Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

P eter Stastny is a New York-based psychiatrist, documentary filmmaker, and a co-founder of the International Network toward Alternatives and Recovery (INTAR). He has been working on the development of services that obviate traditional psychiatric intervention and offer autonomous paths towards recovery and full integration. Stastny has frequently collaborated with psychiatric survivors in conduct...

P sychiatric diagnosis has come under increased scrutiny in recent years following the release of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) in 2013. Two organizations that played a prominent role in challenging the Bible of psychiatry prior to 2013, the British Psychological Society and the Society for Humanistic Psychology (American Psyc...

This week on MIA Radio we share what is something of an anniversary for us at MIA. This interview marks one hundred episodes since we launched our podcast in July 2017. And for this episode, we interview David Joslin. David is a retired army medic, having served in Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan in 2008. David currently works as a senior healthcare administrator and he has co-founded Remedy Alpine ,...

This week on MIA Radio we chat with Professor John Read of the University of East London. John worked for nearly 20 years as a Clinical Psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, before joining the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994, where he worked until 2013. He has published over 140 papers in research journals, primarily on the relationship between adve...

This week on  MIA Radio , we interview Wendy Dolin founder of the MISSD foundation . MISSD stands for Medication-Induced Suicide Prevention and Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin. In 2010, Wendy's husband Stewart Dolin was prescribed Paxil (paroxetine), a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor ("SSRI") for mild situational anxiety. Within days, Stewart's anxiety became worse. He felt...

Welcome to  MIA Reports , showcasing our independent and original journalism devoted to rethinking psychiatry. We take selected MIA Reports and provide them as audio articles. Click  here  for the text version of this and all of our MIA reports. The Whistleblower and Penn: A Final Accounting of Study 352 Written by Peter Simons, read by James Moore, first published on Mad in America , December 29,...

This week on  MIA Radio , we interview  Amanda Burrill. After a successful career as a Surface Warfare Officer and Rescue Swimmer in the United States Navy, Amanda was on track to continue her career as a professional triathlete and marathon runner, as she had already been competing internationally still while in uniform. Around the time of her discharge, she was prescribed a cocktail of psychiatr...

D r. Anthony Ryan Hatch is a sociologist and associate professor of Science in Society, African American studies and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University, who studies how medicine and technology impact social inequality and health. Professor Hatch is the author of two books. His first book, Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America , critiques how biomedical scient...

M ary Watkins is a psychologist at Pacifica Graduate Institute who focuses on reorienting psychology toward social justice and liberatory ends. She has a foundation in the depth psychologies of Carl Jung and James Hillman, as well as holistic approaches to community healing such as indigenous, liberation, and eco-psychologies. She has worked in a variety of settings, such as immigration detention...

P eter Mayfield is the founder and executive director of Gateway Mountain Center in California, an innovative program for helping youth learn, heal, and thrive As a teenager growing up in California, Peter became an accomplished rock climber, and developed into one of the world's best mountain climbers, rising to become chief guide of the Yosemite Mountaineering School. Yosemite is known for being...

This week on  MIA Radio , we interview Drs. Peter Breggin and Michael Cornwall their new initiative, Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children (SPAC!). Peter Breggin, MD is a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and a former consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health who has been called "The Conscience of Psychiatry." For decades, he has made successful efforts to reform the field, including bring...

This week on  MIA Radio we turn our attention to support for those who are struggling to withdraw from psychiatric drugs. Recently in the UK, this issue has become headline news with more and more attention being given to the work of groups such as the Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry and peer-led initiatives such as the Bristol Tranquilliser Project .  December 4 2019, marks the release of g...

This week on MIA Radio , MIA Correspondent Leah Harris interviews Celia Brown. Celia is a psychiatric survivor and a prominent leader in the movement for human rights in mental health. She is the current Board President of MindFreedom International, a nonprofit organization uniting 100 sponsor and affiliate grassroots groups with thousands of individual members to win human rights and alternatives...

This week on  MIA Radio , we interview US Navy Veteran and Co-Founder of Minority Veterans of America , Lindsay Church. Lindsay served from 2008-2012 as a Cryptologic Technician Interpretive (Linguist). During her time in the service, she attended language school at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA where she learned Persian-Farsi. After spending two years at a cyber intelligence comm...

This week on MIA Radio, MIA Correspondent Leah Harris interviews psychiatric survivor Dorothy Dundas. Dorothy is an activist, a mother, a mentor, and an incredible supporter of the activists in all of our movement-building work, going back several decades. Relevant Links: On Our Own  by Judi Chamberlin: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/5106590-on-our-own Dorothy Dundas author page at Mad in...

Joseph Gone is a professor of both Anthropology and Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard University. He is a clinical and community psychologist by training, and he conducts participatory research projects with community partners in Native American communities. His projects aim to rethink traditional mental health practices and incorporate Indigenous-healing practices. He has published ove...

This week on MIA Radio , we interview Professor of Psychology Dr. Steven C. Hayes. Dr. Hayes is Nevada Foundation Professor in the Behavior Analysis program at the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada. An author of 45 books and over 625 scientific articles, his career has focused on an analysis of the nature of human language and cognition and the application of this to the underst...

Jennifer Freeman is a marriage and family therapist and an Expressive Arts Therapist. Since 2017, she has been researching narratives centered on how humans are facing climate change and responding to these challenging times of social impoverishment, ecological degradation, the Anthropocene, and the sixth great extinction. She has been engaged in therapeutic conversations, international community...

This week on MIA Radio we turn our attention to psychiatric drug withdrawal and in particular the work of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal. The Institute recently held a network meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, where 40 leading experts from around the world came together to discuss the issues of dependence, withdrawal and iatrogenic harm relating to psychiatric drugs. The...

This week on MIA Radio , we chat with Professor Peter Kinderman. Peter is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist with Mersey Care NHS Trust and Clinical Advisor for Public Health England, UK. He was 2016-2017 President of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and twice chair of the BPS Division of Clinical Psychology. His resear...

On MIA Radio , we interview Anthropologist Zhiying Ma, who explores mental health care in China, including tensions between Western psychiatry and socially-oriented local frameworks. Z hiying Ma is a cultural and medical anthropologist and disability studies scholar whose work explores the experiences and rights of those receiving mental health services in China. Her current book project, Intimate...

On MIA Radio this week, in the second of a number of podcasts focused on parenting issues, we interview Ben Furman MD. Ben is a Finnish psychiatrist, psychotherapist and internationally renowned teacher of the Solution-Focused approach to preventing and treating mental health problems in both children and adults. His numerous books have been translated into over 20 languages. Relevant Links Helpin...

In our second week of MIA Veterans & Military Families, we interview U.S. Navy Veteran Dan Hurd. Dan is the Founder of Ride With Dan USA and the One Pedal at a Time Movement . After surviving his third suicide attempt, Dan became inspired to bicycle to all 48 States in the continental U.S. to help raise awareness about suicide. Along his journey, Dan has realized his attempts were likely caused by...

L illian Comas-Díaz is a pioneer in the field of ethnocultural approaches to mental health. She is both a clinical practitioner and multicultural feminist psychologist, writing numerous journal articles and books pushing the field toward more inclusive and less ethnocentric theories and practices. She was recently awarded the 2019 American Psychological Association gold medal award for lifetime ac...

This week on  MIA Radio we turn our attention to veterans, service members and military families. MIA has recently launched a new resource for military veterans which will provide news, personal stories and resources specific to veterans and their families. So to explain more about the new resources I am delighted to have been able to chat with Derek Blumke. Derek is the newest member of the MIA T...