Interviews

MIA’s Peter Simons interviews Laysha Ostrow about her mental health research and consulting company, the inclusion of peer specialists in mental health care, and her personal experience with the mental health system.

MIA's Justin Karter interviews two leaders of the Task Force on Diagnostic Alternatives, a group of mental health professionals who have issued an open letter demanding a new look at psychiatric diagnosis.

MIA’s Gavin Crowell-Williamson interviews psychologist Rosie Phillips Davis about her presidential initiative to address deep poverty.

Dr. Anthony Ryan Hatch is a sociologist and associate professor of Science in Society, African American studies and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University, who...

MIA’s Micah Ingle interviews Mary Watkins about reorienting psychology toward liberation and social justice.

An interview with Peter Mayfield, founder and Executive Director of the Gateway Mountain Center. Peter talks of his journey from mountaineering to his role as an educator and mentor, and how enabling children and adolescents to connect with nature has such a profound effect on their health and wellbeing.

An interview with Celia Brown: psychiatric survivor, human rights activist, and president of MindFreedom International.

An interview with activist Dorothy Dundas about her connection to the psychiatric survivor movement from the 1970s to today.

MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Joseph Gone about how a history of dispossession, conquest, and colonization shapes mental health outcomes in Native American communities.

In an interview with MIA's Akansha Vaswani, narrative therapist Jennifer Freeman calls for a shift away from individualistic approaches to 'eco-anxiety' and toward responses that connect us all to a counter-tsunami of action for the planet.

Anthropologist Zhiying Ma explores mental health care in China, including tensions between Western psychiatry and socially-oriented local frameworks.

MIA’s Hannah Emerson interviews Comas-Díaz on the need for culturally competent care in a medicalized and individualistic society.

MIA’s Justin Karter interviews critical psychiatrist and philosopher Pat Bracken about the necessity of challenging received wisdom.

MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Diana Kopua about the Mahi a Atua approach, the global mental health movement, and the importance of language and narratives in how we understand our world and ease our suffering.

MIA's Zenobia Morrill interviews Lucy Johnstone about the reaction to the Power Threat Meaning Framework, her life influences, and her hopes for the future.

MIA’s Tim Beck interviews Dr. Felicity Thomas and Dr. Richard Byng about their report, Poverty, Pathology, and Pills, which situates increasing rates of mental health diagnosis and psychiatric prescriptions within socioeconomic and policy trends across the UK.

MIA's Gavin Crowell-Williamson interviews PharmedOut founder Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman about Big Pharma's influence on medical education.

MIA's Peter Simons interviews David Cohen, PhD, on his path to researching mental health, coercive practices, and discontinuation from psychiatric drugs.

Akansha Vaswani interviews Dr. John Read about the influences on his work and his research on madness, psychosis, and the mental health industry.

Dr. Raskin discusses psychotherapists’ dissatisfaction with current psychiatric diagnostic systems and explores alternatives.

Dr. Vance Trudeau discusses his study's finding that antidepressants may have far-reaching, adverse effects that last up to three generations.

In an interview with MIA, Dr. Horowitz discusses his recent article on why tapering off antidepressants can take months or even years.

Dr. Gail Hornstein, author of Agnes’s Jacket: A Psychologist’s Search for the Meanings of Madness, discusses the importance of personal narratives and service-user activism in the context of the global mental health movement.

Tony Kendrick, a professor of Primary Care at the University of Southampton, has found through his research and practice that too many people are being prescribed antidepressants long-term without the information and support necessary to get off of them.

Researchers, Jon Jureidini, Jay Amsterdam and Leemon McHenry, have taken a closer look at the data from a randomized control trial of citalopram (Celexa) that was ghostwritten and then used by the manufacturers to support claims of the drug’s efficacy and safety in the treatment of child and adolescent depression. To get the background on this story, we connected with Dr. Leemon McHenry, an investigator in this study and a lecturer in philosophy at California State University, Northridge.