Groupthink in Mainstream and Critical Psychiatry
Critical psychiatry should continue to point out where mainstream psychiatry falls short, but mainstream psychiatry must correct itself.
AI Undermines Medical Education—Trainee Doctors May Never Learn Vital Skills
Medical trainees using chatbots to do their homework and write their papers will not develop the skills needed to be a successful doctor.
Harm for Profit: Are Nursing Homes Drugging Residents to Avoid Paying for Adequate Staffing?
Long-term care facilities commonly prescribe antipsychotic drugs to elderly service users, often to treat behavioral issues associated with dementia. Despite a lack of evidence...
Weekly Research Digest: Bullying, Social Media, and SSRI’s Link to Suicide
This week, Mad in America examines research around increased suicide risk in children and adolescents related to bullying in high-school and the use of...
My Escape From the Disabling Power of Disability Benefits
I am now almost completely released from the traditional mental health system, but as a paid peer worker I come back in five days a week to remind those still within the system that there is a way out.
Mitochondria and Energetic Failures: A New Understanding of Antidepressant Withdrawal? An Interview With Chris...
Chris Masterjohn joins us to discuss the importance of our mitochondria, the role of serotonin in our body and whether a new understanding of antidepressant withdrawal is urgently needed.
Did the FDA Black Warning Cause Suicides? Reply to Soumerai and Lu
The idea that the FDA black box warning led to increased suicide is just as easily refuted by the data now as when it was first proposed.
Doing Harm: The Human Cost of Turning Mourning Into a Disorder
Grief has long been understood as a normal and healthy response to loss. However, over the past decade, American psychiatry has rebranded that time...
Weekly Research Digest: Bad Research, Unsupported Beliefs, and Sleep Apnea
This week, Mad in America examines recent antidepressant research questioning withdrawal severity, a study of unsupported biological beliefs about mental "illness," and research linking...
Leaving Psychiatry: Two Weeks In, 10 Years to Exit
With time, my body is healing, and I’m slowly learning how to feel my emotions. I was only hospitalized for two weeks, but it took me over 10 years to exit.
Why Critical Mental Health Knowledge Is Essential for Ethical Practice: An Interview with Jan...
In this conversation, Jan DeFehr argues that ethical practice requires access to what the field itself disputes, including the risks people rarely hear about.
The Sermon on the Balcony at Bùi Viện
Who can even entertain the thought, "Am I the Incipient Buddha?" in a world like this?
ADHD Diagnoses, Examining the Psyche, Withdrawal and PSSD Risks, ECT Harms and More: Robert...
In our first podcast of 2026, Robert Whitaker joins us to answer questions submitted by Mad in America readers and listeners. We discuss the validity of ADHD diagnoses, withdrawal and sexual dysfunction risks of SSRI antidepressants, the harms of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), the rise of AI-generated misinformation and much more.
To Be Agents of Our Own Treatment: Demedicalization at the Heart of the Inner...
We are fighting for transparency, accountable science, and for the rights of the common people who are misinformed, as we require informed consent.
Case Studies Contradict Accepted Wisdom About AI Psychosis
Many of those who experience AI psychosis have no psychiatric diagnosis, but were experiencing social and environmental stressors, isolation, and lack of sleep.
Psychiatry’s Rightwing and Progressive Bigotries: How Each Enables the Megamachine
Whether in Nazi fascism, Soviet totalitarian communism, or U.S. corporate capitalism, psychiatry has been an enabler of the megamachine.
Nearly All ECT Recipients Report Negative Effects, Study Finds
A new international online survey published in the Journal of Affective Disorders gives voice to the lived experiences of people who have undergone electroconvulsive...
Mad in America’s 10 Most Popular Articles in 2025
A roundup of Mad in America's most read blogs and personal stories of 2025 as chosen by our readers.
In Defense of Instability in Mental Health Recovery
Limiting someone’s dreams based on a professional opinion of what is possible for people with serious mental illnesses is misguided at best.
Anti-inflammatory Drugs Fail for Depression
Response and remission rates failed to beat placebo in a new Harvard meta-analysis, throwing the inflammation hypothesis into question.
