Event information:

So many things divide Americans today. But one thing we agree on is that we’re mad in America—mad as in crazy and mad as in angry.

We’re angry mad at our country, our politicians, each other, and ourselves. We’re labeled ‘mad’ by a mental health system that has diagnosed 42 million (1 out of 5) with an emotional disease. We’re alarmed and scared by the epidemic of legal and illegal drugs that are destroying millions of lives.

We’re anxious, depressed, despairing and furious at the shrinking of possibilities there seem to be for creating the lives we want. And being branded and divided by partisan and ideological labels fuels more rage and fear.

Join two long-time activists and scholars who challenge how we see madness for a wide-ranging conversation on the madness of contemporary society, efforts to engage and transform it, and what more we might do. Journalist Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, and developmentalist Lois Holzman, director of the East Side Institute and author of The Overweight Brain and The End of Knowing, will share the role that psychology and psychiatry play in our madness by medicalizing  human emotionality, and offer ways to cultivate different ways to see, be and become.

If you or someone you care about is mad in America, you need be part of this conversation.

Lois Holzman is a major voice in the current conversation about the limitations of mainstream psychology. The author of eight books and a consultant to community development projects across the globe, she provides thought leadership and on the ground guidance to those seeking to reinitiate the development of persons and communities through play, performance and group creativity. Holzman was a member of the international Dx Summit on Diagnostic Alternatives, which came together in response to the publication of DSM-V to advocate for and disseminate alternatives to current diagnostic systems of mental illness. 

Robert Whitaker is the author of five books. In 2010, his Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness won the U.S. Investigative Reporters and Editors book award for best investigative journalism.

Prior to writing books, he worked as a science reporter at the Albany Times Union newspaper in New York for a number of years. He is the founder of madinamerica.com, a website that features research news and blogs by an international group of writers interested in “rethinking psychiatry.”

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