Mad in America

DECEMBER 21, 2024

From the safety of ones surroundings to access to proper nutrition, sleep, and social stability, the circumstances of life have a lasting biochemical effect on the brain. These areas of the brain impact how a person reacts to the world. Those with high ACE scores have brains physically different from those with low or no ACE scores.

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Construction Trauma and the brain Sleep and mental health Legal 141

Mad in America

JUNE 28, 2024

A few months ago, I attended a live Zoom event on Guidely with Dr. Gabor Maté, author of The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture. He was talking about being abandoned for a month at the age of one because his mother was protecting his life during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. Is that even possible?

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Trauma and the brain Aging and mental health Autism spectrum Genetics and mental health 128

Child Mind Intitute

FEBRUARY 19, 2025

At the Child Mind Institute, we are dedicated to understanding how the brain develops and identifying ways we can support children and adolescents in building mental health awareness and resilience. Think of the brain as a network of interconnected pathways. Journaling is like exercising the brains emotional regulation muscles.

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Resilience and coping Trauma and the brain Self-awareness Technology 59

Mad in America

MAY 2, 2024

Some neuroscientists argue that we should rather focus our efforts on the upstream social and structural factors, such as trauma and inequity , that create the conditions for mental health concerns to arise. A recent Neuroscience News article is titled “ Bipolar disorder can be detected with blood test. ”

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Trauma and the brain Neurotransmitters and mental health Genetics and mental health Biopsychosocial model 111

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

She earned a PhD in English literature at the University of Maryland, College Park. She now teaches a course on U.S. history at Mount St. Mary’s University. It was named a New York Times Editors’ Pick and will be the focus of our conversation today. She lives in Hanover, Pennsylvania. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.

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Trauma and the brain Genetics and mental health Aging and mental health Technology 140

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 16, 2024

T he text that follows is the English translation of a speech I gave at The Danish Psychiatry Top Summit in 2024. A video of the speech, with English subtitles, is available here. The summit features professionals, politicians, and people with lived experiences. This year more than a thousand people attended. Every year, the summit has a theme.

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Trauma and the brain 133

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 6, 2024

She talks about understanding the place of her own childhood trauma and also the limitations of simplistic trauma narratives. She talks about understanding the place of her own childhood trauma and also the limitations of simplistic trauma narratives. She is also a writer and producer on Netflix’s 3 Body Problem.

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Trauma and the brain Poverty and mental health Psychedelic therapy Childhood trauma 113

Mad in America

MARCH 6, 2025

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. This is in contrast with the typical chronological history of who served as superintendent, for how long, the date new buildings were opened and other such changes.

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Hospitality Trauma and the brain Aging and mental health Self-awareness 79

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 18, 2024

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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Trauma and the brain Sleep and mental health Personality disorders Self-awareness 141

Critical Psychiatry

OCTOBER 8, 2024

Terry Lynch , who wrote a chapter for my Critical Psychiatry edited book, has posted a video asking why doctors pay so little attention to trauma in the lives of people with psychiatric diagnosis. The belief that primary mental illness is brain disease clothes psychiatry with an aura of factuality, even though that belief is incorrect.

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Trauma and the brain 130

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

She’s the author of The Anatomy of Anxiety and takes a functional medicine approach to mental health. She considers the whole person and addresses imbalance at the root. Dr. Vora received her BA from Yale University and her MD from Columbia University. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity.

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Genetics and mental health Trauma and the brain Sleep and mental health Nutrition and mood 98

Mad in America

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

Perhaps if I took a different prescription or combination of prescriptions, my brain would magically adjust and rid me of my alleged ‘chemical imbalance’. My brain sat in my skull like a dead goldfish. I had been diagnosed with numerous ‘disorders’ because I had a traumatic childhood. I was severely unwell. I was disgusted.

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Trauma and the brain Poverty and mental health Autism spectrum Anxiety disorders 144

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 26, 2024

According to Moncrieff, mainstream psychiatry’s theory of drug action is that psychiatric drugs work by healing some underlying brain abnormality, thus supporting the concept of biological psychiatry. C urrently, antidepressants are among the most commonly prescribed drugs for a wide range of diagnoses, not just depression and anxiety.

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Trauma and the brain Family dynamics Bipolar disorder Community support 125

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 18, 2023

A fter years of work involving hundreds of people in dozens of countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) have released their joint production, Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation: Guidance and Practice ( WHO/OHCHR , 2023, referred to as the Guidance.

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Genetics and mental health Biopsychosocial model Legal Trauma and the brain 145

Mad in America

DECEMBER 30, 2023

New Study Finds Connection Between Childhood Trauma and Psychosis In December, Ashley Bobak wrote about a new study which sheds new light on the profound impact of childhood trauma in the development of psychotic symptoms, particularly in treatment-resistant cases of schizophrenia.

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Dialectical Behavior Therapy Childhood trauma Trauma and the brain Sleep and mental health 144

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

I was trying to recover from a mild traumatic brain injury. I was having nightmares and flashbacks from childhood trauma that I had successfully hidden in the recesses of my mind until that time. You said this when I described my nightmares and flashbacks and the confusion and terror I had as I remembered my childhood trauma. “It

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Childhood trauma Trauma and the brain Hospitality 137

Mad in America

JULY 29, 2024

Mad in America and Mad in the UK are jointly publishing this four-part series on neurodiversity. This third part of this series on Neurodiversity consists of an essay by a therapist who has asked to remain anonymous for fear of the consequences for their job. The series is being archived here. In Part 1 and Part 2 , we—e.g.

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Trauma and the brain Construction Education Eating disorders 144

Mad in America

NOVEMBER 24, 2023

I had headaches, brain fog, and fatigue. Being a brain doctor, he focused on the headaches. “Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that really isn’t you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”

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Trauma and the brain Sleep and mental health Genetics and mental health Aging and mental health 141

The London Psychiatry Centre

JANUARY 3, 2025

When first-line treatments havent worked, sufferers and their loved ones often begin to wonder about the science of it all, asking: how does mental health affect our brain (and vice versa)? Read on to learn more about how mental health affects the brain. Brain function is key to both physical health and mental health.

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Neurotransmitters and mental health Trauma and the brain Bipolar disorder 52

Mad in America

JANUARY 20, 2024

This paper is surprising since Torrey has long argued that schizophrenia is a brain disease to be treated biomedically. T he decades-long attempt to locate the gene or genes for schizophrenia has failed, according to a new article in Psychiatric Research by prominent schizophrenia researcher E. Fuller Torrey.

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Genetics and mental health Bipolar disorder Poverty and mental health Trauma and the brain 145

Mad in America

AUGUST 28, 2024

Her work is deeply informed by her lived experiences surviving complex trauma, psychosis, and an autoimmune disease. Her work is deeply informed by her lived experiences surviving complex trauma, psychosis, and an autoimmune disease. This has led her to bridge critical neuroscience communities with the mad movement.

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Trauma and the brain Mind-body connection Nonprofits Education 119

Mad in America

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

My family life growing up was a good period for me, and I have no complaints, yet there seemed to be something in the way my nervous system was wired, a leftover of birth trauma perhaps, that meant that relaxation and physical comfort weren’t part of my being. Perhaps broken open a bit, but in a good way.

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Trauma and the brain Hospitality Education 103

Mad in America

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

In 2018, he was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to research PTSD treatment in military veterans and continues to teach workshops for people with trauma-affected sleep. O n the Mad in America podcast today, we hear about the potential of lucid dreaming therapy to aid those struggling with post-traumatic stress.

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Mad in America

DECEMBER 21, 2023

“We need to describe how human beings unfold and become very beautiful when listened to. Listening shows that the nature of human beings is nothing like socialized content. If this is true, what are we doing sending people off into the eyeshades on their psychedelic journeys? Cloud Shadow With Red Diffusion Light During the Disturbance Period.

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Trauma and the brain Psychedelic therapy Aging and mental health Education 117

Mad in America

FEBRUARY 18, 2025

I will always wonder whether I got worse because of me or because of damage to my brain? T his is all written to the best of my memory. I worked, I had a life. But then I languished on disability for twenty-six years. Dystonia, kidney failure, possibly the hypothyroidism was my lot for serving as a drug whore for psychiatry.

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Trauma and the brain Sleep and mental health Aging and mental health Legal 127

The Art of Healing Trauma

DECEMBER 21, 2018

Healing Trauma with Guided Drawing, A Sensorimotor Art Therapy Approach to Bilateral Body Mapping, by Cornelia Elbrecht, is an in-depth instructional textbook for the somatic therapeutic approach Guided Drawing. Based on leading edge understandings about trauma healing and the body (sensorimotor psychotherapy, somatic experiencing, etc.),

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Art therapy Trauma and the brain Self-awareness 52

Mad in America

AUGUST 17, 2024

By Friday, the effects of K2 had turned his brain into a monster, a stark contrast to the gentle young man we knew. Told by his mother, Pamela, and his oldest brother, Joe, it’s also a story of resilience, loving commitment, and a push for change against a system riddled with discrimination and harms.

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Hospitality Trauma and the brain Mental health advocacy Mental health policy 120

The Art of Healing Trauma

JUNE 25, 2020

When we remember and then begin to do a writing practice about the memory, we are turning on many parts of our brains and awareness to interact with the memory, such as new knowledge, new experiences, and other frames of reference that did not exist when the experience happened.

Trauma and the brain 52

Trauma and the brain Self-awareness 52

Mad in America

JUNE 17, 2024

I was grappling with the pressures of balancing the needs of my teenagers, who were struggling in different ways, and my two preschoolers with developmental delays that no professional could explain — all while attempting to manage and overcome my own trauma from military service. Two police officers stood inside my entryway, watching us.

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Trauma and the brain Sleep and mental health Aging and mental health Self-awareness 126

National Council for Mental Wellbeing (NCMW - the

FEBRUARY 19, 2025

When substance use is layered with trauma or mental health challenges like PTSD, depression, anxiety or traumatic brain injuries, these feelings of shame and isolation deepen. These often include mental health challenges, substance use, and the complex interplay between the two.

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Resilience and coping Trauma and the brain Aging and mental health Education 96

Mad in America

JANUARY 16, 2024

S ince the onset of the pandemic, misery and mental disorder have increased, raising considerable concern about mental health. It has become obvious that we need to be better at addressing issues related to our psychological well-being. In short, ten years ago the WHO called for a paradigm shift in mental health care. That has not happened.

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Genetics and mental health Trauma and the brain Anxiety disorders Construction 145

Mad in America

FEBRUARY 24, 2024

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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Poverty and mental health Childhood trauma Neurotransmitters and mental health Trauma and the brain 145

The Art of Healing Trauma

NOVEMBER 17, 2019

This is the earliest somewhat coherent journal entry I can find that I wrote after the traumas as I was too ill and in too much chaos to write anything down for a couple years. This short story about a train trip shows how the many symptoms of PTSD combine to have a devastating impact to one’s Sense of Self.

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Trauma and the brain Self-awareness Hospitality 52

Mad in America

AUGUST 16, 2024

I ’m sitting on the floor of my ex-boyfriend’s spare room, rummaging through my forsaken knick-knacks, when a vintage toy poodle emerges. Her faded velvet body feels soft and clean, the black boucle loops of fur on her head and paws are rough and scratchy. Instead, I find him sitting rigid on the couch, his eyes glued to the TV, nothing unusual.

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Aging and mental health Legal Trauma and the brain Hospitality 103

Mad in America

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

A new review published in CNS Drugs analyzes the current available treatment guidelines for monitoring the potential negative side effects of clozapine. Shockingly, based on their inclusion criteria, the authors only found one existing guideline.

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Trauma and the brain Childhood trauma Education Hospitality 108

Mad in America

MARCH 13, 2024

Mandeville, LMFT – Scapegoat Recovery : “What is traumatic invalidation, and why is it important that adult survivors of family scapegoating know about this form of trauma? Questions to ask yourself As a scapegoat child, you may have had a lifetime of being invalidated, and you can’t help but carry that in to other systems.

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Trauma and the brain 79

Mad in America

OCTOBER 22, 2024

The real question is whether the “brighter future” is always so distant. When mundane events increasingly take on the character of the surreal or the apocalyptic, what does it mean to be normal or sane? I believe these kinds of questions will shape our understanding of the future of mental health. Yet these things are not acts of God.

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Trauma and the brain Self-awareness Legal Technology 120