Blogs

This research study aims to improve service responses to repeated self-harm. Are you a health professional working in a service which supports people (18+) who repeatedly self-harm? 

The ERNI (Emotions aRe Not Illnesses) declaration is based on the idea that distress does not equate to disease, dysfunction, dysregulation, or chemical imbalance. Signatories believe that there needs to be a shift from illness and diagnosis ideas to personal narratives and understandings.

It’s not dangerous to think. The idea that it is, which underlies CBT, has a long line of proponents, from the Spanish Inquisitors to Soviet Russia, who would be only too happy to see it advanced. Humans love to shut down other people’s minds, especially the minds of the most hurting and vulnerable, which are often the most interesting.  

Our system fails because it colludes with social structures that themselves generate harmful ways of being in the world. The sector at best sedates these states while at the same time exonerates harmful social arrangements by over-emphasising the so-called internal and disordered causes of structural distress.  

We do not have to end up on a cocktail of drugs to function if we have a mental breakdown, and with support from the professionals, we can reduce our medication or stop all medication and get our lives back.