Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Joining us for a roundtable discussion are Brooke Siem, David Antonuccio, Kim Witzak, Angie Peacock and David Healy. They discuss the challenges of openly discussing psychiatric drug withdrawal, the true meaning of informed consent, getting doctors to acknowledge medication-induced harm and much more. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is...

On July 21st 2025, the FDA convened a  hearing on maternal use of antidepressants during pregnancy and the impact this use has on fetal development. Around 400,000 children in the United States are born each year whose mothers took antidepressants while pregnant, and so it's easy to see the societal importance of this topic. What are the risks to the fetus, the newborn, and the long-term developme...

Frank Gruba-McCallister is a clinical psychologist, educator, and scholar whose career spans more than three decades of teaching and academic leadership.  He served as Vice President of Academic Affairs at Adler University , where he helped to reorient the institution's mission toward training socially responsible practitioners. His leadership and curricular reforms contributed to Adler's doctoral...

John Ioannidis is a Stanford professor, a physician, and one of the most eminent scholars in the world in the field of evidence-based medicine. Ioannidis has spent his career exposing the weak foundations of much of modern medicine. His 2005 paper,  "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False ," became the  most-viewed  article in the history of PLOS Medicine and helped spark a global reckonin...

Talia Weiner is a psychological anthropologist, licensed professional counselor, and assistant professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia. As a medical and psychological anthropologist, her work focuses on the intersection of social-structural forces and how those forces show up in lived experience, particularly in relation to mental health care. Weiner studies these and other topic...

On the Mad in America podcast this week, we explore the importance of raising awareness of psychological approaches that challenge mainstream perspectives. Joining us today are three people who are practising clinical psychologists and who have written for Mad in America. Zenobia Morrill is a critical-liberation psychologist and psychology professor who received her doctorate from the University o...

Welcome to MIA Radio. Today, we are pleased to have as our guest Jaakko Seikkula. Jaakko is a psychologist who helped develop the Open Dialogue practice at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio, Finland, in the 1990s, and he is the person who  has conducted the research that told of remarkable longer-term outcomes with this form of care. For the past 15 years, he has developed and led training programs tha...

Jørgen Kjønø, whose stage name is Dex Carrington, is a Norwegian-American stand-up comedian based in Oslo, Norway. He is also an actor, host of the Truth Train podcast, and former travel show host who gained international recognition as the host of Dexpedition , which aired on MTV in over 30 countries. He joins us on the Mad In America podcast to talk about his experience with Lyrica and Zyprexa,...

Stijn Vanheule is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and professor of psychology at Ghent University. Trained in the Lacanian tradition, he has written widely on the structure of psychosis, the limits of psychiatric diagnosis, and the importance of attending to the subjective logic of mental distress. His books include The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective, Diagnosis and the DSM: A...

Nelson Lee is a therapist and mental skills coach with a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling and an MBA. In 2024, he attempted to get off antidepressants that he'd been on for 15 years. This led to significant long-term medication withdrawal that Nelson is still navigating at the time of this interview. As a therapist, Nelson specializes in helping clients transform their relation...

Paulo del Vecchio is a person in long-term recovery from mental health and addictions, who has been a leader in the peer recovery movement for 40 years. He recently completed a 30-year career at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, where he served in multiple roles including the director of the Center for Mental Health Service...

Laurence Kirmayer is one of the most influential figures in cultural psychiatry today. A psychiatrist, researcher, and theorist, he serves as James McGill Professor and Director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University and Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry . Across decades of work bridging anthropology, psychiatry, and cognitive science, Kirmayer has ad...

Hello, my name is Bob Whitaker, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Kermit Cole. We'll be speaking about a philosophical enterprise that Kermit is now deeply engaged in. That is, broadly speaking, how humor can help in creating a shared experience that is helpful to the healing process. Kermit, in his experiences of being with people in psychotic states, has seen humor as a moment when...

Welcome to this Mad in America podcast. My name is Robert Whitaker, and I'm happy today to have the pleasure of speaking with Joanna Moncrieff. Dr. Moncrieff is a psychiatrist who works in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. She is a Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College, London. In 1990 she co-founded the Critical Psychiatry Network , which today has abo...

On the Mad in America podcast this week, Brooke Siem, author of  May Cause Side Effects, talks with Teralyn Sell and Jenn Schmitz about their journey from working in the prison system to challenging conventional psychiatric narratives in their therapy practice and podcast, The Gaslit Truth . Dr. Teralyn Sell is a distinguished expert in Psychology and Brain Health, holding a PhD in Psychology and...

David Goodman is the Director of the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics and the Dean of the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College , where he also teaches in the Department of Formative Education . A past president of the APA's Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Division 24) , Goodman is known for his interdisciplinary work at the intersection of psycho...

Welcome to Mad In America Radio . My name is Bob Whitaker, and today my guest is Italian psychiatrist, Giovanni Fava. From 1992 to 2022, Dr. Fava edited the journal  Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics . We will be talking about the importance of that journal and what may be lost now that the publisher, Karger, may be taking it in a new direction. Here's why this journal, under Dr. Fava's leadership,...

J eff Sugarman is a distinguished scholar in theoretical and philosophical psychology, known for his work examining the psychology of selfhood, human agency, and the sociopolitical underpinnings of psychological science. A Professor Emeritus in the Education Department at Simon Fraser University, Dr. Sugarman has spent decades critically interrogating the ways mainstream psychology reflects and re...

Welcome to the Mad in America podcast. My name is Brooke Siem, and I'm the author of May Cause Side Effects . Today, I'm here with Rick Fee, president of the Richard Fee Foundation . Rick joins us to talk about his son, Richard Fee and his encounter with psychiatric drugs, most notably Adderall.  *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funde...

Mick Cooper is a leading voice in contemporary counseling psychology, known for his work at the intersection of psychotherapy and social change. A Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Roehampton in the UK, Dr. Cooper is both a researcher and a practicing therapist, exploring how psychotherapeutic principles can contribute to broader political and societal transformation. As a co...

Brent Dean Robbins is a psychologist, scholar, and all-around thoughtful human whose work has profoundly shaped existential and humanistic psychology . He is one of those rare thinkers who makes psychology feel alive—not just a collection of theories and data, but a field full of urgent, deeply human questions. He's a professor of psychology and the director of the  Psy. D. in Clinical Psychology...

Brent Dean Robbins is a psychologist, scholar, and all-around thoughtful human whose work has profoundly shaped existential and humanistic psychology . He is one of those rare thinkers who makes psychology feel alive—not just a collection of theories and data, but a field full of urgent, deeply human questions. He's a professor of psychology and the director of the  Psy. D. in Clinical Psychology...

In this interview, Brooke Siem, who is the author of a memoir on antidepressant withdrawal, May Cause Side Effects , interviews Gretchen LeFever Watson, PhD. Gretchen is a developmental and clinical psychologist with postdoctoral training in pediatric psychology. She has served as a professor in multiple disciplines at universities and medical schools in the United States and abroad and as the pat...

Becky Brasfield has emerged as a formidable advocate for change in the complex landscape of mental health care. A certified recovery support specialist and policy researcher at the Human Services Research Institute, Ms. Brasfield has dedicated her career to elevating the voices of service users and dismantling systemic inequities. Her lived experience with psychosis, combined with her leadership i...

S usan Grundy is an author who writes about the weight of emotional distress and an easier way of being. Her book, Mad Sisters , is a highly personal account of her caregiving journey for an older sister diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 13. When not at her writing desk, Susan can be found walking in nature towards a café. She divides her time between Montreal and London. *** Thank you fo...