Featured

Psychiatry’s depression outcomes are poor because its bio-chemical-electrical treatments are based on a depression model that science has flushed down the toilet.

I stopped thinking of akathisia in terms of the disease model and instead began thinking of it as an injury. Akathisia is not the car crash; it is a result of the car crash.

The ASD diagnosis glosses over the many developmental specifics that might underlie a child’s challenges related to social communication.

If the wounded healer doesn't work on their wounds, they become the wounded wounder, keeping the client and themselves trapped in their roles.

Ketamine treatment, which was being hailed as a ‘miracle cure’, backfired so spectacularly that it very nearly cost me my life.

This is what social media does, she says. It draws people in. It hurts people. In the worst cases, it kills people.

The published articles underreported suicide-related events and provided false claims that the drugs were effective.

Study finds that reduced cortical thickness and brain surface area associated with 'schizophrenia' may result from antipsychotic drug use.

Even though I was only on the medication for a little over six months, I am still traveling down the long road of psychiatric drug withdrawal. This is the hardest thing I have ever endured.

How persistent, unbearable suffering, due to prolonged withdrawal from antipsychotics prescribed as a sleeping medication, led to euthanasia.

What if the only choice we can really make, and trust, is the irrational, even mad, choice to love? What would saving the world look like then?

Justin Karter interviews narrative and philosophical psychologist Mark Freeman about his vision for the future of psychology.

A psychiatrist and mom reflects on teen suicide clusters in Palo Alto and discusses alternative ways to address adolescent mental health.

We can assess whether Mad in America readers or JAMA Psychiatry readers are being provided with the most robust scientific literature.

New clinical case studies have found that many young children who spend too much screen time—on TV’s, video games, tablets and computers—have symptoms labeled as “autism.” When parents take away the screens for a few months the child’s symptoms disappear.

If one person is struggling, everyone in the family is struggling. Families need support.

The conversation about what truly constitutes “autism” is an ongoing one. Although I resist the label personally, I do not begrudge anyone for identifying as autistic, or seeking out an autism diagnosis. Leaving this discussion within the domain of medicine is limiting. That’s why a new discourse is emerging, not among doctors, but among activists who push for autistic self-advocacy.

The healing journey is less about being free from medication and psychiatry and more about connecting with myself now. I am grateful for the freedom to feel.

I am thankful "Beyond Order" exists; if only because it serves as a cautionary tale for anyone looking to modify their mood using psychiatry’s plethora of pills.

For every person “Are you suicidal?” may assist, there are many more of us who are scared into silence when those words are uttered. Why? Well, “Are you suicidal?” is, in fact, the king of the suicide risk assessment questionnaire. “Are you suicidal?” has become the red, neon, flashing sign that screams “Stop! Don’t talk to me!” Perhaps this might just explain why suicide risk assessments are well known not to work.

"The Best Minds" could be seen as a book that is critical of conventional psychiatry, but it falls short on pointing out its true faults.

After suffering PTSD in the late 1980s, I reluctantly accepted antidepressants. In time, I had resolved the trauma, but when I tried to stop the antidepressants (Prozac, and later Zoloft), I assumed my desperate feelings and “return” of depression were an indication I had an imbalance and needed those drugs. I didn’t understand I was experiencing withdrawal. (I was never told that for most people, psychiatric medications need to be tapered.)

The psychotic and the mystic swim in the same water. But why do some swim, and some drown?

One thing I noticed, from the moment that I stepped out of my psychiatrist’s office, was how strangely blank and yet clear my mind was. I felt surprisingly calm and relaxed, and I decided to go back for another treatment the next week. What I couldn’t have known then was that after that next “treatment,” life would be completely destroyed for me.

Philosopher Justin Garson discusses the potential benefit of looking at madness not as disease or defect, but as a designed feature.