Power to the patients!

(Courtesy of tdj)

http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinterview.jsp;jsessionid=OMKKDNPJEBCJ?id=ns24101

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Power to the patients!
Photo: John Angerson

He found himself sobbing uncontrollably, unable to work a sandwich dispenser and consumed by guilt. Clinical psychologist Richard Bentall had taken a psychiatric drug as part of an experiment. Add in personal tragedy and a spell of depression, and he could never see mental illness the same way again. Now he thinks diagnostic labels have no more predictive power than star signs and that plenty of people can live happily with severe psychotic symptoms. And as he told Liz Else, the people doing the suffering should have power restored to them

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