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Join us for "Our Psychiatric Future? The politics of mental health", a public lecture presented by Nikolas Rose, Professor of Sociology, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London. Abstract Our everyday lives are increasingly intertwined with psychiatry and discussions of mental health. Yet the dominant medical discipline of psychiatry remains surrounded by controversy. Is there really an epidemic of mental ill health? Is mental distress really an illness like any other, treatable by drugs? Are psychiatric diagnoses like any other medical diagnoses, and will they eventually be validated by physiological or genetic biomarkers? Has neurobiological research finally shown that mental ill heath arises from disorders of the brain? Do the psychiatric drugs that so many of us take actually treat the bases of mental distress? What are we to make of the growing Global Mental Health Movement which seeks to extend the styles of thought and practice developed in the Global North to the Global South? Should the power of psychiatrists be challenged by the knowledge of those with lived experience of mental ill health? And what are the implications of the evidence that mental distress is intrinsically linked to social adversity, from individual trauma and loneliness to poverty, racism and social exclusion? The answers we give to these questions will shape the psychiatric futures that are being brought into existence. On the basis of a rigorous analysis of current research, Nikolas Rose proposes a radically different future for psychiatric thought and practice, no less evidence-based and indeed far more attuned to the realities of mental health, and argues that, as a branch of social medicine, another psychiatry is possible. Presenter Bio Nikolas Rose is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King’s College London. He is a social and political theorist, with a particular focus on questions of political power, mental health, psychiatry and neuroscience. His work explores how scientific developments have changed conceptions of human identity and governance and what this means for our political, socio-economic and legal futures. Trained as a biologist, a psychologist and a sociologist, Rose co-founded two influential radical journals in the 1970s and 1980s, playing a key role in introducing French post-structuralist critical thought to an English speaking audience and helping develop new approaches to political analysis and strategy. He has published widely across numerous fields and disciplines, with work translated into 13 languages. He is a former Managing Editor of Economy and Society and Joint Editor-in-Chief of the interdisciplinary journal, BioSocieties. His recent books include Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind, Princeton University Press, 2013 (written with Joelle Abi-Rached) and Our Psychiatric Future: The politics of mental health, Polity, 2019. His current work seeks to develop new relations between the social sciences and the life sciences, partly through research on mental health, migration and megacities: his forthcoming book The Urban Brain: Living in the Neurosocial City (with Des Fitzgerald) will be published by Princeton University Press in 2019. *Update for Deakin Staff and Students: Live-streaming of event at Burwood and Waurn Ponds* This event will also be live-streamed at Burwood Corporate Ccentre (enquire at reception for room number) and Waurn Ponds (Room ic2.108). Staff can also join virtually via VMP 522 39384.
Event Contact:
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