For most of his adult life, Aaron Presley, age 34, felt like a husk of a person, a piece of "garbage." He was trapped in a reality that was so excruciatingly tedious that he had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. Then, all at once, the soul-crushing, depressive fog started to lift, and the most meaningful experience of his life began. The turning point for Presley came as he lay on a psychiatrist's couch at Johns Hopkins University, wearing an eyeshade and listening t

Sept. 28, 2017, 9:49 AM CDT / Updated Sept. 28, 2017, 9:49 AM CDT By Joseph Bennington-Castro In the mid-1950s, LSD and other psychedelic drugs took the medical world by storm — and no wonder. Studies at the time suggested that the hallucinogens were effective against a variety of difficult-to-treat mental health problems, including alcoholism. The research stalled in the early 1970s, however, in large part because psychedelics had developed a reputation as dangerous recreati

January 18, 2021 APA's Apology to Black, Indigenous and People of Color for Its Support of Structural Racism in Psychiatry Today, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the oldest national physician association in the country, is taking an important step in addressing racism in psychiatry. The APA is beginning the process of making amends for both the direct and indirect acts of racism in psychiatry. The APA Board of Trustees (BOT) apologizes to its members, patients, th