Personal Stories

People with “lived experience” tell of their interactions with psychiatry and how it impacted their lives, and of their own paths to recovery.

Unmedicated Clarity: How I Reclaimed My Voice After Psychiatry Silenced It

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My healing didn’t begin with that pill. It began the moment I stopped handing over my truth for someone else to interpret.
Collage. A woman chained to a giant pill

Akathisia After a Five-Year Taper: Chained to an Antidepressant Forever

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I have been on Cymbalta for 17 years now and am gutted that my five-year taper did not free me of the drug.

The “Sick Enough” Paradox in Eating Disorder Treatment

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I had internalized that not only would I be socially rewarded for starving myself, but also that I could only earn care by proving that I was sick enough to meet their criteria.

A Love Letter to the Mad

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My madness forged me. Madness led me to deeper truths. Madness discarded beliefs which no longer served me.

Tortured by the Mental Health System Due to Misdiagnosis of Schizophrenia

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The police think my non-existent "schizophrenia" makes me a danger to the community. If I don't show up for my injections I'm subject to police arrest and kidnapping from my home.

Dear Psychiatrist: I Almost Died Under Your Care

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Dear Psychiatrist: What were you thinking when you prescribed me nearly 800 pills of Xanax in under seven months?

Elizabeth Loftus, False Memories and the Search for My True Self

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A cautionary tale about the largely unconscious need for power and dominance that mental health clinicians have over patients’ narratives, especially for children and adolescents.
Depressed student holding a lot of medicine while sitting on her bed

Psychiatric Butchery: What I’ve Seen at a Homeless Shelter for Women with Children

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Children are being given psychiatric drugs, “treated” for the abuse they receive in the harsh world of the homeless.

A Victim Re-Victimised

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I had just been physically abused, deprived of my liberty and had my property stolen. Yet, I was the one who was being arrested.

Grief and Burnout: The Challenge of Staying Out of Psychiatry

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No matter how many times I scatter, I gather my pieces every time and get down to my garden where souls dwell, waiting to be tended.

The Note

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I’ve helped dozens of my students through tough times and suicidal thoughts. But my own child? How do I handle THIS?
Two women, one looking sadly at the viewer and the other standing out of focus in the background. Magazines and chocolates on the bed. A pink convertible out of focus through the window in the background.

I Am Looking for People I Miss

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It’s a community of like-minded people; we should stick together. Maybe, hopefully, I will find my hospital friends.

A Psycho-Spiritual Journey

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The Wellness approach, despite years of deliberate suppression, has survived and proven itself to be highly effective.

Burnout: How Mental Health Systems Fail Neurodivergent Professionals

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Many neurodivergent professionals are burning out quietly in a field that prides itself on empathy while treating its providers like machines.

My Involuntary Metamorphosis

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After day treatment, I went once a week to a “continuing care” group. What was “continued” was the lesson that you had a fault that was shameful, volatile and dangerous.

Therapy Can Harm Too

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I’d like to open up a conversation about the role psychologists and social workers play in getting people on psychiatric drugs and ensuring treatment compliance.

Dear Psychiatrist – I Survived

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It took me over 20 years to believe in myself enough to walk away from psychiatry and psych drugs and regain my life. I not only survived, but I am also thriving.

Overprescribed and Overlooked: A Preventable Tragedy

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My friend’s death was entirely preventable. We need more regulation of psychiatric medication in America.

How Creativity and Flexibility in Therapy Changed My Healing Journey

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This is not meant to be an indictment of DBT, but an example of how important it is to make changes when a treatment doesn’t work.

Medical Health Treatment vs. Mental Health Treatment

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Every person seeking help should be treated with respect, informed of their options, and have a strong sense that their concerns are being addressed.

Brain Stew: An Interview with Myself

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To this day not a single doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, or any other professional has ever even suggested to me that psych meds could potentially be a contributing factor to violence or homicide.
spiritual awakening

The Aggressive Suppression of Spiritual Awakening

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As they handed her hospital pajamas, similar to the orange prison suits you see on TV, she suddenly understood how little these people could help.

Go Where You Are Watered

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It is now five years after I had the courage to take hold of my own destiny. To not let people make me feel like I was less-than due to a diagnosis.

On Not Becoming David Foster Wallace

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I didn't know Wallace was a poster boy for antidepressant withdrawal because I didn't know that antidepressant withdrawal was common, or that I would be experiencing it myself.

Human

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God-like, they assured me they knew what was wrong with me and had the elixir. But their elixir was a poison.