A Myth in Creation

This blogpost is in response to a blogpost by James Barnes on Mad in the UK : Are critics of psychiatry stranded in a ‘Jurassic world?’ I am not interested in framing my response as a refutation . I am not interested in any claims of victory or proclamations along the lines of “Hah! Arguments by critics of psychiatry have been refuted!” That would be the wrong way to think about this. I think there are many valid criticisms of psychiatry to be made, and it is important and essential to engage with criticisms. As I explain below, any framing that frames this discussion in terms of psychiatry vs its critics is problematic in my view. Refutations and counter-refutations are neither the best way to advance a debate nor the best way to learn from each other. My hope, in offering this as a response, is that we can move away from having the same arguments over and over again . 1) Psychiatry and the Critics of Psychiatry First thing I want to note is the framing of debate, the way the ti...

VICE News published the article ' The Movement Against Psychiatry ' yesterday by Shayla Love. The article examines the anti-psychiatry and critical psychiatry movements, and also features several quotes from me. My communication with Shayla Love was more than just the featured quotes, and it has become apparent to me after conversations with several friends that I should offer more context and background. So, this blogpost is an attempt to do that. I occupy a somewhat uncomfortable position on the critical spectrum. I do not identify as a "critical psychiatrist" because I do not think "critical" serves well as an identity function. The word also means different things in different contexts, and has different nuances and connotations, ranging from fertile and philosophically robust critiques to serving as a euphemism for views that embody anything but critical virtues. I am wary of extreme criticisms of psychiatry – of which there is no shortage – that rely...

Some reflections in a piece for CLOSLER on looking at success in academic medicine through the lens of virtue ethics.

I was lucky to see a screening copy of the documentary Medicating Normal (2020, directors: Lynn Cunningham & Wendy Ractliffe) earlier this weekend, and this post is intended partly as a review and partly as a way of organizing my preliminary thoughts and reactions to it. As described by the filmmakers : “ Medicating Normal is the untold story of what can happen when profit-driven medicine intersects with human beings in distress.” The film is well-made and remarkable. It is engaging and rewards emotional investment. The focus of the documentary is on the harms of psychiatric medications, the harms these medications can do while one is taking them, and the harms these medications can do when one tries to stop taking them or has stopped taking them. The documentary primarily focuses on the stories and experiences of five individuals who took psychiatric medications and experienced derailment of their lives. There are also interviews with various authors/commentators/expe...

Recently I've been thinking about Reformation, the 16th century Christian movement in Europe led by Luther. As commonly understood, this movement "posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in particular to papal authority, arising from what was perceived to be errors, abuses, and discrepancies by the Catholic Church" ( wikipedia ). Prior to Reformation, under the Catholic Church, scripture and tradition were seen as equal, and scriptural interpretation took into account former commentaries as well as Church doctrine and tradition. The Catholic Church had the authority to give authentic interpretation of the Word of God, as reflected in the notion of the Roman magisterium. The common people did not read the Bible or interpret it themselves; they relied on the Church to interpret it for them. Where others saw infallibility and divine authority, Luther saw corruption. He invoked the notion of sola scriptura , challenging the authority of the c...

I was interviewed by Mad in America. We talk about my intellectual development as a psychiatrist, the interview series for Psychiatric Times , my interest in philosophy of psychiatry, and work on “conceptual competence” in psychiatric education. You can listen to the audio as well as the transcript here:  https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/07/bridging-critical-conceptual-psychiatry-interview-awais-aftab/

James Barnes is a psychotherapist, mental health advocate, and writer. He lives in Exeter in the UK. He is on twitter: @psychgeist52 Discussion Background This discussion started on Twitter in the context of the last blogpost in which Mark Ruffalo and Ron Pies discuss their views on psychiatric diagnoses and on the definition of “disorder”. James Barnes objected that a non-essentialist, pragmatic definition of disorder misses the entire point of the term “disorder” or “disease”, which for him is to discriminate an empirical object of/in the organism, as it does in the vast majority of cases of unquestioned physical disorders. I responded by saying it is possible to define disease/disorder is many different ways, that each definition has its internal logic, and each has pros and cons, and different implications. A common goal of most definitions is to try to capture the everyday use of this term in general medicine, but other definitions may not care for this goal. ...