Tag: Disorder

What the ….? They’re at it again, I hear myself silently saying.

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.  

The World Health Organisation newly published guidance for community mental health urges an end to forced treatment and the adoption of person-centred and rights-based services.

I always seek to use more ordinary language, bringing the person’s own words and metaphors in. It can be painful to hear a person’s detailed and often very meaningful description of their feelings or distress being reduced to a symptom.