Review of The Therapy Industry: the Irresistible Rise of the Talking Cure, and Why it Doesn’t Work By Paul Moloney, Pluto Press, 2013 Everyone sings the praises of talking therapy these days. A myriad of therapies, each with their own logic and rationale and a technical sounding acronym, claim to cure an increasingly diverse range…
There are some things to applaud about the recently released update of the NICE bipolar guidelines (1,2), not least the recognition that the diagnosis has been inappropriately applied to children with behavioural problems. Hopefully this will help curtail the worrying trend of using toxic bipolar drugs in this age group. As usual, however, the Guidelines…
In the light of the much trumpeted claims that recent research has identified genes for schizophrenia, it is important to review the track record of this type of endeavour (1). Despite thousands of studies costing millions of dollars, and endless predictions that the genetics of schizophrenia would shortly be revealed, the field has so far…
German psychiatrist, Stefan Leucht and colleagues, have produced another really important paper (1). The results indicate that the small differences usually found between antidepressants and placebo are far below the sort of differences that would be clinically detectable or meaningful. Leucht et al have conducted the first thorough, systematic attempt to provide some empirical evidence…
‘Psychiatric prejudice’ is a term being bandied about these days, mainly by aggrieved psychiatrists who feel that psychiatry is not being given equal status with other medical specialities. Ordinary people, other doctors and medical students are all prejudiced because they do not appreciate that psychiatry is a proper medical activity, and critics of psychiatry are…
A long overdue debate is raging about the chemical imbalance theory of depression. Having been deluged with this idea for two decades now, the general public has come to believe that it is a scientifically proven fact. An LBC radio presenter recently announced that he had suffered from depression and he knew it was a…
The FIAT (Financial Incentives for Adherence Trial) study, published last year, highlights the paradoxical nature of our current attitude to the use mind-altering drugs. In this randomised controlled trial people with ‘psychotic disorders’ were paid £15 a time to take an injection of an ‘antipsychotic’ drug (1). The payment increased rates of compliance only marginally,…
People have used psychoactive substances to dull and deaden pain, misery and suffering since time immemorial, but only recently, in the last few decades, have people been persuaded that what they are doing in this situation is rightly thought of as taking a remedy for an underlying disease. The spread of the use of prescription…
In order to explore the current political context of mental health services, as I will be doing in some upcoming blogs, it is necessary to establish what the modern mental health system actually consists of and what function it serves. It is only by tracing the historical development of mental health services, and analysing how…
Two pieces of research have been published over the last two years that should prompt a major reorientation of the treatment of schizophrenia and psychosis, and a fundamental reappraisal of the use of antipsychotic drugs in general. Put together, these studies suggest that the standard approach to treating serious mental health problems may cause more…
Joanna Moncrieff 