The Fight Against Involuntary Commitment: Are Protection & Advocacy Organizations Fulfilling Their Mission?
Protection and Advocacy organizations were designed as ground-breaking tools for fighting involuntary commitment and protecting patients’ rights. Are they fulfilling their promise? And will they survive Trump?
Global Psychiatry’s Attempt to Excommunicate the Former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to...
The UN reflected a middle-ground position for human rights-based mental health, but the response from psychiatric organisations was hostile.
The War on Suicide Is Making Things Worse
While allegedly intended to help, institutionalizing people against their will does more harm than good. Psychiatric coercion is dehumanizing.
The STAR*D Scandal: Scientific Misconduct on a Grand Scale
The American Journal of Psychiatry Needs to Retract Study That Reported Fraudulent Results
Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Earning the Right to Sleep on the Floor
Life in the DC was far too complicated for me to be able to just listen to my body and sleep on a thick yoga mat placed on the floor to alleviate my severe back pain.
ADHD Diagnosis Leads to Worse Quality of Life, Increased Self-Harm in Kids
When comparing kids with the same symptoms who were either diagnosed with ADHD or not, those who received the diagnosis had worse outcomes.
Remembering Don Weitz, 1930-2021
My hero, mentor, and very dear friend Don Weitz died comfortably, in his home, on the afternoon of September 1, attended by his loving twin children, Lisa and Mark.
Changing Narratives: Reflecting on Mad in America’s Mission and Work
For our 200th podcast interview, we are joined by members of MIA staff to reflect on Mad in America's mission and work over the last decade.
Art, Music, Exercise, and More: What Are the Recommended Doses for Improving Mental Health?
Researchers have calculated the dose-response benefits of ordinary hobbies, habits, and lifestyle practices that are available without any trip to a doctor or a drug store.
A Win for Science, with Profound Implications for Industry: FDA Rejects MDMA
Concerns, from functional unblinding to sexual assault in the clinical trials, led this week to a full repudiation of Lykos' MDMA-assisted therapy.
The Year Of Potentiality
I lost three years of my life to my first psychosis. I am living proof that your entire world can be smashed into a trillion pieces and you can recover and turn the broken pieces of glass into a kaleidoscope.
Project LETS: Building Peer-Led Mental Health Alternatives on Campus
Founder and Executive Director Stefanie Lyn Kaufman-Mthimkhulu talks about the organization's work to support struggling students and end discrimination against them.
Can Critiques of Psychiatry Help us Imagine a Post-Capitalist Future? An Interview with Hans...
An interview with Hans Skott-Myhre on the seeds of post-capitalist subjectivity to be found in the writing of Franco Basaglia and R.D. Laing.
Responsibility Without Blame in Therapeutic Communities: Interview with Philosopher Hanna Pickard
Hanna Pickard on the elusive middle ground between personal responsibility and systemic factors in our understandings of addiction.
The Clinical, Social, and Cultural Harm of an Iatrogenic Psychiatry
Normal reactions transformed into illnesses, emotions stripped of meaning, & people deprived of their autonomous coping skills and supports.
Michael Hengartner – Evidence-biased Antidepressant Prescription
We talk with Dr. Michael Hengartner about his new book which addresses the overprescribing of antidepressant drugs and critically examines the scientific evidence on their efficacy and safety.
Risk of Depression Spikes When Kids Take Ritalin
Risk of depression increased when children were taking methylphenidate for ADHD, but once they stopped taking the drug, depression risk dropped to normal levels.
Psychiatry’s Cycle of Ignorance and Reinvention: An Interview with Owen Whooley
Ayurdhi Dhar interviews sociologist Owen Whooley about psychiatry's stubborn perseverance in the face of recent DSM embarrassments and the failures of the biomedical model.
Remembering Jay Mahler
“I’ve spent 58 years in the public mental health system—10 years surviving it and 48 trying to change it.” That’s how Jay Mahler—psychiatric survivor, activist, leader—described his experiences.
Laura Van Tosh: The Life of a Psychiatric Survivor Activist
Laura Van Tosh has been a leader in psychiatric survivor circles for 40 years, working at local, state and national levels.
The Parts Within Us: An Interview with Richard Schwartz, Creator of Internal Family Systems
IFS is a different paradigm, which says that rather than being a sign of pathology, it’s the nature of the mind to have “parts." We’re born that way because they're all valuable.
Australia’s Billion-Dollar Question: Why Is Mental Health Not Improving With Better Access?
Amid growing mental health crisis, research raises questions about the mass rollout of brief psychotherapies in Australia.
Waking From the Nightmare: Is Recovery From Akathisia Possible?
I had a chemical brain injury from medications. The only help doctors could offer was more medications: treating the failed treatment with other dangerous treatments.
Remembering Darby Penney — A Fierce Advocate for Justice and Human Rights
Celia Brown, Ron Bassman, and Peter Stastny mourn the loss of Darby Penney, who fought to transform the mental health system in New York.
Causality in Mental Disturbance: A Review of the Neuroscience
Psychiatry's medicalization of social and psychological suffering is not justified by the currently known biology.
