Mad in America’s 10 Most Popular Articles in 2024

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A roundup of Mad in America's most read blogs and personal stories of 2024 as chosen by our readers.
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“Tetris for Trauma” Viral Twitter Thread: A Master Class in Misleading Psych Research

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A TV writer claims that research shows that Tetris is “literally a trauma first aid kit.” Her tweets sound scientific, but the research behind it is unconvincing.

NIMH’s It-girls: The Genain Quadruplets and the Whiteness of Psychiatry

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The poster-children of psychiatric genetics, who endured abuse throughout their lives, were also the product of a racist culture.
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The Core Error of Psychiatrists and Psychologists: Certainty about “Consensus Reality”

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Mental health professionals are selected and socialized to accept consensus reality and see a lack of adjustment to it as "mental illness."

The Anatomy of Anxiety: An Interview With Ellen Vora

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Dr. Ellen Vora, author of 'The Anatomy of Anxiety', joins us to discuss trauma, grief, functional medicine and more.
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The Emperor’s New Clothes? The Psychiatrist as Expert in a Post-Modern World

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

Faith Healing in India: An Ancient Way of Tending to Madness

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In contrast to the colonial legacy of medical psychiatry in India, indigenous and faith healing methods emphasize the interconnectedness of the mind, body, and spirit, using rituals, storytelling, and communal support to create a holistic healing environment.
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Causality in Mental Disturbance: A Review of the Neuroscience

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Psychiatry's medicalization of social and psychological suffering is not justified by the currently known biology.

Catherine’s Story: A Child Lost to Psychiatry 

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A year ago today, our youngest child died, thanks to the adversarial actions and toxic treatments foisted on her by medical-model psychiatry. By telling her story, we hope to promote systemic change.

The Nurtured Heart Approach Goes Mainstream: Research and Experience Support “Celebrating Greatness in Every...

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The Nurtured Heart Approach represents a massive shift in thinking—about schooling, about children and how to raise them, about how we regard those with intensity, and about the medical model pathologizing them.

State Hospital Memories: More of My Story

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The Detroit Free Press did an excellent job in bringing to light the conditions at Pontiac, its loss of accreditation, and closing. Still, they didn't quite grasp the severity of violence there.

The Connection Cure: An Interview with Julia Hotz

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Julia Hotz is a solutions-focused journalist based in New York City. She is the author of the forthcoming book, The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive...

The Dying of the Light: Norway’s “Medication-Free” Services for Psychotic Patients Are Fading Away

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Despite their successful outcomes, Norwegian non-coercive and medication-free programs are being threatened with closure.
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The Clinical, Social, and Cultural Harm of an Iatrogenic Psychiatry

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Normal reactions transformed into illnesses, emotions stripped of meaning, & people deprived of their autonomous coping skills and supports.

Anders Sørensen – Tackling Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal Through Research and in Practice

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Anders Sørenson is a Danish clinical psychologist with a special interest in psychiatric drug withdrawal. He has undertaken research which assesses the state of guidance on psychiatric drug withdrawal and paid close attention to tapering methods with the aim of identifying approaches which might make withdrawal more tolerable for people.

Called by God: Dealing With Depression and Psychosis

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God supported me during my psychosis. I was afraid that I would lose God when I took antipsychotics again. That had happened after my first forced medication.

Anatomy of an Industry: Commerce, Payments to Psychiatrists and Betrayal of the Public Good

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Pharmaceutical companies paid psychiatrists $340 million from 2014 through 2020, corrupting every aspect of the testing and marketing of new psychiatric drugs.

Psychiatry, Fraud, and the Case for a Class-Action Lawsuit

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For decades, psychiatry committed medical fraud when it told the public that antidepressants fixed a chemical imbalance in the brain.
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A Bicultural Māori/European Vision for a Truly Healing Hospital

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Our therapies need to treat the root causes of mental distress—especially trauma and environment—and not just numb the pain.

Making Mental Health an Ongoing Priority:  A Patch Adams Approach

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My brother’s sudden death and Mental Health Awareness Month spurred me to spend May making small, very personal efforts to both honor his memory and move the mental health conversation forward.

“War Cry For Change”: Veterans Launch Campaign for Informed Consent and Safe Deprescribing at...

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Derek Blumke and Timothy Jensen: The Grunt Style Foundation leads a new phase in the movement to combat psychiatric drug harm.

Dismissing the “Human Experience”: College Students Feel Unseen by the Medical Model of Mental...

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In conversations with college students and recent graduates from across the country and around the world, they described feeling dismissed by views of mental health that narrow their experiences to individual medical problems.
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A Win for Science, with Profound Implications for Industry: FDA Rejects MDMA

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Concerns, from functional unblinding to sexual assault in the clinical trials, led this week to a full repudiation of Lykos' MDMA-assisted therapy.

Green Star Mother Demands Answers from VA Secretary

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If the Veterans Administration is sincere in wanting to reduce veteran suicides, the first place to start is to collect information following these deaths to try to better understand the causes.

That Others May Live: An Airman’s Mental Health and Medication Hurricane

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“These things we do, so others may live.” It took a small army of my brothers and sisters in and out of uniform to drag me out of my abyss.