On January 17, 2013, Peter Kinderman, PhD, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, wrote an article titled Grief and Anxiety are not mental illnesses. On February 4, 2013, Steven Novella, MD, wrote a critique of Dr. Kinderman’s article. On February 20, I wrote a critique of Dr. Novella’s article. And finally, on… Continue Reading
What Is Mental Illness?
BACKGROUND I recently received the following question from Disparity, on Twitter. “I’m interested in all your posts, but they’re always telling us what mental illness ‘isn’t.’ Do you have many on what it ‘is’? I referred him/her to the post There are No Mental Illnesses and received the following reply: “I have read it a… Continue Reading
Mental Distress Is Not An Illness
BACKGROUND Sam Thompson (University of Liverpool) posted the following tweet on April 27: Can anyone point me to a good, succinct summary of the case for equating mental distress with illness? (serious, non-sarcastic question) On the face of it, this looks like a straightforward question, and one might think that a straightforward answer could be… Continue Reading
There are No Mental Illnesses
I have been writing this blog for the past three years. The primary concepts are scattered throughout the blog, and I thought it might be helpful to draw together the essential underlying concepts in one post. Some of this repeats material covered under the individual “diagnoses,” and for this I apologize to my regular readers,… Continue Reading