Stijn Vanheule is a clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst, and professor of psychology at Ghent University. Trained in the Lacanian tradition, he has written widely on the structure of psychosis, the limits of psychiatric diagnosis, and the importance of attending to the subjective logic of mental distress. His books include The Subject of Psychosis: A Lacanian Perspective, Diagnosis and the DSM: A Critical Review , and most recently, Why Psychosis is Not So Craz y , which offers a reorientation ...
Jun 25, 2025•45 min
Nelson Lee is a therapist and mental skills coach with a master's degree in clinical mental health counseling and an MBA. In 2024, he attempted to get off antidepressants that he'd been on for 15 years. This led to significant long-term medication withdrawal that Nelson is still navigating at the time of this interview. As a therapist, Nelson specializes in helping clients transform their relationships with themselves and others and overcome anxiety and OCD. He loves helping people rise above th...
Jun 11, 2025•47 min
Paulo del Vecchio is a person in long-term recovery from mental health and addictions, who has been a leader in the peer recovery movement for 40 years. He recently completed a 30-year career at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, where he served in multiple roles including the director of the Center for Mental Health Services and the founding director of the Office of Recovery. Paolo is now an independent advocate, working...
Jun 04, 2025•39 min
Laurence Kirmayer is one of the most influential figures in cultural psychiatry today. A psychiatrist, researcher, and theorist, he serves as James McGill Professor and Director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill University and Editor-in-Chief of Transcultural Psychiatry . Across decades of work bridging anthropology, psychiatry, and cognitive science, Kirmayer has advanced a complex view of mental health as inseparable from culture, history, language, and political...
May 21, 2025•38 min
Hello, my name is Bob Whitaker, and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Kermit Cole. We'll be speaking about a philosophical enterprise that Kermit is now deeply engaged in. That is, broadly speaking, how humor can help in creating a shared experience that is helpful to the healing process. Kermit, in his experiences of being with people in psychotic states, has seen humor as a moment when a connection can be made. In many ways, this project is bringing Kermit back full circle to his work...
May 07, 2025•36 min
Welcome to this Mad in America podcast. My name is Robert Whitaker, and I'm happy today to have the pleasure of speaking with Joanna Moncrieff. Dr. Moncrieff is a psychiatrist who works in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. She is a Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College, London. In 1990 she co-founded the Critical Psychiatry Network , which today has about 400 psychiatrist members, about two-thirds of whom are in the United Kingdom. From my perspective...
Apr 30, 2025•49 min
On the Mad in America podcast this week, Brooke Siem, author of May Cause Side Effects, talks with Teralyn Sell and Jenn Schmitz about their journey from working in the prison system to challenging conventional psychiatric narratives in their therapy practice and podcast, The Gaslit Truth . Dr. Teralyn Sell is a distinguished expert in Psychology and Brain Health, holding a PhD in Psychology and an MS in Counseling Psychology. She bridges the gap between traditional mental health care and integr...
Apr 16, 2025•49 min
David Goodman is the Director of the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics and the Dean of the Woods College of Advancing Studies at Boston College , where he also teaches in the Department of Formative Education . A past president of the APA’s Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Division 24) , Goodman is known for his interdisciplinary work at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, theology, and ethics. He is the founder of the Psychology and the Other conference...
Apr 09, 2025•43 min
Welcome to Mad In America Radio . My name is Bob Whitaker, and today my guest is Italian psychiatrist, Giovanni Fava. From 1992 to 2022, Dr. Fava edited the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics . We will be talking about the importance of that journal and what may be lost now that the publisher, Karger, may be taking it in a new direction. Here's why this journal, under Dr. Fava’s leadership, was so important to us all. When psychiatry talks about how its drug treatments are evidence-based, ...
Mar 26, 2025•40 min
Jeff Sugarman is a distinguished scholar in theoretical and philosophical psychology, known for his work examining the psychology of selfhood, human agency, and the sociopolitical underpinnings of psychological science. A Professor Emeritus in the Education Department at Simon Fraser University, Dr. Sugarman has spent decades critically interrogating the ways mainstream psychology reflects and reinforces the ideologies of neoliberalism , shaping how we understand identity, mental health, and hum...
Mar 19, 2025•54 min
Welcome to the Mad in America podcast. My name is Brooke Siem, and I’m the author of May Cause Side Effects . Today, I’m here with Rick Fee, president of the Richard Fee Foundation . Rick joins us to talk about his son, Richard Fee and his encounter with psychiatric drugs, most notably Adderall. *** 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:...
Mar 05, 2025•47 min
Mick Cooper is a leading voice in contemporary counseling psychology, known for his work at the intersection of psychotherapy and social change. A Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Roehampton in the UK, Dr. Cooper is both a researcher and a practicing therapist, exploring how psychotherapeutic principles can contribute to broader political and societal transformation. As a co-developer of the pluralistic approach to therapy, Dr. Cooper has been instrumental in advancing a m...
Feb 19, 2025•46 min
Brent Dean Robbins is a psychologist, scholar, and all-around thoughtful human whose work has profoundly shaped existential and humanistic psychology . He is one of those rare thinkers who makes psychology feel alive—not just a collection of theories and data, but a field full of urgent, deeply human questions. He’s a professor of psychology and the director of the Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology program at Point Park University , where he’s helped create one of the most distinctive training progr...
Feb 12, 2025•52 min
Brent Dean Robbins is a psychologist, scholar, and all-around thoughtful human whose work has profoundly shaped existential and humanistic psychology . He is one of those rare thinkers who makes psychology feel alive—not just a collection of theories and data, but a field full of urgent, deeply human questions. He’s a professor of psychology and the director of the Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology program at Point Park University , where he’s helped create one of the most distinctive training progr...
Feb 12, 2025•53 min
In this interview, Brooke Siem, who is the author of a memoir on antidepressant withdrawal, May Cause Side Effects , interviews Gretchen LeFever Watson, PhD. Gretchen is a developmental and clinical psychologist with postdoctoral training in pediatric psychology. She has served as a professor in multiple disciplines at universities and medical schools in the United States and abroad and as the patient safety director for a large healthcare system. She secured millions in federal funding to study...
Jan 22, 2025•46 min
Becky Brasfield has emerged as a formidable advocate for change in the complex landscape of mental health care. A certified recovery support specialist and policy researcher at the Human Services Research Institute, Ms. Brasfield has dedicated her career to elevating the voices of service users and dismantling systemic inequities. Her lived experience with psychosis, combined with her leadership in peer support, has made her a powerful critic of traditional psychiatric models that often marginal...
Jan 08, 2025•41 min
Susan Grundy is an author who writes about the weight of emotional distress and an easier way of being. Her book, Mad Sisters , is a highly personal account of her caregiving journey for an older sister diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 13. When not at her writing desk, Susan can be found walking in nature towards a café. She divides her time between Montreal and London. *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by r...
Dec 11, 2024•49 min
Ellen Vora is a board-certified psychiatrist, acupuncturist, and yoga teacher. 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. *** 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 c...
Nov 20, 2024•45 min
Rose Cartwright is a screenwriter and the author of Pure, a hugely successful memoir which was then turned into a series for Channel Four . She is also a writer and producer on Netflix’s 3 Body Problem. Pure portrayed Rose’s autobiographical account of finding that she had OCD, a “mental illness”, and the breakthrough that this medical framework provided her. This was short-lived. In her new book The Maps We Carry , she writes about the dawning realization that the “illness” story she had believ...
Nov 06, 2024•40 min
Dr. Paul Andrews is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Psychology in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University. His research focuses on understanding the evolution of depression, which he argues may be an evolved emotional response for understanding and solving complex problems. Dr. Andrews is also concerned with the evolution of the serotonin system and the effects of antidepressants on mental and physical health . His research has shown an increased ri...
Oct 23, 2024•51 min
In this interview, Brooke Siem, who is the author of a memoir on antidepressant withdrawal, May Cause Side Effects , interviews her mother, Dee Barbash, to discuss the circumstances that led to Brooke being prescribed a cocktail of antidepressants at the age of 15. Today, her mother is a therapist who helps her clients taper from psychiatric medications – a profession that she took up after she came to understand the harms that Brooke suffered from having been prescribed these drugs for 15 years...
Oct 09, 2024•45 min
Daniel José Gaztambide is an assistant professor of psychology at Queens College and the director of the Frantz Fanon Lab for Decolonial Psychology . His research and clinical work focus on Puerto Rican and Latinx populations, ethnic minority identity, psychotherapy, and the social determinants of health. Daniel is the author of A People’s History of Psychoanalysis: From Freud to Liberation Psychology and the newly published Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon’s Couch ....
Oct 02, 2024•49 min
Our guest today is Banning Lyon, author of The Chair and The Valley: A Memoir of Trauma, Healing, and The Outdoors . An account of the abuse he suffered after being hospitalized in a psychiatric facility at age 15 and the long journey toward joy and awe that followed, his memoir was published this spring by Penguin Random House. He first wrote about his experiences in 1993 for The New York Times and, more recently, for the Washington Pos t. Based in California’s bay area, Lyon is an outdoor educ...
Sep 04, 2024•42 min
Jazmine Russell is the co-founder of the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA), a transformative mental health training institute, and the host of the Depth Work Podcast . As a writer, educator, and scholar, Jazmine works at the intersection of mad studies, critical psychology, and neuroscience. Her work is deeply informed by her lived experiences surviving complex trauma, psychosis, and an autoimmune disease. Jazmine's focus extends to the intersection of mental health and chronic ...
Aug 28, 2024•46 min
In this interview for MIA Radio, Brooke Siem speaks with David Taylor and Mark Horowitz about their publication of the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, which is of particular note since the Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines is a leading text in medicine worldwide. David Taylor is the Director of Pharmacy and Pathology at Maudsley Hospital and a Professor of Psychopharmacology at King's College in London. He is also the editor-in-chief of the journal Therapeutic Advances in Psychopharmacology . B...
Aug 21, 2024•55 min
Carl Elliott is a distinguished professor at the University of Minnesota with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Journalism and Mass Communications. An influential voice in bioethics, Elliott is known for his critical examination of the medical and pharmaceutical industries. His latest book, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No , describes the harrowing experiences of whistleblowers who expose corruption and malpract...
Aug 07, 2024•46 min
Neil Gong is an assistant professor of sociology at UC San Diego, where he researches psychiatric services, homelessness, and how communities seek to maintain social order. Neil's new book, "Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics: Mental Illness and Homelessness in Los Angeles," published by the University of Chicago Press, offers a detailed look into the starkly different worlds of mental health care in Los Angeles. He contrasts the public safety-net clinics, which strive to keep patients hou...
Jul 17, 2024•41 min
Julia Hotz is a solutions-focused journalist based in New York City. She is the author of the forthcoming book, The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service, and Belonging. Her stories have appeared in The New York Times, Wired, Scientific American, the Boston Globe, Time, and more. After studying Sociology at the University of Cambridge, she joined the Solutions Journalism Network, where she helps other journalists rigorously report on what's working to solve to...
Jul 10, 2024•51 min
Jessica Schleider is a clinical psychologist, researcher, and founding director of the Lab for Scalable Mental Health ( www.schleiderlab.org ). She’s a leader in single-session interventions for youth mental health – an evidence-based approach that aims to provide help that’s accessible, doable, and affordable for populations around the world and is already available via open-access programs. On her own and with colleagues, she’s published a wide array of articles and book chapters and co-wrote ...
Jun 26, 2024•33 min
Sasha Durakov Warren is the author of the new book Storming Bedlam: Madness, Utopia, and Revolt published by Common Notions Press . Sasha is a writer based in Minneapolis. His experiences within the psychiatric system and a commitment to radical politics led him to co-found the group Hearing Voices - Twin Cities , which provides an alternative social space for individuals to discuss often stigmatized, extreme experiences and network with one another. Following the George Floyd uprising in 2020, ...
Jun 19, 2024•51 min
