MIA Radio

How a ski accident gave a practical philosopher the insight to liberate his own self worth from the judgments of others and to discover his own career path.

Professor John Read of the University of East London talks about the overuse of psychiatric medications and the alarming growth in the prescribing of antidepressants, benzodiazepines and other psychoactive medications.

An interview with Michael Guy Thompson, a psychoanalyst and founder of the Gnosis Retreat Center, who worked with R.D. Laing in London and has created hospital alternative sanctuaries for people struggling with experiences called psychosis.

Voice hearers, mystics, visionaries, and mad people are found throughout the scriptures of Judaism. What does Jewish theology have to teach us about madness and psychiatric diagnosis?

How can seeing visions and hearing voices be transformed into a spiritual gift for healing? What does the initiation ordeal into becoming a shaman involve? Gogo Ekhaya Esima was diagnosed with psychosis and confined in psychiatric hospitals before she became an initiated Sangoma healer in the Zulu tradition of South Africa.

Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD) is one of the after-effects neglected amid the rapid march of the psychedelic renaissance. But is the impulse to pathologise these perceptual changes helpful?

MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Joseph Gone about how a history of dispossession, conquest, and colonization shapes mental health outcomes in Native American communities.

Dr Irving Kirsch is Associate Director of the Program in Placebo Studies and lecturer in medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He joins us this week to discuss his research into the placebo effect and what it tells us about the efficacy of antidepressant drugs.

Tina talks about her experience with depression, her use of antidepressant drugs and how a change in her medication led to her withdrawal problems.

In an interview with MIA's Akansha Vaswani, narrative therapist Jennifer Freeman calls for a shift away from individualistic approaches to 'eco-anxiety' and toward responses that connect us all to a counter-tsunami of action for the planet.

Sinead has taken antidepressant drugs for the last 16 years and attempted to withdraw on several occasions, she describes the challenges that she faced.

MIA’s Justin Karter interviews psychiatrist Awais Aftab about how “conceptual competence” uses philosophy to transform psychiatry.

Herman Garcia is the Vice President and Ryan Bemis Founder of Crossroads Community Supported Healthcare, which offers practical skills training to local healers in the violence-stricken communities of Ciudad Juarez and Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico.

Pratima Singh, who got her medical degree in India, works at the Maudsley NHS Hospital in London as an adult psychiatrist. She has a deep interest in alternatives to biological approaches to psychiatry and the use of psychotropic medications.

After taking the psychedelic drug ayahuasca, Martha Elisabeth went into an extended altered state diagnosed as psychotic. Her terrifying ordeal ignited a spiritual initiation that eventually brought gifts of awakening, insight, and compassion.

An interview with Professor Sami Timimi, Psychiatrist Peter Gordon and campaigner Stevie Lewis, who talk about the potential for conflicts of interest with the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists participation in a Government-led review of Prescribed Drug Dependence.

MIA's Richard Sears interviews psychotherapist Anne Guy about working with clients withdrawing from psychiatric drugs.

What do depression, loss, frustration, and conflict have to do with global transformation? You can find the answers in this introduction episode to the Break Down. Wake Up podcast

This week on MIA Radio, we interview Chris Hansen. Chris works as Director for Intentional Peer Support and in this interview, we talk about Chris’s personal experiences of the mental health system and how Intentional Peer Support approaches contrast with mainstream psychiatry.

MIA's Ana Florence interviews recovery advocate Ro Speight about her journey from receiving Peer Support to working as a facilitator in Peer Partnered Open Dialogue.

MIA's Gavin Crowell-Williamson interviews PharmedOut founder Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman about Big Pharma's influence on medical education.

How coming to terms with her own relationship doubt and a part of herself she did not want to see brought an executive coach deep compassion for herself and others.

Peter Simons covers in detail a new systematic review that debunks the widely popularized myth of low serotonin in depression, the “chemical imbalance theory.”

An interview with psychiatrist, academic and author Dr Joanna Moncrieff, one of the founding members of the Critical Psychiatry Network. We talk about the recent meta-analysis of the efficacy and tolerability of 21 antidepressant drugs, widely reported in the UK news media on February 22nd.

Monica Cassini has seen the mental health system from both sides – as a social worker and as a person whose life was severely ruptured by psychiatric drugs. She writes critically about the system, as well as holistic pathways of healing without medication.