The Myth of the Chemical Cure: The Politics of Psychiatric Drug Treatment

The seminar will challenge the myth that psychiatric drugs reverse underlying chemical imbalances or abnormal brain states. It will trace the historical development of this idea, and how it replaced an earlier understanding of psychiatric drugs as psychoactive substances that produce altered mental states, which can suppress the symptoms or manifestations of mental disorders. The seminar will suggest that the current view of psychiatric drug treatment reflects political, commercial and professional interests rather than scientific fact. The seminar will also explore the way that psychiatric drug treatment has promoted increasing medicalisation of human distress and social problems which has facilitated neoliberal social and economic policies.