Tag: Mental health

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.  

It was as if all my knowledge about, and philosophical encircling around, the heart of madness suddenly broke a limit, gravitated to a central core, and then exploded into freeing fragments radiating outwards towards an infinity of madness, which was both abysmal as well as ecstatic at the same time.

If madness involves a loss or failure of shared reasoning that places the individual outside of the community of immediate and implicit human understanding, does this mean it is without interest or meaning?

People experiencing emotional distress and unusual psychological experiences, need protecting from the pathology-driven medical diagnostic approach, which has resulted in much untoward death and significant harm over the past half century.

When I was invited to review “Call me Crazy”, written and directed by Paula J Caplan, a clinical and research psychologist, playwright, author, advocate, filmmaker and activist from the US, I was aware that this was the first play she had ever written and that it had won second place in a national playwriting competition.