Blogs

Essays by a diverse group of writers, in the United States and abroad, engaged in rethinking psychiatry. (The directory of personal stories can be found here, and initiatives here).

Why We Need Mental Health Social Entrepreneurship

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A mental health social entrepreneurship is a business that uses market principles to maximize benefit instead of maximizing profit. For instance, my business, Wellness...

“Social Workers’ Malaise: What’s Our Mission?”

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Just a few final words on this issue. One of the readers of the blog I posted on March 27 on madinamerica.com identified himself as...

Playing Hide-and-Seek with Psychiatric Drug Studies

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If I were in charge of distributing NIH grant money, I’d be sending a lot of it to researchers like Erick Turner, a psychiatrist...

Does It Matter if We Believe in Mental Illness?

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It's clear that different people relate to the idea of "mental illness" and labeling differently. Many people find the experience of being diagnosed with...

Bipolar? When Quitting is the Answer

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Whether it’s the Nurtured Heart Approach, or any other method that’s truly up to the task, we need these effective strategies and ways of thinking to be more widespread so we can lessen the pitfalls of the medical model’s limited prospective which has no idea of how to turn intense into immensely great.

Dialogical Recovery of Life

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During a recent dialogue training, Dr. Peter Rober, from Belgium, said, "listening deeply, going beyond categories, creates dialogical space in which life can come......

1984 & DSM5, Revisited: Where Are the Social Workers?

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Where are the social workers? Where are the NASW and its local and state-wide chapters? For that matter, where are the peer-run and -led...

Dyskinesia, Dissociation, and the Long Term Consequences of “Antipsychotic” Drugs

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I recently receive a tweet from Intervoice, that said “This is a odd research finding in my view, what do you think? http://fb.me/L9cs3NTR” Curious, I...

How Technology Worship Keeps Americans Ignorant about Depression Treatment

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Technology is worshipped in U.S. culture, but when it comes to transforming depression and emotional suffering, is this predilection for technology justified? Technology worship means...

What is in a Name: One Psychiatrist’s View of Psychiatric Diagnosis

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What do I tell my patients about diagnosis? I try to explain what a diagnosis is and is not. It is a label that reflects that the person has reported certain symptoms. It is a label for the symptoms not for the person.

“Come Out for Health Week”: March 26-30, 2012

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My personal + professional advocacy and mission work didn’t start with mental illness. I Chaired the University of Washington’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender student...

Remembering Kate

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I first wrote this story of my mother back in 2000, six years after her death. I share it today as my first entry on this important blog, in the hope that people will see that there is another way. In future entries I want to share with you why I don't believe in mental illness and the use of psychotropic medications, and how I believe people who are experiencing emotional distress can get well, stay well, and live the lives they want to live.

Thinking Holistically – Don’t Forget Tobacco

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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 Illegality of Forced Drugging and Electroshock

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Court ordered psychiatric drugging and electroshock is illegal when measured against the constitutional requirements for forcing someone to ingest drugs, or be subjected to...

Madness Radio: Sharna Olfman on Medicating Children Diagnosed Bipolar

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Professor Sharna Olfman has researched and written extensively about children in society, including education and sexuality, and her perspective on so-called bipolar disorder is...

I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness, Do You?

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In November 2000, I anxiously stood before the gathered four hundred and fifty mental health professionals, administrators, peers and academicians and said, "Hi, I'm Michael Cornwall and I don't believe in mental illness!"

We Need Drugs

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The truth is we live in a horribly miserable time. There is no getting around it. It cannot be candy coated. Self-help books about...

Chapter Twenty-Five: “Paranoid Android”

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It is Christmas Eve of 2008. I am leaning against the kitchen counter of an old friend’s house, arms tucked tightly across my stomach,...

Why Can’t They Hear Our Truth? We Have a Cure.

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There is a guy named David Kennedy who, along with other people, figured out how to cut the murder rate of a city in...

Snake Medicine: Transforming Our Stories

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The stories we tell ourselves and others have the power to heal or to harm. This is a story about how we define mental health, the challenges we face in pursuit of it, and the power of transforming our stories.

In Praise of Families

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This anecdote is offered as a story in praise of families and a recognition of their importance to the process of recovery.

Poverty & Serious Mental illness: Connecting the Dots

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Judging from the responses of several readers, certainly not all, to my previous post of March 7, “Poverty & Mental Illness: You Can't Have...

Empowerment is Vital to Dialogical Recovery

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In my previous blog, I used a new term, Dialogical Recovery to describe the importance of dialogue to recovery. I and others in the...

Poverty & Mental Illness: You Can’t Have One Without the Other

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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...

Generative Narratives and the Counterculture Psychiatrists

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For outsiders like me who are really critical of mainstream psychiatry, the first thing to understand is that "community psychiatry" is a counterculture within the larger culture of biomedical psychiatry. When I say "counterculture" I don't mean these people had flowers in their hair or face piercings.