Currently, it is common practice among the child psychiatric establishment to prescribe powerful and potentially addictive drugs to children who have emotional or behavioural problems. Pathological Child Psychiatry and the Medicalization of Childhood is a strong challenge to this way of thinking.
Sami Timimi uses a wide variety of sources that shape our understanding including his personal experiences to highlight the role of culture, beliefs, science, social hierarchy and power, in shaping our understanding of childhood problems and how to deal with them. He urges professionals...

Currently, it is common practice among the child psychiatric establishment to prescribe powerful and potentially addictive drugs to children who have emotional or behavioural problems. Pathological Child Psychiatry and the Medicalization of Childhood is a strong challenge to this way of thinking. Sami Timimi uses a wide variety of sources in shaping our understanding of childhood problems and how to deal with them, including his personal experiences, to highlight the role of culture, beliefs, science, social hierarchy and power. He urges professionals who work with children to question their...

Confronts the psychological impact of social changes, and explores the liberatory potential of psychiatry.

There is a crisis of credibility within child and adolescent psychiatry. Child and adolescent mental health theory and practice have come to be dominated by a narrow biomedical frame. Rising numbers of children are being diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses and given psychotropic medication to treat these illnesses. This text brings together knowledgeable specialists across the spectrum of child and adolescent psychiatry, which are deeply critical about current mainstream theory and practice. These critical voices drawing upon research and writing from related disciplines, radically question...