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From Hyde Park, London, to a Global Movement: Marking Stolen Lives on Prescribed Harm Day

By

 Katinka Blackford Newman

 

April 27, 2026

Editor’s Note: This article is appearing simultaneously on our affiliate site, Mad in the UK.

Three years ago, on 29 July, a small group of us gathered together in Hyde Park, London. It was something we set up through Antidepressant Risks, the not-for-profit I founded to improve informed consent around antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, raise awareness of their potential harms and adverse effects, and give voice to those whose experiences are too often overlooked or dismissed.

There was no stage, no formal programme, no infrastructure. Just people who had been affected, directly or indirectly, by prescribed medication and who felt that something important was missing from public conversation.

What was missing was space.

Space to acknowledge harm that is often misunderstood, minimised, or overlooked altogether. Space to speak openly about experiences that do not fit neatly into prevailing narratives. Space to discuss the often overlooked agony of psychiatric drug withdrawal, and to share stories of PSSD and other legacy effects that can persist long after the drugs have been stopped. Space to remember those who are no longer here.

That first picnic was simple, informal, and quietly powerful. People came with their own stories, their own losses, their own questions. Some spoke. Some listened. Some brought photos of those who had lost lives lost to prescribed drug harm  and they lit candles.  Some simply sat in the presence of others who understood in a way that is hard to explain unless you have lived it.

What began as a small gathering has, over the past three years, grown steadily. Not through large campaigns or institutional backing, but because the need for it has become increasingly clear.

Each year, more people have found their way to the Stolen Lives picnic. Some are individuals who have experienced adverse drug reactions or difficult withdrawal. Others are family members who have lost loved ones and are trying to make sense of what happened. There are clinicians, journalists, campaigners and those simply seeking to understand.

What connects them is not a single viewpoint or ideology. It is a shared recognition that the story of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs is more complex than it is often presented, and that within that complexity, there are lives that have been profoundly affected.

Through Antidepressant Risks, we have tried to hold that space, not as a campaigning organisation in the traditional sense, but as a platform for informed consent, lived experience, and open conversation.

This year marks a significant evolution.

For the first time, we are hosting a dedicated Stolen Lives London Talks event in collaboration with A Disorder 4 Everyone ahead of the picnic. There will be a number of guest speakers, both experts and those with lived experience and it will take place in a private venue, creating a more structured space for reflection, learning, and dialogue before we move to Hampstead Heath for the informal picnic gathering.

Alongside this development in London, something else has begun to take shape.

What started in Hyde Park has resonated far beyond one city. Over the past year in particular, we have heard from people in different parts of the world who have been following Stolen Lives and who are asking how they might take part.

In response, we are launching the first Stolen Lives Global Picnic through Antidepressant Risks.

On 29 July, which we mark as Prescribed Harm Day, we are inviting individuals and communities around the world to host their own Stolen Lives gatherings. These can be as simple or as structured as people wish. A few people meeting in a local park. A small group gathering in a garden. A beach, a woodland, a public green space.

Already, picnics are being organised in Michigan, Corsica, Lyon, Vancouver, Australia, and the Netherlands, with more across the United States to be announced. What is emerging is not a single event, but a distributed, global act of recognition.

There is no requirement to replicate the London event. In fact, the intention is the opposite. The global picnic is designed to be decentralised, flexible, and locally led, with Antidepressant Risks providing a framework and support for those who wish to host.

What matters is the act of marking the day.

What matters is creating a space, however small, where people can come together to acknowledge harm that is often invisible. To remember those who have died. To support those who are still struggling. To share knowledge and experience in a way that feels grounded and human.

In a world where much of our discourse takes place online, the act of gathering physically, even in very small numbers, carries weight. It brings a different kind of presence. It allows for conversations that are harder to have in digital spaces. It creates a sense of shared reality that cannot be replicated through screens.

At the same time, the global nature of this initiative reflects a wider truth.

The issues that sit at the heart of Antidepressant Risks are not confined to one country or one healthcare system. The use of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs is widespread across the world, and so too are the challenges around informed consent, adverse effects, and withdrawal.

By inviting people to host their own picnics, we are not attempting to build a centralised movement with a single voice. We are creating a framework within which many voices can be heard, in many different places, each shaped by local context and individual experience.

As we approach this year’s Prescribed Harm Day, there is a sense that something important is unfolding.

The London event has grown into a meaningful annual gathering. The addition of the talks programme allows for deeper engagement with the issues at hand. And the launch of the global picnic opens the door for participation on a scale that was not imaginable three years ago.

And yet, at its heart, the essence remains unchanged.

A group of people coming together. Stories being shared. Lives being remembered.

In a culture that often moves quickly past discomfort, there is value in pausing. In marking a day. In saying, collectively, that these experiences matter and that they deserve to be seen, heard, and understood.

Whether in London or elsewhere in the world, our invitation is simple.

Join us. Mark the day. Create a space.

Because behind every statistic is a life, and behind every life is a story that deserves to be acknowledged.

For more information about the Stolen Lives London Talks and Picnic, and to find out how to host your own Stolen Lives gathering anywhere in the world, visit AntidepressantRisks.org.

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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Next article “It Was Like They Crushed a Beautiful Flower”: Families Speak Out on the Harms of ECT

Katinka Blackford Newman

https://www.antidepressantrisks.org

Katinka Blackford Newman is a London-based life coach, journalist and author who works with high-achieving professionals to help them go from stuck to unstoppable. She is the author of “The Pill That Steals Lives” and the founder of AntidepressantRisks.org, a not-for-profit organisation raising awareness of the risks and harms associated with antidepressants. Drawing on her background in documentary filmmaking and health journalism, her work sits at the intersection of mental health, behaviour change and lived experience. www.kbnlifecoaching.co.uk

4 COMMENTS

World in so many wars. Be aware of Palantir. Quote on Military Industrial Complex by Dwight D. Eisenhower “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

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judy morris

@judymorris3

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8h

Understand that Republicans and Democrats destroyed the purchasing power of the dollar. Deficit spending and money printing is not only inflation but the inflation tax is the highest tax we pay.

Clash Report

@clashreport

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1h

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian: Their goal was to completely disarm us. If they do that, they’ll come and destroy our land, just like they’re doing in Gaza, and we’d be powerless. Is it right to let them strip us of our military and defense capabilities and bow down to them? We won’t do that. However, we don’t intend to invade other countries. We aren’t seeking territory or expansion—unlike Zionist Israel, which aims for Greater Israel. We’re not looking for Greater Iran. We see all these neighboring countries as our brothers. There’s no need for conflict; we share borders and are neighbors. But Israel doesn’t respect the borders of Islamic nations; it’s focused on invasion and seizing their land.

https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/2085801605132075262/video/1

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Palantir’s Advice on Free Speech and “Countering Digital Surveillance”

Founded by Trump ally and right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, Palantir has attacked the press and works in the digital surveillance space.

Spencer Norris

August 7 2026, 12:02 p.m. ETShare

Palantir founder Peter Thiel, right, listens to President-elect Donald Trump during a meeting with tech leaders in New York City on Dec. 14, 2016. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

The Trump administration tapped a surveillance giant with a record of attacking the press to advise the State Department on free speech.

Among the partners for the State Department’s new “Freedom Tech Excellence Program” is Palantir, the AI and data integration firm started by right-wing powerbroker Peter Thiel. Under the program, company employees will go on temporary assignments to advise the government on “digital freedom and freedom of expression,” including counter-surveillance and dealing with First Amendment issues.

“FTEP brings private sector talent to the Department for limited-term assignments to advance diplomatic efforts on key issues including online freedom of expression, privacy-enhancing technologies, countering digital surveillance, and responsible AI governance,” according to the State Department’s website.

“Neither this State Department, nor the partners they have announced so far, are trustworthy leaders in what they identify as online freedom of expression.”

Palantir is best known for building large-scale data analysis platforms. In addition to corporate contracts, the company’s massive government tenders include database, surveillance, and tracking tools for police and federal authorities. Among its government clients are the military, the State Department itself, and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. Palantir and its key personnel have also been involved in multiple lawsuits against journalistic outlets.

The firm’s history has raised criticisms of its role in the new State Department initiative, especially given the Trump administration own’s dubious track record on First Amendment issues.

“To some extent, this announcement and this program sound like doublespeak,” said Carrie DeCell, a senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Certainly neither this State Department, nor the partners they have announced so far, are trustworthy leaders in what they identify as online freedom of expression or countering digital surveillance.”

The new initiative is planned to run through the beginning of 2029, according to the State Department’s press office. While participants could be placed anywhere in the agency and may require security clearances, the Freedom Tech Excellent Program “is not geared towards bolstering the Department’s internal application or operational use of AI technologies,” the department said in a statement to The Intercept.

Anduril, a military tech firm with links to Palantir and Thiel, was also listed as a partner in the State Department initiative. Anduril’s executive chair Trae Stephens is a partner at Thiel’s Founders Fund, which has invested about $2.6 billion in Anduril. Besides a mutual appreciation of “The Lord of the Rings,” Thiel shares similar politics with Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey and has backed Luckey’s new bank, Erebor.

Neither Anduril nor Palantir responded to requests for comment.

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Palantir and the Feds

Palantir’s work has brought it notoriety across the globe, though at times defining what it does can be complex. It has repeatedly eschewed its label as a surveillance firm. Palantir CEO Alex Karp denied on a podcast last year that the company engages in unconstitutional surveillance work.

And, in an unsigned blog post last year, Palantir wrote, “Contrary to some media reports, we are not a surveillance company.”

Palantir, though, enabled U.S. mass surveillance by bolstering the National Security Agency’s global data collection efforts, according to documents provided to The Intercept by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Palantir helped the NSA expand a program that became notorious for its ability to hoover up Americans’ communications along with those from abroad.

More recently, the firm has become a focal point for protests in the U.K. over its massive contract with the National Health Service and its ties to the Israeli military. Just this week, the NHS apologized after admitting it had falsely stated that Palantir did not have access to identifiable patient data.

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Palantir Is Helping Trump’s IRS Conduct “Massive-Scale” Data Mining

Stateside, the company had a contract with New York City public hospitals that gave it access to patient information. The contract was allowed to expire after it came under scrutiny in an Intercept report. The Intercept also reported this year that Palantir has access to sensitive federal databases for its contract to aid in Internal Revenue Service investigations.

Palantir’s IRS work led to a letter last year from 10 members of Congress to Karp requesting information about the “mega-database” built off IRS data. In response, the firm again denied that it was engaging in widespread surveillance of Americans and that it was building any such database.

Palantir also has a 15-year relationship with ICE. The Intercept found that its contracts with the agency have aided immigration raids, including ones that led to family separations. And Palantir built bespoke software for ICE that helps track self-deportations and visa overstays.

In April, Reps. Dan Goldman and Nydia Velázquez, both Democrats from New York, sent a list of questions directed to ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, demanding information about how they were leveraging Palantir’s technology to create “a mass surveillance ecosystem.”

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Attacks on Free Press

Along with eccentric far-right views and donations to MAGA Republicans, one of Thiel’s most well-known acts was his involvement in the lawsuit that drove the news outlet Gawker into bankruptcy.

Thiel had become upset with Gawker over the media company’s reporting about his personal life. He went on to spend $10 million secretly bankrolling lawsuits against the company, finally scoring with a major judgment in favor of the wrestler Hulk Hogan that caused Gawker to close and sell off its assets.

Journalism advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said that Thiel constituted a “serious threat” to the group’s principles of “freedom of press and independence of media,” particularly in light of the secrecy around his role in the case. His actions were, RSF said, “nothing different to governments using legal or economic leverage to shut down a media that happens to displease them.”

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Kash Patel Is Using MAGA’s Favorite Tool to Muzzle the Free Press

Palantir also recently filed a suit against Swiss online news magazine Republik for reporting on how Palantir repeatedly failed to land contracts with the Swiss government. Palantir claimed that Republik had an obligation to run a list of rebuttals from the firm.

A Swiss court, however, handed Palantir a defeat by siding with the outlet on all but one of the 23 charges and forcing Palantir to pay most of Republik’s legal fees. (In a since-deleted post on Medium responding to the Republik lawsuit, Palantir once again denied that it is a surveillance company.)

David Greene, senior counsel for anti-surveillance nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that positioning Palantir as a bulwark for civil rights undermined the government’s own free speech initiative.

“There’s a big problem right now with the U.S. government and the people outside government who exercise power, in terms of trying to claim free speech as a value when they clearly don’t sincerely hold that value,” Greene said. “It really lowers the esteem of the U.S. in terms of having any moral authority on freedom of expression grounds.” Share

IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.

What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government. 

This is not hyperbole.

Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.

Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.” 

The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.

We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?

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Contact the author:

Spencer Norris spencernorris @protonmail.com @norris_reporton X

Jul 30, 2026 Iran war explained

With unprecedented access, BBC World Service makes a 25-hour train journey across the length of Iran. From the country’s political heart in Tehran to its strategic southern coast at the Strait of Hormuz, #BBCEye Investigations meets Iranians from across the social and political divide. Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 https://bbc.in/3VyyriM Reaching parts of Iran usually inaccessible to foreign journalists, BBC Eye builds a rare picture of a nation at war. A grieving mother in Minab, where a school hit in the opening hours of the conflict became one of its defining tragedies; mourners at the funeral of Iran’s Supreme Leader, defiant in the face of foreign pressure; and the young Iranians facing an uncertain future, guarded about what they feel they can and can’t say about the regime, or about their own lives. The BBC’s Senior international correspondent Nawal Al Maghafi was reporting from Iran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC’s Persian Service. These restrictions apply to all international media organisations operating in Iran.

00:00 North to South: A journey across Iran 01:29 Boarding the train 03:36 Protests demanding the regime’s downfall 05:18 Intervention from the US and Israel 06:30 Minab: the school strike 08:07 Inside the school 10:04 Meeting one of the first responders 11:38 Visiting the cemetery 13:00 The Strait of Hormuz 14:11 Strikes on Bandar Abbas 15:58 The supreme leader’s funeral

Brokipedia

Grokipedia Appears to Have Completely Broken and Nobody Noticed

“As far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months.”

By Victor Tangermann

Published Aug 6, 2026 1:54 PM EDT

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We certainly wouldn’t blame you for having completely forgotten that last year, Elon Musk tried to reinvent Wikipedia because he thought it was too woke.

In October, his AI startup xAI launched Grokipedia, named after its AI chatbot. The encyclopedia stole human-written and edited pages from Wikipedia wholesale and ran them through a large language model, which also fielded user-submitted edits, to better reflect Musk’s contorted worldviews.

The site was hardly an exemplary of objectivity. It was quickly found to heavily cite an infamous neo-Nazi forum as a source of information, desperately tried to paint Tesla’s Cybertruck as a successful and desirable electric pickup truck, and validated Musk’s favorite conspiracy theories. But it was a major cultural moment, garnering countless stories in the media and discussions on podcasts over Musk’s attempt to control the spread of information.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the desperate attempt to twist the largest online encyclopedia in human history into an extension of an almost-trillionaire’s bigoted mind appears to have ground to a screeching halt — and, damningly, barely anybody seems to have noticed.

According to a new investigation by Lawfare, Grokipedia appears to have entirely stopped updating itself sometime earlier this year. Reviewing suggested edits from humans has also ground to a halt.

“As far as we can tell, no entry has changed in more than three months,” Lawfare concluded of the site, which is now owned by SpaceX since it merged with Musk’s AI efforts.

Worse yet, the site’s edit log appears to have broken completely as well, making it impossible to track which user-suggested changes were “accepted” or “rejected” by the AI.

By January, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism had already observed that xAI’s Grok was making more edits to its own articles than acting on human-suggested ones, suggesting a bottoming out of interest for the project.

Since then, it has turned into a ghost town, a completely redundant and misinformation-filled copy of Wikipedia, which remains one of the last bastions of human-edited and verified sources of information on the internet.

Even when Lawfare submitted an “uncomplicated factual update” about SpaceX having launched its IPO in June — an irrefutable fact that any allegedly “open source, comprehensive collection of all knowledge” should probably include — the Grokipedia entry remained stagnant.

Even pages that are purportedly drawing millions of views aren’t updating. The most recent approved update Lawfare could locate — to the entry about OpenAI’s ChatGPT — dates back to April 24.

As of today, Lawfare found that that there are 13,002 suggestions that “sit unresolved, trapped ‘in review.’”

“Altogether, what we found was that the ‘live’ change feed is gone, past decisions were retroactively reverted without explanation, new decisions are not being issued, and article text appears frozen (and, in some cases, outdated),” the publication concluded. “We do not know whether xAI is preparing a major revision or has altogether abandoned active development of the project.”

It’s a precarious situation. Despite having been abandoned, Similarweb data suggests Grokipedia received over six million visits in June alone. Hundreds of thousands of sites are also still citing Musk’s encyclopedia, which could spread misinformation even further.

https://dda59c55413d3dcaa06826e400f95377.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html

Futurism has reached out to SpaceX for an update on the project, but considering the reputation of Musk’s companies and their refusal to interact with the media, we’re not holding our breath for a response.

More on Grokipedia: Elon Musk Is Not Beating the Allegations: Grokipedia Cites a Hardcore Nazi Website 42 Times

Victor Tangermann

Senior Editor

I’m a senior editor at Futurism, where I edit and write about NASA and the private space sector, as well as topics ranging from SETI and artificial intelligence to tech and medical policy.

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1782

George Washington creates the Purple Heart

HISTORY.com Editors

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Published: November 13, 2009 Last Updated: May 28, 2025

On August 7, 1782, in Newburgh, New York, General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, creates the “Badge for Military Merit,” a decoration consisting of a purple, heart-shaped piece of silk, edged with a narrow binding of silver, with the word Merit stitched across the face in silver. It would come to be widely known as the Purple Heart.

The badge was to be presented to soldiers for “any singularly meritorious action” and permitted its wearer to pass guards and sentinels without challenge. The honoree’s name and regiment were also to be inscribed in a “Book of Merit.”

Washington Commands the Continental Army

At the time of the Revolution, America had no money, no military and barely a chance at success. Even George Washington was not immediately seen as a strong military commander, often making mistakes.

1:02m watch

Washington’s “Purple Heart” was awarded to only three known soldiers during the Revolutionary War: Elijah Churchill, William Brown and Daniel Bissell, Jr. The “Book of Merit” was lost, and the decoration was largely forgotten until 1927, when General Charles P. Summerall, the U.S. Army chief of staff, sent an unsuccessful draft bill to Congress to “revive the Badge of Military Merit.”

In 1931, Summerall’s successor, General Douglas MacArthur, took up the cause, hoping to reinstate the medal in time for the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth. On February 22, 1932, Washington’s 200th birthday, the U.S. War Department announced the creation of the “Order of the Purple Heart.”

In addition to aspects of Washington’s original design, the new Purple Heart also displays a bust of Washington and his coat of arms. The Order of the Purple Heart, the oldest American military decoration for military merit, is awarded to members of the U.S. armed forces who have been killed or wounded in action against an enemy. It is also awarded to soldiers who have suffered maltreatment as prisoners of war.