We all oppose the cuts but we must move away from a system that makes as being medicalised a precondition for receiving benefits & care. we need to put disability support on surer footing, which would happen if we assessed not the basis of 'pathology' but functional impairment.
The dominance of the medical model in mental health provision has driven & exacerbated mental health disability by generating poor outcomes, low recovery rates & growing iatrogenic harm. This is why I'm bemused by disability activists who ardently support it....1/2
A pioneer of autism research is asking us to rethink the diagnosis, only viewing as autistic those diagnosed in early childhood (usually before 3 or 5) with severe intellectual/language impairments. Everyone else with the label may be suffering from something else...
www.tes.com/magazine/tea...
I'm writing a series of articles on psychotherapy, social justice, the 'social unconscious' and how therapists may better integrate what I call a "socially informed" perspective in their work. The clinical application of these ideas is really undeveloped in the psych-professions. What should I read?
In this article Lucy Foulkes misses the mark. It's not that we're "over-diagnosing mental illness", as she suggests, it's that we're over-medicalising & over-depoliticising widespread social suffering as requiring psych rather than structural solutions.
www.theguardian.com/books/2026/f...
When you educate an entire generation to believe that "anything is possible with hard work", and then build an economic system that is rigged against most hard-working people ever achieving any notable wealth or 'success', how can widespread anxiety not be an inevitable result?
How often it is that a young person’s pain (self-harm; eating problems) is a desperate attack, via the self, on a dysfunctional family, idea, school or wider system; a plea for systemic change. But we rarely see it like that - instead we pathologise them & treat *their* disorder.
'Targeting' refers to the way an ideology redirects people’s anger & grievances away from their true sources (i.e. inequality) & toward groups or objects the ideology wants to blame, even when they're unconnected to the problem. This device is a favourite among many deflecting despots.
"The choice is not between autism or nothing, but rather between autism & about a dozen other diagnostic possibilities," says Aftab..... And that’s precisely the problem with psychiatry; the logic reduces distressing human experience to a menu of predefined pathologising categories, & 'nothing' else
We often discuss how psych-diagnosis 'opens the door to care'. But let's talk about how it regularly shuts it, via 'diagnostic overshadowing’: when physical complaints get wrongly attributed to 'mental illness', with examinations & treatments being consequently delayed or denied.
The proliferation of psych-diagnoses isn't leading young people to 'organise against state & fascist oppression' its sadly enabling them to better align with (via drugs & minor accommodations) the dominant structures of contemporary neoliberal society. You'll never diagnose your way to liberation.
The proliferation of psych-diagnoses isn't leading young people to 'organise against state & fascist oppression' its sadly enabling them to better align with (via drugs & minor accommodations) the dominant structures of contemporary neoliberal society. You'll never diagnose your way to liberation.
Mind your Language.......We’re not 'over-diagnosing mental health problems' - we’re 'over-medicalising human suffering'. The distiction matters! - My new blog on Mad in UK 👇👇
www.madintheuk.com/2025/12/over...
Interesting, you're right, but I'm thinking of prospects - boomers could aspire to buy a home, have hope is an expanding economy, entered life with less debt to repay - there was a sprit of rising affluence and progress; as opposed to the fear of decline & ever harder prospects...
The Baby Boomers (who had far easier paths to wealth & stability) are the ones most likely to call Gen Z the 'snowflake generation.' Yet it was Boomer-era politics that entrenched neoliberalism, & its subsequent harms, so a more conciliatory stance toward those inheriting those harms seems warranted
We clearly have a problem with over-medicalising distress (social suffering) and we on the left need to recognise this. Over-medicalisation has exonerated socio-political drivers of distress and located problems in self. We must challenge this, and repoliticise our responses to distress.
I don't think "mental health conditions are being over-diagnosed" but that "real suffering is being over-medicalised". These are very different things. The former tries to justify cutting support, but the latter does not: it acknowledges real suffering but asks for different (psychosocial) provision
I don't think "mental health conditions are being over-diagnosed" but that "real suffering is being over-medicalised". These are very different things. The former tries to justify cutting support, but the latter does not: it acknowledges real suffering but asks for different (psychosocial) provision
Assuming a 'diagnostic identity' as your core identity (as it's supposedly hardwired into your brain) centres 'disorder' as a core & enduring characteristic of your self, over which the psych elite now have ideological & instrumental authority. This doesn’t sound like liberation.
If I’m sitting next to someone at a event whose politics I disagree with, rather than enter a debate with them, I've learnt to explore why they hold their views. That way I usually learn something intriging, while they feel heard. And overall its a far more pleasant & instructive evening.
If you think expanding the mental health sector is the way to remedy growing societial suffering, you've drunk the cool aid. The expansion of that sector (its ideology & interventions) only worsens the problem. The solution is the right kind of social, economic & political change.
The BMJ has altered it's original news piece on the recent antidepressant withdrawal study, "to clarify the study’s limitations and to add comments from James Davies" as the editor says....
- We all appreciate this critical amendment 👇
www.bmj.com/content/390/...
"This flawed & misleading paper should at the very least be amended to reflect its clear limitations, with a formal acknowledgement by the authors. I will be writing to the Chief Medical Officer to this effect".
- Dr Simon Opher, Labour MP
www.standard.co.uk/comment/anti...
I think it is poor. He seems oblivious to the fact that there are longer-term RCTs on withdrawal, and that ANTLER was not included in the review's primary analysis! He writes with authority yet makes very basic errors.....
I think it is poor. He seems oblivious to the fact that there are longer-term RCTs on withdrawal, and that ANTLER was not included in the review's primary analysis! He writes with authority yet makes very basic errors.....
My response in New York Times: “If you are looking at people on the drugs for eight weeks, you are not going to find withdrawal,” said James Davies “It’s like saying cocaine isn’t addictive because we did a study on people who had only been taking it for eight weeks"👇
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/h...
I delivered a presentation yesterday in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, on the over-prescribing of antidepressants. Here is one of my slides👇
Researchers at Imperial College and King’s College London have been accused of endangering patient safety after publishing a study suggesting that most people do not experience severe withdrawal after coming off the drugs". #backfire
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07...
The word 'depression' is a catch-all phrase which, once you get to know a person deeply, tells us very little about the nuances, origins & substance of their experience. I find the phrase clinically unhelpful & the medicalised meanings with which it is laden regularly misleading.
As Robert Spitzer (chair of DSM-III) once told me about DSM-5: they created it to make money. As everyone would need to buy the new edition, the publisher, American Psychiatric Association, would make millions a year selling it. The same for DSM-6... New edition, familiar hustle.
