We need brave people to speak out

Angela Gilchrist on the launch of ‘Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia’ , a new report from the British Psychological Society

This is a critical moment in mental health history: never have so many decision makers wanted things to change. That’s according to the National Clinical Director for Mental Health, Dr Geraldine Strathdee, speaking last week at the launch of ‘Understanding Psychosis and Schizophrenia', a report from the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology.

The event, described by many as 'ground-breaking and momentous', was remarkable in that it brought together numerous and disparate voices in the mental health community including psychiatrists, psychologists, policy makers, third sector workers and people with lived experience of psychosis. Among the guests were the Shadow Minister for Public Health and Mental Health, Luciana Berger; and the founder and principal theorist for the Hearing Voices Movement, Professor Marius Romme.

Guest Post: In Praise of Creative Maladjustment

We are pleased to have our first guest post. In this entry Peter Kinderman writes about the  role of psychologists and makes a plea for social engagement.

Peter Kinderman

What would he think psychologists
should be doing?
Photo: Discover Black Heritage

“On September 1^st 1967, the Nobel Prize-winning civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech entitled “The Role of the Behavioral Scientist in the Civil Rights Movement” to the American Psychological Association. With eloquence and passion, Dr. King championed the civil rights struggle and spoke about how people like you and me could and should support the civil rights movement.  This speech is particularly relevant today.

“There are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we … must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will. We must never adjust ourselves to racial discrimination and racial segregation. We must never adjust ourselves to religious bigotry.

“We must never adjust ourselves to economic conditions that take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. We must never adjust ourselves to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence. … There comes a time when one must take a stand that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular. But one must take it because it is right…”

If there were a Martin Luther King for 2013, he or she would call on us to speak out, to identify and to condemn those things that should be condemned. We should refuse to tolerate the unacceptable and to act accordingly. That modern Martin Luther King would turn to academics and psychologists and call on us to analyze – using those particular skills and perspectives that we possess – the psychological and social mechanisms that sustain and maintain those unacceptable current realities, and similarly to use our particular skills in psychological science to research social and psychological mechanisms that could support positive change.