MIA Radio

Dr. China Mills shares her reactions to recent events focused on Global Mental Health, elaborating on deeper issues with the framing of mental health as a “burden” and the underlying implications of coloniality, technology, and medicalization.

On October 10th, 2018, World Mental Health Day, The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development published a report outlining a proposal to “scale up” mental health care globally. In this podcast series, we discuss the implications.

On October 10th, 2018, World Mental Health Day, The Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health and Sustainable Development published a report outlining a proposal to “scale up” mental health care globally.

Business as usual — big farming, big pharma and conventional healthcare — is threatening our planet and our very ability to survive as a species. Planetary and human health are at a tipping point. Solutions informed by the science of environmental health, epigenetics and the microbiome, are elegantly simple, but their impact is profound.

Olga Runciman, voice hearer, psychiatric nurse in locked wards, and survivor of a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, brings her experience with recovery to her work as a psychotherapist in private practice.

This week on MIA Radio we turn our attention to Electroshock or Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) as it’s known in the UK. On Wednesday, September 19th, this emotive and controversial intervention was discussed at the 57th Maudsley debate, held at Kings College, London.

From Mad in America Hispano Hablante. With one of the highest mental health expenditures in Europe, the Netherlands is going through a period of...

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.

Does a diet without animal products improve mental health? Why can changing to plant based nutrition be so hard to sustain? And are people's food ethics a symptom of an eating disorder and neglected self-care?

An interview with Dr Julia Rucklidge, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Director of the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Group.

A special two-part interview to join in with events for World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2018. We hear from W-BAD Lead Operations Volunteer Nicole Lamberson, psychiatrist Dr Josef Witt-Doerring, therapist and campaigner Chris Paige and Mad in America founder Robert Whitaker.

Doctoral candidate Akansha Vaswani interviews researcher and geneticist Dr. Peter Groot, who has led the development of Tapering Strips, a novel and practical method by which people taking certain prescription medications can gradually reduce their dosage.

An interview with Professor Sami Timimi and Professor John Read who provide an update on a complaint made to the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists by a group of thirty academics, psychiatrists and people with lived experience.

How can people come off psychiatric medications in the safest way? What are the key lessons and vital ingredients for leaving psychiatric care? Is there life after meds? Laura Delano spent 14 years as a psychiatric patient before she left behind her psychiatric diagnoses and reclaimed herself. Today she is Director of the Inner Compass Initiative and The Withdrawal Project, working to support drug withdrawal and build community beyond the mental health system.

An interview with Dr Peter Gordon who describes himself as a gardener with an interest in medicine. He trained in both medicine and architecture before specialising in psychiatry. In addition, he is an activist and campaigner and has a range of creative interests including filmmaking, photography, writing and poetry.

An interview with Laura Delano, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Inner Compass Initiative and The Withdrawal Project, which aim to create safe spaces for people to connect and the opportunity to learn about and be guided through the process of getting beyond the mental health system and off psychiatric drugs.

An interview with Professor John Read who brings us up to date on the Royal College of Psychiatry's response to a formal complaint lodged on behalf of a group of thirty academics, psychiatrists and people with lived experience.

An interview with Jeffrey Michael Friedman, clinical social worker and activist in the psychiatric survivors movement who provides trauma-informed therapy to victims of abuse and violence, including those who have survived abuses within the mental health system.

An interview with Dr. Russell Razzaque, consultant psychiatrist and associate medical director in east London who, together with colleagues, is leading a pioneering multi-centre Open Dialogue pilot in the UK National Health Service.

What’s it like to be a teenager in a psychiatric hospital? What is it like to be a queer pregnant teenager? Is it true that friends do make the best medicine? Nina Packebush explores these questions and more in her groundbreaking debut young adult novel: Girls Like Me.

An interview with Dr. Duncan Double, consultant psychiatrist in the UK. Duncan is a founder of the Critical Psychiatry Network and runs a critical psychiatry blog. We talk about Duncan’s experiences as a critical psychiatrist working within a bio-medically oriented profession.

Patients, academics and psychiatrists formally complain that the president of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists has misled the public over antidepressant safety. Professor John Read talks to us about recent events.

An interview with Dr. Lucy Johnstone about the new Power Threat Meaning Framework, an ambitious attempt to outline a conceptual alternative to psychiatric diagnosis which was published on January 12th this year by the Division of Clinical Psychology of the British Psychological Society.

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.

An interview with Professor of classical languages and literature, Michael Fontaine. Michael is Associate Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education at Cornell University in New York. We discuss what Ancient Greece and Rome can teach us about psychiatry and the concept of mental disorders.