Tag: psychiatric medication withdrawal

My Mental Health Awakening

184
Although it’s taken me a while to acknowledge my right to be in this world, I know that I am not “mentally ill,” but rather have a dynamic spiritual and emotional sensitivity to this world. I am here for a reason, and having to go into the depths of a very dark cave in order to see the light is how I was able to grow and discover that I don't have to take medications for the rest of my life.

10 Things I Learned in 5 Years Consulting With People Coming...

26
It's been over 5 years since I started offering non-medical consultations to people in the process of coming off or hoping to come off psych drugs. I wanted to share here some things I have learned in this process. Despite how far we have come, we have a long way to go in the quest to liberate all who wish to be liberated from psychiatry.

A Mother’s Very, Very Worst Nightmare

33
I was Marci’s former psychotherapist. When I heard what had happened, I immediately informed the detectives that I suspected that the homicide and suicide attempt were related to psychiatric drugs.

Post-Election Considerations for Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

117
A variety of scenarios of social and economic collapse have gone through many of our minds since Election Day. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies want to keep people on drugs, but what if there was no government subsidy for those who can’t pay?

Announcing an International Symposium and Institute on Psychiatric Drug Risks and...

18
I have given up on psychiatry as a system capable of “being there” for people who are dealing with life and death issues. Psychiatry as a system of care lacks validity. Every day — unfortunately — we learn of new examples proving this statement. But here's the good news: every day we meet people who show us that the predictions of psychiatry are not true; that there are “cures,” that it is possible to reduce or withdraw psychiatric drugs.

Please Join Groundbreaking Research on Psychiatric Medications

25
Psychiatric medications such as antipsychotics and antidepressants account for a huge number of published research studies. This existing research, however, is almost exclusively constrained within a medical model approach, purporting to evaluate medications as treatment for biological brain disorders, and designing studies accordingly. The disease, and how medications presumably affect it, is at the center — with pharmaceutical company financial interests not far behind. That paradigm is starting to change.

The Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode (RAISE) Study: Notes from...

43
I was a psychiatrist who participated in the Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode Early Treatment Program (RAISE ETP). Although I welcomed the positive headlines that heralded the study's results, the reports left me with mixed feelings. What happened to render the notion that talking to people about their experiences and helping them find jobs or go back to school is something novel?

Setting the Intention to Heal: The Starting Point of Mental Health...

15
In my work facilitating depression support groups, I have discovered three essential factors to healing from depression, which I call ”the three pillars of mental health recovery.”  In my earlier blogs for Mad in America I wrote about two of these pillars --connecting with community and using a holistic approach to treat symptoms. Now I would like to present the first and MOST IMPORTANT pillar — Setting the Intention to Heal.

KMSP-TV Investigative Report on Psychiatric Research Abuse at the University of...

6
For a scathing, 11-minute overview of the death of Dan Markingson at the University of Minnesota, and new allegations of coercion into psychiatric clinical trials, you can't do much better than this excellent investigative report by Jeff Baillon.

Finding the Meaning in Suffering: My Experience with Coming off Psychiatric...

78
For the last month or so, Mad in America has been hard at work building a directory of “mental health” providers across North America (and eventually, we hope, the world) who will work with people wanting to come off psychotropic drugs.  I’ve been honored to have been tasked with the responsibility of building this directory, and I have to say, it’s been inspiring to talk to people all over the country who do this work, and who “get it”.

“Baby Cry Too Much?”

2
This is the second in my new series, “Haiku for social change”, the first having appeared on my own blog page. Since this piece is about pharmacology and psychopharmacology, I think MIA is a good home for it.

Entrepreneurship Is The Way Out of Our Mess

91
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” ― Richard...

Chapter Fourteen: Crossing the Threshold

1
Although the drive to the psychiatric hospital in White Plains, New York, in September 2004 was a mere fifteen minutes from home, the trip...

Chapter Thirteen: In the Muck and The Mire

1
There I was on my first night of Outward Bound, lying under the big Texas sky in a little town called Redford, amidst waxy...

Chapter Twelve: A Gift of Desperation

0
By January of my junior year in college, I had reached my first true emotional bottom. Though surrounded by people on a daily basis...

Chapter Eleven: Teetering on the Edge

0
Frantic, fearful, and desperate to get my life together, I returned to Cambridge in the middle of August to move into my off-campus apartment....

Chapter Ten: A ‘Victim of Circumstance’

0
Upon arriving home at the end of sophomore year in college, which had been devoted to hyper-control and a carefully maintained, entirely black-and-white existence,...

Chapter Nine: Is It Me Or My Meds?

0
Subtly and insidiously, my medications, once merely inert composites of chemicals, acquired an agency of their own and took center stage in my life...

Chapter Eight: “Forget Happiness . . . I’ve Got Control”

1
At no moment in my childhood-- whether in those weekday hours after school spent exploring the woods with my dog, or on the early...

Chapter Seven: Becoming Bipolar, Becoming Empowered

0
A newfound acceptance of my bipolar diagnosis during the winter of my freshman year at Harvard filled me to the brim with a sense...

Chapter Six: A Disease of Dis-Ease, and New Hope for a...

0
On the day I arrived as a freshman at Harvard in the fall of 2001, I dropped my belongings in my dorm room, said...

Chapter Five: Filling the Void

0
When I returned to boarding school in the fall of my junior year, I brought with me not just duffel bags of clothes, athletic...

Chapter Four: Eye of the Storm

0
I settled into my new life in the fall of my sophomore year at a co-ed boarding school in Western Massachusetts and was convinced...

Chapter Three: At War With A Diagnosis

2
Note: In this third entry, it is still early on in my story. It is the fall of my ninth grade year, I am...

Chapter Two: Opening Pandora’s Box

4
Soon after awakening to my crisis of ‘self’, I was sent to my first therapist. My social circles had changed, and I’d begun to...