Click on the above link for this interesting and important piece in the Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ section, showing how these perceptions are gradually making it into the mainstream media…which is encouraging. For the writer, Jay still speaks in part from within some of the assumptions of the ‘disorder’ model, and so she would not align herself with all of this. That said, she is wholeheartedly on board with the fundamentals: about validating and trusting people’s truths, and challenging the medicalization of human distress – which has given rise to coercive and oppressive cultural structures unsupported by evidence or reason, and in which empathy, compassion or respectfulness for those caught in the wheels is largely absent:-
‘Rather than clumsily trying to squeeze people’s distress into different boxes, and attempting to convince the public that these reflect illness processes, as with flu or cancer, we must shift our focus to one that validates the lived experience of people who are suffering, however they choose to understand their pain.’
Palace Gate Counselling Service, Exeter
Counselling Exeter since 1994
Palace Gate Counselling Service Blog 