The Medicalisation of Misbehaviour - Let's Discuss!

With the ethos of Respecting the Person, whilst Challenging the Idea, we'll be discussing questions, thoughts and opinions that arise for us around the following episode:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zf34d

The Medicalisation of Misbehaviour from March 2011:

Blurb from the Beeb - Blurb written by the BBC at the time of the show

Are we too willing to excuse bad behaviour as the morally-neutral symptom of newly-defined mental disorders?

The 'DSM' - The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the Bible of American psychiatry - is reported this week to be debating whether to recognise 'sex addiction' as a treatable medical condition.

Private 'rehab' clinics say that more and more clients are seeking treatment for sex addiction. Those who have already undergone therapy for it include Russell Brand, Tiger Woods and Michael Douglas.So should we tear up the seventh commandment and replace it with 'If you commit adultery you should seek therapy'?

We could replace a few more commandments. In place of 'Remember the Sabbath', 'Thou shalt not covet', 'Thou shalt not steal' and 'Honour thy father and mother', we could have 'Recognise that you may be a workaholic, a shopaholic or a kleptomaniac, or that you may have Oppositional Defiant Disorder.'

If any socially-unacceptable behaviour is a symptom of a condition that can be treated with drugs or therapy or both, where does that leave those quaint old moral terms good and bad, right and wrong?

Are we nowadays too willing to excuse bad behaviour as the morally-neutral symptom of some newly-defined mental disorder?

Or is medical science finding new ways to diagnose and treat the causes of deviance where traditional morality has failed?

Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk with former Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo, the Catholic writer Clifford Longley, Melanie Phillips social commentator on the Daily Mail and Neurobiologist Kenan Malik.

With Paula Hall author and Psychotherapist specialising in Sexual Addiction, Professor Richard Bentall from the Dept of Clinical Psychology at Liverpool University, John King writer and producer of Living with ADHD and Dr Hannah Pickard Philospher of Mind and Psychiatry at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics making up the 'witnesses'.

All roles were those held by the individuals at the time of broadcast - in 2011.

Our discussions do not need to be limited by or to the points raised within the show, but having listened to the differing opinions shared within the episode beforehand can be helpful to foster a thoughtful discussion.

Event Venue

Room 1.26, Paterson's Land, The University of Edinburgh, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh, United Kingdom