We're All Mad Here

Too often, if a man and a woman present in the ER with identical symptoms, the woman will be written off as simply “anxious” and sent home without treatment- or sometimes, being told she had been treated but was actually given a placebo. It’s not always based on gender, though- doctors are hesitant to give […]

The Martha Mitchell Effect: a clinical term for when someone (usually female) is labelled mentally ill for reporting truth stranger than fiction, with or without a history of insanity. Named for Martha Mitchell, of course, the woman notorious for drinking, gossiping… oh, and blowing the whistle on Watergate. Her life was ruined by the defamation […]

Failure can be frustrating. A lot of failure can be REALLY frustrating. And Charles Guiteau failed a lot. Was it that that led him to assassinate a president? Was it a lifetime of syphilis? Or was it insanity?

Was Joan of Arc crazy? No one can seem to agree whether the teenager who saved France in 1429 was truly speaking to God or if she had epilepsy. Or migraines. Or tuberculosis (EVERY TIME, GUYS!) But whether she was schizophrenic, was truly speaking to God, or was just a really clever teenage girl, Joan […]

In the 1860s, 8% of asylum patients were admitted due to “religious excitement.” While that’s no longer a diagnosis, 24% of schizophrenic patients in psych wards today report having some form of religious delusion. But religious delusions exist outside the psych ward, too. Religious fanatics are willing to blow up buildings and murder to please […]

When it comes to seniors and mental health treatment, society generally accepts that the older crowd are against it. They think it’s shameful or it’s witchcraft, right? WRONG! But, if people of a certain age are open to treatment, why aren’t they getting it?

In the early 1990s, Edward Gingerich was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and as an Amish man, was not allowed to treat it with medication. But after toe massages and thrice-daily molasses drinks didn’t work, he was finally allowed to take some. It worked like a charm, but the second he told his bishop he didn’t […]

Rachel talks about how she made the decision to go on medication for her anxiety and depression. She also rips SSRI Stories (dot) com a new one.   Love the show? Visit us at https://www.patreon.com/allmadpodcast We’re on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!

The Urban Asylum at Dalldorf was built in 1880s Berlin and was a comparatively good facility to be at. In 1920, a young woman was admitted who refused to reveal her identity for two whole years. The staff called her Miss Unknown. When she finally started talking, a rumor spread that Miss Unknown was actually […]

In 1973, Dr David Rosehan gathered a group of colleagues and friends to pull a Nellie Bly. They got themselves admitted to 12 different psych wards in 5 different cities to observe what life was like there. It wasn’t pretty. Hospital personnel were miffed after Dr Rosenhan published his study two years later and challenged […]

Elizabeth Cochran was one of the first “stunt journalists,” going where no woman had gone before. Too poor to afford much of an education, she dreamed of becoming a writer. After writing an anonymous letter to a newpaper editor, Elizabeth was hired as a freelancer for the paper, writing under the pen name “Nellie Bly.” […]

Dr Shirley Turner did not appreciate being broken up with by fellow doctor, Andrew Bagby… so she shot and killed him in November of 2001. It didn’t take long for the police to figure out who did it, but somehow, Shirley, who ran back to Canada, managed to avoid conviction. And then she discovered she […]

Shirley Turner made it clear that she wanted to be a psychiatrist to make money, not to help people. Usually that just makes someone seem selfish or shallow, but Dr Turner was labelled a psychopath by her coworkers, Her career wasn’t like she had pictured it, and neither was her personal life. Before she received […]

In 1892, early-day feminist Charlotte Perkins-Gilman published The Yellow Wallpaper in a literary journal. At first regarded as a piece of gothic fiction, the piece was soon corroborated by mental health professionals and eventually changed the way post-partum depression, among other ailments, was treated. Enjoy Rachel’s dramatization of Gilman’s piece.

The reason the Libby Zion Law was created is discussed with JJ and Ted from Conspiring to Argue. 18 year old Libby should never have died on that evening in 1984- but was it murder, or simply a flawed system?

After his mother’s death in 1988, John duPont threw himself into sports. He built a training facility he called Foxcatcher Farms and opened it to athletes. His money turned the world of USA Wrestling around, and soon Foxcatcher Farms was hosting world-class wrestlers, training for the Olympics. John was on top of the world… sometimes. […]

John DuPont became a murderer in 1996. But before that, he was a boy desperate to belong. Ignored by his parents and unable to excel at his favorite thing, sports, John was a sad kid. As he grew up, his eccentricities were ignored because people loved what his money did for them, and that willful […]

June and Jennifer were the only black kids in their 1960s Welsh school, and people assumed that that was why they never grew out of their special twin language. But by eleven, they refused to even speak to their family, and when people tried to separate them, each girl grew catatonic. After dropping out at […]

Why are so many Halloween costumes labelled with the word “psycho”, so many haunting stories start with suicide, so many haunted houses given an asylum theme? What is it about mental illness that scares people so much that even after All Hallow’s Eve, we both relish and fear stories about a deranged psych ward escapee? […]

Alan Turing has been called one of the most important people of the 20th century. The inventor of what would become stored-memory computers, Turing worked as a cryptanalyst during WW2. His work with his colleagues is believed to have shortened the war by years and saved millions of lives. And yet, when it was discovered […]