Chemically Imbalanced: Joanna Moncrieff on the Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Release Date: 04/30/2025
Examining Psychiatric Medication Tapering and Withdrawal: The Evolving Role of Pharmacists — A Conversation with Agnes Higgins and Cathal Cadogan
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, my name is James. Today, we are discussing the experiences of people who have attempted to stop taking psychiatric drugs. These experiences are captured in a survey undertaken by the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Joining me to talk about this work are Cathal Cadogan and Agnes Higgins, both from Trinity College. Cathal is an Associate Professor in Practice of Pharmacy at Trinity College. His research focuses on developing supports to help people make informed decisions about starting and stopping...
info_outline
Spiritual Emergency and the Collective Work of Staying Alive: An Interview with Nisha Gupta
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Nisha Gupta is an existential phenomenologist, a depth psychotherapist, a creativity scholar, and an artist. She's an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia and earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. She's also, if she doesn't mind me saying, a bit of a rising star as an early career psychologist, having won early career awards from the APA divisions for both humanistic and qualitative psychology. Dr. Gupta's work centers on lived experience and the problems of form and method in the field. She is an advocate of the...
info_outline
The Political Systems Driving Abuse in Psychiatry: An Interview with Human Rights Lawyer Alicia Ely Yamin
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Alicia Ely Yamin is the Director of the Global Health and Rights Project and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. She's also an adjunct senior lecturer on health policy and management at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a Senior Advisor on Human Rights and Health Policy at Partners in Health. Alicia is known globally for her work on the right to health, economic and social rights, and reproductive justice. She has spent much of her professional life in Latin America and East Africa, including co-founding a health and human rights program with the Asociación Pro Derechos...
info_outline
History, Eugenics, and an Inquiry into Mad Consciousness: A Conversation With Susanne Paola Antonetta
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Susanne Paola Antonetta is an accomplished writer and poet, the author of numerous books, and in 2001 her book Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir, won a prestigious American Book Award. Her latest book is . *** Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: © Mad in America 2026. Produced by James Moore
info_outline
How Our Blindness to Context Harms Patients and Breaks Practitioners: A Conversation With Kamaldeep Bhui
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Kamaldeep Bhui is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford and Honorary Professor at Queen Mary University of London. He is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work on cultural psychiatry, ethnic inequalities in mental health, and the social determinants of distress. In recognition of his contributions to mental health research and policy, he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He has written extensively on the grim reality of minorities facing higher rates of psychiatric detention and coercion. In an era of algorithmic checklists and...
info_outline
UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 2 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of , which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work. She has worked with health teams and trade unions, practiced as a psychotherapist in the NHS, and now runs the Digital Therapy Project, a group of UK and US researchers studying the future of therapy from both sides of the relationship. In her new book, , she explores the effects of reorganizing mental health care around the logic of the app store. Therapy is now something you can scroll through on your phone,...
info_outline
UberTherapy and the Enshittification of our Relational Lives: Part 1 of our Interview with Elizabeth Cotton
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Elizabeth Cotton is Associate Professor of Responsible Business at the University of Leicester and the founder of , which carries out socially engaged research on mental health and work. She has worked with health teams and trade unions, practiced as a psychotherapist in the NHS, and now runs the Digital Therapy Project, a group of UK and US researchers studying the future of therapy from both sides of the relationship. In her new book, , she explores the effects of reorganizing mental health care around the logic of the app store. Therapy is now something you can scroll through on your phone,...
info_outline
Food First, Pharma Last - Part Two of our Interview with Chris Masterjohn
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
This week, we are joined by Chris Masterjohn, PhD. Chris is a nutritional scientist, a former professor, and the founder of . With a PhD in nutritional science and years of research in mitochondrial biology, Chris’s work focuses on translating peer-reviewed science into practical tools for human health. At Mitome, Dr. Masterjohn pioneered the first analysis designed to measure mitochondrial respiratory chain function directly, identifying individual energy bottlenecks and guiding personalized science-backed protocols to optimize the system responsible for over 90% of cellular energy...
info_outline
Mitochondria and Energetic Failures - A New Understanding of Antidepressant Withdrawal? An Interview with Chris Masterjohn
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
This week, we are joined by Chris Masterjohn, PhD. Chris is a nutritional scientist, a former professor, and the founder of . With a PhD in nutritional science and years of research in mitochondrial biology, Chris’s work focuses on translating peer-reviewed science into practical tools for human health. At Mitome, Dr. Masterjohn pioneered the first analysis designed to measure mitochondrial respiratory chain function directly, identifying individual energy bottlenecks and guiding personalized science-backed protocols to optimize the system responsible for over 90% of cellular energy...
info_outline
Why Critical Mental Health Knowledge Is Essential for Ethical Practice: An Interview with Jan DeFehr
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Jan N. DeFehr is an associate professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Winnipeg and an associate of and a member of the . She is also a member of the . Before entering academia, she spent many years as a clinical social worker, working alongside people who were trying to make sense of their distress within, and often in spite of, the mental health system. Her teaching, research, and course development focus on building public access to critical analyses of that system, drawing on the work of clients and survivors of psychiatry, practitioners, and scholars. Her new book,...
info_outlineWelcome to this Mad in America podcast. My name is Robert Whitaker, and I'm happy today to have the pleasure of speaking with Joanna Moncrieff.
Dr. Moncrieff is a psychiatrist who works in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. She is a Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College, London.
In 1990 she co-founded the Critical Psychiatry Network, which today has about 400 psychiatrist members, about two-thirds of whom are in the United Kingdom. From my perspective, the Critical Psychiatry Network has been at the forefront of making a broad critique of the disease model of care. Without this network, I don't think that critique would be anywhere near as prominent or as sophisticated as it is today.
Dr. Moncrieff is a prolific researcher and writer. Her books include De-Medicalizing Misery, The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs, and The Myth of the Chemical Cure.
Her latest book is titled Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth. This book in many ways is a follow-up to her 2022 paper which looked at the serotonin story and concluded that there was no good evidence that a serotonergic deficiency was a primary cause of depression. It caused quite a furor within the media and in psychiatry.
***
A full transcript of this interview is availabe here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/04/chemically-imbalanced-joanna-moncrieff-making-unmaking-serotonin-myth/
Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/
To find the Mad in America podcast on your preferred podcast player, click here: https://pod.link/1212789850
© Mad in America 2025. Produced by James Moore https://www.jmaudio.org