How the Moral Panic on Psychiatric Bed Shortages is Fueling a ‘Competency Crisis’ in...
The number of people referred to state hospitals as ‘Incompetent to stand trial’ (IST) has surged over the last decade. In response, states are refurbishing or rebuilding their state hospitals— even as their own experts say this will only make the crisis worse. Why?
From Church to Clinic: The Cult of Compliance
It was jarring to realize that the rigid protocols in the church were mirrored in the clinical settings where I began my career.
Yet Another Claim About the Benefits of Antidepressants Bites The Dust
Former FDA officials write that claims that the black warning led to an increase in youth are "factually inaccurate in ways that are directly verifiable."
“Assault” and “Torture”: Patients Recall the Institutional Violence of Forced Drugging
A new article published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology finds that patients often experience forced drugging in psychiatric contexts as dehumanizing and violent....
In the Lindsay Clancy Case, Polypharmacy Will Be on Trial
Lindsay Clancy worsened while under the influence of psychiatric drugs, and at each step she desperately sought medical help.
When Therapy Makes Things Worse
This week, Mad in America examines three articles related to negative effects of psychotherapy. The first reviews the literature around negative effects in therapy,...
Unlearn Your Pain: Harnessing the Power of Neuroplasticity – A Conversation With Howard Schubiner
Dr. Howard Schubiner joins us on the MIA podcast to discuss his work and the power of neuroplasticity to address psychological or physiological pain.
What Medicine Does Not Yet Recognize in Psychiatric Tapering
Together, we can create a new way to support patients tapering psychiatric medications and the medically orphaned will finally feel welcomed.
“Every Time I Took a Pill, I Felt I Was No Longer Myself”: Young...
A new study published online by the Journal of Humanistic Psychology examines young adults’ experience of taking and discontinuing antipsychotic drugs after completing a...
Inside the Hot Flush Gold Rush: The Medicalization of Menopause Spreads to Perimenopause
Many brands promising to help women actually make their suffering worse by reinforcing the belief that menopause is a time of deterioration.
Depression Drug Approved by FDA Had 11 Failed Trials and an Advisory Committee Vote...
Rejected by the FDA four times; an advisory committee vote against approval. Yet in 2023, gepirone (Exxua) was approved for depression.
How Psychiatry Launders Our Debts: An Interview with Khameer Kidia
Physician-anthropologist Khameer Kidia examines how violence and inequality shape mental distress, arguing for patient autonomy, community care, and structural change beyond diagnosis, medication, and individualized psychiatric treatment.
Shifting Acute Mental Health Care to the Home Limits the Cycle of Rehospitalization, Study...
Intensive home treatment (IHT) is an approach to acute psychiatric care that avoids the stressful psychiatric ward admission procedures and allows the patient or...
What’s Been Lost in Medicine Is Shameful in Psychiatry: Reflections on Bernard Lown
Mental health professionals are trained to be technicians rather than provided with the opportunity to discover the craft of healing.
How Can Soccer Coaching Help People Who Hear Voices?
Voice hearing might be conceptualised as reflecting disowned or dissociated aspects of self, often occurring as a result of life events.
Doctors Who Avoid Conversations: How Psychiatry Made Me Ill
Not one of the doctors ever asked how I was feeling or doing. They were never willing to have conversations or sort through problems with me, even though they said I was ill.
A Mother’s Journey Through Psychiatric Drug Harm and Healing
Chelsea McVeigh joins us to discuss her journey through antidepressant withdrawal. At 31, during a new pregnancy, she suffered a severe adverse reaction that turned her world upside down.
Therapy as a Rite of Passage
If we turn toward ourselves with enough sincerity and curiosity, we will see that there is always something wanting to happen next.
Nobody Told Me to Do This: What It Means to Be a Dissident Psychiatrist
Reckoning with my own story became the vehicle for reckoning with my profession—and with what psychiatric care does to the people we care for.
The Tragedy of Morton the Sixth
Starting out with what were called “nervous breakdowns,” my father was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia and incarcerated in the state mental hospital for the last twenty years of his life.
Using Lived Experience to Challenge Systemic Prescriber Inexperience of Antidepressant Withdrawal
Carla Delgado joins us to discuss her experience of antidepressant withdrawal and the hurdles created by dealing with a system that is largely ignorant of withdrawal and tapering.
Where Psychedelics Meet Madness: Intersections, Lessons and a Call for Transformative Research Agendas
If I had been supported to integrate my altered-state experiences 36 years ago, how much suffering could have been alleviated?
An Attorney Goes Public—My Experience of Misdiagnosis, Damaging Drugs, and Lack of Informed Consent
Without complete transparency, consent cannot be considered truly informed. While silence may feel safe, it keeps us immobilized.
On Alienation and the Chimeric Promise of Neuro-Identitarianism
As provision of basic needs continues to atrophy, resistance increasingly takes an individualised, myopic form.
On Psychological Abuse: How The System Twisted My Pleas For Help
I once heard a fellow survivor describe narcissistic abuse as a “rape of the soul,” and that is exactly how it felt for me.
