How often it is that a young person’s pain (self-harm; eating problems) is a desperate attack, via the self, on a dysfunctional family, idea, school or wider system; a plea for systemic change. But we rarely see it like that - instead we pathologise them & treat *their* disorder.

'Targeting' refers to the way an ideology redirects people’s anger & grievances away from their true sources (i.e. inequality) & toward groups or objects the ideology wants to blame, even when they're unconnected to the problem. This device is a favourite among many deflecting despots.

"The choice is not between autism or nothing, but rather between autism & about a dozen other diagnostic possibilities," says Aftab..... And that’s precisely the problem with psychiatry; the logic reduces distressing human experience to a menu of predefined pathologising categories, & 'nothing' else

We often discuss how psych-diagnosis 'opens the door to care'. But let's talk about how it regularly shuts it, via 'diagnostic overshadowing’: when physical complaints get wrongly attributed to 'mental illness', with examinations & treatments being consequently delayed or denied.

The proliferation of psych-diagnoses isn't leading young people to 'organise against state & fascist oppression' its sadly enabling them to better align with (via drugs & minor accommodations) the dominant structures of contemporary neoliberal society. You'll never diagnose your way to liberation.

The proliferation of psych-diagnoses isn't leading young people to 'organise against state & fascist oppression' its sadly enabling them to better align with (via drugs & minor accommodations) the dominant structures of contemporary neoliberal society. You'll never diagnose your way to liberation.

Mind your Language.......We’re not 'over-diagnosing mental health problems' - we’re 'over-medicalising human suffering'. The distiction matters! - My new blog on Mad in UK 👇👇 www.madintheuk.com/2025/12/over...

The Baby Boomers (who had far easier paths to wealth & stability) are the ones most likely to call Gen Z the 'snowflake generation.' Yet it was Boomer-era politics that entrenched neoliberalism, & its subsequent harms, so a more conciliatory stance toward those inheriting those harms seems warranted

I don't think "mental health conditions are being over-diagnosed" but that "real suffering is being over-medicalised". These are very different things. The former tries to justify cutting support, but the latter does not: it acknowledges real suffering but asks for different (psychosocial) provision

Assuming a 'diagnostic identity' as your core identity (as it's supposedly hardwired into your brain) centres 'disorder' as a core & enduring characteristic of your self, over which the psych elite now have ideological & instrumental authority. This doesn’t sound like liberation.

If I’m sitting next to someone at a event whose politics I disagree with, rather than enter a debate with them, I've learnt to explore why they hold their views. That way I usually learn something intriging, while they feel heard. And overall its a far more pleasant & instructive evening.

If you think expanding the mental health sector is the way to remedy growing societial suffering, you've drunk the cool aid. The expansion of that sector (its ideology & interventions) only worsens the problem. The solution is the right kind of social, economic & political change.

The BMJ has altered it's original news piece on the recent antidepressant withdrawal study, "to clarify the study’s limitations and to add comments from James Davies" as the editor says.... - We all appreciate this critical amendment 👇 www.bmj.com/content/390/...

"This flawed & misleading paper should at the very least be amended to reflect its clear limitations, with a formal acknowledgement by the authors. I will be writing to the Chief Medical Officer to this effect". - Dr Simon Opher, Labour MP www.standard.co.uk/comment/anti...

I think it is poor. He seems oblivious to the fact that there are longer-term RCTs on withdrawal, and that ANTLER was not included in the review's primary analysis! He writes with authority yet makes very basic errors.....

My response in New York Times: “If you are looking at people on the drugs for eight weeks, you are not going to find withdrawal,” said James Davies “It’s like saying cocaine isn’t addictive because we did a study on people who had only been taking it for eight weeks"👇 www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/h...

I delivered a presentation yesterday in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster, on the over-prescribing of antidepressants. Here is one of my slides👇

Researchers at Imperial College and King’s College London have been accused of endangering patient safety after publishing a study suggesting that most people do not experience severe withdrawal after coming off the drugs". #backfire www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07...

The word 'depression' is a catch-all phrase which, once you get to know a person deeply, tells us very little about the nuances, origins & substance of their experience. I find the phrase clinically unhelpful & the medicalised meanings with which it is laden regularly misleading.

As Robert Spitzer (chair of DSM-III) once told me about DSM-5: they created it to make money. As everyone would need to buy the new edition, the publisher, American Psychiatric Association, would make millions a year selling it. The same for DSM-6... New edition, familiar hustle.

Nearly 40% of women have a "mental health condition" says survey. Can't we ditch that language & the ideology it propagates & rather say: such women are in emotional pain, often for obvious socio-relational reasons. This take obliges a different response. www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Psychology students, if you are looking for an example of conflicts of interest in research and theory development, look no further.

Maria A Oquendo, the new Chair of DSM-6 (yes it's coming) has received unrestricted educational grants and/or lecture fees form AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Otsuka, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, and Shire. She receives royalties from the commercial use of....

Let's not call for more resilience, diagnoses, drugs, medicalisation & neurofication to address escalating rates of poor mental health, let's call for new social policy to tackle its social determinants & properly fund demedicalised psycho-social support. That's it in a nutshell.

Pharma is using neurodivergence as an instrument of profit, establishment psychiatry is using it to make biological determinism great again, while the state is using it to exonerate the harms created by neoliberal social structure. The concept is ripe for conservative co-option.

INVESTIGATION: 7% of England -3.8m people- have been on antidepressants for > 5 years 💊 While effective for some, long term use carries risks + raises chances of withdrawal when stopping, leaving some feeling "trapped" on the drugs @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcar...

A 🧵thread on why increasing numbers of young people (especially men) are being captured by the right, by being wooed away from conventional career paths in favour of fast-track wealth schemes that claim to offer an escape from the 'matrix.'

A 🧵thread on why claiming 'psychiatry is just like any other medical specialty' glosses over major differences. It’s a convenient slogan; not an honest comparison. Here's why 👇

The neurofication of everyday life has been wonderful for the retrenchment of bio-psychiatry, the expansion of pharma profits & the depoliticisation of socially induced distress.

Excited to be delivering a Keynote address this week at the European Network for Psychological Anthropology in Münster, Germany. If you're an academic working in this space, please join the network! It hosts some of the most innovative work in Mental Health... 👇 enpanthro.net

"Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways." – Sigmund Freud

🧵I recently watched the BBC documentary "Change Your Mind, Change Your Life" (it films therapists in action), & found many aspects of it frankly disturbing. Within minutes of meeting clients, therapists were making sweeping claims about their client's underlying psychology...1/7

Therapists who do not listen & learn collaboratively & dialogically, but who instead impose thier prefabricated ideas, advice & meanings, do not heal people - they manipulate them. They do not help liberate, empower or enlighten: they oppress.

16 Pharma companies were sponsoring the recent Austrian Conference.

The American Psychiatric Association’s (2025) annual conference, or should we say Pharma Expo 2025? One glance at the conference map & you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a sales convention, not a 'medical' gathering 👇

🧵A defence mechanism I regularly encounter in the therapeutic space (but which is entirely under-theorised) is what I would term 'internalisation bias', wherein somone persistently attributes all difficulties, failures & negative experiences to a perceived internal flaw, defect...

Call me cynical, but isn't Mental Health Awareness Week a hollow festival of shallow & performative activism, that companies leverage to stage 'progressiveness' & everyone else expolits to sell their individualistic ideas & wares; where social determinants remain buried & nothing gets better.

Our new study of patients enrolled in primary care therapy services confirms that antidepressant withdrawal is common & debilitating, with those using antidepressants for longer than 2 years more likely to experience withdrawal & severe/protracted effects. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Uncovering the true aim of therapy is a vital part of the therapeutic process. It must emerge collaboratively, not be imposed externally before the work begins (e.g. when services prioritise outcomes like 'return to work'). When this happens, you're being co-opted, not helped.

As we're biologically predisposed to seek attachment figures during periods of extreme vulnerability, we're very suspectible to the lure of any figure who authoritatively nurtures such an attachment; even if this figure's influence may be ultimately at our own expense. Be careful.

In many cultures, the birth of a child is also seen as the birth of a mother - both are supported & nurtured by the community. In ours, we often negelct the birth of the mother entirely, and then medicalise the fallout when inevitable suffering sets in.... www.independent.co.uk/life-style/h...

Around 1.8 million adults were prescribed psychological therapy in England last year, compared to nearly 9 million prescribed antidepressants. The imbalance isn't in our brains it's in our provision.

The less a person knows about how social institutions work; about how the social world shapes the internal contours of self (i.e. the more impoverished their sociological imagination), the more vulnerable they are to reductive & individualistic logics & harms of the psych-professions.

A downside of the consistanly 'validating' therapist: they invariably collude & rarely challenge reinforcing biases, blind-spots, harmful beliefs/behaviours. By putting feeling-states above facts, they foster dependency, a victim mentality & reality avoidance. All inhibit change

The idea that critical psychiatry is anti-disability is just cynical nonsense. No one denies that suffering & disability require care & support. What's rejected is the idea that your needs must be first medicalised, pathologised, depoliticised & privatised before supported.

'Diagnostic sliencing' I define as the most potent form of censorship - its pathologises our dissent, sows doubt in our radical instincts & wounds (in the eyes of others) our power and credibility.

"When patients...being ‘treated’ by psychiatric services are then informed that the drugs they took [for years] in the hope of recovery, were exactly what robbed them of the chance to lead their best life, their pain & loss becomes unbearable". www.madintheuk.com/2023/03/pate...

🧵Why is mental health disability rising? Here are key reasons rarely discussed in mainstream media: 1/ For decades we've neglected tackling the social determinants of societal distress, relying instead on medicalisation as a superficial ‘fix’ for downstream harms. This has......

When the right complains about 'over-diagnosis' they really mean people aren't suffering at all & so don't warrent support. For the left that's disengenious, as people's suffering is real, but rather points to psycho-social problems that over-medicalisation mistreats & ignores.

I want to talk to you about one of the biggest myths in psychiatry, & that is the idea that all we need are new drug breakthroughs and then all of our problems will be solved. — a play on the words of Quyen Nguyen.