Earlier this year, a bill was proposed in the U.S. state of Connecticut to end forced shock treatment. To put it mildly, the bill restored my hope. Electroshock treatment, eventually re-branded as ...

Faith in oneself, tempered by adversity, creates an anti-fragile personality. I am living proof of that concept. I grew up in Monona, Wisconsin, in an enriched environment of beautiful parks and ...

After this happened to me, I know that I can handle anything in life, no matter how hard it is. Welcome to the Mad in America podcast. My name is Brooke Siem, and I am the author of a memoir on ...

Treatment guidelines generally support trying to discontinue antipsychotics in patients diagnosed with “first-episode psychosis” after one or two years of initial use, but these guidelines also ...

As family therapist I often have families referred to me with an “identified patient”, a person who has troubled behavior, or is troubling to the family in some way. This person may be the object of ...

"When neuroleptic medication was used, the team became much more passive. They started to wait for the effect of the medication, and no longer had an active role with the families." Welcome to MIA ...

“It’s hard to get off narcotics because you love them so much—but it’s hard to get off psychiatric drugs because you fear them so much.” Today, he joins us on the Mad In America podcast to talk about ...

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 ...

Why psychiatry's favored idioms may do harm—and how poetic attentiveness can open new paths to care. His forthcoming book, Healing and the Invention of Metaphor: Toward a Poetics of Illness Experience ...

Spurred on by narratives that street problems are caused by mental health issues rather than by worsening economic inequities, new bills expanding powers to involuntarily commit people have been ...

The social work profession was historically rooted in a mission of improving the lives of the vulnerable, the oppressed, and those living in poverty. Yet, the modern use of the social work license and ...

The Vermont Longitudinal Study, which was led by Courtenay Harding, reported on the long-term outcomes of patients discharged from Vermont State Hospital in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her ...