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From Medium: What Americans really need is to fix the cycles of abuse that have driven them to seek, and yet never find, safety in the unsafe world they have created.

A roundup of Mad in America's most read blogs and personal stories of 2022 as chosen by our readers.

I had a chemical brain injury from medications. The only help doctors could offer was more medications: treating the failed treatment with other dangerous treatments.

With a diagnosis of schizophrenia, if internalized, comes the erosion of personhood, lowered self-esteem, shattered dreams, and a sense of disenchantment. The psychiatrist Richard Warner has even suggested that those who reject the diagnosis of severe mental illness may have better outcomes as they retain the right to construct their own narrative of personhood and define what really matters for them. Despite public education campaigns (or perhaps because of them), the stigma of mental illness is as enduring as it was 50 years ago.

On the MIA Podcast, Dr David Healy discusses World Tapering Day, antidepressant treatment and sensory neuropathy and the difficulties that can be encountered when trying to deprescribe.

Since I spoke at NAMI’s national convention last month, the writer Pete Earley has invited people who listened to my talk to send him their reports of the event. Earley wrote a book titled Crazy, which was both about his son’s struggles with mental illness and the criminalization of the mentally ill, and in his book and other writings, he has told of his frustration with laws that prevented his son from being forcibly medicated. Yesterday, on his website, he published a letter from a mom who attended my talk with her adult son, and she told of how, after returning from the meeting, her son apparently abruptly stopped taking his medication and has now gone missing.

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

In just two decades, pointing out the pseudoscience of the DSM has gone from being an “extremist slur of radical anti-psychiatrists” to a mainstream proposition from the former chairs of both the DSM-3 and DSM-4 taskforces and the director of NIMH. In addition to the pathologizing of normal behaviors, another explanation for the epidemic — the adverse effects of psychiatric medications — is also evolving from radical to mainstream, thanks primarily to the efforts of Robert Whitaker and his book Anatomy of an Epidemic. While diagnostic expansionism and Big Pharma certainly deserve a large share of the blame for this epidemic, there is another reason.

Even after their own advisory committee criticized call tracing, leaders of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline have been lobbying government for cutting-edge mass surveillance and tracking technology. Privacy experts are raising concerns.

The proponents of compulsory outpatient treatment claim that it leads to better outcomes for the recipients, and protects society from violent acts by the "seriously mentally ill." Those claims are belied by history, science, and a critical review of the relevant research.

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

As I have various discussions about mental health and disability on the internet, I am disturbed at how many people continue to use the terms “high functioning” and “low functioning” when referring to people with psychiatric or other disabilities. I have heard people refer to their family members as “low functioning.” I have seen these terms used by advocates to bully and discredit other advocates who critique calls for increased levels of involuntary treatment as “high functioning” individuals who don’t know what they’re talking about.

An interview with Angela Peacock who talks of her experiences of being prescribed benzodiazepines, her journey off multiple medications, her continuing work in veterans advocacy and her thoughts about the film Medicating Normal which will be screened on World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, July 11.

Robert Spitzer, chair of the Task Force for DSM-III, discusses his decisions on inclusion, exclusion, expansion, and renaming disorders in the manual.

On the Mad in America podcast, we hear about the potential of lucid dreaming therapy to aid those struggling with post-traumatic stress.

Our guest today is Jessica Taylor, author of Sexy But Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them, which was published in March...

Without clarity and consensus around what social justice means, psychologists risk perpetuating injustices that undermine their stated mission.

I know the popular thing to do right now is rail against the Murphy Bill, and with good reason given its devastating implications. (I plan to do my fair share of railing.) Yet, I can’t ignore the less sensational tragedies of the day. Today's tragedy is a documentary that lets us know that, along with trauma, "approximately 20 percent of adolescents have a diagnosable mental health disorder." In other words, there's the trauma... and then there's the 'mental illness.' Separate and not particularly equal.

We are joined by Dr. Chris van Tulleken who talks about the science, economics, history, and production of ultra-processed food. We discuss some of the effects of UPF on our brains and bodies and how the food industry positions UPF to dominate our diets.

Author William Styron is often remembered for speaking about depression as an illness. But a review of his life reveals that psychiatric drugs may have triggered and even worsened his depressive episodes.

“For your own good” is oppressive. Embedded in that four-word phrase is the idea that each of us doesn’t understand who we are or what we need. Someone else is the expert. Someone else has the privilege to hold all the answers, and if those answers don't work for us then somehow it's our fault.

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

Author Sarah Fay joins us to discuss why "cured" is such a seldom-used word in psychiatry.

From the Disability Visibility Project: Those of us who have survived psychiatric incarceration know that not only did the asylum never die — it is, and always was, another prison.

Anders Sørenson is a Danish clinical psychologist with a special interest in psychiatric drug withdrawal. He has undertaken research which assesses the state of guidance on psychiatric drug withdrawal and paid close attention to tapering methods with the aim of identifying approaches which might make withdrawal more tolerable for people.