MIA Today

Medically-induced harm—affecting tens of millions of people worldwide—has taken the field decades to take seriously.

Research suggests that slowly tapering off an antipsychotic reduces the risk of withdrawal psychosis compared to abrupt discontinuation.

If Minnesota is going to mandate ECT for people like Charles Helmer, there are at least 20 questions they need to consider before proceeding.

From The Washington Post: Subtle, everyday forms of mistreatment and discrimination have a major impact on psychological and physical health.

From RT: The framing of an increasing array of social issues in mental health terms raises important questions about how we are being asked to think about the problems that face us.

Psychiatric diagnoses can be shaped by prejudice, reflecting biases that ignore trauma, diminish populations, and invalidate humanity and experience.

From Susan Rosenthal: It doesn’t help to replace one form of oppression with another. Like the police, the ‘mental health industry’ is built on discrimination.

Rape is to Love what Bombs are to Peace and what Behavioral Eugenics are to Mental Health. So I choose noncompliance with psychiatric force.

Richard Sears interviews pharmaceutical industry scholar Lucas Richert about American counterculture and psychiatry in the 1970s.

Ivory McCuen needed warmth and a home the night she died. Court-ordered psychiatric drugs deliver neither warmth nor a home. Federal agencies need to consider people with lived experience.

Rethinking Psychiatry and MindFreedom International convene the first International Peer Respite and Soteria Summit: Creating Compassionate Alternatives for People in Crisis and Distress.

In part four of this series, Megan Wildhood takes on the tropes of "That's not about you," "The outer world is a reflection of your inner world," "I didn't mean to," and "Time heals all wounds."

This week on the Mad in America podcast we turn our attention to prescription-drug-induced akathisia and joining me to discuss this is Jill Nickens. Jill is the president and founder of the Akathisia Alliance for Education and Research, a nonprofit organization formed by people who have personal experience of akathisia.

"Overprescribing Madness" explains how our sane social, political-economic distress responses have become medicalized into a mental illness epidemic.

From The Nation: Campaigns telling people to become “aware” and “reach out” are, at best, an incorrect diagnosis of the problem and at worst, gaslighting.

From MindSite News: The appointment of Pierfranco Trincas as director of the Barcola mental health center in Trieste, Italy, has set alarm bells ringing among supporters of this unique system of community mental health.

MIA’s Justin Karter interviews humanistic-existential psychologist Kirk Schneider about how psychology can play a role in confronting the political, social, and climate crises facing humankind.

As a psychiatric survivor, I was stunned to see a medical professional describe a dystopian nightmare as a vision of progress for psychiatric medicine.

From France 24: "Human beings are born with a search for meaning that can’t be suppressed by an injection of antipsychotic drugs or a few anti-depressants," said one Parisian child psychiatrist.

From Psyche: Often overlooked are the ways in which social norms, cultural beliefs and communal attitudes contribute to mental illness.

MIA interviews psychiatrist and anthropologist Helena Hansen about bringing structural competency to psychiatry while rebuilding communities.

From CNN: A new French Amazon film follows the story of a young woman committed to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in 19th-century Paris for her non-conforming and spiritual ways.

From Psychiatry Is Driving Me Mad: I cannot ‘recover’ in this abusive, controlling, life-threatening environment. I can only try and remain safe, while hoping to survive it.

I am very concerned that Evan is about to be devoured by psychiatry's maw. Things could be different if Evan were able to hire an attorney or attorneys to deal with all of these different legal actions coming at him and otherwise protect his interests such as sue the trustees for their unconscionable actions, but as I have indicated, his trustees have cut off his money so he can't hire such an attorney or attorneys.

Psychiatric survivors in Canada tell the UN that Canada is not complying with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).