Essays

For decades, psychiatry committed medical fraud when it told the public that antidepressants fixed a chemical imbalance in the brain.

All the new hype about miracle psychedelic treatments as the next wave of cures for mental disorders leaves out the risk of therapy abuse.

As contacts to the new 988 suicide hotline number have risen, so have call tracing and police interventions.

A TV writer claims that research shows that Tetris is “literally a trauma first aid kit.” Her tweets sound scientific, but the research behind it is unconvincing.

In his new book, former NIMH director Thomas Insel, while exploring the causes of poor mental health outcomes in the United States, omits any mention of NIMH studies that tell of how the drugs worsen long-term outcomes.

Leading figures in psychiatry acknowledge that DSM psychiatric diagnoses and the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness are not scientifically valid, but are useful fictions that help people manage their emotions and comply with their medication treatments.

Psychiatry's defenders are open to criticism of psychiatry as long as it stops short of acknowledging the increasingly well-documented reality that psychiatry lacks any scientific merit.

The "science" of happiness has always been inextricably linked to eugenics. Modern positive psychology, with its focus on genetics and willpower, is no different.

The research literature from the WHO, NIMH, and others does not support a narrative of therapeutic progress, of psychiatric treatments that have “continued” to improve over time.

Even those who would seek to reform the profession of psychiatry cannot confront the reality that exists in the research literature

Now I’m under attack, with threats of violence flung at me alongside threats of lawsuits. And all because I shared the large body of peer-reviewed research that contradicts the mainstream assumptions of psychiatry.

A dialogue between Dr. Jim Phelps—a psychiatrist who questions whether MIA is doing more harm than good by reporting the results of long-term trials of psychiatric drugs—and Robert Whitaker, founder of MIA.

Sean Gunderson, who was detained by the criminal justice system for 17 years after receiving an NGRI verdict, documents the life of a forensic psychiatry inmate.

Unbiased experts must examine the claims and research of psychiatry and issue a report as to whether psychiatry not only has a valid medical basis, but whether this basis justifies the widespread violation of medical ethics and the routine use of imprisonment and torture.

Service-users' experience was at the heart of everything the critics spoke about, as well as the importance of relying on the most up-to-date and accurate evidence.

Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD) is one of the after-effects neglected amid the rapid march of the psychedelic renaissance. But is the impulse to pathologise these perceptual changes helpful?

A dialogue between Jim Phelps and Robert Whitaker about Nassir Ghaemi's latest article, which concluded that psychiatric drugs, except for lithium, do not provide a long-term benefit.

To strip psychedelic use down to its chemicals is to de-radicalize its communal and anti-authoritarian roots. Given psychiatry’s history of treatment outcome failure and its ethically compromising financial relationships with Big Pharma, is it really a good idea to make psychiatry the societal authority in charge of psychedelic use?

After Joanna Moncrieff and colleagues published their study debunking the low-serotonin theory of depression, the editor of Mad in Sweden, Lasse Mattila, wrote Sweden’s...

Just as it risks transmitting harmful narratives about pain and distress, psychotherapy might also subvert these very harms in pursuit of genuine healing and transformation.

If the Brackeen v. Halland case is successful, Native children are more likely to be placed with non-Native foster parents, and face a surge in psychiatric labeling and drugging.

A new study finds that those with mild distress are three times as likely to feel worse after therapy than to receive some benefit.

The poster-children of psychiatric genetics, who endured abuse throughout their lives, were also the product of a racist culture.

How the unrelated murder of an inmate on another unit led to Sean's transfer, his escape from forced medication, and eventually, his release.

As mainstream mental health ideas and approaches are increasingly incorporated by community resilience-building groups, critics warn about the dangers of pathologizing and medicalizing reactions to climate change.