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My Story of Surviving Psychiatry

Mad in America

It will be easier to dive into the depths of darkness and despair that I went through as a mental health patient if I start with a story of hope. At the age of 41, I was sectioned under the Mental Health Act in the midst of the Covid pandemic in the early autumn of 2020 in the throes of an episode of psychosis.

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Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Six)

Mad in America

14 Many psychologists do not realise that they have a great advantage over psychiatrists, which is that they are educated with the aim of understanding the patients where they are and helping them with psychotherapy and other forms of support. In 2012, the US Centers for Disease Control reported that 25% of Americans have a mental illness.

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Remembrances of Linda Andre, Leader in the Fight Against ECT

Mad in America

Linda Andre spent the last eight years of her life institutionalized at the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, where she died by suicide this month at age 63. In Doctors of Deception , she wrote about the unquantifiable, permanent harm she experienced at age 24 from 15 coerced shock treatments at New York Hospital: “My life was stolen.

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Medication Overload, Part II: The Explosion of Drugs for Kids

Mad in America

I n the early 1960s, around the age of two, I experienced an accidental overdose. The incident occurred after one of my preschool-age siblings managed to use a kitchen chair to retrieve the tasty but very toxic medicine, open the bottle, and then give it to me believing the “candy medicine” would help their baby sister feel better.

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For-Profit Healthcare Is a Predator; Its Main Prey Is Our Young

Mad in America

S ince the 1990s, weve been hearing about the amazing progress in mental healthcare: We learned that mental illnesses like depression are serious but treatable diseases. And thanks to education and awareness-raising efforts, more people are getting help with their suffering. But theres a paradox here: The U.S.

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Critical Psychiatry Textbook, Chapter 16: Is There Any Future for Psychiatry? (Part Five)

Mad in America

668 A WHO study of 640 depressed patients found that those treated with medication had worse general health and were more likely to still be mentally ill than those who weren’t treated at the end of one year. 119:24 Whitaker also mentioned the MTA trial ( see Chapter 9, Part Two ).