Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

Hannah Zeavin is a leading scholar investigating how mediated communications and technology impact our intimate relations. Her most recent work tackles teletherapy and digital mental health communications, which have seen a boon throughout the pandemic. Zeavin is a Lecturer in the Departments of English and History at the University of California, Berkeley, and affiliated with the Berkeley Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society. Zeavin is also a visiting fellow at the Columbia University Center for the Study of Social Difference. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU in 2018. Her first book, The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy, will be published by MIT Press this summer. Zeavin serves as an editorial associate and author for numerous publications, including the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association. She is also a co-founder of The Science, Technology, and Society Futures Initiative. In this interview, she discusses her upcoming books and all things mediated communication, teletherapy, and technology. Zeavin approaches human relationality, including therapy, from the perspectives of literature and media studies. She explores the history of psychoanalysis and other forms of therapy, garnering fresh insights into our relationship with technology and each other–without the usual moral tenor of psychologists. She also draws upon her research to discuss how care may take unexpected forms through technologies, enabling distanced intimacy and social change that transcends the psychology of the individual. We close by addressing the feminization of care labor, care as a cover for capture and control, and shifts in how we understand care, now and in the future.

*** Our next psychiatric drug withdrawal town hall discussion will be held on May 14 2021, register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/150023595613 *** This week on the MIA podcast we are providing the audio taken from our recent psychiatric drug withdrawal town hall held in March 2021. This discussion was aired live on March 12, 2021 and the panelists are Dr Giovanni Fava, Dr Peter Groot, Dr Mark Horowitz and Professor Joanna Moncrieff. For this discussion, we asked what science and research can tell us about the experience of withdrawal. We discuss research effort that has called into question long-held professional beliefs about the effects of psychotropic drugs on the brain and nervous system. Panelists Giovanni Fava Dr Giovanni Fava is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He has authored more than 500 scientific papers and performed groundbreaking research in several fields. He is editor-in-chief of the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. Peter Groot Dr Peter Groot is a researcher who started using antidepressants. His own experiences helped him to develop a practical solution proposed by many patients to help prevent withdrawal problems from antidepressants and other psychotropic drugs. Mark Horowitz Dr Mark Horowitz is a training psychiatrist and psychiatric academic at University College London who is currently coming off psychiatric drugs. His work and research focuses on how to safely stop psychiatric medication. Joanna Moncrieff Dr Joanna Moncrieff is a psychiatrist based in community mental health services in North East London. She also teaches and researches at University College London. Joanna is one of the founding members and the co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network.

This episode of “Mad in the Family” discusses the links between nutrition and mental health, and the science that’s showing that diet may help improve or even prevent mental health issues in children and adults. Julie Rucklidge: "Taking a one-a-day gummy bear might prevent you from getting scurvy, but it's not meeting the optimal amount that your brain needs.” Julia's interest in nutrition and mental health grew out of her own research showing poor outcomes for children with psychiatric illness despite conventional treatments. In the last decade, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Group has been running clinical trials investigating the role of broad-spectrum micronutrients in the expression of issues such as ADHD, mood disorders, anxiety, and stress associated with traumatic events, such as earthquakes and mass shootings. Julia's interest in nutrition and mental health grew out of her own research showing poor outcomes for children with psychiatric illness despite conventional treatments. In the last decade, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Group has been running clinical trials investigating the role of broad-spectrum micronutrients in the expression of issues such as ADHD, mood disorders, anxiety, and stress associated with traumatic events, such as earthquakes and mass shootings. With her colleague Bonnie Kaplan, Ph.D., she is the author of a new book, The Better Brain: Overcome Anxiety, Combat Depression, and Reduce ADHD and Stress with Nutrition, which will be published April 20 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Anne Guy is a member of the council for evidence-based psychiatry (CEP) and works with the secretariat for the All-party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence. She's the lead editor and author of “Guidance for psychological therapists: enabling conversations with clients taking or withdrawing from prescribed psychiatric drugs.” (an abridged version can be found here). This guide is endorsed by the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy, the UK Council for Psychotherapy, the National Counseling Society, and the British Psychological Society. Dr. Guy is also a practicing psychotherapist that does not rely on a model of diagnosis to help her clients. Beginning as a claims manager for an insurance company, she got an up-close view of how the healthcare system worked and saw the biggest problems clearly. This “systems view” followed her into her work as a psychotherapist, where she attempts to navigate systemic failures that have resulted in the over-prescription of psychiatric drugs. In this interview, we will discuss withdrawal from psychiatric medications, problems with psychiatry's over-reliance on the biomedical model, the difference between “addiction” and “dependence,” and counseling beyond diagnosis. She notes that while withdrawal can be difficult, not everyone will experience it as severely as described—for example, research shows that 50% of people coming off antidepressants are likely to experience some kind of withdrawal reactions, with half of those describing them as ‘severe.’ Most reactions last weeks or months with a small group of people experiencing them for years.

Peter Sterling, now retired from the University of Pennsylvania, is a well-known neuroscientist, having co-authored a popular text, Principles of Neural Design. He is a lifelong political activist, and historians of psychiatry may remember his public criticisms of psychiatric treatments in the 1970s, most notably of electroshock and antipsychotics. He could also be described as an ethnographer, as his travels among the indigenous people of Panama, where he now lives part-time, influenced his understanding of how the human brain was shaped in response to the demands of early hunter-gatherer societies. He is the author of a recent book titled, What is Health: Allostasis and the Evolution of Human Design. His books raises this provocative question: What does our species require for a healthy life? And can we achieve this with drugs?

Bethany Morris is an assistant professor of psychology at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she teaches and does theoretical and qualitative research. Dr. Morris is a transdisciplinary scholar whose work bridges critical psychology, literature, philosophy, history, psychoanalysis, and film studies. Early in her career, at Prince Edward Island University and Brock University in Canada, she studied alternative anti-psychiatric interventions for early-onset schizophrenia as illuminated by children’s literature. During this time, she was also thinking critically about issues of women’s stigmatization and oppression. In recent years, her work has focused on using the ideas of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to gain a further critical understanding of the oppression of women, psychology’s medical model, and other issues related to social justice. Her recent publications include the co-authored book Subjectivity in Psychology in the Era of Social Justice, as well as her first solo-authored book, Sexual Difference, Abjection, and Liminal Spaces. Throughout her work is a sustained critique of Borderline Personality Disorder, both as a diagnostic category and the way that it is used toward misogynistic ends in popular culture.

This week on the MIA podcast, we discuss a recent paper that considers the support provided by online support groups when people seek help for psychiatric drug withdrawal. The paper is entitled ‘The role of Facebook groups in the management and raising of awareness of antidepressant withdrawal: is social media filling the void left by health services?’ It was published in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology in January 2021 and the authors are Sherry Julo, Ed White and John Read. "In June 2020, the groups had a total membership of 67,125, of which, 60,261 were in private groups. The increase in membership for the 13 groups over the study period was 28.4%. One group was examined in greater detail. Group membership was 82.5% female, as were 80% of the Administrators and Moderators, all of whom are lay volunteers. Membership was international but dominated (51.2%) by the United States (US). The most common reason for seeking out this group was failed clinician-led tapers." Links and further information The role of Facebook groups in the management and raising of awareness of antidepressant withdrawal: is social media filling the void left by health services? Facebook Groups Provide Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal Help When Doctors Don’t Out of the Abyss (with a Little Help from My Friends) Antidepressant Withdrawal: Avoid Doctors? Tens of Thousands Relying on Social Media Support Groups to Withdraw From Antidepressants (video)

Actor, singer, writer, and civil rights activist Donzaleigh Abernathy is goddaughter of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and daughter of the Reverend Dr. Ralph David Abernathy, King's best friend and partner in the civil rights movement — who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and became president of it after King's assassination on April 4, 1968. Her mother was civil rights activist Juanita Abernathy. As a child, Abernathy witnessed some of the most inspiring and formative moments of the civil rights movement — and some of the most sobering. She also grew up knowing and loving the man she called Uncle Martin, whose stances against racism, poverty, and war remain as relevant today as they were when he first voiced them. Also relevant are his calls for creative maladjustment, meaning the refusal to adjust to society's many ills. Abernathy is the author of Partners to History: Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy and the Civil Rights Movement. She also contributed to the Smithsonian Institute’s In the Spirit of Martin. As an actor, she's known for her many roles in films — such as the civil war drama Gods and Generals — and many series, including the Lifetime drama Any Day Now and zombie-apocalypse series The Walking Dead. In addition, she is the lead soloist in a new choral piece, The Listening, composed by Cheryl B. Engelhardt for the Voices 21C Choir in New York City. It’s inspired by an anti-war speech King delivered exactly one year before his death, and it’s been released as a single and a video.

Helen Spandler is a Professor of Mental Health Studies at the University of Central Lancashire in the UK. She is the managing editor of Asylum, a non-profit radical mental health magazine. She currently holds the Welcome Trust Investigator Award and is the principal investigator on a new research project about the role of MadZines (comics and graphic memoirs created by people with lived experience of psychosocial disabilities) in contesting mental health knowledge and practice. With over four books and 40 publications to her name, professor Spandler has applied her expertise to a wide range of concerns. She has written about the psychiatric survivor movement, alternate interventions such as therapeutic communities, psychosocial disability, and grassroots activism concerning patient rights. In this interview, she discusses the importance of placing human suffering before theoretical preferences. She argues that understanding truly listening to psychiatric survivors requires us to get accustomed to uncomfortable truths.

This week on the Mad in America podcast we turn our attention to prescription-drug-induced akathisia and joining me to discuss this is Jill Nickens. Jill is the president and founder of the Akathisia Alliance for Education and Research, a nonprofit organization formed by people who have personal experience of akathisia. The group includes biochemists, psychologists, nurses, attorneys, business owners, and others who have survived akathisia, suicidality and devastating personal losses due, in part, to a lack of awareness by medical professionals. They have come together to inform and raise awareness to help minimize the risk of developing akathisia. Akathisia is an extremely distressing neurological disorder that causes severe agitation, an inability to remain still and an overwhelming sense of terror. It is primarily caused by prescribed medications and the most common offenders are anti-psychotics, antidepressants, anti-nausea medications and antibiotics.