Mad in America

I have been aware of patient rights since I began working as a Certified Peer Specialist in 2006. I had the privilege of serving as emcee at an M-POWERed event at the statehouse in 2009, and participated in testimony related to Massachusetts’ Restraint and Seclusion Initiative around the same time. I worked for a year at The Transformation Center, a wing of M-POWER, th...

How does a wounded world wound us in return? Can we be mindful and offer intimate attention to pain and trauma? We answer these and other questions with Will Adams who is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Duquesne and completed his clinical psyc...

Rob Wipond appears on the Psychophobia* podcast, hosted by Dr. Michael R. Montgomery.

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Psychosis is treated like a crime, and the sentence is social death.

There is no place in society for people like me. I’ve known it deep down for a long time, but I was ashamed to say it out loud. Having had a psychosis is treated as worse than having committed a crime. Few experiences carry as much stigma, and the shame doesn’t fade when the psychosis does.

After lights out at the state forensic hospital, a worker would peer through my door’s square window every fifteen minutes. He would quickly flick the overhead light on and off—just long enough to record whether I was breathing and in what position I was sleeping. Sometimes I could hear him whispering the data aloud to a partner making rounds alongside him, recounting ...