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Mood Tracking: My System for Reducing Psychiatric Hospitalizations

Mad in America

D uring my first psychiatric hospitalization in 1998, I was strapped down, placed in 4-point restraints, and administered a painful catheter—apparently because I had peed on the floor during the course of my psychotic episode. Captivity By my count (with an assist from my mother) I’ve had 12 psychiatric hospitalizations in my life.

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Everything About Us Without Us

Mad in America

T his historical record of Oregons first state hospital, the Oregon State Insane Asylum, from its opening in 1883 until the mid-1950s, will focus on the experiences of patients there. The guiding principle for the hospital during these seven decades, whether recognized or not, was Everything About Us Was Without Us.

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A Psycho-Spiritual Journey

Mad in America

Soon after mentioning these experiences to my local doctor and the minister of the church I attended, I was certified insane and involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital. I was also acutely embarrassed and ashamed about what had happened to me so I tried to hide my experiences from everyone, even to the point of self-denial.

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How I Developed a Critical Perspective on Psychiatry

Mad in America

A person may come into hospital on no drugs at all, only to leave with several psychiatric drugs, often causing adverse side effects which leads to more prescriptions to counteract the side effects. It’s tragic that these people may then be wrongly labelled as personality disordered, bipolar, or psychotic.

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Letting Go of Lithium

Mad in America

I felt like I had taken a magical pill to cure whatever might have been wrong with me… until I crashed, became paranoid and landed in the hospital. None of this sat well with me, but coming home from the hospital completely overly medicated and numb, I was in shock, disassociated, and unable to question the doctor’s theory.

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How to Explain Top Psychiatrists’ “Dr. Strangelove Exuberance” Unchecked by Reality

Mad in America

Insel is a prime example of a top psychiatrist with exuberance about psychiatry regardless of his awareness of the reality of its repeated failures. “I Authored by psychiatrist Marshall Garrick, this article provides a window to the cultural values of psychiatry, and how self-serving rationalizations are considered artful diplomacy.

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My Red October – An Army Veteran’s Crucible to Recovery

Mad in America

I was a shell of my former self, unable to think, staring off into space; all while trying my best to care for my family. The nightmare that was my inpatient hospitalization, combined with my newly developed distrust of those around me, exacerbated my previous traumas. Broken trust It wasn’t just the doctors I’d lost trust in.