Encouraging news emerged from Australia last month when the government announced its intention to radically change the country’s suicide-prevention strategy. In keeping with the draft report of Christine Morgan (Suicide Prevention Advisor), there will be a shift away from viewing […]
Continue ReadingDear politicians Future generations will look back on our efforts to resolve our current ‘mental health’ crisis with a mixture of horror and amusement. I can imagine – in the year 2119 and beyond – social history courses exploring […]
Continue ReadingI am a vocal critic of biological psychiatry and, like all of us on this side of the debate, receive regular criticism (and sometimes personal attacks) from those wedded to the ‘illness like any other’ approach to human suffering. One […]
Continue ReadingAll services and projects require money if they are to survive. As already discussed in a previous post, the source of this funding will exert an overarching influence on the practices of the initiative in question. Irrespective of whether we […]
Continue ReadingIn the first part of this blog, I provided an overview of how innovative ideas in mental health are typically nullified by advocates of the dominant bio-medical paradigm. As a consequence, change in Western psychiatry is painfully slow and […]
Continue ReadingI felt a creeping despondency when I learnt that the documentary, My Baby Psychosis and Me, had recently won a MIND charity media award. It seemed incredible that an organisation like MIND – once a leading progressive voice and advocate […]
Continue ReadingI’m 58 years old and, to date, I have yet to experience a sustained mental health crisis or period of overwhelm; I feel blessed by my good fortune. Nonetheless, in my 30-plus years of work within the mental health system, […]
Continue ReadingIn part I of this blog, I listed three reasons to be cheerful about the future of mental health. Here I describe another three positive developments that promote optimism that, over the next few years, we might witness radical improvements […]
Continue ReadingWestern psychiatry is fundamentally flawed and, therefore, a paradigm shift away from the prevalent ‘illness like any other’ approach is urgently required. Despite the powerful vested interests continuing to actively obstruct change, I remain optimistic that, in the next decade […]
Continue ReadingIn my previous post, I argued that it was unrealistic – even naïve – to expect that radical change away from bio-medical approaches to human suffering can be achieved organically, one step at a time, by innovative practitioners embedded within […]
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