Mad In America: Science, Psychiatry And Social Justice

Anne Guy is a member of the council for evidence-based psychiatry (CEP) and works with the secretariat for the All-party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence. She's the lead editor and author of “Guidance for psychological therapists: enabling conversations with clients taking or withdrawing from prescribed psychiatric drugs.” (an abridged version can be found here). This guide is endorsed by the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, the UK Council for Psychotherapy, the National Counseling Society, and the British Psychological Society. Dr. Guy is also a practicing psychotherapist that does not rely on a model of diagnosis to help her clients. Beginning as a claims manager for an insurance company, she got an up-close view of how the healthcare system worked and saw the biggest problems clearly. This “systems view” followed her into her work as a psychotherapist, where she attempts to navigate systemic failures that have resulted in the over-prescription of psychiatric drugs. In

Peter Sterling, now retired from the University of Pennsylvania, is a well-known neuroscientist, having co-authored a popular text, Principles of Neural Design. He is a lifelong political activist, and historians of psychiatry may remember his public criticisms of psychiatric treatments in the 1970s, most notably of electroshock and antipsychotics. He could also be described as an ethnographer, as his travels among the indigenous people of Panama, where he now lives part-time, influenced his understanding of how the human brain was shaped in response to the demands of early hunter-gatherer societies. He is the author of a recent book titled, What is Health: Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design. His books raises this provocative question: What does our species require for a healthy life? And can we achieve this with drugs?

Bethany Morris is an assistant professor of psychology at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she teaches and does theoretical and qualitative research. Dr. Morris is a transdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges critical psychology, literature, philosophy, history, psychoanalysis, and film studies. Early in her career, at Prince Edward Island University and Brock University in Canada, she studied alternative anti-psychiatric interventions for early-onset schizophrenia as illuminated by children’s literature. During this time, she was also thinking critically about issues of women’s stigmatization and oppression. In recent years, her work has focused on using the ideas of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to gain a further critical understanding of the oppression of women, psychology’s medical model, and other issues related to social justice. Her recent publications include the co-authored book Subjectivity in Psychology in the Era of Social Justice, as well as her first solo-authored

This week on the MIA podcast, we discuss a recent paper that considers the support provided by online support groups when people seek help for psychiatric drug withdrawal. The paper is entitled ‘The role of Facebook groups in the management and raising of awareness of antidepressant withdrawal: is social media filling the void left by health services?’ It was published in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology in January 2021 and the authors are Sherry Julo, Ed White and John Read. "In June 2020, the groups had a total membership of 67,125, of which, 60,261 were in private groups. The increase in membership for the 13 groups over the study period was 28.4%. One group was examined in greater detail. Group membership was 82.5% female, as were 80% of the Administrators and Moderators, all of whom are lay volunteers. Membership was international but dominated (51.2%) by the United States (US). The most common reason for seeking out this group was failed clinician-led tapers." Links and further in

Actor, singer, writer, and civil rights activist Donzaleigh Abernathy is goddaughter of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and daughter of the Reverend Dr. Ralph David Abernathy, King's best friend and partner in the civil rights movement — who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and became president of it after King's assassination on April 4, 1968. Her mother was civil rights activist Juanita Abernathy. As a child, Abernathy witnessed some of the most inspiring and formative moments of the civil rights movement — and some of the most sobering. She also grew up knowing and loving the man she called Uncle Martin, whose stances against racism, poverty, and war remain as relevant today as they were when he first voiced them. Also relevant are his calls for creative maladjustment, meaning the refusal to adjust to society's many ills. Abernathy is the author of Partners to History: Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and the Civil Rights Movement. She also contributed to the Smit

Helen Spandler is a Professor of Mental Health Studies at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. She is the managing editor of Asylum, a non-profit radical mental health magazine. She currently holds the Welcome Trust Investigator Award and is the principal investigator on a new research project about the role of MadZines (comics and graphic memoirs created by people with lived experience of psychosocial disabilities) in contesting mental health knowledge and practice. With over four books and 40 publications to her name, professor Spandler has applied her expertise to a wide range of concerns. She has written about the psychiatric survivor movement, alternate interventions such as therapeutic communities, psychosocial disability, and grassroots activism concerning patient rights. In this interview, she discusses the importance of placing human suffering before theoretical preferences. She argues that understanding truly listening to psychiatric survivors requires us to get accustomed to uncomfortabl

This week on the Mad in America podcast we turn our attention to prescription-drug-induced akathisia and joining me to discuss this is Jill Nickens. Jill is the president and founder of the Akathisia Alliance for Education and Research, a nonprofit organization formed by people who have personal experience of akathisia. The group includes biochemists, psychologists, nurses, attorneys, business owners, and others who have survived akathisia, suicidality and devastating personal losses due, in part, to a lack of awareness by medical professionals. They have come together to inform and raise awareness to help minimize the risk of developing akathisia. Akathisia is an extremely distressing neurological disorder that causes severe agitation, an inability to remain still and an overwhelming sense of terror. It is primarily caused by prescribed medications and the most common offenders are anti-psychotics, antidepressants, anti-nausea medications and antibiotics.

Janice Haaken is a professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist, and a documentary filmmaker. In addition to her work as a professor at Portland State University, Haaken has taught as a Fulbright scholar at Durham University (UK) and University College Cork (Ireland) and as a visiting professor at London School of Economics (UK), York University (UK), and University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Her documentaries, including Guilty Except for Insanity (2009), Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front Lines (2014), Milk Men: The Life and Times of Dairy Farmers (2016), and Our Bodies Our Doctors (2019), focus on people and places on the social margins, drawing out their insights on the world around them. Jan has received numerous awards for her filmmaking, most recently the Lena Sharpe Persistence of Vision award at the 2019 Seattle International Film Festival. Haaken publishes extensively in psychoanalysis and feminism, the history and politics of diagnosis, trauma, culture, and

This episode of “Mad in the Family” focuses on a non-drug method to bringing out the best in challenging children, particularly those diagnosed with “ADHD.” It is called the Nurtured Heart Approach® and its essence is that, in the words of our guest, “the same intensity that drives people crazy is actually the source of a child’s greatness." He is the approach’s creator, family therapist Howard Glasser.  Glasser has been called “one of the most influential living persons working to reduce children’s reliance on psychiatric medications” and is the author of the bestselling book, Transforming the Difficult Child and more than a dozen other books. Glasser is also the Founder of the Children’s Success Foundation, whose  mission is to advance the work of the Nurtured Heart Approach by conducting training programs to support parents in building Inner Wealth® in their children, educators in formally implementing the approach in school systems, and therapeutic professionals to meet the unique mental health needs of “

Lucas Richert is the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and historical director for the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. His work explores prescription and illicit drugs, the American counterculture, and the influence of various power structures within and beyond psychiatry. As a scholar of the pharmaceutical industry, Richert encountered a trove of historical documents that talked about the self-described radicals in mental health from the 1970s. “They cared about relevant issues, things that we talk about right now: racism, the environment, militarism, and political division. It really grabbed hold of me when I got these documents, they were a catalyst.” This project turned into his 3rd book, Break on Through: Radical psychiatry and the American counterculture in which he examines the tumultuous 1970s in America with a focus “not just on the elite doctors and people in positions of power, but also wider societal trends.” In addition to Break

This week we are sharing the audio taken from our recent psychiatric drug withdrawal town hall held on January 15th 2021. This was our initial, scene-setting discussion and the panelists are Adele Framer, also known as Alto Strata founder of surviving antidepressants, Luke Montagu, co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, Swapnil Gupta, a psychiatrists with a specila interest in deprescribing and John Read, Professor of psychology and Chair of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal. This series aims to explore what we do and don’t know about safe withdrawal from antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and stimulants. We will seek to present and explore new understandings that are emerging from the professional and lived-experience communities. We will discuss the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to support those who may be having difficulty getting off psychiatric drugs. We will address questions of interest to both prescribers and patients alike. Our ne

Mad in America, in partnership with the Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry and the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug withdrawal is arranging a series of free to attend online town hall discussions on psychiatric drug withdrawal. We aim to explore what we do and don’t know about safe withdrawal from antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and stimulants. We will discuss the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to support those who may be having difficulty getting off psychiatric drugs. By doing this we hope to stimulate further discussion between service users and prescribers. Our first discussion will be held on Friday January 15th at 10 AM Pacific time, 1 PM Eastern time and 6 PM GMT. The panellists for the first discussion are Adele Framer, founder of Surviving Antidepressants; Swapnil Gupta, a Board Member of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal and a psychiatrist with a special interest in deprescribing; John Read, Professor of Psychology and Chair of th

Thomas Teo is a Professor of Psychology in the Historical, Theoretical, and Critical Studies of Psychology Program at York University, Toronto, Canada. He has spent his 20+ year career challenging the status quo in academic psychology. His unique approach to research has been described as both critical and meta-psychological. He often takes the discipline of psychology itself, including its methods and assumptions, as the target of his analysis. He is currently the co-editor of the Review of General Psychology (Sage), editor of the Palgrave Studies in the Theory and History of Psychology, and co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology. He is the former president of the International Society for Theoretical Psychology, of the American Psychological Association’s Society of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Division 24), and former chair of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the Canadian Psychological Association. He has a research record with more than 200 academic publ

Piers Gooding is a Mozilla Foundation fellow (2020) and researcher at the Melbourne Social Equity Institute at the University of Melbourne Law School. His main interests are disability law and policy, international human rights law, the law and politics of mental health, and empirical legal research. Gooding describes his scholarship as an interdisciplinary undertaking that blends theoretical inquiry with applied qualitative research at the local, national, and international levels. He has collaborated with the UN Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the World Psychiatric Association on recommendations for alternatives to coercion in mental health. He blogs at https://pgooding.substack.com/ and tweets at @p_gooding. In this interview, he discusses his journey pursuing a human rights agenda in mental health. We focus on his efforts to marry international human rights law and the work of disability rights committees to ensure that people with psychosocial disabilities are not left

Jennifer White is one of the founders of the Critical Suicidology Network, a growing international network of scholars interested in exploring alternatives to biomedical approaches to suicide prevention. Critical suicidology brings together persons with lived experience, mental health professionals, researchers, and activists “to rethink what it means to study suicide and enact practices of suicide prevention in more diverse and creative, less psycho-centric and less depoliticized, ways.” She is a Professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She has practiced as a counselor, educator, researcher, and advocate. White served for seven years as the Director of the Suicide Prevention Center in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. She has written numerous articles and book chapters on suicide and self-harm and has co-authored two books: Child and youth care: Critical perspectives on pedagogy, practice and policy (2011),

Tanya Luhrmann is a Watkins University Professor in the Anthropology Department at Stanford. Her work explores how cultural contexts shape the experience of mental distress, particularly voice-hearing and the symptoms associated with psychosis. She also turns the lens on the practice of Western psychiatry itself, investigating how the field represents the mind and how these representations influence our collective understanding of reality. Luhrmann’s book When God Talks Back was New York Times’ Notable Book of the Year, and she has written numerous articles on psychosis, medical anthropology, and spiritual experiences. Recently, Our Most Troubling Madness: Schizophrenia and Culture was published by the University of California Press. Her newest book, How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, was published by Princeton in 2020. Luhrmann describes herself as someone who is interested in different types of “realnesses.” Given that she grew up surrounded by different worldviews, it is not s

dele Framer, also known by her online handle Altostrata, is the founder of SurvivingAntidepressants.org, a critical and comprehensive peer-support website that features several thousand case histories of psychiatric drug withdrawal. The site is a hub of information on the topic, highlighting methods of safe drug tapering and recovery and underscoring the humanity of those in the grips of withdrawal. Framer arrived at her expertise through personal experience. In 2004, after three years on 10 mg of paroxetine, she went off under medical supervision and suffered symptoms of withdrawal that her doctor discounted as relapse. She then went on to visit more than 50 psychiatrists, trying and failing to find someone knowledgeable in antidepressant withdrawal. Her own research into the topic, including close readings of journals and FDA recommendations, led her to the creation of SurvivingAntidepressants.org in 2011. Registered members now stand at roughly 14,000, with around 56,000 visitors per month. The site featur

Natalie Campo, MD, is an integrative psychiatrist practicing in Nashville, TN. She became interested in holistic treatment modalities in her first year of medical school at the University of Texas. In that same year, she was awarded an NIH grant to study infectious encephalitis in the Amazon Jungle. Upon her return, she sought out a physician whose primary care practice included holistic modalities, nutrition, and acupuncture. During medical school, on an externship, she started studying mindfulness and began using it with patients. After medical school, Campo trained in psychiatry at Yale and in medical acupuncture at Harvard. She obtained certifications from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine. For many years, she taught alternative, holistic, and natural treatment options for anxiety and PTSD as a Yale faculty member. Campo currently resides in Nashville, where she serves as a Clinical Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt and provides cons

Kirk Schneider is currently running for President of the American Psychological Association (APA). He is a licensed psychologist and adjunct faculty at Saybrook University and Teachers College, Columbia University. He is well-known as the leading spokesperson for integrative, existential, and humanistic approaches to psychology, which emphasize the therapeutic relationship and the importance of confronting the deep paradoxes of being human, and the conflicts that arise from them, in psychotherapy. He has authored or co-authored thirteen books, including the Wiley World Handbook of Existential Therapy, The Spirituality of Awe: Challenges to the Robotic Revolution, The Polarized Mind: Why It's Killing Us and What We Can Do About It, and, most recently, The Depolarizing of America: A Guidebook for Social Healing. Many trainees in counseling and clinical psychology will recognize Schneider from the APA Psychotherapy Training video series featuring his therapy work. Schneider is campaigning to serve as Presid

Ronda "Ro" Speight is a mental health peer specialist and recovery advocate at the Mental Health Association of Westchester in Westchester County, New York. She is a person with lived experience with the psychiatric system and a trained co-facilitator in an innovative approach that combines peer support and principles of the Open Dialogue approach called Peer Supported (Partnered) Open Dialogue (POD). POD is currently being tested in a large randomized clinical trial in the UK. Ro was a service recipient in the Parachute Program NYC, which provided mobile crisis services and implemented respite centers in New York City—combining Intentional Peer Support and Open Dialogue informed practices. The Parachute program was discontinued, but the peer respite model it introduced in New York continues to exist. Her engagement with peers in Parachute shaped her views on mental health care and inspired her to pursue a career as a peer specialist. Identifying as a person of color, Ro was profoundly affected by her mother'