Searching for Normal by Dr Sami Timimi

A psychiatrist looks beneath the surface of mental health and neurodiversity in the wider political and cultural context and explores how we might reconsider the way in which we think about, treat and care for those in distress

More and more people are being diagnosed with ADHD and autism.

More and more people are being diagnosed with mental disorders.

Young people are being medicalised for behaviours that might be explained as entirely normal in other parts of the world.

Distress has been commodified over many decades by pharmaceutical companies, the media and the psychiatric establishment.

So how can we know when distress is normal and when it is something that needs to be treated?

In Searching for Normal, Dr Sami Timimi explores the political and cultural context of these phenomena and presents, instead, a deeply humane approach that looks at the person as a whole – their family context, their culture, their personal resilience – and advocates for a reframing of how we think about and treat distress.

About the Author: Dr Sami Timimi is a practicing consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist in the NHS. He has written 40 book chapters, mainly in academic books, on subjects related to critical psychiatry, childhood, psychotherapy, depression, behavioural problems and cross-cultural psychiatry; authored six books, including Naughty Boys- Anti-Social Behaviour, ADHD and the Role of Culture; co-edited four books, including, with Carl Cohen, Liberatory Psychiatry- Philosophy, Politics and Mental Health; and co-authored two others including, with Neil Gardiner and Brian McCabe, The Myth of Autism- Medicalising Men’s and Boys’ Social and Emotional Competence. His most recent book, published in 2021, is Insane Medicine- How the Mental Health Industry Creates Damaging Treatment Traps and How You Can Escape Them.

20 Mar 2025
 

Searching for Normal: A New Approach to Understanding Distress and Neurodiversity by Dr Sami Timimi ISBN 9781911717133