article thumbnail

Letting Go of Lithium

Mad in America

My sister took antidepressants and my family has a lot of mental health issues, so based on that, I was thrown into the same category. I decided to agree with the medical model, that it was a genetic disease that could be treated with a medication, like diabetes. Being a brain doctor, he focused on the headaches. I was angry.

article thumbnail

Depression: Psychiatry’s Discredited Theories and Drugs Versus a Sane Model and Approach

Mad in America

In summary, researchers have found no serotonin nor any other neurotransmitter association with depression, no neurobiological associations, and no genetic associations. government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) , reported that among American adults, serious suicidal thoughts occurred in 6.6%

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Searching for the “Psychiatric Yeti”: Schizophrenia Is Not Genetic

Mad in America

In the article, Torrey reviews the history of the Human Genome Project, their hopes for identifying the genetic basis for schizophrenia, and how those hopes have been dashed by the complete failure to find anything of the sort. Yet laypeople, and many mental health professionals, still believe that schizophrenia is a genetic disorder.

article thumbnail

Why Failed Psychiatry Lives On: Its Industrial Complex, Politics, & Technology Worship

Mad in America

Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 2002-2015, acknowledged in 2011, “Whatever we’ve been doing for five de­cades, it ain’t working. adults now takes an antidepressant”; however, Time continued, “Mental health is getting worse by multiple metrics. As of late 2022, just 31% of U.S.

article thumbnail

How to Explain Top Psychiatrists’ “Dr. Strangelove Exuberance” Unchecked by Reality

Mad in America

In the twenty-first century, there has been no higher-level psychiatrist then Thomas Insel , director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) from 2002-2015. Thomas Insel, quoted in 2017. “To and devoted much time to the problem of mental illness.” Thomas Insel, in Insel’s 2022 book Healing , xxvi.

article thumbnail

The Clinical, Social, and Cultural Harm of an Iatrogenic Psychiatry

Mad in America

Iatrogenesis is social when medicine as an institution and a bureaucracy creates ill-health by increasing stress; by subverting autonomy and community support; and by depoliticizing sources of illness. This alienation is of course quite stressful and a source of ill-health. had no clinically significant benefit over a placebo.”

article thumbnail

Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Five)

Mad in America

668 A WHO study of 640 depressed patients found that those treated with medication had worse general health and were more likely to still be mentally ill than those who weren’t treated at the end of one year. On Whitaker’s Mad in America website there are two more reviews of Insel’s book.