ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Good Night, and Good Luck: Live from Broadway, Becoming Victoria Wood, Hamnet, and Song Sung Blue
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Against the medicalisation of mental health
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
RADICAL: Greta Thunberg urges MEPs to show climate leadership, March 2020. In 2021 she likened her autism to a "superpower", crediting her success to her special interests, or areas of highly focussed attention.
[European Parliament/CC]
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Filipino-US saxophonist JON IRABAGON about the threat of AI in the time of Musk and Trump, and how an artist can respond
PETE HIRST introduces a theatre company from Wakefield dedicated to the propagation of socialist perspectives on present British political realities
JENNY FARRELL reminds us that the US novelist, famed for pulp fiction and nature stories, was, by virtue of life experience, a committed revolutionary socialist
BRENT CUTLER recommends a sober examination of the real risks and true merits of nuclear energy, and an exposure of the capitalist system as an obstacle to human betterment
Searching for Normal: A New Approach to Understanding Mental Health, Distress and Neurodiversity
Dr Sami Timimi, Fern Press, £25
WITH mental health, particularly of young people in our society, a hot topic of conversation, Dr Sami Timimi’s new book offers a refreshing and radical view as a counterpoint to the mainstream narrative and the increasing medicalisation of mental health.
Challenging mainstream shibboleths, especially scientific ones, can be a Quixotic enterprise but Timimi takes up the knight’s lance with alacrity. He has been an NHS consultant in child and adolescent psychiatry since 1997 and has a wealth of hands-on experience. This is his sixth book and he has also made numerous contributions to medical journals. His book is written in a clear and accessible way for a general readership.
While he doesn’t proclaim himself as such, his approach to psychiatry is one of a Marxist bent, in that he looks at the subject holistically and recognises the dialectical interplay of factors, particularly social, class and cultural, on everyone’s mental health.
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