Mad in America: Where Can We Go From Here?
An Online Revolutionary Conversation 
with Lois Holzman and Robert Whitaker

Friday March 9 - Monday April 2*
Registration: $150; Student, Retired, Low Income $75
*Conversation is asynchronous - participants are in different time zones, and read/post messages on their own schedule.


By the mid-1900s, psychology and psychiatry ushered in a medical framework for understanding human emotionality and the treatment of mental distress. This framework has won the day-currently, in the U.S. alone 42 million people (1 out of 5) are diagnosed with an emotional 'disease,' and 8 million young people are taking psychotropic drugs for ADHD, depression and other 'psychiatric illnesses.' And the medical model is spreading rapidly across the globe, as more and more nations adopt the U.S. way of doing things, often unwittingly.
  
Join two long-time activists and scholars for a wide-ranging conversation on the madness of contemporary society, the medical model in psychiatry and its use in psychotherapy and counseling, efforts to engage and transform it, and what more we might do. Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, and developmentalist Lois Holzman, director and co-founder of the East Side Institute and author of The Overweight Brain and The End of Knowing, will lead this four-week (asynchronous) online conversation to explore the role that psychology and psychiatry play in our madness and offer ways to cultivate different ways to see, be and become.


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."
For more information or to register go to: eastsideinstitute.org/events or contact mmeyer@eastsideinstitute.org, 212-941-8906, ext 304.