Drop the Disorder!: Challenging the culture of psychiatric diagnosis

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They generally do what they want, they respond to whatever suits them (sometimes public opinion may influence) but much more often it’s the pharmaceutical industry. That said, a COMPETENT therapist who keeps a safe and sound distance from the medicator is essential. And for every new personal story, there becomes a greater strength in number, and that increased collective weight encourages a belief that the ideology can start to penetrate. As a counsellor with 18 years under my belt, I've listened to many life-stories, read many books, attended many sceminas and training courses. Therefore, until we witness a paradigm shift in the way the developed world makes sense of human suffering and overwhelm, a reliance on biomedical language will, to some extent, be necessary.

A label such as ‘clinical depression’ or ‘schizophrenia’ written on a health record can often be an essential requirement for accessing state benefits and a necessary passport into specialist mental health services” (chapter 10, p127). These too are ways that the survivors of abuse decide not to face their own feelings, and instead to abuse other survivors.But it was the power of this interaction and the difficult feelings I experienced that encouraged me to start asking myself for the first time… “Exactly how am I helping these people I’m supposed to be caring for? And I again find myself worrying that the nuance of this book’s message is consequentially being lost even within an admirable effort to create positive action.

I didn’t have an answer for this patient because, like them, I was doing what the system told me to do. If Close ever wound up with the psych label of “schizophrenia” she would find out that the word was very meaningful indeed. establishments I can see now how much of my initial confusion and dislocation to the medical process was simply based on a gut feeling and disconnection that has often been hard to quantify or articulate. The appetite for challenging the mainstream narrative was huge and by March 2020 we had taken our AD4E day event to 21 cities around the UK and involved many contributors in the process. I guess I’ve set this challenge for myself (and it is very frustrating and disheartening when others don’t understand what I’ve been through–or worse they couldn’t be bothered to listen).And this is how the book describes those at the mercy of the system, diagnosed, labelled, and condemned to a process that disadvantages their recovery, and ultimately their right to be a person. However I think there are infinitely better ways of responding to distress and suffering than assigning a label that has been created around a table! As such it marks a refreshing and pivotal departure from the dominant ‘illness’ narrative we have come as a society to accept unquestioningly, and to impose on other cultures. Jacqui is part of a collective voice demanding a radical shift in the way we understand and respond to experiences currently defined as psychiatric illnesses. Despite the progressive image conveyed by British critics of psychiatry (both professionals and survivors), the biomedical discourse in the UK is still deeply embedded in public consciousness and actively promoted in anti-stigma campaigns and media reporting.