Here, I’m interested in two ways of responding to worries regarding what I’ll call psychiatric over-pathologisation. By this, I mean the increasing tendency to view various ways of being as inherently ...

MEDICALISATION is the term used to describe the process whereby human problems and conditions that were previously regarded as occurring naturally as part of life, come to be defined as medical ...

Medicalisation is the process of taking non-medical problems and perceiving them as illnesses or health-related disorders. Dr Wolfgang Seidl examines the dangers of this at work in terms of absence, ...

NHS doctor and science writer Ben Goldacre writes about bullshit medical research, bogus science reporting, the placebo effect, and everything else from postmodernism to evolutionary psychology. His ...

When I was a child, someone was only mad if they thought they were Napoleon or a teapot, and everyone else was 'normal'. Thankfully, things are a little more nuanced now, but how far from 'normal' do ...

Yesterday you were shy, bereaved, apathetic, eccentric. Today you are mentally ill. But don't worry. Nothing has changed except some new labelling appearing in the upcoming edition of a manual of ...

A man shows the logo of a T-shirt that reads "Stop the Cut" referring to Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) during a social event advocating against harmful practices such as FGM at the Imbirikani Girls ...

The prevailing view of menopause as an endocrine deficiency has led to a "disease-based model" that leads to over-medicalisation of this inevitable life transition, according to the first paper in a ...

The medicalisation of female genital mutilation (FGM) is one of the most profound violations of human rights and ethical principles that underpin healthcare practice. In 2024, over 230 million women ...

Sheila Kitzinger, the “high priestess of natural childbirth” who has died aged 86, could reasonably be said to have done more than anyone else to change attitudes to birth in the past 50 years. It was ...