Understanding Mental Illnesses, and Ourselves
I trained in psychiatry in the 1950s. I saw psychiatry switch from trying to help patients to understand themselves better to trying to find a drug that would relieve their symptoms.
Insane Medicine, Chapter 3: The Manufacture of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (Part 1)
Both the idea that there are some characteristic brain-based abnormalities for those diagnosed with ADHD, and that the medications used have specific properties that target a disease process—like a chemical imbalance—are false.
Who’s to Blame for the Lost Soul of Psychiatry?
An interview between Drs. Aftab and Pies reveals a deep mistrust of patients' reports of their own experiences, and devolves into a game of semantics in an attempt to prove psychiatry's relevance.
Stepping Into One’s Inner Radiant Space
It is hard to step out of the space of diagnoses because of the power it holds. The “doctor” who inflicted on you the awful label of “schizophrenia” or “bipolar” damages you because of the power he holds.
Insane Medicine, Chapter 2: The Scientism of Psychiatry (Part 2)
Paying attention to the science tells us that we need to look beyond formal services. People need connection and meaning as well as basics such as safety, housing, and work.
When Psych Diagnosis Means Life-or-Death
One label in the DSM that applies to cognitive abilities—“Intellectual Disabilities”—is crucial in determining whether people accused of crimes in some US states will be executed.
The Need for Acknowledgment of Context Within Approaches to Mental Distress
Mental distress is often perceived as something devoid of context, as an individual medical condition or a failure instead of a human condition linked to the social context one exists in.
The Reckoning in Psychiatry Over Protracted Antidepressant Withdrawal
Medically-induced harm—affecting tens of millions of people worldwide—has taken the field decades to take seriously.
The Spin Doctors: “ADHD” Research
We now spend over twenty billion dollars a year on treatment for something called “ADHD.” For that amount of money, we could pay the mid-career salaries of an extra 365,000 teachers or 827,000 teachers’ aides.
Insane Medicine, Chapter 2: The Scientism of Psychiatry (Part 1)
Wherever you find mental health services to have expanded, you find a parallel increase in the numbers who have been classed as disabled due to a mental health disorder.
The Double Standard at the Heart of Peer Services
There is clear evidence of a double standard and attitude that favors and privileges one side of the binary—the clinicians—over peers. This discrimination must be made visible and revealed to mental health advocates and changemakers.
An American History of Addiction, Part 3: Mr. Booze
Coupled with a burgeoning new movement (AA) for temperance members to refer to, the movement changed from a public policy interest group to what we would now call a treatment-based outreach organization.
Original Soteria House Members to Speak!
Soteria House’s history is complex and fascinating. Soteria Houses have never had the support they needed, but they still managed to change so many lives.
Stop Saying This, Part Five: Fake It Till You Make It
Megan Wildhood discusses the flaws in phrases like "fake it till you make it," "you can choose how you feel," and "no one is responsible for your life but you."
De-Weaponizing Empathy
I am not immune to what I call weaponized empathy, which I see as the pure intention of compassion for another tainted with aggression around eradicating pain, pain that could be a source of growth for the sufferer if allowed to arise and pass away without force.
Insane Medicine, Chapter One: The Medical Model of Mental Health Is Finished
The concepts we use have undermined our natural resilience, sensitised us to an idea of our vulnerability, and encouraged us to transfer our agency to practitioners who use a system as if it has scientific validity and is clinically useful.
Psychiatric Oppression Under Victoria’s Mental Health Laws
Public mental health authorities continue to oppress persons with psychosocial conditions through a combination of punitive and discriminatory laws that are constructed with a "best interests" paradigm in mind and a medical model that pathologises difference and dissent.
What is Open Dialogue Today?
Please join us on Friday, October 23 for OpenExcellence, HOPENDialogue, and Mad in America’s ongoing Town Hall conversation about what Open Dialogue is — and is becoming.
How Academic Psychiatry Minimized SSRI Withdrawal
If academic psychiatry is evidence-based, why did it take two decades to recognize SSRI withdrawal as widespread and chronic among patients?
The Smoldering Wick: Suicide and Faith
Some suicidal people may only benefit from the extraordinary selflessness and profound empathy demonstrated by St. Paul to his jailer. Credentials don’t measure for that.
Insane Medicine: How the Mental Health Industry Creates Damaging Treatment Traps and How You...
Yes, we need to drastically reform the foundational assumptions that govern the ideologies that pervade our systems, but many now know the truth about what is happening, and transformational approaches have been sprouting up organically in the rich soils of human creativity.
Four Children
I went to the children’s ward, to work with the kids. I remembered to tell all of them that I had been locked up my whole childhood on psych wards, and this always made them trust me.
We Are the 100%: World Mad Pride, Disability, & Revolution
This year, I finally got that first major speaking invitation: One of the four keynoters in the largest gathering each year for mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors, Peerpocalypse.
How Many Times Must the “PTSD” Label’s Harm Be Exposed?
A recent Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article and a recent American Psychiatric Association (APA) press release reveal the power the APA has wielded through its various DSM editions in pathologizing the effects of trauma.
How Little We Really Know About Psychiatric Drugs
Joanna Moncrieff reflects on what has and has not changed in the field of psychiatric drug treatment in the years between the first and newly published second edition of the Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs.
