Jim Flannery: Sorry It’s Not Funny – Comedy, Hip-Hop and Activism

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Born and raised in suburban Weathersfield, Connecticut, Jim Flannery was committed at four mental hospitals across the United States. There he received the best care available in the modern world
torture.
Jean-Martin Charcot Demonstrating Hysteria in a Patient

Psychiatry’s Nightmarish 2022 & Its Hysterical Defense Against Criticism

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Psychiatry's defenders are open to criticism of psychiatry as long as it stops short of acknowledging the increasingly well-documented reality that psychiatry lacks any scientific merit.
therapist couch

A Moment to Reflect

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Within my heart, something feels like it’s been stolen. But they tell me it’s all in my brain, a tripped-up neurocircuitry, a misguided chemical.
An illustration depicting a man opening a door in his chest, light spilling out

The Answers Are in Our Weak Spots

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When looking at your own weak spots as a therapist, it would be a safe bet to first consider how you can improve your skills in developing a stronger alliance.

Long Term Antidepressant Use Associated With Increased Morbidity and Mortality

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A study finds that commonly prescribed antidepressants are associated with the development of diabetes, hypertension, and other diseases.
A woman in a suit with a skirt holds a lantern while standing on a desert landscape below a night sky full of stars

Grief, Intense Feelings, and Pathologization: Can We Conceive a Different Approach?

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We still try to shove every kind of emotion into a neatly organized box, give it a label, maybe even an accompanying medicine to make it neat and predictable.
Illustration of a shape of a baby crawling made out of various types of pills, on a black background

Health Risks to Babies When Antidepressants Used During Pregnancy

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Babies born to mothers taking antidepressants during pregnancy were more than six times as likely to have neonatal withdrawal syndrome—including breathing problems, irritability/agitation, tremors, feeding problems, and seizures—than those born to mothers taking other types of drugs.

“Don’t Worry, You’ll Be Fine”

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I was prescribed a “baby dose” of diazepam for pain management. Over the following months, everything got progressively worse.

Mental Health & Our Schools, Part 2

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Schools are rolling out programs and services intended to safeguard students’ emotional well-being. They are full of potential—and pitfalls.
Seated among others at a town hall meeting, an older adult white woman raises her hand

20 Concrete Steps to Achieving System Change

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I offer the following 20 suggestions for advocates who want to get something done and not just vent their quite justifiable criticisms of the mental health system.
Black and white illustration of a flying origami bird with a giant realistic bird for a shadow

An Illness, or Risky Experimentation?

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Questioning is what I did, but once I started questioning so much of what I had learned and of what my identity had been, it wasn’t obvious to me where I should stop.
A black and white photo of Andrew Rich

In Andrew’s Honor: Attorney Elizabeth Rich’s Fight Against Unjust Commitments

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Anyone detained and then formally committed under Wisconsin’s civil mental health laws can initially be held and forcibly drugged for six long months. Yet, for years, not a single person has been able to appeal the six-month commitments in court.

Systematic Failure

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This is the story of a life in turmoil, my failings and those of the systems meant to help such persons.
Illustration of a naked person's back with a blue butterfly perched on their shoulder

A Return to Dignity from Psychiatric and Childhood Abuse

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Homebirth was a reflection of how the mental health system should work: Informed person-centered care while respecting your agency.
Illustration depicting a keyhole in a person's shirt/chest. They are holding an old-fashioned skeleton key near it.

Why We Urgently Need New Approaches to Mental Health

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Emotions function like a guidepost to what we need. But if we are not aware this, we cannot understand what they are trying to convey.
Photo of a man in a white button-down and tie, sitting at a desk in an office, with one hand on a computer keyboard and the other holding a red toy airplane

Meaningless Distractibility, or Meaningful Mind-Wandering?

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What do we lose when we view boredom and curiosity as "symptoms" of ADHD? It can rob us of intuitions that crucial life changes desperately need to be made.
Illustration of a man standing on a rock surrounded by ocean waves

Thomas Szasz Versus the Mental Health Movement

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Unbiased experts must examine the claims and research of psychiatry and issue a report as to whether psychiatry not only has a valid medical basis, but whether this basis justifies the widespread violation of medical ethics and the routine use of imprisonment and torture.

Understanding the Limits of the Beneficial Effect of Antidepressants Reported in the Meta-analysis by...

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Stone, M. B., Yaseen, Z. S., Miller, B. J., Richardville, K., Kalaria, S. N., & Kirsch, I. (2022). Response to acute monotherapy for major...
Vector drawing of pills and a box labeled "Placebo"

The Psychiatrist’s Dilemma: In Defense of Placebo Psychiatry

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Telling stories they know are or may be untrue has become standard practice in psychiatry. It is a small step to set aside the need to provide truly informed consent.
Photo of Diana Rose, wearing a pink sweater, smiling, in front of a bookshelf

Is Service-User Research Possible in Mental Health? An Interview with Diana Rose

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MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Diana Rose about producing knowledge with survivors of psychiatry, abuses faced by service users, and what good research would look like.
Photo of a padlock chaining a set of document binders

“Beware, Scientology Related”: How ADHD Experts Silence Criticism

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We do not belong to the scientology movement, but this false accusation triggered an email correspondence that exposed the problematic happenings usually behind closed academic curtains.

#RestoreTheirRights: An Update on Guardianship Action

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It’s time to change the conversation around guardianship. The question is not “When do we remove someone’s rights?” but “How can we best support them?”

Madness to Miracles

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I lost 20 years of my life and everyone and everything I held dear, including myself, due to psychiatric medicine. Why did doctors not see how drastically I changed and how rapid and brutal my descent was?
Man with glasses and scarf looks at a small red pill. Behind him is a pattern of money symbols.

The Culture Is the Poison: Why Psychedelics Are Dangerous Medicine in a Neoliberal Society

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Extraction of psychedelics from the ritual process has dissociated them from community, connectedness, and responsibility, which used to define psychedelic drug use.

Jon Jureidini–Evidence-Based Medicine in a Post-Truth World

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In this interview, Jon Jureidini talks about the issues with evidence-based medicine and describes what led to the debasement of a system originally conceived to challenge extravagant claims and poor science.