Links to sites relevant to all CAMHS professional groups who might work within the wider CAMHS services. Links to CAMHS services in the UK.

Social Work

WWW Resources for Social Workers  Information for Practice: news and new scholarship from around the world.

Pat McClendon’s Clinical Social Work  Site with interests in health and mental health issues, especially in the effects of all types of trauma on the minds and bodies of survivors. There is a focus on identifying and communicating effective treatment protocol for trauma survivors and an interest in dissociative disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.

SocioSite  Social Science Information System.

The Sociology of Mental Illness  We start by examining mental illness from the point of view of the person. Do common threads run through first-person accounts -- threads such as typical contents of experience, certain relevancies, background expectancies, and styles of experiencing? Does it seem that mental illness in general, or certain "forms" of "it," can be seen as finite provinces of meaning (e.g., is schizophrenia a special reality)? In general, can we develop a typology of "disorders" based NOT on outsiders' theories of mental illness or on the statistics of what is "normal" in a society, but on features of the experience itself? Does action (e.g., certain symptoms) make sense based on the structure of experience?

Mental Health and Civil Liberties  In this paper I outline the case against compulsion made by Szasz; the defence of compulsion made by an English psychiatrist, Anthony Clare; and the criticisms of Szasz and the anti-psychiatry movement made by Peter Sedgwick in his book PsychoPolitics. The object of the paper is not to argue a case, but to outline some of the theoretical concepts that I think are useful for analysing the issues.

Classical Sociological Theory  Readings, resources and references.

ZNet  A community of people committed to social change.

Critical Social Work Many individuals committed to social justice and equity have found inspiration in the social work field, even if some have expressed some regrets about having to work from within “the system”. A number of social work journals have expressed a concern for the current and future potential of a critical perspective on their work, and the University of Windsor’s School of Social Work has decided to do something about this situation. They have created the journal, Critical Social Work, which exists solely as an electronic publication. You can browse through each volume of the journal dating back to the first issue, which was issued in 2000. Since then, the journal has taken on a wide range of topics, such as spirituality in social work and global justice, making this online journal worth a visit.

The legacy of radical social work How contemporary social work theory nurtured the new authoritarianism.

Psychiatric Nursing

Psychiatric Nursing Links  What it says........

The Role of the Psychiatric Nurse  What can be the relevance of the psychiatric nurse to the life of a person who is mentally ill? To do justice to this question, it is necessary to examine what 'mental illness' is, how best to care for those 'suffering from it' and the role psychiatric nurses might usefully play in that care. My starting point is the position held by David Smail, a senior clinical psychologist and academic, and the ensuing discussion will use Smail's work as the basis for examining all of these issues.

Nurses.info  Information and Resources: Psychiatric Nursing

Counselling

Collaborative Possibilities  Welcome to Collaborative Possibilities. This weblog is intended to be an informational resource for mental health consumers, students of the mental health field, and mental health professionals.

Critical Engagements  This site provides 'critical engagements' with different types of counselling and psychotherapy, or with specific theoretical or practical issues on which different types of counselling disagree.

The Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy  JCPCP focuses on a compassionate critique of the worlds of psychology, counselling and psychotherapy. JCPCP questions and examines the assumptions inherent in therapeutic practices, explores the implications of making the person central to psychological enquiry, and invites discussion and comment between people who believe that there is more to counselling than meets the scientific eye.

Paediatrics

Psychosocial Paediatrics  Paediatrics with a psycho-sociological slant.

CAMHS Services in the UK

CAMHS Consultants  The NHS Plan: making it work for CAMHS. Mental health services for children & young people: the past, present and future of service development and policy.

Surrey CAMHS  Issues, services, reources, news, national policy.

East Sussex CAMHS  What is mental health, FAQ’s, Information.

Child SIG North East  Child psychology special interest group, North East England. News, activities, information, courses.

Birmingham CAMHS Leaflet  Information about the service for referrers.

"In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary." Kathleen Norris

Clinical Psychology

Introduction to Clinical Psychology  Information and links.

Psychology Resources  List of Links.

Creativity and Humanistic Psychology Getzels and Jackson were able to demonstrate that I.Q. tests did not measure originality and that there was no necessary correlation between originality and intelligence as measured by the I.Q.  What’s more, those scoring high exclusively on I.Q. tests tended to share the traditional values of their teachers and parents - they were highly goal-directed and achievement-orientated in terms of societal goals, lacked originality and a sense of humour, tended to be efficient and have little time for idle exploration, and tended to show minor interest in self-understanding.  Those scoring significantly lower on I.Q. tests, but high on measures designed to tap originality, showed considerably greater independence of judgement, considerably more touch with their emotions and experiences, they permitted themselves to express greater emotional instability, accepted ambiguity, and tended to value self-exploration and philosophical questioning over efficient and success-oriented thinking.

Transpersonal Psychology  "Transpersonal Psychology" is a branch of psychology that is concerned with the study of those states and processes in which people experience a deeper or wider sense of who they are, or a sense of greater connectedness with others, nature, or the "spiritual" dimension. The term "transpersonal" means "beyond the personal".

Howard Gardner, multiple intelligences and education  Howard Gardner's work around multiple intelligences has had a profound impact on thinking and practice in education - especially in the United States. Here we explore the theory of multiple intelligences; why it has found a ready audience amongst educationalists; and some of the issues around its conceptualisation and realisation.

Howard Gardner  Howard Gardner is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences, a critique of the notion that there exists one single human intelligence that can be assessed by standard psychometric instruments.

What is Postmodernism This article identifies some of the advantages of using a postmodern approach in the psychology classroom. A postmodern pedagogical stance has special relevance for faculty who teach abnormal psychology insofar as postmodernism encourages reflexivity and increases students' awareness of social justice issues.

Articles, Research, and Resources in Psychology  The journal articles and other resources are in this site's 15 major sections: assessment; dual relationships; ethics codes & practice guidelines; articles on ethics & malpractice; fallacies & pitfalls in psychology; psychology laws & licensing boards; utilities for psychology discussion lists sponsored by the American Psychological Association; memory & abuse; online literature searches; sexual issues in therapy, counseling, teaching, & the lives of psychologists; suicide; the therapist as a person; Tsunami, war, and torture; Carolyn Payton; and Ground Zero imaged by psychologist Beverly Greene.

IQ Test. What Does It Measure? Intelligence testing began in earnest in France, when in 1904 psychologist Alfred Binet was commissioned by the French government to find a method to differentiate between children who were intellectually normal and those who were inferior. The purpose was to put the latter into special schools where they would receive more individual attention. In this way the disruption they caused in the education of intellectually normal children could be avoided.

Personality Theories  Freud, Erikson, Jumg, Rank, Adler, Horney, Ellis, Fromm, Skinner, Skynner, Eysenck, Bandura, Allport, Kelly, Snygg & Combs, Maslow, Rogers, Binswanger, Boss, Frankl, May, Piaget, Sociobiology, etc.

Community Psychology in Education  CPHE is a discussion & action forum for those interested in the teaching & learning of community psychology in UK Higher Education.

The Personality Project  These pages are meant to guide those interested in personality theory and research to the current personality research literature.

Psychology’s Radical Critics  This discussion, attended by two dozen people, turned out to be the founding meeting of the Radical Psychology Network. Here is our original proposal for the "conversation hour" that we submitted to APA's Division of the History of Psychology. Plus links to other papers.

The Psi Cafe  A Psychology resource site. Top 25 psychology sites.

Humanistic Psychology  Throughout history many individuals and groups have affirmed the inherent value and dignity of human beings. They have spoken out against ideologies, beliefs and practices which held people to be merely the means for accomplishing economic and political ends. They have reminded their contemporaries that the purpose of institutions is to serve and advance the freedom and power of their members. In Western civilisation we honour the times and places, such as Classical Greece and Europe of the Renaissance, when such affirmations were expressed. Humanistic Psychology is a contemporary manifestation of that ongoing commitment. Its message is a response to the denigration of the human spirit that has so often been implied in the image of the person drawn by behavioural and social sciences.

Critical Psychology Links  Yahoo links to critical psychology sites.

Clinical Psychology Practice  This website provides free information about the practice of Clinical Psychology. Psychological Practice, clinical issues, social issues, personality and identity, stress management, fear of flying, self-help, etc.

The Myth of the Bell Curve  The myth of the bell curve has occupied a central place in the theory of inequality (Walker, 1929; Bradley, 1968). Apologists for inequality in all spheres of social life have used the theory of the bell curve, explicitly and implicitly, in developing moral rationalisations to justify the status quo. While the misuse of the bell curve has perhaps been most frequent in the field of education, it is also common in other areas of social science and social welfare.

Review of the Bell Curve  Herrnstein and Murray's Bell Curve (1994) obtained a fair amount of publicity upon its release.  It has been seized upon by those with a predisposition to believe that heredity is the central and determining factor in explaining race and class differences.  As Stephen Jay Gould points out in the November, 1994 New Yorker (based on his book The Mismeasure of Man) that "the Bell Curve  holds no new arguments or compelling data but cashes in on the depressing temper of our time."  I would suggest the E. Miller's (1997) review and his extension of the arguments offered in the Bell Curve  reflect quite deeply this "depressing temper of our time".

The Roots of the IQ Debate  My interest in the eugenics movement stems from my fear that the basic principles of the eugenics debate, even its most discredited aspects, are resurfacing in the 1990s. To revisit the eugenics movement of the early 20th-century is to be reminded of the harm the movement intended toward those members of society least able to defend themselves. History, in this case, may help to provide an antidote to contemporary manifestations of eugenicist arguments - the I. Q. debate and the right’s anti-immigrant campaign.

What does it mean to say someone has an IQ of 126? There are no numbers in people’s heads. Intelligence does not have quantity or magnitude, except as we believe it does. And why do we believe that it does? Because we have tools that imply that this is what the mind is like......We do not see nature or intelligence or human motivation or ideology as “it” is but only as our languages are. And our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our metaphors create the content of our culture. Neil Postman. Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Classical Adlerian Psychology  Classical Adlerian psychology is a values-based, fully-integrated, theory of personality, model of psycho-pathology, philosophy of living, strategy for preventative education, and technique of psychotherapy. Its mission is to encourage the development of psychologically healthy and co-operative individuals, couples, and families, in order to effectively pursue the ideals of social equality and democratic living . A vigourously optimistic and inspiring approach to psychotherapy, it balances the equally important needs for individual optimal development and social responsibility. With a solid foundation in the original teachings and therapeutic style of Alfred Adler, it integrates several powerful resources: the rich contributions of Kurt Adler, Lydia Sicher, Alexander Müller, Sophia de Vries, and Anthony Bruck; the self-actualization research of Abraham Maslow; and the creative innovations of Henry Stein.

The High Stakes Testing Controversy  A disturbing trend in information gathering currently exists in the American educational system. Referred to as high-stakes testing and advocated as a means of motivating students and prompting improved average performance in schools, this trend will predictably lead to a variety of negative consequences in terms of the quality of students' learning and their psychological well-being.

Classics in the History of Psychology  Ancient to Modern Thought, Behaviourism, Cognition, Developmental Theory, Evolutionary Theory, Experimental Psychology, Functionalism and Pragmatism, Gestalt Therapy, Intelligence testing, Neuropsychology, Perception, Personality, Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Social Psychology, Statistics and Methodology, Women and Psychology, Wundt and Structuralism.

The Demise of IQ Testing for Children with Learning Disabilities  The validity of the concept of LD does not hinge on the validity of IQ-Achievement Discrepancy as a means for identifying individuals with LD. IQ-Achievement Discrepancy is not a valid means for identifying individuals with LD. There is no compelling need for the use of IQ tests in the identification of LD. Elimination of IQ tests in the identification of LD will help shift the emphasis in Special Education away from eligibility and toward the interventions children need to be successful learners.

Intelligence is fixed and measurable  Selection is justified by the myth that intelligence is a fixed characteristic which can be measured at the age of 11 and which will predict all future intellectual performance.

howard gardner, multiple intelligences and education In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings - initially a blank slate - could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early 'naive' theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains.

Cultural Considerations in Intelligence Testing  The cultural validity of intelligence testing.

Humanistic Psychology and Humanistic Social Science  There are three essential characteristics to the humanistic movement: 1. An epistemology that admits the centrality of human experience as basic data. 2. An emphasis on holistic theoretical models. 3. An advocacy of value-based and value-affirming social science.

Narrative Psychology  This site focuses upon narrative perspectives in psychology and allied disciplines and provides an introductory and interdisciplinary guide to bibliographical and Internet resources concerned with "the storied nature of human conduct" (Sarbin, 1986) broadly conceived. Narrative in psychology itself has developed particularly notable links with the emergent discipline of cultural psychology (Bruner, 1990).

Social Power and Psychological Distress  Hardly any of the 'symptoms' of psychological distress may correctly be seen as medical matters. The so-called 'neuroses', 'psychoses' and related forms of suffering are nothing to do with faulty biology; nor indeed are they the outcome of individual moral weakness or other personal failing. They are the creation of the social world in which we live, and that world is structured by power.

Review of Why Therapy Doesn’t Work, etc By now, most of us in psychology have heard of David Smail, who works in the United Kingdom within the National Health Service, as both of the above works are compilations of previous works, now published as compilations by Robinson. The first comprises Illusion and Reality (1984) and Taking Care (1987), the second, The Origins of Unhappiness (1993) and How to Survive Without Psychotherapy (1996).

Department of Psychological Therapies Shropshire  News, articles, leaflets.

Great Ideas in Personality  How do people tend to think, feel, and behave - and what causes these tendencies? These are the questions addressed by personality theory and research. This website deals with scientific research programs in personality psychology.

What’s Wrong With Standardised Tests?  This page argues a case against standardised testing.

School Psychology Resources Online  School Psychology Resources for Psychologists, Parents and Educators. Research learning disabilities, ADHD, functional behavioral assessment, autism, adolescence, parenting, psychological assessment, special education, mental retardation, mental health, and more.

Scholarly Psychology Resources on the Web

Psychology on the Web  AmoebaWeb showcases psychology at its best.

Clinical Psychology Links  Links to a variety of clinical problems, therapy, mental health organizations, and more.

Psych Web  This Web site contains lots of psychology-related information for students and teachers of psychology.

The Radical Psychology Network  We challenge psychology's traditional focus on minor reform, because enhancing human welfare demands fundamental social change instead. Moreover, psychology itself has too often oppressed people rather than liberated them.

Radical Therapy Links & Resource  Radical therapy uses psychiatry as a force for liberation, taking the position that alienation is the result of oppression and that by discovering the reason for the alienation the individual will grow in self-knowledge.

Teaching Clinical Psychology  This site is devoted to sharing ideas and resources for teaching clinical psychology, especially undergraduate courses on abnormal psychology, psychotherapy, group dynamics, psychological testing, and clinical components of introductory psychology. The orientation is mostly psychodynamic and humanistic, although other orientations are covered.

Psychwatch Clinical Psychology Resources  What it says. Some links are rated.

A Guide to Psychology Practice  This site provides free information about the practice of Clinical Psychology.

BUBL Clinical Psychology  Catalogue of Internet Resources: Clinical Psychology Links.

Emotional Intelligence  Goleman seeks to guide us through the unparalleled burst of scientific studies of the emotions that have appeared over the last decade; most dramatic of which are the glimpses of the brain at work. These studies are enabling scientists to speak with authority on the nature of the irrational, and to map with some precision the human heart. This mapping challenges those who subscribe to a narrow view of human intelligence and argue that IQ is a genetic given that cannot be changed, and that our destiny is largely fixed by these aptitudes.

Emotional Intelligence  in the late 1980s, two American psychologists, Peter Salovey of Yale and John Mayer of the University of New Hampshire, were casting around for a pithy way to sum up human qualities such as empathy, self-awareness and emotional control. For a while, the phrase they hit on -- "emotional intelligence" -- languished in academic obscurity. Then Daniel Goleman, a writer with The New York Times, picked it up and nailed it to the mast of his best-seller Emotional Intelligence: why it can matter more than IQ.

IQ, Genetics, Culture and Time For most of the last century it was widely thought that intelligence was in decline. The idea was that those at the lower end of the intelligence spectrum were having more children, thereby reducing the general intelligence level. Then one November day in 1984 James Flynn, a New Zealand-based moral philosopher, had a Eureka moment that turned cognitive science on its head. He opened a package sent to him by an academic in Holland named PA Vroon. Inside were data from an IQ test known as Raven's Progressive Matrices. IQ are the initials of 'intelligence quotient', the psychometric system by which the mental ability known as intelligence is measured. Vroon did not know how to crunch the raw numbers, but Flynn did. And he noticed that 18-year-old Dutch males had made a giant leap in IQ scores on the previous generation. Over the following month, he checked similar data from around the word and the answer was the same: IQ was going up, and dramatically.

None of the Above The Flynn effect has moved from theory to fact. What remains uncertain is how to make sense of the Flynn effect. If an American born in the nineteen-thirties has an I.Q. of 100, the Flynn effect says that his children will have I.Q.s of 108, and his grandchildren I.Q.s of close to 120; more than a standard deviation higher. If we work in the opposite direction, the typical teen-ager of today, with an I.Q. of 100, would have had grandparents with average I.Q.s of 82; seemingly below the threshold necessary to graduate from high school. And, if we go back even farther, the Flynn effect puts the average I.Q.s of the schoolchildren of 1900 at around 70, which is to suggest, bizarrely, that a century ago the United States was populated largely by people who today would be considered mentally retarded.

Bruce Levine is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has been in practise for nearly two decades. Levine is the author of Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations and a World Gone Crazy (New York-London: Continuum, 2003), a protest book. The 26 alphabetically ordered chapters of Commonsense Rebellion detail Levine's contention that the high national rates of mental illness in the United States are really just natural reactions (e.g., discontent and disconnectedness) to the oppression of what he terms an "institutional society," which he argues causes many to break down psychologically.

Review of Emotional Intelligence  A review of Daniel Coleman’s book, Emotional ntelligence.

Articles, Research, and resources in Psychology  Therapy, Ethics, Malpractice, Forensics, Critical Thinking (and a few other topics).

Community Psychology UK  Community Psychology is orientated to the community rather than the individual as the basic unit of analysis and intervention.  (It is not just the practice of individual applied psychology in community contexts.  For this reason we sometimes call our orientation Community Social Psychology, the term used widely in Latin America).  Our orientation is broadly radical, underpinned by values of social justice, liberation, empowerment and inclusion of people marginalised by the existing order.  However we also emphasise conceptual and methodological rigour, in the practice and the theory of community psychology - as research and as collaboration with diverse communities.

Psychiatry

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry  This site is designed to serve both AACAP Members, and Parents and Families. Information is provided as a public service to aid in the understanding and treatment of the developmental, behavioural, and emotional disorders which affect an estimated 7 to 12 million children and adolescents at any given time in the United States. You will find information on child and adolescent psychiatry, fact sheets for parents and caregivers, AACAP membership, current research, practice guidelines, managed care information, awards and fellowship descriptions, meeting information, and much more.

How one man revolutionised psychiatry  Robert Spitzer isn’t widely known outside the field of mental health, but he is, without question, one of the most influential psychiatrists of the twentieth century. It was Spitzer who took the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — the official listing of all mental diseases recognised by the American Psychiatric Association (A.P.A.)—and established it as a scientific instrument of enormous power.

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Online  List of links.

Clinical Languages/Clinical Realities One perspective on the DSM-IIIR (American Psychiatric Association,1987) classification system is that it provides a convenient and scientific shorthand for describing the clinical issues faced by mental health professionals. From a modernist perspective, in which empirical science is capable of providing objective truths, the DSM approach to understanding and treating the emotional and mental difficulties of human beings makes compelling sense (Schwartz & Wiggins, 1986).

Critical Psychiatry  Critical psychiatry is part academic, part practical. Theoretically it is influenced by critical philosophical and political theories, and it has three elements. It challenges the dominance of clinical neuroscience in psychiatry (but does not exclude it); it introduces a strong ethical perspective on psychiatric knowledge and practice; it politicises mental health issues. Like other psychiatrists we use drugs, but we see them as having a minor role in the resolution of psychosis or depression. We attach greater importance to dealing with social factors, such as unemployment, bad housing, poverty, stigma and social isolation. Most people who use psychiatric services regard these factors as more important than drugs. We reject the medical model in psychiatry and prefer a social model, which we find more appropriate in a multi-cultural society characterised by deep inequalities.

Royal College of Psychiatrists: Critical Psychiatry  Critical psychiatry repudiates the biomedical hypothesis. Instead it proposes attempting to understand mental health problems in personal and social contexts. Speculation about the biological basis of mental disorder does not add to that meaning. The biomedical model is so dominant in modern psychiatric practice that any criticism appears threatening. This is why it is important for psychiatrists to recognise that there has always been a strand of thinking in psychiatry that has not relied on the biomedical model.

Healthy Skepticism  Countering misleading drug promotion.

Critical Psychiatry Links  by The Online Dictionary of Mental Health.

Douglas C. Smith is an American psychiatrist and mental health consultant who currently lives and practices in Juneau, Alaska. He is on the board of the National Association of Rights Protection and Advocacy and the International Centre for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology. Dr. Smith is board certified in psychiatry, and has extensive post-graduate training in psychoanalysis.

R D Laing Site  All about Laing

Experts Defining Mental Disorders Are Linked to Drug Firms Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses, a new analysis has found.

BUBL Child Psychiatry  List of Links.

Strengths and Criticisms of the DSM List of pros and cons.

Postpsychiatry: New Direction for Mental Health  Government policies are beginning to change the ethos of mental health care in Britain. The new commitment to tackling the links between poverty, unemployment, and mental illness has led to policies that focus on disadvantage and social exclusion. These emphasise the importance of contexts, values, and partnerships and are made explicit in the national service framework for mental health. The service framework raises an agenda that is potentially in conflict with biomedical psychiatry. In a nutshell, this government (and the society it represents) is asking for a very different kind of psychiatry and a new deal between health professionals and service users.

I suspect that most psychiatrists yearn to be “proper doctors”, and they achieve this by an inflated adherence to the medical model. In so doing they lost touch with the patient as a human being possessing a mind, or whose mind has been stunted or scarred, or whose capacity for good relationships is impaired. The patient becomes a “case” characterised by symptoms that add up to a diagnosis. With almost computer-live precision the appropriate drug treatment or regime follows.......The insistence of academic psychiatry on a strict medical model and its dependence on theories of brain chemistry and on the pharmaceutical industry overlook the fact that there are probably at least ten times as many people who could benefit from psychotherapy as those who are being treated with anti-psychotic drugs Yet psychotherapy in the NHS remains, as Holmes has said, “the Cinderella of Cinderellas”. Ronald Sandison. A Century of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Group Analysis. 2001.

The Biopsychosocial Model  The biopsychosocial model in Anglo-American psychiatry is appraised. Its content and history are described and its scientific and ethical strengths noted. It is situated in relation to competing approaches in the profession, especially an older but enduring biomedical model. The tensions provoked by the latter, in relation to ‘anti-psychiatry’, the users’ movement and ‘critical psychiatry’ are explored, as a context in which the biopsychosocial model has both emerged and been constrained. At the end of the paper, reasons for the relative lack of success of the model are discussed and its future assessed.

Biopsychiatry Controversy The biopsychiatry controversy is an ongoing dispute over the scientific basis of biological psychiatry theory and practice. The debate is focused on criticism of mainstream psychiatric thinking, proposed by a vocal lobby of psychiatrists and scientists who are at present in the minority. Activist organizations support their views. Critics contend the field is flawed in a number of ways. They argue that the lack of biomarkers is a flaw in the evidence for a somatic, biological cause for mental illness. Instead they draw attention to trauma models of mental disorders within the psychiatric literature which have been marginalized as research efforts switched to the biological model since the 1980s.

Wrongdiagnosis  This web site focuses on misdiagnosis of more than 2,000 diseases and 700 symptoms.

A Reevaluation of the Relationship between Psychiatric Diagnosis and Chemical Imbalances  The assumption that the etiologies of DSM-IV disorders are fundamentally related to "chemical imbalances" is challenged. While the chemical imbalance model may eventually be empirically shown to be unequivocally accurate in specific disorders, this is not presently the case for any disorder. The attempt to correct chemical imbalances through medication is at the heart of modern psychiatric treatment, as are evidence-based protocols which follow from the establishment of an accurate diagnosis. There is much to be said for this approach, but the downside is that other medication treatment strategies are rendered illegitimate. Instead of correcting imbalances, it is argued that pharmacological agents may be viewed as inducing particular psychological states which though not specifically related to diagnosis, are nonetheless the basis for the usefulness of the medication. This perspective provides justification for using medications in clinical situations that may not even be DSM-IV defined. To properly use medications in this way, patients must more often be viewed in the complexity usually associated with psychotherapy. A case is made against the widespread use of medications by non-psychiatrists as well as the 15-minute, once-a-month medication visits that have become standard psychiatric practice, both the product of the chemical imbalance model.

Psychiatry On Line  The International Forum for Psychiatry - the world's First Internet Medical Journal.

Mental Magazine  "It is quite possible  - overwhelmingly probable, one might guess - that we will always learn more about human life and human personality from novels than from scientific psychology." Noam Chomsky Language & Problems of Knowledge.

Psychiatric Myths  One of the more intriguing aspects of the "schizophrenia" literature is the discrepancy between the strength of the belief that "schizophrenia is a brain disease" and the availability of direct supporting evidence; even those who hold the belief admit that there is no direct evidence for it. Clinical Psychology Issue 12. April 2002.

Psychiatry's Interface with Philosophy and Religion  Excellent bibliography.

History of psychiatry  ... from the history of psychiatry.

Being Mentally Ill   Although the author, Thomas Scheff, now recognizes the one-dimensional, rather than consilient nature, of a single disciplinary sociological perspective, a dichotomy was created between the biomedical model of mental illness and theories, like labeling theory, which maintain that mental illness is primarily of social origin. Scheff argues that the statement of a countertheory to the dominant biopsychiatric model, even if not totally valid, is worthwhile in itself.

Antipsychiatry in Print  Reading room.....

Classification of Psychopathology  This article criticises the approach to language underlying the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Concepts from the philosophy of language illuminate taxonomic problems that vex users of the DSM nosology: lack of coverage, comorbidity, and within-category heterogeneity. Exception is taken to the operationism that results in a highly artificial DSM nomenclature, raising the spectre of non-referential criterion sets. A dimensional approach is recommended because it would better correspond to an objectively seamless reality.

Teaching the DSM System  Counsellor educators have a responsibility to teach students how to ethically diagnose in ways that respect diversity. A contextual understanding of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) and an awareness of the individual clinician’s values, and potential biases are essential to ethical diagnosis. This article presents teaching strategies to help counselling students learn how to consider gender and culture in the ethical diagnosis of mental disorders.

Philosophy of Psychiatry Bibliography  A collection of reviews. Follow the links on the left for specific areas.

Philosophy of Psychiatry  Not exclusively philosophical, but all links are relevant to the contemporary philosophical understanding of mental health.

The Limits of Psychiatry  Much of the expansion of psychiatry in the past few decades has been based on a biomedical model that encourages drug treatment to be seen as a panacea for multiple problems. Psychiatrist Duncan Double is sceptical of this approach and suggests that psychiatry should temper and complement a biological view with psychological and social understanding, thus recognising the uncertainties of clinical practice.

Psychodiagnostics in Question  Bibliography with notes.

Ivan Illich Archive  Ivan Illich can be considered one of the most radical political and social thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century. His aim is to analyse the institutional structures of industrialised society and to provide both rigourous criticism and a set of alternative concepts. The main thrust of his criticism goes against a society which endorses growth economy, political centralisation, and unlimited technology.

Mental Health and Civil Liberties  In this paper I outline the case against compulsion made by Szasz; the defence of compulsion made by an English psychiatrist, Anthony Clare; and the criticisms of Szasz and the anti-psychiatry movement made by Peter Sedgwick in his book PsychoPolitics. The object of the paper is not to argue a case, but to outline some of the theoretical concepts that I think are useful for analysing the issues.

Critical Psychiatry Network  Mainstream psychiatry acts on the somatic hypothesis of mental illness to the detriment of understanding people's problems. Laing's (1982) primary motivation was his appreciation that schizophrenia, in particular, was more understandable than mainstream psychiatry recognised. This stance is consistent with Adolf Meyer's (1951/2) philosophy. The neo-Kraepelinian has eclipsed the Meyerian approach over recent years and encouraged excessive enthusiasm about diagnosis and treatment which requires critical analysis (Double 1991).

PCCS Books  We are a small publishing company specialising in books on counselling and psychotherapy with a focus on the person-centred approach and critical psychology.

Peter Breggin is a controversial psychiatrist from the United States. Dr. Breggin is best known as a critic of biological psychiatry and psychiatric medication, and as the author of books such as Toxic Psychiatry, Talking Back to Prozac, and Talking Back to Ritalin.