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. 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? These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments.

It was because I couldn’t get away from the reality of how difficult the message it communicates so brilliantly still remains such a challenge. And “A further barrier to language change may derive from the privileges granted to those who have been given a psychiatric diagnosis. 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. I have a (very fraudulent) SMI 10 year Record Qualification + As a (detail removed) I’m sure I’m Qualified to look after myself.I have many friends who still drink the koolaid and strongly think that their psych drugs are really helping them out and I must admit that I can totally relate to that mindset. I made my Recovery in (detail removed) in 1984 as a result of (carefully) coming off strong medication with the help of Psychotherapy. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. And psychotherapy is always based on that, the victim is to change, and no one else is to be held accountable. I live in a place where cultural norms are much more accepting of LGBT, of “sexual diversity,” of gender, and a bit more tolerant in regard to identity politics, so I guess I haven’t thought about it’s impact and connection to psychiatric diagnostic labels much, but I can certainly see there is a deep stigma.

Celebrity and comedian Ruby Wax was on a riotous roll, and everywhere you looked, it seemed, someone was promoting the “broken brain” message. Joining me on our admin team are activist and blogger Nicky Hayward, clinical psychologist and author Gary Sidley, counselor Teri Tivey, lived experience educator Joanne Newman and social worker Lanie Pianta. 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. has enabled me to understand and communicate the reasons for the incongruence I once felt in being part of the system.an institutional process that absolved my lack of human connection and moral responsibility because I wasn’t caring for this patient, I was prison guarding them. All are justifiably impassioned and subversive; yet reasoned, full of wisdom, common sense and rigorous analysis, informed by the latest evidence on trauma and attachment. She is a key figure in the international Hearing Voices Movement, has co-edited three books, published numerous articles and papers and is on the editorial board of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches. 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.