Joanna Moncrieff

Joanna Moncrieff is British psychiatrist and a leading figure in the Critical Psychiatry Network. She is a prominent critic of the modern 'psychopharmacological' model of mental disorder and drug treatment, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry. She has written papers, books and blogs on the use and over-use of drug treatment for mental health problems, the mechanism of action of psychiatric drugs, their subjective and psychoactive effects, the history of drug treatment, and the evidence for its benefits and harms. She also writes on the history and politics of psychiatry more generally. Her best known books are The Myth of the Chemical Cure and The Bitterest Pills.

Moncrieff qualified in medicine from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1989. She trained in psychiatry in London and the south east during the 1990s. From 2001 for 10 years she was the consultant for a psychiatric rehabilitation unit catering for people with severe and enduring mental disorders. As of 2016,^[update] she works as a consultant in adult community psychiatry at the North East London NHS Foundation Trust, and she is a Senior Lecturer at University College London. Dr Moncrieff is a founding member and the co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network. This is a group of psychiatrists from around the world who are sceptical of the idea that mental disorders are simply brain diseases and who campaign to reduce the influence of the pharmaceutical industry and find alternatives to narrow, medical model based practice.

Moncrieff's work challenges the idea that drugs or medications have specific effects on underlying diseases or abnormalities. She challenges the theory that mental disorders are caused by chemical imbalances, something that we currently have no evidence for, even less evidence pertains to chemicals being the best form of treatment for mental issues. She shows that there is little evidence for serotonin abnormalities in depression, or dopamine abnormalities in psychosis or schizophrenia. She traces the history of the idea that psychiatric drugs are magic bullets and she explores the role of the pharmaceutical industry, the psychiatric professional and the state in fostering this model. She has documented the increasing rates of prescriptions of psychiatric drugs over the last decade, and analysed the way the pharmaceutical industry has created conditions like adult ADHD and the ‘new bipolar disorder’ to help market these drugs.

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