Is COVID-19 Making Everybody Crazy?
The response to the pandemic promises a vast expansion of the market for therapists, but such claims carry great potential for harm, adding to the burdens of people with upsetting but understandable, deeply human feelings.
Racism and Radical Psychiatry
A radical caucus within the American Psychiatric Association tried to combat systemic racism in the 1960s. So why is the APA still behind the times?
Child Abuse and Psychosis: My Healing Journey
Hospitalized for "grandiose delusions," I began to wonder: Was my dis-orientation really just a sickness? Or in "treating" it, was I missing a powerful re-orientation toward healing old wounds?
Randomized Controlled Trial Confirms That Antipsychotics Damage the Brain
A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry connects antipsychotics with damage to the brain in multiple areas.
Angela Peacock ā Medicating Normal
An interview with Angela Peacock who talks of her experiences of being prescribed benzodiazepines, her journey off multiple medications, her continuing work in veterans advocacy and her thoughts about the film Medicating Normal which will be screened on World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, July 11.
Bridging Critical and Conceptual Psychiatry: An Interview with Awais Aftab
MIAās Justin Karter interviews psychiatrist Awais Aftab about how āconceptual competenceā uses philosophy to transform psychiatry.
Snakes and Ladders: How Psychiatry Took Away My Choices
The psychiatric system takes away all choices and freedom and calls the resulting state "mental illness." Psychiatry justifies alienation rather than repairing it.
Voicehearing, Reinaldo, and My Work as The Writer
The Writer has outlined a significant work through my hands, dictated by the voice of someone who lived at some point a long time ago, such as London in 1682 A.D.
The Year I Lost Everything, Psychiatry Offered Nothing
After a failed suicide attempt following my son's death, New York State incarcerated me in a mental institution for 21 days. The environment was degrading, stultifying, and downright depressing.
Youth Antidepressant Use Associated With Increased Suicide and Self-Harm
National data on rates of youth antidepressant prescription, suicide, and self-harm in Australia sparks public health debate about drug safety.
Suicide & Candy Corn: The Utility and Challenges of Risk Assessments
Researchers admit their suicide risk assessments work only about as well as random guessing, and they can lead to harm. We can instead focus on finding new ways to form connections that might help tether someone to this world.
Kerry OāMalley: A Personal Struggle Against Forced Medication
Neglect for personal autonomy is a pervasive attitude in the mental health system.Ā No human being should be stripped of their dignity and autonomy, much less a vulnerable 74-year-old woman.
Instrument of the Machine No More
Early in my social work career, I truly believed that medication and forced confinement helped heal āmental illness.ā Then an abrupt awakening completely altered my worldview.
Is It Time to Rethink Mental Illness in Light of the Pandemic?
Now that so many are experiencing distress because of the coronavirus, can we not appreciate that many who have been labeled mentally ill have long experienced these kinds of hardships?
Defunding the Police: Replacing Guns With Prescription Pads Is Not the Answer
Mental health workers responding to emergency calls and crises results in coercion, labelling and othering, paternalism, force, and, yes, even violence, all under the guise of āfor your own good.ā
Study Finds SSRIs Associated with Increased Risk for Violent Crime
Study finds an apparent connection between SSRIs, the most commonly prescribed type of antidepressant, and increased risk of violent crime.
JAMA Psychiatry Retracts Antidepressant Study
Once an appropriate statistical method was used, the study findings were āno longer valid,ā according to the editors of JAMA and JAMA Psychiatry.
Does Stranger Mean Danger?
Are those diagnosed with āmental illnessā more dangerous than other people? Or have we evolved to sense danger from anything that we believe to be different or "strange"?
Stop Saying This: Phrases That Sound Helpful, But Are Actually Gaslighting, Part 1
Therapists seem to have a reference book where they go to find phrases that sound really helpful but are actually gaslighting and self-serving.
John Read and Irving Kirsch ā Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) Does the Evidence From Clinical...
An interview with John Read and Irving Kirsch to discuss their paper which calls to prohibit ECT. This is because the negative effects of ECT are so strong, the evidence supporting it is so weak (especially in the long-term and beyond the improvement due to placebo) and there are other means of addressing the difficulties that the person is struggling with.
Black Suicidality and Mental Health #BlackLivesMatter
Suicides in Black communities can be understood to be caused by an institutionalized inequality that requires Black folks to negotiate their quality of life with life itself.
End Police āWellness Checks.ā Now.
If you are a mental health worker or advocate, there's a way to help dismantle police brutality and systemic racism in the U.S.
Exercise for Youth Mental Health in the Lockdown: Interview with Psychologist Scott Greenspan
School Psychologist Scott Greenspan discusses how to promote exercise and mental wellbeing for adolescents stuck indoors during the pandemic.
We Must Not Be Silent On George Floyd & Systemic Racism.
Dear Mad in America community: How much have we grown? Can we join together in working toward our liberation, bound together as activists?
Withdrawing Kids from Psych Drugs: Why, How, and When
Here are methods for reducing or eliminating a child's psychiatric medications that I have seen work well over years of supporting families through this process.
