Features

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 Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is eager to provide advice or assistance to US citizens who may wish to sue their physicians for prescribing off-label psychiatric drugs to children, said lawyer James Gottstein in an interview with Mad In America.

In their letter to the editor, Rush et al. have doubled-down on the fraud they committed in their 2006 summary report of STAR*D outcomes.

During the current pandemic, the practice of mutual aid—defined broadly as the ways that people join together to meet one another’s needs for survival and relationship—has become mainstream. Yet, often missing from major media coverage of mutual aid is any acknowledgment of its roots in movements led by marginalized people, including Black and Brown people, disabled people, mad people, and psychiatric survivors.

Despite new claims that their study provides "clear evidence" linking serotonin and depression, their data actually supports the opposite conclusion: serotonin levels did not correlate with depression.

“No one is watching these hospitals,” Miranda warned. “No one is listening. Our rights are being violated left and right. They can do whatever they want.”

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."

Part one of a two-part Mad In America investigation into the expansion of psychological screening and electronic surveillance of children and youth. A new government-funded mental health training program for British Columbia family physicians and school staff promotes screening for mental disorders in all children and youth. Critics say the program omits key scientific evidence, seems more like drug promotion than medical education, and downplays serious potential harms. Nevertheless, programs like it are rolling out across Canada and the US.

Legal and practical barriers to voting disenfranchise people judged "mentally incompetent." The centuries-old, unclear laws and regulations also disproportionately affect people of color.

A Vermont residential community program helps people taper or stay off medications with holistic care embedded in a pastoral setting.

Insiders paint a picture of chaos and fear in public and private psychiatric hospitals across the country. "Now that she has been discharged, Sevigny is getting the truth out, just as the nurse asked her to do. She also plans to continue to organizing in her state, with and on behalf of those who continue to be subjected to dangerous conditions in the name of care."

Meet another talented teen behind the pieces in MIA's art exhibition, who says: "I think art is underrated sometimes because of its seemingly uselessness, but I highly believe it can cure many minds."

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

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."

Connection, whether one-on-one or in groups, is at the heart of peer support. In a time when social distancing and stay-at-home orders proliferate, the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community/Wildflower Alliance (WMRLC) is finding creative ways to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances dictated by the novel coronavirus.

As the novel coronavirus continues to wreak havoc around the globe, whistleblowers at American psychiatric facilities paint a picture of mismanaged COVID-19 responses and lax safety protocols, putting patients, workers, and the surrounding communities in harm’s way. Some even allege coverups of deaths.

Veterans struggling with a diagnosis of PTSD, or depression and other difficulties find that learning to perform Shakespearean monologues, and developing their own dramatic monologues, can help them "unwire" from the traumas of war.

“You can’t coerce someone into wanting to be alive. Force just doesn’t work. People must be invited to live while supporters (healthcare professionals, social workers, loved ones) make their lives and world more habitable.”

This is the first of 4 spotlight interviews with some of the talented youth behind the pieces in MIA's art exhibition. HoJin states: "The original idea for my drawing started with the brain. The complexity of its sudden twists and curves fascinates me."

Disability Rights California will challenge Los Angeles’ Assisted Outpatient Treatment program in court this fall, DRC attorney Pamela Cohen announced Friday. According to Cohen, California’s AB-1241 or “Laura’s Law” diverts funding from community mental health services and towards police, administrators and courts, doesn’t reach the people it purports to be trying to help, and violates people’s civil rights. “This is an illegal program,” said Cohen.

Greg Hitchcock is standing and schmoozing with a cluster of people in the soaring, glass-domed rotunda of what once was a grand old bank...

This paper reviews the problems with the usual double-blind, placebo-controlled trials on which drug approvals are based, and advocates for a stricter form of testing psychiatric drugs with patient-relevant outcomes, real comparators, long-term outcomes, and assessment of harms.

In the United States and abroad, a growing number of groups have devoted their mission and mindset to rethinking psychiatry, doing their best to...

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

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.