Documentary Analysis: Challenging Conceptions of Drug Use and Promoting Mental Health through Psychedelic Assisted Therapy

This is an introductory analysis which looks at the impact and themes explored in the documentary film ‘Psychedelics in Scotland’  which challenges conceptions around Psychedelic Assisted Therapy and Cannabis as ‘agents of change’. The film presents a critical examination of our society, highlighting the systemic issues that manifest as spiritual and mental health challenges, particularly in drug-using communities. This summary aims to analyze the documentary’s key points it makes on the potential of psychedelic assisted therapy and the responsible use of cannabis as innovative approaches to addressing mental health concerns. Read more…

Cult Behaviours: Avoiding Dissent – Reviewing Prof Arthur J. Deikman’s Work

This is the fourth part of a review and digest of the work of Professor Arthur Deikman who studied cults and identified how certain everyday tendencies in humans can coalesce in cult behaviours.  As someone who has spent his professional life examining cases of extreme cult indoctrination he is ideally placed to foster a discussion of cult like behaviours which are more common and distributed throughout our lives as human beings.

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Human Rights and the Psychiatric Setting

This is an article exploring human rights in relation to the mental health industrial complex which has risen to articulate the way which people are treated in response to their need for support.  In this piece of writing I examine human rights discourses in the context of present day Britain and deconstruct some of the ideological narratives we find intersecting in mental health ultimately asking questions about harms and interrelationships.

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Notes on Hypothesis Making in Medicine: Opiates and Opioids as a Unifying Framework for Mental Illness

This piece of work represents a continuation of a multivalent piece of interdisciplinary work which extends back over the last twenty years.  In this social document two main purposes are being addressed, the first one being continuing a study of science and it’s information tools exploring the basis of how hypotheses can be constructed and tested so that the reader may get some sense of where an idea sits on a scale of increasingly or decreasingly reliable knowledge. Read more…