Mad In America: Science, Psychiatry And Social Justice

Jussi Valtonen is a neuropsychologist, an adjunct researcher with the Finnish Centre for Evidence-Based Orthopedics (FICEBO), a professor of writing at the University of the Arts Helsinki, and a columnist for the Finnish Medical Journal. He works clinically as a neuropsychologist, and his research and writing sit at the crossroads of mind and brain through the health humanities. Jussi is an award-winning novelist as well. His novel They Know Not What They Do won Finland's top literary prize and has been translated into multiple languages. Alongside his scholarly work, he leads the Health, Narrative, and the Arts initiative at Uniarts Helsinki, which offers training in narrative skills for professionals in healthcare and social work and brings literary, artistic, and humanistic ways of thinking into conversation with clinical care. In this conversation, we turn to Jussi's recent work helping to build narrative medicine groups in Finland, first with clinicians and now increasingly with neurological patients,

Born in Germany and raised in Denmark, Fiona Frenzen is a qualified teacher with a master's degree in anthropology. For years, she had a dream about living in Iceland, seeking the grounding and healing effect of nature. But due to her health challenges and severe withdrawal syndrome, this dream seemed unrealistic. However, this past fall, she moved to a rural part of Iceland where she began teaching at the local elementary and high school. She dreams about putting her degree in anthropology to use by working in research and contributing to the awareness of the risks of antidepressants and the difficulties of withdrawal. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https:

Marsha Zaritsky is a licensed mental health therapist certified in Internal Family Systems. She joins us to explain how her experience with polypharmacy and psychiatric drug withdrawal has changed and informed how she practices. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org

Eric Jarvis is a Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University whose work brings attention to areas often overlooked in mainstream psychiatry, including religion, coercion, the social determinants of psychosis, and culture. He directs the Cultural Consultation Service, the First Episode Psychosis Program, and the Culture and Psychosis Working Group at the Jewish General Hospital, and is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry. His research looks closely at how religious belief, spiritual practice, moral worlds, language, migration, racism, and social context shape how people experience distress, meaning, and healing. In this conversation, we explore how faith, culture, and power shape mental health practice. We discuss Jarvis's work on religion and spirituality in cultural psychiatry, his research on culture and the social causes of psychosis, and his studies of coercion in first-episode psychosis. We also talk about category fallacies, looping effects, and what happens when biomedical explanations of suff

Beatrice Birch is the Founder and Director of Inner Fire, a residential program in rural Vermont, which is unique in one particular way. It provides support for tapering from psychiatric drugs, including antipsychotics, which is an essential aspect of the therapy. In this interview, Beatrice introduces Inner Fire, tells us about the programme and staff and explains how kindling our inner fire can hold up a mirror that tells people they are worthy and valuable. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org

Justin Garson is a philosopher and historian of science at the City University of New York. He has published several books and articles on biology, the mind, and madness, including Madness: A Philosophical Exploration in 2022. He also contributes to Psychology Today and Aeon. His latest book, The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia, was published by St. Martin's Press in April 2026. In this interview, Justin joins us to talk about the work of Solomon Snyder, whose discoveries ushered in the era of biological psychiatry. We also talk about the race to develop new psychiatric drugs based on his research and the implications for our understanding of psychosis. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/

Kelsey Osgood is the author of How to Disappear Completely: on Modern Anorexia, which was chosen for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers New Program. Her work has appeared online and in print at The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harper's and The New Yorker, among other outlets. In this interview we talk about Kelsey's new book Godstruck: Seven Women's Unexpected Journeys to Religious Conversion and her experiences with anorexia and psychiatric drugs. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org

Psychosis and conditions like Schizophrenia have been tainted with pessimism right from the beginning. Doctors often don't know that recovery is possible and can convey this fatalism to their patients. Prateeksha Sharma's lived experience and research work challenges this pessimism. Prateeksha is a musician, a researcher, a composer, a counselor, and a writer. However, for the longest time, she was only thought of as a patient. She is a distinguished research fellow at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research in Hyderabad and the founder of Brightside Family Counseling Center. She received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder as a college student and has managed these achievements while navigating the horrors and the gifts of psychosis. Prateeksha's writings critically examine psychiatric systems and foreground survivor perspectives. She brings intellectual depth and personal clarity to what it means to move from being labeled a patient, to being recognized as a person. In this interview, we discuss psyc

Linda Michaels is a psychologist in private practice in Chicago and a co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN). She trained at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and completed the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy program at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Before becoming a clinician, she worked in marketing, innovation, and management consulting, including work with organizations in the U.S. and Latin America. Michaels is the chair and co-founder of PsiAN, a public-facing effort focused on helping people understand different forms of psychotherapy and advocate for the kind of care they are seeking. She is also a Consulting Editor at Psychoanalytic Inquiry and Clinical Associate Faculty at the Chicago Center for Psychoanalysis. She is currently a Fellow at the Lauder Institute Global MBA program. In this conversation, we trace her path from market research to psychotherapy and then to organizing. We talk about what clients say they want from therapy and how training, insurance, and

Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, my name is James. Today, we are discussing the experiences of people who have attempted to stop taking psychiatric drugs. These experiences are captured in a survey undertaken by the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Joining me to talk about this work are Cathal Cadogan and Agnes Higgins, both from Trinity College. Cathal is an Associate Professor in Practice of Pharmacy at Trinity College. His research focuses on developing supports to help people make informed decisions about starting and stopping psychiatric medication. He was recently involved in a priority setting partnership to identify priorities for future research on reducing and discontinuing psychiatric medicines. Agnes is a nurse, researcher and academic who has recently retired as a professor in mental health at the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College. She is a former Chairperson of the Board of Mental Health Reform, Ireland's leading service use

Nisha Gupta is an existential phenomenologist, a depth psychotherapist, a creativity scholar, and an artist. She's an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia and earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. She's also, if she doesn't mind me saying, a bit of a rising star as an early career psychologist, having won early career awards from the APA divisions for both humanistic and qualitative psychology. Dr. Gupta's work centers on lived experience and the problems of form and method in the field. She is an advocate of the psychological humanities, disseminating psychology to the public as art, including paintings, film, poetry, and literary memoir, for community healing and social change. Her artwork seeks to raise critical consciousness and empowerment regarding marginalized lived experiences, such as sexual and gender oppression, creative madness, and spiritual emergencies. In psychotherapy practice, she integrates depth and liberation psychother

Alicia Ely Yamin is the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. She's also an adjunct senior lecturer on health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Senior Advisor on Human Rights and Health Policy at Partners in Health. Alicia is known globally for her work on the right to health, economic and social rights, and reproductive justice. She has spent much of her professional life in Latin America and East Africa, including co-founding a health and human rights program with the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos in Lima in 1999. She has served in major UN and global expert roles, including as one of 10 experts appointed by the UN Secretary-General to the Independent Accountability Panel from 2016 to 2021. Alicia has edited and authored over a dozen books and UN reports, and close to 200 articles. Her most recent book, When Misfortune Becomes Injustice: Evolving Human Rights Struggles for Health and Social Equality, was published

Susanne Paola Antonetta is an accomplished writer and poet, the author of numerous books, and in 2001 her book Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, won a prestigious American Book Award. Her latest book is The Devil's Castle, Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org

Kamaldeep Bhui is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at Queen Mary University of London. He is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on cultural psychiatry, ethnic inequalities in mental health, and the social determinants of distress. In recognition of his contributions to mental health research and policy, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He has written extensively on the grim reality of minorities facing higher rates of psychiatric detention and coercion. In an era of algorithmic checklists and time-pressured care, Bhui argues for reclaiming biographical listening and patients' own stories and understandings. Without cherishing lived experience, clinicians lose meaning in their work and patients lose agency, trust, and hope. In this interview, we will discuss how our contexts and culture reach deep within us to inform our experience of pain, and to indicate what is abnormal, why we feel distress, and what it means

Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of Surviving Work, which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work. She has worked with health teams and trade unions, practiced as a psychotherapist in the NHS, and now runs the Digital Therapy Project, a group of UK and US researchers studying the future of therapy from both sides of the relationship. In her new book, UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health, she explores the effects of reorganizing mental health care around the logic of the app store. Therapy is now something you can scroll through on your phone, match with in seconds, and rate like a ride share. Platforms promise frictionless access and personalized care. What is harder to see is how this new "mental health marketplace" is reshaping what therapy is, how it feels, and who it is really built to serve. UberTherapy is part political economy, part insider account of therapy work, part literary exploration o

Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of Surviving Work, which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work. She has worked with health teams and trade unions, practiced as a psychotherapist in the NHS, and now runs the Digital Therapy Project, a group of UK and US researchers studying the future of therapy from both sides of the relationship. In her new book, UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health, she explores the effects of reorganizing mental health care around the logic of the app store. Therapy is now something you can scroll through on your phone, match with in seconds, and rate like a ride share. Platforms promise frictionless access and personalized care. What is harder to see is how this new "mental health marketplace" is reshaping what therapy is, how it feels, and who it is really built to serve. UberTherapy is part political economy, part insider account of therapy work, part literary exploration o

This week, we are joined by Chris Masterjohn, PhD. Chris is a nutritional scientist, a former professor, and the founder of Mitome. With a PhD in nutritional science and years of research in mitochondrial biology, Chris's work focuses on translating peer-reviewed science into practical tools for human health. At Mitome, Dr. Masterjohn pioneered the first analysis designed to measure mitochondrial respiratory chain function directly, identifying individual energy bottlenecks and guiding personalized science-backed protocols to optimize the system responsible for over 90% of cellular energy production. His mission is to bring mitochondrial testing out of the rare disease space and into everyday health. In part 2, we discuss the biochemistry of our stress response and the potential benefits of balanced nutrition for those in psychiatric drug withdrawal. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please he

This week, we are joined by Chris Masterjohn, PhD. Chris is a nutritional scientist, a former professor, and the founder of Mitome. With a PhD in nutritional science and years of research in mitochondrial biology, Chris's work focuses on translating peer-reviewed science into practical tools for human health. At Mitome, Dr. Masterjohn pioneered the first analysis designed to measure mitochondrial respiratory chain function directly, identifying individual energy bottlenecks and guiding personalized science-backed protocols to optimize the system responsible for over 90% of cellular energy production. His mission is to bring mitochondrial testing out of the rare disease space and into everyday health. In this interview, we discuss why so little is understood about the role serotonin plays in the body and how our mitochondria might play a part in the experince of antidepressant withdrawal. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader

Jan N. DeFehr is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Winnipeg and an associate of The Taos Institute and a member of the Faculty for Palestine, Manitoba. She is also a member of the York University Mad Studies Hub. Before entering academia, she spent many years as a clinical social worker, working alongside people who were trying to make sense of their distress within, and often in spite of, the mental health system. Her teaching, research, and course development focus on building public access to critical analyses of that system, drawing on the work of clients and survivors of psychiatry, practitioners, and scholars. Her new book, A Critical Mental Health Primer: Towards Informed Choice in Social Services, Education, and Healthcare(Canadian Scholars, 2025), offers a clear and accessible map of critical mental health scholarship. The book examines scientific critiques of diagnosis, the potential harms of psychiatric labels, the lack of transparency and procedural justice i

In our first podcast of 2026, Robert Whitaker joins us to answer questions submitted by Mad in America readers and listeners. We discuss the validity of ADHD diagnoses, withdrawal and sexual dysfunction risks of SSRI antidepressants, the harms of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), the rise of AI-generated misinformation and much more. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/ To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850 © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org