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The Trauma of Psychosis: My “Bipolar” Journey

Mad in America

I tell this story through the lens of akathisia (and a similar condition known as restless leg syndrome or RLS) since it was an early indicator for me that while I was being treated for the typical symptoms of bipolar, I was actually dealing with trauma. In May of 2021 I had a severe manic episode that led to psychosis.

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Much of U.S. Healthcare Is Broken: How to Fix It (Chapter 2, Part 5)

Mad in America

Healthcare is Broken: How to Fix It. Editor’s Note: Over the next several months, Mad in America is publishing a serialized version of Les Ruthven’s book, Much of U.S. In this blog, he addresses increases in suicide and homicide caused by antidepressant drugs. Y ou bet it is!

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How I Developed a Critical Perspective on Psychiatry

Mad in America

I can think of many examples throughout my early career where I saw many people admitted to psychiatric wards having suffered an adverse life event, recent or past trauma, only to leave with prescriptions for multiple drugs to treat their new presumed diagnoses.

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Depression: Psychiatry’s Discredited Theories and Drugs Versus a Sane Model and Approach

Mad in America

P sychiatry’s serotonin-imbalance theory of depression, long discarded by researchers, was finally flushed down the toilet by psychiatry and the mainstream media in 2022. And psychiatrists’ primary treatments for depression—their so-called “antidepressants”—are now circling the drain. 2) What approach to depression makes sense? Genes and depression?

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Escaping The Shackles of Psychiatry: What I’ve Seen and Survived, as Both Doctor and Patient

Mad in America

We were not given any advice or support from healthcare services to help our family adjust to this enormous change in our circumstances. “T he only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” said Edmund Burke. It is how and why the tyrants prevail. They still struggle to understand what happened to me.

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Recovery of Soul After 22 Years on Antipsychotics

Mad in America

There appears to be more dopamine uptake due to the antipsychotic-induced brain compensatory mechanism as a response to the suppressed blockade state in an effort to achieve energy equilibrium. A fter 22 years and many attempts I finally stopped taking antipsychotics.

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Healing From Psychiatric Drug Harm, Part 2: Rational Approaches to Recovery

Mad in America

In my last piece , I wrote about various neuro-rehab therapies I engaged in with Dr. J, the functional brain injury specialist, and that there came a point when my husband and I knew we’d reached the end of what medical science could offer me. I sat down to write this article with the experience of severe akathisia fresh in my mind.