Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, and his latest book is Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007). Dr. Levine has been in private practice since 1985 and has presented talks and workshops to diverse organizations throughout North America. He is also the author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy (Continuum, 2003), and he has recently authored the chapter "Troubled Children and Teens: Commonsense Solutions without Psychiatric Drugs or Manipulations" for Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry (Peter Lehmann Publishing, 2007). Dr. Levine has been a regular contributor to Z Magazine and AlterNet, and his articles and interviews have been published in numerous other magazines. He is an editorial advisor for the Icarus Project/Freedom Center Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, on the advisory council of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology, and on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry. www.brucelevine.net

Blog Entries by Bruce E. Levine

When Liberals and Conservatives Are Two Sides of the Same Oppressive Coin

Posted July 30, 2009 | 01:04 PM (EST)


For many people I know -- especially many young people, Native Americans, and others alienated from American dominant culture -- the difference between liberals and conservatives is only in technique used to coerce conformity and gain control.

My friend Roland Chrisjohn is a psychologist and a professor in the Native...

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The Wave of Evil: New Report on ADHD Drugs Blowback

9 Comments | Posted July 16, 2009 | 10:51 AM (EST)


"The wave of evil washes all our institutions alike." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

The wave of evil washes not only the financial-industrial complex, the military-industrial complex, the energy-industrial complex, and predatory executives at AIG, Citibank, Halliburton, Blackwater/Xe, Enron, and Exxon. The pharmaceutical-industrial complex has virtually annexed the mental health profession, whose...

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Revolutionary Road, A Beautiful Mind and Truthfulness

Posted March 25, 2009 | 12:22 PM (EST)


The films Revolutionary Road and A Beautiful Mind both portray mathematicians turned mental patients who create havoc for their families. But the similarity ends there.

In director Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind (2001), the facts of the real-life recovery of Nobel prize winner John Nash are fabricated to create a...

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Are We Really Okay with Electroshocking Toddlers?

Posted January 30, 2009 | 02:00 PM (EST)


"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -- C.S. Lewis

Psychiatry's "shock doctrine" is quite literally electroshock, and its latest victims are - I'm not kidding - young children.

On January 25, 2009, the Herald Sun, based in...

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Just How Corrupted Has American Medicine Become?

Posted January 13, 2009 | 12:06 PM (EST)


"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through." - Jonathan Swift

After reading "The Neurontin Legacy -- Marketing through Misinformation and Manipulation" in the January 8, 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, one may conclude that (1) America's prisons...

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"Fundamentalist Consumerism" Kills Us Quickly and Slowly

Posted December 23, 2008 | 04:33 AM (EST)


While fundamentalist Jews, Christians, and Moslems are singularly attached to their literal interpretations of particular texts, fundamentalist consumerists are singularly attached to cheap stuff. All fundamentalists decry, deny, or ignore the multiple dimensions of life that fall outside their particular theologies and ideologies. Fundamentalist consumerists could not care less about...

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NPR Embarrassed by Psychiatrist Host: Bad Apple or Bad Barrel?

Posted November 25, 2008 | 02:36 PM (EST)


National Public Radio announced on November 21, 2008 that it had fired psychiatrist Frederick Goodwin and would be terminating his program "The Infinite Mind." Goodwin was released after NPR learned that he had received at least $1.3 million from drug companies between 2000 and 2007. In the 2008 ongoing Congressional...

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Can Voters and Nonvoters Battling Against Despair Respect Each Other?

Posted October 20, 2008 | 10:45 AM (EST)


There is a faction of Americans who believe that it is their civic duty to vote, and there is another faction who believe it is their civic duty to reject the pseudo-democratic voting ritual, and these two groups routinely engage in mutual mocking of one another. However, I have found...

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Thinking Critically About Scientology, Psychiatry, and Their Feud

Posted September 10, 2008 | 11:29 AM (EST)


For many Americans who gain their information solely from television, all critics of psychiatry are Scientologists, exemplified by Tom Cruise spewing at Matt Lauer, "You don't know the history of psychiatry. . . . Matt, you're so glib." The mass media has been highly successful in convincing Americans to associate...

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Lost Common Sense about Depression: Relationships

Posted August 13, 2008 | 04:29 PM (EST)


Both research and experience have long informed mental health professionals of a strong link between depression and relationship dissatisfaction. So why is psychiatry losing that awareness? One major reason is the disappearance in psychiatry of psychotherapy (talk therapy), in which it becomes obvious just how important our significant relationships are...

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Congress Pummels Establishment Psychiatry but Neglects a Brave Psychiatrist

Posted August 5, 2008 | 11:15 AM (EST)


It has been a rough year for American psychiatry. In June 2008, Congressional investigators exposed the financial relationships between drug companies and several high-profile psychiatrists. And on July 12, 2008, the New York Times reported, "Now the profession itself is under attack in Congress," as psychiatry's premier professional organization...

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Depressed Lawyers: A Little Help For My Friends

Posted July 24, 2008 | 06:13 PM (EST)


Among the lawyers whom I have known, it occurs to me that the only ones I've liked have had bouts of depression. So when Dan Lukasik, lawyer and depression sufferer, invited me to write a piece for his lawyerswithdepression.com, I gladly agreed.

In Surviving America's Depression Epidemic, I explain how...

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A Blue Ohio: Democrats and the Blue-Collar Blues

Posted December 13, 2007 | 06:01 PM (EST)


I have been a clinical psychologist in private practice for more than two decades in southwestern Ohio, a Republican stronghold in the state that broke Democrats' hearts in 2004. Three years later, it appears that most of the "blue team" remembers Ohio only for voter fraud, but I remember how...

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Why I Don't "Disease" Depression

Posted November 27, 2007 | 04:45 PM (EST)


If forced to choose between labeling immobilizing depression as either a character weakness or a disease, it's understandable that disease would be the preference. But there is a third choice, one that normalizes depression and which -- for people such as myself -- feels more respectful and better reduces suffering.

...
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Regaining Morale in the Age of Depression

Posted November 13, 2007 | 01:19 PM (EST)


Lifting the spirits of the demoralized is a craft--not a science--and a wall covered with diplomas does not translate to talent and wisdom in this area.

I have been a clinical psychologist for more than two decades and have found that most of my fellow mental health professionals talk far...

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Has Psychiatry Earned Its Unpopularity?

Posted October 29, 2007 | 04:56 PM (EST)


While psychiatry--similar to the Bush administration -- may want to blame its current unpopularity on the press, the corporate media is generally reluctant to challenge a powerful institution until it is already out of favor. Thus, the unpopularity of a powerful institution is usually well-earned through undeniable deceit, incompetence, corruption...

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The Politics Behind Despair and Depression

Posted October 5, 2007 | 01:52 PM (EST)


On September 14, 2007, New York Times reporters Alex Berenson and Benedict Carey foiled, at least temporarily, Big Pharma and its psychiatry allies' attempt to eliminate the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warning label about increased suicidal thoughts and behaviors in minors using antidepressants.

Berenson and Carey refuted a...

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