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Philosopher Justin Garson discusses the potential benefit of looking at madness not as disease or defect, but as a designed feature.

The amount of anxiety I felt on these medications — and for a couple of years after — was unfathomable. I felt as though I was trapped in an air-tight vat, constantly gasping for breath. And my thoughts were guided by my state of constant worry and panic.

A warm line is an alternative to a crisis line that is run by “peers,” generally those who have had their own experiences of trauma that they are willing to speak of and acknowledge. Unlike a crisis line, a warm line operator is unlikely to call the police or have someone locked up if they talk about suicidal or self-harming thoughts or behaviors. Most warm line operators have been through extreme challenges themselves and are there primarily to listen.

I kept telling her that Carsten Dahl is not Carson Dyle for the obvious reason the former doodles Danish bebop on the piano with a sort of...

The American Journal of Psychiatry Needs to Retract Study That Reported Fraudulent Results

I look into the dark pool I see colors spinning Inklings Of what has yet to become With one prick of my finger The ripples of change Cast outwards Water cannot...

For decades, psychiatry committed medical fraud when it told the public that antidepressants fixed a chemical imbalance in the brain.

Three Identical Strangers is a riveting film describing the story of identical triplets separated at six months of age and reunited in early adulthood. Their story provides no evidence in support of the genetic side of the nature-nurture debate, but it does supply some evidence in favor of the environment.

The “good” suicide attempt survivor wakes up in a hospital bed bathed in beautiful natural light, surrounded by the people who love them most, and they realize that their thinking was flawed and all those unsolvable problems can actually be solved if they are just compliant with medication and therapy. And then there's the “bad” suicide attempter who is angry that they lived, who challenges the status quo.

In Part 2 of our reader Q&A podcast, MIA founder Robert Whitaker answers questions on pharmaceutical marketing and issues with psychiatric treatments including psychiatric drugs and electroconvulsive therapy.

The Minnesota Starvation Experiment was conducted at the University of Minnesota during the Second World War. Prolonged semi-starvation produced significant increases in depression, hysteria and hypochondriasis, and most participants experienced periods of severe emotional distress and depression and grew increasingly irritable. It really should not be a surprise to this audience that the brain’s functioning is highly compromised when the body is being starved of food (and nutrients). What we wonder is whether eating a diet of primarily highly processed foods low in nutrients has similar effects.

On the Mad in America podcast this week we have Robert Whitaker with us to answer questions sent in by readers and listeners.

Psychiatry has long turned a blind eye to the full scope of harm associated with TD. New TD drugs "work" by further impairing brain function.

During the past twenty years, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and American psychiatry have adopted a "medicalized" approach to preventing suicide, claiming that antidepressants are protective against suicide. Yet, the suicide rate in the United States has increased 30% since 2000, a time of rising usage of antidepressants. A review of studies of the effects of mental health treatment and antidepressants on suicide reveals why this medicalized approach has not only failed, but pushed suicide rates higher.

In this interview, Jon Jureidini talks about the issues with evidence-based medicine and describes what led to the debasement of a system originally conceived to challenge extravagant claims and poor science.

Personality tests function for an employer, intentionally or otherwise, much like diagnostic criteria function for the mental-health system: these labels determine who gets resources that capitalism itself makes scarce — not only basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter, which require money to obtain, but empathy, understanding and support, which are kept in short supply.

MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Sunil Bhatia about decolonizing psychology, confronting the field’s racist past, colonial foundations, and neoliberal present.

Through my research and experiences, I've found that what the Veterans Administration has been doing to fight the veteran suicide epidemic isn't working and appears to be unintentionally exacerbating it. These problems are fixable. But I need your help.

Pharmaceutical companies paid psychiatrists $340 million from 2014 through 2020, corrupting every aspect of the testing and marketing of new psychiatric drugs.

Supporting a Child, Teen, or Young Person in Crisis - Our guest panel, Ciara Fanlo, Morna Murray and Sami Timimi join host Amy Biancolli to share stories of crisis but also stories of healing and of hope.

I was shaking and crying as I told a stranger everything about my life, and they looked at me like I was a criminal. Like I was crazy. I started to think maybe I was.

This is a call that challenges how psychiatry is practiced today and ultimately challenges its power in society.

In their letter to the editor, Rush et al. have doubled-down on the fraud they committed in their 2006 summary report of STAR*D outcomes.

The American Journal of Psychiatry will not be retracting the fraudulent STAR*D study.

In the United States and other countries that have a military, there is often a great deal of talk about supporting veterans, but way too often, research aimed at learning what will be helpful is misguided and can even be harmful. The same applies to nonveterans who have been through traumatic experiences. Two new studies exemplify such wrongheaded approaches.