There’s a new post on Peter Kinderman’s blog. It’s called Time for a paradigm change, and it’s dated September 2. The article is based on a speech that Dr. Kinderman gave to North Wales Clinical Psychology Programme, Annual Stakeholders’ Meeting on the same date.
Here are some quotes:
“But mental well-being is fundamentally a psychological and social phenomenon, with medical aspects. It is not, fundamentally, a medical phenomenon with additional psychological and social elements.”
“My role, my job…is helping people fulfill their potential as human beings, not treating illnesses.”
“So of course every thought involves brain-based activity. But this isn’t the same as biomedical reductionism. Our biology provides us with a fantastically elegant learning engine. But we learn as a result of the events that happen to us – it’s because of our development and our learning as human beings that we see the world in the way that we do.”
“Get the message right – drop the ‘disease model’ and adopt a psychosocial model.”
“…a very senior psychiatrist once, quite pleasantly, stated that his medical education made him entirely competent to do all the jobs of everyone in his team, including clinical psychologists, nurses and social workers.”
“Then… Stop diagnosing non-existent illnesses – a simple list of people’s problems (properly defined) would be more than sufficient as a basis for individual care planning and for the design and planning of services.”
“Recognise our role lies in supporting well-being, not treating illnesses.”
Peter Kinderman is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, Head of the Institute of Psychology, Health and Society at the same institution, and an honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist with Mersey Care NHS Trust. He is an outspoken critic of the principles and practices of biological psychiatry, and was active in the development of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology’s Position Statement on the Classification of Behaviour and Experience in Relation to Functional Psychiatric Diagnoses: Time for a paradigm Shift. (May 13 2013)
The post is well worth reading.