Drop the Disorder! Challenging the culture of psychiatric diagnosis

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Since going online in 2020 we've attracted thousands more people from around the world to our annual online festival, our poetry events and our ongoing workshops. This unique contribution to the psychology literature remains accessible through compelling narratives, poetry and artwork. This is not just a book; it is a call to action to advocate for a paradigm shift in modern mental health care. It offers an alternative framework for understanding distress and promotes hope for recovery. This is a limited numbers online workshop with the aim of creating a space for interaction and discussion for participants. Free and reduced places are limited and available on a first come first served basis. UK mental health services were in crisis when this book was first published. They are in even greater crisis now. This updated second edition offers a cohesive basis for collective change to the individualising and medicalising of ‘mental health’. Anyone who wants to deal with the epidemic of distress and despair in our society should engage deeply with Jo Watson’s work and this massively important book.'

Book review: Drop the Disorder! by Adie Hulm - Mad in the UK

helpful to anybody who wants to learn more about the many facets of mental health care and treatments.’ Challenging, insightful and often controversial… a truly innovative and valuable book that functions both as a learning resource and an ardent call to arms.’ This book represents a mission… a move away from biomedical entrapment to a caring mental health system built on the values of liberation and humanity.’ with overwhelming emotional issues typically does not help them. Instead, a psychiatric diagnosis usually

Thank you, Jacqui, totally mind blowing! Really made me think and lots of practical skills I can use in my work. Jo will outline the challenge to psychiatric diagnosis and Jacqui will talk about how we can best support people without colluding with mainstream diagnostic frameworks. Dr Sarah Carr, Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Service User Research Enterprise, King’s College London Hearing Voices Network– If you hear voices, HVN can help – we are committed to helping people who hear voices. We offer information, support and understanding to people who hear voices and those who support them. Thanks for this, I needed something to rekindle my spirit today. It’s always wonderful to read of practitioners who saw the light and align with DTD.

Home Page | Jacqui Dillon

Since then, they have delivered events in towns and cities across the UK, bringing together activists, survivors and professionals to debate psychiatric diagnosis. How and why does psychiatric diagnosis hold such power? What harm it can do? What are the alternatives to diagnosis, and how it can be positively challenged? A. New assessment tools: based on the kinds of trauma a person has experienced and its lasting effects. They also need more humane methods of eliciting recovery, e.g. counseling in which there is authentic, person to person, client-centered connection. Online Events Online Classes Online Health Classes #counselling #psychiatry #psychology #mental_healthAnyone who wants to deal with the epidemic of distress and despair in our society should engage deeply with Jo Watson's work and this massively important book. --Johann Hari, author of Lost Connections and Chasing the Scream It draws on the expertise of those with experiential knowledge of the mental health system to review the past, challenge the present and explore how we might fight for a future, better way of responding to mental crisis and distress that places the service user at the centre. There’s an intruder in our house! Counselling, psychotherapy and the biomedical model of emotional distress

Drop the Disorder! by Jo Watson | Waterstones Drop the Disorder! by Jo Watson | Waterstones

The Power Threat Meaning Framework– Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis. This book is a revised and retitled second edition of A Straight Talking Introduction to Being a Mental Health Service User(2010).I was a 26-year-old support worker sat face to face with a recently sectioned, police-escorted patient on a mental health ICU ward. As this patient looked me in the eye with what took considerable effort to fight the level of sedation they were under, they asked me… “What can you actually do for me, how can you help me, you look like a teenager, how can you help someone of my age, how can you understand what I’ve been through?” So grateful for you giving us this time and opportunity Jacqui…. your passion and knowledge is so inspiring. I have been able to take so much away with me. I’d love the opportunity to hear more of your thinking. There will be space for questions, discussion and the sharing of ideas making for a uniquely powerful and hopeful learning experience. This online workshop is aimed at people who reject the culture of psychiatric diagnosis and who want to further explore non-pathologising ways of supporting people who are experiencing emotional distress particularly when the distress has been or is at risk of being explained by society, services and many professionals as evidence of ‘mental illness.’

Drop the disorder? - Jo Watson Drop the disorder? - Jo Watson

AD4E started in 2016 when Jo Watson invited Lucy Johnstone to do a training event in Birmingham. The appetite for challenging the mainstream narrative was huge and by March 2020 we had taken our AD4E day event to 21 cities around the UK and involved many contributors in the process. Just want to say thank you, your perspective is so extremely refreshing and mind-opening. I’ve bought the literature and can’t wait to read more. I feel enlivened by changes in my thought process and possibilities of working with a different mind-set. This is such a simple and obvious concept and so needed, it just shows how we (society) has been conditioned to think in limiting ways about mental wellbeing. Thank you. It would require significant systemic change to de-medicalise mental ‘illness’ but the authors suggest three steps that individuals can take to help reduce the use of biomedical language: 1) use everyday words, 2) emphasise the context of ‘symptoms’ and 3) use speech marks around diagnostic language. They suggest that these seemingly small acts can build up to collective action for radical change.We want a better deal for everyone who seeks help for emotional distress – better understanding from practitioners and society, better responses and more choices from services and better outcomes from treatments. Our aim is that our publishing reflects these goals. Thank you for this afternoon and for the passion you brought to it. It’s made me feel more hopeful that change is possible. Jacqui Dillon is an activist, author, and speaker, and has lectured and published worldwide on trauma, abuse, hearing voices, psychosis, dissociation, and healing. She is a key figure in the international Hearing Voices Movement, has co-edited three books, published numerous articles and papers and is on the editorial board of the journal Psychosis: Psychological, Social and Integrative Approaches. Jacqui is Honorary Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of East London, Visiting Research Fellow at The Centre for Community Mental Health, Birmingham City University and a member of the Advisory Board, The Collaborating Centre for Values-Based Practice in Health and Social Care, St Catherine’s College, Oxford University. Jacqui’s survival of childhood abuse and subsequent experiences of using psychiatric services inform her work, and she is an outspoken advocate and campaigner for trauma informed approaches to madness and distress. Jacqui is part of a collective voice demanding a radical shift in the way we understand and respond to experiences currently defined as psychiatric illnesses. In 2017, Jacqui was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Psychology by the University of East London. This book takes the themes, energy and passions of the AD4E events – bringing together many of the event speakers with others who have stories to tell and messages to share in the struggle to challenge diagnosis. Mad in America– Mad in America’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the United States (and abroad).