Is there a child mental health crisis?
It is now common for media reports to mention a ‘child mental health crisis’ with claims that anxiety and depression in children are rising to catastrophic levels. The evidence behind these claims can...
View ArticleReconstructing through altered states
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of doing a post-screening Q&A with the film-makers of an amazing documentary called My Beautiful Broken Brain. One of the many remarkable things about the documentary...
View ArticleA new wave of interrogation
Wired has an excellent article that tracks the development of police interrogation techniques from the dark days of physical violence, to the largely hand-me-down techniques depicted in classic cop...
View ArticleCultures of mental distress
BBC Radio 4 is currently running a fascinating four-part series called The Borders of Sanity on the interaction between culture and mental illness. It’s been put together by cultural historian...
View ArticleThe science of urban paranoia
I’ve got an article in The Atlantic on how paranoia and psychosis are more common in cities and why the quest to explain the ‘urban psychosis effect’ is reshaping psychiatry. The more urban your...
View ArticleMaking the personal, geospatial
There is an old story in London, and it goes like this. Following extensive rioting, there is an impassioned debate about the state of society with some saying it shows moral decay while others claim...
View ArticleIs psychosis an ‘immune disorder’?
A fascinating new study has just been published which found evidence for the immune system attacking a neuroreceptor in the brain in a small proportion of people with psychosis. It’s an interesting...
View ArticleShould we stop saying ‘commit’ suicide?
There is a movement in mental health to avoid the phrase ‘commit suicide’. It is claimed that the word ‘commit’ refers to a crime and this increases the stigma for what’s often an act of desperation...
View ArticleWhy we need to get better at critiquing psychiatric diagnosis
This piece is based on my talk to the UCL conference ‘The Role of Diagnosis in Clinical Psychology’. It was aimed at an audience of clinical psychologists but should be of interest more widely. I’ve...
View ArticleDo we suffer ‘behavioural fatigue’ for pandemic prevention measures?
The Guardian recently published an article saying “People won’t get ‘tired’ of social distancing – and it’s unscientific to suggest otherwise”. “Behavioural fatigue” the piece said, “has no basis in...
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