More on disparaging postpsychiatry

Nice to have an oldfashioned radical like Rob Poole wading into the debate about postpsychiatry (see the e-letter from Robert Higgo and him in response to Pat Bracken and Phil Thomas's article in Psychiatric Bulletin - see also my previous post). And congratulations on his appointment as professor of psychiatry at Glyndwr University, Wrexham, which is a university that's obviously going somewhere.

I think what Rob and Robert are saying is that their books, Clinical skills in psychiatric treatment and Psychiatric interviewing and assessment are better than Pat and Phil's Postpsychiatry, but there's no need surely to be quite so rude about Pat and Phil's book. I will look at Rob and Robert's books and I'm sure there's something good in them, although I doubt whether they have the same "attitude of provisional scepticism" as Pat and Phil. Still, it's important to recognise the psychosocial emphasis of psychiatrists like Rob and Robert - they at least emphasise the link between mental health problems and poverty.

Let's try and elucidate the similarities and differences amongst psychiatrists that can look beyond a narrow biomedical model rather than get into a slanging match about postmodernism.