Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

How does a wounded world wound us in return? Can we be mindful and offer intimate attention to pain and trauma? We answer these and other questions with Will Adams who is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne and completed his clinical psychology internship at McLean H...

In this episode of the   Mad in America   podcast, Brooke Siem speaks with Selma Eikelenboom, a forensic scientist and medical examiner whose career has spanned psychotherapy, medicine, emergency care, surgery, and forensic investigation. Eikelenboom works as a forensic medical examiner investigating cases involving psychoactive medications and acts of violence. In this conversation, Brooke and Se...

Alicia Martin is an Australian community pharmacist, a member of the  Not Broken Project and founder of TaperMate . Through her work in pharmacy, Alicia saw patients struggling with unusual and severe symptoms when they tried to stop their antidepressants and realized there was little support when people wanted to stop long-term medications. Rather than waiting for the system to catch up, she star...

G ail Hornstein is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Mount Holyoke College. Across a long and influential career, her work has moved between psychology, psychoanalysis, history, qualitative research, and the study of first-person accounts of madness. She is the author of To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann , a biography of the pioneering psychiatrist an...

Merrick Daniel Pilling is an Associate Professor and Interim Co-Director of the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice and the co-editor of Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Madness: Documented Lives . His new book, Mad Studies: The Basics, introduces Mad Studies as a field that has emerged fr...

Dinesh Bhugra is a leading voice in social and cultural psychiatry. He is Emeritus Professor of Mental Health and Cultural Diversity at King's College London and has served as president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , the British Medical Association , and the World Psychiatric Association . His many honors include being named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for service...

Marianne Apostolides is the award-winning author of eight books, four of which have been translated and published internationally. She is a two-time recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship and winner of the K.M. Hunter Award for Literature. Her books include I Can't Get You Out of My Mind , Deep Salt Water , Voluptuous Pleasure: The Truth about the Writing Life , and Swim . Moving across fiction...

Welcome to the Mad in America podcast. My name is Brooke Siem, and I am the author of the award-winning memoir on antidepressant withdrawal, May Cause Side Effects . Today, I'm excited to have Dr. Howard Schubiner on the show. Dr. Schubiner is an internist and a clinical professor at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and has authored more than 100 publications in scientific j...

K hameer Kidia is a physician and an anthropologist, works at Harvard Medical School and the University of Zimbabwe, and spends his life between Washington DC and Harare. Kidia has many accolades to his name – he is a Rhodes scholar and a 2023 New America Fellow. His papers have appeared in elite medical journals and his stories in the New York Times. His recent book, which we will discuss, was co...

Chelsea McVeigh began her journey with psychiatric medications at 16, never imagining where it would lead. At 31, during a new pregnancy, she suffered a severe adverse reaction that turned her world upside down. After years of fighting to reclaim her health and sense of self, she's now 37, a mother of two incredible boys and living proof that healing is possible even after the unimaginable. *** Th...

Carla Delgado is a San Diego native with eight years of experience in healthcare and a master's in healthcare administration. She also has a personal story of SSRI withdrawal, and we discuss how her background in healthcare administration helped to navigate the healthcare system, which has not been that friendly for people experiencing antidepressant withdrawal. *** Thank you for being with us to...

J ussi 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 awar...

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 teachi...

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 cont...

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-C...

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...

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 Pres...

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 Con...

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 w...

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 org...

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 Colle...

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 fr...

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, an...

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 ye...

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...