We, a doctor and a lawyer, have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing biological paradigm in psychiatry. We recommend an approach we call humanistic psychiatry.
Humanistic psychiatry focuses on the patients’ troubles, and on how they can best be helped, respecting their experiences, values, preferences, and autonomy. Coercion is not an option.
Biological psychiatry assumes that mental health issues are caused by abnormalities in the brain and that psychiatric drugs can help normalise these abnormalities. No reliable research exists in support of this idea.
Mental health issues are not medical issues, and psychiatry should not be seen as a medical specialty but as a humanistic enterprise. Read the Humanistic Psychiatry Declaration