Blogs

As MIA readers may have noted, we recently opened a store on this site. You’ll find videos for sale there, as well as MIA merchandise. In the near future, we intend to begin selling ebooks as well.

This weekend I am celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Let us get a little bit crazy now! I am introducing a new segment where I boycott so-called normality. Our choice, our only choice, and we always have a choice, is what kind of madness we want.

When searching for answers related to mental health, at times it can feel as if one is looking for a door in a brick wall. The task can become even more difficult when a family or individual embraces a diagnosis that seems to define one’s identity permanently.

The Hope Concept Wellness Center + HOPE Project just held our first national conference in the City of Freedom (Philadelphia) much to everybody’s and to our amazement. Here is some of what I learned from producing Wellness Solutions 1.0 Uncensored Innovation.

My work in peer service stems from the giving back to my community, yes, but it’s more than that. I do it because I can’t do anything else. I love this work. I love consumer 1:1 contact and prefer to be in the background otherwise because I don’t like attention.

Upon arriving home at the end of sophomore year in college, which had been devoted to hyper-control and a carefully maintained, entirely black-and-white existence,...

From Mad in Sweden. One of the most important contributions made by research on recovery, is understanding people diagnosed with “severe mental health problems”, as not merely victims of an illness, but as agents in their own lives.

My path to becoming an activist began at a young age. My parents were both visionaries in their own ways. They both saw the possibility of creating a world in which all people would be able to live satisfying lives. They both were strong supporters of the Civil Rights Movement.

While my fellow ‘Class of 2006’ graduates celebrated with embraces and high-fives on Commencement Day, jumping excitedly into group photos with caps and gowns,...

In the wake of transitioning from relationship to true friendship with my Beloved, I am continually struggling with what to do with myself in light of heartbreak, hardship on socially moving forward — alone, as it were — and ways to keep Hope alive. Were I to ably move forward in silence and in privately held pain and suffering, weeping in heartache, hoping for relief and release, wouldn’t falling apart be easier without as much aforethought? Placing blame on my mental diversity, my moods, as it were…

I’m concerned about the medicalisation of life; over-prescribing and how sometimes normal difficult emotions are (mis)diagnosed as an illness requiring medication. I expressed this view on twitter and said how I think Dr Joanna Moncrieff does make some valid points. Immediately I was accused of pill shaming, lack of empathy and insulting people who suffer from real deep depression.

In my last post here I gave a detailed analysis of the Human Rights Committee's recommendation to the United States to "generally" prohibit nonconsensual psychiatric interventions. I might not have been sufficiently clear about how I see the international human rights standards and the value of standards that we don't agree with but that are higher than existing U.S. law and practice.

At no moment in my childhood-- whether in those weekday hours after school spent exploring the woods with my dog, or on the early...

Being a woman of a certain age, I dutifully went in for a “routine” colonoscopy a few weeks ago. My doctor came to see me before the procedure. She spent about 5 minutes reviewing the procedure and asked me to sign the consent form. I was in the procedure room for about 10 minutes and then we were done. A few days ago, I got the bill. It got me to wondering about the reimbursement for the work I do.

What does the new DSM-5 have in common with an Alfred Hitchcock mystery?  They both use a plot device, a “MacGuffin,” to drive the story. Hitchcock explained a MacGuffin as on the one hand “ridiculous”, “non-existent”, “empty” and inherently without meaning, and at the same time the central point around which the entire story turns.  Which narratives, and whose, are served by the "diagnosis MacGuffin”? Are there more socially desirable alternatives to replace this particular plot vehicle? 

Shane Neimeyer had just tried to hang himself. It, too, had failed. Like much of his life to that point, which had been spent in and out of state custody since his adolescent years, his road had hit a dead end. But in the depths of his despair, thoughts of a different kind surfaced, with one idea in mind: Ironman. Sitting in his straight jacket, awaiting sentencing as a homeless heroin addict, he had turned the pages of an endurance magazine to pass the time. As he began to read more about triathlons, there was something about the discipline, the drive, the pursuit of a difficult goal, which began to consume him. The thought entered his mind. Maybe he could be one of them. Maybe his life could change forever.

A little over a year ago, there was consternation in psychiatric circles as a French psychiatrist, Daniele Canarelli was found guilty after her patient hacked a man to death. She had not recogized the hazard he posed. Doctors didn’t like the implications they saw. In a series of lectures I have raised the question as to how long it might be before doctors would be found guilty for a suicide or homicide linked to an antidepressant, given that we have known that these drugs can cause suicide or homicide for over 50 years.

This short blog is inspired by the always entertaining and witty Thank You Notes ritual Jimmy Fallon does on the Tonight Show every week. It’s intended to be funny, but of course not as funny as Jimmy Fallon; he’s the best. People say I am funny, and have a great face for radio, but come on… how funny can you be when you talk about mental health and drugging kids?

In 2008, Philip Cowen published an essay in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. His essay leads off with the provocative question, “Serotonin and Depression: Pathological...

Yesterday December 4, 2012, the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities by a 2/3 vote.  Right...

I had a soul-redemptive heart-to-heart reunion with a woman I had known from a distance but whom now (after our hours long coeur-a-coeur/heart-to-heart) I consider a close friend. I shared with her some very exciting and some challenging circumstances I have been experiencing of late. After I shared and shed a few tears she told me a story from her life that also poses, like my story, an invitation for profound change in our lives.

So, at this national conference, Partnership with Patients, I met a bunch of "e-patient advocates," which are civil rights fighters in all the other "medical" areas. One thing I learned at that conference was that there are many "patient" advocacy opportunities. One of them is PCORI, the "Patient" Centered Outcomes Research Institute. This is theoretically an organization that funds research that people with lived experience ask for. However, the problem is that they aren't really talking to our community and we aren't talking to them. So they did this big splashy launch about "mental health as a major focus," and they said what they had figured out that mental health needed was.

At the University of Minnesota, the answer is apparently $1,446. If harmless clerical errors were to blame for oddities like this, that fact should be easy to clarify simply by looking at the relevant documents.  But if there are systematic issues with the administration of clinical trials that makes it possible to bill for a visit with a dead subject, those issues would be important for other universities and private trial sites as well. 

A complex set of cultural forces that have come together in a way that amounts to prejudice against children. A range of professionals who care for children, including psychiatrists, pediatricians, occupational therapists, educators, and many others, must join together with parents to overcome this prejudice. We must recognize the value and necessity of protecting time and space to listen to these youngest voices.

Frantic, fearful, and desperate to get my life together, I returned to Cambridge in the middle of August to move into my off-campus apartment....