The History of Madness Network News and the Early Anti-Psychiatry Movement
Madness Network News, founded in 1972 by two women inmates of Agnews State Hospital, was an anti-psychiatry journal that served as the focal point for organizing throughout North America, and even overseas.
Mental Health Act Reforms Aim to Tackle High Rate of Black People Sectioned
From The Guardian: Mental health advocates have described the proposed reforms as an important step forward to treating people with respect and dignity.
An American History of Addiction, Part 4: “Drugs Are Bad”
The disease theory of addiction had been ingrained in our culture for 200 years when Nixon signed this law. But had we ever actually checked to see if it was all true?
Now I See a Person: A New Model for Breaking Free of Mental Health...
NISAPI helps people achieve recovery by pairing the normalcy of a ranch and the nurturance of horses with a philosophy of postmodern collaborative practice.
Burning Down the House of Psychiatry During COVID
If there was ever a time to re-evaluate how society deals with human suffering, it is now. The pandemic’s mental health effects strain every false narrative and misguided practice of psychiatry.
Is Anti-Psychiatry Harmful?
The notion that one can help a despondent person by giving him or her mood-altering drugs, while systematically ignoring the reason for his/her despondency is a travesty of a helping profession.
Suicide: Shhhhhh
When we have a strong urge to live, it must be very difficult to understand another person’s wish to die. So far, no one has been willing or able to “go there” with me.
Insane Medicine, Chapter 8: Treatment Traps and How to Get Out of Them (Part...
Deconstructing diagnosis, the nature of psychological injury, and how identifying a problem can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Finding One’s Way Through Withdrawal
Prescribers are taught to prescribe psychiatric medication, but they are often not well-educated about the effects on patients of discontinuing these medications.
Looking Under the Lamppost: Confinements of the Prevailing Mental Health Paradigm
The mental health field's focus on the biomedical paradigm is like looking for your keys in only one spot, just because it's the most well-lit.
Reckless Psychiatric Treatment Spun Me Out of Control
The mental health treatment I received between 2016-2019 was like an unreliable car that various mechanics had tinkered with. Yet each time I careened into a ditch, nobody looked at the car, just at me.
Fascist Subjectivity and the Subhuman: An Interview with Critical Psychologist Thomas Teo
MIA's Tim Beck interviews critical psychologist Thomas Teo on how theory and research can do justice to the people it means to describe and explain.
15 Signs You’re Experiencing a Spiritual Emergency
From lonerwolf: There are two main types of spiritual emergency: mystical psychosis (hallucinations, mania, etc.) and the dark night of the soul (depression).
Insane Medicine, Chapter 7: Industrialised Psychotherapy Markets Western Folk Psychology (Part 2)
Contrasting the folk psychology brands of CBT and McMindfulness with empowering frameworks such as Open Dialogue and the Power Threat Meaning Framework.
The Real Cure for COVID Is Renewing Our Fractured Relationship With the Planet
From The Globe and Mail: The solution is not to beat back the symptoms and return to business as usual, but to fan the flame of aliveness of the beautiful and healthier world that is in retreat.
How Big Pharma & Psychiatry Gaslight Us: Interview with Bruce Levine
From Radio Free Sunroot: Kollibri terre Sonnenblume and psychologist Bruce Levine discuss some of the myths surrounding the mental health industry.
Making Music, Healing Souls
The healing power of communal singing is at the heart of two organizations in England and Ireland: Sing Your Heart Out and 49 North Street.
The Professionalization of Mental Health Services Is Ruining Friendship
The emphasis on getting "professional" help allows people to abdicate responsibility to their real-life friends, rather than learning how to contribute meaningfully to relationships.
Appealing the FDA’s Denial of ECT’s Harms
More than 200 people signed an open letter to the FDA requesting electroconvulsive therapy’s safety studies and electrical dosing protocols.
Now I’ve Quit Benzos, This Year Will Be the First I Can Remember for...
From The Guardian: The variety of oblivion benzodiazepines have to offer is a lonely, clinical, anesthetic one.
Celebrating the Anti-Psychiatry Movement
We are winning this battle. And I use the word battle with no apologies or misgivings. Psychiatry has been utterly unreceptive to the concerns of our movement.
Making the Transition to Compassionate Care
I feel my brother was harmed not only by psychiatric drugs, poor nutrition, and dehydration but also by the lack of compassion, social isolation, and dehumanization experience typical of psychiatric facilities.
IN-SHADOW – A Modern Odyssey – Animated Short Film
By Lubomir Arsov: Embark on a visionary journey through the fragmented unconscious of our modern times, and with courage face the Shadow. Through Shadow into Light.
Insane Medicine, Chapter 7: Industrialised Psychotherapy Markets Western Folk Psychology (Part 1)
Sami Timimi explores the common factors that influence therapy’s success, the evidence base for psychotherapy, and the over-promotion of CBT.
We’ve Got Depression All Wrong. It’s Trying to Save Us.
From Psychology Today: When a threat is so bad or goes on for so long, and there is no way to fight or flee, the nervous system decides there is only one option left: immobilization.