With Robert Whitaker (founder of Mad in America)
Saturday, July 17, 2021
3:00 PM – 5:00 PM BST
This is a free event, for further information and to register go here
About this event
Robert Whitaker is an American journalist and author, writing primarily about medicine, science, and history. He is the author of five books, three of which cover the history or practice of modern psychiatry. He has won numerous awards for science writing, and in 1998 he was part of a team writing for the Boston Globe that was shortlisted for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of articles questioning the ethics of psychiatric research in which unsuspecting patients were given drugs expected to heighten their psychosis. He is the founder and publisher of Mad in America, a webzine critical of the modern psychiatric establishment.
Robert will be talking about the evidence base for Soteria houses:
“There is a long record of evidence that psychosocial care that avoids or minimizes use of neuroleptics can help people struggling with psychosis recover and fare better over the long-term than if they were treated conventionally with these drugs. The original Soteria project that ran for a decade in California produced such results. There is a renewed interest in creating Soteria homes (or other respites that de-emphasize use of neuroleptics), and in Israel, there are a number of such homes now operating, with insurance covering the cost of such care. A recent World Health Organization Report on Community Mental Health called for paradigm shift in mental health, away from the biological model that has governed care for the past 40 years, and toward a psychosocial model of care that is based in honoring the human rights of those who are being “treated.” The WHO report pointed to Soteria homes as a model for such care.”
Robert Whittaker
CHARM 