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Are those diagnosed with “mental illness” more dangerous than other people? Or have we evolved to sense danger from anything that we believe to be different or "strange"?

An interview with John Read and Irving Kirsch to discuss their paper which calls to prohibit ECT. This is because the negative effects of ECT are so strong, the evidence supporting it is so weak (especially in the long-term and beyond the improvement due to placebo) and there are other means of addressing the difficulties that the person is struggling with.

If you are a mental health worker or advocate, there's a way to help dismantle police brutality and systemic racism in the U.S.

Dear Mad in America community: How much have we grown? Can we join together in working toward our liberation, bound together as activists?

Here are methods for reducing or eliminating a child's psychiatric medications that I have seen work well over years of supporting families through this process.

Recovery involves engaging in new material and social contexts and in open dialogues where new ways of understanding and handling the situation are created.

The main problem with prescribing psychiatric drugs to children is that it hasn’t been very effective.

For every person “Are you suicidal?” may assist, there are many more of us who are scared into silence when those words are uttered. Why? Well, “Are you suicidal?” is, in fact, the king of the suicide risk assessment questionnaire. “Are you suicidal?” has become the red, neon, flashing sign that screams “Stop! Don’t talk to me!” Perhaps this might just explain why suicide risk assessments are well known not to work.

I have been involved in hundreds of commitment hearings in which psychiatric diagnoses were crucial. In that context, I have never witnessed the presence of all three factors: (1) the transparent (honest) use of diagnostic labels (which includes the acknowledgment of the inherent biases built into the labels as well as their limited validity), (2) allowing full voice to and full acknowledgment of the labeled person’s view of reality, and (3) using the labels in a manner that produced a useful understanding, which in standard mental health practice would require that the understanding be significantly more beneficial to the labeled person rather than the labeler.

James and I started talking about how we each fell on the path as seekers. He told me that he was a reiki master. A seed was planted within me. Even though my previous meditation practice did not work out, I still had spiritual longings and wanted to try again.

The answer to DJ Jaffe’s question as to whether or not forced incarceration in psychiatric facilities leads to fear of psychiatric facilities (or of reaching out for help in general) is an obvious one. Yet, it is important that we find ways to use this opportunity to draw the connections in bold, impossible-to-miss lines, and turn this crisis into a learning opportunity that might actually help move psychiatric oppression out of the shadows of the unknown and into the light.

When the DSM-5 came out six years after the study was published, it ignored the evidence that psychological injuries caused 88% of “depression” in adulthood. It wasn't just this study that was sidelined. All the research that linked childhood trauma to later episodes of “depression” was ignored as well.

Trials of antidepressants for relapse prevention are confounded by withdrawal effects caused by the drugs.

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

It's really hard to talk about suicide. We are constantly constrained by the notion that our mental health is our individual responsibility to manage, told to “live our best lives” by a never-ending campaign of exploitative wellness fads. A more collective conversation is needed.

Compassionate Activism encourages people to “take a second look,” as Deron and Linda advised me to do. It is not the easiest thing to do, as we have learned the language and lived the life that profits some while others suffer. Knowing what has happened before can help light a pathway to where we want to be, so sharing the history of mental health is a big part of CA.

The next Town Hall in this Dialogical Series, which is being jointly convened by MIA, HOPEnDialogue, and Open Excellence, will be held on May 15th at noon Eastern U.S. time. It will feature a discussion between Russell Razzaque of London, Regina Bisikiewicz of Poland, Corinne Hendy of Nottingham, Rob Cotes of Atlanta, and Martijn Kole of Utrecht that begins with their experiences of fostering a dialogical perspective in systems of “mental health” care.

A new mental health documentary awakens longstanding tensions around voice, representation, and the power to define problems and solutions.

For psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other therapists to claim that they are essential for warning people that Trump is dangerous is to claim special expertise and insight to which they are not entitled, and it simultaneously demeans the judgment of nonprofessionals and helps strengthen the power of their guilds.

Ann: "I’ve fallen in love! With my group! And they’re in love with me!" Hugh: "The group and you have an important relationship that you’re creating together week after week. This includes breaking down the authoritarian boundaries that keep people in their “places” so that they can’t grow."

Psychiatry: the science of the obligation to adhere to the norm. The norm has changed, and also changes whatever can be defined deviant and erroneously made pathological.

From The Guardian: Counseling has been good to me, and I hope good for my patients. But what if the premise of it is undone by circumstance?

If I had not crumbled, brought to my knees beneath the weight of the misdiagnoses and sordid side-effects of the medications, I would not have had the opportunity to rise up and gain such a strong sense of self—something for which many spend their whole life searching.

In his book 12 Rules for Life, supposedly based on "cutting-edge research," Jordan Peterson attempts to justify the hitting of children as a form of discipline. But Peterson does so without citing a single study to support his view. In fact, this entire section of the book is bereft of any reference to any research supporting the effectiveness of corporal punishment.

Today we launch our brand new culture section where you can find tips on books and films related to mental health issues, and which contribute to the critical review of the current health paradigm in the psychiatric field. The page also has its own section for poetry.