My Lived Experience Helps Others Heal: Working with Families on the Path to Recovery

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If one person is struggling, everyone in the family is struggling. Families need support.

From Labeled to Healer: A Road Less Traveled

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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.
A painting depicting clouds with lightning over the sea at sunset

Breaking the Cycle: How I Overcame Intergenerational Trauma and Became a Peer Advocate

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How did that young Puerto Rican girl who very much disliked seeing a therapist when locked up in the juvenile system end up working in the mental health field as an adult?
sad child full of woe

Rethinking the Nature of Our Woes

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Parents must inform themselves about the flaws in the current paradigm if they are to have any chance of thinking sensibly about what might be distressing their child. Toward that end of providing information about those flaws, I interviewed Richard Hallam, author of the new book Abolishing the Concept of Mental Illness: Rethinking the Nature of our Woes.
time for rain

A Time For Rain: Teaching Our Children About Sadness

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The only way out of the epidemic of feeling-people-turned-medicated-psychiatric-patients is to rebrand and reframe feeling as a cultural collective. And I believe it starts with our messaging as parents and our orientation toward shadow elements like anger and sadness. We have to model a conscious relationship to our own dark parts, and we have to show our children what it looks like to move through these spaces. Feelings can be messy, wild, and sometimes ugly to our constrained sensibilities.
3D illustration of a bunch of red and white pills labeled "ADHD"

Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 9: ADHD (Part Two)

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Peter Gøtzsche discusses the results of the MTA study on ADHD drugs and the misleading statements textbooks make about ADHD treatment.

Children Are Vulnerable Cogs in the Psychiatric Machine

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My guardian decided to seek out “professional” advice about how to diminish my “outbursts.” I was perceived as a problem that needed to be extinguished into a compliant state.

The Role of Love in Mental Health

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The one core ingredient on which any recovery from emotional distress depends is the one that never makes an appearance in any medical handbook or psychiatric diagnostic manual—that is, love.

Medication Overload, Part II: The Explosion of Drugs for Kids

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An analysis of the huge increase in drugs for children, the role of Big Pharma, and a look at the impact on families and communities.
Illustration of a naked person's back with a blue butterfly perched on their shoulder

A Return to Dignity from Psychiatric and Childhood Abuse

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Homebirth was a reflection of how the mental health system should work: Informed person-centered care while respecting your agency.
sister

“Floss on the Waves”: My Sister’s Journey

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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.

Survivors and Families Working Together For Change: A New Project 

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Based on his lived experience, Ron Bassman describes his efforts to create an educational and support program that links families with survivors.

Reflections on the Silicon Valley Teen Suicides-by-Train: Fifteen Years Later

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A psychiatrist and mom reflects on teen suicide clusters in Palo Alto and discusses alternative ways to address adolescent mental health.

Listen to the Victims: Senate Holds Hearing on Guardianship

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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.
Young professional scientist man wearing white coat over isolated background looking unhappy and angry showing rejection and negative with thumbs down gesture. Bad expression.

Collateral Damage: The Negative Impact of Antidepressants on New Zealand Youth

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Health and wellbeing in young people are trending down in New Zealand. Are antidepressants to blame?

Changing Brains, Changing Minds: Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal and the Marital Relationship

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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.
Silhouette of man and woman's handsin form of heart

Engaging “Madness”: A Guide for Significant Others and Families

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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.
Close up photo of hands dripping water on a plant outside

To Promote Mental Health, We Must Teach It

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When we are quick to pathologize suffering, yet do not provide the fundamentals for healthy living, it is inhumanity of the highest order.

Someone I Used to Know

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When I sit in Billie’s office, I am still 13 years old, bitter anger saturating my body. I am 23, sobbing that I cannot do this anymore. I am 24, celebrating my first year of college. I am all of these people and none of these people.

MIA Update: Our Parent Resources Initiative and More

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Regular MIA readers may have noticed that we recently added a content box on the front page titled “Parent Resources.” This initiative has been a long time coming, and it is one that we hope will help us reach—and serve—a new group of readers. Many parents writing to us are desperately looking for a way out of the conventional system.

7 Tips to Help a Distracted Child

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Simple changes such as keeping a calm home environment, limiting media distractions and enrolling your child in sports will help a child who is inattentive or having problems focusing on his or her school work. They are also useful for any child and can even prevent inattentiveness in an ever-more-distracting world.

Mental Health & Our Schools, Part 2

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Schools are rolling out programs and services intended to safeguard students’ emotional well-being. They are full of potential—and pitfalls.
protesters with a sign reading "silence is suicide"

Black Suicidality and Mental Health #BlackLivesMatter

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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.
trauma wars adverse childhood experiences

U.S. Politicians Now “Trauma Informed”—Should We Be Hopeful?

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It is good that the general public is finally hearing about the ACE Study, but I do not count on U.S. politicians to address the core implications of the ACE findings—the need to re-make U.S. society so as to (1) prevent preventable adverse childhood experiences, and (2) create a society in which healing from trauma can more easily occur.

#RestoreTheirRights: An Update on Guardianship Action

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It’s time to change the conversation around guardianship. The question is not “When do we remove someone’s rights?” but “How can we best support them?”