Essays

After decades of study, billions of dollars spent, and thousands of studies conducted, the failure to identify any genes for schizophrenia should definitively put to rest the notion that schizophrenia is a genetic disorder, according to E. Fuller Torrey.

A TV writer claims that research shows that Tetris is “literally a trauma first aid kit.” Her tweets sound scientific, but the research behind it is unconvincing.

By embracing the widely popular technology-worship “religion,” psychiatry is permitted to ignore the reality that its repeated failures are evidence that its fundamental paradigm is misguided.

For decades, psychiatry committed medical fraud when it told the public that antidepressants fixed a chemical imbalance in the brain.

All the new hype about miracle psychedelic treatments as the next wave of cures for mental disorders leaves out the risk of therapy abuse.

Just as it risks transmitting harmful narratives about pain and distress, psychotherapy might also subvert these very harms in pursuit of genuine healing and transformation.

A new study finds that those with mild distress are three times as likely to feel worse after therapy than to receive some benefit.

This is a call that challenges how psychiatry is practiced today and ultimately challenges its power in society.

Leading figures in psychiatry acknowledge that DSM psychiatric diagnoses and the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness are not scientifically valid, but are useful fictions that help people manage their emotions and comply with their medication treatments.

Reviews of four recent books reflecting various perspectives on the mental health system, including explorations of the DSM and Open Dialogue.

Unbiased experts must examine the claims and research of psychiatry and issue a report as to whether psychiatry not only has a valid medical basis, but whether this basis justifies the widespread violation of medical ethics and the routine use of imprisonment and torture.

As contacts to the new 988 suicide hotline number have risen, so have call tracing and police interventions.

To strip psychedelic use down to its chemicals is to de-radicalize its communal and anti-authoritarian roots. Given psychiatry’s history of treatment outcome failure and its ethically compromising financial relationships with Big Pharma, is it really a good idea to make psychiatry the societal authority in charge of psychedelic use?

A dialogue between Dr. Jim Phelps—a psychiatrist who questions whether MIA is doing more harm than good by reporting the results of long-term trials of psychiatric drugs—and Robert Whitaker, founder of MIA.

Sean Gunderson, who was detained by the criminal justice system for 17 years after receiving an NGRI verdict, documents the life of a forensic psychiatry inmate.

The poster-children of psychiatric genetics, who endured abuse throughout their lives, were also the product of a racist culture.

The "science" of happiness has always been inextricably linked to eugenics. Modern positive psychology, with its focus on genetics and willpower, is no different.

In his new book, former NIMH director Thomas Insel, while exploring the causes of poor mental health outcomes in the United States, omits any mention of NIMH studies that tell of how the drugs worsen long-term outcomes.

Following psychiatry’s repeated failures, a sane society would not give it increased status and power. However, our insane society uncritically accepts, celebrates, and worships anything promoted as technologies of control.

Harrow's research over the years told of how long-term antipsychotic use is associated with worse outcomes, even after controlling for psychosis severity.

After Joanna Moncrieff and colleagues published their study debunking the low-serotonin theory of depression, the editor of Mad in Sweden, Lasse Mattila, wrote Sweden’s...

A new documentary about gay activists' defeat of the APA ends with a disclaimer that ECT is "effective" for severe depression. Bruce Levine spoke with the filmmakers.

How did that young Puerto Rican girl who very much disliked seeing a therapist when locked up in the juvenile system end up working in the mental health field as an adult?

How the unrelated murder of an inmate on another unit led to Sean's transfer, his escape from forced medication, and eventually, his release.

Even those who would seek to reform the profession of psychiatry cannot confront the reality that exists in the research literature