What If the Problem Is the Lens?
The very phrase "mental health" implies that our emotional life is organised along a continuum of health and illness, like physical disease.
Questioning the Prescription: Antidepressants and the Medicalization of Childhood
This week Mad in America explores four recently published articles related to antidepressant use in children and adolescents. The first reports that although clinical...
Finding Support Outside ‘The System’
How a friend who wasn’t a mental health professional saved me from suicide by supporting me in a way my parents and the professionals hadn’t.
The Fight for the Soul of Psychotherapy: An Interview with Linda Michaels
Linda Michaels is a psychologist in private practice in Chicago and a co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN).
She trained at the Illinois...
Are We Overlooking Homicidal Ideation in Psychiatry?
If patients are willing to bring these thoughts into treatment, psychiatry should be better prepared to receive them.
All Major Pharma Companies Implicated in Bribery Schemes, New Report Says
Pfizer, J&J, Eli Lilly, BMS, AstraZeneca, GSK, and more all engaged in systematic bribery schemes, according to decades of OECD reports. That's the finding...
Alfred Adler: Psychoanalysis for the People
Adler provides a starting point to end the apartheid within psychoanalysis that means psychology for the rich and psychics for the poor.
Therapy Treats the Individual, but the Problem Is the Self We Were Taught to...
If human regulation is fundamentally relational, then well-being cannot be reduced to insight, learning, growth, or individual coping strategies alone.
Coercive Measures in Psychiatry are Increasing, Traumatic, and Linked to Systemic Failings
This week, Mad in America explores three studies related to the use of coercive psychiatric measures. The first finds that rates of coercive measures...
Undoing Thirteen Years of Iatrogenic Illness
No one was ever going to tell me that I was never mentally ill. It would mean that everything The System did to me was a lie.
Examining Psychiatric Medication Tapering and Withdrawal: The Evolving Role of Pharmacists — A Conversation...
Agnes Higgins and Cathal Cadogan join us to discuss their work on understanding the experiences of people tapering from psychiatric medication and the role that pharmacists could potentially play when people are considering stopping their psychiatric drugs.
Wouter Kusters and God
God may not exist, but man’s relationship with God certainly does exist, and that is what mysticism is all about.
Psychobabble of the Month: Depressed? Try Exercise-in-a-Pill!
Exercise consistently shows positive results for depression... so how about a prescription for "exercise mimetic" pills instead?
Psychiatric Force and Coercion Undermine Recovery
Instead of creating a sustainable environment for recovery, traditional practices often create more distress and reluctance.
From Silence to Accountability: How Massachusetts’ Special Commission on State Institutions Changed the Law
This is the beginning of an effort to restore dignity to those whose lives were forgotten for far too long.
I Can Barely Breathe: The Journey Continues
I want more for myself than just being a sweet, docile, compliant mental patient. I want a voice and a seat at the table.
Spiritual Emergency and the Collective Work of Staying Alive: An Interview with Nisha Gupta
Nisha Gupta reflects on spiritual emergency, wounded healing, and why staying alive in times of profound pain is not only an individual task but a collective one.
What Frontline Addiction Nurses See That Policy Debates About Medication Miss
Medication stabilizes the body and reduces risk, but the deeper work of recovery unfolds gradually through therapy, support, and daily effort.
TikTok Videos Portray ADHD Stimulants in Overwhelmingly Positive Light, Study Finds
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of pharmaceuticals is a controversial topic within healthcare and psychiatry, with only two countries (US and New Zealand) allowing this practice....
Doomed: A Psychiatry Comic
The prescription still lives in my chart, even though I only took it for one month, 15 years ago. As I navigate health care as an adult, I still have to answer for it.
Mental Health and the Assault on Autonomy in the New America
These myths lead to seeing the homeless as mentally ill and the mentally ill as irredeemable and “other,” impeding effective care.
This Isn’t the Place: Counselor Education in a Time of Fear
Nervous systems do not calm because a policy is clarified. They calm when impact is honored. When someone stays.
The Political Systems Driving Abuse in Psychiatry: An Interview with Human Rights Lawyer Alicia...
Alicia Ely Yamin is the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project and a lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. She's also...
The Compliance Machine: How ADHD Habit-Tracking Apps Enforce the Disease Model
The habit-tracking market is flooded with apps following the same book. Set goals, monitor adherence, penalize deviation, reward consistency.
Undisclosed Industry Payments Found in Top Psychiatry Journals
Research has shown that financial conflicts of interest (COIs) are a common issue in medicine and psychiatry, with a 2020 paper finding that 55.7%...
