Winner of the British Psychological Society Book Award upon first publication in 2004 Argues that labels such as 'Schizophrenia' and 'manic depression' are meaningless, based on nineteenth-century classifications that deny the complexity of the mind This new edition is fully updated with new material drawing on the latest scientific advances Part of a growing international movement against the routine reduction of psychology to brain chemistry and genetics. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/29/richard-bentall-the-doctor-who-lost-his-brother-then-revolutionised-psychology?fbclid=IwAR2bf6t0EuCi8bIYWisc7vhZc_giAYgv1YgMOFQmjd68BK1yk-AN05jpYfw From the Guardian article: "It sounds crazy now, but we just had no idea how to be in a room with a mad person," he says. "And it turns out, the way to be in a room with a mad person is exactly the same as with a non-mad person. These are people who have had huge misfortune in life and they are trying to make sense of their world. And you can have a conversation with them about that." From the Guardian article: Bentall's compassionate approach also included a greater consideration of poverty, racism and childhood trauma - and of the role of debt or marriage counselling, for example, in helping to treat mental illness.

He sees clinical psychology as an exercise in public health. "Arguably, the biggest cause of human misery is miserable relationships . conducted in miserable circumstances," he has written.Viewing mental illness as biological tempts us to categorise people as either mentally well or ill - and to assume that each of us is either doomed or impervious. "It also encourages the idea that there is a simple fix, maybe a chemical," Bentall says. He says mental illness is a continuum - one that all of us are on.