Patients at Greatest Risk of Self-Harm Right After Starting Antidepressants: Study
From Axios: It has been known since 2004 that antidepressants can increase suicidal behavior, but new research is clarifying when the threat is greatest.
The Medicalization of the American Mind
One cause of fragility? Pathologizing our children with psychiatric diagnoses and focusing on a medical solution to life's problems.
Trauma Responses Are Conditioned, Not “Chosen”
From Dr. Glenn Doyle: From our nervous system’s point of view, if it had to wait around for us to think about everything that happens to us or "choose" a response, we’d have been eaten by sabre tooth tigers eons ago.
Interview with Robert Whitaker – How Psychiatry Lost Its Way
From Witt-Doerring Psychiatry: Robert Whitaker and Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring discuss what is wrong with the way psychiatry is practiced today, why there are so many problems and why they haven't been fixed.
SSRIs, Lindsay Clancy, and Me
Sharing the similarities between Lindsay Clancy's homicidal episode and my own will hopefully help prevent rare SSRI-induced suicides and homicides, including mass shootings.
Eating Disorders Among Teens More Severe Than Ever
From NBC News: Since the pandemic, people are experiencing eating disorders at younger ages and in more serious condition, with both mental and physical symptoms appearing more urgent.
Federal Judge Finds Texas Use of Psychotropic Drugs on Foster Children ‘Appalling’
From KERA News: "These children are being repeatedly raped in [DFPS's] care," said Judge Janis Jack. "They’re being drugged in your care if they complain. If their behavior is not up to snuff, they’re getting psychotropic drugs. And that is not safe."
Q&A: What Is Informed Consent, and What Should I Know to Help My Child?
My experience caused me to look into the origin of including the patient in decision-making about treatment and informed consent.
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.
To Promote Mental Health, We Must Teach It
When we are quick to pathologize suffering, yet do not provide the fundamentals for healthy living, it is inhumanity of the highest order.
A Case Before the U.S. Supreme Court Could Surge the Psychiatric Labelling and Drugging...
If the Brackeen v. Halland case is successful, Native children are more likely to be placed with non-Native foster parents, and face a surge in psychiatric labeling and drugging.
Abused by Psychiatrists After a BPD Misdiagnosis
If you don't realize that you are autistic, your intellectual, sensory, social, and emotional differences are a mystery, even to you.
Tanya Frank—Zig-Zag Boy: My Family’s Struggles With Broken Mental Healthcare
Author Tanya Frank discusses her book 'Zig-Zag Boy A Memoir of Madness and Motherhood', which chronicles the experiences of her son Zach who experienced psychosis as a 19-year-old.
Pharmed Out Podcast: Paying Attention to ADHD Diagnosis and Treatment in Children
On the latest Pharmanipulation podcast, hosts Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman and Caroline Renko interview psychologist Dr. Gretchen LeFever Watson and journalist Robert Whitaker about the...
Emotional Crisis Response: The Peer-Run Respite/Soteria House Approach Compared to the Conventional Approach
The peer respite/Soteria house model responds to emotional crisis with compassion and curiosity, rather than pathologizing.
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.
Mad/Cripistemologies of Pandemic Parenting: Insights for Our “Post-COVID-19” Present
Respondents described the grief and rage associated with being socially isolated while healing from childbirth and caring for a newborn, in some cases, entirely on their own.
Diode | A Narrative About a Mental Journey by Karen Hudes
From Thomas Pynchon: Atmospheric forces channel suddenly through the individual, the release point of a larger, pressured system. At the moment of crisis, all attention goes to the diode.
Screening for Perinatal Depression: An Effective Intervention, or One That Does More Harm Than Good?
Why does the U.S. describe perinatal screening as providing a proven benefit, while the task forces in the U.K. and Canada see no evidence of such benefit?
What’s Missing from NAMI and Pro-Psychiatry: Lived Experience
Since many psych patients become forced consumers, their advocates have a duty to be educated and concerned with adverse reactions.
Beyond Labels and Meds—Closer Look: Isabella Castillo
At times I tend to feel invisible. Sometimes I don’t feel like I fit in with everyone else; I feel like an outsider.
Beyond Psychiatry: A Trauma-Centric View of Mental Health
Internal family systems therapy is a non-pathologizing method of working toward healing from trauma, a journey of returning to wholeness by reconnecting with ourselves.
Everyone Has a Story
Greetings to all in the Mad in the Family community. I’m the new editor of this bustling corner of Mad in America, and I’m thrilled to start working with you all.
Beyond Labels and Meds—Closer Look: Madeline Aliah
Meet another talented teen behind the pieces in MIA's art exhibition. She writes: "This poem was written in my first year at a queer-positive school and is processing the new forms of guilt and shame I experienced and was exposed to."
‘More Like Spin-the-Bottle Than Science’: My Mission to Find Proper Treatment for My Son’s...
From The Guardian: After years journeying through the traditional healthcare system, could radical alternatives save my son from an endless cycle of hospital stays and drugs?
