The discovery of antipsychotics was an accidental revolution, the result not of systematic research, but of random observations. In the early Fifties, an obscure French naval surgeon was trying out chlorpromazine as a potential anaesthetic; he noticed that it calmed …
The psychological battle over trauma
We live in traumatised times. Over the past few years, our social media channels, reality TV shows, and even playgrounds have become saturated with therapy speak. Instead of feeling uncomfortable, people now feel “triggered”; listening to a friend is now …
Is liberal society making us ill?
As rates of Covid-19 infection started to dwindle, there came signs of a much stranger pandemic: long Covid and its host of long-term complications. You might think that, since men and older people suffer the most complications from the virus, …
Is the psychedelic industrial complex evil?
“More real than reality itself.” This is the sales pitch made by fans of dimethyltryptamine. Otherwise known as DMT, the compound found in ayahuasca returned to the spotlight recently thanks to Prince Harry’s description of his trips, which, he says, …
How Big Pharma monetised depression
We are, if you believe the headlines, living in the midst of an unprecedented mental health crisis, exacerbated by the stress and isolation of the pandemic. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the end of …
The grubby truth about mental health memoirs
I don’t quite know what to do with mental illness memoirs. I’m naturally interested in their subject, as I suffer from bipolar disorder myself. And they fulfil an important social function: despite the rise of innumerable online voices yelling about …
Inside Britain’s psychiatric nightmare
There were still grim Victorian-era asylums dotted around Britain when Penelope Campling started out as a young psychiatrist almost 40 years ago. She began her career in The Towers, one of two such places in Leicester. It was bleak: filled …
The psychedelic utopia is a lie
“We are going to usher in a new day in the treatment of psychiatric diagnoses and brain health disorders.”
Rob Barrow is the CEO of MindMed: a leader in a new species of pharmaceutical firm. These companies, described as “corporadelic”, …
Why we need fairies
Some years ago, when I was a Man Booker judge, I had a running scrap with one of my fellow judges, David Baddiel. David and I got on well (we all did that year; we even went on holiday together) …
The dangerous side of Munchausen’s
People are nicer to you when you’re ill; they pay you more attention. Most of us appreciate this special treatment, but what if you begin to crave it? What if you craved it so much that you started to embellish …
