A Collective Human Potential Movement
A Mental Health Recovery Movement is a good start, but frankly I am more interested in a movement that uses the language of ātransformation," a movement that recognizes the powerful of our collective potential to transform the world, that isnāt willing to compromise our visions of a better world, has the ability to capture many peopleās imaginations, and is capable of building coalitions across many boundaries.
On Being Mad in Public
Even as you are being shown amazing and mystical things and having all sorts of mysteries clarified in your mind, you are also being placed in a position where no one will pay any attention to what you have to say, or if they do, the results of that attention will be negative (such as being locked up). The mysterious and powerful journey you are on is almost invisible to other people.
Madness, Sexuality and Legacies of Strategic Sanism
There has been little engagement between the survivor and LGBT movements despite a shared interest in critiquing and resisting the normalization project of the psy disciplinesĀ ā that is, psychiatry and psychologyās clinical categorization of what is ānormalā and āabnormalā or āhealthyā and āsickā. Why might this be?
Beyond ADHD: Moving Past the DSM Paradigm of Mental Illness
A paradigm is a way of thinking about things. For the past 60 or so years, our thinking about mental health and illness has been dominated by what can be referred to as the "DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) paradigm." What this looks like in everyday practice is that when a child is referred to my behavioral pediatrics practice for anxiety, the questions that parents, referring doctors, and teachers ask is, "Does he have anxiety disorder?" followed by "How to we manage his behavior?" and "Does he need medication?"
Robin Williams or Patch Adams? Watch a Brief Message from David Oaks to the...
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.
Positive Explanations for Psychological Problems
I am a clinical psychologist working in an anxiety and OCD Clinic at the University of Oslo, Norway. In this clinic we do almost all the treatment without starting drugs, and for many patients we help them taper the drugs. One of the reasons for this is that taking drugs for psychological problems often may be seen as avoidance behavior, and this is exactly what maintains the anxiety, or in many cases makes it worse.
Allen Frances: Still Spinning the Story
Allen Frances' latest article: There are problems in the psychiatric field, but none of these problems can be blamed on psychiatry. But the spurious promotion of psychiatric "diagnoses" as real illnesses, and the routine prescribing of chemical and electrical "cures" were and are psychiatric inventions.
Tardive Dyskinesia in the Atypicals Era: Is The Risk Any Less Today Than Before?
A few weeks ago, while I was at a birthday celebration, a friend who works in a mental health setting remarked that she was...
Away From Psychiatrization: Towards Socio-Ecological Wellbeing in the Community
The modern notion of poor mental health and how to respond to it is an escalating series of biomedical interventions that donāt actually solve the underlying problem.
For-Profit Healthcare Is a Predator; Its Main Prey Is Our Young
Labeling kids with ābrain diseasesā sets them up for failure. This explains why the U.S. has so many youth crises.
Uniting Critical Voices: Where can we Collaborate?
If we are to achieve the much-needed paradigm shift in the way we respond to human suffering, it is imperative that we unite. Given the powerful vested interests sustaining the dominant bio-medical model, a fragmented opposition will possess insufficient power to transform the system.
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 8: Depression and Mania (Affective Disorders) (Part Twelve)
Peter GĆøtzsche discusses that depression pills increase mortality, and that psychiatry mistakes withdrawal effects for relapse.
#Diversity? ā What “Solidarity” Really Looks Like
What would it look like if national peer-run mental health organizations and other national leaders came out with statements in support of other movements' struggle for freedom from oppression? What would it look like if we were truly unified in solidarity? We would have community-based centers providing intentional support, open 24 hours a day, instead of crowded jail cells holding people in pain. It wouldn't be easy, but we have to do it.
I Am “Pro-Healing”
Yoga helped me explore and reconnect with the body Iād abandoned and abused for years. My pain and sadness had me living exclusively in my mind, my body nothing more than a battleground for my inner wars. Through yoga and meditation, I slowly began to love myself again, learning to treat myself with care and respect. I felt a greater sense of self-awareness, and a sense of connection to something greater. This was a drastic contrast to the days when I felt as if god had forgotten about me, or like I was a mistake not meant for this world.
Doctor Munchausen, I Presume!
In 2000 when I gave a lecture on "Psychopharmacology and the Government of the Self" at the invitation of the University of Toronto, I ran into a problem. Ā In the public domain our shared difficulties were because of this lecture.Ā In fact, the difficulties stemmed from a member of the Establishment ā Charlie Nemeroff ā who put the frighteners on the U of T about hiring Healy. 'The psychopharmacology establishment in the face of adverse effects from drugs' is the same as 'the medical establishment in the face of treatment-related adverse effects' is the same as 'the British establishment in the face of allegations of paedophilia and child abuse' is the same as 'the Vatican in the face of allegations of abuse.' Itās about power.Ā We have it ā you donāt.Ā Get lost.
The Illegality of Forced Drugging and Electroshock
Court ordered psychiatric drugging and electroshock is illegal when measured against the constitutional requirements for forcing someone to ingest drugs, or be subjected to...
Why Is There An Anti-psychiatry Movement?
On February 18, the eminent psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, former President of the APA, published a video and transcript on Medscape.Ā The article was titled What Does the New York Times Have Against Psychiatry?, and was essentially a fatuous diatribe against Tanya Lurhmann, PhD, a Stanford anthropologist, who had written for the New York Times an op-ed article that was mildly critical of psychiatry.Ā The essence of Dr. Lieberman's rebuttal was that an anthropologist had no business expressing any criticism of psychiatry, and he extended his denunciation to the editors of the NY Times.
In Memory of Julie Greene
With deep regret, Mad in America announces another loss in our contributor community. Julie C. Greene, writer and antipsychiatry advocate, lost her battle with kidney disease on November 29 at her home in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania.Ā Julie had been an MIA blogger since 2014, including several pieces on the dangers of lithium.
An Open Letter to Persons Self-Identifying as Mentally Ill
Like you, I have experienced severe cognitive and emotional distress in my life. This distress was sufficient that I once received a psychiatric diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, though I imagine other diagnosis could have easily been applied as well. I know what panic attacks feel like. I know how it feels to experience a "dissociative episode" from the inside out. I know what it feels like to believe that you are going crazy. I know what it feels like to convulse in sobs so intensely that you tear muscles. I know what it feels like to want to die.
How Effective are Neuroleptic Drugs?
Robert Whitaker has raised questions about the problems with long term exposure to antipsychotic drugs but recent research raises questions about their efficacy in the short run.
Study 329: Big Risk
Study 329 seems to fit the classic picture: It has Big Pharma ghostwriting articles, hiding data, corrupting the scientific process and leaving a trail of death, disability and grieving relatives in its wake. But is it at fault alone? Both Big Pharma and Big Risk (the insurance industry) were once our allies in keeping our hopes alive ā in keeping our children alive and well. They are now a threat. And of the two ā Big Risk is the bigger threat.
Psychiatry Disrupted
On August 15, 2014, McGill-Queens University Press published Psychiatry Disrupted: Theorizing Resistance and Crafting the (R)evolution. The work is a collection of papers by various authors, edited by Bonnie Burstow, Brenda A. LeFrançois, and Shaindl Diamond. There is a Foreword by Paula Caplan, and a Preface by Kate Millett. It is no secret that there is growing opposition to psychiatry. No longer marginalized and ignored, as in former decades, anti-psychiatry writers are proclaiming psychiatry's spurious and destructive nature in a wide range of venues. Even the mainstream media is taking tentative steps in our direction.
Long-Term Antipsychotics: Making Sense of the Evidence in the Light of the Dutch Follow-Up...
In the 1950s, when the drugs we now call āantipsychoticsā first came along, psychiatrists recognised that they were toxic substances that happened to have the ability to suppress thoughts and emotions without simply putting people to sleep in the way the old sedatives did. The mental restriction the drugs produced was noted to be part of a general state of physical and mental inhibition that at extremes resembled Parkinsonās disease. Early psychiatrists didnāt doubt that this state of neurological suppression was potentially damaging to the brain.
Major Depression: The āChemical Imbalanceā Pillar Is CrumblingāIs the Genetics Pillar Next?
A more detailed critical evaluation of molecular genetic studies, which have failed to discover genes shown to cause depression.
Brand Fascism
The norm in science is that there is free access to the data underpinning experiments. If free access is denied; itās not science. In the case of branded pharmaceuticals, we do not even know what trials have been done. What is put in the public domain is not data. The selected highlights of a football game and the comments of the pundits afterwards don't change the score. The selected highlights of pharma studies and the comments of pundits routinely change the score.