New NICE Guidelines for ECT Are Dangerously Inadequate, Say 50 Patients and Professionals
While there has been little (if any) sign of interest in reviewing ECT practices and guidelines in Canada, a group in the UK has...
Shamanic Approaches to Dis-Ease: Working with the Whole Person
The shamanic practitioner approaches illness, or “dis-ease” from a spiritual perspective. The focus is not on treating a condition, but on working with the...
Fernando de Freitas: A “Dear Friend” Who Was a Warrior for Radical Change
Written by Robert Whitaker and posted to Mad in America on February 3, 2023
Over the past decade, the call for radical change in psychiatry...
Why We Need a National Organization
“We become aware of the void as we fill it.” ― Antonio Porchia
I have been privileged! At the mere age of 22 with lots...
Appeal to Board of Health to Ban ECT in Ontario
In January of 1984 seven members of the Ontario Coalition to Stop Electroshock, three psychiatrists, and a psychiatric social worker gave personal testimony. I...
Voicing the Views of the Psychiatrized for 35 Years!
Our Voice is turning 35!
2022 marks an important milestone in the publishing of resiliency and plight from those of us who are living with...
There’s a Fundamental Flaw in Mental Health Care in Canada
Mad in Canada launched on June 1st. We’re just over a month old. Reflection on the mission we share with Mad in America and...
Loss, Grief, and Betrayal: Psychiatric Survivors Reflect on the Impact of New Serotonin Study
Loss, grief, and a sense of betrayal are felt deeply by many who have been affected by the myth of the chemical imbalance—a myth...
The ERNI Declaration: Making Sense of Distress Without “Disease”
The ERNI (Emotions aRe Not Illnesses) declaration is based on the idea that distress does not equate to disease, dysfunction, dysregulation, or chemical imbalance....
Personality disorders? Please, tell us what you really think.
This week on Twitter, there was an uproar in response to a UK Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPUK) advertisement for a course on ‘personality...
Rethinking Psychiatry …. Robert Whitaker Speaks in Montreal
Robert Whitaker, founder and president of Mad in America, gave a public lecture at Concordia University on November 10th. 'Rethinking Psychiatry: How the Failure to...
“Global Psychiatry’s Crisis of Values”
American psychiatrist Awais Aftab, leads the series 'Conversations in Critical Psychiatry' for Psychiatric Times. His June 3rd installment, an interview with Dainius Pūras, MD,...
In Memoriam: Paula Joan Caplan
Paula Caplan, a prolific writer, playwright, and social activist, who for decades was one of the most prominent critics of psychiatry and its diagnoses,...
Antipsychotics Often Prescribed Without Informed Consent
This article was written by Samantha Lilly and originally published by Mad in America, March 23, 2022
New research reveals that patients are often not...
Responses to the ‘No Chemical Imbalance Study’: A Long-awaited Watershed Moment?
Initial reactions to the 20 July publication of the Moncrieff et al. study have included widespread media coverage in some places, and the metaphorical...
Research Reveals Mental Health Professionals’ Participation in Rape Culture
Standard clinical practices often enforce anti-blackness, rape culture, and sanism, normalizing sexual violence and misogyny.
New work from social work professor Merrick Pilling investigates...
Thomas Insel Makes A Case for Abolishing Psychiatry
Thomas Insel’s book Healing: Our Path From Mental Illness to Mental Health is getting a fair amount of media attention, which could be expected...
The WHO Calls for Radical Change in Global Mental Health
During the past decade, the World Health Organization has regularly promoted the goal of improving “global mental health.” While it has often told of...
Review of the Conference on Withdrawal and Side Effects: IIPDW
The online conference Withdrawal From Psychiatric Drugs was held on Friday May 6th and 7th. An extremely important topic for us at Mad in...
How are we doing?
We’re 21 months and counting into this global pandemic. And just when we think we’re getting close to the end, this wicked virus dumps...
When Tapering Antidepressants, is Going Slow Always the Best Strategy?
I start this blog with an apology. There may be people reading who, like myself, look back with frustration and despair that they cannot...
Announcing Oral History Collection on Mental Health Activists in Manitoba
Stories are us. Finding ourselves in history, we figure out who we are and where we belong and how what we do fits with...
887 Deaths from Psychoactive Meds Reported to Health Canada in 2021
I guess I started seriously considering the potential of antipsychotics to kill after I lost my friend Cameron. Cameron Fray was a husband, father...
Honoring Jane Whittington: 1950-2021
It’s with great sadness that I am writing of the sudden and unexpected passing of my former husband and best friend Jane. Many of...
What is “Psychosis”?
There are different hypotheses about what psychosis is. One hypothesis that has been repeatedly disproven is that of the medical model belief that psychosis...
The Politics of Distress: A discussion with Dr. James Davies on his new book...
Dr. James Davies graduated from the University of Oxford in 2006 with a DPhil in social and medical anthropology. He is a Reader in...
Medical Assistance in Dying for ‘Mental disorders’: Fatally flawed without expertise of service users/survivors
Now that people suffering exclusively from mental distress will be eligible for medical assistance in dying (MAiD) from April, 2023, the debate has shifted...
Will We Wake for Pity’s Sake
Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the United States. While antidepressants, and other psychotropic, mind altering medications, are designed to decrease...
Is psychiatry such a fragile house of cards?
On October 9, 2021 an opinion piece was published in the Globe and Mail entitled ‘Woke’ psychiatrists have lost sight of the biological causes...
Evidence of change?
Working outside the dominant biomedical narrative can feel perilous and sometimes even risky. Taking a critical perspective of psychiatry (mental health care more broadly),...