Making Music, Healing Souls
The healing power of communal singing is at the heart of two organizations in England and Ireland: Sing Your Heart Out and 49 North Street.
The Professionalization of Mental Health Services Is Ruining Friendship
The emphasis on getting "professional" help allows people to abdicate responsibility to their real-life friends, rather than learning how to contribute meaningfully to relationships.
Appealing the FDA’s Denial of ECT’s Harms
More than 200 people signed an open letter to the FDA requesting electroconvulsive therapy’s safety studies and electrical dosing protocols.
Now I’ve Quit Benzos, This Year Will Be the First I Can Remember for...
From The Guardian: The variety of oblivion benzodiazepines have to offer is a lonely, clinical, anesthetic one.
Celebrating the Anti-Psychiatry Movement
We are winning this battle. And I use the word battle with no apologies or misgivings. Psychiatry has been utterly unreceptive to the concerns of our movement.
Making the Transition to Compassionate Care
I feel my brother was harmed not only by psychiatric drugs, poor nutrition, and dehydration but also by the lack of compassion, social isolation, and dehumanization experience typical of psychiatric facilities.
IN-SHADOW – A Modern Odyssey – Animated Short Film
By Lubomir Arsov: Embark on a visionary journey through the fragmented unconscious of our modern times, and with courage face the Shadow. Through Shadow into Light.
Insane Medicine, Chapter 7: Industrialised Psychotherapy Markets Western Folk Psychology (Part 1)
Sami Timimi explores the common factors that influence therapy’s success, the evidence base for psychotherapy, and the over-promotion of CBT.
We’ve Got Depression All Wrong. It’s Trying to Save Us.
From Psychology Today: When a threat is so bad or goes on for so long, and there is no way to fight or flee, the nervous system decides there is only one option left: immobilization.
Out of the Bubble: Now or Never?
Never in human history did a powerful institution, no matter how harmful and corrupt, slide into self-inflicted irrelevancy. Institutions like the current psychiatric system can only be toppled by a powerful social movement.
Seizures and Constant Headaches: My TMS Experience
I wanted to believe TMS could be the thing that helped my depression and changed my life. Instead, I wound up with a new diagnosis: Epilepsy.
The Ghosts of Christmas: Was Scrooge the First Psychotherapy Patient?
From The New Yorker: Revisiting his past allowed Scrooge to feel pity and grieve for his childhood self—which led to the blossoming of his feelings and compassion.
The Psychiatric Patient: Who Is She?
The psychiatric patient is interesting—not your average person. She is the one who might tell you: “There is more to this reality, and I saw the proof.”
Psychosocial Disability Rights and Digital Mental Health: An Interview with Piers Gooding
MIA's Emaline Friedman interviews legal scholar Piers Gooding on his work on disability rights and digital mental health technologies.
Insane Medicine, Chapter 6: Neoliberalism and the Compare-and-Compete Society
Neoliberalism teaches people that suffering has nothing to do with the inequality they experience, but that it comes from their own individual failures of body and mind, and requires "experts" to identify and treat it.
New Survey Reveals Class, Age Divide in Mental Health Crisis
From The Hill: We are in absolute crisis across this country, and it's not getting nearly enough attention let alone anyone doing anything about it in DC.
Why Some College Dorm Policies Are Driving Students Into Depression
From Forbes: Out of concern for their bottom line, colleges are betraying their students and trapping them in social isolation.
Stop Saying This, An Encore!
Continuing the series, we look at discussions of "chemical imbalances," medications, and diagnoses, as well as telling people to "calm down" and a further look at the "observer."
To the Young Person Who Doesn’t Identify with Their Disability Diagnosis Anymore
Your diagnosis should serve YOU. Not your parents, your doctors, your teachers, or the next door neighbor. We should be fighting for a future where the person being labeled has the ultimate say over how doctors and therapists view them.
Letters to My Doctors (Part 3)
Rape is to Love what Bombs are to Peace and what Behavioral Eugenics are to Mental Health. So I choose noncompliance with psychiatric force.
No, Jill Biden Should Not Be Called “Doctor”… But Only Because No One Should
Jill deserves all the defense she is receiving. However, this rush to defend Jill’s honorific usage is missing a much bigger and far more pervasive point: NO ONE should be called “Dr. Last-name.”
Narrow Escape: My Prescribed Nightmare
It has taken me close to three years to be able to live with my memories from the hospital, where I felt completely and utterly alone, despairing that I might never live a normal life or see my family again.
Dr. Pies: Still Going Wrong
In his attacks against the British Psychological Society's report "Understanding Depression," Dr. Pies falls into his own trap: "There are none so blind as those who will not see."
Listening to the Patient Voice: The Antidepressant Withdrawal Experience
Patient advocates join with researchers and service users to present first-hand experiences of antidepressant withdrawal.
This Crisis Team Has Handled Mental Health Calls Without Cops for 30 Years
From VICE: “When the threat of coercion and that fear of violence is removed from the interaction, people can actually engage and de-escalate," said mental health lawyer Anita Szigeti.
