Books Under Review: Fall 2021

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

Leading Psychiatrists Unwittingly Acknowledge Psychiatry Is a Religion, Not a Science

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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.
A man, silhouetted, seen from the back, standing in a dark city street overpass

Inside A Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Where I’ve Come From and Where I’m Going

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I will begin with a story of my youth. Then I will explore what my life has looked like since my release from custody. Finally, I will offer my own perspective on the country’s problems with gun violence, articulated from my unique positionality.

Point/Counterpoint: What Is the Importance of Nassir Ghaemi’s Conclusion that Psychiatric Drugs Do Not...

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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.
Photograph of two faces in psychedelic colors with dark background

Ending The Silence Around Psychedelic Therapy Abuse

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

“Tetris for Trauma” Viral Twitter Thread: A Master Class in Misleading Psych Research

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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.
Photo depicting a close-up of hands handcuffed behind someone's back, holding a cell phone

Psychiatric Detentions Rise 120% in First Year of 988

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As contacts to the new 988 suicide hotline number have risen, so have call tracing and police interventions.
Photograph of a modern prison's front gate

Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: The Ground Where Death Meets Life

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

Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Here’s How to Survive

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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.

Inside A Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Rolled Ankles, RATs, and Invisible Abuse—The Final Obstacles Toward...

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Sexual abuse is inevitable, an unspoken and largely invisible tragedy that affects most, if not all, inmates who enter into any detention center, especially a so-called “mental hospital.”

Martin Harrow: The Galileo of Modern Psychiatry (1933 – 2023)

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

Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Access to the Courts—A Right and Survival Tool

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Being stuck in the custody of a malicious treatment team could mean death. I had to resort to the Mother of All Tactics Hegemony (a lawsuit).
Photo depicting a female scientist in lab coat looking at a computer screen depicting a colorful psychedelic scene with a figure and a bright eye in the sky

From Peer Support to Psychedelics: Psychiatry’s Co-Optation & De-Radicalization

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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?
Vector illustration of a crowd of many diverse faces

Should Everyone Be in Therapy?

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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 bird soars between bright clouds

Can Psychotherapy Promote Liberation? Addressing Power Dynamics in Clinical Practice

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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.
Thomas Insel

Thomas Insel Makes A Case for Abolishing Psychiatry

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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.
Hands of mother and baby closeup

Mad/Cripistemologies of Pandemic Parenting: Insights for Our “Post-COVID-19” Present

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Respondents described the grief and rage associated with being socially isolated while healing from childbirth and caring for a newborn, in some cases, entirely on their own.
Beata Pawlikowska, a blonde White woman, smiles while holding a manuscript and a pen, sitting at a table in a home.

Threatened for Telling the Truth: Polish Journalist Speaks Out

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Now I’m under attack, with threats of violence flung at me alongside threats of lawsuits. And all because I shared the large body of peer-reviewed research that contradicts the mainstream assumptions of psychiatry.
Close up of businessman hand holding glowing jigsaw element

Our RCT Fetish: How the “Gold Standard” for Research Has Led to A Societal...

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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...
AI-generated image of a snowy yeti and an ice-crusted double-helix

Searching for the “Psychiatric Yeti”: Schizophrenia Is Not Genetic

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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.
Photos of Jim Phelps and Robert Whitaker against a turquoise background

Is Mad in America Doing More Harm Than Good?

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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.

The WHO and the United Nations: Let Freedom Ring for the Mad

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This is a call that challenges how psychiatry is practiced today and ultimately challenges its power in society.
Poster for the documentary film "Cured"

In a PBS documentary, ECT Is Bad for “Curing” Homosexuality, but Great for Depression!

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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.
A painting depicting clouds with lightning over the sea at sunset

Breaking the Cycle: How I Overcame Intergenerational Trauma and Became a Peer Advocate

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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?

Psychiatry, Fraud, and the Case for a Class-Action Lawsuit

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