This is part two of our highlights of the AD4E Festival 2022 a day of activism, inspiration, panels and talks about challenging the medical models of distress with the A Disorder For Everyone online festival – a day dedicated to friend and colleague Pete Sanders. You can read Part One here and AD4E’s Jo Watson’s interview with Dr Gabor Maté here.
Panel Discussion: Controversies and debates about psychiatric drugs with Professor John Read, Dr Rani Bora, Z’Ev Faith, Stevie Lewis and Professor Joanna Moncrieff.
In this talk we heard from Professor Read describing how drugs are over-prescribed to women, people from low socio-economic groups and the elderly: “We are medicalising poverty” and Dr Bora’s galvanising note of hope “We don’t have to do it the way we have always been doing it – there is always opportunity for a fresh start” and “It takes each of us to stand up, share the news and create change.”
Ruth Dixon shared her powerful poem:
Dr James Davies shared extracts and findings from his new book ‘Sedated: how modern capitalism created our mental health crisis’, to begin to answer the question posed to him by Lucy Johnstone: “How have we ended up in this mess?” James explored the relationship between political economy and mental health, describing how the mental health sector has evolved not for the benefit of service users, but rather the economy- at the expense of what is best for patients.
Dr Jacqui Dillon presented a keynote on Iatrogenic harm, to finish off a day of what she describes as hundreds of people coming together “demanding radical revolutionary change and love”:
You can watch all the talks and events from the festival on A Diagnosis For Everyone Youtube channel.