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).

Mad in America’s 10 Most Popular Articles in 2024

3
A roundup of Mad in America's most read blogs and personal stories of 2024 as chosen by our readers.
Medical Students In Lecture Hall 6th March 2022 Hyderabad India — Photo by rajastills

Modern Psychology and Its Colonial Legacy

23
I question the modern rhetoric of ‘primitive’ cultures not having enough ‘knowledge’ about mental health and needing to be ‘educated’.
Close up of document titled "Informed Consent" being held

Who Can Consent to Research—and What Does That Mean for Forced Treatment?

16
What the doctors are not seeing is the health in people—except when it’s convenient for them and their research projects.
Person sitting in the distance, yellow light corridor

The Fallacy of Modern Psychiatry: Treating Symptoms, Ignoring Causes

105
To truly understand a person’s actions and behaviors, one must ask: What was this person exposed to? What did they experience?
Stock image of a person holding a warning sign in front of their face.

Mental Illness Prophesies Society’s Spiritual Sickness

26
The rising prevalence of mental illness in the west is a warning to society to take a good, hard look at itself.
comic book style see, hear, speak no evil, psychedelic background

Set, Setting, Forgetting: Silence on Abuse in Psychedelic Therapy Histories

14
The failure to address therapist abuse in MDMA-AT perpetuates a dangerous silence that distorts the field's history and compromises future practice.
Train Station in Sopot, Poland, Europe. Attractive man waiting at the train station. Thinking about trip, with backpack. Travel photography. tourist with backpack stand on railway station platform.

Exile: My Cure for Psychosis

31
Psychiatry infantilizes the patient. Living in exile allows formerly psychotic people to achieve mature, healthy independence. 

Rights, Responsibilities and Resources–Peer Support in Mental Health Services

2
Service users and peer support experts should be taking inspiration from the Recovery movement and the defense of rights.
Aliens in a cornfield

The Schizophrenic and the Dreamer

16
If delusions contain symbolic content, like dreams, then the language of the schizophrenic may be intelligible after all.
watercolor portrait of a sleeping woman

What Are Waking Dreams, and Why Should You Care?

12
Indigenous cultures around the world recognize and intentionally cultivate waking dreams for both personal and community well-being.

The Consciousness of Voices and Visions

4
Alan Robinson reviews a 30-year journey working with his voices and visions in directing actors and creative writing.
Photo of a dramatic tree-lined wilderness

The Two Earliest Stories of Recovery in Oregon

10
In the early 19th century, frontiersmen Pelton and Day experienced recovery from "mental illness" after traumatic experiences.
Professional woman looking at documents with magnifying glass

Seriously Misleading Testimony by Psychiatry Professor in Oslo District Court About the Effect of...

6
Lawsuits are a means to obtain changes in an inhumane psychiatry.
B&W photo of a young woman smoking. Close-up on the cigarette being lit by a lighter; her face is out of focus

Smoke ‘Em if You Got ‘Em: Rethinking Smoking as a Trauma Response

34
For people with trauma-impacted brains, smoking is a tool to quiet an ever-present storm.
Portrait of Primeval Caveman Wearing Animal Skin and Fur Hunting with a Stone Tipped Spear in the Prehistoric Forest. Prehistoric Neanderthal Hunter Ready to Throw Spear in the Jungle

Beyond the Chemical Imbalance: Looking to the Past to Understand the Mental Health Crisis

25
Our bodies and minds evolved to thrive in an environment that is vastly different from the one in which a majority of us now live.

Ward 362: On Meeting People in Sorrow

12
There is no understanding that we have the need for comfort and support. Our feelings are not allowed; they are reduced to medical symptoms.
Close-up of hands, sunlight between them, above tiny growing pink flowers

A Bicultural Māori/European Vision for a Truly Healing Hospital

13
Our therapies need to treat the root causes of mental distress—especially trauma and environment—and not just numb the pain.
A man hiding behind a large wooden table, only his head and hands showing

The Trauma Craze: How the Expansion of Trauma Diagnoses Fueled Victimhood Culture

102
Exploring the paradox of increasing trauma diagnoses in a safer world and the proliferation of trauma culture.
Miniature people - The worker at work with medicine pills

Irrational Polypharmacy: How Integrated Mental Health Treatment Can Help

1
Drug-first treatment overlooks the underlying circumstances that contributed to the development of mental health issues in the first place.
Vector illustration of two phones, one with a therapist and one a client

Is Virtual Psychotherapy of Lesser Quality Than In-Person?

33
Are therapists contributing to the depersonalization and loneliness that has hollowed out social life in our culture in general?

Is There Transformative Meaning in Madness?

13
How do some people find and harness transformative meaning in their experiences conceptualised as psychosis by clinical psychiatry?
senior man sitting alone. Lonely gray haired man on a bench in fall season

I Accuse Psychiatry of Murder

21
My beloved friend Geoffrey could have contributed so much to the world if psychiatrists had not murdered him.
A female nurse helping another woman

How I Developed a Critical Perspective on Psychiatry

69
I saw many people admitted to psychiatric wards having suffered a recent or past trauma, only to leave with prescriptions for multiple drugs.
A person walking on a hill toward a sunrise

Dismantling the Psychiatric Monopoly: Why We Need an Alternative

46
A speech given at the annual Danish Psychiatry Top Summit conference on the theme "New winds are blowing."
Vector illustration of a man with a maze for a head with someone confused inside it

The Emperor’s New Clothes? The Psychiatrist as Expert in a Post-Modern World

26
Psychiatry has fallen to too many fads and abusive treatments over the decades to hold current treatments with any confidence.