‘A wonderful opportunity to be inspired by the dynamic, passionate developmental psychologist and community activist Lois Holzman and her change-making colleagues.’
Are psychiatric and psychological labels and identities helping or hurting? Do we need them? How do they impact our ways of seeing and feeling? A recent Mad in America blog by Lois explores the ‘looping effect’ inherent in psychiatric labelling: People become more and more identified with and captured by their labels, becoming more and more like the categories they’ve been put in. Their ways of understanding who-I-am and who-I-am-becoming are dangerously narrowed and deformed. But that’s not the only damage done, argues Lois. For those seeking help with their emotional distress, much of the ‘mental health’ field inflicts a second-level label: i.e., that of the vulnerable victim — the therapy patient.