Appeal To The Man On The Clapham Omnibus

An article appealing to the common sense of everyday people to think critically about psychiatry; an appeal to the man on the Clapham Omnibus. Famously On Sane People In Insane Places was a study done by David Rosenhan, a psychologist in America.  Central to the study was the question he posed, ‘If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?‘.  This seems a pivotal inquiry if billions upon billions of pounds are now involved in psychiatric drugs that are proffered as treatments for what gets described as mental illness. Read more…

ECT Is Murder: The Historical and Political Roots of ECT and its Hold on Public Imagination By Sonia Soans

Electro Convulsive Therapy is one of those psychiatric treatments that has a strong hold on public imagination. One Flew over a Cuckoos Nest is iconic in its use of ECT as a treatment. The image of a patient being tied by and given electric shocks is hard to shake, brutality and force are ideas associated with this treatment. Inextricably tied to the profession of psychiatry it is born out of experiments with electricity and in abattoirs.

The image of the ‘mad person’ being subdued is powerful, it signals punishment for deviance. It plays on our fear of physical retribution. It is present in films, we have all seen a film where an agitated person was brought in kicking and screaming and given electric shocks only to be subdued. Read more…

"Another stupid man, or, reasons why I do not engage with services" By John Sawkins

I was forced to take haloperidol and procyclidine for bipolar. I stopped taking them after 6 weeks. (cold turkey – I never told the doctor). I have not taken any medication for bipolar or other psychiatric condition for 15 years.
One side effect of haloperidol is known to be stroke which I duly experienced one year after taking the drug – and that was only 6 weeks’ worth! (They missed the diagnosis of stroke and put it down to “hallucinations”. I eventually succeeded in persuading an optician to confirm my diplopia (double vision). Read more…

Diagnostic Overshadowing and Psychiatric Diagnoses

The Mad World art exhibition is an aggregation of work by artists, groups, psychologists, psychiatrists, chemists, social workers, and survivors of the psychiatric industry.  It starts with the question: Can you work out who here is diagnosed as Mad ? It then introduces a logic problem created by Raymond Smullyan, one of the finest logicians of our time:… Can you work it out ? Read more…

Psychiatry, Sexuality, Gender and Race: An Interview With Sonia Soans of Asylum Collective

This is an interview with Sonia Soans, part of the Asylum magazine collective which is a platform for democratic psychiatry.  Having experience in clinical psychology and teaching in India, she has focused her study on gendered representations of addiction. Having recently finished her PhD in Manchester, she regularly contributes to critical psychiatry as she helps bring together the new editions of Asylum magazine. Read more…

A Perspective on Depression by Cathy Frank

As the only daughter of two estranged German Jewish immigrants, whose mother stood by and watched her own distraught mother attempt to take her own life, soon after their arrival in N.Y.C. Is it any wonder that I followed my mother’s adolesent sudden descent into madness?

Grandmother, mother and daughter…. three generations of Manic-Depression; my two brothers and half brother free of any psychosocial malady.

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My Experiences of the Mental Health System by ‘N’

Good, bad, ugly, sad, hopeful.
It’s sad to anyone to have to visit or work at ********* *****, not an ideal place for anyone to spend time in.
An ugly building with rooms like interrogation rooms, with the odd cushion. A bit like how the DSS signing on offices used to look in the 80’s.Horrible lighting and old magnolia old painted walls.
Not a plant or ounce of colour or life in sight. Read more…

Inspector Rosenhan Visits The Asylum

As part of the Mad World exhibition which examined missing voices from the story of psychiatry. The word ‘Madness’ is a rich word, and in its labyrinths are held important stories of humanity. It means a lot of different things to different people, and for me it has come to be a word which sometimes symbolises the best qualities in humans. Billy, a man who is part of ‘the old and the bold’ that keep our ambulance service running told me:
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