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"To optimize the function of the healing system, you must do everything in your power to improve physical health, mental/emotional health, and spiritual health... One must see the whole picture of health, and understand the importance of working on all fronts." Andrew Weil, Eight Weeks to Optimal Health

On August 16, 2003, six individuals who had travelled from all over the country – Brooklyn; Wilmington, Delaware; Chicago; Portland – to Pasadena, California,...

I am committed. Fully committed to creating a solution. Are you with me? I think medications and labels for people experiencing emotional distress should be almost entirely eliminated, and should not be applied first, for everyone and forever, to people experiencing extreme states. Our current mental health system is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. We need mental health exit ramps, we need human ways to help each other in crisis and through adversity, we need compassion and love and friendship in times of struggle. We need each other.

How does a straightforward, common-sense idea - guaranteeing the elemental pleasures of fresh air and access to nature to those in inpatient and residential psychiatric/mental health facilities – repeatedly fail on a policy level?

In January 2012, The Journal of Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology published a study which suggests that providers who prescribe neuroleptics are unaware of how impacted their patients are by the adverse effects of these drugs. Now more than ever we need to reevaluate the benefits and harms that can come with psychiatric drugs. The power inherent in this kind of practice -- exercising a marginalized voice or tending to our mistakes -- is the very essence of healing.

What follows is my attempt to report on the Pre-Seminar program from the 17th International Conference on the Treatment of Psychosis.

Both addiction and “mental illness” are far more prevalent where there is poverty, patriarchy, and other forms of mental and physical violence; all this creates fertile ground for various forms of trauma experiences on a daily basis. Addiction and extreme states of psychological distress will never be fully eradicated, or even humanely treated on a broad scale, until the material conditions from which they have emerged are transformed in a truly revolutionary way.

Prozac Nation stands as a reminder of the failed promise and language of bio-psychiatry. It also highlights what the first and real problem was for me at age 16. Still underlined are the words that drew me in, made her an ally, and which could have inspired great dialogue had they not been sidelined by psychiatric drugs. She writes, “I feel like a defective model, like ... my parents should have taken me back for repairs before the warranty ran out.”

The conventional wisdom is that antidepressant medications are effective and safe. However, the scientific literature shows that the conventional wisdom is flawed. While all prescription medications have side effects, antidepressant medications appear to do more harm than good as treatments for depression.

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.

Did you know that West Virginia has the second highest rate of deaths from prescription drug overdoses in the country? I didn't, until I...

I get a lot of ideas from other advocates from online forums like the Alternatives Facebook discussion group,  where we have a gathering of about...

We’ve managed not only to survive with our scar songs, mad wisdom, and crooked beauty, but by 2012 to grow into an international community of activists, artists, healers, scholars, lovers, fighters, and dreamers!

I just learned that Dr. Martin Keller, principal investigator of the controversial Paxil study 329, has retired from his position as a professor of...

I've been working for 2 1/2 years on a system to provide non-medical care for people with emotional distress. I want it to be...

I have just attended the 17th International Conference on the Treatment of Psychosis in Tornio, Finland. I am full of thoughts and I keep trying to figure out how I will explain this meeting to others.

Millions of people believe that psychiatric medications have saved their lives, while millions of others report that their psychiatric medications were unhelpful or made...

When I first read Anatomy of an Epidemic in 2010, something inside of me ignited.  I had no idea that such a sensation was...

Today we are launching discussion forums on Mad in America. We intend for these forums to serve three broad purposes. 1) Furthering discussion of the issues raised here. 2) Sharing personal experiences with psychiatric drugs, and 3) Providing a platform for personal networking and activism.

In the late 70’s, before the invention of CT scanners or MRI scanners, I practiced emergency medicine. Without these sophisticated tools, I had to look at a patient and make a decision about whether or not they appeared ill or in distress. A doctor had to examine the patient; smell the patient, touch the patient, talk to the patient; this was crucial to the decision making process of diagnosis and treatment. With that sort of background, why do my observations and opinions as a psychiatrist somehow no longer matter?

Readers on this site have wondered how the notion of a "chemical imbalance" could have been accepted by so many when the research did not actually support the concept. A recent paper from the Treatment Advocacy Center that summarizes studies of anosognosia in psychosis gives some clue as to how this type of thinking becomes entrenched and accepted.

I've been hearing about translational medicine for a long time and wondering what it was. For the most part, it's a huge subsidy to...

Brothers and sisters, I want to tell you a little movement history which I am sure many of you don't know.

There are two main problems with the term "medical model." First, it automatically frames the debate in the terms of the oppressor, and secondly, it's confusing. Many people in our community say "medical model" when we mean, "The idea that something wrong in my brain caused my emotional suffering." So why not just use a term that says this? When we say "Disease Model" we can clarify exactly what we are against. With just one word changed we can say we do not believe that a mental "disease" came from nowhere to put us out of action.

Psychiatric survivors know that U.S. law does not protect our rights under the CRPD and needs to be changed; it is also contrary to human rights principles for any country to assert that its own law represents the limit of its treaty obligations.