After nearly twenty years working as a neuroscientist, I closed down my university research laboratory at the beginning of the millennium. I no longer believe in the biomedical approach to helping people overcome addiction and mental health problems. I believe that long-term use of psychiatric drugs causes more harm than good. It’s not ‘what is wrong with you’, but ‘what has happened, or is happening, to you.’
In January 2018, the Clinical Psychology Division of The British Psychological Society produced a very important paper, titled The Power Threat Meaning Framework and subtitled ‘Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis.’
In my opinion, this document is a major breakthrough in the field, and the approach it describes makes so much more sense and is far superior to the biomedical approach to helping people overcome emotional distress (or so-called mental health problems).
