Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, a weekly discussion that searches for the truth about psychiatric prescription drugs and mental health care worldwide. Hosted by James Moore, this podcast is part of Mad in America's mission to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care. We believe that the current drug-based paradigm of care has failed our society and that scientific research, as well as the lived experience of those who have been diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, calls for profound change. On the podcast we have interviews with experts and those with lived experience of the psychiatric system...
Being Mindful of Agony: How to Incorporate the Sublime in Our Daily Life - An Interview with Will Adams
How does a wounded world wound us in return? Can we be mindful and offer intimate attention to pain and trauma? We answer these and other questions with Will Adams who is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne and completed his clinical psychology internship at McLean Hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Adams is the author of A Wild and Sacred Call: Nature-Psyche-Spirit, published by SUNY Press, a book that explores the deep connections between human psychology, t...
Psychiatric Drugs and Violence: What Can Genetics Tell Us? A Conversation With Selma Eikelenboom
In this episode of the Mad in America podcast, Brooke Siem speaks with Selma Eikelenboom, a forensic scientist and medical examiner whose career has spanned psychotherapy, medicine, emergency care, surgery, and forensic investigation.
Eikelenboom works as a forensic medical examiner investigating cases involving psychoactive medications and acts of violence. In this conversation, Brooke and Selma explore what she has learned from investigating these cases, and the questions her research raises about the relationship between psychoactive drugs, genetic variation, and violent behavior.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and re...
When Stopping Prescription Drugs Isn't Simple: Alicia Martin and the TaperMate Story
Alicia Martin is an Australian community pharmacist, a member of the Not Broken Project and founder of TaperMate. Through her work in pharmacy, Alicia saw patients struggling with unusual and severe symptoms when they tried to stop their antidepressants and realized there was little support when people wanted to stop long-term medications.
Rather than waiting for the system to catch up, she started building a solution. TaperMate now supports people across the world to track and adjust hyperbolic tapering plans through a simple mobile app and provides personalized tapering plans and advice for patients across Australia through a...
First-Person Knowledge and the Meanings of Madness: An Interview with Gail Hornstein
Gail Hornstein is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Mount Holyoke College. Across a long and influential career, her work has moved between psychology, psychoanalysis, history, qualitative research, and the study of first-person accounts of madness.
She is the author of To Redeem One Person Is to Redeem the World: The Life of Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, a biography of the pioneering psychiatrist and psychoanalyst best known for her intensive psychotherapeutic work with people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses. She is also the author of Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness, which explores what first-person...
Mad Studies Is More Than Lived Experience: An Interview with Merrick Daniel Pilling
Merrick Daniel Pilling is an Associate Professor and Interim Co-Director of the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of Queer and Trans Madness: Struggles for Social Justice and the co-editor of Interrogating Psychiatric Narratives of Madness: Documented Lives.
His new book, Mad Studies: The Basics, introduces Mad Studies as a field that has emerged from community activism and the perspectives of people who have been psychiatrized, institutionalized, criminalized, and otherwise dehumanized by what Merrick refers to as the psy complex. It organizes itself around two basic questions: What can Mad Studies...
The West Doesn't Have All the Answers: An Interview with Dinesh Bhugra
Dinesh Bhugra is a leading voice in social and cultural psychiatry. He is Emeritus Professor of Mental Health and Cultural Diversity at King's College London and has served as president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the British Medical Association, and the World Psychiatric Association. His many honors include being named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to psychiatry and receiving the Yves Pelicier Prize for his contributions to social psychiatry.
A prolific scholar who has authored or edited more than 30 books, Bhugra is also a clinician and a longtime advocate...
Go/No Go - How Mental Health Research Took a Wrong Turn: An Interview with Marianne Apostolides
Marianne Apostolides is the award-winning author of eight books, four of which have been translated and published internationally. She is a two-time recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship and winner of the K.M. Hunter Award for Literature. Her books include I Can't Get You Out of My Mind, Deep Salt Water, Voluptuous Pleasure: The Truth about the Writing Life, and Swim. Moving across fiction, memoir, and literary nonfiction, her work often returns to the body, desire, memory, and the stories we tell about ourselves.
Her latest book is Go/No-Go: A Journey Into the Research and...
Unlearn Your Pain: Harnessing the Power of Neuroplasticity – A Conversation With Howard Schubiner
Welcome to the Mad in America podcast. My name is Brooke Siem, and I am the author of the award-winning memoir on antidepressant withdrawal, May Cause Side Effects. Today, I'm excited to have Dr. Howard Schubiner on the show. Dr. Schubiner is an internist and a clinical professor at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and has authored more than 100 publications in scientific journals. He lectures internationally and is the author of three books, including his most recent book, Unlearn Your Pain: The Science of Recovering from Chronic Pain, Fatigue, Anxiety, and Depression.
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The Empire of Madness: Why Psychiatry Must Rethink Human Suffering - An Interview with Khameer Kidia
Khameer Kidia is a physician and an anthropologist, works at Harvard Medical School and the University of Zimbabwe, and spends his life between Washington DC and Harare. Kidia has many accolades to his name – he is a Rhodes scholar and a 2023 New America Fellow. His papers have appeared in elite medical journals and his stories in the New York Times. His recent book, which we will discuss, was covered by The Washington Post. His experience navigating two cultures and his expertise across disciplines is what allows him to see that psychiatry, as it currently stands, needs to end.
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A Mother's Journey Through Psychiatric Drug Harm and Healing
Chelsea McVeigh began her journey with psychiatric medications at 16, never imagining where it would lead. At 31, during a new pregnancy, she suffered a severe adverse reaction that turned her world upside down. After years of fighting to reclaim her health and sense of self, she's now 37, a mother of two incredible boys and living proof that healing is possible even after the unimaginable.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue...
Using Lived Experience to Challenge Systemic Prescriber Inexperience in Antidepressant Withdrawal
Carla Delgado is a San Diego native with eight years of experience in healthcare and a master's in healthcare administration. She also has a personal story of SSRI withdrawal, and we discuss how her background in healthcare administration helped to navigate the healthcare system, which has not been that friendly for people experiencing antidepressant withdrawal.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/d...
Mercy, Magic, and the Medical Humanities: An Interview with Jussi Valtonen
Jussi Valtonen is a neuropsychologist, an adjunct researcher with the Finnish Centre for Evidence-Based Orthopedics (FICEBO), a professor of writing at the University of the Arts Helsinki, and a columnist for the Finnish Medical Journal. He works clinically as a neuropsychologist, and his research and writing sit at the crossroads of mind and brain through the health humanities.
Jussi is an award-winning novelist as well. His novel They Know Not What They Do won Finland's top literary prize and has been translated into multiple languages. Alongside his scholarly work, he leads the Health, Narrative, and the Arts i...
Anthropology, Arctic Iceland and Antidepressant Withdrawal: A Conversation With Fiona Frenzen
Born in Germany and raised in Denmark, Fiona Frenzen is a qualified teacher with a master's degree in anthropology. For years, she had a dream about living in Iceland, seeking the grounding and healing effect of nature. But due to her health challenges and severe withdrawal syndrome, this dream seemed unrealistic. However, this past fall, she moved to a rural part of Iceland where she began teaching at the local elementary and high school.
She dreams about putting her degree in anthropology to use by working in research and contributing to the awareness of the risks of...
Meeting Life Unmedicated: Aging, Protracted Withdrawal and Healing - A Conversation With Marsha Zaritsky
Marsha Zaritsky is a licensed mental health therapist certified in Internal Family Systems.
She joins us to explain how her experience with polypharmacy and psychiatric drug withdrawal has changed and informed how she practices.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here:Â https://pod.li...
Faith, Culture, and Coercion: An Interview with Cultural Psychiatrist G. Eric Jarvis
Eric Jarvis is a Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University whose work brings attention to areas often overlooked in mainstream psychiatry, including religion, coercion, the social determinants of psychosis, and culture. He directs the Cultural Consultation Service, the First Episode Psychosis Program, and the Culture and Psychosis Working Group at the Jewish General Hospital, and is Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry. His research looks closely at how religious belief, spiritual practice, moral worlds, language, migration, racism, and social context shape how people experience distress, meaning, and healing.
In this conversation, we explore how faith, culture, and power shape...
Kindling Our Inner Fire: A Residential Program Where Drug Tapering is the Norm
Beatrice Birch is the Founder and Director of Inner Fire, a residential program in rural Vermont, which is unique in one particular way. It provides support for tapering from psychiatric drugs, including antipsychotics, which is an essential aspect of the therapy.
In this interview, Beatrice introduces Inner Fire, tells us about the programme and staff and explains how kindling our inner fire can hold up a mirror that tells people they are worthy and valuable.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA...
The Madness Pill: How Psychedelics and Stimulants Shaped Biological Psychiatry — An Interview with Justin Garson
Justin Garson is a philosopher and historian of science at the City University of New York. He has published several books and articles on biology, the mind, and madness, including Madness: A Philosophical Exploration in 2022. He also contributes to Psychology Today and Aeon.
His latest book, The Madness Pill: One Doctor's Quest to Understand Schizophrenia, was published by St. Martin's Press in April 2026.
In this interview, Justin joins us to talk about the work of Solomon Snyder, whose discoveries ushered in the era of biological psychiatry. We also talk about the race to develop new psy...
Finding God and Leaving Psychiatry: An Interview With Kelsey Osgood
Kelsey Osgood is the author of How to Disappear Completely: on Modern Anorexia, which was chosen for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers New Program. Her work has appeared online and in print at The Atlantic, The New York Times, Harper's and The New Yorker, among other outlets.
In this interview we talk about Kelsey's new book Godstruck: Seven Women's Unexpected Journeys to Religious Conversion and her experiences with anorexia and psychiatric drugs.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is f...
"Everybody Can Recover": Fighting Psychiatric Subjectivation and Helping Others Along the Way: An Interview with Prateeksha Sharma
Psychosis and conditions like Schizophrenia have been tainted with pessimism right from the beginning. Doctors often don't know that recovery is possible and can convey this fatalism to their patients. Prateeksha Sharma's lived experience and research work challenges this pessimism. Prateeksha is a musician, a researcher, a composer, a counselor, and a writer. However, for the longest time, she was only thought of as a patient.
She is a distinguished research fellow at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research in Hyderabad and the founder of Brightside Family Counseling Center. She received a diagnosis of bipolar...
The Fight for the Soul of Psychotherapy: An Interview with Linda Michaels
Linda Michaels is a psychologist in private practice in Chicago and a co-founder of the Psychotherapy Action Network (PsiAN). She trained at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and completed the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy program at the Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute. Before becoming a clinician, she worked in marketing, innovation, and management consulting, including work with organizations in the U.S. and Latin America.
Michaels is the chair and co-founder of PsiAN, a public-facing effort focused on helping people understand different forms of psychotherapy and advocate for the kind of care they are seeking. She is also a Consulting...
Examining Psychiatric Medication Tapering and Withdrawal: The Evolving Role of Pharmacists — A Conversation with Agnes Higgins and Cathal Cadogan
Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, my name is James. Today, we are discussing the experiences of people who have attempted to stop taking psychiatric drugs. These experiences are captured in a survey undertaken by the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Joining me to talk about this work are Cathal Cadogan and Agnes Higgins, both from Trinity College.
Cathal is an Associate Professor in Practice of Pharmacy at Trinity College. His research focuses on developing supports to help people make informed decisions about starting and stopping psychiatric medication. He was recently...
Spiritual Emergency and the Collective Work of Staying Alive: An Interview with Nisha Gupta
Nisha Gupta is an existential phenomenologist, a depth psychotherapist, a creativity scholar, and an artist. She's an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia and earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. She's also, if she doesn't mind me saying, a bit of a rising star as an early career psychologist, having won early career awards from the APA divisions for both humanistic and qualitative psychology.
Dr. Gupta's work centers on lived experience and the problems of form and method in the field. She is an advocate of the psychological h...
The Political Systems Driving Abuse in Psychiatry: An Interview with Human Rights Lawyer Alicia Ely Yamin
Alicia Ely Yamin is the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. She's also an adjunct senior lecturer on health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Senior Advisor on Human Rights and Health Policy at Partners in Health.
Alicia is known globally for her work on the right to health, economic and social rights, and reproductive justice. She has spent much of her professional life in Latin America and East Africa, including co-founding a health and human rights program with t...
History, Eugenics, and an Inquiry into Mad Consciousness: A Conversation With Susanne Paola Antonetta
Susanne Paola Antonetta is an accomplished writer and poet, the author of numerous books, and in 2001 her book Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, won a prestigious American Book Award.
Her latest book is The Devil's Castle, Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in...
How Our Blindness to Context Harms Patients and Breaks Practitioners: A Conversation With Kamaldeep Bhui
Kamaldeep Bhui is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at Queen Mary University of London. He is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on cultural psychiatry, ethnic inequalities in mental health, and the social determinants of distress. In recognition of his contributions to mental health research and policy, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
He has written extensively on the grim reality of minorities facing higher rates of psychiatric detention and coercion. In an era of algorithmic checklists and time-pressured care, Bhui argues for reclaiming biographical...
UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 2 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton
Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of Surviving Work, which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work. She has worked with health teams and trade unions, practiced as a psychotherapist in the NHS, and now runs the Digital Therapy Project, a group of UK and US researchers studying the future of therapy from both sides of the relationship.
In her new book, UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health, she explores the effects of reorganizing mental health care around the logic of the app...
UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 1 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton
Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of Surviving Work, which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work. She has worked with health teams and trade unions, practiced as a psychotherapist in the NHS, and now runs the Digital Therapy Project, a group of UK and US researchers studying the future of therapy from both sides of the relationship.
In her new book, UberTherapy: The New Business of Mental Health, she explores the effects of reorganizing mental health care around the logic of the app...
Food First, Pharma Last: Part Two of our Interview with Chris Masterjohn
This week, we are joined by Chris Masterjohn, PhD. Chris is a nutritional scientist, a former professor, and the founder of Mitome. With a PhD in nutritional science and years of research in mitochondrial biology, Chris's work focuses on translating peer-reviewed science into practical tools for human health.
At Mitome, Dr. Masterjohn pioneered the first analysis designed to measure mitochondrial respiratory chain function directly, identifying individual energy bottlenecks and guiding personalized science-backed protocols to optimize the system responsible for over 90% of cellular energy production. His mission is to bring mitochondrial testing out of the rare disease space...
Mitochondria and Energetic Failures - A New Understanding of Antidepressant Withdrawal? An Interview with Chris Masterjohn
This week, we are joined by Chris Masterjohn, PhD. Chris is a nutritional scientist, a former professor, and the founder of Mitome. With a PhD in nutritional science and years of research in mitochondrial biology, Chris's work focuses on translating peer-reviewed science into practical tools for human health.
At Mitome, Dr. Masterjohn pioneered the first analysis designed to measure mitochondrial respiratory chain function directly, identifying individual energy bottlenecks and guiding personalized science-backed protocols to optimize the system responsible for over 90% of cellular energy production. His mission is to bring mitochondrial testing out of the rare disease space...
Why Critical Mental Health Knowledge Is Essential for Ethical Practice: An Interview with Jan DeFehr
Jan N. DeFehr is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Winnipeg and an associate of The Taos Institute and a member of the Faculty for Palestine, Manitoba. She is also a member of the York University Mad Studies Hub. Before entering academia, she spent many years as a clinical social worker, working alongside people who were trying to make sense of their distress within, and often in spite of, the mental health system. Her teaching, research, and course development focus on building public access to critical analyses of that system, drawing on the...
ADHD Diagnoses, Examining the Psyche, Withdrawal and PSSD Risks, ECT Harms and More: Robert Whitaker Answers Reader Questions
In our first podcast of 2026, Robert Whitaker joins us to answer questions submitted by Mad in America readers and listeners. We discuss the validity of ADHD diagnoses, withdrawal and sexual dysfunction risks of SSRI antidepressants, the harms of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), the rise of AI-generated misinformation and much more.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the M...
Learning to Soar: A Conversation With Artist Kev G Mor
Musician and artist Kev G Mor joins us to discuss his experience of psychosis, his daily support strategies, and the pros and cons of having a hundred-pound pit bull terrier for emotional support.
Kev is a suicide survivor who grew up with early childhood trauma and has experienced homelessness as a teen, is a single father, and is now again in recovery. His work is about showing what staying well looks like on hard days and keeping it practical for people who live with psychosis.
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Thank you for being with us to listen...
Antidepressant Withdrawal: Finding an Astronomical Perspective - A Conversation with Safa Askeri
Safa Askeri joins us to discuss his experience of antidepressant withdrawal and the gaslighting he was subjected to as he raised concerns with his doctors.
"After this happened to me, I know that I can handle anything in life, no matter how hard it is."
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Like to know more about Mad in America or rethinking psychiatry more broadly? On our podcast, Robert Whitaker will answer your questions. Email questions to [email protected] by November 30, 2025 and we'll pick a selection for our December episode. We'd love to hear from you.
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<...Psychiatric Drugs: The Real World is Where the Harms Live
Joining us for a roundtable discussion are Brooke Siem, David Antonuccio, Kim Witzak, Angie Peacock and David Healy.
They discuss the challenges of openly discussing psychiatric drug withdrawal, the true meaning of informed consent, getting doctors to acknowledge medication-induced harm and much more.
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Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in America podcast o...
Medical Organizations Turn Blind Eye to Harms of Maternal Antidepressant Use: A Conversation With Adam Urato and Joanna Moncrieff
On July 21st 2025, the FDA convened a hearing on maternal use of antidepressants during pregnancy and the impact this use has on fetal development. Around 400,000 children in the United States are born each year whose mothers took antidepressants while pregnant, and so it's easy to see the societal importance of this topic. What are the risks to the fetus, the newborn, and the long-term development of that child? Adam Urato and Joanna Moncrieff were members of that FDA panel, and so too were several others well-known to MIA readers, including David Healy and Joseph Witt-Doerring.
The purpose o...
Psychotherapy, Spirituality, and Democratic Socialism: A Conversation with Frank Gruba-McCallister
Frank Gruba-McCallister is a clinical psychologist, educator, and scholar whose career spans more than three decades of teaching and academic leadership.Â
He served as Vice President of Academic Affairs at Adler University, where he helped to reorient the institution's mission toward training socially responsible practitioners. His leadership and curricular reforms contributed to Adler's doctoral program receiving the American Psychological Association's Board of Educational Affairs Award for Innovative Practices in Graduate Education in 2007. He has also taught at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology and The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, and worked as a clinician in both m...
Science Under Pressure, Humanity at Stake: An Interview with John Ioannidis
John Ioannidis is a Stanford professor, a physician, and one of the most eminent scholars in the world in the field of evidence-based medicine.
Ioannidis has spent his career exposing the weak foundations of much of modern medicine. His 2005 paper, "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," became the most-viewed article in the history of PLOS Medicine and helped spark a global reckoning with reproducibility. He has since warned about how evidence-based medicine can be hijackedby industry influence, how biased reward systems in academia favor quantity over quality, and how even systematic reviews can recycle flawed data. His...
Therapy in the Age of Abandonment: A Conversation with Psychological Anthropologist Talia Weiner
Talia Weiner is a psychological anthropologist, licensed professional counselor, and assistant professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia.
As a medical and psychological anthropologist, her work focuses on the intersection of social-structural forces and how those forces show up in lived experience, particularly in relation to mental health care. Weiner studies these and other topics with students in the Clinical Ethnography Lab within the University of West Georgia's psychology program.
Weiner has an upcoming book titled Therapeutic Inequalities: Mood Disorder Self-Management in Chicago, scheduled for release Jan. 6, 2026, through NYU Press's Anthropologies of American...
How to be a Critical Psychologist Without Losing Your Soul: A Conversation With Zenobia Morrill, José Giovanni Luiggi-Hernández and Justin Karter
On the Mad in America podcast this week, we explore the importance of raising awareness of psychological approaches that challenge mainstream perspectives. Joining us today are three people who are practising clinical psychologists and who have written for Mad in America.
Zenobia Morrill is a critical-liberation psychologist and psychology professor who received her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her research interests include critical and liberation psychology, the psychotherapy process, and wider conceptual and ethical issues in psychology and psychiatry.
José Giovanni Luiggi-Hernández is a clinical psychologist in private practice, a qualitative researcher at...
Is Dialogue the Best Medicine? A Conversation With Jaakko Seikkula
Welcome to MIA Radio. Today, we are pleased to have as our guest Jaakko Seikkula. Jaakko is a psychologist who helped develop the Open Dialogue practice at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio, Finland, in the 1990s, and he is the person who has conducted the research that told of remarkable longer-term outcomes with this form of care.
For the past 15 years, he has developed and led training programs that have seen Open Dialogue practices adopted in 40 countries. He recently published a book titled, Why Dialogue Does Cure.
In this interview, we discuss how Open Dialogue came t...
