Why do we take psychiatric medication?
What does the medication we take actually do?
What is a good relationship with medication?
What does this conversation mean for you?
This event was organised by the Manchester based Taking Control of Psychiatric Medication Network, part of the Organic Recovery Learning Community.
Joanna Moncrieff is a British psychiatrist who has published extensively about psychiatric medication. Her books include “The Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs”, “The Bitterest Pill” and “The Myth of the Chemical Cure”.
She aims to overturn the claim that psychiatric drugs work by correcting chemical imbalance, and analyses the professional, commercial and political vested interests that have shaped this view.
She also challenges the accepted account that portrays antipsychotics as specific treatments that target an underlying brain disease and explores early views that suggest, in contrast, that antipsychotics achieve their effects by inducing a state of neurological suppression.
Further, she believes we need to de-medicalise human emotions.
In this video presentation she discusses her research and the implications it has for people who take psychiatric medication, our social networks, and those of us who prescribe the medication.
She talks about her work and then a panel of people with lived experience had a conversation with her about what she has shared in the video from their own perspectives.
With thanks to National Survivor Users Network for their sponsorship.
