Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

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.

Janice Haaken is a professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist, and a documentary filmmaker. In addition to her work as a professor at Portland State University, Haaken has taught as a Fulbright scholar at Durham University (UK) and University College Cork (Ireland) and as a visiting professor at London School of Economics (UK), York University (UK), and University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Her documentaries, including Guilty Except for Insanity (2009), Mind Zone: Therapists Behind the Front Lines (2014), Milk Men: The Life and Times of Dairy Farmers (2016), and Our Bodies Our Doctors (2019), focus on people and places on the social margins, drawing out their insights on the world around them. Jan has received numerous awards for her filmmaking, most recently the Lena Sharpe Persistence of Vision award at the 2019 Seattle International Film Festival. Haaken publishes extensively in psychoanalysis and feminism, the history and politics of diagnosis, trauma, culture, and memory, and the dynamics of storytelling. In addition to Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory and the Perils of Looking Back(2000) and Hard Knocks: Psychology and the Dynamics of Storytelling (2010), her new book is called Psychiatry, Politics, and PTSD: Breaking Down (2021). In this interview, she discusses her background in anti-psychiatry and other social movements and her experience liaising between theory and praxis in feminist movements, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo. Weaving a history of how both radical and normative ideas and diagnoses in mental health play out in social movements, Jan draws upon her books and films to discuss how activists and mental health professionals alike can better reflect upon their practices and the role they play within larger social systems. We close by following her recent work, which unpacks the benefits and drawbacks of the PTSD diagnosis for personal narratives, collective memory-making, the US military, NGOs, and global mental health critics.

This episode of “Mad in the Family” focuses on a non-drug method to bringing out the best in challenging children, particularly those diagnosed with “ADHD.” It is called the Nurtured Heart Approach® and its essence is that, in the words of our guest, “the same intensity that drives people crazy is actually the source of a child’s greatness." He is the approach’s creator, family therapist Howard Glasser.  Glasser has been called “one of the most influential living persons working to reduce children’s reliance on psychiatric medications” and is the author of the bestselling book, Transforming the Difficult Child and more than a dozen other books. Glasser is also the Founder of the Children’s Success Foundation, whose  mission is to advance the work of the Nurtured Heart Approach by conducting training programs to support parents in building Inner Wealth® in their children, educators in formally implementing the approach in school systems, and therapeutic professionals to meet the unique mental health needs of “intense” children. A frequent keynote speaker at conferences  on treatment and education, he currently teaches certification trainings on his method, as well as in Dr. Andrew Weil’s program at the University of Arizona’s School of Integrative Medicine. http://www.howardglasser.com/ https://childrenssuccessfoundation.com/

Lucas Richert is the George Urdang Chair in the History of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and historical director for the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. His work explores prescription and illicit drugs, the American counterculture, and the influence of various power structures within and beyond psychiatry. As a scholar of the pharmaceutical industry, Richert encountered a trove of historical documents that talked about the self-described radicals in mental health from the 1970s. “They cared about relevant issues, things that we talk about right now: racism, the environment, militarism, and political division. It really grabbed hold of me when I got these documents, they were a catalyst.” This project turned into his 3rd book, Break on Through: Radical psychiatry and the American counterculture in which he examines the tumultuous 1970s in America with a focus “not just on the elite doctors and people in positions of power, but also wider societal trends.” In addition to Break on Through, Richert has published A Prescription for Scandal: Conservatism, consumer choice, and the food and drug administration during the Reagan era and Strange Trips: Science culture, and the regulation of drugs. His fourth book, Cannabis: Global Histories, will be available later this year (2021). In this interview, we will discuss the radical landscape of American psychiatry in the 1970s, “therapeutic” and “non-therapeutic” drugs and how they are classified as such, and feminist critiques of psychiatric institutions.

This week we are sharing the audio taken from our recent psychiatric drug withdrawal town hall held on January 15th 2021. This was our initial, scene-setting discussion and the panelists are Adele Framer, also known as Alto Strata founder of surviving antidepressants, Luke Montagu, co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, Swapnil Gupta, a psychiatrists with a specila interest in deprescribing and John Read, Professor of psychology and Chair of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal. This series aims to explore what we do and don’t know about safe withdrawal from antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and stimulants. We will seek to present and explore new understandings that are emerging from the professional and lived-experience communities. We will discuss the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to support those who may be having difficulty getting off psychiatric drugs. We will address questions of interest to both prescribers and patients alike. Our next even in the series will be held on March 12th 2021 and registration details will be available on Mad in America in early February.

Mad in America, in partnership with the Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry and the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug withdrawal is arranging a series of free to attend online town hall discussions on psychiatric drug withdrawal. We aim to explore what we do and don’t know about safe withdrawal from antidepressants, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and stimulants. We will discuss the knowledge, skills and experience necessary to support those who may be having difficulty getting off psychiatric drugs. By doing this we hope to stimulate further discussion between service users and prescribers. Our first discussion will be held on Friday January 15th at 10 AM Pacific time, 1 PM Eastern time and 6 PM GMT. The panellists for the first discussion are Adele Framer, founder of Surviving Antidepressants; Swapnil Gupta, a Board Member of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal and a psychiatrist with a special interest in deprescribing; John Read, Professor of Psychology and Chair of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal; and Luke Montagu, co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry and member of the NICE guideline committee for safe prescribing and withdrawal. To register for the first discussion, visit madinamerica.com and use the link at the bottom of the home page or click here: https://bit.ly/psych-drug-withdrawal We hope that these discussions will add to an increasingly detailed collection of knowledge and experiences that can inform prescribers when providing informed consent and when implementing gradual tapering regimes. We very much hope you can join us.