Bentall is Ok, phew

[Bill Penson]

He had me worried for a while- the opening sections of the 'Doctoring the Mind' book were just too friendly towards the psychiatric discipline but really he was just hooking the reader and the whammy comes not too far in.  It is a real concern for critical writers I think in that if you show your cards too early you lose the reader because of the sense that you are too partisan and you've either lost insight, or you are an academic malcontent. Books like this are important because they keep calling into question the lack of rigor in the field which just wouldn't be acceptable in any other human venture claiming to be scientific, and sadly this holds back the real possibilities of doing good and being helpful.There is no other field that I know of that affirms its general lack of progress as being because the thing it deals with is too complicated and seems to badge as still relevant thinking that is over 100 years old. If we can't research it (madness) we should be more humble about what we can claim we know, that will give a true baseline and a more ethical point from which to research, practice and help. Unfortunately given a range of real evidence available it would mean acknowledging in no uncertain terms that the disabled population accounts for more women, black people, sexual minorities and the poor in its ranks, and the biggest risk factors for poor mental health are poverty, isolation and urbanization (this seems to me to be code for industrialization and capitalism). Early readings of some research coming out of the North east seems to find childhood adversity, not just trauma, linked to adult mental health problems and distress (Alison Brabban presented some early findings from work she and colleagues have been doing at a Best Practice for Psychosis Forum in Sunderland earlier this year). New to blogging therefore blog=rant!