Trauma

After 25 years of chronic emergency, 22 mental hospitalizations, a stint at a “community mental health center,” 13 years in a "board & care," repeated withdrawals from addictions to legal drugs, and a 12-year marriage, I plan to live every last breath out as a survivor, an advocate, and an artist.

From Medical Xpress: New research findings suggest that when pregnant women who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) feel supported by those around them, their...

From The British Psychological Society: A group of senior psychologists and prominent service user campaigners has published a report offering an alternative framework to understand emotional distress. "The Framework...

From WBUR: National tragedies such as the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida can be traumatic even for those who were not directly affected. It is...

From Red Wedge: Mark Fisher, an author and scholar known for analyzing mental health under neoliberal capitalism, took his own life this past January. His...

In this episode of ABC Radio National's All In The Mind, Lynne Malcolm interviews three experts about the impact of trauma on our memory and mental health. One guest,...

In this blog post, Dale M. Kushner explains how the field of epigenetics can illustrate the role of ancestral and transgenerational trauma in shaping our...

How does experiencing physical abuse as an 8 year old shorten one's lifespan? How do insulting words turn into diabetes? Or sexual abuse trigger a heart attack 50 years in the future? Emotional wounds can damage DNA and produce a huge web of destructive effects, but therapy can turn the process around.

It would take decades before I recognized the trauma caused by repeatedly being separated from my mom when she was hospitalized. I grieved almost exactly the way children did who had lost a parent to death. Yet it was grief without closure because my mom was not dead, just... gone.

An interview with Jeffrey Michael Friedman, clinical social worker and activist in the psychiatric survivors movement who provides trauma-informed therapy to victims of abuse and violence, including those who have survived abuses within the mental health system.

I remember clearly thinking, “I’m done. I’m not putting myself through this again.” I wasn’t going to settle for the side effects of a marginally better than placebo treatment again. Here is a brief look into my rollercoaster journey of recovery, returning to work, having my trauma re-triggered, finding a way through, and finally living well.

From Quartz: Despite its inaccuracy, the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness continues to persist in public consciousness. The prevalence of this myth may be...

From The Body Is Not An Apology: For many people, calling the police during a mental health emergency can result in brutality. Here are five...

From Pacific Standard: A new study records the prevalence of several different Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) as well as the demographic groups who are most likely to experience childhood trauma. "The most prevalent...

From The New York Times: Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who has emerged as one of the country's strongest voices calling for a national public health...

From the Boston Review: In his new book Doctors in Denial: The Forgotten Women in the "Unfortunate Experiment," Ronald W. Jones chronicles the history of New...

From BuzzFeed: The Royal College of Psychiatrists has issued a historic statement acknowledging the harm done to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people who were subjected to...

From Medscape: New research shows that individuals who were physically, sexually, or emotionally abused as children are more likely to engage in non-suicidal self-injury. Article →­

From Aeon: The finding that only one in five people avoid any kind of mental health problems or psychiatric diagnoses through their lives has prompted...

From California Healthline: Although people of color are much more likely to suffer from severe psychological distress, they are less likely to receive mental health...

In this piece for The Atlantic, Brooke King reflects on how her trauma currently affects and may continue to affect her children, as well as...

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.

As a clinical psychologist and someone who was herself “diagnosed” and “treated” for “serious mental illness,” Noël Hunter has a unique vantage point to view the mental health profession. I spoke with her about her new book, which offers an insightful critique of mental health’s diagnostic and treatment irrationalities.

In the second part of a two-part series on philosophy and psychiatry, Vincenzo Di Nicola describes an alternative model of psychiatry that rejects some of...

An interview with Jesse Zook Mann of Mental Health Media about trauma, medication withdrawal, and the possibility for recovery. Jesse was severely harmed by psychiatry, but uses language that reaches people who identify with the mainstream paradigm of mental health and mental illness.