Something Broken: My Mother’s Story

1
The use of psychiatry against women who have experienced male violence is a form of control. It silences women and maintains the status quo.
Diagnosis: Placebo Effect

More Evidence That Antidepressants Work Via Placebo Effect

14
Antidepressants were more effective for depressed patients who were more “optimistic.” Still, only 30% responded to SSRIs.

Kermit Cole: Dialogical Therapy and Quantum Theory Walk Into a Bar…

10
On the podcast this week we are joined by Kermit Cole who shares his thoughts on how humor can help in creating a shared experience that is helpful to the healing process. Kermit, in his experiences of being with people in psychotic states, has seen humor as a moment when a connection can be made. In many ways, this project is bringing Kermit back full circle to his work as a film director, early in his professional career.
A male doctor appears to scream in frustration. His glasses catch the light

Are Psychiatrists More Mad Than Their Patients?

81
Misconceptions among psychiatric leaders are at variance with the scientific evidence. They suffer from a serious, collective delusion.
Stock photo. Man in lab coat appears to scream in anger.

Criticisms That Establishment Psychiatry Can and Cannot Tolerate

79
Criticism that uniquely applies to establishment psychiatry but not to medicine in general threatens its existential legitimacy, and is not tolerated.

Death in a Bottle: My 24-Year Battle with Benzodiazepines

23
I’m not even taking Klonopin because it helps me. I’m taking Klonopin so I don’t go through withdrawal from Klonopin. That’s the trap.

And You Thought They Were Side Effects: How Psychiatry Turned Chemical Disruption Into Medical...

41
There’s no cure beneath the disruption, just a chemical hit that alters perception or behavior.

Chemically Imbalanced: Joanna Moncrieff on the Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth

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Joanna Moncrieff joins Robert Whitaker to talk about her latest book, titled Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth. They discuss the serotonin story and the fact that there is no good evidence that a serotonergic deficiency is a primary cause of depression.
Photo of young woman in a therapy group

The Quiet Crisis in Mental Health: The Medicalization and Deskilling of Psychotherapy

27
The focus on the "worried well" and the exclusion of the "mad" serves to legitimize psychiatric control and surveillance.

Jo Watson Interviews Cathy Wield, Author of “Unshackled Mind”

0
It’s never too late to seek another explanation for the problems you’re facing, to change your mind and get your life back.
A person, out of focus, holding a pill bottle in focus

Half of Those Who Take Antidepressants Are Labeled “Treatment Resistant”

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Millions of people are trying multiple antidepressant drugs without success, and psychiatry labels them “treatment resistant.”

The Fight Against Involuntary Commitment: Are Protection & Advocacy Organizations Fulfilling Their Mission?

9
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?

The Garden of the Mind: Fictions Weeded Out by Psychiatry

4
Delusions are more than fleeting mental turmoil; they reveal the unconscious mind’s storytelling power.
Vector illustration; profile of person with capsules falling into their head

America’s Unhealthy Relationship with Antidepressants

7
Exhaustive research topples the conceptual house of cards in which the antidepressant hegemony resides.

Interview with German activist Peter Lehmann: “I Lost My Fear and Gained Everything.”

8
Peter Lehmann is a central figure in the struggle for emancipation and dignity of people with lived experience of psychiatric treatment.
Professional psychotherapist and patient in office, focus on hands with clipboard

The Moral World of Personality Disorder Assessment

23
Professionals in the field must recognize psychiatry's connection to social norms rather than portraying it as a neutral branch of medicine.

The Failure of “Spit For Science”: No Genetic or Neurological Pathways for Substance Abuse

11
Despite finding no meaningful correlation between genes and substance use, high-profile geneticists misleadingly conveyed optimistic results.

Unmedicated Clarity: How I Reclaimed My Voice After Psychiatry Silenced It

57
My healing didn’t begin with that pill. It began the moment I stopped handing over my truth for someone else to interpret.

Dreaming with Purpose: How the Mind’s Hidden GPS Can Guide Us Toward Personal and...

17
By honouring dreams, we honour our innate creativity, our shared humanity, our capacity to reimagine reality.

Teralyn Sell and Jenn Schmitz: Breaking Out of the Prison of Prescribing and Finding...

7
On the Mad in America podcast, Brooke Siem talks with Teralyn Sell and Jenn Schmitz about their journey from working in the prison system to challenging conventional psychiatric narratives in their therapy practice and podcast, The Gaslit Truth.
Close-up of pill with smiley face on it. Woman's hand holding it toward the viewer

Behind the Smiles: Mental Health in South Korea’s High-Pressure Society

3
South Korea ranks among the highest in the world for suicide, and its people are turning to psychiatric drugs in record numbers.
Miniature people - The worker at work with medicine pills

Antidepressant Trials Last Eight Weeks, So Why Do We Take Them for Years?

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The studies are of short duration and are riddled with methodological issues like unblinding and failure to assess withdrawal.

New WHO Guidance Calls for Paradigm Shift in Mental Health Policy

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The guidance emphasizes shifting away from institutional mindsets and practices, the biomedical approach, and the use of psychotropic drugs.
Collage. A woman chained to a giant pill

Akathisia After a Five-Year Taper: Chained to an Antidepressant Forever

38
I have been on Cymbalta for 17 years now and am gutted that my five-year taper did not free me of the drug.
A woman and her child holding hands, walking in the dark toward a bright crack in the ground

The Mental Health System in the UK Failed Us

8
The whole system is broken and I pray for my friends in Great Britain. They need a reform, not cuts or euthanasia.