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| The DSM makes a handy lectern Photo: Maciej Janowicz |
As regular
readers of this blog know, we are very interested in the pros and cons of
psychiatric diagnosis. We try to discuss this issue in an accessible way and reach
as broad an audience as possible. It was a great pleasure, therefore, to be
invited by Lewes Skeptics (a Sussex branch of the Skeptics in
the Pub network) to give a talk about mental illness,
diagnosis, and some of the controversies raised by the new version of the
psychiatric classification manual DSM-5. We've since been asked to make the
talk available more widely, so we've posted it below. It's a video of the
slides, accompanied by a soundtrack recorded on the night.
It was
interesting to see that the event sold out in a few days. Since we’re hardly
big names, we hope this says something about the level of public interest in
mental health. The same happened the last time that the Skeptics put on a
mental health-related talk (by psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff), so something clearly strikes a chord. On the night of our talk the
room was jammed, the temperature was hot and the controversy even hotter!
Actually that last bit isn’t true. The debate was conducted in the most civil
and decorous manner - not always easy when passions on this topic can run
high.
We’d like to
thank Lewes Skeptics (and in particular Eugene Gill) for hosting the event, and
for their commitment to promoting public engagement with important topics. If
you want to know more follow them @LewesSkeptics on Twitter. We are
also grateful to John Warburton man of many parts, two of which were his very
strong forearms. The fortitude with which he acted as a human boom for the
recording equipment was admirable. Thanks also to the audience. The pub patrons
of Lewes are clearly a thoughtful lot.
There is
also a recording of the discussion following the talk. The quality is slightly
more variable as questioners were sitting in different parts of the room. The
Q&A audio is embedded below or you can listen to it directly on Sound Cloud.
