Post by Admin on Jun 27, 2021 5:00:53 GMT
The Politics of Distress: A Discussion With Dr. James Davies on His New Book, “Sedated”
www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/interview-james-davies/
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, London, a psychotherapist (having practiced in the NHS), secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence and co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry (CEP). He is author of the bestselling book Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good and his new book Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis is out now.
— Interviewed by James Barnes.
JB: The core theme of your excellent new book, ‘Sedated’, is the progressive medicalisation and individualising of emotional and psychological distress that has moulded all of our lives in the West since the 1980s. This trend, as you illustrate, is deeply and intimately tied to the rise of the neoliberal political project in the US and UK via Reagan and Thatcher. You paint a very powerful picture of the insidious reframing of our often socio-politically derived distress in terms of dysfunctions in the individual, ultimately serving the political status quo but harmful to our wellbeing. I wonder if you could expand on the theme of neoliberalism as it pertains to our ‘mental health’ and give us a taste of the key strands in the book?
www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/interview-james-davies/
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, London, a psychotherapist (having practiced in the NHS), secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence and co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry (CEP). He is author of the bestselling book Cracked: Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good and his new book Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis is out now.
— Interviewed by James Barnes.
JB: The core theme of your excellent new book, ‘Sedated’, is the progressive medicalisation and individualising of emotional and psychological distress that has moulded all of our lives in the West since the 1980s. This trend, as you illustrate, is deeply and intimately tied to the rise of the neoliberal political project in the US and UK via Reagan and Thatcher. You paint a very powerful picture of the insidious reframing of our often socio-politically derived distress in terms of dysfunctions in the individual, ultimately serving the political status quo but harmful to our wellbeing. I wonder if you could expand on the theme of neoliberalism as it pertains to our ‘mental health’ and give us a taste of the key strands in the book?