Earlier in January, two months after the launch of this newsletter, Psychiatry at the Margins crossed a thousand total subscriptions, and the number has continued to steadily grow! Not only that, the newsletter has attracted an international audience and is read in 71 countries! I am immensely grateful to all the subscribers and readers. For a blog with such specialized interests, I am very heartened by this response. I am particularly thankful to the paid subscribers who chose to support the newsletter early on without knowing much about what it would deliver.
As a psychiatrist who is passionate about my profession, I find it really disheartening that so many people on Twitter demonise psychiatry and blame psychiatrists for everything that is wrong with mental health care. The same people valorize psychotherapy without any recognition of its limited effectiveness or adverse effects. How do you deal with all the hate and also the negation of your knowledge (i.e., we are fake doctors who give fake drugs and are brainwashed by Pharma)?
Hello, Awais! Thank you for the work that you do. I never knew about the anti-psychiatry movement until I saw your posts on Twitter. I am a grad student and I perform behavioral experiments in rats. I had an existential crisis when I learned about the reductionist and behaviorist approach that neuroscientists employ in their research. Do you think it is still worth our time and resources to use animals (rodents, non-human primates) to study human psychiatric disorders? Can we really translate the findings of animal behavioral tests such as elevated plus maze or sucrose preference test to mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression?
Hi Awais, I'm a soon-to-be psychiatry resident - do you have any must-read books in the next few months before intern year starts? Or will this substack suffice :)?
Hi Awais, i am a reader from North Macedonia so i would rather ask a different question. As a first year psychiatry resident myself, what is the only advice you would have given to every psychiatry resident on their first day of residency?
As a person with lived experience, I'm now organizing the first-in-nation Eating Disorders Awareness Week in Korea. In so doing, I came to the realization that the whole experiences of ours are, without exception, narrowed down to a disease to be cured and the insignificant rest, that are excuses of patients who aren't motivated enough to be cured to the medical authorities. A psychiatrist told me the other day, "They need to know that eating disorder patients are not strange people but can get better with medical treatment." I can agree on her first argument, but the second one? I received the impression that, to some psychiatrists, what matters is that simple legacy system where they take authority firmly or to confirm medical consumers that their services are still the most effective.
The medical model is surely an efficient tool, but how can we do better in keeping patients' life experiences from being dismissed? How can we set the tone of our collective discourse so that the psychiatric authorities won't regard our questioning as an attack upon them?
Hi Awais, I’m always inspired by and excited about your thinking. I’m curious: what’s your relationship to psychodynamic theory? And how do you conceptualize and/or relate to the notion of ‘unconscious’ processes?
I love your newsletter and am grateful for the thoughtful, rigorous, humble approach you model! I would love if you gave attention in the future to "constructive" approaches (following Femi Taiwo) and affirmative visions of mental health care, as well as the political economy of mental health care more broadly (joining Chapman and others; i.e. following the money). Would also be great to have more about political organizing among mental health clinicians (see Isabel Perera on how psychiatrists in France organized in unions and helped secure public money vs. privatization/fragmentation in US). And would love a post on how and why inpatient units became so carceral and punitive, following up on your interview about managed care and psych with Psych Times. Just some ideas from a fan :) -Jeremy Levenson MD and PhD Candidate Anthro/Social Medicine
Thank you! You are so thoughtful about the intersection of philosophy, science and medicine. What’s one emerging thing in any or all of those realms that you are particularly excited about?
Hello Awais,
As a psychiatrist who is passionate about my profession, I find it really disheartening that so many people on Twitter demonise psychiatry and blame psychiatrists for everything that is wrong with mental health care. The same people valorize psychotherapy without any recognition of its limited effectiveness or adverse effects. How do you deal with all the hate and also the negation of your knowledge (i.e., we are fake doctors who give fake drugs and are brainwashed by Pharma)?
Hello Awais, what do you make of the current 'renaissance' of interest and work around psychedelics in psychiatry?
Hello, Awais! Thank you for the work that you do. I never knew about the anti-psychiatry movement until I saw your posts on Twitter. I am a grad student and I perform behavioral experiments in rats. I had an existential crisis when I learned about the reductionist and behaviorist approach that neuroscientists employ in their research. Do you think it is still worth our time and resources to use animals (rodents, non-human primates) to study human psychiatric disorders? Can we really translate the findings of animal behavioral tests such as elevated plus maze or sucrose preference test to mental illnesses such as anxiety or depression?
Hi Awais, I'm a soon-to-be psychiatry resident - do you have any must-read books in the next few months before intern year starts? Or will this substack suffice :)?
Hi Awais, i am a reader from North Macedonia so i would rather ask a different question. As a first year psychiatry resident myself, what is the only advice you would have given to every psychiatry resident on their first day of residency?
As a person with lived experience, I'm now organizing the first-in-nation Eating Disorders Awareness Week in Korea. In so doing, I came to the realization that the whole experiences of ours are, without exception, narrowed down to a disease to be cured and the insignificant rest, that are excuses of patients who aren't motivated enough to be cured to the medical authorities. A psychiatrist told me the other day, "They need to know that eating disorder patients are not strange people but can get better with medical treatment." I can agree on her first argument, but the second one? I received the impression that, to some psychiatrists, what matters is that simple legacy system where they take authority firmly or to confirm medical consumers that their services are still the most effective.
The medical model is surely an efficient tool, but how can we do better in keeping patients' life experiences from being dismissed? How can we set the tone of our collective discourse so that the psychiatric authorities won't regard our questioning as an attack upon them?
Hi Awais, I’m always inspired by and excited about your thinking. I’m curious: what’s your relationship to psychodynamic theory? And how do you conceptualize and/or relate to the notion of ‘unconscious’ processes?
I love your newsletter and am grateful for the thoughtful, rigorous, humble approach you model! I would love if you gave attention in the future to "constructive" approaches (following Femi Taiwo) and affirmative visions of mental health care, as well as the political economy of mental health care more broadly (joining Chapman and others; i.e. following the money). Would also be great to have more about political organizing among mental health clinicians (see Isabel Perera on how psychiatrists in France organized in unions and helped secure public money vs. privatization/fragmentation in US). And would love a post on how and why inpatient units became so carceral and punitive, following up on your interview about managed care and psych with Psych Times. Just some ideas from a fan :) -Jeremy Levenson MD and PhD Candidate Anthro/Social Medicine
Thank you! You are so thoughtful about the intersection of philosophy, science and medicine. What’s one emerging thing in any or all of those realms that you are particularly excited about?