Hearing voices

Watched Channel 4's drama-documentary last night, about 'Ruth' a doctor who hears voices and who was treated by Rufus May, a clinical psychologist who challenges the mainstream medical approach to treatment and works with patients to help them recover from this kind of experience without necessarily using anti-psychotic drugs or sectioning.

I wasn't all that impressed with the film maker's particular style but on the whole it was an interesting piece of work, which hopefully made more people think about mental health in a different way (that may be a naive hope on my part). What struck me most about May's approach was that, above all else, he respected the people he was working with and treated them with a basic humanity. From my observations of psychiatric "care" generally (as with social "care" more widely), this is far from the norm. State services too often dehumanise people and the more this can be challenged, the better.