On the Mad in America podcast this week, we explore the importance of raising awareness of psychological approaches that challenge mainstream perspectives. Joining us today are three people who are practising clinical psychologists and who have written for Mad in America.

Zenobia Morrill is a critical-liberation psychologist and psychology professor who received her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her research interests include critical and liberation psychology, the psychotherapy process, and wider conceptual and ethical issues in psychology and psychiatry.

José Giovanni Luiggi-Hernández is a clinical psychologist in private practice, a qualitative researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, a writer for Mad in America and part of the recently launched Mad in Puerto Rico website. His interests include understanding the lived experiences of colonized people using phenomenological, psychoanalytic, and decolonial frameworks, LGBTQ issues and psychotherapy for physical health concerns.

Also joining us is Mad in America’s lead research news editor, Justin Karter. A graduate in both psychology and journalism, Justin’s research and writing span topics in the philosophy of psychology, critical psychology, MAD studies, cross-cultural psychology, qualitative methods, and theories of counselling and psychotherapy.

In this conversation, we discuss the possibilities opened up by adopting a critical mindset, identify some of the barriers to working in such a way, and share some key resources to help aspiring psychologists explore alternative approaches.

Find a full transcript of this interview here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/08/how-to-be-a-critical-psychologist-without-losing-your-soul/

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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

Welcome to MIA Radio. Today, we are pleased to have as our guest Jaakko Seikkula. Jaakko is a psychologist who helped develop the Open Dialogue practice at Keropudas Hospital in Tornio, Finland, in the 1990s, and he is the person who has conducted the research that told of remarkable longer-term outcomes with this form of care.

For the past 15 years, he has developed and led training programs that have seen Open Dialogue practices adopted in 40 countries. He recently published a book titled, Why Dialogue Does Cure.

In this interview, we discuss how Open Dialogue came to be, the research that shows its positive outcomes, how psychiatry has failed to learn from Open Dialogue practice and more.

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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

Jørgen Kjønø, whose stage name is Dex Carrington, is a Norwegian-American stand-up comedian based in Oslo, Norway. He is also an actor, host of the Truth Train podcast, and former travel show host who gained international recognition as the host of Dexpedition, which aired on MTV in over 30 countries.

He joins us on the Mad In America podcast to talk about his experience with Lyrica and Zyprexa, including a five-and-a-half-year taper after 10 years on the drugs.

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Find a full transcript of the interview here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/07/horror-psychiatric-drug-withdrawal-dex-carrington/

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