Drop the Disorder!: Challenging the culture of psychiatric diagnosis

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That said, a COMPETENT therapist who keeps a safe and sound distance from the medicator is essential. We are very lucky to have this online support network in place because it’s very hard if not impossible to find in many areas of the globe. At that moment the patient was just initials to me on an ICU whiteboard, a label of what was wrong with them, with a long script of negative ‘warnings’ attached which made me fearful of sitting too close, let alone leaning in to truly hear who they were or what had happened to them. should be essential reading for anyone working within mental health and that of course includes student counsellors.

But the current promotional pitch of raising awareness often feels like it just reinforces a greater attachment to the label for me. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. This is exactly the message that the self proclaimed “holistic psychologists” have been spewing as truth for decades now, especially the “holistic” psychologists who like to profiteer off of covering up sexual abuse of small children for the religions, like my former psychologist.Would they have thought I was healthy if I constantly defied authority, had no conscience, and was promiscuous? I guess I’ve set this challenge for myself (and it is very frustrating and disheartening when others don’t understand what I’ve been through–or worse they couldn’t be bothered to listen). And this is how the book describes those at the mercy of the system, diagnosed, labelled, and condemned to a process that disadvantages their recovery, and ultimately their right to be a person.

There will be space for questions, discussion and the sharing of ideas making for a uniquely powerful and hopeful learning experience. As such it marks a refreshing and pivotal departure from the dominant ‘illness’ narrative we have come as a society to accept unquestioningly, and to impose on other cultures. by Jo Watson questions the entire concept of pathologized diagnosis by examining the consequences and social construction of distress.This was just what our team needed to give us the confidence to challenge the damaging ways of responding to people that have sadly become so normal. This includes people with experiences of mental distress, professionals, academics, journalists, artists, politicians, authors, and many others. This moment has stayed with me for all of my working life because it provoked personal feelings of incompetence, inadequacy, and rejection. My core team of 30 counsellors and college students will all be reading this book because quite frankly it would be an outrage not to. This is so well phrased and I think this counts for many other examples of oppression in our society where a certain group of people is encouraged to and rewarded for disconnection and discrimination.

And with that in mind, I feel it might be worthy to continue this review aligned to the personal storytelling theme from the book within my own story. All are justifiably impassioned and subversive; yet reasoned, full of wisdom, common sense and rigorous analysis, informed by the latest evidence on trauma and attachment. But it was the power of this interaction and the difficult feelings I experienced that encouraged me to start asking myself for the first time… “Exactly how am I helping these people I’m supposed to be caring for?e. primarily failures of ongoing emotional support, love, and security – I can present a more hopeful open-ended model of suffering to them. And “A further barrier to language change may derive from the privileges granted to those who have been given a psychiatric diagnosis. I made my Recovery in (detail removed) in 1984 as a result of (carefully) coming off strong medication with the help of Psychotherapy. Thank you so much to all concerned for playing this part in helping to give our humanity a chance by producing and publishing this book!