Tag: Disorder

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.

The voices at AD4E were those of empowered people, powerful in the moment, leaving the perpetrators, and supporters of the perpetrators through their use of diagnostic labels, firmly in the shadows.

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”?

What follows is a doctor-patient interaction that I hope will become more commonplace across psychiatric outpatient clinics.