New approaches to psychosis

• Online
• 21st Nov '25 11.00 am – 1.00 pm

Acute psychosis—what our forebears used to call madness—is often terrifying to the person affected but also to bystanders, neighbours, or family members. Modern psychiatrists treat it as an indication of several diseases. There are treatments, but they are less efficacious than drug companies suggest and have more side effects than many doctors are comfortable admitting. Many people stop their medication, even when they know that another attack of psychosis is likely.

These uncomfortable facts lead to a minority who want to blame psychiatrists for the reality. They emphasise the minority who recover from psychoses without any medication, and they want to believe the alternative professionals who offer ‘cures’ or ‘treatments’ that don’t involve medication or diagnostic procedures.

A third group accepts many of the facts, but believes that there is considerable room for improvement in the mental health care of psychotic people. They want more compassion, more understanding, and more dialogue between. Professionals, patients, and families. They also want to see a better understanding among professionals of the ‘lived experience’ of people who are or have been psychotic. Some of the exponents of this third way have used ideas from existential theory and practice, and it is this approach that I will be putting forward.

Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, University of Sheffield, Visiting Professor of Psychology, Middlesex University, Director of Existential Academy. Digby has had long experience of working with psychotic people in the NHS in many different settings.