Full Description
The culture of psychiatric diagnosis causes harm.
It labels people in distress. It silences them. It takes away their
individuality and agency. At its worst, it removes their human rights. It only
asks, 'What's wrong with you?' and doesn't ask, 'What happened to you?'
It fails to acknowledge the complexity of an individual's story and their
social context.
This powerful follow-up to the first Drop the Disorder!
book (PCCS Books, 2019) assembles 40 contributors who are challenging the
culture of psychiatric diagnosis and disorder. They include high-profile
names such as 'V' (formerly known as Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina
Monologues), child therapist Kate Silverton and Canadian physician Gabor
Mate (The
Myth of Normal), leading researchers and writers, including
professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (The Spirit Level) and
Joanna Moncrieff; Robert Whitaker of madinamerica.com, and frontline
campaigner Jacqui Dillon, alongside a host of other activists, service users
and refusers, poets, artists, counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists and other
practitioners and leaders in the mental health and homeless sectors who are
trying to do things differently in their own spheres.
This book's message is 'do
something', and its hard-hitting and inspiring chapters tell us why
and how.
Contents
A note on language and terminology
Foreword - James Davies
Introduction - Jo Watson
PART ONE - REWRITING THE NARRATIVE
1. Why I wrote Insane Medicine - Sami Timimi
2. 'We need to be honest and open that what we are doing is behaviour change' - Jo Watson interviews Joanna Moncrieff
3. Mad in America: Journalism in the service of activism - Robert Whitaker
4. 'When bad things happen, it fucks you up' - Jo Watson interviews John Read
5. Mad in the UK: A space for silenced and critical voices - Peter Kinderman and Jo Watson
6. If it's in you, get it out there! - Jo Watson interviews Gabor Mate
7. The enemy between us: challenging the inequality that erodes ourmental health - Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson
8. 'When we know better, we do better' - Jo Watson interviews Kate Silverton
PART TWO - TRANSFORMING PRACTICE
9. Survival is not a disorder: Resistance, rebellion and revolutionarylove - Bec Bayliss and Akima Thomas
10. Wisdom from the street: what happens when we listen to people'sstories - Pat McArdle
11. 'It's just so important to recognise that people have lives that aremore than just meeting the demands of services' - Jo Watson interviews Hari Sewell
12. Writing a new script for mental health - Sara Boyce and Lisa Morrison
13. Stay curious, keep reading and question the status quo - Sharon McCormick
14. Using the Power Threat Meaning Framework to challengediagnostic practice - Lucy Johnstone, Amanda Griffiths, Ray Middleton, Gareth Morgan,Faye Nikopaschos and Jo Ramsden
15. Community-led approaches to wellbeing - Cormac Russell
16. Disabled people challenging psychiatric diagnosis - Katy Evans and Mel Halacre
PART THREE - ART AS ACTIVISM
17. Poetry in mission: A journey in progress - Jo McFarlane
18. Leading conversations about child sexual abuse: society's shame,not ours - Sophie Olson
19. All I can do is small things. But I care a lot. I'm stubborn. And I'mjust going to keep trying because I have to' - Jo Watson interviews Indigo Daya
20. Dodging diagnosis: CSA survival and creative resistance - Viv Gordon
21. 'When someone owns the truth, becomes accountable for harmsdone, it is pure liberation' - Jo Watson interviews 'V'
PART FOUR - ACTIVIST JOURNEYS
22. 'Psychiatric diagnosis is the first cause of everything bad thathappens in the mental health system' - Jo Watson interviews Paula J. Caplan
23. Story and counterstory: how I took authorship of my life back frompsychiatry - Marnie Wedlake
24. Dialectical behavioral therapy is not my koolade - Rebecca Donaldson
25. 'We have a failed paradigm and that's what needs to change' - Jo Watson interviews Lucy Johnstone
26. Emerging proud to be the change we wish to see in the world - Katie Mottram
27. How I used the law to fight the NHS and won justice for my dad - Nadine Denneth
28. From psychotherapist to activist - Daniel Mackler
29. It started with a book - Anne Guy
30. 'What drives me more than anything is that I know that people canheal' - Jo Watson interviews Jacqui Dillon
