Articles

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

Mad in America February 24th, 2024

Psychiatry’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. This leads to at least two questions: (1) What model of depression actually fits the facts? (2) What approach to […]

Scientific Misconduct and Fraud: The Final Nail in Psychiatry’s Antidepressant Coffin

CounterPunch January 17th, 2024

“. . . if the major media picks up on this story, they will have the chance to report on what arguably is the worst—and most harmful—scandal in American medical history”—Robert Whitaker, publisher of madinamerica.com, January 3, 2024

The Eugene V. Debs Museum: What It Spoke to Bill Walton, Larry Bird, and Me

CounterPunch December 1st, 2023

What spoke to me on my visit to the Debs Museum? Although I have long known many of the facts of Debs’s life, including the violence directed at him by the U.S. ruling class and its lackeys in the U.S. government, hanging out in Deb’s former home provoked a more visceral experience of just how ugly the ruling-class bastards can be when they are threatened, and how effective their violence has been.

Why Failed Psychiatry Lives On: Its Industrial Complex, Politics, & Technology Worship

Mad in America October 21st, 2023

How can psychiatry retain its authority and influence despite its scientific failures? That’s been the question posed to me in 2023 by interviewers, I have talked about the components of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical-industrial complex, along with how psychiatry meets the political needs of the ruling class and dysfunctional families. In addition to these financial and political explanations, a fundamental cultural reason why psychiatry lives on is Western society’s worship of technology.

Psychiatry’s Control-Freak Medical Model vs. Healing and Healers

Mad in America August 26th, 2023

If one has a dark sense of humor, psychiatry’s medical model can be seen as the root cause of a comical farce in which an institution charged by society to decrease suffering actually increases it. What then is a helpful alternative to psychiatry’s medical model? The simplest answer is its complete opposite. Here, I will spell out exactly what that means.

UC Health Fails to Back up Electroshock Claims

Cincinnati Enquirer July 25th, 2023

Cincinnati Enquirer July 25th, 2023 Many people are surprised to discover that electroconvulsive therapy, commonly called electroshock, is offered by UC Health in Cincinnati. The UC Health’s “Electroconvulsive Therapy” website claims, “Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the gold standard for treatment of severe depression, and other psychiatric disorders,” and that “ECT is an extremely effective form of treatment.” […]

The Tragedies of Ted Kaczynski

CounterPunch June 13th, 2023

Of all the public figures I profile in this book, Ted Kaczynski’s story is, for me, the most tragic—tragic, of course, for his murder victims; tragically traumatizing for his injury victims and near-miss victims; tragic for the position that he put his family members in; tragic for enabling authoritarians to marginalize causes that many nonviolent […]

The APA’s Apology for Racism Omits Psychiatry’s Essential Bigotry

Mad in America June 10th, 2023

In 2021, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the guild of U.S. psychiatrists, acknowledged its history of racism. However, it is difficult to imagine how psychiatry will ever acknowledge that its entire edifice is built on a fundamental bigotry. Bigotry is defined by Merriam-Webster as: “obstinate or intolerant devotion to one’s own opinions and prejudices.” Racism […]

Once Radical Critiques of Psychiatry are Now Mainstream, So What Remains Taboo?

CounterPunch May 5th, 2023

One need not be a Marxist to acknowledge the logic behind Karl Marx’s observation: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.” It is especially important for the ruling class that the general public’s ideas about our emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances be the ideas of the ruling class. Twenty […]

From Peer Support to Psychedelics: Psychiatry’s Co-Optation & De-Radicalization

Mad in America March 25th, 2023

How can psychiatry co-opt the psychedelic underground subculture, discard its radical anti-authoritarian message of rejecting a dehumanizing society, retake psychiatry’s lost power and authority, and make both drug companies and the ruling elite happy? To strip psychedelic use down to its chemicals is to de-radicalize its communal and anti-authoritarian roots.