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Bessel van der Kolk.

How Trauma Became America’s Favorite Diagnosis

Psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s once controversial theory of trauma became the dominant way we make sense of our lives.
by Danielle Carr via Intelligencer on July 31, 2023
Colorful rainbow image of a brain.

Mental Illness Is Not in Your Head

Decades of biological research haven't improved diagnosis or treatment. We should look to society, not to the brain.
by Marco Ramos via Boston Review on May 17, 2022
Gerd Stern.

Ping Pong of the Abyss

Gerd Stern, the Beats, and the psychiatric institution.
by Gabby Kiser via The Beat Museum on February 9, 2021
Nurse administering electroshock therapy to a patient.

The Troubled History of Psychiatry

Challenges to the legitimacy of the profession have forced it to examine itself. What, exactly, constitutes a mental disorder?
by Jerome Groopman via The New Yorker on May 20, 2019
U.S. Base hospital No. 13, Dansville, NY, with porches and awnings over open windows.

Neuro-Psychiatry and Patient Protest in First World War American Hospitals

Though their wishes were often overshadowed, soldier-patients had voices.
by Evan P. Sullivan via Nursing Clio on November 7, 2018
Doctors performing a lobotomy while others watch.
partner

Lobotomy: A Dangerous Fad's Lingering Effect on Mental Illness Treatment

From the 1930s to the 1950s a radical surgery — the lobotomy — would forever change our understanding and treatment of the mentally ill.
by Barbara Dury, Margaret M. Ebrahim via Retro Report on April 16, 2017
Lee Pattie Registrar's Report

Trouble with the Brothers: Booze, Divorce, and Madness in the American West

The past really is a foreign country, as historian Jonathan Ablard finds when piecing together the turbulent history of his ancestors in the West and Midwest.
by Jonathan Ablard via Tropics of Meta on June 23, 2025
Man working on a farm.

RFK Jr.’s 18th-Century Idea About Mental Health

The health secretary’s clearest plans for psychiatric treatment are a retreat to the past.
by Shayla Love via The Atlantic on April 4, 2025
A nurse passing a cup with methadone through a glass window.
partner

History Exposes the Flaw in RFK Jr.'s Drug Treatment Plan

Kennedy wants to create "wellness drug rehabilitation farms." But the U.S. tried it before, and it didn't work.
by Melody Glenn via Made By History on January 30, 2025
Police officer speaking to a homeless person in a New York subway station.
partner

Attacks in New York City Renew Questions About Forced Mental Health Treatment

New York City’s renewed efforts to tackle homelessness and untreated mental illness is raising questions about civil liberties, safety and effective care.
via Retro Report on January 10, 2025
Magnifying glass on top of the book "The Mask of Sanity" by Hervey Cleckley.

The Man Who Invented the “Psychopath”

Hervey Cleckley wanted to treat the most overlooked psychiatric patients. Instead his work was used to demonize them.
by Camille Bromley via The New Republic on November 7, 2024
Painting by Mary Cassatt titled "Mother and Child (Goodnight Hug)".

Beyond “Baby Blues”

“Postpartum depression” encompasses various debilitating changes in mood that can occur after giving birth. How did that language come to be?
by Rachel Louise Moran, Jess McAllen via The Baffler on September 30, 2024
Saint Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington D.C.

Immigration and Mental Health Collide, Again

Trump's seeming mixup of asylum-seeking refugees with patients in psychiatric institutions stems from a long rhetorical and political tradition.
by Jeremy Peschard via The Abusable Past on June 20, 2024
network of connected smiling faces

Ecstasy’s Odyssey

When the creator of MDMA first experimented with the drug, he felt a mellow sensation that he compared to "a low-calorie martini."
by Mike Jay via New York Review of Books on May 2, 2024
American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, Hartford, Connecticut.

What Was Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization?

An interview with sociologist and historian of psychiatry Andrew Scull about the history and legacy of psychiatric deinstitutionalization.
by Andrew Scull via Damage on April 22, 2024
Photo of "Madness: Race and insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum" with photo of author Antonia Hylton alongside it.

What It Was Like to Be a Black Patient in a Jim Crow Asylum?

In March 1911, the segregated Crownsville asylum opened outside Baltimore, Maryland, admitting only Black patients.
by Julia Métraux, Antonia Hylton via Mother Jones on January 10, 2024
A drawing of the outside of colorful windows at night.

Upper West Side Cult

In 1950, the Sullivinian Institute was created to push the boundaries of psychoanalysis. By 1980, its therapists and patients had become a small paramilitary.
by James Lasdun via London Review of Books on July 27, 2023
Barbara Antmann, whose sister was a Sullivanian, outside one of their buildings.

The Upper West Side Cult That Hid in Plain Sight

In the sixties and seventies, the Sullivanian Institute had a winning sales pitch for young New Yorkers: parties, sex, low rent, and affordable therapy.
by Jessica Winter via The New Yorker on June 14, 2023
Morlok quadruplets with a teacher next to a chalkboard.

Sleepwalking to Madness in Mid-Century America

On Audrey Clare Farley’s “Girls and Their Monsters.”
by Ellen Wayland Smith via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 13, 2023
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz during a signing ceremony to ban conversion therapy.
partner

Conversion Therapy Is Harmful and Ineffective. So Why Is It Still Here?

Conversion therapies have never been about providing medical or mental care. Instead, they have been a tool to eradicate LGBTQ activism, culture and people.
by Andrea Ens via Made By History on May 15, 2023
Roland R. Griffith and psychedelic mushrooms..

Roland Griffiths' Magical Profession

His research ushered in the psychedelic renaissance. Now it's changing how he's facing death.
by Tom Bartlett via The Chronicle of Higher Education on April 10, 2023
A picture of switchboard operators.

Intimacy at a Distance

Hannah Zeavin’s history of remote and distance psychotherapy asks us whether the medium matters more than the message.
by Danielle Carr via The Nation on June 14, 2022
Artists and people sitting on and around a hotel at Woodstock in 1967

The Dropout, a History: From Postwar Paranoia to a Summer of Love

The dropout was not just a hippy-trippy hedonist but a paranoid soul, who feared brainwashing and societal control.
by Charlie Williams via Aeon on December 3, 2021
a artistic human face photo

Bring Back the Nervous Breakdown

It used to be okay to admit that the world had simply become too much.
by Jerry Useem via The Atlantic on February 8, 2021

The Legal Fight That Ended the Unjust Confinement of Mental Health Patients

Ayelet Waldman on the landmark case O’Connor v. Donaldson.
by Ayelet Waldman via Literary Hub on January 21, 2020

The Gay Activists Who Fought the American Psychiatric Establishment

Mo Rocca on the struggle to depathologize homosexuality.
by Mo Rocca via Literary Hub on November 6, 2019

“A Most Damnable Fraud?” Public (Mis)conceptions and the Insanity Defense

An upcoming Supreme Court case will test the "not guilty by reason of insanity" plea.
by Steph Chevalier-Crockett via Nursing Clio on September 19, 2019

A Brief and Awful History of the Lobotomy

Groundbreaking discoveries... but at what cost?
by Andrew Scull via Literary Hub on July 30, 2019
Sesame Street cast

Psychiatry, Racism, and the Birth of ‘Sesame Street’

How a black psychiatrist helped design a groundbreaking television show as a radical therapeutic tool for minority preschoolers.
by Anne Harrington via UnDark on May 17, 2019

On Early 20th-Century America’s Unhealthy Fixation with ‘Hygiene’

Junk Science, paternalism, and a misplaced faith in 'expertise.'
by Anne Harrington via Literary Hub on April 25, 2019
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