EP 44: Straight Talk About Psychiatric Drugs with Professor Joanna Moncrieff

The Upside of Bipolar: Conversations on the Road to Wellness

In this illuminating episode Professor Joanna Moncrieff shares:

• What led her to question and begin researching how psychotropic drugs actually work,
• The difference between the disease-centered model versus the drug-centered model of treatment and why this distinction matters,
• How the disease-centered model is preventing curiosity about what is actually causing the symptoms of mental illness and leading to worsening long-term outcomes,
• The conditions that led to the current condition of the psychiatric industry,
• How the beliefs that are promoted about psychiatric disorders creates a psychological dependence on psychotropic drugs, in addition to the chemical dependence,
• Why psychotropic drugs can become a barrier to processing trauma because they suppress emotions and emotional responses,
• The false comparison between insulin and psychiatric medications,
• How her books are intended to help inform practitioners and patients alike about how psychotropic drugs actually work, how they affect the brain and how to safely withdraw if that is what is best, and
• How the medical and disease models of treatment create barriers to healing.

Website: www.joannamoncrieff.com

X (Twitter): @joannamoncrieff

Bio:

Professor Joanna Moncrieff studied medicine at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, qualifying in 1989. She trained in psychiatry in London and the southeast during the 1990s. During her undergraduate years she did research on parents’ fears about substance misuse, and during the course of her psychiatric training she worked on a trial investigating the use of the drug naltrexone in people with alcohol problems. She also investigated the prevalence of previous sexual abuse among people attending alcohol treatment services.

Professor Moncrieff took up her current post in 2001. For 10 years she was a consultant for a psychiatric rehabilitation inpatient unit, helping people with severe and long-lasting mental health problems. For the last three years she has been based in various community mental health services in Northeast London. She teaches and does research at University College London.

Professor Moncrieff is one of the founding members and the co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network. The Critical Psychiatry Network consists of a group of psychiatrists from around the world who are skeptical of the idea that mental disorders are simply brain diseases and of the dominance of the pharmaceutical industry.

She is a practicing psychiatrist and a part-time academic and author. She has an interest in the history, philosophy and politics of psychiatry, and particularly in the use, misuse and misrepresentation of psychiatric drugs.

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