Most are oblivious to the fact that psychiatric eugenics initiatives continued to exist—and beyond that, to flourish—long after the end of what is normally thought of as “the eugenics era�...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/07/psychiatric-eugenics-then-and-now/
The concept of cognitive liberty is valuable—one might even say necessary—precisely because it goes to the core of what we are as human beings. Correspondingly, it unmasks psychiatry for the ...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/07/cognitive-liberty-principle-rally-behind/
This is a call for action against the horror euphemistically known as “electroconvulsive therapy.” At a time when society is finally making advances against ECT, a courageous 80-year-old shoc...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/11/time-strike-now-anti-ect-activism/
Why is this scholarship important? Because it will fund, create recognition for, and promote research into violence against Indigenous women. It includes not only what is conventionally seen as v...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/09/indigenous-scholarship-antipsychiatry-battle/
A quiet revolution has just happened—a formidable piece of counter-hegemony. We now have antipsychiatry scholarships ensconced at all three universities in a major international city. And with ...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/05/three-antipsychiatry-scholarships/
A fictional shock survivor was the narrator of my novel, but her memory loss was such that she did not know huge sections of the story she was trying to tell. In finding solutions to such problem...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/03/aha-moments-in-the-world-of-electroshock/
“Unfit to study” policies are “respectable fascism.” Where marginalization, exclusion, and control on the basis of putative “mental illness” is starting to happen in any arena, or to ...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/11/creeping-fascism-university-unfit-to-study-policies/
In the midst of flagrant professional misrepresentation of ECT, this is a call to arms. Quite simply, the time has come for a frontal assault on the ECT industry and on the professionals associa...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/10/ending-ect-lawsuit-novel-moment-now/
With reports of the horrid abuse at Oak Ridge surfacing frequently over the years, how could this travesty have continued unabated for so long? What is wrong with the “therapeutic” community ...
What exactly does “antipsychiatry” mean? Is the term useful or hopelessly ambiguous? Can one be antipsychiatry without being abolitionist? And if one wants to end the use of psychiatric coerc...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/06/antipsychiatry-say-what/
Those of us who are radicals are commonly struggling to find ways to confer legitimacy on positions which substantially challenge an oppressive status quo. In this article, I will be exploring ho...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/05/conferring-legitimacy-counterhegemonic/
In “polite society,” cursing is largely verboten. Let me suggest, however, that if done in the correct spirit and adroitly, cursing can be a highly useful type of anti-oppression work. On top...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/03/curse-for-cursed-profession/
Every year at this time, from Canada to Ireland, from Turkey to South Africa, both determined and not-so-determined folk make a very unusual list, known traditionally as New Year's resolutions. W...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/12/starting-new-year-bang-medley-antipsychiatry-resolutions/
As an activist, you work for a long, long time seeing no signs of change, and perhaps you are tempted to throw your hands up in despair. However, very, very often something utterly profound is sh...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/12/learnings-from-earthworms-antipsychiatry-breakthrough/
The impetus for this article is an exciting new scholarship endowed in perpetuity which has just been launched at University of Toronto. Called “The Dr. Bonnie Burstow Scholarship in Antipsychi...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/10/turning-tables-using-academy-battle-psychiatry/
The context in which this article is penned is rule by institutions which are functions of the state, in particular those deemed services; the ways in which these interconnect to create a veritab...
Rational Suicide, Irrational Laws is an excellent book that explores the criminalization and decriminalization of suicide. It analyzes laws by which “mental health” professionals and organiz...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/hot-potato-topic-rational-book/
Various instruments of the United Nations have commented on forced treatment, or involuntary confinement, or both (for details, see Burstow, 2015a), and a number of truly critical additions to in...
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/02/the-chrusp-call-to-action-and-its-significance/
On December 25, 2015, renowned psychiatrist Robert Spitzer died. Spitzer was a giant in world psychiatry, best known as the architect of the third edition of the psychiatry’s diagnostic bible �...
There is a hunger out there for a foundational critique of psychiatry—something that pulls no punches, minces no words. That is, there is a hunger for a reasoned antipsychiatry position. Someth...