Blogs

Non-medical, non-pathologising resources to help us all survive the crisis. A list of blogs and helpful resources related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Writing in The Guardian, clinical psychologist Dr. Lucy Johnstone says it is wrong to view our natural fears as mental health disorders. "The more we label our understandable human reactions as disorders, the greater the temptation to disconnect them from their source and focus on new individual “treatments” instead."

I ended up admitted to a psychiatric hospital without being involved in that decision. At a time of stress and vulnerability I expected genuine support. Instead I had the police on my doorstep and I was locked into a building for three weeks. Forced hospitalisation was a serious trauma and I continue to suffer post-traumatic stress over a decade later.

Since nothing good ever comes of pouring petrol upon a blaze, it is the duty of any mental health professional to avoid attacking, silencing or misrepresenting those they purport to serve, especially when such people have passed through our service. But the anti-psychiatry tag is increasingly being used indiscriminately to do those very things.

Why is it that so many people, even some astute critics of the traditional mental health system who are happy to challenge the pathologizing of emotional distress generally, cling uncritically to the term and concept of “eating disorders”?