Insane Medicine, Chapter 8: Treatment Traps and How to Get Out of Them (Part...
Sami Timimi provides a discussion of the ways medication may be helpful for some, and advice and information on discontinuing psychiatric drugs.
Letters to My Doctors (Part 2)
Why am I whole when I dance and paint but deathly ill when faced by a European/American medical mechanic? Why was I locked in a room for a week in the first place? Was it to heal? Or was it to fill a bed?
A Short History of Tardive Dyskinesia: 65 Years of Drug-Induced Brain Damage That Rolls...
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.
Who’s to Blame for the Lost Soul of Psychiatry?
An interview between Drs. Aftab and Pies reveals a deep mistrust of patients' reports of their own experiences, and devolves into a game of semantics in an attempt to prove psychiatry's relevance.
What is Open Dialogue Today?
Please join us on Friday, October 23 for OpenExcellence, HOPENDialogue, and Mad in America’s ongoing Town Hall conversation about what Open Dialogue is — and is becoming.
The Smoldering Wick: Suicide and Faith
Some suicidal people may only benefit from the extraordinary selflessness and profound empathy demonstrated by St. Paul to his jailer. Credentials don’t measure for that.
The First Studies of Antidepressant Withdrawal
The history of antidepressant withdrawal dates to the first articles on imipramine in the late 1950s. It is useful to compare discussion of both generations of psychiatric drugs and focus on shared efforts to deny and minimize their withdrawal syndromes.
VICE, MIA and The Movement Against Psychiatry
The Vice article was presented as an exploration of the “movement against psychiatry,” and yet you can see, once it is deconstructed, how it told a story that surely pleased the promoters of the conventional narrative, and put the “critics” on the defensive at almost every turn.
PharmedOut Webinar: Institutional Corruption and Clinical Practice Guidelines
From PharmedOUT: Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are systematically developed statements to assist practitioners and patient decisions, but they are not immune to industry influence.
New Mom Held in Psych Unit Urges B.C. to Protect Rights of ‘Mentally Ill’
From CBC: Unlike most of Canada, British Columbia does not provide patients with legal representation — which the ombudsperson wants changed in the Mental Health Act.
Jodi Aman – Anxiety, I’m So Done with You
An interview with Jodi Aman, LCSW, a psychotherapist and coach who has more than 20 years of experience working with children, their parents, and helpers. She is the author of the book Anxiety....I'm So Done With You: A Teen’s Guide to Ditching Toxic Stress & Hardwiring Your Brain For Happiness
Deep Sleep “Therapy” in Australia in the 1960s & ’70s: Could Something Like This...
Psychiatry has a history of continuing to perform harmful, even deadly procedures. But does it still happen? Medication-induced akathisia filled two and a half pages of the DSM-IV. Why was it written out of the DSM 5?
An FDA Whistleblower’s Documents: Commerce, Corruption, and Death
In 2008, a reviewer of psychiatric drugs at the FDA, Ron Kavanagh, complained to Congress that the FDA was approving a new antipsychotic that was ineffective and yet had adverse effects that increased the risk of death. Twelve years later, a review of the whistleblower documents reveal an FDA approval process that can lead to the marketing of drugs sure to harm public health.
Ecotherapy/Nature Therapy/Green Therapy
Do you love hiking, backpacking, gardening or taking walks in beautiful places? Ecotherapy explores how our relationship with nature is an essential and therapeutic part of our humanity.
Abolition Must Include 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.
Drs. Pies and Ruffalo Still Rattling Their Wooden Swords
Pies and Ruffalo argue that psychiatric diagnoses are "diseases" because the word "disease" can't be defined, and suggest that circular logic is scientifically valid.
Overdose Deaths Soar Across Country Amid COVID-19 Pandemic
From The Appeal: "COVID-19 really highlights the risk factors [for deaths of despair] that we know are most prevalent: unemployment, social isolation, disconnection. Those are huge risk factors."
Reporting the COVID Crisis at Psychiatric Hospitals: A Missed Opportunity
In its coverage of the impact of COVID on psychiatric hospitals, the media missed opportunities to challenge stereotypes and interrogate problems with current carceral approaches to mental health treatment.
World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2020
This week on MIA Radio, we present the second part of our podcast to join in the events for World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day 2020...
Racism and Radical Psychiatry
A radical caucus within the American Psychiatric Association tried to combat systemic racism in the 1960s. So why is the APA still behind the times?
Angela Peacock – Medicating Normal
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.
Voicehearing, Reinaldo, and My Work as The Writer
The Writer has outlined a significant work through my hands, dictated by the voice of someone who lived at some point a long time ago, such as London in 1682 A.D.
The Year I Lost Everything, Psychiatry Offered Nothing
After a failed suicide attempt following my son's death, New York State incarcerated me in a mental institution for 21 days. The environment was degrading, stultifying, and downright depressing.
Suicide & Candy Corn: The Utility and Challenges of Risk Assessments
Researchers admit their suicide risk assessments work only about as well as random guessing, and they can lead to harm. We can instead focus on finding new ways to form connections that might help tether someone to this world.
Instrument of the Machine No More
Early in my social work career, I truly believed that medication and forced confinement helped heal “mental illness.” Then an abrupt awakening completely altered my worldview.
