Mad In America

06/05/2025

By Rod Tweedy Originally published at Red Pepper . Mental illness is now recognised as one of the biggest causes of individual distress and misery in our societies and cities, comparable to poverty and unemployment. One in four adults in the UK today has been diagnosed with a mental illness,

06/04/2025

Paolo 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. In this interview he speaks with Mad in America’s Leah Harris about his roots as a housing justice activist to his decades of public service at SAMHSA, what worries him most about mental health in today’s America, and where he sees hope in the recovery movement that he helped create.

Paolo del Vecchio speaks with Leah Harris about his decades of public service at SAMHSA, what worries him most about mental health in today’s America, and where he sees hope in the recovery movement that he helped create.

06/04/2025

A systematic review reveals growing global interest in Liberation Psychology, a framework that resists individualistic and medicalized models of mental health in favor of community-based approaches rooted in social justice and collective healing. This renewed attention arrives amid escalating global crises of displacement, inequality, and violence, conditions under which Liberation Psychology has long offered an alternative vision for understanding and responding to suffering.

Liberation Psychology is an approach to psychological thought and practice committed to social justice and political consciousness. It critiques frameworks that treat psychological distress as an individual phenomenon divorced from sociopolitical context. Central among its critiques is the medical model, which pathologizes individuals while overlooking how structural forces shape inner life.

Originally articulated by Salvadoran psychologist Ignacio Martín-Baró, Liberation Psychology opposes both the individualism and the supposed neutrality of traditional psychological science. For Martín-Baró, science should openly serve the people, especially those marginalized by oppressive political and economic systems.

First emerging in the 1980s and 1990s, Liberation Psychology has recently experienced a resurgence. A new thesis by Helena Denyer at Italy’s University of Padua offers a systematic meta-review of the field’s academic literature, tracking how Liberation Psychology has evolved and spread across global contexts.

“Ultimately, the study argues for a radical transformation in theory and practice, advocating for a move beyond individualistic, medicalized approaches toward models that integrate social justice, cultural relevance, and community participation,” writes Denyer. “The future of psychology, according to Liberation Psychology, lies in its ability to address the interconnectedness of personal suffering and societal structures, and in the empowerment of marginalized communities to become agents of change.”

https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/06/liberation-psychology-gains-ground-in-a-fractured-world/ Systematic Review Maps Liberation Psychology’s Global Impact

As crises of displacement and inequality intensify, more scholars are turning to Liberation Psychology’s commitment to structural change.

06/04/2025

A new study published in Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science provides compelling evidence that trauma exposure plays a critical role in the link between psychiatric family history and mental health struggles in adolescents. Led by Dr. Barbara Chaiyachati and a team of researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the study emphasizes trauma as a “modifiable risk factor in youth,” drawing attention to the environmental, rather than purely genetic, dimensions of intergenerational mental health.

“[I]n a large cohort of American adolescents,” the authors write, “trauma is more common among youth with [family history] of psychiatric disorders, and that over 20% of the risk association between [family history] and adolescent general psychopathology is mediated through trauma exposure.”

By demonstrating that nearly a quarter of the link between psychiatric family history and adolescent mental health struggles is mediated by trauma exposure, the research disrupts assumptions that genetic inheritance is the primary engine of psychopathology. Instead, it highlights how social and relational injuries, often shaped by caregiving dynamics, structural inequality, and intergenerational stress, embed themselves in psychological development.

https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/06/study-reveals-how-adolescent-mental-health-is-shaped-by-inherited-wounds/ Adolescents Inherit More Than DNA: Study Reveals Trauma’s Role in Mental Health Risk

A new study reveals that family trauma, not just genetics, fuels mental health risks across generations.

06/03/2025

Depsychiatrization: Dispelling Harmful, Diagnostical Self-Concepts in Therapy and Community Health Work
by Jonas Vennike Ditlevsen

Depsychiatrization is a way of reclaiming the right to be understood through a nonpathologizing, rehumanized lens.

Depsychiatrization is a way of reclaiming the right to be understood through a nonpathologizing, rehumanized lens.

06/03/2025

A new study found that elderly patients who stop taking antipsychotic drugs (after receiving them for behavioral control in the hospital) have better outcomes than those who continue taking the drugs. Those who discontinued antipsychotics (APMs) had lower rates of rehospitalization, delirium, dangerous falls, urinary tract infections, and death.

“These findings underscore the importance of reevaluating the need for ongoing APM use and support the use of APMs for the shortest possible duration to minimize potential harms,” the researchers write.

The researchers write that older adults often end up prescribed APMs as a form of behavioral control in the hospital, used off-label (without FDA approval) “to manage acute behavioral disturbances or hyperactive delirium.” They note that this is common, with up to 41% of those with dementia (and 10.2% of those without) receiving these drugs in the hospital. However, the researchers note that there is no evidence supporting the use of these drugs for this indication.

“APMs are frequently prescribed for off-label use to manage acute behavioral disturbances or hyperactive delirium in hospitalized older patients,” they write. “To our knowledge, there is currently no consistent evidence supporting the efficacy of APM use in addressing behavioral disturbances.”

The researchers also note the many dangers of antipsychotic drug use in the elderly.

“APMs are linked to several adverse clinical outcomes, including death, falls and fractures, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, and stroke,” they write.

The study was led by Chun-Ting Yang at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and published in JAMA Psychiatry.

https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/06/elderly-patients-who-stop-antipsychotics-have-better-outcomes/ Elderly Patients Who Stop Antipsychotics Have Better Outcomes - Mad In America

Older adults are often prescribed antipsychotics off-label for behavioral control. But there’s a great deal of evidence of harm.

06/03/2025

Become an MIA supporter! Get access to all of Mad in America’s science news, MIA report content and free access to all MIA webinars. Our next event is 'Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy for Psychosis’ on June 26th. Subscribe for as little as $20 per year or $5 per month. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/

05/31/2025

Screen Time for Children Under Three: A Trigger for Virtual Autism?
by Marilyn Wedge, PhD

"A Stone Unturned" weaves together the threads of virtual autism research around the globe and individual stories of children whose autism symptoms were reversed by removing screens and adding more parent engagement.

"A Stone Unturned" weaves together research with stories of autism symptoms reversed by removing screens and adding more parent engagement.

05/30/2025

From Mad in Puerto Rico: From shouting and threats to interventions without consent, obstetric violence is a form of gender violence that profoundly impacts postpartum mental health. Dr. Keila Castro proposes ways to heal.

From shouting and threats to interventions without consent, obstetric violence is a form of gender violence that profoundly impacts postpartum mental health. Dr. Keila Castro proposes ways to heal.

05/30/2025

You’re Not Crazy
by Sylvie Leber

I want others who have PTSD to know that, yes, recovery is tough going, but you can rebuild trust in the world and your future.

I want others who have PTSD to know that, yes, recovery is tough going, but you can rebuild trust in the world and your future.

05/30/2025

A new study published in Schizophrenia Research finds that exposure to online racism is associated with increased odds of psychotic experiences among Black and Asian emerging adults.

The research, led by Hans Y. Oh of the University of Southern California, finds that exposure to online racism significantly increases the odds of experiencing psychotic symptoms among Black American and Asian/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (ANHPI) emerging adults.

The study represents the first empirical investigation to demonstrate a direct association between online racism and psychotic experiences, adding to longstanding literature showing how systemic racism contributes to mental health disparities. While previous studies have linked everyday discrimination to an increased risk of psychosis, this study is the first to highlight how racism in digital contexts poses an additional and distinct risk, above and beyond in-person discrimination and other known predictors like depression, anxiety, and socioeconomic factors.

“To our knowledge,” the authors write, “this was the first study to show the association between online racism and psychotic experiences among Black and ANHPI American emerging adults. We found that online racism significantly increased odds of psychotic experiences, even after accounting for everyday discrimination, total internet use, and mental health (depression and anxiety).”

They continue:

“Extant literature has shown online racism has been linked to greater risk for mental health problems, and our findings add to this literature by showing that online racism is linked to psychotic experiences above and beyond other forms of discrimination while accounting for other psychopathologies.”

Rather than treating psychosis as a decontextualized biomedical anomaly, the findings point to the relational and structural forces, such as racialized digital violence and chronic exposure to online hate, that shape psychological experience. By demonstrating that online racism has a measurable, compounding effect on psychosis risk, the research invites a deeper interrogation of the environments in which suffering is produced and pathologized. It underscores the need to rethink diagnostic categories, treatment priorities, and digital infrastructures in light of the harms imposed by systemic inequality.

New research finds that online racism significantly increases the odds of psychotic experiences in Black and Asian American young adults.