Main description:

In October 2016 Jo Watson hosted the very first `A Disorder for Everyone!' event in Birmingham, with psychologist Dr Lucy Johnstone, to explore (and explode) the culture of psychiatric diagnosis in mental health. To provide a space to continue the debate after the event, Jo also set up the now hugely popular and active Facebook group `Drop the Disorder!'.; Since then, they have delivered events in towns and cities across the UK, bringing together activists, survivors and professionals to debate psychiatric diagnosis. How and why does psychiatric diagnosis hold such power? What harm it can do? What are the alternatives to diagnosis, and how it can be positively challenged?; This book takes the themes, energy and passions of the AD4E events - bringing together many of the event speakers with others who have stories to tell and messages to share in the struggle to challenge diagnosis.; This is an essential book for everyone of us who looks beyond the labels.

Contents:

Foreword - Paula J Caplan, Introduction - Jo Watson, 1. Do you still need your psychiatric diagnosis? Critiques and alternatives - Lucy Johnstone, 2. Counselling, psychotherapy, diagnosis and the medicalisation of distress - Pete Sanders, 3. Psychiatry: a dangerous raft in a sea of despair - Sally Fox,4. The revolution will not be pathologised - Dolly Sen, 5. Problems in living: an existential perspective - Emmy van Deurzen, 6. Deceived: how Big Pharma persuades us to swallow its drugs - James Davies, 7. The language of values; the value of language - Clare Shaw, 8. `Schizophrenia' - the least scientific and most damaging of psychiatric labels - John Read and Lorenza Magliano, 9. Resistance, rebellion, resilience and recovery - Akima Thomas, 10. Why words can harm your mental health - Gary Sidley, 11. Offensive pathways: the `personality disorder' construct and the over-responsibilisation of incarcerated women - Robyn Timoclea, 12. Working therapeutically with clients with a psychiatric diagnosis - Terry Lynch, 13. Towards a trauma-informed approach with people who have experienced sexual violence - Lisa Thompson and Becky Willetts, 14. Disability, depression and the language of disorder - Chris Coombs, 15. Finding my tribe: a survivor's story - Sue Irwin, 16. From chemical imbalance to power imbalance: a manifesto for mental health - Peter Kinderman, 17. A tale of two tutors: challenging the narrative of diagnosis and disorder in counselling training - Jenny Taper and Jamie-Lee Tipping, 18. Violence under the guise of care: whiteness, colonialism and psychiatric diagnoses - Guilaine Kinouani, 19. Names matter, language matters, truth matters - Jacqui Dillon, 20. There's an intruder in our house! Counselling, psychotherapy and the biomedical model of emotional distress - Jo Watson.