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Let’s try to get some other messages out there that challenge the old, tired, damaging narrative of diagnosis and disorder. Messages that offer hope and solidarity to people and messages that put the responsibility for the primary causal factors of emotional distress firmly back where it belongs.

Our desperation to view mental disorder as a disease leads to unhelpful assumptions that it is somehow distinct from the ‘true’ self, encourag[ing] the supposition that it can be treated or cured without changing the individual’s personality. This has led to a huge programme of medically-disguised social engineering, in which people are encouraged to change the way they think and behave, by being persuaded that they have a medical condition that needs to be eliminated.

My heart goes out to anyone experiencing withdrawal but especially those surrounded by unsupportive judgemental people, and those who are so ill they can’t work and are struggling to navigate a heartless and cynical ‘benefits’ system. Denial and minimisation make it even more difficult for people to access help, support or seek understanding. Their only crime is to have experienced difficulty from a prescribed treatment, yet they are treated as medical pariahs.

Johann Hari and Lucy Johnstone join us to talk about their new books. A panel discussion will follow to further discuss the issues raised. Thu,...

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."