From Horse Ranch to Home Ground: Healing Families via Telehealth
Since COVID, NISAPI has transitioned our collaborative therapy setting from barns and fields to kitchens and living rooms. Our clients report similar positive outcomes with telehealth as in person.
ADHD: The Money Trail
Doctors, drug companies, and the news media have profited from skyrocketing rates of diagnosis and drugging for ADHD, and the law has created a perverse set of incentives for parents and children which favor the ADHD label.
The Abused Children to Bipolar Pipeline
The mental health system traumatized me further. They were allies with my abusers to cover up and continue my abuse.
From Labeled to Healer: A Road Less Traveled
We have let down our children (and ourselves) by losing touch with parental intuition and handing their care over to professionals at the first sign of a problem.
Saving Lives or Cementing Stigma? A Review of “Just Like You…”
In my experience, episodes of anxiety and depression dwindle in the face of hope and empowerment, while broken-brain narratives lead to deeper despair.
Connecting the Dots: My Toxic Workplace Made Me âMentally Illâ
In 1996, I suffered my first manic episode. My mother was convinced it had been caused by chemical exposure. But I wouldnât hear it, and neither would my psychiatrists.
Engaging “Madness”: A Guide for Significant Others and Families
Using personal stories from my own family, my new booklet Engaging 'Madness' paints a clear picture of what an alternative healing journey outside the biomedical paradigm can look like.
Parenting Changed My Perspective on âADHDâ
My experience of raising a son who was bright and creative but didnât fit the mold helped me to approach my restless, impulsive students more compassionately and creatively.
Why Do People Self-Harm, and How Can We Stop It?
The psychiatric treatments I underwent did nothing to help me come to terms with my troubled past. Self-harm did not serve me well either. We must re-learn what to expect from ourselves.
Collateral Damage: The Negative Impact of Antidepressants on New Zealand Youth
Health and wellbeing in young people are trending down in New Zealand. Are antidepressants to blame?
Save the Date! Kids in Crisis: The Overprescribing of Psychiatric Medication
Mad in America presents a live Town Hall featuring a special, private screening of "Luna" followed by a panel discussion.
Why Is Child Sexual Abuse So Common in Institutions?
Where ableism and adultism allows disabled children to be seen as unreliable narrators of their own experience, sexual violence in institutions will continue to be pervasive.
Home Alone: Finding Connection During the Pandemic
This wave of emotional distress is a perfectly reasonable human response to living our lives in an increasingly isolated and uncertain world.
Guardianship Destroyed My Family
People who canât take care of themselves need support and protection, but guardianship provides neither. I know: I've lived it.
Fatherland Dreamland Motherland Hinterland
I grew up in Rhodesia, a British colony in southern Africa. Until the age of 16, I lived on the grounds of Ingutsheni Mental Hospital where my father worked. As a psychiatrist, he had enormous power.
Getting A Diagnosis Meant That My Sister Never Had the Chance to Resolve Her...
My sister was told if she took medications everything would be fine. But everything was not fine, and the medications sent her down a path of no return.
Book Review: “Opening Up: The Parenting Journey”
This is a book about stories, urging families to recognize their own strengths and create new narratives on the path ahead.
âFloss on the Wavesâ: My Sisterâs Journey
It takes a long time to recover from a psychotic episode, I understand now, and I wish someone had found a way, especially during those early years of her troubles, to give Rachel more space and time to find her own path to health.
Postpartum Anxiety, Psychiatric Drugs and Paternalism
My postpartum anxiety diagnosis became subsumed by an arbitrary diagnosis of depression. And this diagnosis has followed me for 30 years and counting.
The Sins of Conservatorship: Why Britney Spears Compared It to Slavery
For the last three years of my motherâs life, she was under absolute control of her conservator. If we dared to object to the neglect or abuse, retaliation was certain.
Garbage in, Garbage out: The Newest Cochrane Meta-Analysis of Depression Pills in Children
In May 2021, Cochrane published a network meta-analysis of depression pills for children. The abstract is misleading and reads like drug company marketing.
Why I Fight for Trauma-Informed Systems
I am not sure what was worse: being abused growing up while my community documentedâthen ignoredâmy torment, or being attacked for going public with my story.
So Long, Pill Mill: A Letter to My Former Patients and Their Families
I love being a psych nurse practitioner, and I never want to feel that my only role is pushing pills. The private practice I started is my effort to move away from this dysfunctional system.
Suicidality: When Your Feelings Are Too Dangerous
After finding a cop at my door, I learned it wasnât safe to talk about my feelings of wanting to die. As a result, I spent the better part of the next decade not telling anyone when I was suicidal.
Cindi Fisher on Hunger Strike: Free My Sidd
Cindi Fisher has gone on a hunger strike to demand that her adult child, Siddharta, be freed from Western State Hospital after being suddenly removed from the discharge list without explanation.
