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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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How I Developed a Critical Perspective on Psychiatry

Mad in America

F ollowing my recent experience of antidepressant withdrawal and having worked in psychiatry for nearly 20 years as a registered mental health nurse, I now have a very critical view on what good mental health treatment and recovery should look like. I have seen this merry-go-round all too often.

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Letting Go of Lithium

Mad in America

My sister took antidepressants and my family has a lot of mental health issues, so based on that, I was thrown into the same category. I started talking fast, coming up with ideas and creative projects and I stopped sleeping. On the drive back from the hospital I found out that we had evacuated our home due to black mold.

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Giving Caregivers a Platform: Meagan, Mother of Matt

Mad in America

But the combined intelligence and cognitive awareness of Matt and his mother’s tenacity for answers undoubtedly gave him a second chance on life. I knew in October of 2018 that Matt was in trouble during a phone call, when he told me in a cheerful voice that he had been to the ER for “mental health reasons” but was “fine.”

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

Mad in America

Overwhelmed, I sought help from my VA mental health team. In response to how quickly my mental health had devolved, my husband was concerned I might have a brain tumor. 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.

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Don’t Call Me a Therapist

Mad in America

I just think that it is your expression of a misunderstood, imprecise and outdated definition of what mental health work entails. If you struggle mentally, it does not mean that you are ill. It is psychiatry’s view of what mental problems are and how they arise which in itself is pathological. The author, Erik Rudi.

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I Secret Shopped #988 and Three Cop Cars Showed Up Outside My House

Mad in America

Vibrant Says… Vibrant Emotional Health (Vibrant) is described as “one of the nation’s leading mental health organizations.” But never have I ever ‘secret shopped’ anything in the ‘mental health’ world before. Mental health system providers rarely apologize, so that was meaningful even if only a small thing.