Mad In America: Science, Psychiatry And Social Justice

This week on the Mad in America podcast we hear from Johann Hari. Johann is an  internationally bestselling author whose books have appeared in 38 languages, and he was twice named National Newspaper Journalist of the Year by Amnesty International. We last heard from Johann in 2018 about his then-new book Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and the Unexpected Solutions. Today, we get to talk about Johann’s latest book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, released on the sixth of January 2022 in the UK and January 25th in the US and Canada. For Stolen Focus, Johann went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons behind our inability to focus and to understand how this crisis affects our wellbeing and society. Crucially, he learned how we can reclaim our stolen focus if we are prepared to fight for it.

In the face of the COVID pandemic, social and academic pressures, and an uncertain future, young people are struggling. Each week we see another news reports about a “mental health crisis” among youth in North America, including rising suicide rates. Last fall, a consortium of physicians declared poor youth mental health a “national emergency.” More recently, on December 7, 2021, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on Protecting Youth Mental Health, which prescribes actions by families, schools, governments, media and other stakeholders. Typically, these announcements call for getting kids greater access to mental health diagnosis and treatment. As MIA readers know, that frequently leads to more screening, more labels, and more prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. In his practice with children and adolescents, his research, and his teaching, Dr. Elia Abi-Jaoude is pushing back on that approach in favor of alternatives that more closely involve families and take environmental elements into account. He

Sebastienne Grant is a professor of critical psychology at Prescott College in Prescott, Arizona. She currently serves as the program director for a Master’s program in Critical Psychology and Human Services. Dr. Grant received her PhD in Psychology: Consciousness and Society from the University of West Georgia. Grounded in the traditions of Buddhism, critical psychology, existential-humanistic psychology, and transpersonal psychology, Dr. Grant is concerned with questions of wellbeing—both individual and societal. She has written on transhumanism from Buddhist and existential perspectives, as well as the tensions of social justice under neoliberalism. Her most recent publication is a chapter titled “Addressing the Empty Self: Toward Socially Just Subjectivities” in the book Subjectivity in Psychology in the Era of Social Justice. This book was co-written with several colleagues, including previous MIA podcast guest Dr. Bethany Morris.

Dawn Sonntag and Kermit Cole have collaborated on creating a 30-minute opera, For Life, that explores the possible harms that can come from psychiatric drugs. It’s a novel subject for an opera, which premieres online on January 15 at 9 p.m. EST. The opera will be performed by students at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory of Music. Dawn is an award-winning composer whose works have been commissioned by the Cleveland Opera Theater and the Hartford Opera Theater and performed at numerous music festivals in the United States and Canada. Her first opera, for which she also wrote the libretto, titled Verlorene Heimat, was a finalist in the 2021 American prize for opera. She wrote the composition for For Life. Kermit Cole is well known to Mad In America readers. He cofounded madinamerica.com, and served as our editor for the first four years. He has a background in street theatre, having toured Europe as part of a mime troupe, and in the 1990s, produced a documentary about living with HIV. He has worked in various re

Vincenzo Di Nicola is an Italian-Canadian child and adolescent psychiatrist and a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Montreal where he co-directs the postgraduate course in psychiatry and the humanities. He has written extensively about the importance of relationality and dialogue in therapy and is one of the leading figures of social psychiatry. Most recently, he received the 2022 Distinguished Service Award from the American Psychiatric Association. Di Nicola’s most recent book Psychiatry in Crisis (co-authored with Drozdstoj Stoyanov) offers a critical analysis of the discipline and points to the glaring gaps that must be addressed.

In this podcast we discuss an educational program called Emotional CPR (eCPR), a form of peer support anyone can use to assist youth (or adults) in emotional crisis. Our guests are Oryx Cohen and Briza Gavidia of the National Empowerment Center, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit whose mission is to carry a message of recovery, empowerment, hope, and healing to people with lived experience with mental health issues, trauma, and/or extreme states. Oryx Cohen, M.P.A., is a leader in the international mental health consumer/survivor/ex-patient (c/s/x) or Mad Pride movement. Currently, Oryx is NEC’s Chief Operating Officer. Among other responsibilities, he organizes the national Alternatives Conference every three years and assists states that have an underdeveloped consumer/survivor voice to find that voice and then work toward transforming their mental health systems to become peer-driven and recovery-oriented. Oryx is also a lead trainer for Emotional CPR, or eCPR, and has conducted over 50 eCPR trainings around

Elisa Lacerda-Vandenborn is a professor at Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, Canada. She is currently part of several national and international research projects examining education in indigenous communities and the decolonization of mental health. Her writings explore alternate ways of understanding human suffering, challenge the dominant psychiatric worldview, and critique the Euro-American understandings of distress and disease. Her interests include understanding different ideas of self, especially in indigenous communities, and how our ignorance about these differences harms people we say we are healing. Lacerda-Vandenborn notes that “Psychology is not a very reflective discipline.” This is a conversation about lost indigenous children, psychology’s blind spots, and how we can address these concerns with epistemic humility.

On the Mad in America podcast this week, we hear from Renee Schuls-Jacobson. Renee was a teacher for two decades and she is now an author, artist, advocate and coach. In this interview, we discuss her book Psychiatrized: Waking up After a Decade of Bad Medicine which was released this year. The book is a beautifully written account of Renee's experiences being prescribed the benzodiazepine clonazepam (Klonopin) for seven years. It talks of her experiences taking the drug as prescribed but perhaps more importantly, also tells of what happened to Renee as she made attempts to withdraw.

In this podcast, we hear from the renowned clinician and researcher Dr. Giovanni Fava. Dr. Fava is a psychiatrist and professor of clinical psychology at the University of Bologna in Italy. He is also a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Since 1992, he has been the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed medical journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. Dr. Fava has authored more than 500 scientific papers and is known for researching the adverse effects of antidepressant drugs. In a 1994 editorial, he argued that many of his fellow psychiatrists were too hesitant to question whether a given psychiatric treatment was more harmful than it was helpful. He recently released his latest book entitled “Discontinuing Antidepressant Medications” published by Oxford University Press. The book is designed to be a guide for clinicians who want to help patients withdraw from antidepressants. In this interview, we discuss the new book, approaches to antid

Hans Skott-Myhre is a Professor of Human Services at Kennesaw State University in Kennesaw, Georgia. Over the last 50 years, he has worked within a wide variety of human service settings, including residential homes, community health centers, inpatient psychiatric units, homeless youth shelters, transitional living programs, and prisons. About two decades ago, he transitioned into academia, where he now does research at the intersections of human services, psychology, cultural theory, and literature. His recently published book titled “Post-Capitalist Subjectivity in Literature and Anti-Psychiatry: Reconceptualizing the Self Beyond Capitalism” explored how we might be different types of people if we didn't live in a capitalist society. The book draws on Marxist and post-Marxist theory and presents a nuanced analysis of antipsychiatrists' professional writings, including Franco Basaglia and R. D. Laing, as well as the work of fiction writers, including Franz Kafka and Gabriel García Márquez. Through this analy

In this podcast, which comes on the heels of reports linking social media use to reduced self-esteem in teen girls, eating-disorders therapist Shira Collings discusses person-centered, socio-culturally aware approaches to dealing with disordered eating and other food-related challenges in youth (and adults). Shira Collings, M.S., N.C.C., is Mad in America’s Assistant Editor for MIA Continuing Education and the Youth Coordinator for the National Empowerment Center. She received her B.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.S. in Counseling and Psychology from Troy University. As a person with lived experience of recovery from diet culture, disordered eating, and trauma, Shira is passionate about supporting others in finding freedom with food, body acceptance, and the ability to be their full, authentic selves and live according to their values. She is an advocate for trauma-informed, person-centered approaches to mental health care.

Helena Hanson is professor and chair of translational social science and health equity and associate director for the center for social medicine at UCLA. As a psychiatrist and anthropologist, she has spent much of her career researching how race, class, gender, and social determinants of health affect psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Growing up in 1970's Oakland and Berkeley, California, Hansen witnessed the consequences of deinstitutionalization and mass incarceration policies firsthand. Losing family members to both the prison and mental health systems gave her a personal understanding of the social and structural failures she interrogates in her work today. She also draws on the principles she learned as a participant in AIDS-related activism to mobilize community organizations and champion mutual aid groups in combatting our current mental health crises. In this interview, Hansen discusses how race and class affect psychiatric diagnoses and subsequent treatment, the moral implications of psychiatric d

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric diagnosis that carries a heavy social stigma. However, experts have also questioned the validity and utility of the label. In response, some experts and service-user groups have called for different conceptualizations and terms for those experiencing psychotic symptoms. Doctors Matcheri Keshavan and Raquelle Mesholam-Gately are currently tackling this issue. They recently completed a project in collaboration with the Consumer Advisory Board of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA, examining the benefits and drawbacks of renaming schizophrenia. Matcheri Keshavan, M.D. is the Stanley Cobb Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Academic Head of Psychiatry and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Massachusetts Mental Health Center. Raquelle Mesholam-Gately, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is also the director of the Consumer Advisory Board and conducts neuropsychology research

This week we talk with Professor Jim van Os and Doctor Peter Groot about their latest study which looks at the effectiveness of tapering strips to help people get off antidepressant drugs. Jim van Os is Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Public Mental Health at Utrecht University Medical Centre, the Netherlands and Peter Groot works with the User Research Centre of UMC Utrecht. They both are involved with the development and study of tapering strips which are pre-packaged, gradually reducing dosage tablets that facilitate tapered withdrawal from psychiatric drugs. In this interview, we discuss their latest research paper which examines tapering strips in real-world use. *** Download Mad in America's new mobile app here. Available for Apple or Android mobile devices, keep up to date as we publish new audio interviews or browse our archive.  

Ursula Read is a research fellow and associate at King's College London. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from University College London, where she studied family experiences of mental illness and help-seeking and Ghana. Currently, her research addresses Global Mental Health, and she utilizes participatory research methods to explore the relationship between mental illness and social exclusion internationally. Her recent work focuses on mental health care in Ghana, drawing attention to the need for rights-based approaches to mental health care. In doing so, she questions the movement for Global Mental Health: asking what this movement is doing currently and imagining what it could become. Her research brings to light how those in the Global North and high-income countries can overlook what rights-based approaches to mental health care may actually look like when incorporated into Global Mental Health and enacted on the ground. She also is deeply concerned with the structural and social determinants of health

Michael Ungar is the founder and director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University in Canada. He is also a family therapist and professor of social work. He has received numerous awards, such as the Canadian Association of Social Workers National Distinguished Service Award (2012), and has authored around 15 books and over 200 peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Ungar’s work is globally recognized and centers on community trauma and community resilience. In particular, his work explores resilience among marginalized children and families, especially those involved with child welfare and mental health services, refugees, and immigrant youth. His research is spread across continents and challenges our traditional notions of trauma and resilience. Analyzing people’s risks and available resources, he scrutinizes simplistic ideas of individual perseverance and grit in the face of trauma. Instead, he implicates the role of context, circumstances, and ill-suited services in contributing to people’s psycholo

Patricia Rush, M.D., M.B.A. is an internal medicine physician whose scientific focus is complex chronic illness.  Her over 40-year career has focused on working with underserved populations and promoting universal access to high-quality medical care. She spent 20 years in the Cook County (Illinois) Health System, including six years as director of their emergency department. From 2000-2008 ran a trauma-informed solo private medical practice in Chicago. During this time, she completed in-depth interviews with more than 500 patients, which led her to identify a group of high-risk individuals with serious illnesses who also had a consistent pattern of extreme stress at a young age, including profoundly disordered sleep and emotional distress. Until her retirement, Dr. Rush was also an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago and now teaches neurodevelopment as a member of the Physician Workgroup of the Child Trauma Academy. She was a co-founder and serves as a co-director of the Center for th

Marcela Ot'alora works with the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) as the principal investigator for government research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy. In addition to her role as principal investigator, she also worked as a co-therapist during earlier phases of MDMA psychotherapy research and currently leads the MDMA therapy training for MAPS. Ms. Ot'alora also works as a therapist using both ketamine and fine arts to treat trauma. Ot'alora approaches her work with a humility learned from years of therapeutic experience:  “My clients and the participants in our studies have taught me that their healing looks so different than anything I could have imagined. If I come in leaving that agenda, leaving that bias aside, and being present with whoever is in front of me, they will surprise me every time about how healing works for them.” In this interview, we discuss her research into MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and how the use of MDMA differs from more traditional substances such as ant

Michelle Funk is the Unit Head of the Policy, Law, and Human Rights at the Department of Mental Health and Substance Use at the World Health Organization. She has created and leads the WHO Quality Rights Initiative that aims to assess and improve human rights standards in existing services and advance the full implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). In this interview, we discuss the launch of the new “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services: Promoting Person-Centred and Rights-Based Approaches.” The document is grounded on the principles of recovery and rights-based approaches. It presents successful examples of best practices in mental health service provision respecting dignity, moving to zero coercion, and eliminating neglect and abuse. Among the best practices showcased in the document are Open Dialogue as practiced in Tornio, Finland, Soteria Berne in Switzerland, Afiya House in Western Massachusetts, Basal Exposure Therapy in Norway, and Hearing Voice

Ilana Mountian is a researcher drawing on psychoanalytic, critical, decolonial, and feminist philosophies. She is the author of Cultural Ecstasies: Drugs, Gender, and the Social Imaginary, exploring discourses around drug use, gender, and drug policy. She is currently working on a book that will be published later this year by Routledge about otherness and mental health, focusing on immigration, drug use, and transsexuality. Mountian is a member of the Discourse Unit, a group led by well-known critical psychologists Erica Burman and Ian Parker. The Discourse Unit is dedicated to providing teaching resources for qualitative and feminist work, producing radical academic work, and developing critical perspectives in action research. In addition to her work as a researcher, Mountian is a psychoanalyst and a postdoctoral lecturer at the University of Sao Paulo Brazil and Manchester Metropolitan University. In this interview, she discusses intersectionality and drug use, the disease model of addiction, psychiatric