Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

I n 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 succe...

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 ...

L ynne 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 supervis...

D ana 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...

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 H...

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. Toda...

I n 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. Surgeo...

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 ps...

D awn 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 commissio...

V incenzo 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 Dist...

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 menta...

E lisa 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 crit...

O n 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 clonaz...

I n 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  Psychoth...

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...

I n 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 Edu...

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, Hanse...

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 rec...

T his week we talk with Professor Jim van Os and Doctor Peter Groot about their latest study which looks at the effectiveness of tapering strips to help people get off antidepressant drugs. Jim van Os is Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Public Mental Health at Utrecht University Medical Centre, the Netherlands and Peter Groot works with the User Research Centre of UMC Utrecht. They both a...

U rsula Read is a research fellow and associate at King's College London. She holds a Ph. D. in anthropology from University College London, where she studied family experiences of mental illness and help-seeking and Ghana. Currently, her research addresses Global Mental Health, and she utilizes participatory research methods to explore the relationship between mental illness and social exclusion...

Michael Ungar is the founder and director of the  Resilience Research Centre  at Dalhousie University in Canada. He is also a family therapist and professor of social work. He has received numerous awards, such as the Canadian Association of Social Workers National Distinguished Service Award (2012), and has authored around 15 books and over 200 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Ungar's work is globally...

Patricia Rush, M.D., M.B.A. is an internal medicine physician whose scientific focus is complex chronic illness.  Her over 40-year career has focused on working with underserved populations and promoting universal access to high-quality medical care. She spent 20 years in the Cook County (Illinois) Health System, including six years as director of their emergency department. From 2000-2008 ran a t...

Marcela Ot'alora works with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) as the principal investigator for government research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. In addition to her role as principal investigator, she also worked as a co-therapist during earlier phases of MDMA psychotherapy research and currently leads the MDMA therapy training for MAPS. Ms. Ot'alora also works a...

M ichelle Funk is the Unit Head of the Policy, Law, and Human Rights at the Department of Mental Health and Substance Use at the World Health Organization. She has created and leads the WHO Quality Rights Initiative that aims to assess and improve human rights standards in existing services and advance the full implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)....

Ilana Mountian is a researcher drawing on psychoanalytic, critical, decolonial, and feminist philosophies. She is the author of Cultural Ecstasies: Drugs, Gender, and the Social Imaginary , exploring discourses around drug use, gender, and drug policy. She is currently working on a book that will be published later this year by Routledge about otherness and mental health, focusing on immigration,...