Danielle Gansky was prescribed ADHD stimulants at age seven after a school referral for mild inattentiveness. A happy, shy child who didn’t fit the classroom mold was quickly labeled and medicated to conform to rigid societal expectations of “normal.” Adverse reactions to the stimulants were misinterpreted as new “mental health conditions,” triggering a dangerous cascade of unnecessary psychiatric drugs — including SSRIs, benzodiazepines, and antipsychotics — all before her 10th birthday. SSRIs then remained a constant, taken continuously throughout her entire life while her brain was still developing.

Years later, at 23, after being on antidepressants her entire life, Danielle followed her doctor’s exact instructions and tapered off over just six weeks using the standard physician-directed tapering guidelines doctors are taught to use. This doctor-directed withdrawal triggered a severe neurological injury that left her bedridden and physically disabled for years. Forced to reinstate the medication simply to survive, she remains trapped on the same SSRI she was first prescribed as a child. Now at 30, she continues to live with persistent, life-altering neurological damage and physical symptoms caused by that withdrawal injury. Today, she is a leading advocate exposing the hidden global epidemic of antidepressant harms harms that pharmaceutical companies have long deliberately hidden from patients and doctors. As a voice for the voiceless, she fights for the countless people worldwide whose lives have been destroyed by serious neurological injuries from SSRIs. She calls for informed consent, safer tapering practices, and urgent recognition and reform to support the millions suffering in silence.

Cameron LaBar’s Instagram platform (@coldplungecam) has grown to 400K followers since starting three years ago. His initial focus was the mental health benefits he experienced from cold plunging. But as he began tapering off 25 years of SSRIs (which he started at age 9), he shifted his platform’s focus to highlighting the difficulties he faced in antidepressant withdrawal. His journey is one of identity, self-discovery, and vulnerability; with hopes to share his process of tapering completely off SSRIs over the next few years.

Lauren Friedman is a senior at Vanderbilt University living with post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD), a condition characterized by permanent loss of sexual function and significant emotional blunting following antidepressant use. She was prescribed SSRIs as a freshman at Amherst College for worsening anxiety and depression, exacerbated by academic demands and collegiate athletics. She was advised and ensured by medical professionals there was no risk of significant or permanent harm and was subsequently blindsided by developing PSSD. She is currently on medical leave from Vanderbilt due to cognitive impairment associated with her condition and is advocating for updated drug labeling, expanded research into PSSD, and greater clinical recognition of antidepressant-related injuries.

Nick Taber speaks and writes about personal development coming out of authoritarian and controlling environments, especially the mental health system, schools, and families. He explores how young people are pathologized and controlled for normal reactions to their environment, and how they can grow and transform afterward.

Mark Gorton is the President of the MAHA Institute, where he leads efforts to advance health freedom, transparency, and holistic solutions in public health. He is also the founder and Chairman of Tower Research Capital LLC, one of the world’s leading computerized trading firms, which he established in 1998, and the founder and former CEO of LimeWire, the pioneering file-sharing company.

A life-long advocate for livable streets, alternative transportation, and open government, Mark founded OpenPlans in 1999 and is a Founding Board Member of Reinvent Albany, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting ethical government and fair elections in New York. He also serves on the Board of Children’s Health Defense. In 2022, he executive produced Four Died Trying, a documentary exploring the extraordinary lives and tragic assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.

Admiral Brian Christine serves as the 18th Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In this role, he provides leadership on the nation’s public health priorities, including chronic disease prevention and efforts to strengthen the nation’s overall health.

ADM Christine also leads the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, one of the nation’s eight uniformed services, composed of more than 5,000 public health professionals dedicated to protecting, promoting, and advancing the health and safety of the nation.

President Donald Trump nominated ADM Christine for this position, and he was subsequently confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

As Assistant Secretary for Health, ADM Christine is focused on restoring trust in public health, radical transparency, and tackling the epidemic. His leadership emphasizes putting patients first, strengthening the integrity of public health institutions, and ensuring that every American has the opportunity to live a healthier, more fulfilling life. ADM Christine earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from Emory University and completed his residency in Urology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. An internationally recognized leader in Men’s Health, he established a practice regarded as a global Center of Excellence, treating patients from across the United States and abroad.

ADM Christine has published peer-reviewed research, lectured extensively, and trained surgeons around the world. He is a member of several leading professional organizations, including the American Urologic Association, the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, the International Society for Sexual Medicine, and the International Continence Society.

As a “Mainstreet Physician” treating the men, the women, and children of our republic, ADM Christine has demonstrated a deep commitment to service, innovation, and improving the health and well-being of all Americans.

Alex J. Adams, Pharm.D., M.P.H., serves as Assistant Secretary for Family Support, leading the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Assistant Secretary Adams brings years of health, human services, education, and regulatory expertise to the broader vision to Make America Healthy Again.

Prior to leading ACF, Dr. Adams spent more than ten years in Idaho State Government, most notably as Governor Brad Little's budget and regulatory director and state Department of Health & Welfare director. In these capacities, he oversaw the state's first upgrade to a AAA credit rating with both Fitch Ratings and Moody's. Dr. Adams led the Governor's zero-based regulation initiative, which resulted in Idaho becoming the least regulated state in the nation. He also made significant efforts to improve Idaho's child welfare system, enacting kin-specific licensing standards, announcing paid family leave for foster parents, extending foster care to age 23, and overseeing record recruitment and retention of foster homes, and ending diversion of Social Security survivor benefits.

Dr. Adams earned his bachelor's degree and Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Toledo in Ohio and his Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. Dr. Adams and his wife, Jennifer, are raising their daughter, Emerson.

Laura Delano is an author, speaker, and consultant, and the founder of Inner Compass Initiative, a nonprofit organization that helps people make informed choices about taking and safely tapering off psychiatric drugs while working to shift culture, science, and policy away from medicalized responses to human suffering. She has worked as an advocate within and beyond the mental health system and has spent the past 15 years working with individuals and families around the world seeking guidance and support for psychiatric drug withdrawal. Laura is regularly turned to by psychiatrists and other mental health professionals wishing to learn about safer medication tapering protocols. Her book, Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance, was published in March 2025. Learn more at www.lauradelano.com.

David Cohen, Ph.D., M.S.W. has studied medicalization of children's problems, iatrogenic harms of psychotropic drug treatments, cultural factors driving psychoactive drug policies, and sparse accountability for coercive psychiatric care. He asks whether the sharp but nonscientific divide between approved and illicit drugs obscures their shared psychoactive effects and undermines sound and comprehensive harm reduction policies.

He's authored or co-authored over 130 publications, 11 books including Mad Science and Your Drug May Be Your Problem, and created award-winning tools like CriticalThinkRx to help child welfare practitioners make informed choices about psychiatric medications. More recently he produced the first contemporary count of involuntary psychiatric detentions in the U.S. A former Fulbright Distinguished Chair, he is Professor of Social Welfare and Associate Dean at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Gretchen Watson, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist whose research and intervention projects have received scholarly and media attention. She has served as a professor of pediatrics, psychiatry, behavioral sciences, and education at universities and medical schools in the U.S. and abroad and as director of patient safety at a large healthcare system.

She received millions of grant dollars to study the epidemiology of psychotropic drug use in children and non-drug alternatives. She is an academic affiliate at the University of South Carolina and a member of the Southern Network on Adverse Reactions (SONAR), a national post-marketing drug surveillance initiative, and the author of the forthcoming book Prescription Affliction: The Overuse of Psychiatric Drugs in Children.

Jeffrey Lacasse, Ph.D., M.S.W. is a researcher and educator who has spent nearly 25 years challenging conventional thinking about mental health care. He focuses on psychiatric diagnosis and medication, asking important questions about what truly helps people in distress and what barriers may prevent better outcomes. He has written widely on topics such as the "chemical imbalance" theory of depression, direct-to-consumer drug advertising, medical ghostwriting, and the high rates of psychotropic medication use among children in the child welfare system.

With roughly 75 publications, nearly 2,900 citations, and an h-index of 25, his scholarship has helped spark vital conversations about evidence-based, humane approaches to mental health. Dr. Lacasse has received approximately $500,000 in research funding, including projects evaluating medication education programs for child welfare workers. Above all, he is committed to bridging research and policy so that people experiencing mental distress receive support grounded in solid science and genuine compassion.

Mark Horowitz, M.D. is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Adelaide University, Australia, a resident psychiatrist, and Visiting Lecturer in Psychopharmacology at King's College London. He holds a Ph.D. from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London in the neurobiology of depression and antidepressant action. He is the lead author of The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, the first authoritative handbook on safely stopping antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and other psychiatric drugs.

His pioneering research on hyperbolic tapering has informed national UK guidelines from the National Institute of Health and Social Care (NICE) and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Drawing on both his clinical expertise and personal experience with antidepressant withdrawal, Dr. Horowitz is a strong voice for evidence-based deprescribing and informed consent in mental health. He also co-founded Outro Health, a telehealth clinic supporting safe tapering in the US.

Anders Sørensen, Ph.D. is a Danish clinical psychologist, researcher, and author specializing in psychiatric drug withdrawal and safe deprescribing. With a Ph.D. in psychiatry from the University of Copenhagen, he has run a dedicated tapering and psychotherapy practice in Copenhagen for over a decade, supporting thousands of people coming off antidepressants, antipsychotics, and other psychiatric medications.

His groundbreaking research on hyperbolic tapering, receptor occupancy, and the psychological aspects of withdrawal has been published in leading journals. Anders is the author of the acclaimed book Crossing Zero: The Art and Science of Coming Off, and Staying Off, Psychiatric Drugs, which combines the latest science with practical clinical guidance. A frequent speaker and collaborator with organizations like Inner Compass Initiative, he is a leading international voice for informed consent and life beyond long-term psychiatric medication.

Derek Blumke is a subject matter expert in mental health, medication safety, and policy reform. He serves as the Veteran Policy Fellow at the Grunt Style Foundation, where he leads efforts to make prescribing practices safer and smarter for veterans and all Americans. Derek deployed three times throughout twelve years of service in the U.S. Air Force and Michigan Air National Guard. He co-founded Student Veterans of America, served as a founding committee member of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, and led the creation of a national mental health program for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

He also built a technology venture based in New York City. Derek holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Alma College. He currently serves as Chairman of the Psychotropic Safety Subgroup of the Michigan Governor's Challenge, State Legislative Director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars – Michigan, and National Legislative Councilman with the American Legion.

Kim Witczak  is an international drug safety advocate, speaker, and Consumer Representative on the FDA Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee, where she served three consecutive terms from 2016 to 2025. Her work began after the sudden death of her husband, Woody, in 2003. He died by suicide just five weeks after being prescribed Zoloft for insomnia, despite having no prior history of depression or mental illness. In the aftermath, Kim filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Pfizer that helped expose internal documents on suicide risks and other harms. Over the past two decades, Kim has become a leading voice in drug safety reform. She played a key role in pushing for the addition of black box warnings on antidepressants in 2004 and 2006, and has testified before Congress and the FDA on issues of transparency, risk communication, and informed consent. Through her organization, Woodymatters, and years of advocacy, Kim has brought real-world experiences into national conversations on drug safety. She continues to challenge the overprescribing of these drugs and advocates for a system grounded in transparency, accountability, and truly informed decision-making, ensuring that pharmaceutical harms, especially from psychiatric drugs, are no longer minimized or hidden.

Chris Carroll, M.Sc., serves as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) for Mental Health and Substance Use at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). In this capacity, PDAS Carroll will provide overall leadership of mental health and substance use disorder treatment, prevention, recovery services; agency policies, programs, and operations, including budget; and, intragovernmental and public affairs. He has over thirty-five years' experience leading behavioral health organizations.

His expertise in payment systems, innovative program and policy development, and advancing legislative intent have improved mental health and substance use service provision at the federal, state, and local levels. Mr. Carroll has an extensive background in health economics, behavioral health administration and financing, public health program implementation, organizational management, and behavioral health systems operations.

Since 2004, Mr. Carroll has held a variety of positions within SAMHSA advising senior leadership on health policy and program development, strategic planning, organizational alignment, and legislative issues. Mr. Carroll received his B.Sc. in Organizational Management from John Brown University and M.Sc. in International Health Economics and Policy from SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, Italy.

Alex J. Adams, Pharm.D., M.P.H., serves as Assistant Secretary for Family Support, leading the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Assistant Secretary Adams brings years of health, human services, education, and regulatory expertise to the broader vision to Make America Healthy Again.

Prior to leading ACF, Dr. Adams spent more than ten years in Idaho State Government, most notably as Governor Brad Little's budget and regulatory director and state Department of Health & Welfare director. In these capacities, he oversaw the state's first upgrade to a AAA credit rating with both Fitch Ratings and Moody's. Dr. Adams led the Governor's zero-based regulation initiative, which resulted in Idaho becoming the least regulated state in the nation. He also made significant efforts to improve Idaho's child welfare system, enacting kin-specific licensing standards, announcing paid family leave for foster parents, extending foster care to age 23, and overseeing record recruitment and retention of foster homes, and ending diversion of Social Security survivor benefits.

Dr. Adams earned his bachelor's degree and Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the University of Toledo in Ohio and his Master of Public Health degree from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. Dr. Adams and his wife, Jennifer, are raising their daughter, Emerson.

Samantha Fuesy is a behavior scientist, systems strategist, reform advocate, and founder of The OBSI Project, a nonprofit focused on improving outcomes for children and adolescents across education, child welfare, and juvenile justice. Drawing on more than a decade of on-the-ground experience in child-serving systems, her work centers on translating behavior science and the science of learning into practical tools, coaching, and decision-making frameworks that help systems reduce preventable escalation, strengthen environments, and improve real-world outcomes.

She is especially focused on solutions to overmedicalization in children’s mental health, including context-first stabilization, caregiver informed choice, meaningful youth voice, and the use of decision-grade data to support responsive reform.

Kristopher Kaliebe, M.D. is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.  He is Board Certified in Psychiatry, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Forensic Psychiatry.  He is a Distinguished Fellow at the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP).  

His clinical work has been primarily in University clinics, Federally Qualified Health Centers and juvenile corrections.  At USF, Dr. Kaliebe instructs medical students, psychiatry residents, child and adolescent psychiatry fellows, and forensic psychiatry fellows.   

From 2013-2021, he served as co-chair of AACAP’s Media Committee. From 2016 to 2022 he was the liaison between the AACAP and the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

Dr. Kaliebe’s publications and presentations include a wide range of topics, including the effects of digital technologies, gender, psychotherapy, corrections, mind-body medicine, nutrition, and mental health in primary care settings.  He is concerned about naïve interventionalism and groupthink within the medical and mental health systems.

‍

Amy Miller is Director of States at MAHA Institute. She is a passionate champion of our God-given rights and medical freedoms. She has led and worked with top health freedom organizations and thought leaders across the country. A leading legislative advocate, she has successfully championed legislation that has made Tennessee a leader in health freedom and MAHA policies. She has worked closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other leaders in the medical freedom movement.

In addition to her health freedom advocacy, Amy is active in the movement to stop both foreign and domestic pesticide manufacturers from gaining liability shields that would strip Americans of their right to a jury trial when injured by toxic pesticides. In 2025, her efforts helped stop such a liability shield from being passed in Tennessee.

Dr. Andrea Beckel-Mitchener is the Acting Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the lead federal agency for research on mental disorders. She oversees the institute’s research portfolio of basic and clinical research that seeks to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses, paving the way for prevention, recovery, and cure.

Dr. Beckel-Mitchener joined NIH in 2004 and has overseen several large programs and collaborative projects, including management of the Functional Neurogenomics program at NIMH, the Common Fund’s Single Cell Analysis Program , and the Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® (BRAIN) Initiative Cell Census Network  (BICCN). She continues to serve as the Deputy Director of the BRAIN Initiative  and has held multiple leadership positions within NIMH.

Dr. Beckel-Mitchener completed her Ph.D. in Molecular Neuroscience at The University of New Mexico. Prior to joining NIH, she worked as a staff scientist at GlaxoSmithKline and as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Beckel-Mitchener was named Acting NIMH Director in April 2025 and will continue to serve in this role while NIH conducts a national search for a replacement.

Chris Carroll, M.Sc., serves as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary (PDAS) for Mental Health and Substance Use at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). In this capacity, PDAS Carroll will provide overall leadership of mental health and substance use disorder treatment, prevention, recovery services; agency policies, programs, and operations, including budget; and intragovernmental and public affairs. He has over thirty-five years' experience leading behavioral health organizations. His expertise in payment systems, innovative program and policy development, and advancing legislative intent have improved mental health and substance use service provision at the federal, state, and local levels. Mr. Carroll has an extensive background in health economics, behavioral health administration and financing, public health program implementation, organizational management, and behavioral health systems operations.

Since 2004, Mr. Carroll has held a variety of positions within SAMHSA advising senior leadership on health policy and program development, strategic planning, organizational alignment, and legislative issues. Most recently, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary. As SAMHSA's Director of Health Financing and Systems Integration, Mr. Carroll advised SAMHSA Administrators, Assistant Secretaries, and senior HHS leadership; led internal and external engagements that maintained valued public and private sector relationships; and shaped the agency's activities to advance public and private financing of behavioral health services. Mr. Carroll also served as Senior Advisor for Behavioral Health to the Director of the Centers for Medicaid and CHIP Services providing guidance on implementing and coordinating complex and high-priority behavioral health initiatives.

Prior to his work at SAMHSA, Mr. Carroll served in the private sector as Director of Behavioral Health Operations for the Sisters of Mercy Healthcare Network for 15 years. Mr. Carroll received his B.Sc. in Organizational Management from John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Arkansas and M.Sc. in International Health Economics and Policy from SDA Bocconi School of Management in Milan, Italy.

Marta Sokolowska is the Deputy Center Director for Substance Use and Behavioral Health in FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). She serves as the center's executive-level leader responsible for advancing FDA's public health response to the non-medical use of substances with abuse potential. With expertise in science-based assessment and management of drug abuse risks, Dr. Sokolowska advises senior FDA officials on shaping scientific and policy interventions and executing strategies pertaining to the use of controlled substances and behavioral health programs.

Dr. Sokolowska joined CDER in 2018 as Associate Director for Controlled Substances in the Office of the Center Director. In 2020, she began leading the Controlled Substances Program (CSP), which comprises the Controlled Substance Staff (CSS) and the Controlled Substances Initiatives (CSI) group. CSS provides consultation throughout FDA on evaluation of abuse potential of drugs and advises on all matters related to domestic and international drug scheduling. The strategy group pursues activities and policies to identify, mitigate, and manage emerging issues with controlled substances to minimize risks associated with problematic use while enabling appropriate access to these products for medical use.

Dr. Sokolowska is a recognized expert in drug abuse liability and scheduling strategies. She has facilitated numerous initiatives to improve public health by advancing the science of assessing drug abuse liability. Prior to joining FDA, Dr. Sokolowska held senior clinical and medical leadership roles in the pharmaceutical industry. She earned her doctoral degree in psychology from McMaster University in Canada.

Dr. Timothy W. Westlake serves as Chief of Staff at SAMHSA, supporting agency leadership and operations that advance national mental health and substance use priorities. He is a board-certified emergency physician with more than 25 years of clinical experience practicing community emergency medicine, having led federal and state policy efforts addressing the opioid and fentanyl crisis informed by over 29 years personal long-term recovery and a commitment to integrative approaches that support resilience and wellness.

Dr. Westlake played a central role in the development of fentanyl-related substance class scheduling policy, originating the initial legislative framework in Wisconsin in 2016 and contributing to its evolution through enactment in federal law as the HALT Fentanyl Act in 2025. He also drafted the Department of Veterans Affairs prescription opioid reform provisions included in the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA).

At the state level, Dr. Westlake served as Chair of the Wisconsin Medical Examining Board and as a member of the Wisconsin Controlled Substances Board. He was the physician architect of Wisconsin’s prescription opioid reform strategy and served on the Governor’s Task Force on Opioid Abuse. He coauthored and edited the Wisconsin Medical Examining Board Opioid Prescribing Guidelines and founded the Wisconsin Coalition for Prescription Drug Abuse Reduction.

Dr. Westlake received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin, his Doctor of Medicine from the Medical College of Wisconsin, and completed his residency in emergency medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School. He has been a Gracie jiu jitsu black belt instructor and yoga practitioner since 2008. He has been married to his wife, Richele, for 31 years and is a proud father of two daughters.