Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

This week on MIA Radio, we chat with Beatrice Birch who is the initiator of the residential healing community Inner Fire. For over 35 years, Beatrice worked as a Hauschka artistic therapist in integrative clinics and inspiring initiatives in England, Holland and the USA where the whole human being of body, soul and spirit was recognized and appreciated in the healing process. She has lectured and taught as far afield as Taiwan. Her passionate belief in both the creative spirit within everyone and the importance of choice, along with her love and interest in the human being has taken her also into prisons where she has volunteered for many years offering soul support through Alternatives to Violence work and watercolor painting. In this interview, we discuss how Inner Fire works to help the people that attend, and how a core principle of their healing work is that ‘human being are creators, not victims’. We discuss: Beatrice’s background and experiences as someone providing alternative help and support for mental and emotional challenges, including her time in the UK National Health Service (NHS) utilizing Hauschka artistic therapy and other artistic therapies alongside improving nutrition and connection to new skills. How she came to be interested in the resilience of the human spirit, wanting to understand why some people cope and others do not. That Beatrice worked for many years in prison settings, working with Alternatives to Violence (AVP) and providing artistic therapies to inmates before founding Inner Fire, based in Vermont. Inner Fire is a proactive healing community officially recognised by the state of Vermont as a Therapeutic Community Residence (TCR) that has been operating as a 501(c)(3) non-profit for almost 6 years. How Inner Fire provides a medication-free approach to recovery from debilitating or traumatic life experiences, helping people to reclaim their lives. That Beatrice believes in the importance of allowing people to connect with their divine, creative selves and this leads to a core principle of Inner Fire which is that ‘human being are creators, not victims’. Inner Fire doesn’t influence a person’s choice to stay on or come off psychotropic drugs, but they will work with people who want to gradually taper either to a comfortable level or off completely. Beatrice presented a paper to ISPS Rotterdam entitled: Suppose ‘Mental Health’ is a Reductionist Term for ‘Soul Health’… How Beatrice describes those that come for help as ‘seekers’ and those from Inner Fire that support them as ‘guides’. That the focus of Inner Fire is participation, connection and community achieved by learning new skills in a group environment, getting people out of their heads and into their limbs. The importance of rhythm when following the Inner Fire programme and how it is key to the healing process. Inner Fire has a staff psychiatrist who has an appreciation of the spiritual dimensions of our lives, allowing spiritual and biological aspects to coexist. How Beatrice’s experience is that while medications can be helpful for some for a time, typically one drug will lead to another and then another and ultimately to hospitalisation. Where tapering is concerned, the seeker and the psychiatrist together decide on the tapering approach but that it is recognised that tapering must be slow and must adapt to the experience of the person trying to reduce. That Beatrice wants to raise enough money to provide a space where people can freely express the emotion that often arises as they come off their psychotropic drugs. Inner Fire is currently private pay and that people donating can therefore help seekers who want to attend but don’t have the financial resources. How Inner Fire is not a profit-motivated enterprise because the focus is on the individual’s healing journey. Bob Whitaker helped open the east wing of the Inner Fire home. Love is for the world what the Sun is for outer life No soul could live if love departed from the world It is the moral Sun of the world To spread love over the Earth to the greatest degree possible To promote love That alone is wisdom - Rudolph Steiner, Love and its Mission in the World More Information: Inner Fire Application Process Become a Supporter Beatrice on the Peter Breggin Hour podcast

This week on MIA Radio, we interview Laysha Ostrow. Laysha is the founder and CEO of Live & Learn, a research and consulting company that specializes in the inclusion of people with lived experience of the mental health system. She researches community-driven interventions that present safe and effective pathways to independence and empowerment. Ostrow earned her PhD from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and holds a master's degree in public policy from Brandeis. Ostrow is passionate about improving the experience of mental health service users, partially due to her personal experience with mental health systems. She has discussed some of her previous research on Mad in America.

Peter Stastny is a New York-based psychiatrist, documentary filmmaker, and a co-founder of the International Network toward Alternatives and Recovery (INTAR). He has been working on the development of services that obviate traditional psychiatric intervention and offer autonomous paths towards recovery and full integration. Stastny has frequently collaborated with psychiatric survivors in conducting research and writing projects, including the book and major exhibit at the New York State Museum, The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic(together with Darby Penney) and the edited volume Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry (with Peter Lehmann). He has directed several documentary films.  

Psychiatric diagnosis has come under increased scrutiny in recent years following the release of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5) in 2013. Two organizations that played a prominent role in challenging the Bible of psychiatry prior to 2013, the British Psychological Society and the Society for Humanistic Psychology (American Psychological Association - Division 32) subsequently joined to form the Task Force for Diagnostic Alternatives (TFDA). Today, February 12th, 2020, the TFDA released a new Open Letter regarding the reform and revision of diagnostic systems. MIA spoke with two leaders of the Task Force, Sarah Kamens, and Peter Kinderman about this effort. Sarah Kamens is an Assistant Professor of Psychology, at the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Old Westbury and co-chair of the Task Force for Diagnostic Alternatives for the Society for Humanistic Psychology. Her research examines the intersections between extreme emotional distress and structural marginalization. More specifically, she studies the ways in which lived experiences of psychosis and trauma are entangled with social conditions in the world. Peter Kinderman is past president of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and a Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool. He is also a past guest on the Mad in America podcast and the author of A Manifesto for Mental Health, Why We Need a Revolution in Mental Health Care (2019) and A Prescription for Psychiatry: Why We Need a Whole New Approach to Mental Health and Wellbeing (2013).

This week on MIA Radio we share what is something of an anniversary for us at MIA. This interview marks one hundred episodes since we launched our podcast in July 2017. And for this episode, we interview David Joslin. David is a retired army medic, having served in Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan in 2008. David currently works as a senior healthcare administrator and he has co-founded Remedy Alpine, a veterans therapeutic recreation non-profit dedicated to providing wilderness therapy adventures in Alaska. David has also written for Mad in America, having published Broken is Not All I’ll Ever Be in August 2019 and he has recently launched a new podcast called Bullets to Beans, which is a military and veteran-centric podcast focused on current military and veteran topics, blended with discussions on mountain oriented recreational and adventure-based therapy programs. We discuss: How upon leaving the military, David felt that he had lost his identity, suddenly working in private healthcare and not being able to care directly for colleagues as he had as a combat medic. That to help deal with the change, David started going out into the backcountry wilderness to find peace and healing. How this interest led him to meet Eric Collier, a like-minded veteran interested in wilderness hiking. How David and Eric saw the benefits to be had in sharing wilderness adventure experiences and launched their first event for veterans in 2017 and when they got home, realising the amount of interest in and support for similar future events. David and Eric then took the time to establish themselves as a business during the Winter of 2018. During 2019, David and Eric led 49 veterans into the Alaska wilderness and connected with 150 veterans via outreach and community enrichment events. That David came to see that many veterans attending the wilderness therapy had struggled with multiple medications, prescribed during their service years. How David’s experiences within the military led to treatment for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, resulting in being prescribed a drug cocktail. How the initial drugs were followed by others for insomnia, drugs for nightmares, blood pressure problems and for focus and concentration. How at the height of David’s ‘better living through chemistry’ he was on 13 different drugs. That through David’s pharmacological training he realised that one of the top ten side effects of many of the drugs he had been put on was suicidal thinking. How David came to take himself off all his drugs and strongly advises others never to do this themselves. That it was planning his own suicide that brought him to face that his life was unsustainable, accepting that he didn’t want to live as he had been. As he was planning it, he found that he didn’t want to suffer and came to realise that he did want to live, and realised that the suicidal thoughts were very likely as a result of treatment. That during his service years, David had assisted with at least three suicide interventions and that caused him to consider what might be driving veterans to consider suicide. How having confronted his suicidal thoughts and coming off his drugs, David then went on to find solace and comfort in wilderness adventures. That David still sometimes struggles with nightmares, hypervigilance and social anxiety but that he could deal with this without feeling numbed by the drugs and by being away from society but with trusted colleagues and friends in an environment conducive to healing. That Remedy Alpine is now starting to work as a government contractor to provide recreationally-based programs to the veteran community. How Remedy Alpine operates year-round and provides single-day hikes, single overnight camping events and multi-day hikes which can range from 26 to 30 miles through the Alaskan mountains. The recent launch of the Bullets 2 Beans podcast which focuses on post-military life challenges. That Remedy Alpine were attendees at the Nature’s Grace Conference, which focussed on America's veterans and the healing power of nature. How Remedy Alpine is now focussed on expanding the business side, applying for grants, developing their therapeutic programs and training veteran peer mentors. Relevant Links: Broken Is Not All I’ll Ever Be Remedy Alpine Bullets 2 Beans podcast Remedy Alpine on Facebook Nature’s Grace Conference

This week on MIA Radio we chat with Professor John Read of the University of East London. John worked for nearly 20 years as a Clinical Psychologist and manager of mental health services in the UK and the USA, before joining the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1994, where he worked until 2013. He has published over 140 papers in research journals, primarily on the relationship between adverse life events (e.g. child abuse/neglect, poverty, etc.) and psychosis. He also researches the negative effects of biogenetic causal explanations on prejudice, the opinions, and experiences of recipients of antipsychotic and antidepressant medication, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in mental health research and practice. John joins us to discuss the UK licensing of esketamine nasal spray (Spravato) for so-called ‘Treatment Resistant Depression’. John led a group of 12 academics and professionals who wrote to the UK regulator expressing concerns about esketamine. We Discuss: Concerns about the basic concept of using derivatives of hallucinogenic, addictive street drugs to address complex human problems. The particular details of the clinical trials that raise concerns about treatment with esketamine. How the US Food and Drug Administration approved Spravato in January 2019 and the European Medicines Agency recommended that member states approve it on October 17, 2019, giving 67 days for member states to comment. That the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency approved esketamine for UK use. That there have been no trials of the efficacy of esketamine in the medium or long term, with most trials being only four weeks duration. That only one of the trials found a benefit for esketamine over placebo, yet this was deemed sufficient for licensing by the USA’s FDA. That there were deaths and suicides recorded during the esketamine clinical trials. The relationship between the drug regulators and funding from the pharmaceutical manufacturers. How there was no response from the MHRA to the concerns raised by John’s group. In addition, no reply was made to concerns raised by Sir Oliver Letwin writing on behalf of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Prescribed Drug Dependence as well as letters from independent researchers from Kings College London and a group of service users. A recent response to the approval by the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. A response to the NICE announcement from the Science Media Centre.

This week on MIA Radio, we interview Wendy Dolin founder of the MISSD foundation. MISSD stands for Medication-Induced Suicide Prevention and Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin. In 2010, Wendy’s husband Stewart Dolin was prescribed Paxil (paroxetine), a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor ("SSRI") for mild situational anxiety. Within days, Stewart's anxiety became worse. He felt restless and had trouble sleeping. On July 15, 2010, just six days after beginning the medication, following a regular lunch with a business associate, Stewart left his office and walked to a nearby train station, despite not being a regular commuter. A registered nurse who was also on the platform later reported seeing Stewart pacing back and forth and looking very agitated. As a train approached, Stewart ended his life. Founded in 2011, MISSD is a unique non-profit organization dedicated to honoring the memory of Stewart and others by raising awareness and educating the public about the dangers of akathisia. MISSD aims to ensure that people suffering from akathisia's symptoms are accurately diagnosed so that needless deaths are prevented. Relevant Links: Medication-Induced Suicide Prevention and Education Foundation in Memory of Stewart Dolin MISSD on YouTube MISSD Handout MISSD Free one-hour Continuing Ed Course Akathisia Stories - MISSD Podcast (Apple Podcasts, Spotify) NYC Subway Ads Take Akathisia Out of the Darkness Wendy Dolin Takes on GlaxoSmithKline And Wins — For Now at Least Stewart Dolin’s Widow Loses $3 Million Verdict for Paxil Suicide on Appeal

Welcome to MIA Reports, showcasing our independent and original journalism devoted to rethinking psychiatry. We take selected MIA Reports and provide them as audio articles. Click here for the text version of this and all of our MIA reports. The Whistleblower and Penn: A Final Accounting of Study 352 Written by Peter Simons, read by James Moore, first published on Mad in America, December 29, 2019. Although the general story of ghostwriting in trials of psychiatric drugs is now pretty well known, the details of the corruption in specific trials are still emerging into the public record, often a decade or more after the original sin of fraudulent publication. The latest study to finally see the full light of day is GlaxoSmithKline’s study 352. Perhaps the most infamous ghostwritten study is GSK’s study 329, which, in a 2001 report published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, falsely touted paroxetine (Paxil) as an effective treatment for adolescent depression. The company paid over $3 billion in penalties for fraud. That same year, study 352 made its first appearance in the research literature. That was when Charles Nemeroff, who in the years ahead would become the public face of research misconduct, “authored” an article on the efficacy of paroxetine for bipolar disorder. It has taken 18 years for the full story of that corruption to become known, the final chapter recently emerging when a large cache of study 352 documents—emails, memos, and other internal correspondence between the key players—was made public. The documents reveal a web of corruption that went beyond the fraud of ghostwriting into the spinning of negative results into positive conclusions, and the abetting of that corruption by an editor of the scientific journal that published the article. The documents also reveal a whitewashing of the corruption by the University of Pennsylvania. However, it was the publication of these documents that provided Jay Amsterdam, an investigator in the trial who turned whistleblower after he smelled a rat, with a chance to say “case closed.” Amsterdam and Leemon McHenry have now published two articles that provide a step-by-step deconstruction of the study—the ghostwriting, the spinning of results, the betrayal of public trust. Here is the story of that whistleblowing. 

This week on MIA Radio, we interview Amanda Burrill. After a successful career as a Surface Warfare Officer and Rescue Swimmer in the United States Navy, Amanda was on track to continue her career as a professional triathlete and marathon runner, as she had already been competing internationally still while in uniform. Around the time of her discharge, she was prescribed a cocktail of psychiatric medications that caused physical injuries and leading to an early end to her rapidly accelerating career.  Amanda completed a Masters degree in Journalism from Columbia University, a culinary arts degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and continued her work as a travel and culinary journalist; all while surviving a cocktail of over a dozen psychiatric medications over eleven years.  While being treated for a traumatic brain injury (TBI) by specialists at New York University in 2018, Amanda’s doctors raised concerns about the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), benzodiazepines, stimulants, sleeping medications and mood stabilizers concurrently prescribed to her by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Over the next 12 months, Amanda was successful in withdrawing from her cocktail of meds, which included the SSRI, Zoloft. She now sees it as her mission to ensure what happened to her does not happen to others.

Dr. Anthony Ryan Hatch is a sociologist and associate professor of Science in Society, African American studies and Environmental Studies at Wesleyan University, who studies how medicine and technology impact social inequality and health. Professor Hatch is the author of two books. His first book, Blood Sugar: Racial Pharmacology and Food Justice in Black America, critiques how biomedical scientists, government researchers, and drug companies use the concepts of race and ethnicity to study and treat ‘metabolic syndrome,’ a biomedical construct that identifies people at high risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. His second book, Silent Cells: The Secret Drugging of Captive America, examines how custodial institutions like prisons, nursing homes, and the U.S. military use psychotropic drugs to manage mass incarceration and captivity in the United States. His 2018 Wesleyan TedX talk is entitled “How Social Institutions Get Hooked on Drugs.”