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Alastair Santhouse
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No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis Kindle Edition

by Alastair Santhouse (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

At what point does a low mood tip over into depression? When does a distressing experience qualify as trauma? When does a cluster of symptoms indicate an underlying condition? As the conversation around mental health has moved from the consulting room to the public arena, so the concept of normal is shifting. Today, we are seeing an unprecedented rise in diagnosable conditions, in waiting lists, in diagnoses, and in medication.

Yet, are we really less psychologically healthy than previous generations? In this brave, engrossing and vitally important new book, consultant neuropsychiatrist Dr Alastair Santhouse argues that the consequences of the new climate of diagnosis are immense. Drawing on his decades of clinical experience, Dr Santhouse explores our current malaise and proposes a solution - that we pull back from this diagnostic expansion, focus on the effective treatment of a core group of severe mental health problems, and de-medicalise a vast range of other normal human experiences.

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  1. Print length
    287 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Granta Books
  4. Accessibility
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  5. Publication date
    April 10, 2025
  6. File size
    791 KB
  7. Page Flip
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Alastair Santhouse

Alastair Santhouse

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Dr Alastair Santhouse is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at The Maudsley Hospital in London. After completing his training in internal medicine, he was unable to resist the allure of psychiatry, and retrained as a psychiatrist. He now works in neuropsychiatry, the area between mind and brain. His most recent book is No More Normal, about the sharp rise in psychiatric diagnoses and how to understand why this has happened. His first book, Head First was published in 2021, and explores the relationship between mind and body.

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  • Julia Wilson
    5.0 out of 5 stars An empathic, insightful view of mental disorder. Highly recommended reading!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 11, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    As a mental health professional (previously worked as an AMHP) this book is superb. An insightful, empathic insight into the world of mental health and how services might improve if they reflected on current practices. Highly recommended reading for anyone currently working in services or thinking of working in services.
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  • touristas
    5.0 out of 5 stars Must read book about mental health
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    This book is full of common sense which unfortunately is becoming rarer in everyday mental health practice. The best chapter is the one on neurodevelopmental disorders where the rate of overdiagnosis is phenomenal.
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  • Topher
    1.0 out of 5 stars saddening stuff.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 30, 2025
    Verified Purchase
    I've worked in what i've come to think of as the mental ill health system for several decades now. I found this book saddening and out of date. I feel sad just stating this but the entire system is mostly driven by the DSM and the mindset that it has spawned. The author points to a little of this but his entrenched bias is written on almost every page. He really believes the DSM categorises brain disorders and that psychiatry has 'treatments' for this disordered brain states.

    Nothing could be further from the truth and this is really saying something. Why? after decades and multiple billions spent, desperately trying to find biomarkers, genes and just anything physical that can be used to make a reliable and valid diagnosis ZERO has been found or is used when someone is given a DSM label.

    We've been so bamboozled by media pasting sensationalist headlines to the corruptions of peer review, journals and regulators into believing we do have physical evidence mass ignorance prevails. No one ever sees the studies, are of poor quality, riddled with methodological issues, end up retracted, and are never replicated. This bamboozlement is magnified 1000% by the DSM's ability to be capitalised on and in multiple ways - the latest DSM fads, now utterly out of control with so called 'adhd' and 'asd' etc.

    All predicated by that other captain of contradiction and confusing DSM chair Allen Frances in his book savings normal, actually cited by the author.

    We are literally losing the ability to describe or understand ourselves and our experiences outside of this pseudoscientific, reductionist, medicalised, claptrap. The language of disorder is everywhere now and when people refer to 'mental health' they are most often talking about this cultural poison of DSM mental 'ill health'

    The system is doing way more harm than it CAN EVER do good as its based on false premises. I would encourage people to read the history of psychiatry. Try Owen Whooley on the heels of ignorance or Andrew Scull Desperate remedies.

    What is clear is each iteration of psychiatry believes its now in possession of 'the science' while looking back with some embarrassment at the one before while patting itself on the back - only to be replaced by the next ignorant iteration and the same tried old process bumbles along. This would be all well and good for it for the staggering carnage each one causes, and each worse than the one before it. This latest iteration of the madness is the most harmful one yet - we've sanctioned the mass labelling and drugging of literally tens of millions of children and adults globally - at least in the past when some clown in a white coat came ambling towards you with an icepick you could see how wrong things could go.

    Not now, drugs or 'treatments' come to market via a plethora of corrupt scientific practices and large doses of marketing. Its all so 'safe and effective' there really are things like 'antidepressants' and 'antipsychotics' not just rebranded major tranquillisers, and numbing and mildly stimulating agents that cause great damage to body and brain.

    Its a real mess, but highly profitable and like so much shot through with self and vested interest.
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