Psychology Today
April 21, 2026

In the 1960s, doctors sought a drug to induce madness. They found one.

PsychologyToday.com
April 13, 2026

In 1969, a controversial experiment used amphetamines to induce psychosis in healthy volunteers—changing our understanding of schizophrenia and helping shape psychiatry as we know it.

PsychologyToday.com
March 31, 2026

A new study upends decades of received wisdom about healing.

The History Reader
March 24, 2026

Looking back at the drug-fueled quest to cure schizophrenia, and how it shaped modern psychiatry.

PsychologyToday.com
March 16, 2026

A new study shows how biological beliefs about depression can make us worse off.

PsychologyToday.com
March 2, 2026

From plant sentience to AI feelings, Michael Pollan’s new book explores the terrain of awareness.

PsychologyToday.com
Jan 20, 2026

A new film reframes dyslexia as a distinct cognitive style with its own set of strengths.

PsychologyToday.com
Dec 16, 2025

What if depression, anxiety, and psychosis aren’t signs of a broken brain, but survival strategies?

PsychologyToday.com
Sept 22, 2025

A conversation with journalist Daniel Bergner about finding meaning in “madness.”

PsychologyToday.com
August 11, 2025

The author of Hidden Valley Road discusses the sisters who broke their silence, the mystery of schizophrenia, and the future of mental illness.

PsychologyToday.com
March 18, 2025

A new memoir, "Unshrunk," offers a scathing critique of the psychiatric drug industry, and forges a new path to healing.

PsychologyToday.com
January 27, 2025

Depression may be a functional signal - and that view may give patients hope.

PsychologyToday.com
Dec 23, 2024

For some, antidepressants may obstruct the path to healing.

PsychologyToday.com
Sept 16, 2024

What if experiences of madness actually advance the pursuit of truth and knowledge?

PsychologyToday.com
August 20, 2024

A new book, The Maps we Carry, documents one woman's recovery from OCD.

PsychologyToday.com
May 20, 2024

An interview with the author of "Strangers to Ourselves."

PsychologyToday.com
April 25, 2024

Seeing mental illness as due to “faulty genes” can further harm suffering people.

PsychologyToday.com
March 25, 2024

I interview Peter Bullimore on the National Paranoia Network, his own mental health history, and the need for alternative approaches to paranoid beliefs.

PsychologyToday.com
November 17, 2023

I interview Dr. Elizabeth Schechter on her research on split brain cases, dissociative identity disorder, and the plural community.

MadInAmerica.com
November 4, 2023

What if madness isn’t a defective form of reasoning, but a distinctive style of reasoning?.

PsychologyToday.com
October 16, 2023

Could a Renaissance masterpiece unlock the deeper meaning of depression?

PsychologyToday.com
October 8, 2023

A psychiatrist’s lonely battle to dismantle a broken system.

The Philosophers’ Magazine
June 16, 2023

Justin Garson on the philosophy of madness, and the importance of listening to what madness is trying to say.

PsychologyToday.com
January 11, 2023

What if the experience is only negative because we've been told it's a problem?

PsychologyToday.com
December 12, 2022

A massive, three-decade-long study shows that stigma toward schizophrenia is increasing, not decreasing. How can we turn it around?

PsychologyToday.com
November 22, 2022

Evidence mounts that ADHD isn’t a brain deficit, but an evolved cognitive style with its own strengths.

Aeon.com
November 14, 2022

Evidence is growing that mental illness is more than dysfunction, with enormous implications for treatment.

PsychologyToday.com
October 17, 2022

A small but vocal group of mental health professionals and service users promotes alternatives to psychiatric diagnosis.

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
September 7, 2022

I review Wouter Kusters’ remarkable book for Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

PsychologyToday.com
August 22, 2022

Some argue that traits associated with BPD represent designed responses to early life events, not brain dysfunctions.

PsychologyToday.com
August 8, 2022

A growing body of evidence suggests that depression isn’t a disease, but nature’s way of showing us that something in our lives needs to change.

PsychologyToday.com
June 27, 2022

Dyslexia is linked to creativity, exploration, and problem-solving. It likely evolved in early humans to enrich society.

PsychologyToday.com
June 14, 2022

What if mental disorders aren’t defects, but designed responses to the trials of life?

MadinAmerica.com
April 26, 2022

To propose that madness may have a function is not to deny the toll it may exact on people, but to help us understand what problem it is meant to solve.

Psychology Today
May 25, 2026

A recent study suggests that the way we explain anxiety may matter more than the anxiety itself.

Mad in America Podcast
April 29, 2026

I join James Moore to talk about the work of Solomon Snyder, whose discoveries ushered in the era of biological psychiatry. We also talk about the race to develop new psychiatric drugs based on his research and the implications for our understanding of psychosis.

Literary Hub
April 28, 2026

Read an excerpt of Chapter 1 of The Madness Pill on the history of madness from the ancient Greek doctors to the pharmaceutical era.

Psychology Today
April 28, 2026

“A fascinating new book looks at how experimentation with psychedelics changed the course of American psychiatry.”

April 6, 2026

I talk with Rachael Xerri from Audible about the psychedelic origins of modern psychiatry and what I discovered while narrating the audiobook.

June 9, 2025

I spoke with philosopher Jack Weinstein on the nature of madness: the reappropriation of the term, insanity and responsibility, religious and secular perspectives, and the links between our cultural understanding of madness and the 60s’ drug subculture.

December 5, 2024

Dr. Roger McFillin and I discuss how the "broken brain" narrative has robbed us of agency, created dependency on psychiatric drugs, and ignored the real roots of human suffering. 

December 9, 2024

I talk with Jazmine Russell for her Depth Work podcast on promoting alternative frameworks for mental health and illness. We share our own experiences on the need for diverse frameworks for making sense of mental health challenges.

June 10, 2024

I spoke for the Royal Institute of Philosophy on seeing purpose, rather than pathology, in madness - and what it means for the future of psychiatry.

June 13, 2024

I talk with Will Hall and Jessica Gallinger about my book, Madness, and how to move beyond psychiatry's medical model.

February 29, 2024

A presentation in London for the Royal Institute of Philosophy on rethinking madness outside the medical model. Registration here.

February 28, 2024

I spoke with James Moore of the Mad in America Podcast on my own history with psychiatry, stigma, psychiatry’s medical model, and its alternatives.

December 11, 2023

A presentation at the Britm i parë Institute in Pristina, Kosovo, on rethinking madness outside the medical model. The talk will be livestreamed here.

October 29, 2023

I spoke with Adam Hunt of the Evolving Psychiatry Podcast on scientific concepts of dysfunction, the role of the paradigms framing psychiatry, and the possible benefits of evolutionary thinking about mental 'disorders'.

February 9, 2023

I spoke with Ashar Khan of the Thing in Itself Podcast on what it means to shift from a dysfunction to a function-centered perspective on madness.

Jan 29, 2023

I talk with Amanda Vanstone of Australia Broadcasting Company’s Counterpoint program about seeing purpose, rather than pathology, in mental illness.

September 20, 2022

I talk with Mollie from her Back from the Borderline podcast about what it means to shift from a “disease” to a “design” model of mental illness.

August 10, 2022

Radio interview with the Elias Makos Show on Montreal’s CJAD 800AM (about 9 min)

May 13, 2021

The history of psychiatry isn’t a clash between mind and brain approaches to madness, but between functional and dysfunctional approaches. I bring madness-as-strategy into dialogue with the movement known as Mad Pride, mad resistance, or mad activism.

July 18, 2021

Is 'mental disorder' purely a dysfunction, or are there important advantages to being psychologically different? Do depression and anxiety serve a vital role in healing and bettering one's life?