06/06/2026
EXCEPTIONAL piece by James Barnes in psychology today.
 "For decades, critics of psychiatry Lucy Johnstone, James Davies, Joanna Moncrieff and others have argued that psychiatric diagnoses are not scientific facts and that psychiatry lacks a coherent scientific foundation for its claims. Rather than identifying naturally occurring disorders, they argue, psychiatric classifications are fundamentally shaped by social values, professional negotiations, institutional interests and cultural assumptions. The response from psychiatry has often been very dismissive, and such critics are labelled 'antipsychiatry,' accused of denying the reality of mental suffering, undermining treatment and/or being ignorant of the science. Times have changed. Today, some of psychiatry's more thoughtful defenders are conceding many of the criticisms that were once treated as sacrilege within psychiatry."
And James’s workshop of the same title is in July…
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1989619057159?aff=oddtdtcreator
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-between-us/202606/who-gets-to-define-human-suffering
As psychiatry concedes long-standing criticisms of diagnosis, a deeper question emerges: What now justifies its authority over human suffering?
