A Difference That Can Make a Difference: Mental Distress as a Call of Being
Could it be helpful to view mental distress by exploring Rollo May's concept of "being" rather than reducing humans to mere dysfunctional cogs in the machine of productivity?
Internet Forum for Tapering Psychiatric Drugs Provides Novel Insights
After 15 years, the founder of SurvivingAntidepressants.org, Adele Framer, shares what she has learned about the science of withdrawing from psychiatric drugs.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 2: Is Psychiatry Evidence Based? (Part 3)
Virtually every single placebo-controlled drug trial in psychiatry is flawed, systematic reviews of trials are also flawed, and guidelines are flawed. Even the drug approval process is flawed.
Antidepressant Withdrawal Misdiagnosed as Functional Disorder
Adverse physiological symptoms of antidepressant withdrawal are regularly mistaken to be other problems to the detriment of the patient.
Online Exhibition: Art-Making During the Pandemic
The online exhibition "Creativity and COVID: Art-Making During the Pandemic" features nearly 100 artists with lived experience with mental distress who shared with us their art-making process and how it helped them survive the global pandemic.
A Thief in the Hospital
I knew by then that there was a thief, but I tried not to rush to conclusions. I couldn’t even think of the possibility that it could be one of the staff. They go into the field in order to help people.
Childhood Trauma Is Not a Mental Illness
My childhood was stolen by systems focused on labeling and medicating me instead of healing the effects of abuse and neglect.
Federal Mental Health Agencies: Remember Ivory!
Ivory McCuen needed warmth and a home the night she died. Court-ordered psychiatric drugs deliver neither warmth nor a home. Federal agencies need to consider people with lived experience.
Feminism, Psychoanalysis and Critical Psychology: An Interview with Bethany Morris
MIA's Micah Ingle interviews Bethany Morris about the psychoanalytic study of film and the history of the "monstrous feminine" in psychiatry.
How Psychiatry Turned General Difficulties in Adaptation into “Real Illnesses Just Like Diabetes”
Though many psychiatrists have abandoned the "chemical imbalance" concept, they now promote the use of a pre-scientific notion that the only criteria for defining disease is the presence of distress or impairment.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 2: Is Psychiatry Evidence Based? (Part 2)
“Psychiatry’s Starter Kit”: Many people start their psychiatric "careers" by consulting their family doctor with some problem many of us have from time to time and leave with a prescription for a depression pill.
Antidepressants Still Linked to Increased Suicide Risk
Bias and financial conflicts in antidepressant trials “contribute to systematic underestimation of risk in the published literature.”
Sherry Julo, Ed White and John Read – Online Support Groups for Psychiatric Drug...
This week on the MIA podcast, we discuss a recent paper that considers the support provided by online support groups when people seek help for psychiatric drug withdrawal. It was published in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology in January 2021 and the authors are Sherry Julo, Ed White and John Read.
How to Support Healing from Psychosis Versus Imposing Social Control
This article is written for the loving supporter or social worker. My hope is that it will help you gain strategies for how to handle the relationship with someone experiencing psychosis.
Confused, Accused, and Retraumatized
At the hospital, what traumatized me the most was that my freedom was in the hands of a professional who was steadfast in his conviction that I was feeling things I was not.
Informed Consent Must Reflect Information from Online Withdrawal Forums
Online withdrawal forums document an assortment of risks associated with discontinuation of psychiatric drugs. Such information is readily available and must be disclosed during informed consent.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 2: Is Psychiatry Evidence Based? (Part 1)
Psychiatric diagnoses are not built on science but are consensus-type exercises where it is decided by a show of hands which symptoms should be included in a diagnostic test.
Our Culture Is Abusive
Emotions are viewed as dangerous liars in this culture, and those who express them in a way that makes people in power uncomfortable are diagnosed as "mentally ill."
Patient or Prisoner? My Hospital Experience
We need to come up with a plan that destigmatizes mental health issues for all races, including respectful and non-punitive treatment in in-patient settings.
Patients as Partners: A Social Empowerment Approach to Health and Mental Health
Hugh Polk and Ann Green discuss social medicine with Jessie Fields, a medical doctor working in Harlem, a community leader, and an advocate for transforming our health and mental health care system.
Sound After Psychiatry
In the wake of psychiatry, there was a fracture, a gulf that opened between me and the authentic sound of my voice when it is connected and resonates with my truth.
Mental Health Survival Kit, Chapter 1: This Book Might Save Your Life
The term “psychiatric survivor” says it all in just two words. In no other medical specialty do the patients call themselves survivors because they survived despite being exposed to that specialty.
Another Failed Study of “Personalized” Depression Treatment
Due to lackluster antidepressant study results, researchers test if subgroups of depressed patients show greater improvement.
Remembering Jennifer Kinzie (1979-2021)
Jennifer Kinzie was a licensed mental health counselor who used her lived experience to guide her work—not only as a counselor and therapist, but also as a volunteer with psychiatric survivor groups.
Creative Maladjustment: An Interview with Donzaleigh Abernathy
Donzaleigh Abernathy—goddaughter of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—shares her thoughts on the civil rights movement and the legacy of racism in the United States.
