Madness in Medicine: Psychotic experiences and innovative approaches to mental health care in the UK

This community-engaged clinical ethnography investigates psychotic experiences and mental health care within the UK’s National Health Service. Experimental psychedelic-assisted therapy mobilizes psychotic experiences as therapeutic in clinical trials. Yet these trials exclude people with a history of psychosis, a highly stigmatised condition that disproportionately impacts racialised and disadvantaged communities. At the same time, conventional psychosis treatments—antipsychotic drugs—are increasingly recognised as insufficient, and cutting-edge psychosis clinics are foregrounding new approaches to managing psychotic illnesses. This project bridges divided research on psychedelics and psychosis to investigate psychotic experiences across these disparate clinical contexts and discover how innovative treatment approaches that mobilize or manage psychotic experiences are transforming mental health care. Through clinical ethnography, participatory arts-based research, and collaborative codesign with patients and clinicians, this research will provide insight on how therapeutic value, safety, and efficacy are changing in the context of the burgeoning ‘psychedelic renaissance’ and global mental health crisis. This project will advance scholarly debates in anthropology and science and technology studies, with implications for destigmatising ‘madness’ and developing more equitable mental health care policy and practice.