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Depression, Psychiatry and the Use of ECT by Pat Bracken

When I was training in psychiatry in the 1980s I was taught that depression was an illness like any other. Like appendicitis or disorders of the gall-bladder it could be investigated, diagnosed, measured and treated through different sorts of medical intervention. It had sub-types, a described course and with the right expertise, a prognosis could be given to the patient.

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Conference Calls for Survivor Workers Union

1ST UK Conference for Survivor Workers Manchester Mechanics Institute 28th February 2001: The event was, in fact, was launched the evening before, most appropriately, with a social and entertainment hosted by Mad Pride. Conference opened, not so much with an air of expectancy, but rather one of achievement – wonder even. Read more


Behavioural Therapy from Hell by Adam James

Debbie Holden was 16 when she first started to slip into the lonely, nightmare world of anorexia. She won a competition with school friends over who could lose the most weight. And it was from this ominous beginning that the eight stone teenager became trapped in a cycle of binging, vomiting and laxative abuse. Read more


Trains, Voices, Possible Narcoplexy Onset, I the Not Necessarily Divine, A New Theory Buds? By Matilda Melbert

There we were on a train, my son and I. Second row in, on the left. I was in the window seat. Behind my son, a man. In front of me, a lady in a pink coat, with pink nail varnish, on a pink mobile. Opposite us sat a man by the window. Behind him, on the first row, by the window, another man. I was aware of two ladies further up on our side and one lady further up at the end of the carriage, on the right. Well I do have SAS blood in me, ipso factso! Ridiculous, but a safety habit. Oh Bruce, where is the conveyor belt! Read more