatry's scope.

Mad in America is proud to introduce a new venture: a web series of virtual “Town Hall” conversations, “Exploring Dialogical Responses in a Time of Crisis,” on Fridays at noon, eastern standard time. The first live town hall will be held on Friday, April 17.

Even though psychiatrists don't use any medical knowledge when making diagnoses, they do have MD degrees, and that's enough.