Another possibility is The Madness of Our Lives.
Experiences of Breakdown and Recovery by Penny Gray, from Jessica Kingsley publishers.
In a similar vein to that of Speaking Our Minds.
Janine
Dr Janine Soffe-Caswell
Clinical Psychologist
N.W. Shropshire CMHT and Dept of
Psychological Therapies
01691 679500
From: The UK Community
Psychology Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Newnes
Sent: 09 January 2007 20:39
To:
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK]
critical reading on everyday psychiatry?
Not sure about this suggestion. Mind have become another part of the
problem as far as I can see. The leaflets talk as if there
is something about people that can be known - and then defined as
unique/different/ in need of help. There isn't. We are, in Breggin's wirds,
each other.
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 5.01PM
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK] critical reading on everyday psychiatry?
Another thought .. Mind have produced
various leaflets and booklets on a range of topics that are intended to serve
the sort of purpose David is wanting… can be sourced via their website – just
google Mind.
Doctorate in Clinical Psychology,
School of Applied Psychosocial Studies,
Faculty of Health and Social Work,
Peninsula Allied Health Collaboration,
College of St Mark and St John,
Phone Programme Administrators:
Jane Murch, Emma Hellingsworth
Please note I work 3 days per week:
usually Monday, Tuesday & either Wednesday
or Thursday.
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Community Psychology
Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Horrocks Matthew
Sent: 09 January 2007 15:13
To:
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: critical reading on
everyday psychiatry?
David - Apologies if this has been
suggested already, in the early 1990’s David Pilgrim and Anne Rogers produced a
good book called ‘experiencing psychiatry: users views of services’. Also maybe
worth a look is a book I think published by Palgrave Macmillan a few yrs ago
‘speaking our minds’. Both I think give good accounts of others experience of
being ‘dealt with’ by the psy-complex.
For me Craig’s email, partly stirred
memories of the debate on this list some time ago about the increasing
migration of clinical psychologists and trainee psychologists onto this list. I
am one such individual who came upon this list by working with enlighted
clinical psychology colleagues, and I think projects such as the one you are
involved with David are of great value in blending community oriented activism,
with the experience (and frustration?) of working in the psychology/psychiatry
complex and trying to support people who are vastly disempowered and
downtrodden and these experiences are ones that clinical psychologists like
other community psychologists find themselves in the middle of on an all too
regular basis.
I for one would be interested to hear more
about such groups and how they progress.
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Community Psychology
Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Fryer
Sent: 09 January 2007 14:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [COMMUNITYPSYCHUK]
critical reading on everyday psychiatry?
Thanks for reopening this issue.
Interestingly, Marie Jahoda - who I regard
as an early critical community psychologist - set up the Brunel Psychology
undergraduate course as a sandwich course in which students worked in
factories, offices etc for a year whilst critically reflecting on the
mutual implications of work life for academic life and vice versa and I
would like to see something similar going on today (though these days
experience may need to be more often in call centres and part time
service sector jobs rather than in factories at least in this part of the
world)
However the people interested in potential
books I am talking about are not Uni students but 'users' of psychiatric
services who are also community activists using arts to tackle
stigma, stereotypes, injustice, oppression in relation to mental health.
They are, despite their artivism, subject to the attentions of psychiatrists,
community psychiatric nurses, psychiatric social workers etc and are 'given'
diagnoses, treatments, discursively positioned and generally 'talked at'.
When they are told they are suffering from schizophrenia, bi-polar
disorder, have a personality disorder etc. in need of treatment
they want to know in plain language what this means to the person doing
the talking and what it means in terms of the potential disempowerment
of the person doing the hearing. Engels may be key critical reading but
may not be priority reading if being faced by being sectioned? However the
social justice activism side of the project means that it is also important to
engage critically with the psy-complex and its discourses . . . and so
many good books which do that are pretty inaccessible to those are not
professional readers (Rose or Foucault would be hard going for some in the
group)
So we want to find something to read which
helps translate and decode psy-professionals' talk (and their doing
by talking) but also which problemetises and deconstructs it in an accessible
way. I have not come across anything yet . . . but am still hopeful though also
perhaps increasingly wondering if it is yet to be written?
David Fryer
University of Stirling
FK9 4LA
Scotland
+44 (0) 1786 467650 (tel)
+44 (0) 1786 467641 (fax)
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Community Psychology
Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Newnes
Sent: 09 January 2007 1:29 pm
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: critical reading on
everyday psychiatry?
I find myself agitated by the suggestions to David about potential
books. They are the usual suapects - even our own (This is madness and This is
madness too) are edited by Clinical Psychologists tho many chapters are by
survivors and others. How about starting with Engels, as a far more insightful
read? Anyone not paid by the psych industry can question it and point out its
myriad flaws - indeed David himself blasted the non link between so called
cognitions, biochemistry and conduct in Forum last year. Perhaps the students
could work in a factory for a year instead.
How about 'Users and Abusers of Psychiatry' (2000) by Rowe and
Johnstone. Very readable, not too technical and critical to some extent
but might have a bit too much of a psychotherapeutic focus and
is not as critical as it could be,
You could try Madness
Explained by Richard P Bentall ( penguin paperback; 2nd edition
2004) ? It doesn’t meet all your requirements in that it doesn’t look at all
diagnostic categories, only psychosis/ schizophrenia, but it does give a very
thorough explanation of the DSM criteria, and why the medical model categories
are inappropriate. Written by a cognitive psychologist but informed by wider
considerations of social justice – the author makes personal connections as he
had a brother who was diagnosed as psychotic. It’s technical, long but
readable.
Regarding anxiety and depression, you
could try Goldberg and Goodyear (2005) Origins and Course of Common Mental
Disorders. Routledge. Again, this challenges medical model thinking but
probably not as socially critical as you would want.
-----Original Message-----
From: The UK Community Psychology
Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Fryer
Sent: 02 January 2007 15:28
To:
[log in to unmask]
Subject: critical reading on
everyday psychiatry?
Can anyone recommend a good book for the following purposes,
please?
Some of us who are members of an expressive arts
mental health group in Scotland, plan to meet in the new year in a 'book
group' to read, think about and critically discuss the diagnoses some of
us have been given by psychiatrists and the broader context of psychiatry and
psy-professions. We are looking for recommendations of a book or books to use.
We have three requirements of such a book:
First, we do need a book which really clearly explicates the
so-called symptoms, diagnostic categories, common pharmaceutical and other
interventions etc. which are actually deployed by psychiatrists and
others.
Secondly, we also need a book written within a critical
frame of reference, which does itself not subscribe to the medical model
of mental ill-health but is informed by wider societal and justice
considerations.
Thirdly, we need a book which will not disable us through
use of a lot of jargon, very complicated sentence structure etc.
Does anyone know of an accessible book
about mental illness which gets to grip with everyday diagnoses and
treatments made in the UK
whilst supporting and promoting ideologically critical thinking?
David Heeley and Mary Boyle
have already been recommended.
Can anyone suggest any
other book we might consider?
David Fryer
University of Stirling
FK9 4LA
Scotland
+44 (0) 1786 467650 (tel)
+44 (0) 1786 467641 (fax)
[log in to unmask]
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