By Pino Pini. A summary from the SE&LMHS project presentation at the HPFT Recovery Conference, Watford 8/10/2019. The SE&LMHS project is based on the assumption that mental health is not only a matter for special services, but should include the whole local community. Several activities beneficial for mental health can be created by working together
By Joanna Moncrieff. This blog was inspired by a talk I gave at the conference of the American Association for Philosophy and Psychiatry in May 2017. The title of this talk was: Many ways of being human: challenging the medical view of mental disorders and the implications for psychiatry. The title is taken from a book by British
The Toronto Critical Psychiatry Reading and Discussion Group has been meeting since 2018. It has been open to all interested people. The aims of the group have included: 1) a better understanding and evaluation of some of the assumptions of psychiatry; 2) fostering an engagement between psychiatry and the humanities; 3) considering psychiatric care beyond the current dominant
By Hugh Middleton. During the pre-Covid years, the Critical Psychiatry Network ran a series of successful one-day conferences at the University of Nottingham each April. A move to London was planned for 2020 but the coronavirus pandemic intervened, and it was rearranged as an online conference, which was held in April 2021. The Nottingham conferences
By Joanna Moncrieff. The Critical Psychiatry Network’s 2017 conference “Recovery in a Time of Austerity” raised some tricky issues for the audience and like-minded people, but also pointed to the potential for radical transformation of our approach to mental health problems. Three top quality speakers, big names in the Recovery field, gave inspiring and provocative talks.
CPN co-chairs, Hugh Middleton and Joanna Moncrieff, went to meet Luciana Berger MP (the shadow minister for Mental Health) to convey the importance of a Critical Psychiatry perspective in developing the Labour Party’s mental health policy. After his victory in the Labour Party leadership last year, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s early moves was to appoint
A recent meta-analysis of antipsychotic drug treatment for people with ‘treatment refractory schizophrenia’ suggests clozapine may not be better than other antipsychotics. Clozapine has been the mainstay of treatment for this group since a landmark study by American psychiatrist, John Kane, in 1988 found it to be substantially superior to the old antipsychotic chlorpromazine. Subsequent
Suicides in the Unites States have reached a 30-year high. The steepest rise is in the middle-aged. The rate of suicide in women rose more than in men, but male suicides are still more than three times as common as female suicides. Suicide by firearms was still the most common cause. The Guardian 22/04/16
A recent spot check by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that Southern Health NHS Mental Health Trust, previously criticised for its inadequate investigations of serious incidents and deaths in care, still lacks robust safety procedures and procedures for managing complaints. The Health Trust’s chairman resigned just before the CQC report was published. The Guardian
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