MIA Reports

In-depth reporting on psychiatry and its impact on society.

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“Confidential” 988 Conversation Records Shared with Corporations

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Recordings of 988 callers’ voice, text, and chat conversations are being shared with researchers, AI developers, and corporations without consent.

The WHO Calls for Radical Change in Global Mental Health

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The World Health Organization newly published guidance for community mental health urges an end to forced treatment and the adoption of person-centered and rights-based services.

John Read and Jeffrey Masson – Biological Psychiatry and the Mass Murder of “Schizophrenics”

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On the Mad in America podcast this week, we hear from the co-authors of a paper published in the journal Ethical Human Psychology and...

Branding Diseases—How Drug Companies Market Psychiatric Conditions: An Interview with Ray Moynihan

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MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Ray Moynihan about the marketing of disorders, broadening of diagnoses, and harmful treatments.
Jean-Martin Charcot Demonstrating Hysteria in a Patient

Psychiatry’s Nightmarish 2022 & Its Hysterical Defense Against Criticism

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Psychiatry's defenders are open to criticism of psychiatry as long as it stops short of acknowledging the increasingly well-documented reality that psychiatry lacks any scientific merit.

A Revolution Wobbles: Will Norway’s “Medication-Free” Hospital Survive?

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We interview Ole Andreas Underland, Director of the Hurdalsjøen Recovery Center in Norway which provides “medication-free” care for those who want such treatment or who want to taper from their psychiatric drugs. Ole Andreas explains why the success of this pioneering approach might threaten its future.

Music Aids Mental Health: Science Shows Why

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What can science tell us about music’s impact on our cognition and on our mood, on our capacity for empathy, and our sense of connection with others? How does it change the brain? How does it change us?

Answering Awais Aftab: When it Comes to Misleading the Public, Who is the Culprit?

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The research literature from the WHO, NIMH, and others does not support a narrative of therapeutic progress, of psychiatric treatments that have “continued” to improve over time.
Human brain in glass jar isolated. Sticker, print or blackwork tattoo design hand drawn vector illustration.

Causality in Mental Disturbance: A Review of the Neuroscience

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Psychiatry's medicalization of social and psychological suffering is not justified by the currently known biology.
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Thomas Szasz Versus the Mental Health Movement

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Unbiased experts must examine the claims and research of psychiatry and issue a report as to whether psychiatry not only has a valid medical basis, but whether this basis justifies the widespread violation of medical ethics and the routine use of imprisonment and torture.

William Styron: His Struggles with Psychiatry and Its Pills

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Author William Styron is often remembered for speaking about depression as an illness. But a review of his life reveals that psychiatric drugs may have triggered and even worsened his depressive episodes.

Beverley Thomson–Antidepressed: Antidepressant Harm and Dependence

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We talk with author Beverley Thomson about her latest book, entitled Antidepressed: A Breakthrough Examination of Epidemic Antidepressant Harm and Dependence.
A girl wearing virtual reality device over eyes looks startled with hands wide and mouth open

Why Failed Psychiatry Lives On: Its Industrial Complex, Politics, & Technology Worship

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By embracing the widely popular technology-worship “religion,” psychiatry is permitted to ignore the reality that its repeated failures are evidence that its fundamental paradigm is misguided.

“Never Look on the Dark Side”: The Science of Positivity from Early Eugenics to...

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The "science" of happiness has always been inextricably linked to eugenics. Modern positive psychology, with its focus on genetics and willpower, is no different.

Psychiatry’s Cycle of Ignorance and Reinvention: An Interview with Owen Whooley

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Ayurdhi Dhar interviews sociologist Owen Whooley about psychiatry's stubborn perseverance in the face of recent DSM embarrassments and the failures of the biomedical model.
digital antipsychotic

The Rise of the Digital Asylum

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The digital pill Abilify MyCite, which is now being introduced into the market, foretells of a future where such technology is used to monitor the behavior, location and "medication compliance" of a person 24 hours a day.

Psychiatry and the Selves We Might Become: An Interview with Sociologist Nikolas Rose

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MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews the well-known sociologist of medicine, Nikolas Rose, about the role psychiatry plays in shaping how we manage ourselves and our world.

“Holy Shit!” Psychiatry’s Cognitive Dissonance on Display

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Even those who would seek to reform the profession of psychiatry cannot confront the reality that exists in the research literature

How Culture Influences Voice Hearing: An Interview with Stanford Anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann

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Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Tanya Luhrmann about cultural differences in voice-hearing, diagnosis and damaged identities, and conflicts in psychiatry.
A collage depicting cut-up photographs of David Carmichael and his son Ian, Lindsay Clancy and her children, and a bottle of pills spilling out

SSRIs, Lindsay Clancy, and Me

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Sharing the similarities between Lindsay Clancy's homicidal episode and my own will hopefully help prevent rare SSRI-induced suicides and homicides, including mass shootings.

Inside a Forensic Psychiatry Unit: Here’s How to Survive

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Sean Gunderson, who was detained by the criminal justice system for 17 years after receiving an NGRI verdict, documents the life of a forensic psychiatry inmate.
Photos of Jim Phelps and Robert Whitaker against a turquoise background

Is Mad in America Doing More Harm Than Good?

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A dialogue between Dr. Jim Phelps—a psychiatrist who questions whether MIA is doing more harm than good by reporting the results of long-term trials of psychiatric drugs—and Robert Whitaker, founder of MIA.
Stock photo of wooden people and government building; people protesting

Maryland Enacts a “Draconian” Assisted Outpatient Treatment Program

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Advocates vow to keep resisting psychiatric force, fighting for rights-based supports

Learning a Different Way: An Interview with Maori Psychiatrist Diana Kopua

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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.

Dismissing the “Human Experience”: College Students Feel Unseen by the Medical Model of Mental...

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In conversations with college students and recent graduates from across the country and around the world, they described feeling dismissed by views of mental health that narrow their experiences to individual medical problems.