Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health

In our second week of MIA Veterans & Military Families, we interview U.S. Navy Veteran Dan Hurd. Dan is the Founder of Ride With Dan USAand the One Pedal at a Time Movement. After surviving his third suicide attempt, Dan became inspired to bicycle to all 48 States in the continental U.S. to help raise awareness about suicide. Along his journey, Dan has realized his attempts were likely caused by the medications he had been prescribed and now dedicates his life towards inspiring others to live life “One Pedal at a Time”.  (audio to be added) We discuss:  How Dan survived a rough childhood and came to be prescribed psychoactive medications as a teenager. That Dan found his time in the U.S. Navy to be the best time of his life. How he came to found Ride with Dan USAand the One Pedal at a Time Movement. Why he is biking all 48 states in the continental U.S., with a path that includes 25,000 miles and a three-year ride to raise awareness about suicide and to call for research. How all three of his suicide attempts were during periods of medication withdrawal. How his first attempt occurred in high school, six months before entering the U.S. Navy. How, a year after discharge from the Navy, Dan began getting prescribed medications again. Dan now realizes that meds were the likely cause of his suicide attempts. Life stressors were triggers, but medication withdrawal manufactured his risk. How Dan experienced severe physical pain as part of withdrawal from psychoactive medications, which was especially pronounced during the first year of his ride across the country. How his physical pain from withdrawal was so intense that it nearly ended his trip within the first six months of his journey. Dan talks about his concerns that psychoactive meds might have harmed his mother, and that her being prescribed these medications prior to his birth might have impacted his life today. How he hadn’t previously connected meds to his negative life events, specifically social isolation. Dan has gone from complete isolation while on meds to exploring all 48 states on his bicycle now that he is off of the drugs. How Dan has come to recognize medications aren’t solving a chemical imbalance, but instead are medicating symptoms, which led to polypharmacy. How Dan’s journey and sharing his story with others has helped him in his recovery and in finding balance in life. Dan’s Message to listeners: "Take life one step and one pedal at a time. If you’re experiencing challenges, tell everybody what is going on. Don’t expect help, because when you expect it, you’ll be disappointed. It’s when you’re asking for help and not expecting it, you’ll be happily surprised at what happens." Relevant Links: One Pedal at a Time Movement Ride with Dan USA Please support Mad in America - Donate now

Lillian Comas-Díaz is a pioneer in the field of ethnocultural approaches to mental health. She is both a clinical practitioner and multicultural feminist psychologist, writing numerous journal articles and books pushing the field toward more inclusive and less ethnocentric theories and practices. She was recently awarded the 2019 American Psychological Association gold medal awardfor lifetime achievement and the practice of psychology, the first time a person of color has been recognized with the award. She credits the long-term, collective effort of professionals of color working on expanding psychology’s lens to include the perspectives of marginalized peoples’ experiences. Comas-Díaz, along with her colleagues, recently introduced a special issue on the concept they call racial trauma (see MIA report). She describes racial trauma as “an insidious type of distress that many people of color and other marginalized individuals experience, where they are living in a society where racism, heterosexism, classism, and all those kinds of ‘isms’ are making the society oppressive towards those targeted groups.”

This week on MIA Radio we turn our attention to veterans, service members and military families. MIA has recently launched a new resource for military veterans which will provide news, personal stories and resources specific to veterans and their families. So to explain more about the new resources I am delighted to have been able to chat with Derek Blumke. Derek is the newest member of the MIA Team and he is the editor of the new veterans section. Derek served 12 years in the US Air Force and Michigan Air National Guard before attending the University of Michigan where he cofounded Student Veterans of America. For his work, Derek received the Presidential Volunteer Service Award and was recognised at the White House by President Barack Obama for his leadership in supporting returning military veterans. To listen and subscribe to the Mad in America podcast on Apple iTunes, click here. Listen also on Spotify, YouTube or Google Podcasts. We discuss: Derek’s time in the US Air Force and Michigan Air National Guard which saw him deployed to Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. How, following his service years, he transitioned to Community College in 2005 and then went on to the University of Michigan. How he came to feel that veterans were often isolated on campuses and this drove him to set up an organisation to provide support and connection for ex-service members, which became Student Veterans of America. That SVA is now the largest student organisation in the US and also the largest organisation of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in the country. That during his three years running SVA, Derek became involved in legislative action to help send military service members to college (the Post-911 GI Bill). How veterans face unique challenges but shouldn’t be viewed as somehow broken or in need of specific support. That it was post-service experiences that led to Derek’s realisation that our approach to mental health could be leading to damage and harm. How Derek came to set up a tech company which he describes as ‘the most stressful and challenging time of his life’. That these stresses and strains led to being prescribed psychiatric drugs, initially Adderall but later having Ambien and Gabapentin added and eventually Zoloft too. How the side effects of this cocktail rendered Derek barely able to function and led to him moving back to Michigan. That he stopped socialising, stopped posting on social media and his social circle reduced because of the effects of the drugs. How these experiences led to questioning and some research and how he withdrew from five drugs over a month, with the most issues coming from the antidepressant Zoloft. His description of withdrawal effects including tinnitus, brain zaps, nausea, fatigue, anxiety and extreme dizziness. That he came to read the New York Times article: ‘Many people taking antidepressants find they cannot quit’ and realised he was in acute withdrawal. That it ultimately took Derek a year to come off the Zoloft. How he discovered Mad in America and realised that the messages in the mainstream mental health world do not do justice to the experiences that people are having with psychiatric drugs. How Derek got involved with MIA and came to lead our news veterans initiative. The suicide epidemic that has so severely affected the veterans community and how it results in more deaths than casualties from recent conflicts. That he hopes that the MIA veterans initiative will be seen as the equivalent of Yelp for veterans who want to read personal accounts and learn from unbiased and alternative sources. That Derek is starting a new non-profit: Walk There, which is designed to get people together to walk in their local area. Relevant Links: Mad in America Veterans Resources Student Veterans of America The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) The New York Times: Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit Walk There

On MIA Radio this week, in the first of a number of podcasts focussed on parenting issues, we interview Dr. Craig Wiener, a licensed psychologist based in Worcester, Massachusetts, who specializes in the treatment of children, adolescents, and families. In addition to over 30 years of private practice, Dr. Wiener is an assistant professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Wiener is the author of three books. most recently Parenting Your Child with ADHD: A No-Nonsense Guide for Nurturing Self-Reliance and Cooperation. Earlier this year he debuted his three-part video series “ADHD: A Return to Psychology,” which appears on the Mad in America website and also on YouTube. © Mad in America 2019

Pat Bracken is a psychiatrist who questions many of the fundamental assumptions of his field. He has worked as a psychiatrist in rural Ireland, inner-city and multi-ethnic parts of the UK, and in Uganda, East Africa. Bracken, who holds doctoral degrees in both medicine and philosophy, calls for a movement toward critical psychiatry. He was one of the people involved in starting the Critical Psychiatry Network, an organization of psychiatrists, researchers, and mental health professionals that question the assumptions that lie beneath psychiatric knowledge and practice. Through his clinical practice and his academic work in philosophy and ethics, he has seen the limits and dangers of standard approaches to mental health in the West. As a result, he has become an advocate for listening to different understandings of madness from those who are routinely ignored and dismissed — namely, service-users and people who themselves experience madness, and those from indigenous and non-Western cultures.

MIA’s Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Diana Kopua about the Mahi a Atua approach, the global mental health movement, and the importance of language and narratives in how we understand our world and ease our suffering. Diana Kopua’s life resembles the stories she uses in her work. From a psychiatric community nurse to the head of the department of psychiatry for Hauora Tairawhiti in Gisborne, New Zealand, her 13-year long, arduous journey is both deeply personal and profoundly political. Kopua says she did this to “become a wedge that kept the door open to allow for indigenous leaders” in her world to change the system. One may call her a storyteller, but a story-gatherer might be more appropriate. As a psychiatrist, Kopua deals in human distress but her interest does not lie in neat psychiatric classifications; instead, she focuses on understanding suffering through Maori creation stories, Purakau. She has developed Mahi a Atua, “an engagement, an assessment, and an intervention” to address the mental distress and suffering among the Maori of New Zealand. Mahi a Atua is not just a set of techniques or a culturally sensitive new therapy, but a drastically different way of conceptualizing the lived experience of the Maori. Recently, along with art and culture expert Mark Kopua and critical psychiatrist Pat Bracken, she published a paper on this approach in Transcultural Psychiatry. Their work can be seen as an alternative to Western pharmaco-therapeutic interventions currently being promoted throughout the global South via the global mental health movement. Researchers have critiqued the exporting of Western psychiatric practices, often citing the famous WHO study that reported better outcomes for people diagnosed with mental disorders in the developing world. As the only Ngati Porou (a Maori nation) psychiatrist in the world, working with a population known for poor mental health outcomes, Kopua’s work offers insight into what can be learned from local, Indigenous, and traditional healing methods. There are many now calling for a “paradigm shift” in Western psychiatry, and in our interview, we covered topics ranging from the specifics of the Mahi a Atua approach, the global mental health movement, and the importance of language and narratives in how we understand our world and ease our suffering. © Mad in America 2019

This week on MIA Radio, we present a special episode of the MIA podcast to join in the many events being held for World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, July 11, 2019. 2019 represents the fourth annual awareness day and each year it’s held on July 11 which is a significant date because it is the birthday of Professor Heather Ashton. Dr. Ashton is a world-leading expert in benzodiazepines and wrote the highly regarded Ashton Manual which aims to aid clinicians and patients in coming off benzodazepine drugs safely. She also spent many years personally assisting and supporting those who had experienced protracted benzodiazepine withdrawal. Around the world there are many activities and events taking place as part of W-BAD, so to follow along with events and to get involved yourself, head over to World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day’s Facebook page and look out for the hashtag #WorldBenzoDay on social media. In our two-part podcast, we hear from W-BAD volunteer and Project Manager for W-BAD Rocks of Kindness, Janelle. We also chat with physician and Director of the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition Christy Huff MD. Finally, in part two, we hear from Stephen Wright MD, addiction specialist and medical consultant to the Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices. W-BAD Rocks on Facebook Rockin’ Against Benzos (closed Facebook group) A Rockin’ Creative Outlet That’s Raising Benzodiazepine Awareness #WBADROCKS – 1 Month, 5 Things We’ve Learned W-BAD Rocks on Twitter and Instagram: @wbadrocks On social media, look for the hashtag #WBADROCKS A Xanax Prescription That Should Have Been Rejected 10 Tips To Help Patients Through Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Follow Dr. Huff on Twitter Dr. Huff’s Blogs and Media Appearances (Scroll down below her bio and click on logos) BIC on Facebook @bzinfocoalition BIC on Twitter @BZInfoCoalition The Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices Benzodiazepine Related Problems: It’s Almost Never Addiction Benzodiazepines and Z Drugs for Pain Patients: The Problem of Protracted Withdrawal Symptoms (PWS) How Chronic Administration of Benzodiazepines Leads to Unexplained Chronic Illnesses: A Hypothesis

This week on MIA Radio, we present a special episode of the MIA podcast to join in the many events being held for World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, July 11, 2019. 2019 represents the fourth annual awareness day and each year it’s held on July 11 which is a significant date because it is the birthday of Professor Heather Ashton. Dr. Ashton is a world-leading expert in benzodiazepines and wrote the highly regarded Ashton Manual which aims to aid clinicians and patients in coming off benzodazepine drugs safely. She also spent many years personally assisting and supporting those who had experienced protracted benzodiazepine withdrawal. Around the world there are many activities and events taking place as part of W-BAD, so to follow along with events and to get involved yourself, head over to World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day’s Facebook page and look out for the hashtag #WorldBenzoDay on social media. In our two-part podcast, we hear from W-BAD volunteer and Project Manager for W-BAD Rocks of Kindness, Janelle. We also chat with physician and Director of the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition Christy Huff MD. Finally, in part two, we hear from Stephen Wright MD, addiction specialist and medical consultant to the Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices. W-BAD Rocks on Facebook Rockin’ Against Benzos (closed Facebook group) A Rockin’ Creative Outlet That’s Raising Benzodiazepine Awareness #WBADROCKS – 1 Month, 5 Things We’ve Learned W-BAD Rocks on Twitter and Instagram: @wbadrocks On social media, look for the hashtag #WBADROCKS A Xanax Prescription That Should Have Been Rejected 10 Tips To Help Patients Through Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Follow Dr. Huff on Twitter Dr. Huff’s Blogs and Media Appearances (Scroll down below her bio and click on logos) BIC on Facebook @bzinfocoalition BIC on Twitter @BZInfoCoalition The Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices Benzodiazepine Related Problems: It’s Almost Never Addiction Benzodiazepines and Z Drugs for Pain Patients: The Problem of Protracted Withdrawal Symptoms (PWS) How Chronic Administration of Benzodiazepines Leads to Unexplained Chronic Illnesses: A Hypothesis

Last year, Lucy Johnstone and her colleagues in the UK launched the Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF), a set of ideas that represented a sharp departure from the biomedical conceptions that animate the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). This framework shifts the notion of “what is wrong with you” in the DSM to “what has happened to you,” and by doing so turns away from a medical process bent on diagnosing broken brains and toward a narrative response that tells of contexts, power dynamics, and systems. At a time when the Movement for Global Mental Health is intent on exporting the Western biomedical approaches around the world, Johnstone and her PTMF team, which has included numerous individuals who identify as service users/survivors, are seeking to promote a radically different way of understanding distress. Responses to the PTMF have ranged the gamut from criticism to gratitude. Johnstone, a consulting clinical psychologist who has experience working in adult mental health settings for many years, believes that the current mental health system has failed, and we are now in the process of witnessing its inevitable downfall. She questions whether a mental health system is needed at all. However, as Thomas Kuhn wrote in his work on scientific revolutions, a system cannot be fully abandoned until there exists a conceptual alternative for the system to move towards. The PTMF, Johnstone believes, offers that conceptual alternative that is necessary for a revolution. In this interview, she reflects on the reaction to the PTMF, and the possibility that it will help stir up a revolution in the field. How is the framework to be used? Does it stand a chance of becoming adopted? She also tells of how her own life experiences and the influences on her work. Relevant Links Dr. Johnstone took part in an earlier interview after the PTMF was launched. You may view this interview here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/03/dr-lucy-johnstone-power-threat-meaning-framework/ More about the PTMF: Lucy Johnstone discussing the primary features of PTMF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkNWQdVB4F0 A British Psychological Society report (with full document link to the framework included): https://www.bps.org.uk/news-and-policy/introducing-power-threat-meaning-framework © Mad in America 2019

This week on MIA Radio, we continue our series of discussions with Doctor Lee Coleman. In previous podcasts, we have discussed Lee’s views as a critical psychiatrist and the role of psychiatry in the courtroom. This time, we turn our attention to the need for action to address the inherent power held by psychiatry and how society might respond. In this episode we discuss: How language has the power to trigger associations and can lead us to not question theories that are presented to us as facts. How we have come to equate psychiatric ‘treatment’ with interventions in other areas of medicine. The deception behind the names of the drugs used in psychiatry such as ‘antidepressants’ or ‘antipsychotics’. That society may well be blinded by language to the critical issues of the use of force and the relationship between the law and psychiatry. That, ultimately, society demands that psychiatry play the role that it does and therefore we need a societal and political response. That any movement to address the dominance of the medical model needs to educate the public at large and so needs resources to be able to provide that challenge. How the media often provides an amplified voice for mainstream messages leading to normalisation and lack of critical questioning of such messages. That we can and should partner with sympathetic media channels who are open to challenging mainstream messaging. That Lee will hopefully be leading a workshop at the 2019 NARPA (National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy) Conference in Connecticut, USA. Relevant Links Article - Technology and Psychiatry NARPA 2019 Conference YouTube - Psychiatry's "War of the Words" YouTube - Dealing With Powerful Opponents: Psychiatry, Government and Pharma To get in touch, email us at podcasts@madinamerica.com © Mad in America 2019