Mad In America: Science, Psychiatry And Social Justice

Executive Director Jahmil Roberts and Advocacy Director Yana Calou from the Trans Lifeline work towards connecting trans people to the community support and resources they need to survive and thrive. Trans Lifeline is a grassroots hotline and microgrants 501(c)(3) non-profit organization offering direct emotional and financial support to trans people in crisis – for the trans community, by the trans community. Their hotline is a peer support phone service run by trans people for trans and questioning peers and does not contact police without consent. The Cops out of Crisis initiative, which you can learn more about here, does advocacy work based on the negative impact of non-consensual law enforcement intervention and forced hospitalization on those in marginalized populations. The Trans Lifeline envisions a world where trans people have the connection, economic security, and care everyone needs and deserves – free of prisons and police. This is the third and final interview in a series of conversations bein

Nicholas Haslam is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne. He is a prolific writer with nine books and around 270 articles to his name and is well-renowned for his work on dehumanization and concept creep. He received his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and taught at the New School for Social Research in New York City before returning to Australia. His books include Psychology in the Bathroom, Introduction to Personality and Intelligence, Yearning to Breathe Free: Seeking Asylum in Australia, and Introduction to the Taxometric Method. In addition to his academic writing, Nick regularly contributes to The Conversation, Inside Story, and Australian Book Review. He has also written for TIME, The Monthly, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Australian, and two Best Australian Science Writing anthologies. Nick is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Association for Psychological Science. In this interview

In this interview, MIA speaks with Allan Horwitz and Sarah Fay about the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and its impact on our society and our personal lives. Allan Horwitz is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University. He is the author or co-author of 11 books, a number of which have focused on the DSM and how the successive iterations of that manual have shaped societal thinking about mental disorders. His most recent book is DSM: A History of Psychiatry’s Bible. Sarah Fay is a writer whose essays and articles have been published in the New York Times, the Atlantic and numerous other national publications. Her memoir, Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses was published in March. She is also the founder of Pathological: The Movement, a public awareness campaign “devoted to making people aware of the unreliability and invalidity of DSM diagnoses, and the dangers of identifying with an unproven mental illness.”

Sera Davidow is a filmmaker, activist, advocate, author, and mother of two very busy kids. As a survivor of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse as a child and relationship violence as an adult, Sera has faced many challenges throughout her own healing process, including many ups and downs with suicidal thoughts, and self-injury. At present, she spends much of her time working as Director of the Wildflower Alliance (formerly known as the Western Mass Recovery Learning Community), which includes Afiya Peer Respite, recently recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of about two dozen exemplary, rights-based programs operating across the world. She also serves on several boards including the Massachusetts Disability Law Center (DLC) Board of Directors, the DLC’s Council Against Institutional and Psychiatric Abuse (CAIPA), as an advisory board member for the National Center on Domestic Violence, Trauma, and Mental Health (NCDVTM), and as a founding Board member of Hearing Voices USA. You can lear

Lynne Layton is a psychoanalyst in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and part-time assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School. Holding a Ph.D. in clinical psychology as well as comparative literature, she has taught courses on gender, popular culture, and psychoanalysis for Harvard’s Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies and Social Studies. Currently, she teaches and supervises at the Massachusetts Institute for Psychoanalysis. She recently published a book called Towards a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes and is the author of Who’s That Girl? Who’s That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory(2004). She was also the co-editor of the books Narcissism and the Text: Studies in Literature and the Psychology of Self, Bringing the Plague: Toward a Postmodern Psychoanalysis, and Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics: Encounters in the Clinical Setting. Her involvement in editing peer-reviewed journals includes being the associate editor o

Dana Becker is professor emeritus of social work and social research at Bryn Mawr College and has practiced as a psychotherapist for over three decades. With a doctorate in psychology and a master’s degree in social work, she has been an equal-opportunity critic of both fields in her work on the effects of therapeutic culture on women in the US. These themes are explored in her books, Through the Looking Glass: Women and Borderline Personality Disorder (Westview Press, 1997) and The Myth of Empowerment: Women and the Therapeutic Culture in America (NYU Press, 2005). Her most recent book, One Nation under Stress: The Trouble with Stress as an Idea (Oxford University Press, 2014), tackles the effects of the therapeutic culture through an examination of the ideological work currently performed by the stress concept. Her work has received awards from the Society for the Psychology of Women. Becker is known for her work on the use of borderline personality disorder to medicalize women’s problems. She has also adva

This week, we hear from Dr. Michael Hengartner. Michael is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland. His areas of expertise include psychiatric epidemiology, public mental health, evidence-based medicine and conflicts of interest in psychological and biomedical research. He was an expert evaluator for the European Research Council and the World Health Organization and currently is a member of the Swiss School of Public Health, the German Society for Social Psychiatry, and the European Public Health Association. In this interview, we discuss Michael's recently released book entitled “Evidence-biased Antidepressant Prescription, Over-medicalisation, Flawed Research, and Conflicts of Interest.” The book addresses the overprescribing of antidepressants and it critically examines the current scientific evidence on the efficacy and safety of the drugs.

This week on the Mad in America podcast we hear from Johann Hari. Johann is an  internationally bestselling author whose books have appeared in 38 languages, and he was twice named National Newspaper Journalist of the Year by Amnesty International. We last heard from Johann in 2018 about his then-new book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions. Today, we get to talk about Johann’s latest book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, released on the sixth of January 2022 in the UK and January 25th in the US and Canada. For Stolen Focus, Johann went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons behind our inability to focus and to understand how this crisis affects our wellbeing and society. Crucially, he learned how we can reclaim our stolen focus if we are prepared to fight for it.

In the face of the COVID pandemic, social and academic pressures, and an uncertain future, young people are struggling. Each week we see another news reports about a “mental health crisis” among youth in North America, including rising suicide rates. Last fall, a consortium of physicians declared poor youth mental health a “national emergency.” More recently, on December 7, 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health, which prescribes actions by families, schools, governments, media and other stakeholders. Typically, these announcements call for getting kids greater access to mental health diagnosis and treatment. As MIA readers know, that frequently leads to more screening, more labels, and more prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. In his practice with children and adolescents, his research, and his teaching, Dr. Elia Abi-Jaoude is pushing back on that approach in favor of alternatives that more closely involve families and take environmental elements into account. He

Sebastienne Grant is a professor of critical psychology at Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona. She currently serves as the program director for a Master’s program in Critical Psychology and Human Services. Dr. Grant received her PhD in Psychology: Consciousness and Society from the University of West Georgia. Grounded in the traditions of Buddhism, critical psychology, existential-humanistic psychology, and transpersonal psychology, Dr. Grant is concerned with questions of wellbeing—both individual and societal. She has written on transhumanism from Buddhist and existential perspectives, as well as the tensions of social justice under neoliberalism. Her most recent publication is a chapter titled “Addressing the Empty Self: Toward Socially Just Subjectivities” in the book Subjectivity in Psychology in the Era of Social Justice. This book was co-written with several colleagues, including previous MIA podcast guest Dr. Bethany Morris.

Dawn Sonntag and Kermit Cole have collaborated on creating a 30-minute opera, For Life, that explores the possible harms that can come from psychiatric drugs. It’s a novel subject for an opera, which premieres online on January 15 at 9 p.m. EST. The opera will be performed by students at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. Dawn is an award-winning composer whose works have been commissioned by the Cleveland Opera Theater and the Hartford Opera Theater and performed at numerous music festivals in the United States and Canada. Her first opera, for which she also wrote the libretto, titled Verlorene Heimat, was a finalist in the 2021 American prize for opera. She wrote the composition for For Life. Kermit Cole is well known to Mad In America readers. He cofounded madinamerica.com, and served as our editor for the first four years. He has a background in street theatre, having toured Europe as part of a mime troupe, and in the 1990s, produced a documentary about living with HIV. He has worked in various re

Vincenzo Di Nicola is an Italian-Canadian child and adolescent psychiatrist and a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal where he co-directs the postgraduate course in psychiatry and the humanities. He has written extensively about the importance of relationality and dialogue in therapy and is one of the leading figures of social psychiatry. Most recently, he received the 2022 Distinguished Service Award from the American Psychiatric Association. Di Nicola’s most recent book Psychiatry in Crisis (co-authored with Drozdstoj Stoyanov) offers a critical analysis of the discipline and points to the glaring gaps that must be addressed.

In this podcast we discuss an educational program called Emotional CPR (eCPR), a form of peer support anyone can use to assist youth (or adults) in emotional crisis. Our guests are Oryx Cohen and Briza Gavidia of the National Empowerment Center, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit whose mission is to carry a message of recovery, empowerment, hope, and healing to people with lived experience with mental health issues, trauma, and/or extreme states. Oryx Cohen, M.P.A., is a leader in the international mental health consumer/survivor/ex-patient (c/s/x) or Mad Pride movement. Currently, Oryx is NEC’s Chief Operating Officer. Among other responsibilities, he organizes the national Alternatives Conference every three years and assists states that have an underdeveloped consumer/survivor voice to find that voice and then work toward transforming their mental health systems to become peer-driven and recovery-oriented. Oryx is also a lead trainer for Emotional CPR, or eCPR, and has conducted over 50 eCPR trainings around

Elisa Lacerda-Vandenborn is a professor at Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is currently part of several national and international research projects examining education in indigenous communities and the decolonization of mental health. Her writings explore alternate ways of understanding human suffering, challenge the dominant psychiatric worldview, and critique the Euro-American understandings of distress and disease. Her interests include understanding different ideas of self, especially in indigenous communities, and how our ignorance about these differences harms people we say we are healing. Lacerda-Vandenborn notes that “Psychology is not a very reflective discipline.” This is a conversation about lost indigenous children, psychology’s blind spots, and how we can address these concerns with epistemic humility.

On the Mad in America podcast this week, we hear from Renee Schuls-Jacobson. Renee was a teacher for two decades and she is now an author, artist, advocate and coach. In this interview, we discuss her book Psychiatrized: Waking up After a Decade of Bad Medicine which was released this year. The book is a beautifully written account of Renee's experiences being prescribed the benzodiazepine clonazepam (Klonopin) for seven years. It talks of her experiences taking the drug as prescribed but perhaps more importantly, also tells of what happened to Renee as she made attempts to withdraw.

In this podcast, we hear from the renowned clinician and researcher Dr. Giovanni Fava. Dr. Fava is a psychiatrist and professor of clinical psychology at the University of Bologna in Italy. He is also a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Since 1992, he has been the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed medical journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. Dr. Fava has authored more than 500 scientific papers and is known for researching the adverse effects of antidepressant drugs. In a 1994 editorial, he argued that many of his fellow psychiatrists were too hesitant to question whether a given psychiatric treatment was more harmful than it was helpful. He recently released his latest book entitled “Discontinuing Antidepressant Medications” published by Oxford University Press. The book is designed to be a guide for clinicians who want to help patients withdraw from antidepressants. In this interview, we discuss the new book, approaches to antid

Hans Skott-Myhre is a Professor of Human Services at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia. Over the last 50 years, he has worked within a wide variety of human service settings, including residential homes, community health centers, inpatient psychiatric units, homeless youth shelters, transitional living programs, and prisons. About two decades ago, he transitioned into academia, where he now does research at the intersections of human services, psychology, cultural theory, and literature. His recently published book titled “Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry: Reconceptualizing the Self Beyond Capitalism” explored how we might be different types of people if we didn't live in a capitalist society. The book draws on Marxist and post-Marxist theory and presents a nuanced analysis of antipsychiatrists' professional writings, including Franco Basaglia and R. D. Laing, as well as the work of fiction writers, including Franz Kafka and Gabriel García Márquez. Through this analy

In this podcast, which comes on the heels of reports linking social media use to reduced self-esteem in teen girls, eating-disorders therapist Shira Collings discusses person-centered, socio-culturally aware approaches to dealing with disordered eating and other food-related challenges in youth (and adults). Shira Collings, M.S., N.C.C., is Mad in America’s Assistant Editor for MIA Continuing Education and the Youth Coordinator for the National Empowerment Center. She received her B.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. in Counseling and Psychology from Troy University. As a person with lived experience of recovery from diet culture, disordered eating, and trauma, Shira is passionate about supporting others in finding freedom with food, body acceptance, and the ability to be their full, authentic selves and live according to their values. She is an advocate for trauma-informed, person-centered approaches to mental health care.

Helena Hanson is professor and chair of translational social science and health equity and associate director for the center for social medicine at UCLA. As a psychiatrist and anthropologist, she has spent much of her career researching how race, class, gender, and social determinants of health affect psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Growing up in 1970's Oakland and Berkeley, California, Hansen witnessed the consequences of deinstitutionalization and mass incarceration policies firsthand. Losing family members to both the prison and mental health systems gave her a personal understanding of the social and structural failures she interrogates in her work today. She also draws on the principles she learned as a participant in AIDS-related activism to mobilize community organizations and champion mutual aid groups in combatting our current mental health crises. In this interview, Hansen discusses how race and class affect psychiatric diagnoses and subsequent treatment, the moral implications of psychiatric d

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis that carries a heavy social stigma. However, experts have also questioned the validity and utility of the label. In response, some experts and service-user groups have called for different conceptualizations and terms for those experiencing psychotic symptoms. Doctors Matcheri Keshavan and Raquelle Mesholam-Gately are currently tackling this issue. They recently completed a project in collaboration with the Consumer Advisory Board of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA, examining the benefits and drawbacks of renaming schizophrenia. Matcheri Keshavan, M.D. is the Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Academic Head of Psychiatry and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Raquelle Mesholam-Gately, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is also the director of the Consumer Advisory Board and conducts neuropsychology research