De-Medicalizing Misery

JAMES BOURNE Clinical psychologist and is currently working London, UK MARY BOYLE Professor Emerita of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, UK PATRICK BRACKEN Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director of Mental Health Services in West Cork, Ireland CARLTON COULTER Clinical Psychologist who lives and works in East London, UK RUDI DALLOS Professor of Clinical Psychology and Programme Director of the Doctor of Clinical Psychology Training Programme, College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth, UK DUNCAN DOUBLE Consultant Psychiatrist in Norfolk & Waveney Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia, UK SUMAN FERNANDO Former Consultant Psychiatrist in Enfield for over twenty years and then an Academic at the Tizard Centre, University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. He is involved in voluntary organisations serving black and minority ethnic (BME) communities in London and Sri Lanka DAVID J. HARPER Reader in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, UK LUCY JOHNSTONE Clinical Psychologist and Counselling Psychologist, and formerly Programme Director of the Bristol Clinical Psychology Doctorate, UK IRVING KIRSCH Professor of Psychology at the University of Hull, UK CRAIG NEWNES Former Director of Psychological Therapies and a past-Chair of the BPS Psychotherapy Section, and Former Head of Clinical Psychology Services in Nottingham and Special Professor of Clinical Psychology at Nottingham University, UK NIMISHA PATEL Reader in Clinical Psychology on the Doctoral Degree Programme in Clinical Psychology, University of East London, UK, and Lead Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Head of Audit, Evaluation and Research at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture DAVID SMAIL Former Head of Clinical Psychology Services in Nottingham and Special Professor of Clinical Psychology at Nottingham University, UK EWEN SPEED Lecturer in Medical Sociology in the Department of Health and Human Sciences at the University of Essex, UK PHILIP THOMAS Writer and Honorary Visiting Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities in the University of Bradford, UK SAMI TIMIMI Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the National Health Service, UK and Visiting Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Lincoln, UK ARLENE VETERE Professor of Clinical Psychology at Surrey University, UK, and a UKCP registered Systemic Psychotherapist

Psychiatry and psychology have constructed a mental health system that does no justice to the problems it claims to understand and creates multiple problems for its users. Yet the myth of biologically-based mental illness defines our present. The book rethinks madness and distress reclaiming them as human, not medical, experiences.Psychiatry and psychology have constructed a mental health system that does no justice to the problems it claims to understand and creates multiple problems for its users. Yet the myth of biologically-based mental illness defines our present. The book rethinks madness and distress reclaiming them as human, not medical, experiences.