MIA Today

Headlines of Today's Posts

Close-up of pill with smiley face on it. Woman's hand holding it toward the viewer

Behind the Smiles: Mental Health in South Korea’s High-Pressure Society

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South Korea ranks among the highest in the world for suicide, and its people are turning to psychiatric drugs in record numbers.
Miniature people - The worker at work with medicine pills

Antidepressant Trials Last Eight Weeks, So Why Do We Take Them for Years?

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The studies are of short duration and are riddled with methodological issues like unblinding and failure to assess withdrawal.

NY Times Finally Figures out ADHD Critics May be Onto Something

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From The New York Times: "From 2012 to 2022, the total number of prescriptions for stimulants to treat A.D.H.D. increased in the United States...

New WHO Guidance Calls for Paradigm Shift in Mental Health Policy

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The guidance emphasizes shifting away from institutional mindsets and practices, the biomedical approach, and the use of psychotropic drugs.
Collage. A woman chained to a giant pill

Akathisia After a Five-Year Taper: Chained to an Antidepressant Forever

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I have been on Cymbalta for 17 years now and am gutted that my five-year taper did not free me of the drug.

Kaine & Banks Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Support Mental Health Care and Substance Use...

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"Today, U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Jim Banks (R-IN), members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, introduced the Providing...
A woman and her child holding hands, walking in the dark toward a bright crack in the ground

The Mental Health System in the UK Failed Us

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The whole system is broken and I pray for my friends in Great Britain. They need a reform, not cuts or euthanasia.

Psychology’s Small Stories and the Call of the Other: An Interview with David Goodman

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Ayurdhi Dhar interviews David Goodman about his vision for a psychology grounded in care for the other, the risks of psychotherapeutic standardization, and why humility—and even embarrassment—may be vital to human flourishing.
Pile of Scrabble letter blocks on wood background.

Lost in Psychobabble? Cut Through the Jargon for Real Mental Clarity

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The key to healing is to recognize that you are not dealing with a broken brain, but unlearning survival habits that no longer serve you.
Flat illustration of an anxios person holding their head with their hands.

A Reflection on “Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance”

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The act of diagnosis is so influential on a person’s sense of self that its limitations need to be repeated again and again and again.

The Curious Case of Empty Asylums and the Birth of Psychiatry

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Psychiatry has cut, burned, shocked, drugged, and subdued its way through history—leaving behind compliance, not cures.
Man on a white background reads the instructions for medicines. Male looks at the list and composition of the drug. The concept of home self-medication and the study of the properties of drugs

False Information in UK Package Inserts for Antidepressants About a Chemical Imbalance

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To state something that is blatantly false is not a “paradigm,” it is a lie, plain and simple.
Closeup of a researcher's blue-gloved hands counting money

Confessions of an Advertising Writer: How I Helped Pharma Sell Antidepressants

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As a former pharmaceutical ad writer, I not only witnessed the explosive growth in antidepressant drugs, I contributed to it.
Signpost showing many different directions

De-Meaning Psychotherapy: The New Psychiatric Critic

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I reject psychiatry. But I also reject the critic. In the final analysis psychiatric abolition must be a deeply personal act.
Closeup of pills in hand, a magnifying glass

Psychiatric Drugs “A Crude Form of Chemical Restraint”

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Mental health nursing has a key role to play in helping people discontinue the drugs, writes Timothy Wand.
Illustration of a diver disappearing into a human head full of water

Symptoms and Surface Psychology

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Given the lack of objective signs, surface psychology can only ever be the treatment of subjectively distressing symptoms.
Unshrunk (cover image)

Unshrunk: A Memoir That Upsets the NYT and Which Freethinkers Will Love

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Bruce E Levine writes a rebuttal to the New York Times review of Laura Delano's book Unshrunk in Counter Punch. "Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric...

A Love Letter to the Mad

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My madness forged me. Madness led me to deeper truths. Madness discarded beliefs which no longer served me.

Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics: End of an Era for Independent Journals? An Interview With Giovanni...

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Giovanni Fava joins us to discuss the uncertain future of the journal 'Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics' which he edited for thirty years and which has been essential to our understanding of the impact of psychiatric treatments.

Rethinking Mental Health in Ireland: Why Not a Trieste-Style Approach?

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Those with mental health difficulties continue to face systemic barriers to holistic, person-centred care.
Close up of Pills spilling out of pill bottle on blue background. with copy space. Medicine concept .

Animal Study: SSRI Neurotoxic in Pregnancy

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Researchers: Fetal exposure to vilazodone hampers neurodevelopment and leads to "long-lasting neurodevelopmental impairments."

When Narratives Clash: Unshrunk and The Cognitive Dissonance of the NY Times

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For the mainstream media, reviewing Laura Delano's memoir "Unshrunk" is an exercise in cognitive dissonance.
Sepia illustration of a brain machine

Psychiatry: Medical Science of Mind or Moral Ideology?

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Psychiatry is a moral ideology, making and enforcing judgments about the appropriateness of people's experiences.

Psychology, Personhood, and the Crisis of Neoliberalism: Jeff Sugarman on Theoretical and Critical Psychology

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Tim Beck interviews Jeff Sugarman on the psychology of personhood, the influence of neoliberalism on mental health, and the need for a more philosophically informed psychology.
Black and white photo of a hand holding a colorized pill

What I Have Learned in Working With 300+ People in Their Journey of Tapering

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Tapering is stepping into each individual’s complex world of biology, history, psyche, circumstance, and tolerance for discomfort.