I think being a good psychiatrist involves a healthy dose of anti-psychiatry.  We psychiatrists have enormous power over people’s lives and we have to be on the lookout for the damage that can be done.  Two recent examples that trouble me are the collusion of some psychiatrists with the mistreatment of immigration detainees, and the dominance of psychiatric discourse by the pharmaceutical industry and key opinion leaders.  More will be said about this latter issue in subsequent blogs.

Meanwhile to introduce myself, I am a child psychiatrist, father of 3 adolescent/young adult daughters, married to an editor (who takes no responsibility for the grammar in this blog). I am full-time head of a Consultation-Liaison psychiatry service in a children’s hospital, and Associate Professor in the Disciplines of Psychiatry and Paediatrics, University of Adelaide. I am the Chair of  Healthy Skepticism Inc, an organisation devoted to countering misleading drug promotion, and of Siblings Australia, an organisation which advocates for the needs of individuals with ill and disabled siblings. My publications in the last 2 years have addressed prescribing for children, immigration detention, suicide, and child abuse.