Susanne Paola Antonetta joins us to discuss her book The Devil’s Castle, Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry’s Troubled History Reverberates Today
"We live in a time and in a culture where the idea of normality is so constricted."
Read or listen here: buff.ly/ksQPXFY
#podcast #eugenics
ChatGPT is Psychology’s Marlboro Man
By Chris Dabbs & Audrey Scaer
Big Tobacco drafted the plays that Big Tech is enacting today: manipulating public opinion by partnering with the medical field.
www.madinamerica.com/2026/03/chat...
Informal Coercion Linked to Reduced Autonomy
By Richard Sears
A new Japanese study finds that informal coercion applied during psychiatric hospitalization resulted in less autonomy for people diagnosed with schizophrenia.
www.madinamerica.com/2026/03/info...
With AI Chatbots As Therapists, We Can All Be Patients.
By Zoe Cunniffe
Chatbots, with constant availability and user-centric conversation style, are widening the reach of “therapeutic culture.”
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Farewell to Suicide
By Seth Allard
The conditions required for suicide to happen are the same conditions required for dysfunctional leadership, toxic organizational culture and communication, counterproductive policies, and deadly practices to thrive.
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Racial Discrimination Linked to Mental Health Risks and Increased Psychiatric Detention
By Richard Sears
Mad in America's Weekly Research Digest: From hiring discrimination to involuntary hospitalization, new research highlights systemic racial inequities.
www.madinamerica.com/2026/03/raci...
When a Radical Feminist from South Korea Became a Psychiatrist in the US
by Wonyun Lee, MD
As a Doctor, I Felt Compelled to Agree to ECT—It Nearly Ruined My Life
By Cathy Wield
Despite surviving, I’m utterly horrified by my experience of ECT.
www.madinamerica.com/2026/03/as-a...
It remains to be seen how much of an impact it will have if the fundamental economic structures remain undisturbed. Increasing wealth inequality and concentration in an increasingly monopolistic and unaccountable tech sector demands urgent attention and redress at a structural level.
Is Focusing on Screen Time Diverting Us From the Real Drivers of Youth Distress?
By Abby Cartus
Given how harmful we know social media is for young people’s mental health, banning social media for kids may be a helpful step, unless the implementation is seriously mismanaged.
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Poem of the Week: Madness by Peter Hobden
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Featured Artwork: Nostalgia by Rebecca Gonzalez
"This work is a part of a series about my childhood, my time in the psychiatric system, and recovery. If you look closely at each piece, you will see representations of innocence, trauma, and resistance."
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Would jealous people find being called mentally ill helpful? If you are suspicious of your partner’s behavior, would it help your relationship to be diagnosed as “obsessively jealous”? Who gets to decide what is “too jealous”? What if your partner is actually being dishonest?
Psychobabble of the Month: Jealousy Is Now a Mental Illness
In an article published in top psychiatry journal JAMA Psychiatry, researchers David Mataix-Cols and Johan Åhlén argue that doctors should be on the lookout for a new diagnosis: obsessional jealousy.
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Weekly Research Digest: Art Therapy Shows Promise in Clinical Trials and Lived Experience
by Richard Sears
This week Mad in America examines three studies around art therapy and art-based interventions for mental health issues.
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There Is No Over- or Under-diagnosis of ADHD or Autism, Just a Confused Cacophony of Opinions
By Sami Timimi, MD
Assessments for these conditions rely on subjective interpretations. There is no blood test or brain scan. There is no neuro in neurodiversity.
www.madinamerica.com/2026/02/the-...
What Isn’t Broken, Part 3: Spiritual Rebirth
by Jasmine Marshall
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The first time ‘it’ happened — my first awakening — was on my 22nd birthday, just a few months after having quit psych drugs cold-turkey.
Is Psychiatry’s Myth of Mental Health as Damaging as Its Myth of Mental Illness?
By Bruce Levine, PhD
Only a profoundly uncritical thinker would celebrate adjustment in of itself as "mental health" without a critical analysis of the dehumanizing society one is adjusting to.
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Weekly Research Digest: Peer Support Strengths, Challenges, and Co-option by Biomedical Models
By Richard Sears
New research on peer support focuses on trauma-informed programs, workplace challenges, and concerns about professionalization undermining core peer support values.
What Isn’t Broken, Part 1: A Temporary Fix
by Jasmine Marshall
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The diagnosis I had sought to help me would instead betray me, blame me, scapegoat my faulty biology. Yet at the time, I naively believed that it would make my pain “valid.”
Elizabeth Cotton joins us on the Mad in America #podcast for part 2 of our discussion in which she traces how digital therapy can block the very thing people come for: a stable, human relationship that can hold fear, dependency, and ambivalence.
#ubertherapy #enshittification ➡️ buff.ly/lEhWRYW
Facing Existential Challenges, WHO Shuts Down its Policy, Law, and Human Rights Unit
By Leah Harris
Global activists react to the news and vow to keep up the fight for human rights in mental health.
www.madinamerica.com/2026/02/faci...
Are We Allowed to Criticise Mental Health Professionals?
By Bella Jackson
While on nursing placements and then again while trying to write it all down, I attempted to make sense of why some staff had lost their empathy or dissociated. Why some were even rude or cruel or abusive.
Weekly Research Digest: Adolescent Suicide, Debt, Cannabis, ACEs, and Psychiatric Hospitalization
by Richard Sears
Studies on debt, financial stress, adverse childhood experiences, bullying, cannabis use, and psychiatric hospitalization leading to suicidality and self-harm.
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“The FDA attempts to approve devices based on safety, not efficacy. The main take-home message is that regulatory approval doesn’t mean a device works. It means it’s safe,” said Katya Rubia, PhD, lead investigator on the new study.
The FDA Allows Ineffective Devices to Come to Market
By Peter Simons
An FDA-cleared brain stimulation device for ADHD doesn’t work, according to new evidence. But it will likely remain on the market and even provide a pathway for future approvals of similar ineffective devices.
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When the Government Becomes the Source of Trauma for Children
By Dr. Cheryl Aguilar & Dr. Vanessa Joachin
Liam’s and Chloe’s stories are not outliers, they reflect the lived experiences of children whose lives have been upended at moments when they should feel safe.
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Elizabeth Cotton joins us on the Mad in America #podcast to discuss the rise of digital therapy platforms and the gig-economy playbook approach to psychotherapy.
#ubertherapy #psychology #enshittification
Full interview here ➡️ www.madinamerica.com/2026/02/uber...
