11/01/2022
Sedated: How Modern Capitalism Created Our Mental Health Crisis - James Davies
Join us in the Library at 7pm on Tuesday 11th January, when guests can meet author James Davies and hear about his latest book, Sedated, over a drink in this relaxed and elegant room.
Over 20% of our adult population takes a psychiatric drug on any given day. But good mental health outcomes are falling, while mental health disability is going up. Despite spending £18 billion annually on mental health services, things are going from bad to worse. So why are successive governments failing to act? Is it really all down to poor investment, or is there something more ominous about our whole approach to mental health that politicians are simply unwilling to confront?
Dr. James Davies will draw on his extensive clinical, academic and parliamentary experience to show that this pro-market agenda has put economic servitude before individual health. Rather than viewing most mental distress as an understandable reaction to wider societal problems, we have embraced a medical model which situates the problem solely within the sufferer and their brain.
"Sedated is an urgent intervention for post-pandemic society. Dr James Davies writes with expertise and clarity. Warning: will cause irritation to powerful interests who fear us all becoming better informed about the root causes of so much human suffering." Shami Chakrabati
"Sedated is a polemic of great clarity that will make you feel at once angry and reassured. " New Statesman