Videos

Olive Sacks reflects on the brain's disposition to see or hear things. Related Item: Q&A with Oliver Sacks: Hallucinations, neurological curiosities and a passion for...

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.

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk explores his field's long, complex, and stubborn history with trauma. Dr. van der Kolk explains how psychiatry as a...

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

Robert Whitaker notes on Al Jazeera's "Inside Story" that a helpful diagnostic text must be both reliable and valid, and the DSM is neither...

Peter C. Gøtzsche, MD is a Danish medical researcher, and leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has written...

Most people believe that children diagnosed with ADHD misbehave because they possess an inferior inhibitory system that renders them less able to suppress unacceptable actions. However, this belief has numerous shortcomings. This series of videos challenges these assumptions and offers alternative explanations for why a child may exhibit ADHD behaviors.

Though attention tends to be drawn to physical forms of violence, it may actually be the more invisible forms of violence - abuse and...

 

"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

Youtube →  

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

<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...

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.

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

A new study shows psychiatric drugs kill over half a million Americans and Europeans every year who are over 65. Professor Peter Gøtzsche claims...

Psychiatrist Pat Bracken speaks on the current "crisis of legitimacy in psychiatry," and the growth of the international "service user" movement at the Forum...

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.

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...

Earlier this year, I was invited to speak at TEDMED 2014 and John Kazanjian and I worked hard to come up with a 13-ish minute version of my play Sick. The video of the talk/performance got released today on TEDMED.com and YouTube. It’s been a wild ride sharing the big play with small audiences around the country these last couple of years, and I am excited and humbled by the potential audience this abbreviated version can have online. I hope you have a chance to watch it.

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?

Last week was my anniversary off a huge psych drug cocktail I’d been on for 20 years. In this video I speak to the inner resources that kept me going. The fact is there is nothing in society to help those who love us to understand what we are going through.

Attorney Jamie Sheller of Philadelphia firm Sheller, P.C. discusses a client whose child had birth defects caused by taking Paxil during her pregnancy. GlaxoSmithKline...

In 1954, Thorazine was introduced as a treatment for mental disorders, thus began the modern era of psychiatry. This new drug was said to "prevent...