Drop the Disorder + Do Something!

Jo Watson is a psychotherapist, supervisor, trainer and activist with 30 years' experience of working with people who have faced trauma and adversity. She challenges the medicalisation of emotional distress and advocates for approaches that reject the pathologising of people and communities. Jo is founder of the Facebook group Drop the Disorder! and co-founder of A Disorder for Everyone (AD4E) (adisorder4everyone.com). Jo is also a founding member of Mad in the UK (madintheuk.com), an affiliate of the website Mad in America, which serves as a catalyst for fundamentally re-thinking theory and practice in the field of mental health in the UK and promoting positive change. Jo is the editor of Drop the Disorder!: Challenging the culture of psychiatric diagnosis (PCCS Books, 2018) and We are the change-makers: Poems supporting drop the disorder (PCCS Books, 2020).

A note on language and terminology

Foreword - James Davies
Introduction - Jo Watson

PART ONE - REWRITING THE NARRATIVE
1. Why I wrote Insane Medicine - Sami Timimi
2. 'We need to be honest and open that what we are doing is behaviour change' - Jo Watson interviews Joanna Moncrieff
3. Mad in America: Journalism in the service of activism - Robert Whitaker
4. 'When bad things happen, it fucks you up' - Jo Watson interviews John Read
5. Mad in the UK: A space for silenced and critical voices - Peter Kinderman and Jo Watson
6. If it's in you, get it out there! - Jo Watson interviews Gabor Mate
7. The enemy between us: challenging the inequality that erodes ourmental health - Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson
8. 'When we know better, we do better' - Jo Watson interviews Kate Silverton

PART TWO - TRANSFORMING PRACTICE
9. Survival is not a disorder: Resistance, rebellion and revolutionarylove - Bec Bayliss and Akima Thomas
10. Wisdom from the street: what happens when we listen to people'sstories - Pat McArdle
11. 'It's just so important to recognise that people have lives that aremore than just meeting the demands of services' - Jo Watson interviews Hari Sewell
12. Writing a new script for mental health - Sara Boyce and Lisa Morrison
13. Stay curious, keep reading and question the status quo - Sharon McCormick
14. Using the Power Threat Meaning Framework to challengediagnostic practice - Lucy Johnstone, Amanda Griffiths, Ray Middleton, Gareth Morgan,Faye Nikopaschos and Jo Ramsden
15. Community-led approaches to wellbeing - Cormac Russell
16. Disabled people challenging psychiatric diagnosis - Katy Evans and Mel Halacre

PART THREE - ART AS ACTIVISM
17. Poetry in mission: A journey in progress - Jo McFarlane
18. Leading conversations about child sexual abuse: society's shame,not ours - Sophie Olson
19. All I can do is small things. But I care a lot. I'm stubborn. And I'mjust going to keep trying because I have to' - Jo Watson interviews Indigo Daya
20. Dodging diagnosis: CSA survival and creative resistance - Viv Gordon
21. 'When someone owns the truth, becomes accountable for harmsdone, it is pure liberation' - Jo Watson interviews 'V'

PART FOUR - ACTIVIST JOURNEYS
22. 'Psychiatric diagnosis is the first cause of everything bad thathappens in the mental health system' - Jo Watson interviews Paula J. Caplan
23. Story and counterstory: how I took authorship of my life back frompsychiatry - Marnie Wedlake
24. Dialectical behavioral therapy is not my koolade - Rebecca Donaldson
25. 'We have a failed paradigm and that's what needs to change' - Jo Watson interviews Lucy Johnstone
26. Emerging proud to be the change we wish to see in the world - Katie Mottram
27. How I used the law to fight the NHS and won justice for my dad - Nadine Denneth
28. From psychotherapist to activist - Daniel Mackler
29. It started with a book - Anne Guy
30. 'What drives me more than anything is that I know that people canheal' - Jo Watson interviews Jacqui Dillon