Tag: psychiatry

Wherever you find mental health services to have expanded, you find a parallel increase in the numbers who have been classed as disabled due to a mental health disorder.

The concepts we use have undermined our natural resilience, sensitised us to an idea of our vulnerability, and encouraged us to transfer our agency to practitioners who use a system as if it has scientific validity and is clinically useful.

Professor Sir Robin Murray recently noted that ‘sadly, a few psychologists appear to have been stranded in a Jurassic world where they spend their energies railing against a type of psychiatry which became extinct years ago.’ If true, this would obviously pose a problem for those critics of psychiatry.

Why do we keep treating 'mental health problems' like diagnosable medical conditions instead of the complex existential phenomena they obviously are? Why do we submit to the false authority and doctrinal absurdities of hubristic 'mind doctors', when a holistic, humane, preventative perspective is clearly required?

Values matter as much in the digital space as in everyday life. Despite the recent update by the Royal College of Psychiatrists of its professional values, it is disappointing that an opportunity has been missed to hold to account its own members for their behaviour on social media platforms.