Art

I am a psychiatric survivor of over thirty-six years. Since my nervous breakdown in 1978, I have undergone multitudinous experiences ranging from the subtly humiliating to the horrifically debilitating at the hands of incompetent psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists who, in the name of medicine, did more harm than good.

-"I could not have written those six words 30 years ago, when panic episodes, anxiety disorders and Tourette's syndrome clouded my view," writes Jonathan Friesen.

-Artists who have "outsider" ways of thinking and expressing are reportedly becoming more popular with some galleries and collectors.

-The Edinburgh International Book Festival hosted a discussion exploring religious beliefs, creative inspiration, and whether hearing "the voice of God" should be regarded as a symptom of mental illness.

There were days that I’d wake up and all I could do was cry for no particular reason, just another miserable day of withdrawal. However, the idea of taking photos would get me out of the house. Especially on those days, the absolutely only thing that would get me to move at all was the idea of taking photos. One particular day, I was just crying, crying, crying, and as soon as I got to a beautiful spot that I loved, I stopped crying, took photos, and felt at peace. I even found that the days I felt the worst were the days I took the best photos.

People "who are prone to psychosis" in its most "extreme" forms, such as delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thought, have been found to also show...

In AlterNet, Scott Barry Kaufman reviews the evidence that people who've been diagnosed with ADHD often have higher than average levels of creativity. He...

The Guardian and other media outlets ran articles about two psychiatrists promoting "the use of hip-hop as an aid to the treatment of mental...

Maria Popova provides some excerpts about music, madness and therapy from the new book, Joni Mitchell: In Her Own Words, from the iconic Canadian...

Boston.com has published an article about the Mad In America Film Festival, running through this weekend in Medford, Massachusetts. "Making people rethink psychiatry —...

Vanderbilt University psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, author of The Protest Psychosis, has published a brief history of "schizophrenia" in relation to African American culture in...

In gaming magazine Polygon, Liana Kerzner reviews video games that weren't designed as "therapy," but include primary characters who are struggling with deep psychological...

In his Scientific American blog, Scott Barry Kaufman discusses a study that provides new perspectives on the controversial question of the links between "mental...

"Is this the future of medicine?" asks Stephen Armstrong in the British Medical Journal. "Little Artie has been left at the doorstep of his...

If human beings were meant to be entirely stable entities, then “stabilizing” them would be an entirely good thing; a target for mental health treatment that all could agree on. But it’s way more complex than that: healthy humans are constantly moving and changing. They have a complex mix of stability and instability that is hard to pin down. All this relates to one of my favorite subjects, the intersection of creativity and madness.

Daniel Helman had a psychotic episode at age 20, but has been off all psychiatric medications since 2006 and is now 44. In Schizophrenia...

The Economist reports on "Ellie," a programmed, virtual psychologist designed by researchers at the Institute for Creative Technologies in Los Angeles, who has a...

A new documentary coming to theatres around the US over the next few months explores Dan Cohen's Music and Memory program and its emotional...

King5 News reports on video games that are being designed by psychologists to help players deal with emotional problems like anxiety and depression. Cheri...

The New York Times Magazine reports on how a woman suffering in depression ended up founding an online art gallery for photographers struggling through...