Helen Spandler is an academic who has been involved in Asylum magazine for a number of years. Asylum magazine is a publication which brings together many alternative and challenging perspectives on psychiatry to raise discussions surrounding the idea of mental health.
To begin our considerations, I would like to draw your attention to a recent article in New Scientist by Clare Wilson. In the article entitled Out of the Shadows, Wilson discusses aspects of the most recent thinking on schizophrenia. In the course of discussing the case of Peter Bullimore, a recovered schizophrenic, she points out that,
“The downsides [of medication] have always been seen as a necessary price to pay for relief from the condition’s devastating symptoms, but now that idea is being called into question. Not only are the side effects of these drugs worse than we thought; the benefits are also smaller.”[1]