
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, a weekly discussion that searches for the truth about psychiatric prescription drugs and mental health care worldwide.
Hosted by James Moore, this podcast is part of Mad in America’s mission to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care. We believe that the current drug-based paradigm of care has failed our society and that scientific research, as well as the lived experience of those who have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, calls for profound change.
On the podcast we have interviews with experts and those with lived experience of the psychiatric system. Thank you for joining us as we discuss the many issues around rethinking psychiatric care around the world.
For more information visit madinamerica.com
To contact us email podcasts@madinamerica.com
Latest episodes

Nov 23, 2022 • 1h
Art and Transformation - Creating Justice in Mental Health Care
Madness: Fighting for Justice in Mental Health is an upcoming conference created by the Disruption Network Lab. The Lab examines the intersection of politics, technology and society, exposing the misconduct and wrongdoing of the powerful. This year, the conference will investigate systems of mental health care focusing on the prevailing discourses and practices, biases, and inequalities. It will explore the questions: What does it mean to have a just mental health care system and who has access to it? Who decides who is labelled as mad? The conference is being held in Berlin, Germany, as well as streamed online free on November 25th through the 27th. You can view the conference live at disruptionlab.org/madness. In this podcast, Mad in America’s Arts Editor, Karin Jervert, interviews the curator of the conference, Elena Veljanovska, and three artists—Dolly Sen, Anika Krbetschek, and Marcello Lussana—about art and transformation, human rights, and justice in mental health. Dolly Sen is an internationally renowned writer, filmmaker, artist, and activist. Anika Krbetschekis a multidisciplinary artist and curator. And Marcello Lussana is a research associate and coordinator of the project Social Interaction Through Sound Feedback, Sentire. These artists will be interviewed at the conference on Saturday the 26th at 8 pm CET/2 pm EST on a panel moderated by Lily Martin titled “Art and Survivor Empowerment.”

Nov 16, 2022 • 59min
David Healy – Polluting Our Internal Environments: The Perils of Polypharmacy
On the Mad in America podcast this wweek we are joined by renowned psychopharmacologist Dr David Healy. David is a psychiatrist, scientist and author. Before becoming a professor of Psychiatry in Wales, and more recently in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Canada, he studied medicine in Dublin and at Cambridge University. He is a former Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, and has authored more than 220 peer-reviewed articles, 300 other pieces, and 25 books, including The Antidepressant Era, The Creation of Psychopharmacology and Pharmageddon. He has been involved as an expert witness in homicide and suicide trials involving psychotropic drugs, and in bringing problems with these drugs to the attention of American and European regulators, as well raising awareness of how pharmaceutical companies sell drugs by marketing diseases and co-opting academic opinion-leaders, ghost-writing their articles. David is a founder and CEO of Data Based Medicine Limited, which operates through its website RxISK.org, dedicated to making medicines safer through online direct patient reporting of drug side effects. In this interview we discuss the recently held World Tapering Day, a possible relationship between antidepressant treatment and sensory neuropathy and the difficulties that can be encountered when trying to deprescribe.

Nov 9, 2022 • 1h
Morgan Shields - Breaking Academia's Silence on Inpatient Psychiatry
Morgan Shields is one of the few health policy researchers who focuses on quality of care and issues of coercion within inpatient psychiatry. Her research exposes how current healthcare settings are influenced by power imbalances, profit structures, and organizational priorities that are fundamentally misaligned with the human needs of individual patients. Dr. Shields completed her Ph.D. in Social Policy at Brandeis University and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, where she also directs her own research group. She has published over 25 peer-reviewed articles in outlets such as Health Affairs, Psychiatric Services, and the JAMA Network. She has also completed several policy reports for entities such as the U.S. Health and Human Services Office, and has served as a legal expert in cases related to psychiatric patient discrimination. In doing so, her research has effected change at the state and federal levels, prompting internal investigations and structural reforms within agencies such as the Veterans Health Administration and the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health. In this interview, Dr. Shields discusses her current work, which aims to identify strategies for implementing patient-centered and equitable treatment within existing mental health care structures—toward a wholesale re-imagining of inpatient psychiatry.

Nov 5, 2022 • 39min
Anders Sørensen - Tackling Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal Through Research and in Practice
This week we are sharing a special interview that’s being done as part of World Tapering Day. World Tapering Day is being held on the 4th, 5th and 6th of November 2022 and it aims to raise global awareness of the need to safely taper psychotropic drugs. It has been organized by people with personal experience of the severe difficulties that can arise when stopping antidepressants, antipsychotics or benzodiazepines. If you would like to find out more or participate, you can visit the website WorldTaperingDay.org where you can sign up for a range of free-to-view webinars. Our guest today is Anders Sørenson. Anders is a Danish clinical psychologist with a special interest in psychiatric drug withdrawal. He has undertaken research which assesses the state of guidance on psychiatric drug withdrawal. He has also paid close attention to tapering methods with the aim of identifying approaches which might make withdrawal more tolerable for people. In addition to his research work, Anders utilizes psychotherapy in his private practice when helping people to come off the drugs and we’ll get to talk about some of that in this interview.

Oct 19, 2022 • 46min
Justin Karter - Exploring the Fault Lines in Mental Health Discourse
Justin Karter is a staff psychologist at Boston College University Counseling Services. He is a recent graduate of the doctoral program in Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he completed his dissertation research on the experiences of psychosocial disability activists in the Global South. He has served as the editor of the research news section of the Mad in America website since 2015. In addition, he has held executive board positions with the Society for Humanistic Psychology and the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Despite being a recent graduate and early career psychologist, he has published over 25 papers and textbook chapters on topics in critical psychology, critical psychiatry, and philosophy of psychology. While he has often been the interviewer for our MIA podcasts, today, we get to turn the mic around and ask him some questions. In doing so, we discuss his journey into the field and what he has learned through his work with MIA, research in critical psychiatry and psychology, and his practice as a therapist.

Oct 12, 2022 • 37min
Jim Flannery - Sorry It's Not Funny – Comedy, Hip-Hop and Activism
This week on the Mad in America podcast, we are joined by activist and artist Jim Flannery. Born and raised in suburban Weathersfield, Connecticut, Jim was committed at four mental hospitals across the United States. There he received the best care available in the modern world… torture, which included seclusion, restraints, forced drugging, coercion, and a psychiatric diagnosis. Later, he turned to the arts to speak out publicly about his experiences with the mental health system through performing stand-up comedy under the pseudonym Flim Jannery and now through music with his new album, "Sorry, It's Not Funny," which will be released on Friday, October 14. In 2020, Jim began hearing voices, which opened his eyes to what he terms a genocide against neurodiverse people. He shifted his creative efforts towards hip-hop, believing the genre was the best medium to communicate his perspective. You can hear the new album on the website jim-flannery.com. It’s also on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Pandora, SoundCloud, and Tidal.

Sep 14, 2022 • 38min
Diana Rose - Is Service-User Research Possible in Mental Health?
Dr. Diana Rose wears many hats—academic, researcher, service user, and activist. She is a leading figure in user-led research and currently an Honorary Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University. Dr. Rose was previously Professor of User Led Research and Director of the Service User Research Enterprise (SURE) at King’s College. She was also lead in Patient and Public Involvement in several large research programmes at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience. Apart from an impressive set of publications, Dr. Rose’s new book Mad Knowledges and User-Led Research is about to hit the markets. In today’s interview, she brings together her vast breadth of experience and depth of knowledge to talk about the challenges service users and survivors of psychiatry face when they take space as knowers and researchers in the Psy-disciplines. *** If you find this podcast valuable, rating it and leaving a review on iTunes or Spotify or sharing it on social media helps us to get the word out about these important conversations. Thank you.

Sep 7, 2022 • 46min
Jon Jureidini – Evidence-Based Medicine in a Post-Truth World
This week on the Mad in America podcast, we are joined by Dr. Jon Jureidini. Jon is a child psychiatrist who also trained in philosophy, critical appraisal and psychotherapy. He has a continuing appointment as a professor in the School of Medicine at the University of Adelaide. He heads Adelaide University’s Critical and Ethical Mental Health research group, which conducts research, teaching and advocacy to promote safer, more effective and more ethical research and practice in mental health; and the Paediatric Mental Health Training Unit, providing training and support to medical students, GPs, allied health professionals, teachers and counsellors in non-pathologising approaches to primary care mental health. He has an international reputation for his work on the evidence base for psychiatry and is a strong advocate for addressing the social determinants of mental health. Jon, together with co-author Leemon B. McHenry, wrote the book The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine published in 2020. The book was followed by an opinion piece which appeared in the British Medical Journal in March 2022. In this interview, we discuss the issues with evidence-based medicine and what led to the debasement of a system originally conceived to challenge extravagant claims and poor science.

Aug 22, 2022 • 42min
Liam MacGabhann, Martha Griffin, Harry Gijbels and Elaine Browne - The Launch of Mad in Ireland
This week on the Mad in America podcast, we are really pleased to be announcing the launch of a new global affiliated site: Mad in Ireland. Mad in Ireland launches on August the 22nd and joins our other global sites which include Mad in the UK, Mad in Canada, Mad in Finland and Mad in Brasil amongst others. Joining me to discuss the launch and the important role that Mad in Ireland will play are Liam MacGabhann, Martha Griffin, Elaine Browne and Harry Gijbels who are part of the team that has been working hard to get the new site up and running. You can visit Mad in Ireland from August 22nd here: https://madinireland.com Please help them get up and running by visitng the site and sharing it on social media. Thank you.

Aug 17, 2022 • 46min
Beverley Thomson – Antidepressed - Antidepressant Harm and Dependence
Our guest today is Beverley Thomson. Beverley is a writer, researcher and speaker with a focus on psychiatric medication including antidepressants, benzodiazepines and ADHD drugs. She is interested in their history, how the drugs work, adverse effects, dependence, withdrawal and development of patient support services. For the past 10 years, she has worked with organizations such as the British Medical Association, the Scottish Government and recently the UK All Party Parliamentary Group (APPPG) for prescribed drug dependence. She is currently part of a Scottish Government Short Life Working Group addressing the issue of prescribed drug harm and dependence in Scotland. We talk about Beverley’s latest book, entitled Antidepressed: A Breakthrough Examination of Epidemic Antidepressant Harm and Dependence published by Hatherleigh Press in 2022. Featuring compelling accounts from people whose lives have been irrevocably harmed by prescribed antidepressants, Beverley’s work provides proof that there is no such thing as a magic pill and that pretending otherwise risks the lives and well-being of those who need help the most. *** If you find this podcast valuable, rating it 5 stars and leaving a review on iTunes or Spotify or sharing it on social media helps us to get the word out about these important conversations. Thank you.