Essays

Normal reactions transformed into illnesses, emotions stripped of meaning, & people deprived of their autonomous coping skills and supports.

Concerns, from functional unblinding to sexual assault in the clinical trials, led this week to a full repudiation of Lykos' MDMA-assisted therapy.

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

The New York Times published yet again the fraudulent result from the STAR*D trial. Will the mainstream media ever tell of this scandal?

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

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.

Has the global mental health movement truly reformed its tone-deaf universalist attitudes?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

The paradox of techno-optimism at a huge conference on the future of mental health led by embattled tech CEOs alongside the most prominent figures of psychiatry.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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

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.

A dialogue between Jim Phelps and Robert Whitaker about Nassir Ghaemi's latest article, which concluded that psychiatric drugs, except for lithium, do not provide a long-term benefit.

The research literature from the WHO, NIMH, and others does not support a narrative of therapeutic progress, of psychiatric treatments that have “continued” to improve over time.