Mad Parenting: On Becoming an Unlikely Family Man
Iâve often been told I shouldnât have kids because Iâm âbipolar.â But since my twinsâ birth, Iâve been way more stable than I thought I would be, and Iâve found what Iâve always been looking for.
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.
Mental Health & Our Schools, Part 2
Schools are rolling out programs and services intended to safeguard studentsâ emotional well-being. They are full of potentialâand pitfalls.
The Year I Lost Everything, Psychiatry Offered Nothing
After a failed suicide attempt following my son's death, New York State incarcerated me in a mental institution for 21 days. The environment was degrading, stultifying, and downright depressing.
Student Counseling Services: Do They Really Help the ‘Mentally Ill’?
I used to think that the counseling center would help me to resolve my inner conflicts. That visiting the center would do some good for me. I have since realized that most mainstream âmental healthâ is more damaging than helpful. These days if student counselors see any problem with a student visiting the center, they send him or her to see a psychiatrist.
Committed at 16: Memories of a State Hospital
While most of the sting is gone, even now â almost sixty years on â I canât get through a single day without thinking about shock treatment and the state hospital. I regularly have dreams or nightmares about being lost in a strange place and someone making me feel like dirt.
Engaging Voices, Part 2: Working Our Way Toward Connection
Sam Ruck shares his fourth excerpt from his book Healing Companions, which describes his life with, and love for, his wife and her âalters.âÂ
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.
Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 8: Depression and Mania (Affective Disorders) (Part Eight)
Researchers have again and again demonstrated that depression pills double suicides both in children and adults.
One Pill To Disrupt: Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal and the Marital Relationship
The suicidality that accompanies akathisia is the natural human impulse to escape being tortured. To save my wife, the woman I love, I was forced to argue for her continued torture.
The Diseasing of Defiance
Is every defiant child a freedom fighter? Of course not. Disrupting your fourth grade class is not the same as embarking on the underground railway. But is oppositional defiant disorder a label meant to subjugate and to serve the needs of the authorities? Yes, absolutely.
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.
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.
William Jamesâs 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.
“Dad, You Were Right”: I Got Better When I Stopped Treatment
Through all the years that I was a mental patient, my parents were excellent advocates who constantly questioned what the docs were doing, even though my own faith in psychiatry was unwavering.... Amazingly, what cured me was not some type of âtreatment,â but getting away from drugs and therapy.
 Just Like Viruses, Emotions are Contagious
Now is not the time for family members to be nursing old hurts or believe the all-too-common delusion we all periodically fall prey toâyou can get, without giving, when it comes to goodwill. Gestures of decency, gratitude and appreciation will need to prevail.
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.
Child Abuse and Psychosis: My Healing Journey
Hospitalized for "grandiose delusions," I began to wonder: Was my dis-orientation really just a sickness? Or in "treating" it, was I missing a powerful re-orientation toward healing old wounds?
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.
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.
âBreakthroughâ Treatment for Postpartum Depression: Game Changer or Misguided Magic Bullet?
Ultimately, the FDA Advisory Committee recommended approval of brexanolone by a 17-1 member vote. I was the only NO vote. I voted NO because as the sole Consumer Representative on the committee I didnât believe the company had demonstrated that the potential benefits outweighed the potential for harm.
Children Are Vulnerable Cogs in the Psychiatric Machine
My guardian decided to seek out âprofessionalâ advice about how to diminish my âoutbursts.â I was perceived as a problem that needed to be extinguished into a compliant state.
National Boards of Health Are Unresponsive to Children Driven to Suicide by Depression Pills
Peter C. Gøtzsche reports what happened, or rather did not happen, when he contacted National Boards of Health in eight countries with his serious concern that the use of depression pills in children is increasing and leads to more suicides. The continued official denial that these drugs cause suicide and that something substantial needs to be done is appalling.
Shedding the Limits of âSevere Mental Illnessâ Labels
When people seeking help are relegated to âthe Other,â how can they ever form a âtherapeutic allianceâ? Without collaboration, treatment devolves into coercion and oppression. We must change our language and relationships so new narratives can be born.
Four Children
I went to the childrenâs ward, to work with the kids. I remembered to tell all of them that I had been locked up my whole childhood on psych wards, and this always made them trust me.
