Dr. Moncrieff is a Senior Lecturer in psychiatry at University College London and a practising consultant psychiatrist. She has written articles critical of various psychiatric drug treatments, including lithium, antidepressants and neuroleptics. She has also written about the adverse influence of the pharmaceutical industry on psychiatry. She is one of the founders and co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network, a group of psychiatrists who are critical of biological models of psychiatric distress and opposed to increasing coercion of psychiatric patients.
Dr Moncrieff’s research consists of an analysis of all aspects of psychiatric drug treatment, including subjective experiences, history of drug treatment, a critique of evidence for such treatments, theoretical perspectives, and political aspects, including work on the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. She is also interested in the nature and function of diagnosis in modern psychiatric practice, and in the history, politics and philosophy of psychiatry more generally. She has written three books: The Bitterest Pills, published by Palgrave Macmillan, The Myth of the Chemical Cure, published by Palgrave Macmillan, and A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Drugs, published by PCC books.