Essays

Thomas Jobe was a collaborator in a longitudinal study that upended conventional thinking about antipsychotics. He died March 16.

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?

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.

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.

Stories of a state hospital leader who challenged the mental health system by placing patients as the most important people: Dr. Dean K. Brooks of Oregon State Hospital.

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?

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.

Life in the DC was far too complicated for me to be able to just listen to my body and sleep on a thick yoga mat placed on the floor to alleviate my severe back pain.

As mainstream mental health ideas and approaches are increasingly incorporated by community resilience-building groups, critics warn about the dangers of pathologizing and medicalizing reactions to climate change.

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.

If the Brackeen v. Halland case is successful, Native children are more likely to be placed with non-Native foster parents, and face a surge in psychiatric labeling and drugging.

Service-users' experience was at the heart of everything the critics spoke about, as well as the importance of relying on the most up-to-date and accurate evidence.

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.

In the detention center, there is really no better tool to overcome the constant threat of death than equanimity. Meditation was my antidote to hopelessness.

Psychiatry has acknowledged its history of racism, but can they ever acknowledge that the entire edifice is built on fundamental bigotry?

You had better be able to back up what you say with enough force to overcome any opposition; this rule applies to both inmates and staff.

Concerns rise about the adverse effects and longer-term harms of GLP-1 injections like Ozempic and Wegovy.

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.”

I was not going to earn my release the “traditional” way through unquestioning obedience to the treatment team and ADMIN. I was either going to die in there or find a non-traditional path to my freedom.

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).

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.