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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Critical Analysis of the Medical Institution With Special Focus on Madness

In this online version of a paper written as a part of a Masters course at Queen Margaret University I have used visual screengrabs from the original texts. For the purposes of review and education I have chosen to integrate excerpts from each cited reference inline to assist the reader in learning more deeply the arguments which are being laid out.  The reader is encouraged to work through all the reference texts as each one offers a series of nuances important for unpacking the complex issues being dealt with. Read more…

The City of Thieves: A Digest and Perversion of R. D. Laing

What follows after the prelude is a digest of the work of R. D Laing, ‘The Politics Of Experience’.  Laing made valuable contributions to critical thinking in fearless appraisals of institutions that have become sacred cows.  The untouchableness of the medical institution approaches the untouchableness of the family, and precisely because of these untouchable status major problems arise within them and from people acting out roles of them. Read more…

Culture Bound Syndromes: Contextualising and Historically Locating Mental Illness by Sonia Soans

I still remember the day we went through the ICD- 10 in the clinical psychology class. Our professor, a practicing and competent clinical psychologist, talked us through the various symptoms that constituted a mental illness. Mental illnesses such as PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) schizophrenia and depression were assumed to be universal. Extensive studies have been conducted around the world documenting these illnesses. We finally got to the section on culture bound syndromes. Read more…