Drop the Disorder!: Challenging the culture of psychiatric diagnosis

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I was a 26-year-old support worker sat face to face with a recently sectioned, police-escorted patient on a mental health ICU ward. As this patient looked me in the eye with what took considerable effort to fight the level of sedation they were under, they asked me… “What can you actually do for me, how can you help me, you look like a teenager, how can you help someone of my age, how can you understand what I’ve been through?” Even gender identity is a “mental illness.” Washington Blade ran this article this morning: “Denmark no longer considers transgender people mentally ill”

Johann Hari, journalist and writer; author of Lost Connections: why you’re depressed and how to find hope Anyone who wants to deal with the epidemic of distress and despair in our society should engage deeply with Jo Watson’s work and this massively important book.'

I see an increasing number of clients—and particularly young people—who arrive at their first appointment convinced that they have bipolar, or even worse ARE ‘bipolar.’ Many, by the time they get to me, have internalized this as part of their identity along with the understanding that it’s a lifelong situation.” I made my Recovery in (detail removed) in 1984 as a result of (carefully) coming off strong medication with the help of Psychotherapy. Challenging, insightful and often controversial… a truly innovative and valuable book that functions both as a learning resource and an ardent call to arms.’

This is a limited numbers online workshop with the aim of creating a space for interaction and discussion for participants. Free and reduced places are limited and available on a first come first served basis. This unique contribution to the psychology literature remains accessible through compelling narratives, poetry and artwork. This is not just a book; it is a call to action to advocate for a paradigm shift in modern mental health care. It offers an alternative framework for understanding distress and promotes hope for recovery. International Society for Psychological and Social Approaches to Psychosis (UK)– works to promote greater knowledge of the different psychological approaches to psychosis and psychotic experiences – psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, arts-based, family and holistic approaches – and their better integration with each other and with pharmaceutical approaches. Imagine if a woman went to a police station to tell them that she had been raped, and what she heard was, “We offer humanistic trauma informed approaches which validate experience and provide people with a safe context in which to tell their stories.”

Help and support

I would like to record a Professional account of my Recovery because I genuinely need to – to protect myself against misrepresentation*. I would also like to Record my Recovery to contribute towards improvement in the Mental Health situation in the UK. Lucy then talked the audience—a mixture of professionals, current and former ‘service users’, carers and interested lay people—through a critique of diagnosis and an overview of the alternatives. In the afternoon there was time for discussion and trying out some of these ideas. Since going online in 2020 we've attracted thousands more people from around the world to our annual online festival, our poetry events and our ongoing workshops. We share lots of great pieces by critics of mainstream psychiatry around the world, passionately promote appropriate events and publications as well as doing the crucial networking which makes our movement stronger by the day. It draws on the expertise of those with experiential knowledge of the mental health system to review the past, challenge the present and explore how we might fight for a future, better way of responding to mental crisis and distress that places the service user at the centre.

It was February 2016, the UK-EU referendum debate was beginning to warm up and my tolerance for absorbing toxic tweets and frustrating Facebook posts was dwindling fast. What then pushed me over the edge was yet another celebrity-inspired media frenzy about a psychiatric “illness.” Have MIA authors ever actually listened to a political activist, or do all you folks know how to do is promote psychotherapy, recovery, and healing, and to do it by making appeals to pity? This online workshop is aimed at people who reject the culture of psychiatric diagnosis and who want to further explore non-pathologising ways of supporting people who are experiencing emotional distress particularly when the distress has been or is at risk of being explained by society, services and many professionals as evidence of ‘mental illness.’ https://www.washingtonblade.com/2017/01/04/denmark-no-longer-considers-transgender-people-mentally-ill/Finally, spoken word artist Jasmine Gardosi ended the day by bringing one of my own poems—inspired by voice hearer and activist Eleanor Longden—to life. with overwhelming emotional issues typically does not help them. Instead, a psychiatric diagnosis usually This book is a revised and retitled second edition of A Straight Talking Introduction to Being a Mental Health Service User(2010). AD4E asks not 'What’s wrong with you?’ but 'What happened to you?’ a question that encourages the framing of distress as an understandable reaction to trauma, adversity, or just the struggles we all face as human beings in a difficult world. So grateful for you giving us this time and opportunity Jacqui…. your passion and knowledge is so inspiring. I have been able to take so much away with me. I’d love the opportunity to hear more of your thinking.