Thinking differently about mental health

Part 1 of the Adult Psychiatric Morbidty Survey (APMS) for 2023/4 has been published (see website ). The last time this survey was sampled w...

Sami Timimi in his recent book, Searching for normal , describes how the diagnoses of autism and ADHD have changed over the years. They have...

Pullman et al ( 2025 ) consider how social work could contribute to the transformation in mental health services from a predominately medica...

A  Sunday Times investigation found that a quarter of women in their fifties and sixties take antidepressants, and 15% of women over 50 have...

I’ve mentioned the problems with mental health services in Greater Manchester before (eg. see previous post ). Mental health workers in Manc...

Joanna Moncrieff’s abstract for her Sowerby Project 10 year anniversary public lecture, ‘Changing our minds: How we have been misled about t...

Penelope Campling’s book On the brink   with patients’ stories from her life in psychiatry starts at the end of the asylum years, when many ...

Joanna Moncrieff’s book Chemically imbalanced at least seems to have ruffled a few feathers, as it has led to a Lancet editorial . It’s not ...

Peter Gøtzsche is not joking when he asks if psychiatrists are more mad than their patients (see his Mad in America blog post ). I understan...

I’ve mentioned the 1996 article by David Kaiser ‘Against biologic psychiatry’ in a previous post . He described why he found it increasingly...

The executive order establishing the US President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission has caused concern amongst leading psychiatric or...

In a reply to a letter from Peter Gøtzsche, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency ( MHRA ) has made clear that it has no ...

Psychological problems are common. People don't always adjust to difficulties in life and relationships very well. They don't always...

Doctors have always exaggerated the advantages of medication. But medication, including recreational drugs, can’t just be eliminated. There ...

I worry that the clash between Joanna Moncrieff and Awais Aftab about her new book Chemically imbalanced has become too personal (see eg. la...

People are being misled about the nature of mental illness. Of course brain abnormalities can cause organic mental illness, such as delirium...

Functional mental illness is an abstract not concrete concept. It differs from organic mental illness where there is brain dysfunction. Illn...

As I’ve said before (see eg. previous post ), I’m inclined to believe that antidepressants are no better than placebo. I can’t prove this bu...

I’m not sure who advised the king about the appointment of Ed Bullmore as Regius Professor of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psy...

I’ve mentioned before my concerns about the notion that antidepressants work through being emotional suppressants (see eg. previous post ). ...

Jo Moncrieff in her new book Chemically imbalanced (see eg. previous post ) discusses Peter Kramer’s 1993 book Listening to Prozac (see Wik...

Awais Aftab has responded (see his blog post ) to the Sunday Times  magazine article about Joanna Moncrieff (see eg. previous post ). He rai...

I mentioned the Sunday Times magazine article about Joanna Moncrieff in my last post , where I focused on the issue of whether antidepressa...

The Sunday Times magazine has an article about Joanna Moncrieff promoting the publication this week of her new book , Chemically imbalanced...

I talked about Jan Foudraine in the first  chapter of my edited Critical Psychiatry book . As I said, he became the ‘personal ambassador...

Owen Jones is a succesful Guardian journalist. He was central to the Jeremy Corbyn movement. He feels as though he has been held back by h...

Linda Gask, who I have mentioned before (see eg. previous post ), has reviewed Conversations in critical psychiatry (2024) edited by Awais ...

I responded (follow my Twitter thread ) to a  tweet  by  Justin Garson (mentioned in  previous post ) . What he said was:- I can’t fathom ho...