Therapy Can Harm Too
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
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
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
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
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
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.
The Aggressive Suppression of Spiritual Awakening
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
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
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
God-like, they assured me they knew what was wrong with me and had the elixir. But their elixir was a poison.
Recovery from Psychosis in Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorder Is Possible
The biggest injustice done to a person with such a diagnosis is to give up on them for the rest of their life.
That Others May Live: An Airman’s Mental Health and Medication Hurricane
“These things we do, so others may live.” It took a small army of my brothers and sisters in and out of uniform to drag me out of my abyss.
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.
Life on the Ledge
When images of myself climbing over the Golden Gate Bridge’s unmistakable red railing appear on the screen, questions shoot through my mind: Where did this footage come from? Why is it on TV?
I Am Carmen and I Have PSSD
No one is prepared to have the ability to feel attraction or fall in love taken away from them. I am incapable of what makes humans human: emotions, emotional bonding.
Escaping the Hell of Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome
I painfully and gradually learned to function with my dysfunctions. Over time, I noticed genuine improvement.
Training Days: Surthriving an Execution, Antidepressants, then Myself — A Cop’s Tale
Recovery from PTSD and from all the drugs I was prescribed was a journey filled with ups and downs, setbacks, and breakthroughs.
Mood Tracking: My System for Reducing Psychiatric Hospitalizations
Mood tracking can make someone realize: I’m starting to become manic, and this is why, and this is what I can do about it.
2017: My Descent Into Mayhem
It’s time to seek out and rescue those pieces of me still trapped in that time and allow them to finally be at peace.
What I Wish I’d Asked Dr. Gabor Maté When I Had the Chance
Does my complex PTSD, depression and rage go back farther than I think? Back to the womb and my earliest days of life? Is that even possible?
Green Star Mother Demands Answers from VA Secretary
If the Veterans Administration is sincere in wanting to reduce veteran suicides, the first place to start is to collect information following these deaths to try to better understand the causes.
My Red October – An Army Veteran’s Crucible to Recovery
After my VA mental health team prescribed Prozac, I began experiencing rapidly escalating behavioral changes. The drug was never considered as a potential cause.
What It’s Really Like Inside a Psychiatric Ward
In a way, the hospital had made me feel better. It had shown me a vision of hell that was going to become my future if I didn't take drastic action.
Did Something Happen?! The Power of Poetry in Telling My Son’s Story
It's hard, if not impossible, to impose on my son’s story any kind of literary “sense.” As a writer and a mother both, this has been my challenge.
Stealing My Mother From Me: The Horrors of Conservatorship
My beloved mother was mistreated, cheated, abused mentally, and alienated from her family by her conservator and the courts.
