On May 1st, 2005, people gathered to hear a panel of authors speak out against the bio-medical model of mental health, and challenge the human rights abuses that pass for treatment in psychiatry.
recorded by pierre loiselle
This panel was part of the Mindfreedom Support Coalition International's Action Conference which took place in Washington, DC.
Robert Whitaker, is the author of a truly historic contribution to the field of exposing psychiatry Mad in America. Bob, has won many awards as a journalist covering medicine and science including the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and a National Association for Science Writers' Award for best magazine article. In 1998, he co-wrote a series on psychiatric research for the Boston Globe which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Prior to writing Mad in America, he co-founded a publishing company, CenterWatch, that covered the drug-development industry. He also previously worked as director of publications at Harvard Medical School, and was a features/ medical writer at the Albany Times Union newspaper, in Albany, N.Y., for a number of years. His newest book is The Mapmaker's Wife: A True Tale of Love, Murder, and Survival in the Amazon. Bob lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Elliot S. Valenstein is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan. He is author of over 150 scientific articles and seven books including the highly acclaimed Great and Desperate Cures and Blaming the Brain. A new book The War of the Soups and Sparks: The Discovery of Neurotransmitters and the Dispute over how Nerves Communicate will be published by Columbia University Press this summer. He lives in Michigan.
Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D., is a clinical and research psychologist, activist, nonfiction author, playwright, director, and actor. She is currently Visiting Scholar at Brown University and Adjunct Professor at Washington College of Law, American University. She is the author of 11 books, including They Say You're Crazy: How the World's Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal (an expose of the DSM process) and the most recent book, Bias in Psychiatric Diagnosis, which she co-edited and in which she wrote or co-wrote many chapters. Her other books include The Myth of Women's Masochism, Don't Blame Mother: Mending the Mother-Daughter Relationship, Lifting a Ton of Feathers: A Woman's Guide to Surviving in the Academic World, and Thinking Critically About Research on Sex and Gender, which she co-wrote with her son, Jeremy B. Caplan. She is former Full Professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto's graduate faculty of education, where she headed the Centre for Women's Studies in Education, the Community Psychology Program, and the School Psychology Program.
Jeffrey Wilson is a survivor of 23 years of psychiatric drug treatment, a former pharmaceutical industry executive and author of Irrational Medicine: The Antidepressant Crisis And How To Avoid Unnecessary Behavioral Drugs. The book exposes a medical model of treatment that is dangerous and out of control. It shows how doctors ignored various causes for his depression and prescribed drug after drug to "cure" him. Eventually the side effects of the drugs caused him to be diagnosed with ADD and Bipolar Disorder. He then discovered the truth about psychiatric drugs and found a way to get out off pharmaceuticals through alternative healing methods.
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