Please note that we've now moved Discursive of Tunbridge Wells to our university servers. All old articles and comments have been taken over too so the archive will still be available. Our new home is
As those who check in regularly with this blog know we do
occasionally manage a bit of culture (films
and books), when it’s related to psychology and mental health. It’s a great pleasure
therefore, not only be able to talk about a new novel that goes into both
areas, but to interview the author.
Beth Miller is a novelist who used to be a psychologist
(she's got a doctorate that doesn't make it to her book covers). Her
most recent novel The Good Neighbour is part
domestic drama, part psychological thriller, part exploration of some scary
places in the human psyche. It starts in a nice street, in a nice town (Hove, actually), with nice neighbours. We initially see this through the eyes of
Minette, a rather bored stay-at-home mum, who makes friends with Cath: older,
feistier and coping incredibly with her son Davey’s illness. Under Cath’s
spirited influence Minette also becomes a different sort of friendly with the
hunky fellow down the road.
I’ve been a bit itinerant this year. The response to Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia, the report I edited for the British Psychological Society, has
been amazing and I’ve been invited to speak about it in Washington, New
York, Seville, Dublin and most recently Milan. So it was great to get an
invitation to do something nearer home last month, in our local town of Tunbridge
Wells. I was part of a panel at the
annual Critical Voices event.
Critical Voices? To tell the truth I wasn’t totally clear about it either. It describes
itself like this:
‘The space of
medicine, health and wellbeing is one we all inhabit. It is at once complex,
often highly technical and grounded in power, politics and debate. It is a
space where we have made life changing advances. Yet it is also where we are at
our most vulnerable, where our most intimate times of birth, illness,
treatment, life and death are played out. Critical in every sense. Critical Voices provides an opportunity for
conversations that explore the voices in this space as we strive to bring
together doctors, surgeons, psychologists, patients, carers, campaigners,
researchers and academics - intertwined with the expressive insights from film,
music, poetry and literature.’
As you might expect, it was a mighty interesting day. I did a ten minute double-act with my friend
and colleague Peter
Kinderman, talking about our vision for the future of psychological health
care when we stop dividing people into ‘normal’ and ‘mentally ill’. A video of the event is embeded below or you can watch it on Youtube here.
In the aftermath of the
election Maggie Gibbons muses on loss, acceptance and mindfulness without navel gazing
I initially wrote this
blog for https://dayinthelifemh.org.uk/, a
project which clusters together the experiences of people with mental health
difficulties during four ordinary days over a year. I wrote this for 10 May
2015, sent it to a few people and it seemed to resonate. So I’ve decided to
share it more widely, with a few tweaks. It is, I stress, a very personal take.
Mindfulness can help with much worse Ed
I’m
tired after weeks of hard work. I stood as an election candidate locally and
shared others’ sense of shock, anger and bewilderment at the scale of Labour’s
defeat. Coincidentally, it’s also the day before Mental Health Awareness Week.
This year the theme is mindfulness. There’s an interesting debate going on in
Buddhist, mental health and other circles about the ‘McDonaldisation’ of
mindfulness – is it becoming detached from its origins in Buddhist teachings
and practice, sold as a panacea for wider social ills and discontents, exploited
for commercial gain, a way of keeping workers compliant? And so I have been
thinking politics, hearts and minds all day.
The upcoming
election is an opportunity for the population to have their say in the future
running of the country. We live in a democracy and the right to vote feels
fundamental. But two
thirds of all people in the UK with learning disabilities do not vote. Many
may not even know that they are entitled to a vote. UK-based statistics are not
available but research suggests that for individuals who have cognitive
impairments of other causes (e.g dementia, brain injury), voting
rates may be similarly low.
Though there
are many jokes about the intellectual functioning of the average voter abound
in the run-up to an election, the reality is that voting eligibility is not
determined by intellectual ability. It appears though that this is not common
knowledge. Many health and social care professionals (see here and here) are not fully
aware that their clients are actually allowed to vote. The presence of a cognitive impairment may
make the process of voting challenging, but is this really sufficient reason to
not support people from doing so? Assumptions about whether someone can and
should vote may be informed by the ideas around their mental
capacity.
Today, in the first in
an occasional series of longer form pieces, Peter
Kinderman reflects on the interaction between his genetic inheritance and
his personal experience, and considers what they mean for his own mental
health.
‘Very nice dear, now, do you want baked beans on toast for breakfast?’
My
wife once came with me on a Saturday morning visit to a psychiatric hospital. I
was collecting data for my PhD, and she met me in the car park of a large
psychiatric hospital after I’d conducted my interviews. As I drove away, she stroked the back of my
hand and suggested that I could relax my knuckle-whitening grip on the steering
wheel. I really didn’t like leaving the residents behind. I wanted to rescue
them.
It’s just over a month until the
UK general election and many Brits seem to have lost trust in their traditional
politicos. Whether it’s the UK Independence Party (UKIP) scapegoating the
European Union and immigrants, a rise in nationalism (the Scottish National
party), or Russell Brand’s teenage
anarchism, faith in facile, and sometimes ugly, solutions is on the march. It’s a huge relief,
therefore, to hear that the editors of the DSM (the main reference book for
psychiatric classification), are considering a new category of disorder to
cover this condition. Clearly many critical things have been said about the burgeoning amount of psychiatric
diagnosis, here and elsewhere. However, I’ve just looked at the DSM draft entry
(reproduced below), and think that this time, the American Psychiatric
Association might really be onto something. In fact, all I can say is bring it
on.
In fifteen years there will 50% more over 65s than there are
today, and the proportion of older people in our society will continue to grow for
some time after that. The 2013 House of
Lords report Ready for Ageing? looked at the likely consequences of this
on-going demographic shift and stated the problem plainly: “The UK population
is ageing rapidly, but the Government and our society are woefully
underprepared”.
On 5th March politicians from all parties will appear
at an event
in London, organised by the Guardian newspaper, to explain their policies for
addressing the ageing challenge. I hope
they offer some ambitious proposals: the status quo is not an option.
Is a mental health diagnosis necessary to avoid prison? Photo: Liam Quinn
The British Psychological Society’s report ‘Understanding Psychosis and
Schizophrenia’ has challenged many commonly held beliefs about serious
mental health problems. While the report has been widely
welcomed, it has also prompted questions, particularly focusing on the
report’s key recommendation that we move beyond seeing distress as a symptom of
disease:
‘services should not insist that people accept any one
framework of understanding, for example the idea that their problems are
symptoms of an underlying illness’.
This issue has been addressed on this site
on a number
of occasions and it’s clearly one that arouses strong feelings. The
disease-model of modern psychiatry views emotional distress as the result of
illnesses or disorders. Treating such problems in this way, as healthcare issues,
is often seen
as essential for ensuring that people get the help they need, and vital in avoiding
inappropriate treatment. In particular, some
colleagues have suggested
that viewing people as ‘mentally ill’ prevents them being blamed for actions
for which they are not responsible. Rather than being seen as bad you can be
mad (or more accurately sick) and more likely to be treated rather than simply
punished. Removing this protection (the
argument continues) may even result in people being sent to prison
inappropriately. These are clearly serious concerns and deserve careful
consideration.
As human beings, we are
attuned to notice the special or different. We also tend to like simple answers
to complex questions. Perhaps they make us feel more in control of the complicated
environments we find ourselves in. I wondered about this during a recent trawl
for ‘depression cures’ on news websites. Suggestions included 9-stone
weight loss, magic mushrooms
(complete with obligatory 3D brain picture to enhance credibility), laughing
gas and ketamine.
It seems that we are on the lookout for simple-sounding and miraculous cures
for our ailments. After all, the prospect that things can be fixed ever faster
and with less effort sounds great. With a bias towards the novel and apparently
miraculous, I wonder how we can appraise new, glamorous or cutting edge treatments?
Can we judge such shiny new arrivals fairly?
Please note that we've now moved Discursive of Tunbridge Wells to our university servers. All old articles and comments have been taken over too so the archive will still be available. Our new home is
