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Is Public Psychiatry Responding to the Mental Health Crisis or Just “Treating the Chart?”

Mad in America

I couldn’t help but reflect that my interview with him could have been more helpful in at least one concrete sense—that I could have paid closer attention to the emotional dimension of his predicament—had I not had the completion of this unwieldy document in mind. This scenario in public psychiatry settings is, unfortunately, a familiar one.

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Mental Disorder Has Roots in Trauma and Inequality, Not Biology

Mad in America

Moreover, in stark contrast to the discoveries by medical researchers of biological causation for many physical illnesses, psychiatric researchers have failed to find physiological or genetic causation for the most diagnosed mental disorders—the anxiety disorders and depression—negating the rationale for the prescription of these drugs.

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Working to Transmute the Pain: Why I Do the Work I Do

Mad in America

For many years, I received mental health services and accepted the “mental illness” diagnoses, which I now call labels. I didn’t realize that others were actively fighting against what they call the mental health system or psychiatry. The mental health system is deeply ingrained in our culture.

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

Mad in America

Published in 2006 was the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) study, “ The Naturalistic Course of Major Depression in the Absence of Somatic Therapy ,” which examined depressed patients who had recovered from an initial episode of depression, then relapsed but did not take any medication following their relapse.

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A broken safety net? Social security and mental health

Centre for Mental Health

Our social security system is one of the foundations of the UK welfare state alongside education, health and social care. But their effects on the nations mental health will be just as profound and dangerous. This was a consultation document, though many of its most significant elements are notably not up for consultation.

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Assessing Community Mental Health Programs in India: Insights from Task-Shifting in Kerala

Mad in America

It was written by the MISA news team to provide insight into community mental health initiatives in India. A 2020 study published in Medical Anthropology investigates the realities of community mental health initiatives like task-shifting in India. Kerala is uniquely positioned in the Indian mental health system.

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Beyond Paternalism or Abandonment in Mental Health Care: An Interview with Neil Gong

Mad in America

Neil’s new book, “Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles,” published by the University of Chicago Press, offers a detailed look into the starkly different worlds of mental health care in Los Angeles. How do these disparate systems reflect our societal values?