Psychiatrists as officers of the state? The impact of Mental Health Law in the clinical consultation and the role of community treatment

I’ve been doing a lot of reading this week around the role of mental health law and psychiatry in society. This was initially sparked by my needing to find a strong argument against mental disorder as a positivist identity for another piece of work, which naturally led me to Szasz. I’ve previously described Szasz’s thoughts…

Qualitative research methods and mental health

I have argued a number of times in various forums that mental health research needs to maintain sight of the individual person who experiences mental disorder (Shepherd, A. (2013). The need for inclusion of concepts of recovery in clinical trials. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 202(2), 153–153. doi:10.1192/bjp.202.2.153). I…