Awais Aftab’s blog about the Sunday Times article on my new book, Chemically Imbalanced, was predictable. Like previous reactions to our serotonin paper, it illustrates how elements of the psychiatric profession attempt to control the message that gets out to the public. Aftab even subtitled his blog ‘British journalists and editors this is for you’.…
Original article: Vincenzo’s commentary: Part 1 Part 2 For those who have not read my original article, it traces the social functions of the mental health system and its relationship to Capitalism. It suggests the principal functions of this system consist of the public provision of care for those who cannot care for themselves, and…
In this blog I look at the argument that mental disorders are brain diseases just like multiple sclerosis or dementia
In this blog I want to come back to the work of Thomas Szasz. The last two blogs argue that bodily states and processes need to be understood in a different way from the way we understand what human beings think and do. Mental ‘illness’ consists of things that people say and do. For Szasz,…
There are two broad approaches to the ‘mental’ that Wittgenstein’s ideas challenge. One is that all our feelings, thoughts and behaviours are caused by, or ‘epiphenomena’ of, a specific brain state or process. This is sometimes referred to as ‘physicalism’ (‘epiphenomenalism’ being one variant of physicalism). On this view- the one that much neuroscience is…
This is the first of a series of blogs presenting a philosophical analysis of the modern mental health system and what it is concerned with. 20th century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, much of whose later work concerns our thinking about the ‘mind’, suggested that the role of philosophy is to identify and clear-up conceptual confusions. Many…
‘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…
Joanna Moncrieff 