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).

Racism 101

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There are many similarities between mental health oppression (which is an umbrella terms for what this blog/web site is about) and racism. I invite readers to contemplate the similarities and differences in these pernicious forms of oppressions. Sera Davidow has begun a wonderful MIA blog-discussion on this. (Thank you, Sera.) In the mean time let me admit to my own racism. Here is what I wrote previously. I offer it as an invitation to racism 101.

On the Other Side

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It was the first time in my Klonopin journey it occurred to me the problem might not be inherent in me. The problem might actually be the Klonopin. Convinced my very life was at stake, I made the firm decision to get off the stuff once and for all.

The Evidence of Our Convictions

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We are an unlikely duo, sharing secrets only known to insiders, the inmates and staff of Bader 5, Boston Children's Hospital's adolescent psychiatric unit. I am the nurse who blew the whistle that no one heard in 2010, she is the teenager who was imprisoned on Bader 5 for nine months in 2013. We met for the first time on this past Thanksgiving Day at Yale New Haven Children's Hospital, where she has been a *medical* patient for the past nine weeks.

When Homosexuality Came Out (of the DSM)

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With a diagnosis of schizophrenia, if internalized, comes the erosion of personhood, lowered self-esteem, shattered dreams, and a sense of disenchantment. The psychiatrist Richard Warner has even suggested that those who reject the diagnosis of severe mental illness may have better outcomes as they retain the right to construct their own narrative of personhood and define what really matters for them. Despite public education campaigns (or perhaps because of them), the stigma of mental illness is as enduring as it was 50 years ago.

Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia – A Valuable, and Free, Online Report

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What would happen if a team of highly qualified psychologists joined up with a team of people who knew psychosis from the inside, from their own journey into madness and then recovery – and if they collaborated in writing a guide to understanding the difficult states that get names like “psychosis” and schizophrenia”?

Michael Brown and the ‘Peer’ Movement

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I’ve been arguing against calling this movement that I’m a part of a ‘peer’ movement for a long time. What has happened with Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri has helped me to crystallize that point. If we do not see what happens to some of us in the psychiatric system as connected to what happens to others because they are black or because they are transgender or because they love someone else of the same expressed gender (or because they live in poverty, etc. etc.), then I’m not sure any of us really, fully understands what it is we are trying to accomplish at all.

Choice and Emotion: a Short Essay With Some Musing

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When we are emotionally dysregulated or in an otherwise emotionally reactive state we act impulsively and without consciousness or interest about consequences because we want relief from that momentarily intolerable emotional state. We cannot imagine an alternative in that moment. Until consciousness comes to such behavior we effectively have no choice.

A Positive Understanding of How Our Minds Work

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Often it is a relief to get an understanding of how we have developed a psychological problem, and it is especially good if we can feel that there is a reason for the problem that it is understandable. When I suffered from a phobia, it was a relief to understand that I probably had linked fear to an insect when I was a child. And it was even more satisfying when I understood that there was nothing wrong with my brain — that the problem was in what I had experienced. It was in my “software.”

An Unplanned Path to Discovering My Truth

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What began as a story of self-discovery, spiritual awakening, and healing written only for family and friends evolved into a memoir reflecting my path towards liberation that other people might find useful on their journey of awakening to the person they were born to be. A power greater than myself became a wind under my wings moving the creation of this memoir forward. The story was enhanced by the process of creative expression that deepened the intimate look at my experience of loss and grieving that were intertwined with my liberation journey.

Going Deeper into “Madness”: ISPS 2015’s International Dialogue

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As awareness spreads about there being something wrong with existing approaches to “psychosis” aka “madness.” Interest grows in exploring what to do instead. One meeting place for exploring this question of “what to do” will be the ISPS conference in NYC in March 2015, which is titled “An International Dialogue on Relationship and Experience in Psychosis.” This conference promises to stand out in terms of the variety of voices,  perspectives, approaches and traditions that it will bring together to focus on the deeper issue of how helpers can best understand and interact with those experiencing what is called psychosis.

Winning Friends and Influencing People

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Some readers of Mad in America may be aware that Scientific American published a short blog by me on 17th November 2014 - Why We Need to Abandon the Disease-Model of Mental Health Care. This blog was rather wonderfully (and slightly embarrassingly) described by Phil Hickey on his website, Behaviorism and Mental Health, as “an important milestone.” My blog attempts to summarise many of the key points of a perspective widely shared on Mad in America: 

Paradigms Lost

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The fundamental stance of bio-medical psychiatry remains unchanged since my grandfather’s time – “mentally ill” people managed like stock portfolios, reduced to diseased brains and bundles of genes and biochemicals that can be quantified, manipulated and cured “scientifically” by bio-tech and surgical interventions. Magic bullets as magical thinking.

Science and Pseudoscience in Psychiatric Training: What Psychiatrists Don’t Learn and What Psychiatrists Should...

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Evidence based care is supposed to drive up standards, ensure uniformity, establish best practice, guide clinicians and protect patients. This should be celebrated. Instead, evidence-based mental health is openly disparaged, and when psychiatrists don’t get the results they want, they ignore them, suppress them, or denounce them. These attitudes have repercussions on the training of psychiatrists.

Implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement on Equitable Access to Healthcare

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A new generation of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements is likely to significantly threaten access and cost of healthcare, and limit signatory Governments sovereignty to prioritise health care policy to protect and improve the health of citizens. The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), a Pacific Rim regional trade agreement involving 12 countries — including New Zealand, Australia and the US — is one such agreement, and it has the potential to significantly alter the domestic environment for health policy-making.

On The Ubiquity of Conflict

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Conflict is a pervasive human phenomenon that is at the heart of much distress and misery. Unfortunately, it is also seldom recognised; obscured by categories of disorder spelled out in systems such as the DSM, or brushed aside by other, fancier (but less accurate) ways of describing psychological turmoil and discontent. The source of psychological distress is not an ill, a disordered, or a dysfunctional mind but a conflicted one.

Julia’s TEDx Talk: Time to Get Serious About Nutrition

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Based on any data from any country it is clear that we have a problem. Mental illness is on the rise. Researchers in the emerging field of nutritional psychiatry have documented the benefits of micronutrients to treat mental illness, showing that micronutrients help treat depression, stress, anxiety and autism and ADHD. Not a single study shows that the Western diet is good for our mental health. Many questions remain to be answered, but we can make some recommendations.

Psychiatry: Still Trying To Rewrite History

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Psychiatry clings to the broken brain theory, because without it, there is no justification for the employment of medical techniques in this area. Without the broken brain theory, psychiatrists are unnecessary, and even counterproductive. In their hearts, all psychiatrists know this, which is why they never address the fundamental question: why should all significant problems of thinking, feeling, and/or behaving be considered illnesses?

Liberal “Mental Health” Reform: A “Fail-Proof” Way to Fail

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An ever-growing number of people are aware that something’s horrendously wrong with psychiatry — survivors, families, professionals, psychiatrists themselves. Of these a subsection has become actively involved in trying to bring about change. All of which is good. This notwithstanding, sincere and dedicated though almost everyone is — and it is clear that people are — only a tiny percentage of these are pressing for anything truly transformative.

Why an Assassinated Psychologist — Ignored by U.S. Psychologists — Is Being Honored

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On November 16, 1989 in El Salvador, liberation psychologist Ignacio Martin-Baró was murdered by a Salvadoran government’s “counter-insurgency unit” created at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas. This year, 25 years after his assassination, peace and justice activists around the world will honor Martin-Baró. Embarrassingly, the vast majority of U.S. psychologists and psychiatrists know nothing about Martin-Baró and liberation psychology. Why would mainstream mental health institutions keep U.S. psychologists and psychiatrists and the general public ignorant of the life and work of Martin-Baró?

From Blaming the Patient to Blaming the Brain

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The idea of schizophrenogenic or refrigerators mothers was an embarrassing era for psychiatry, and so psychiatrists were only too happy to explore the brain and the genome to unlock the secrets of mental illness. Today, the rhetoric has shifted away from intrapsychical conflicts and traumatic ruptures, and instead aberrant neurochemistry or delinquent genes are held as the source of mental illness. Regardless, the message is clear: mental illness is beyond our control and requires psychiatric intervention. The moral authority the mental health industry claims over our mental life rests on this claim.

The Scarlet Label: Close Encounters With ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’ (Part 2)

I’ve heard countless horrific stories of abuse, neglect, trauma and most every form of torment that one human can inflict upon another. The sting of such stories never lessens. I’ve often marveled at the mind’s capacity to focus a sustained attention upon ever new ways to perpetuate and promote anguish. Sophia’s story, presented here, is tragically similar in regards to the abuse she suffered.

Psychiatric Drugs: More Dangerous Than You Ever Imagined (A New Video)

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Psychiatric Drugs are More Dangerous than You Ever Imagined” is the newest video in my series Simple Truths about PsychiatryIt provides a simple, direct and inescapable warning about this epidemic of harm induced by psychiatric drugs. The video sounds a necessary alarm about this growing tragedy, involving millions of people and their families, who never foresaw the disabling results of taking psychiatric drugs and giving them to their children.

Housing First: An Evidence-Based Approach Beyond the Medical Model

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For each person not sent to a state or federal prison, about $30,000 a year is saved. By starting a War on Mental Illness just as the War on Drugs is wrapping up, some mental health advocates hope to cash in on prison reform. Of course, many Americans might prefer to cash in through lower taxes. So it is essential — if the War on Mental Illness is to succeed — that Rep Murphy create a link in the public imagination between senseless acts of violence and psychiatric diagnosis. Although Murphy acknowledges that there is no empirical data linking psychiatric diagnosis and violence, he hopes to find a link between “untreated serious mental illness” and violence.

Trauma and Schizophrenia: The Ultimate Political Battle

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This weekend I attended an international trauma studies conference in Miami, Florida, where some of the leading researchers and clinicians in the field of trauma gathered to share their innovative projects and findings. Although there were many worthwhile moments, overall I left feeling paradoxically hopeful, saddened, inspired, and a bit dumbfounded. One study after another was presented on "trauma-related disorders" and their associated treatments, yet there was not a single mention of schizophrenia or its related diagnoses. Four days of trauma discussion and the topic of psychosis was nowhere to be found.

My Favorite Fears and How They May Serve Us

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As I’ve worked in the system in a peer support role I’ve become aware that I’m at risk of being "ideologic." In some ways, being involved in the c/s/x movement has felt like joining a new church. I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with this; as was the case in my religious community, we are united around something that we believe in strongly and feel a responsibility to bring to the world. Being part of a group like this is empowering, inspiring, and hopeful. But it also scares me.