Bruce Levine
Phil Ochs, Tom Paine, and American Redemption
In the 1960s, singer/songwriter/revolutionary Phil Ochs was sometimes described as “Tom Paine with a guitar.” Without regard for political correctness, both Paine and Ochs confronted all illegitimate authorities and hypocrisy. America paid them both back by marginalizing them at the end of their lives and ignoring them for decades following their deaths. With Phil Ochs: […]
Phil Ochs, Tom Paine, and There But For Fortune
In the 1960s, singer/songwriter/revolutionary Phil Ochs was sometimes described as “Tom Paine with a guitar.” Without regard for political correctness, both Paine and Ochs confronted all illegitimate authorities and hypocrisy. America paid them both back by marginalizing them at the end of their lives and ignoring them for decades following their deaths. With Phil Ochs: […]
Get Up, Stand Up
Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite
Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose recent US wars and Wall Street bailouts, yet most remain passive and appear resigned to powerlessness. Many Americans have lost confidence that genuine democracy is possible, and Get Up Stand Up explains how major US institutions have created fatalism. When such fatalism and defeatism sets in, truths about economic injustices and lost liberties are not enough to set people free—something else is required. For democratic movements to get off the ground, individuals must recover self-respect, and a people must regain collective confidence that they can succeed at eliminating top-down controls. Get Up, Stand Up describes how anti-elitists can unite and recover dignity, confidence, and the energy to wrest power away from the ruling corporate-government partnership (the “corporatocracy”). Get Up, Stand Up details those strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have successfully employed to gain power.
Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic
How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy
The rate of depression is the United States has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years, and American mental health institutions have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The good news is that age-old wisdom and legitimate science—uncorrupted by the profit-margin pressures of pharmaceutical and insurance companies—have much to inform us about revitalizing depressed people and a depressing culture. Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic provides an alternate approach that encompasses the whole of our humanity, society, and culture, and which redefines depression in a way that makes enduring transformations more likely.
Commonsense Rebellion
Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy
In recent years the mental health industry has been attacked for the invalidity of its illnesses, the unreliability of its diagnoses, the ineffectiveness and dangers of its treatments, and its corruption by drug companies. Commonsense Rebellion integrates those critiques and goes further, arguing that “institutional mental health” has diverted us from examining an important rebellion. This rebellion—mainly passive and too often self-destructive—is against an increasingly impersonal and coercive “institutional society.” What has previously been pathologized is rehumanized and suggestions are made for regaining autonomy and community, and replacing self-destructive rebellion with commonsense rebellion.
5 Myths About Depression Treatments
Good News for Critically Thinking Depression Sufferers
A warning: for people satisfied with their standard depression treatments, debunking myths about them may be troubling. However, for critically thinking depression sufferers who have not been helped by antidepressants, psychotherapy, or other standard treatments, discovering truths about these treatments can provide ideas about what may actually work for them.. . .
Confronting Bigots Intolerant of Alternative Mental Health Treatment
“Webster’s Dictionary” defines bigot as “a person who is utterly intolerant of any differing creed, belief, or opinion.” Despite the success of alternative mental health treatments for many people, there still exists bigotry against these approaches. For many self-defined “ex-mental health patients,” “mental health treatment consumers,” and “psychiatric survivors” who attended Alternatives 2010 Conference (September […]
Anatomy of an Epidemic
Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America
Robert Whitaker, a former Boston Globe reporter, was curious about why there has been such a large increase of disabling mental illness in the United States. His book, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America (Crown Publishers, 2010), begins with these data points: in 1987, the U.S. mental illness disability rate was 1 in every 184 Americans, but by 2007 the mental illness disability rate had more than doubled to 1 in every 76 Americans.
Equal Time for Free Thought, Toward a Healthy Society? with Dr. Bruce Levine
Psychologists Profit on Unending U.S. Wars by Teaching Positive Thinking to Soldiers
While U.S. military psychiatrists are prescribing increasing amounts of chill pills, America’s psychologists are teaching soldiers how to think more positively about their tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and wherever else they are next ordered to kill the bad guys and win the hearts and minds of everyone else. The U.S. Army is planning to require […]
