When Psychology Speaks for You, Without You: Sunil Bhatia on Decolonizing Psychology
MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Sunil Bhatia about decolonizing psychology, confronting the field’s racist past, colonial foundations, and neoliberal present.
Roll-out of 988 Threatens Anonymity of Crisis Hotlines
Even after their own advisory committee criticized call tracing, leaders of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline have been lobbying government for cutting-edge mass surveillance and tracking technology. Privacy experts are raising concerns.
Surviving Antidepressants: An Interview with Adele Framer
That is the truth about withdrawal syndrome: It’s like a 50-50 chance that you’re going to have a problem. If you’re in the unlucky half, you’re gonna be really unlucky.
Anatomy of an Industry: Commerce, Payments to Psychiatrists and Betrayal of the Public Good
Pharmaceutical companies paid psychiatrists $340 million from 2014 through 2020, corrupting every aspect of the testing and marketing of new psychiatric drugs.
Adverse Childhood Experiences: When Will the Lessons of the ACE Study Inform Societal Care?
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?
Deprescribing Psychiatric Drugs to Reduce Harms and Empower Patients: Interview with Psychiatrist Swapnil Gupta
Ayurdhi Dhar interviews psychiatrist Swapnil Gupta on psychiatric drug discontinuation, drug cocktail risks, patient choice, and the need for trust and transparency.
Do Antipsychotics Protect Against Early Death? A Review of the Evidence
Psychiatry is now claiming that research has shown that antipsychotics reduce mortality among the seriously mentally ill. A critical review of the literature reveals that this claim is best described as the the field's latest "delusion" about the merits of these drugs.
Demedicalizing Depression: An Interview with Milutin Kostić
Justin Karter interviews Milutin Kostić on the fundamental flaws in depression research and its neglect of human complexity.
Crisis on Campus: Mental Health Counselors Are Feeling the Crush
A dramatic rise in demand for college mental health services has led to counselors feeling burned out. Counseling center directors are looking for solutions.
Leading Psychiatrists Unwittingly Acknowledge Psychiatry Is a Religion, Not a Science
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.
The Case Against Antipsychotics
This review of the scientific literature, stretching across six decades, makes the case that antipsychotics, over the long-term, do more harm than good. The drugs lower recovery rates and worsen functional outcomes over longer periods of time.
Thomas Insel Makes A Case for Abolishing Psychiatry
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.
The Creation of a Conceptual Alternative to the DSM: An Interview with Dr. Lucy...
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.
The Whistleblower and Penn: A Final Accounting of Study 352
After 18 years, the full story of the scientific corruption in a study of paroxetine for bipolar disorder, and the psychiatrist who blew the whistle.
Twenty Years After Kendra’s Law: The Case Against AOT
The proponents of compulsory outpatient treatment claim that it leads to better outcomes for the recipients, and protects society from violent acts by the "seriously mentally ill." Those claims are belied by history, science, and a critical review of the relevant research.
Exploring Psychiatry’s “Black Hole”: The International Institute on Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal
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.
Multiplicity and Mad Studies: An Interview with Jazmine Russell
In this interview, Jazmine Russell describes her journey through psychosis and mental health advocacy to embracing a multiplicity of frameworks in Mad Studies.
Soteria Israel: A Vision from the Past is a Blueprint for the Future
In Israel, there is a budding Soteria movement that foretells of a possible paradigm shift in care. The thought is that such care may become a first-line treatment for newly psychotic patients.
Psychology is Not What You Think: An Interview with Critical Psychologist Ian Parker
MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Ian Parker about critical psychology, discourse and political action, and whether psychology has anything left to offer.
Trump Calls for “Keeping Very Dangerous People Off Our Streets” at Mental Health Summit
A common refrain from the pro-forced treatment advocates at the summit was that "four walls" are not the solution to the crisis. Dr. Drew slammed such efforts in California during his presentation: "The vast majority have serious mental illness and drug addiction. Four walls are not going to do anything, if they would even go in."
The New Yorker Peers into the Psychiatric Abyss… And Loses Its Nerve
The New Yorker's story on Laura Delano and psychiatric drug withdrawal is a glass-half-full story: It addresses a problem in psychiatry and yet hides the deeper story to be told. A story of how her recovery resulted from seeing herself within a counter-narrative that tells of the harm that psychiatry can do.
Breaking Academia’s Silence on Inpatient Psychiatry: An Interview with Researcher Morgan Shields
Morgan Shields discussed her experiences in inpatient psychiatry and her efforts to bring patient-centered care to this oft-neglected field.
A Neuroscientist Evaluates the Standard Biological Model of Depression
Current evidence does not support a biological hypothesis of depression. It is far better predicted by levels of childhood trauma, life stress, and lack of social supports.
When Healing Looks Like Justice: An Interview with Harvard Psychologist Joseph Gone
MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Joseph Gone about how a history of dispossession, conquest, and colonization shapes mental health outcomes in Native American communities.
“Confidential” 988 Conversation Records Shared with Corporations
Recordings of 988 callers’ voice, text, and chat conversations are being shared with researchers, AI developers, and corporations without consent.
