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Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2004) 10: 361-370
© 2004 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Critical psychiatry in practice

Philip Thomas and Patrick Bracken

Philip Thomas is a consultant psychiatrist with the Bradford Assertive Outreach Team and a senior research fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Community Mental Health, School of Health Studies, University of Bradford (25 Trinity Road, Bradford BD7 0BH, UK. E-mail: p.thomas{at}bradford.ac.uk). His main area of clinical interest is critical social and cultural psychiatry. His academic interests include hermeneutics, phenomenology and narrative. Patrick Bracken is Clinical Director of the West Cork Mental Health Services, Ireland. His clinical and research interests include service innovation and a community development approach to mental health services, asylum seekers and refugees, and conceptual aspects of psychiatry.

The ideas of critical psychiatry are influencing a growing number of psychiatrists in Britain and elsewhere. In this article we examine the origins and development of critical psychiatry over the past 25 years, through the work of philosophers such as Foucault and of critical social theorists such as Ingleby, Miller and Rose. We outline the important differences between critical psychiatry and anti-psychiatry. Finally, we examine the current status of critical psychiatry, and what is called postpsychiatry. We regard both as an attempt by practising psychiatrists to engage with service users’ concerns about psychiatry, with government policies that stress democracy, citizenship and the importance of social and cultural contexts in health care, and with what might broadly be described as postmodernism.




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Copyright © 2004 The Royal College of Psychiatrists.