The making of mental disorder: the disturbing truth about the construction of the psychiatrist’s bible, the DSM (w/ Dr. James Davies)

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 this seminar Dr James Davies takes 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.

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. He has delivered lectures at universities such as Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Oslo, Brown, UCL and Columbia. James has also written for The Times, The New Scientist, The Guardian and Salon. He is author of the bestselling book Cracked: why psychiatry is doing more harm than good (Icon Books), and is co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, now secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Prescribed Drug Dependence.

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