Is Dialogue the Best Medicine? A Conversation With Jaakko Seikkula

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Jaakko Seikkula joins us on the MIA podcast to discuss how Open Dialogue came to be, the research that shows its positive outcomes, how psychiatry has failed to learn from Open Dialogue practice and more.
Crumpled papers in a trashcan

Cochrane Recommends Antidepressants for Anxiety in a Garbage In, Garbage Out Review

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Cochrane's review of antidepressants for anxiety is misleading and harmful.
Enraged crowd of people are behind bars. Fence wire mesh barbed wire, vector silhouette. Street camera on the pillar. Sunset background.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

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Society’s practice of physically segregating privileged people from those they deem to be “less than” has deep roots beginning with the treatment of madness.
Simple single family house with words "Peer Respite " over the front door, with a sign hanging from the doorknob saying "Closed."

America is Legislating a Return to the Asylum, One Policy at a Time

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Federal and state policymakers across the partisan divide are defunding vital programs and rolling back policies and rights protections.

They Called It Psychiatry – I Call It Punishment

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I was fighting something far more dangerous than madness — I was fighting a culture of fear and suppression masquerading as mental health care.
Miniature shot. People crowded in the lower right corner, walking

Where Did All the People Go?

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The question that this history will try to answer is how Oregonian lives were affected by deinstitutionalization, in three phases.
A magnifying glass and pen on charts and data

An Approach to Making Sense of Psychiatric Research

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I don’t consider myself a scientist in the usual sense, but I know a lot about what makes scientific findings more valid and useful.

Subpatterns: A Deeper Dive into Attachment Theory

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Psychological issues have their roots in childhood and are linked to the attachment patterns we develop early in life.

Grossly Flawed Paper Denies that Antidepressant Withdrawal Effects are “Clinically Meaningful”

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Pharma-funded researchers are endangering patient safety by minimising the incidence and severity of withdrawal.

The Trouble with Lived Experience: When Peer Support Compounds Trauma by Denying Abuse

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Trauma and abuse are different experiences, and they require different forms of support, accountability, and healing.
Doctor explaining something to patient

Brain Disorders or Problems with Living? How Research on “Mental Illness” Went Awry

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Is it time to consider the possibility that the entire field is a failed enterprise, a wrong turn in human history?
A glow through the trees of a dark forest

Becoming Stewards of Shadow: Beyond Great Men and Myths of Invention

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Before the psyche was carved into parts with elegant diagrams and marketed methods, cultures walked with shadow. 

The Degrees on the Wall

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The therapists who helped me most weren’t the ones who dazzled with their knowledge. They were the ones who made me feel less alone.

Mad in Puerto Rico

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Since Puerto Rico is, in essence, a colony of the United States, colonialism has a heavy impact on mental health and the healthcare system.
Chess photo. A gold pawn faces against a line of silver pieces

Psychiatry Criticism Politics: When the Enemy of Your Enemy Is Not Your Friend

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Those who would like to abolish psychiatry in order to replace it with their own coercive, authoritarian policies are not friends.

The Whispered Rules of Belonging: How Counseling Education Tried to Silence Me

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I started to understand that I wasn’t just being trained in therapeutic skills. I was being trained to conform.
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The Cat Is Out of the Bag

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I’ve healed; not overnight and not without effort, but today I feel the vitality that I had before my psychiatrization began as a teen.

“I Made it Through the Horrors of Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal” A Conversation with Comedian...

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Dex Carrington, AKA Jørgen Kjønø, is a Norwegian-American stand-up comedian and actor. He joins us on the Mad In America podcast to talk about his experience with Lyrica and Zyprexa, including a five-and-a-half-year taper after 10 years on the drugs.
Double-exposure type photo showing the same person with different expressions

A Mad Perspective on IFS Training

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I became concerned that the reason I was unable to hear from my parts was because I take antipsychotic medication.
Miniature scientist at work with Medicine pills

Protecting the False Narrative About Antidepressants

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We have a mental health crisis because the existing depression drug-focused approaches are not working.

ChatGPT Weakens Your Ability to Think, MIT Study Finds

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“This cognitive offloading phenomenon raises concerns about the long-term implications for human intellectual development and autonomy,” the researchers write.

Goodbye, Brian Wilson

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I propose to call any psychiatrist-patient bond “Landy syndrome” after psychiatrist Eugene Landy, the captor, abuser and oppressor of Brian Wilson.
Magnifying glass is looking at the People stand in a circle on a gray background. Communication. Business team, teamwork, team spirit. Wooden figures of people. A circle of people. Selective focus

Madness Is a Human Phenomenon

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We can see how complicated it is to be human and how much human suffering (called psychopathology) is a complex and unique human phenomena.
Stacking wooden blocks upward like stairs

Why Psychotherapy Should Busy Itself with Building Character Strengths, Not Reducing Symptoms

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Clients want outcomes like self-understanding, self-agency, and social engagement from therapy.

It’s a No-Brainer: Living Proof We Are More Than Our Parts

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Terms like “reward systems,” “emotion centers,” and “decision circuits” suggest precision. But these aren’t discoveries—they’re metaphors.