‘England’s mental health care lacks money, yes – but it also lacks compassion’. New article from me for @guardian emphasising the paradigm shift we need is as much about ideology as funding. Can we seize the moment? Can we afford not to? #IatrogenicHarm

Silly psy cartoon for the weekend!

Please remember that if you are on welfare, you are not doing anything wrong. You are not a bad person. You are not a failure.

If you actually want to reduce #suicide, start by reducing shame. Debt. Sanctions. Food insecurity. Poverty wages. These aren’t “pressures.” They are engineered despair. No amount of awareness ribbons can offset the impact of policymaking built on humiliation.

As a clinician who works with people across the world, can I be clear. We do not have a generous benefits system. We have a cruel, harsh welfare system that is not only dehumanising but often actively damaging, often pushing people into poverty. The #budget does not change that.

I am pleased that Amol Rajan, the host of BBC’s Today, has been forced to apologise for calling benefits claimants ‘scroungers’. Let us be clear - such language is unacceptable. We can and will call you out for using such language.

How exactly are the government planning to protect “genuine” disabled claimants? Because all I’m seeing is persecution and precarity for people who are often in and out of hospital, many under three or more specialist teams. The government imply they already do this- not true.

This is how division is manufactured: a Budget, a red box, and a set of front pages that prime the public to blame disabled and low-income people for structural meltdown. Nothing about this is accidental. No one on benefits is raking it in.

There are lots of nasty front pages blaming welfare claimants for the budget and stoking division. Social media will be especially toxic, so do consider either blocking and muting with joyful abandon, or giving yourself a full digital sabbatical. You have done nothing wrong. JayX

Love and solidarity to everyone tweeting for disability rights because the trolling is next level 😱

Benefits Street turned poverty into entertainment and gave politicians the perfect cover. 10 years later, Channel 4 and Love Productions still haven’t reckoned with how that show poisoned the conversation about benefits in this country.

For those who do not think we have poverty in Britain, The Trussell Trust distributed almost 3 million emergency food parcels in 2023/24, the highest number ever recorded, 1.1 million were for kids.

I don’t think people realise how much folk with psychosis need space and how persecutory it can be if we are not allowed it.

Excited to find out about this “mammoth #benefits give-away” I keep reading about…

I think it’s the most representative platform of how people think, and the best way to lobby outside my echo chamber. I also won’t abandon it because that would mean abandoning the Mad community, who need the locked accounts other platforms lack. Plus, X can be VERY VERY funny.

Some people’s mums are their best friends. Some people’s mums wish for their destruction.

Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway. Guildenstern: What? Rosencrantz: England. Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then? - Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered”. - Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead RIP Tom

My Colin the Caterpillar #Christmas tree decoration, as we need cheering up.

🙌The deadline for completing your questionnaire on #IatrogenicHarm is this Monday so, if you have the spoons, and have been harmed by mental health services, please fill it in. All sorts of harm matter including ideological as well as physical, sexual and emotional harm.

Check out Wayne’s profile. And he runs a sweet shop! This is how we should all live.