Features

Meet another talented teen behind the pieces in MIA's art exhibition. She writes: "This poem was written in my first year at a queer-positive school and is processing the new forms of guilt and shame I experienced and was exposed to."

A program offers psychotherapy in exchange for voluntary service in the community. But the act of volunteering itself can have mental health benefits of its own.

At times I tend to feel invisible. Sometimes I don’t feel like I fit in with everyone else; I feel like an outsider.

While the developers are promoting the apps as a public health initiative, they are effectively an AI that would be snooping on you at all times—ostensibly coming to know you better than you know yourself. And ultimately doing so for commercial purposes that will expand the psychiatric enterprise.

A new questionnaire funded by AbbVie conflates antidepressant side effects with bipolar disorder and doesn’t actually meet the criteria for being considered “screening.”

A new nonprofit support line takes a harm-reduction approach and helps people process their psychedelic experiences.

Lancet Psychiatry, a UK-based medical journal, recently published a study that concluded brain scans showed that individuals diagnosed with ADHD had smaller brains. That conclusion is belied by the study data. The journal needs to retract this study. UPDATE: Lancet Psychiatry (online) has published letters critical of the study, and the authors' response, and a correction.

The ACE study tells of how adverse childhood experiences increase the risk of psychological and physical problems in adulthood. When will we start incorporating these findings into public health policy and medical care?

Through years of turmoil and confusion, Cindi Fisher’s enduring love for her involuntarily committed son gradually changed her from compliant mom to mental health civil rights activist. That’s when authorities banned her from even contacting her son. But could she be a bellwether of a coming nation-wide wave of protestors?

Protection and Advocacy organizations were designed as ground-breaking tools for fighting involuntary commitment and protecting patients’ rights. Are they fulfilling their promise? And will they survive Trump?

New data reveals that four times as many callers to 988 as previously publicly claimed are getting visited by police or emergency medical services.

For the past 15 years, the VA's suicide prevention efforts have focused on getting veterans screened and treated for psychiatric disorders, with antidepressants a first-line therapy. This effort has caused veteran suicide rates to steadily rise.

Criticism that uniquely applies to establishment psychiatry but not to medicine in general threatens its existential legitimacy, and is not tolerated.

Psychiatry’s depression outcomes are poor because its bio-chemical-electrical treatments are based on a depression model that science has flushed down the toilet.

In a MIA survey of people who had been patients in mental hospitals, nearly 500 respondents told of an experience that was often traumatic, and frequently characterized by a violation of their legal rights, forced treatment with drugs, and physical or sexual abuse. Only 17% said they were “satisfied” with the “quality of the psychiatric treatment” they received.

During the past twenty years, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and American psychiatry have adopted a "medicalized" approach to preventing suicide, claiming that antidepressants are protective against suicide. Yet, the suicide rate in the United States has increased 30% since 2000, a time of rising usage of antidepressants. A review of studies of the effects of mental health treatment and antidepressants on suicide reveals why this medicalized approach has not only failed, but pushed suicide rates higher.

When Carina Håkansson sent out an invitation for a symposium on "Pharmaceuticals: Risks and Alternatives," some of the world's top scientists, along with experts-by-experience, came from 13 countries to explore better ways to respond to people in crisis.

A dramatic rise in demand for college mental health services has led to counselors feeling burned out. Counseling center directors are looking for solutions.

This is what social media does, she says. It draws people in. It hurts people. In the worst cases, it kills people.

A mom describes her son's descent into the harms of psychiatry—and his way out. "It was really difficult to watch Matt decline. He had given up hope that he could get well."

“We need the MindFreedom Shield to have someone in our corner when we are told that it doesn't matter what we want, that someone else can make a choice about our bodies that we will have to live with for the rest of our lives.”

This week on MIA Radio, we present the second part of our podcast to join in the events for World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2020...

The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry had the clout to draw a stellar line-up of presenters to its recent conference, including internationally prominent critics like David Healy, Peter Gøtzsche, Robert Whitaker and Allen Frances. There were lots of learnings and even some tense discussions, but one of the most intriguing aspects of the entire conference was the way in which scientific and social issues became deeply intertwined, especially when presenters reached for better pathways forward.

Mayor Adams' plan to "involuntarily remove" unhoused people has met with backlash from activists and the unhoused, who say it violates their rights and further entrenches systemic racism.

Soon after states finally began providing adults who remembered childhood abuse with the legal standing to sue, the FMSF began waging a PR campaign to discredit their memories—in both courtrooms and in the public mind.