Robert Whitaker has been a journalist at the Albany Times Union and director of publications at Harvard Medical School. A 1998 Boston Globe article series he co-wrote on psychiatric research was a finalist for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. In 1994, he co-founded a publishing company, CenterWatch, that covered the pharmaceutical clinical trials industry. He has written two books about the history of psychiatry, Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, the latter an IRE 2010 book award winner for best investigative journalism. As a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Lab on Institutional Corruption at Harvard University, he wrote Psychiatry Under the Influence with Lisa Cosgrove, professor at University of Massachusetts.

Whitaker is the founder of madinamerica.com and continues to write and speak about the problems with psychiatric drugs and psychiatry.