Videos

"My studies in this area lead me to a very uncomfortable conclusion: Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market, as doctors are unable to handle them. It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good." - Peter Gøtzsche, MD; Co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration

In November 2012, Cardiff, Wales, more than two hundred and fifty people who hear voices, see visions and have other unusual and extreme experiences (referred to as “hearing voices” in the rest of this post), family members, friends, activists and allied experts by profession came together from around the world. The purpose of the three-day meeting was to celebrate the twenty fifth anniversary of the formation of hearing voices movement, to consider the lessons learnt so far and to envisage what we should be doing over the next 25 years. The excellent film, "Voices Matter", that you can now view on this site is a record of the event and I strongly recommend that you take a look.

Steven Morgan discusses his transformative journey from chronic "patient" to leading mental health advocate. Steven has been working in peer support and helping to create alternatives to traditional mental health services for the past decade...

Robert Whitaker speaks in this video, recorded May 2, 2012, on "The History of Eugenics in the United States & How It Affects Psychiatric...

“Psychiatric Drugs are More Dangerous than You Ever Imagined” is the newest video in my series Simple Truths about Psychiatry.  It provides a simple, direct and inescapable warning about this epidemic of harm induced by psychiatric drugs. The video sounds a necessary alarm about this growing tragedy, involving millions of people and their families, who never foresaw the disabling results of taking psychiatric drugs and giving them to their children.

The Cannabis and Psychosis Awareness Project, a four-year study from Canada that was released on Tuesday, finds that smoking marijuana - particularly heavy use in...

When Carina Håkansson sent out an invitation for a symposium on "Pharmaceuticals: Risks and Alternatives," some of the world's top scientists, along with experts-by-experience, came from 13 countries to explore better ways to respond to people in crisis.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/CUuyzoTI948" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Thomas Insel's TedEducation presentation. "Today, thanks to better early detection, there are 63% fewer deaths from heart disease than...

Less than six months ago I had the great fortune to start working with a small group of fellow producers who had spent a chunk of time traveling and shooting at various conferences. Interviews with notable figures in the movement. Survivor stories. A mixed bag of “Mad Media”. Immersing myself in the now 200+ hours of raw footage was like swimming in a sea of the subconscious. So I was swallowed whole by the white whale, consumed with the energy to put my still-developing abilities to the best use I could think of.

Open the Paradigm.

For outsiders like me who are really critical of mainstream psychiatry, the first thing to understand is that "community psychiatry" is a counterculture within the larger culture of biomedical psychiatry. When I say "counterculture" I don't mean these people had flowers in their hair or face piercings.

Subscribers to Mad in America might be interested in a Keynote Lecture given by Professor Nikolas Rose in Nottingham on May 15th 2013. In this lecture Professor Rose very thoughtfully challenges a number of the assumptions which underpin conventional and contemporary psychiatric practice. He asks five hard questions:

• Is there (really) an epidemic of mental illness?
• Does the path to understanding mental disorder lie through the brain?
• What is the role of diagnosis and of diagnostic manuals?
• Should we seek early identification of those at risk of future mental pathology?
• What is the place of patients, users, survivors, & consumers of mental health systems?

 

Professor Leigh Turner of the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics blasts the Board of Regents for ignoring psychiatric research abuse.

Bruce Levine speaks about Nelson Algren, Phil Ochs, Marginalization, the Mental Health Industry, and the Occupy Movement at the 23rd Annual Nelson Algren Birthday...

 

Bliss Johns, author of Recovery & Renewal and founder of the Recovery Road Charity, gives an eloquent few words of encouragement for those still in...

David Oaks, whose 1998 challenge to "check out the research for yourself" led Robert Whitaker to write Mad in America and create this website,...

Hallgrímur - A Man like me.

Ben Goldacre reflects on his having been mislead as a psychiatrist in his forthcoming book Bad Pharma (excerpted here in the U.K. newspaper The Guardian), and...

I just made a new film, called PROTEST PSYCHIATRY, on the psychiatric survivor-lead protest of the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in New York City. And I’m thrilled by how it turned out. For starters, I filmed it on no budget whatsoever, created the entire film in three days, and have uploaded it straight to Youtube, so it’s freeeeeee!

Professor John Nash discusses the discrepancies between the book & film "A Beautiful Mind" and his life.  While he endorses the portrayal of mental...

Brattleboro, Vermont psychiatrist Nels Kloster and mental health counselor Robert Stack discuss the coming year in mental health, and the changing perceptions regarding mental...

Michael Moore learned about the link between prozac and violence at the premier of his film "Bowling for Columbine." Here, he appears in Gary...

A child in the foster-care system tells of his experience being diagnosed and then medicated with psychiatric drugs.

Richard Bentall, clinical psychologist and author of Madness Explained presents new evidence for the limitations of anti-psychotic medication and of the psychiatric establishment. Institute of...