A Straight Talking Introduction to the Power Threat Meaning Framework

The current mainstream way of describing psychological and emotional distress assumes it is the result of medical illnesses that need diagnosing and treating. This book summarises a powerful alternative to psychiatric diagnosis that asks not ‘What’s wrong with you?’ but ‘What’s happened to you?’ The Power Threat Meaning Framework (PTMF) was co-produced by a core group of psychologists and service users and launched in 2018, prompting considerable interest in the UK and worldwide. It argues that emotional distress, unusual experiences and many forms of troubled or troubling behaviour are understandable when viewed in the context of a person’s life and circumstances, the cultural and social norms we are expected to live up to and the degree to which we are exposed to trauma, abuse, injustice and inequality. The PTMF offers all of us the tools to create new, hopeful narratives about the reasons for our distress that are not based on psychiatric diagnosis and to find ways forward as individuals, families, social groups and whole societies.

Author Biography

Mary Boyle has worked mainly in clinical psychology education and training and in clinical posts in adult mental health and women’s health. She is a long-time critic of the medical/diagnostic approach and of individualistic approaches more generally in the health field. She is the author of Schizophrenia: A scientific delusion (2002) and Rethinking Abortion: Psychology, gender, power and the law (1997), as well as many articles and chapters on feminist approaches to women’s health and on problems of and alternatives to diagnostic models. She is Emerita Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of East London. / Lucy Johnstone is a consultant clinical psychologist. Her interest in critiques of and alternatives to current models of distress stems from her many years of working in adult mental health services, alternating with academic posts. She is the author of several books – Users and Abusers of Psychiatry (2000); Formulation in Psychology and Psychotherapy (2013), and A Straight Talking Introduction to Psychiatric Diagnosis (2014), and a number of chapters and articles taking a critical perspective on psychiatric theory and practice. She now works as an independent trainer.