Closeup on gloved hands held up as if asking for help

Psychiatry, Violence, and the State: California’s Systematic Failure of Its Unhoused Population

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California has decided to systematically restrain, incarcerate, forcibly strip, and drug its now sizable unhoused population.

How Therapists Can Help With Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: An Interview With Anne Guy

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MIA's Richard Sears interviews psychotherapist Anne Guy about working with clients withdrawing from psychiatric drugs.

Researchers Question Add-On Treatment for ‘Schizophrenia’

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A common practice when antipsychotics are found to be ineffective for schizophrenia is to prescribe a second, additional psychoactive medication. Now, a new study suggests that this practice is not supported by the research.

Voices in our Heads: The Prefrontal Cortex as Parasite

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As I considered the voice I heard talking to me in my own head, it occurred to me that what was happening was, more or less, a later development of the brain talking to a more basic and earlier level of consciousness, one which was not verbal itself and was, in fact, the actual seat and locus of my real awareness.

Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 5: Survival Kit for Young Psychiatrists in a Sick...

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Peter Gøtzsche discusses the ways in which young psychiatrists can stand up to the system and fight for change in psychiatry.

How Mad Studies and the Psychological Humanities are Changing Mental Health: An Interview with...

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In this interview with MIA's Justin Karter, psychiatrist Bradley Lewis discusses the value of art, the humanities, and mad studies in shaping a richer understanding of psychological experiences.
power threat meaning framework

“The Power Threat Meaning Framework”: A New Perspective on Mental Distress

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Many of us have drawn attention over the years to the problems and shortcomings of psychiatric "diagnoses." The Power Threat Meaning document draws together the various threads in this debate and blends them into a coherent, cogent, and highly readable account.
Dorothea Buck

Celebrating Dorothea Buck’s 100th Birthday

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Mainstream psychiatrists celebrated the 100th birthday of their hero Kraepelin. Let us celebrate the 100th birthday of our Dorothea Buck, remember the many victims of psychiatric treatment, and stay together against violent psychiatric behavior and for humanistic support for people in distress.

Researchers Question the Utility of an ADHD Diagnosis

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A new article examines the usefulness of the ADHD diagnosis and suggests alternatives

Mad in Brasil: Part of a Global Effort to Create a New Paradigm of...

It is with great satisfaction and great hope that we are launching our Mad in Brasil website. Ours will be a collaborative effort. We look forward to being part of a global effort that will succeed in creating a new paradigm of care, one that will promote true robust recovery from psychiatric crises.
An illustration of a woman in a white dress, trapped inside a bottle full of blue and white pill capsules, against a gold background.

Why Detox Facilities and Psych Wards Are Not the Place to Come Off Psychiatric...

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In online communities, patients learn their strange symptoms may be due to the medications they are taking, and are offered solutions that provide hope.

Out of the Bubble: Now or Never?

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Never in human history did a powerful institution, no matter how harmful and corrupt, slide into self-inflicted irrelevancy. Institutions like the current psychiatric system can only be toppled by a powerful social movement.
Ekaterina Netchitailova

Psychiatric Medication: Does It Work?

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One can lead a good life with a “mental illness” and I am the case. Yes, it is possible. Even with a diagnosis of “bipolar” above your head.

The Misery of Being Misdiagnosed and Overmedicated

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From an early age, relatives and doctors alike had told me I was severely mentally ill. Naturally, I believed them.

The Antidepressant Wars in the Post-Truth Era

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We have at least some solid, incontrovertible evidence available to all that the claims about antidepressants in the press do not directly match the text of the source article in the Lancet. Nowhere in the original article did the authors make the extreme or even controversial claims appearing in the mainstream media.

The Biological Evidence for “Mental Illness”

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Partners' comment in response to my Carrie Fisher article essentially consists of unsubstantiated assertions, non sequiturs, and appeals to psychiatric authority. Because it comes from, and presumably represents the views of, an extremely large psychiatric practice, it warrants a close look.

Smartphone Based Interventions for Depressive Symptoms

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New meta-analysis of smartphone based interventions demonstrates small-to-moderate effect.
Marci Webber

A Mother’s Worst Nightmare Continues

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Marci Webber is a single mom who experienced a medication-induced psychotic episode, during which she killed her daughter, believing it would "save" her, and then tried to kill herself. For over seven years now, Marci and I have been trying unsuccessfully to get the mental health system and judicial system to acknowledge the true cause of her crime and let her go.

Guidelines Recommending Antidepressants “in Contradiction with the Current Evidence”

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Researchers critique the German S3 guidelines for depression promoting antidepressants.

New Traction for Art Therapy as a Treatment for Depression

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New study investigates the acceptability of a phenomenologically informed, manual-based art therapy for clients diagnosed with moderate to severe depression.

Making Peer Counseling Radically Accessible

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I imagined a world in which anyone can hit a button on their phone and be connected with a compassionate and empathetic listener, 24/7. So in 2019, I founded Peer Collective. Today, there are 30 peer counselors on the platform offering 30-minute counseling sessions for just $14.
Photo shows back view of woman sitting holding a tea with a laptop computer with a young Asian man smiling on the screen

Home Alone: Finding Connection During the Pandemic

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This wave of emotional distress is a perfectly reasonable human response to living our lives in an increasingly isolated and uncertain world.
personality test

This Is Your Personality Test Result On Capitalism

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Personality tests function for an employer, intentionally or otherwise, much like diagnostic criteria function for the mental-health system: these labels determine who gets resources that capitalism itself makes scarce — not only basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter, which require money to obtain, but empathy, understanding and support, which are kept in short supply.
anxiety

The Meaningfulness of Anxiety

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Anxiety can be a clarion call from our better self, a nagging inner tension that will persist until real-life changes are made that attend to deeper needs. When anxiety is reduced to a symptom to be medicated away, or an aberrant emotion based on cognitive distortions in need of correction, the all-important representational value of that anxiety can be lost.
adverse childhood experiences

All in the Family: 4 Steps Toward Healing Adverse Childhood Experiences

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It turns out that our stress response and inflammatory modeling are set early in our childhood. While our infant microbiome certainly lays a foundation, our beliefs and the thoughts that run like a ticker tape under our life experience cannot be underemphasized. How can we heal our pasts?