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Why, without solid scientific justification, has the number of mental disorders risen from 106 in the 1960s, to around 370 today?

Why has the definition of mental disorder expanded to include ever more domains of human experience?

In the first part of this lecture, Dr James Davies will take us behind the scenes of how the psychiatrist’s bible, the DSM, was actually written – did science drive the construction of new mental disorder categories like ADHD and major depression or were less scientific and more unexpected processes at play? His exclusive interviews with the creators of the DSM reveal the answer.

The second part will address why psychiatry is such big business, and why, on the whole, it may be doing more harm than good. You’ll get insider knowledge on how psychiatry has put riches and medical status above patients’ well-being. The charge sheet is damning; negative drug trials routinely buried; antidepressants that work no better than placebos; research regularly manipulated to produce positive results; doctors, seduced by huge pharmaceutical rewards, creating more disorders and prescribing more pills; and ethical, scientific and treatment flaws unscrupulously concealed by mass-marketing.

You’ll learn the true human cost of an industry that, in the name of helping others, has actually been helping itself.

Dr James Davies graduated from the University of Oxford in 2006 with a DPhil in Social and Medical Anthropology.

He is a Reader in Social Anthropology and Mental Health at the University of Roehampton and a practicing psychotherapist. James has delivered lectures at universities such as Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Oslo, Brown, UCL and Columbia.

He has written for The Times, The New Scientist, The Guardian and Salon, and is author of the bestselling book: Cracked: why psychiatry is doing more harm than good.

James is the co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, now secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence. His latest book: ‘Mental Health in Crisis’ will be published later this year.

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