Imperfect Cognitions

In today's post, Carme Isern-Mas (University of the Balearic Islands) discusses the potential harms of everyday self-help discourse in contexts of systemic oppression. Carme worked on this topic with Sally Latham (The Open University) and Manuel Almagro (University of Valencia).  Carme Isern-Mas When I was a teenager, Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret took everyone by storm. For some time, conversations about how to better “manifest” our life goals, or on the importance of having a “positive attitude” were frequent. Later I learned about the self-help industry and how The Secret , among others, was a paradigmatic product of it. Criticisms of this cultural phenomenon were not long in coming. But, in recent years, the discourse of the self-help industry has also conquered our everyday talk.  The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne Everyone knows what “vision boards” are, most of us have tried to keep a “gratitude diary”, and we try to “stay positive” despite the adversity. A worry with such d...

In this follow-up to last week's post , Sorin Baiasu (University of Liverpool) and Luke Jordan (NHS Compass Manchester) continue introducing their interdisciplinary project on philosophy and mental well-being. Luke Jordan We currently face a particularly serious problem: a global mental health crisis combined with the psychiatrisation of society and medicalisation of mental disorders. To contribute to a solution to this serious challenge, our interdisciplinary research relies on some of academic philosophy’s untapped resources. In particular, we examine philosophy’s training potential for the mental health workforce through continuing professional development (CPD) sessions. Providing training to mental health practitioners through philosophy may lead to a common problem : misaligned and irrelevant content. On one good account of the differences between psychotherapy and academic philosophy, the latter is a self-reflective discipline, usually classed among the ‘humanities’. These...

In today's post, and next week's follow-up, Sorin Baiasu, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Liverpool-Oxford-St Andrews Kantian (LOSAK) Research Centre at the University of Liverpool, and Luke Jordan, Clinical Lead at NHS Compass Manchester (Later Life CERN Pathway) and an MBT, SCM and RO-DBT practitioner, introduce their new interdisciplinary project on philosophy and mental well-being. Sorin Baiasu Globally, we are going through a mental health crisis . In 2025, the World Health Organisation (WHO) noted that over 1 billion people were living with mental health disorders. In the UK, in 2021/22, the National Health Service (NHS) spent 12 billion pounds on mental health – 8% of the entire NHS budget (comparable to the amount allocated for the treatment of cancer). The total spend on mental health in 2025/26 increased to almost £14 billion . At the same time, we are experiencing a psychiatrisation of society and a medicalisation of mental disorders , both with their...

Currently on display at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery is Christopher Samuel's Watch Us Lead . The exhibition explores themes of stigma, belonging and agency while encouraging conversations about under-representation, autonomy and the lived experience of disability. In this post, Kate Lynch reflects on the exhibition and the role museums can play in shaping whose stories are heard. One of the first works to catch the eye in this exhibition is a large stained glass panel. Stained glass is often associated with churches and public acts of remembrance, making it an especially powerful medium for an exhibition about stories that have been overlooked.   Pray For Me by Christopher Samuel Elsewhere, visitors encounter a series of portraits, each accompanied by a quotation and the opportunity to hear more. The stories touch on healthcare, education, employment, identity and family life, exploring not only the experience of stigma but also the ways participants have asserted their own ...

This week's post is by Benedetta Cogo from the University of Wollongong. Her interests lie in mental disorders and rationality and in narrative practices in mental health. Benedetta is the author of “ Making Room for Narrative Practices in Mental Health ” (published in Topoi), coauthored with Daniel Hutto. Benedetta Cogo This post is about rationality, persons, and mental disorders. Intuitively, these three terms seem to be interconnected, yet there is no obvious or innocent way to establish that persons are rational, that mental disorders are irrational, that mental disorders affect persons (and not, say, their brains). For example, let’s consider this question: are symptoms of mental disorders distorted forms of rationality – coherent and reason-responsive in their own, often very idiosyncratic, way? Or are they entirely unintelligible through the lens of rationality? I like to think that the answer is “both” – and hopefully, at the end of this post, you’ll see why.  So where do ...

Today's post is by Max F. Kramer , an  Assistant Professor of Bioethics at Geisinger College of Health Sciences, and Clinical Ethicist at Geisinger Health System. Kramer discussed the recent paper "Depressed, Not Disordered: Fittingness and Pathologies of Emotion", published in the Journal of Medicine & Philosophy .  Max F. Kramer A once-prevalent view in philosophy – and possibly still prevalent in public life – holds that reason and emotion are inherently opposed. An extension of this view would have us characterise mental illness as some imbalance between the two; typically, a pattern of excessive emotion or deficient reason. Although this perspective is misguided in certain important ways, it serves as a point of entry into the affective dimensions of psychopathology and especially the class of psychological phenomena categorised as affective disorders: mental illnesses characterised by some defect, impairment, or aberration in the functioning of one’s emotional a...