I was asked to give a talk to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute of the University of Vermont. This is a program that offers courses and programs for adult learners – mostly people who are retired. I decided to title my presentation, “Why I Became a Critical Psychiatrist,” thinking that the kind of Vermonter who would attend something like this was intelligent and well-educated but not necessarily familiar with psychiatry. I imagined that this might be a person who believes in science and modern medicine and assumes that the advances in my profession that are often widely promoted in the media were sound.
The talk explains my own evolution as a psychiatrist and addresses the development of the Critical Psychiatry Network. I focus on three main areas: psychiatric diagnosis, the influence of the commercial forces of the pharmaceutical industry on medicine in general and psychiatry in particular, and the evolution of the use of neuroleptic drugs (in that order). It is a long talk (~ 90 minutes), so if you are only interested in some of these topics you can skip around to find them.