Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

E llen Vora is a board-certified psychiatrist, acupuncturist, and yoga teacher. She's the author of The Anatomy of Anxiety and takes a functional medicine approach to mental health. She considers the whole person and addresses imbalance at the root. Dr. Vora received her BA from Yale University and her MD from Columbia University. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read o...

Rose Cartwright is a screenwriter and the author of Pure, a hugely successful memoir which was then turned into a series for Channel Four . She is also a writer and producer on Netflix's 3 Body Problem. Pure portrayed Rose's autobiographical account of finding that she had OCD, a "mental illness", and the breakthrough that this medical framework provided her. This was short-lived. In her new book...

Dr. Paul Andrews is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Psychology in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University. His research focuses on understanding the evolution of depression, which he argues may be an evolved emotional response for understanding and solving complex problems. Dr. Andrews is also concerned with the evolution of the serotonin system and t...

In this interview, Brooke Siem, who is the author of a memoir on antidepressant withdrawal, May Cause Side Effects , interviews her mother, Dee Barbash, to discuss the circumstances that led to Brooke being prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants at the age of 15. Today, her mother is a therapist who helps her clients taper from psychiatric medications – a profession that she took up after she ca...

Daniel José Gaztambide is an assistant professor of psychology at Queens College and the director of the Frantz Fanon Lab for Decolonial Psychology . His research and clinical work focus on Puerto Rican and Latinx populations, ethnic minority identity, psychotherapy, and the social determinants of health. Daniel is the author of A People's History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psycho...

Our guest today is Banning Lyon, author of The Chair and The Valley: A Memoir of Trauma, Healing, and The Outdoors . An account of the abuse he suffered after being hospitalized in a psychiatric facility at age 15 and the long journey toward joy and awe that followed, his memoir was published this spring by Penguin Random House. He first wrote about his experiences in 1993 for The New York Times a...

J azmine Russell is the co-founder of the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA), a transformative mental health training institute, and the host of the Depth Work Podcast . As a writer, educator, and scholar, Jazmine works at the intersection of mad studies, critical psychology, and neuroscience. Her work is deeply informed by her lived experiences surviving complex trauma, psychosis,...

I n this interview for MIA Radio, Brooke Siem speaks with David Taylor and Mark Horowitz about their publication of the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, which is of particular note since the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines  is a leading text in medicine worldwide. David Taylor is the Director of Pharmacy and Pathology at Maudsley Hospital and a Professor of Psychopharmacology at King's College i...

Carl Elliott is a distinguished professor at the University of Minnesota with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. An influential voice in bioethics, Elliott is known for his critical examination of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. His latest book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of...

Neil Gong is an assistant professor of sociology at UC San Diego, where he researches psychiatric services, homelessness, and how communities seek to maintain social order. Neil's new book, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles," published by the University of Chicago Press, offers a detailed look into the starkly different worlds of mental healt...

Julia Hotz is a solutions-focused journalist based in New York City. She is the author of the forthcoming book, The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging. Her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Wired, Scientific American, the Boston Globe, Time, and more. After studying Sociology at the University of Cambridge, she joined the Solutions J...

Jessica Schleider is a clinical psychologist, researcher, and founding director of the Lab for Scalable Mental Health ( www.schleiderlab.org ).  She's a leader in single-session interventions for youth mental health – an evidence-based approach that aims to provide help that's accessible, doable, and affordable for populations around the world and is already available via open-access programs.  On...

Sasha Durakov Warren is the author of the new book Storming Bedlam: Madness, Utopia, and Revolt published by Common Notions Press . Sasha is a writer based in Minneapolis. His experiences within the psychiatric system and a commitment to radical politics led him to co-found the group Hearing Voices - Twin Cities , which provides an alternative social space for individuals to discuss often stigmati...

Milutin Kostić is a practicing Serbian psychiatrist trained in the tradition of biological psychiatry who has become a new figure in the critical psychiatry movement. Affiliated with the Institute of Mental Health in Belgrade, Serbia, he is currently a Fulbright scholar working alongside Lisa Cosgrove in Boston to challenge established norms in psychiatry and psychology. Kostić utilizes his extens...

R odrigo Nardi is a psychiatrist and psychologist. He obtained his psychology degree in the year 2000, and following that, he obtained a certificate in CBT, and a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology at Universidade Evangélica de Paraná. He obtained his M.D. degree in 2010, and in 2016, he completed his psychiatry residency at Penn State. Altogether, Dr. Nardi has worked as a Mental Health Profe...

Arthur Kleinman is a towering figure in psychiatry and medical anthropology. He has made substantial contributions to both fields over his illustrious career spanning more than five decades. As a Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard University's Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and a Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Kleinman has profoundly influenced how me...

On the MIA podcast this week we turn our attention to conflicts of interest (COIs) and new research from the  British Medical Journal (BMJ) . Mad in America has previously examined the problems with conflicts of interest in research but this time we extend that to look at the potential effect of COIs on diagnostic tools such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Joini...

Swapnil Gupta is an Associate Professor and Medical Director of Ambulatory Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital. She was trained as a psychiatrist in India and the United States, at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and Yale University, and PGI Chandigarh in India. She is known for her work on deprescribing from and discontinuation of psychiatric drugs. Dr. Gupta's career began with research...

J ustin Garson is a Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a contributor for Psychology Today and Aeon . He writes on the philosophy of madness, the evolution of the mind and purpose in nature. His most recent book is Madness: A Philosophical Exploration , published by Oxford University Press in 2022. He is also the author of the forthco...

Deborah Kasdan is author of Roll Back The World: A Sister's Memoir , in which she describes her extraordinary late sister Rachel–poet, musician, free spirit–and her decades-long journey through psychiatric treatment until, finally, she found a place of peace and community.  Kasdan is a longtime business and technology writer who pivoted to memoir writing on a quest to tell her sister's story, join...

Hello and welcome to the Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health podcast. If you are new here, hello. My name is James and I will be your host as we ask critical questions about the state of psychiatry and psychology in the 21st Century. In this podcast, we examine mental health with a critical eye by speaking with psychologists, psychiatrists, researchers, journalists and people with lived exper...

Mark Freeman is a renowned author and a pioneering voice in the emerging field of the psychological humanities . He serves as Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society in the Department of Psychology at the College of the Holy Cross. His body of work, including the critically acclaimed Toward the Psychological Humanities: A Modest Manifesto for the Future of Psychology (Routledge, 2023), offer...

On the Mad in America podcast this week, we continue our reader Q&A with Mad in America founder Robert Whitaker. In Part 1, we discussed Mad in America, the biopsychosocial model and the history of psychiatry. For Part 2, we will be covering reader questions on pharmaceutical marketing and issues with psychiatric treatments including psychiatric drugs and electroconvulsive therapy. Thank you to al...

On the Mad in America podcast this week we have Robert Whitaker with us to answer questions sent in by readers and listeners. Thank you to all of you who took the time and trouble to get in touch. You sent some great questions and on this and our next podcast, we will be talking with Bob about Mad in America, the biopsychosocial model, the history of psychiatry, pharmaceutical marketing, and issue...

A udrey Clare Farley is a writer, editor, and scholar of 20th-century American culture with a special interest in science and religion. She earned a PhD in English literature at the University of Maryland, College Park. She now teaches a course on U.S. history at Mount St. Mary's University. Her first book, The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt , tell...