Mental care needs ‘revamp’

THE “drugs-are-great philosophy” within mainstream psychiatry is falling apart and the discipline needs to reinvent itself, according to an acclaimed US author interviewed in today’s Irish Examiner.

Award-winning medical journalist Robert Whitaker, who will visit Ireland next week for public lectures, maintains psychiatry needs to develop a “big-picture approach” to helping people struggling with psychiatric symptoms. And while that approach may involve using medications in a selective, cautious manner, they need to be just one tool in a larger tool-bag.

Mr Whitaker, brought to Ireland by two campaigning groups, the Irish Network of Critical Voices in Mental Health, and Mind Freedom, will speak in Athlone, Dublin and Cork between February 25 and March 3.