April 18: Underground recovery - Clinical psychologist Rufus May explains why, when using a non-drug approach to help a doctor who heard voices, he had no choice but to work in secret.

April 2, 2008: The anti-psychotic myth exposed?
Anti-psychotics are not effective long-term, shrink the brain and almost triple the risk of an early death, a London NHS psychiatrist and academic has written in a new book. Has the mental health establishment got it wrong over the true validity of such drugs, asks Adam James

Jan 10, 2008: The wrong advice - The national clinical guideline on depression is flawed, acts as a mouthpiece for pharmaceutical firms and pays lip service to the views of service users. We must now challenge it, says Malcolm Learmonth

Oct 31, 2007: Getting personal - Stop the psychological therapy "brand warfare" and recognise a therapist's personal qualities are more important than their model, argues Martin Seager, who helps advise the government on how to make mental health services more therapeutic 

Dec 12, 2006: CTOs do not work...and that's according to the evidence base - Community treatment orders will help protect the public from mentally people who kill, says the government. But what of the evidence for such a claim, asks Adam James? 

Oct 24, 2006: "Abolish schizophrenia" - The diagnosis of schizophrenia is unscientific and damaging, argue Marius Romme and Paul Hammersley, both of a new campaign entitled CASL (Campaign to Abolish the Schizophrenia Label). They say we should replace it with post-traumatic psychosis

April 4, 2006: Stop using mental health as an emergency piggy bank - Want to prevent cuts to your local mental health services? Then get campaigning, urges Simon des Forges

Feb 14, 2006: Disordered thinking?
The prescribing of ADHD drugs is soaring, while concerns are escalating about damaging side effects. Is it time that the social and family lives of ADHD-diagnosed children are examined as much as their brains, asks Adam James

Oct 17, 2005 Mental health doesn't need psychiatrists - Many psychiatrists are sophisticated communicators with a vast knowledge of the physical and social sciences. Nevertheless, do people with mental health problems need to have their care and treatment supervised by such medically-trained doctors, ask Phil Barker and Poppy Buchanan-Barker?

June 6, 2005: Our acute problem - To alleviate the culture of violence on inpatient psychiatric wards exposed by a Healthcare Commission audit, psychologists should have more of a role in care, argues Rufus May. There should also be more service user "consultants" helping manage wards and training of staff. But above all, says May, we need more non-medical residential alternatives to hospital care.

May 16, 2005: It's time the giant of mental health nursing woke up - Input from mental health nurses is markedly absent from clinical guidelines produced by The National Institute for Clinical Excellence, say Phil Barker and Poppy Buchanan-Barker. It's time, they argue, that mental health nurses had their own representative body to stand up for them.

April 11, 2005: We can do a power of good - Many clinical psychologists welcome the draft mental health bill because it would give them extra powers, such as preventing the use of ECT or the over-medication of patients. Moreover, argues Peter Kinderman, it's time clinical psychologists stopped clinging to the myth that, at present, they have no power

Feb 7, 2005: Compassion not compulsion - psychiatric treatment by force amounts to state-sponsored violence, says Rufus May.

Dec 13, 2004: The usefulness of self harm - Self harm can be an imaginative way to cope with trauma. To avoid shaming people who self harm clinical psychologists should not assume that self harm is wrong, argues Sam Warner

Oct 11, 2004: More work less therapy - If clinical psychologists really want to assist clients they should focus on helping them find employment as much as providing cognitive therapy, argues Peter Kinderman

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