UPDATE 28
11 June 2026
Welcome to the latest Update from Save Mental Health. We are encouraged to see that critical social justice is finally receiving the academic scrutiny it deserves, as demonstrated in three of our topics in this edition and in our recommended book this month.
Lucy Beney writes about body modification and why it’s so popular
How today’s obsession with victimhood is endangering all of us
US Psychologists raise alarm about CBT ‘victim’ therapists
Experts-by Experience: Where to draw the line?
A Tale of Two Ideologies: Critical Social Justice & Neurodiversity
I’m an incongruity – get me out of here!
We are pleased to publish Lucy Beney’s latest article – a long-form essay on the popularity of body modification and extreme behaviours amongst young people. Lucy considers what happens when bodies and appearance are all that matters, explaining that the expression of distress – by harming the body in some way – or altering the body to ensure you meet certain perceived standards, becomes more likely. She discusses a range of phenomena from ‘looksmaxxing’, body piercings and paint work, to ‘meat lego’ – a term coined by writer Mary Harrington to describe a wish for the human body to be “liberated from biological constraints”, reducing it to “a collection of exchangeable and replaceable parts”. Lucy reflects on what might lead young people to take such extreme measures to change how they look or punish themselves by inflicting pain. This is another thoughtful and thought-provoking piece from Lucy that helps to shed light on the motivations of young people who find it hard to ‘fit in’ and to accept themselves as they are.
How today’s obsession with victimhood is endangering all of us
A damning indictment of critical social justice theory by Professor Jane Fenton has been published in the Daily Telegraph. Jane Fenton was a social worker in the criminal justice system for 13 years and taught social work at the University of Dundee for two decades before retiring last year. She explains how social work seminars at her university were previously “lively places where students would discuss ideas and different approaches to problems”, but that since 2015 “ideas about systemic racism, decolonisation, patriarchy and oppression” had taken hold. Now, she claims, you are more likely to find ‘silence’ because many students are fearful of departing from “the orthodoxy that has permeated both actual social work and the teaching of it: critical social justice theory”.
Professor Fenton explains that one reason why (particularly white) students “fear questioning or debating issues of race” is because the definition of ‘racism’ has been changed so that “you are just racist if you are white”. She reports that research into the impact of such teaching on social work students found that “two thirds were afraid to talk about tricky subjects for fear of disapproval from other students or ‘causing harm’.” The article goes on discuss the consequences for social work in the real world, pointing out that “having difficult conversations and saying things that people don’t want to hear or don’t like is the bread and butter of social work – and other professions such as law enforcement, probation, teaching and health services”. She raises concerns about failures in the cases of Valdo Calocane and Axel Rudakabana and states that “the damage I’ve seen critical social justice theory cause is extensive”. Professor Fenton concludes by predicting that “uncontested ideas about power privilege, oppressed and oppressor, victimhood, trauma and harm” can now be found across all disciplines. She fears that these ideas have resulted in “a significant number of sub-standard professionals” and predicts that it is “only going to get worse”.
Her words have proved prophetic, with the tragic murder of Henry Nowak. Legitimate concerns have been raised about The Police Race Action Plan which makes a commitment to ‘Anti-Racism’ and ‘racial equity’, making it clear that this: “does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’”. Here at Save Mental Health, we have been warning for some time that so-called ‘anti-racism’ and critical social justice theory more broadly, are divisive and damaging to individuals and to society. How many more innocent people must die or be seriously injured before politicians wake-up to the reality of the situation and take action?
US psychologists raise alarm about CBT ‘victim’ therapists
In a special issue of the journal Current Opinion in Psychology, three US researchers voice their concerns about the threat to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) of young therapists’ ‘victimology worldview’. Richard Redding, Robert Maranto and Nathan Honeycutt explain that CBT “rests on the premise that individuals possess personal agency to change their life circumstances”. However, in psychology, this premise is being displaced by “greater emphasis on conceptualizing distress as reflecting systemic oppression”. The authors identify three concerns arising from this displacement: (i) declining interest in traditional CBT; (ii) problems with alignment of values between therapists and ‘non-liberal’ clients; and (iii) “possible shifts in the theoretical and practical focus of CBT”.
The authors draw comparisons between ‘dignity culture’ which assumes individuals have agency and ‘victim culture’ which privileges “marginalized and minority” groups and considers them helpless and unable to improve their circumstances due to oppressive and discriminatory social forces beyond their control. They point out the divergence between Democrat and Republican views on personal responsibility, with the latter subscribing to “the individual agency and personal responsibility view of human behaviour” while the former “are apt to see that perspective as ‘blaming the victim’, a view in line with current social-justice oriented approaches to psychotherapy”. Recent surveys are cited, showing that many graduate students report being ‘very liberal’ with ‘virtually none’ being conservative. With left-leaning professors training the next generation of therapists the discipline of psychology “has become even more politicized in favor of progressive ideologies and causes”.
In terms of the future of CBT in this politicized environment, the authors express concern that “If fewer graduate students and young therapists are attracted to CBT in favor of other approaches more consistent with their progressive worldview, then training programs may be producing fewer and fewer traditionally trained CBT therapists”. They suggest that some therapists “may eschew CBT entirely, seeing it as inherently Eurocentric and oppressive to marginalized and minority clients” while others may adapt CBT with approaches “similar to decolonial therapy or social justice counselling”. The authors ask whether clients who prefer CBT may find it hard to locate a therapist who offers it and understands and respects their values. They also question whether, in the hands of “politically progressive therapists” CBT would be “fully efficacious”.
The authors conclude by reflecting how unfortunate it would be if fewer new therapists were attracted to practicing CBT, “given its proven effectiveness” or if they were to “corrupt it through a politicization that alters its fundamental approach, aims and therapeutic strategies in favor of strategies that serve a political agenda”. They recommend that graduate training programmes “strive for at least a modicum of sociopolitical diversity among their entering graduates” and expose those students to “a variety of ideological perspectives and approaches” while not “indoctrinating their students into the paradigm that client problems must be seen through a particular ideological lens”. Finally, the authors call for the provision of ‘sociopolitical competence training’for students on how to work with clients who hold political and social views and values that differ from their own.
Save Mental Health has sent this paper to the President of the British Association of Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies in the hope that this UK organisation heeds the authors’ warnings.
Experts-by-Experience: Where to draw the line?
The concept of ‘experts by experience’ arose from a recognition that people with disabilities or mental health difficulties, had unique insights into the efficacy of the services they accessed and could provide useful feedback. The “Nothing About Us Without Us” movement brought about a shift in public services towards decision-making involving the input of ‘service users’. In the 2000s, NHS England and the Care Quality Commission formalised this approach with former patients being appointed to inspection and review panels.
Although this movement has, quite rightly, given many patients and carers using the NHS and other services a voice and a role in shaping those services, in recent years, Save Mental Health has become concerned about the potential for unintended consequences. For example, in 2020, the BPS announced it would welcome candidates with mental health difficulties into clinical psychology training programmes. While this is in many ways laudable, particularly for a profession that claims to destigmatise mental health problems, Save Mental Health has received reports from reliable sources, of some graduates with enduring mental health difficulties finding it hard to cope once they enter the workplace, struggling to manage not only their own mental health difficulties but those of their clients.
It is with the question “where to draw the line?” in mind, that we turn to a recent report that the NHS paid “several psychiatric offenders” to advise them as ‘experts by experience’, on patient care and improvement of mental health services. The report claims that “doctors and campaigners have raised concerns that some offenders with a history of mental illness who have been employed as experts are being discharged too quickly, posing a potential risk to the public and denying justice to their victims”. A former head of an NHS mental health trust is quoted: “Hearing the user experience is one thing. But getting someone who has killed someone to advise you on how to care for people who are seriously ill is another”. A case is cited of a man diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2008 who was released on licence in 2015 after serving 16 years of a life sentence for armed robbery. He was subsequently enlisted by the Royal College of Psychiatry “to deliver a workshop on substance misuse to doctors at its annual forum in July 2018.” This man described himself on LinkedIn as a “service user expert at Royal College of Psychiatrists”. In 2021 he was given a life sentence for murder. An NHS England report stated that this offender “engaged in his work as a lived experience consultant and no concerns were noted”. The report also stated that this work “may have led to some considerable pressure for [him] to maintain a coping façade and mask difficulties that he was experiencing”.
The article cites other troubling instances of offenders acting as experts by experience who have gone on to harm others. It concludes with a quote from Julian Hendy, the founder of Hundred Families, a charity that supports families after mental-health related killings, reflecting that these cases “reinforce the view that the NHS is more concerned with the well-being of offenders than that of their victims”. He acknowledges that serious offenders should have the chance to recover but says that “it’s imperative they do so safely and that those working with them are aware of all the risks they may present when unwell”.
A Tale of Two Ideologies: Critical Social Justice & Neurodiversity
Arnold Cantú is a Clinical social worker and psychotherapist in the US and a friend of Save Mental Health. In a two-part essay which you can read here and here , Arnold discusses how left-wing politics and critical social justice activism have “become ensnared by the biomedical model of mental health”. He sees this model as “another ideology” that views human suffering as arising “primarily from biological factors residing within the individual that are, then, conceptualized as ‘mental disorders’ or putative medical conditions”. Arnold expresses concern that this biomedical model of mental health can be harmful as it medicalises, pathologises and decontextualises human suffering.
He expresses surprise and confusion that this model has been “appropriated” by a left-leaning segment of the population to “achieve their social justice aims in ostensibly progressive ways”. He speculates on the various reasons why people may now be seeing themselves ‘through a psychiatric prism with mental disorder labels strongly moulding their sense of identity.”
Arnold points out that research studies show increasing rates of diagnosed mental disorders self-diagnosis, and worsening mental health, amongst those who are liberal or Democrat. He reflects on why this might be, citing ‘victimhood culture’, ‘grievance politics’ and ‘the oppression Olympics’. He also highlights the cognitive distortions found in such individuals, referring to Lukianoff and Haidt’s observation that these ways of thinking resemble a form of ‘reverse Cognitive Behavioural Therapy’.
In the second part of his essay, Arnold acknowledges the “admirable” aims of the neurodiversity movement, but points out the irony of that movement using medicalizing and pathologizing labels such as ‘disabled’ “to somehow de-medicalize and de-pathologize their experiences”. He also cites Haslam’s ideas about forms of concept creep as more labels and disabilities are “seemingly falling under the neurodiversity umbrella term”. Arnold concludes that it has been “curious” to observe how certain left-leaning individuals have “swallowed up a model that quite clearly goes against their supposed progressive and anti-oppressive social justice values they claim to take seriously”.
We are grateful to Arnold for keeping us informed about his valuable work and allowing us to share it with our supporters. His latest article ‘Critical social justice and its cognitive distortions: Diagnosing the liberal’s poor mental health’, written with his co-author Nathan Gallo, was recently published in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology and is available online here.
RECOMMENDATION
Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind by Gad Saad
Dr Gad Saad’s previous book The Parasitic Mind is a best-seller and his latest book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind,published on 18th June –and awaited with great anticipation by his followers – is likely to follow suit. Born in Lebanon, Saad and his family fled from the civil war to Canada where he established a successful career as an academic. Dr Saad is critical of both social justice activism and political correctness and has his own YouTube show called The Saad Truth. In Suicidal Empathy he argues that in the West, victimhood has been elevated to a virtue while punishment is seen as cruel. As a result, the feelings of marginalized groups are prioritised over the truth, leading to the strong and successful being demonised, while those who commit crimes are valorised over their actual victims. This book is meant to be a ‘wake-up call’ to the West, with Saad encouraging readers to “stop ignoring your survival instincts in the name of political correctness”. He warns that if we do not follow his advice, the West faces civilisational collapse. Dr Saad writes in an accessible style and, despite the troubling subject matter, is very entertaining. Essential reading for all our supporters. Psychotherapist Sue Parker Hall reflects on Dr Saad’s book and the effects of suicidal empathy on the psychological professions in her substack piece here.