Drop the Disorder!

Jo Watson is a psychotherapist and activist. She has worked therapeutically for the last 24 years with those who have been victims of sexual abuse/violence and has campaigned on women's survivor issues for the past three decades. She is, with Dr Lucy Johnstone, the founder and organiser of the `A Disorder For Everyone!' events. She represents the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) on the steering committee for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence, is part of the `Mad in the UK' team and is a founding member of `United for Integrity in Mental Health' (UIMH).

Foreword – Paula J Caplan, Introduction – Jo Watson, 1. Do you still need your psychiatric diagnosis? Critiques and alternatives – Lucy Johnstone, 2. Counselling, psychotherapy, diagnosis and the medicalisation of distress – Pete Sanders, 3. Psychiatry: a dangerous raft in a sea of despair – Sally Fox,4. The revolution will not be pathologised – Dolly Sen, 5. Problems in living: an existential perspective – Emmy van Deurzen, 6. Deceived: how Big Pharma persuades us to swallow its drugs – James Davies, 7. The language of values; the value of language – Clare Shaw, 8. `Schizophrenia’ – the least scientific and most damaging of psychiatric labels – John Read and Lorenza Magliano, 9. Resistance, rebellion, resilience and recovery – Akima Thomas, 10. Why words can harm your mental health – Gary Sidley, 11. Offensive pathways: the `personality disorder’ construct and the over-responsibilisation of incarcerated women – Robyn Timoclea, 12. Working therapeutically with clients with a psychiatric diagnosis – Terry Lynch, 13. Towards a trauma-informed approach with people who have experienced sexual violence – Lisa Thompson and Becky Willetts, 14. Disability, depression and the language of disorder – Chris Coombs, 15. Finding my tribe: a survivor’s story – Sue Irwin, 16. From chemical imbalance to power imbalance: a manifesto for mental health – Peter Kinderman, 17. A tale of two tutors: challenging the narrative of diagnosis and disorder in counselling training – Jenny Taper and Jamie-Lee Tipping, 18. Violence under the guise of care: whiteness, colonialism and psychiatric diagnoses – Guilaine Kinouani, 19. Names matter, language matters, truth matters – Jacqui Dillon, 20. There’s an intruder in our house! Counselling, psychotherapy and the biomedical model of emotional distress – Jo Watson.