The Birth of The “Just Stop It” Movement: A Family’s Journey Through Mental Health...
Will was plunged into an extreme state following exposure to a synthetic street drug, which led to repeat hospitalizations and psych drugs.
Lithium: A Survivor’s Guide for Parents
When I was a young adult, I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and placed on lithium. I am 61 years old now, living on the edge of end-stage kidney disease. If I could undo everything, by all means, I would not have taken this drug. It is not safe for anyone at any age.
Listen to the Victims: Senate Holds Hearing on Guardianship
I have seen the exploitation wreaked by court-appointed guardians. It is up to us to use our voices for those who cannot speak out.
My Sister Lucy’s Death and Life: Picturing an Alternate Timeline of Recovery
I’ll never forget standing beside my sister Lucy as she was strapped to a gurney during a midnight admission to an E.R. in Cambridge, Mass.
Giving Caregivers a Platform: Sam, Husband of Ka’ryn Marie
For many caregivers who assist their loved ones, the journey involves navigating the medical system and its many challenges. This time, the journey takes...
The Scientism of Childhood and Adolescent Depression
When I was training to be a child psychiatrist in the mid-1990s, childhood depression was considered to be rare, related to adversity, and generally unresponsive to pharmaceutical treatment. Since then much has changed. The psychiatrization of the pain and struggles involved in growing up has caused considerably more harm to young people than good. I believe the science is on my side in this conclusion.
Giving Caregivers a Platform: Leigh, Mother of Melissa
This is the story of a young woman who suffered through the agony of "kindling" and other drug-related harm, eventually dying by suicide. This is also the story of her mother’s path ahead.
How the Troubled Teen Industry Turns Pain Into Profit
These programs, though marketed as "therapeutic," are nothing more than profit-driven enterprises that exploit families at their most desperate.
Kick Big Pharma Out of the Classroom
School-based strategies such as the “talk to your doctor” campaign about any childhood problem have been extremely effective in helping the pharmaceutical industry to marginalize traditional child-rearing practices and replace them with advice from mental health “experts” and the use of dangerous drugs. These campaigns are reminiscent of now-illegal vintage tobacco ads in which doctors endorsed cigarette smoking.
The Worst Thing: How My Mother’s Death Pushed Me to Overcome OCD
The goal of creating a legacy for my mother required that I go beyond managing my symptoms to confronting my OCD at its roots. I had to fundamentally change my understanding of anxiety.
7 Tasks for a Parent Whose Child Is Diagnosed with a Mental Illness
When I teach workshops or lead discussions on coming off psychiatric drugs and alternatives, there are invariably parents present who are at loose ends. They want to know how best to help their children, and how it can be possible for their child to live without medication. Here are seven ideas I share with them that may also help you.
William James’s Letter to His Depressed Daughter
If you discover that your child has been experiencing a bout with depression, what wise words might you share? Brilliant psychologist William James was forced to address this issue himself when his 13-year-old daughter, Peg, began to struggle with melancholy. I present his long, thoughtful reply for your consideration.
Good Damage: How Community-Led Healing Challenges the Campus Mental Health System
Being re-grounded in my community reminds me that mourning and love are inseparable, and that “nothing about us, is for us, without us.”
Giving Caregivers a Platform: Chandra, Mother of Sophia
This is the story of Chandra and her daughter Sophia (not their real names), who has been in the mental health system since the age of 10.
Mental Hell-Care: My Sibling’s Story
Doctors refuse to believe psychiatric medications have caused my sibling, Pat, any harm. Over a three-year period, however, Pat's insurance companies have paid out more than one million dollars to warehouse Pat and to provide "treatment" that has caused complete disability.
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.
Catherine’s Story: A Child Lost to Psychiatry
A year ago today, our youngest child died, thanks to the adversarial actions and toxic treatments foisted on her by medical-model psychiatry. By telling her story, we hope to promote systemic change.
Making Mental Health an Ongoing Priority: A Patch Adams Approach
My brother’s sudden death and Mental Health Awareness Month spurred me to spend May making small, very personal efforts to both honor his memory and move the mental health conversation forward.
Childhood Trauma Is Not a Mental Illness
My childhood was stolen by systems focused on labeling and medicating me instead of healing the effects of abuse and neglect.
Changing Brains, Changing Minds: Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal and the Marital Relationship
As family support people for those caught in the mental health system, our job is to mitigate as much of the trauma as we can.
What Video Games Can Teach Us About Effective Parenting
There is a secret to the programming of these games that seems to stir children to a level of greatness. Fortunately, that magic is completely transposable to our interactions with them.
To Young People of Color with Lived Experience: Pay it Forward; Become a Peer
A Peer Support Specialist tells her story and issues a callout to the BIPOC LatinX community, advocating for change.
Inside an Online Charter School: Labeling Kids “Disabled” for Profit
I’d thought this teaching job would be my chance to make positive changes in children’s lives. But most of the recommendations in students' IEPs were related not to reading, writing, and ’rithmetic but to behavior control and obedience to adults. And the school seemed to be working very hard to prove that the kids were disabled and to get them certified as such.
Black Suicidality and Mental Health #BlackLivesMatter
Suicides in Black communities can be understood to be caused by an institutionalized inequality that requires Black folks to negotiate their quality of life with life itself.
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.
