Blogs

I've just returned from a meeting of 17 activists self-identified as users or survivors of psychiatry, or people with psychosocial disabilities, from all over the world. Literally all over the world. An international gathering of human rights defenders that makes me proud to be among them. It was a meeting where I felt heard and acknowledged and able to fully give what I had to give - to offer it up along with everyone else's contributions for the common deliberation. I gave all and received all in return.

I am sitting at the annual meeting for the Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco in Houston, Texas because I am presenting some...

The human condition is both incredibly unique and yet so much the same. Our experiences are as vast as the oceans and as similar as the atoms that comprise them. Our calls range from the most secluded of hermits to the most exposed of world leaders. But we are all faced with betrayal and disappointment. We are all faced with each other.

Human beings can be helped in all sorts of ways: with better schools, cleaner water, less tyranny, more peace, and fairer institutions. Movements of the last hundred years have given names to these different aspirations for betterment: the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the gay rights movement, clean air and clean water initiatives, and so on. Now another sort of “helping” is desperately needed.

The IT GETS BETTER collection (on Beyond Meds) is intended to help those who are currently dealing with the iatrogenic (medically caused) injury from psych meds. The intention is folks who are still suffering really badly might know that we can heal. The series will continue weekly for some time.

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.

I am proud and happy to announce that our webpage DrivingUsCrazy was launched today. It will help us to get the word out about the international film festival taking place in Gothenburg, 16-18 October, 2015, and also to highlight the issue of madness every day until then — and hopefully for many days afterwards.

Two months ago, I wrote a post about a New Yorker article that reported that 67% of the depressed patients in the STAR*D trial...

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.

In his Daily Show, political satirist Jon Stewart spoke recently about various LGBT issues, including current efforts of Texas Republicans to endorse the practice of reparative therapy − or, as it's also sometimes called, "pray away the gay" therapy. In an effort to qualify some of the techniques used by reparative therapists, Stewart quoted an Op-Ed that I wrote in 2012 for the magazine The Advocate about my own experiences undergoing a form of reparative therapy with a psychiatrist in Canada.

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,...

As I wrote in Let’s All Support Stephen Sheller’s FDA Petition to Revoke the Pediatric Approval of Risperdal, Stephen Sheller's law firm, which represents hundreds of boys who were prescribed Risperdal and then grew breasts (gynecomastia) as a result, filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to change the label and revoke its approval for use on children. During the course of discovery for litigation in its Risperdal cases, Sheller became privy to documents not provided to the FDA that showed Johnson & Johnson hid the problem. This is a very important case. If it is successful, it will give hope of forcing the FDA to follow its mandate to protect the public from harmful drugs.

What does screening mean, in the ever more prevalent field of Psychiatry? Psychiatric screening is not a biological metric that can be assumed to predict the future in a linear manner. It’s a series of subjective questions. It is, in short, a survey.

Now that biological psychiatry has been discredited, I am championing a pro-suffering cultural shift. It is time to stop pretending that, with the assistance of hoped-for medical "miracles," we can eliminate everything we are afraid of. It is time that we get over ourselves and appreciate that a full existence as humans is fleeting and full of pain, suffering . . . and beauty.

A major research group mentions in a paper published in an academically rigorous psychiatric journal (and I get it that some readers consider that an oxymoron) the possible influence of super-sensitivity on increasing the risk of relapse when neuroleptic drugs are stopped. Yet those of us who raise this as a reason to moderate our use of these drugs are considered biased or scientifically naive.

I've been working on starting a business that can use market forces to create benefit for our communities. This is called social entrepreneurship. Different models...

Your mental wellness requires a global revolution. In fact, your physical wellness requires one, too. For many years, I have noticed that there are people doing good social change work for mild reform. That is nice, but during my work in what we affectionately call the “mad movement,” I have often called for revolution, because the change we need is so big! We have the technology, a solution is affordable, but we need to act urgently and the main question is, “Do we have the collective will?”

The problems that we face in America today are many and they are grave. Mass gun violence grips our communities on a regular basis. A wave of protest against unfair policing policies and police violence directed against people of color and people with mental health and other disabilities. “Zero tolerance” policies in schools that lead to the school-to-prison pipeline. We incarcerate more people than any country in the world, generally for nonviolent offenses. Suicide rates are on the rise in America for the 10th year in a row. These pressing social issues are deeply interconnected and are rooted in trauma, the breakdown of community support, and socioeconomic inequality. We need reform that sees the intersections and addresses the public’s health and well-being across the lifespan.

My friend David Oaks, director of MindFreedom , likes to say that what is currently needed is a non-violent revolution in mental health care.  Mental...

Everyone knows how muckraking is supposed to work.  An investigative reporter uncovers hidden wrongdoing; the public is outraged; and the authorities move quickly on...

How and why the right to fresh air is continuously blocked by money, politics and ignorance. Plus, personal reflections on how nature heals.

There I was on my first night of Outward Bound, lying under the big Texas sky in a little town called Redford, amidst waxy...

My goal now is to focus on solutions for emotional distress, not talking about medical harm. We all know about the problems with medical harm, but not all people are clear about solutions. I'm not that clear, either, but I'm working on it. I'm not talking about revolution any longer, just trying to make my piece of the pie work.

For decades, one of the most prominent voices for radical change, or “non-violent revolution” in mental health care has been David Oaks, former director of MindFreedom International. Many activists today were drawn into their work due to David’s influence. Robert Whitaker, for example has credited an interview he did with David in 1998 for propelling him into noticing and writing about the way psychiatric drugs were harming more than helping. My own journey in becoming outspoken on these issues has also been massively influenced by David’s activism and ideas, which is one reason I care strongly about the issue I am bringing up here. While David has been helpful, directly or indirectly, to so many of us, he now needs our help.

I live a slow paced life. I meditate every morning, refuse to get a smart phone (yet), and it takes me generous amounts of time to do things. This isn't because I am “stupid” or slow to get things. Sometimes I wonder how others get so much done each day - yet the quality and vibration of what I do is unique. It needs time. How does this relate with psychiatric drugs? Psych drugs are rooted in impatience, urgency, emergency.