Nice analysis of an excellent article. I also think James Davies thinks that capitalism can be reformed, or maybe a revolution instigated, by professionals taking action where as I think it probably has to be from the working class, and that includes service user/survivors of psychiatry leading. Grove Press An imprint of Grove Atlantic, an American independent publisher, who publish in the UK through Atlantic Books.

Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Caused our Mental Health

Davies appears only willing to hint at the need for larger systemic change leaving his readers to somehow believe that fundamental change is still possible within a class based capitalist system, even though he admits it will be more difficult in a post Covid 19 world. The entire appointment was 15 minutes long, and it really rattled me. It implied that there was nothing wrong with my situation, but rather there was something wrong with me. If you're stressed and exhausted by a high stress job during a global pandemic, the doctor seemed to suggest, you should fix yourself with drugs, rather than working to fix the external circumstances. I didn't take the prescription, but that appointment stayed with me. Joanna Moncrieff is Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London, and a consultant psychiatrist at the North East London Foundation Trust. She is one of the founders and the co-chair of the Critical Psychiatry Network. Her research consists principally of a critique of mainstream views about psychiatric drugs. She also writes about the history of drug treatment and about the history, politics and philosophy of psychiatry more generally. She is currently leading UK government-funded research on reducing and discontinuing antipsychotic drug treatment and collaborating on a study to support antidepressant discontinuation. She is the author of numerous papers and several books, including The Bitterest Pills: the troubling story of antipsychotic drugs and The Myth of the Chemical Cure.Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our [PDF] [EPUB] Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our

You are right. Our disabilities don’t and shouldn’t define us. Sometimes, we need that disability distinction from the government to obtain needed services. But, privately, each of us can choose to define ourselves as we wish. Let us let our imaginations run wild on this one. Thank youDavies powerfully argues that the rise of mental illness and the rising prescriptions of psychiatric drugs (he particularly focuses on anti-depressants) is due to a model of mental illness where the individual is blamed and pathologised for their rational responses to socially caused distress - aka capitalism and neo-liberalism. What a lot of treatments do is blame the individual, rather than understand the life circumstances that have led to their distress. The book particularly affected me because I dropped out of CBT treatment and felt like a failure and like I hadn't worked hard enough to fix the way I thought, and there is a whole section dedicated to CBT and why it is ineffective and harmful in blaming victims. To understand this dynamic, let’s look at the ways in which our mental health sector has broadly adapted to the needs of our economy, but at the expense of generating the good clinical outcomes we all want and deserve. There have been four main trends. Tras una investigación concienciduda sobre el estado de la salud mental en Reino Unido, Davies desmenuza con datos y evidencias de dónde viene la actual crisis de salud mental y cómo se está abordando desde los diferentes gobiernos. The idea that we have infinite power over our lives and fates, while initially seductive and uplifting for some, often leads to acute disappointment when things go wrong. Persuading people they have more power than they do and ignoring the real barriers to attainment primes them for self-blame when reality fails to deliver.

Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created our Mental Health

He argues that our: ‘entire approach to mental health is preoccupied with sedating us, depoliticising our discontent and keeping us productive and subservient to the economic status quo’ (p.3).It is really disgusting to observe the treatment of the vulnerable. Worse than any animal society out there. Many believed that we were being granted the freedom to grow personal wealth, giving us all the same opportunities. We adhered to the idea that this neoliberal freedom was vastly preferable to the very limited freedom of Soviet Russia. And every government since the 1980s has continued with this system, even if some did tweak it around the edges. I assure you it is not all doom and gloom, rather it is sobering and incredibly enlightening! It has certainly helped shaped my own thoughts and feelings. In Britain alone, more than 20% of the adult population take a psychiatric drug in any one year. This is an increase of over 500% since 1980 and the numbers continue to grow. Yet, despite this prescription epidemic, levels of mental illness of all types have actually increased in number and severity. This book blew my mind. It articulated and answered so many of the questions that have been swirling around in the brain about mental health for years.