Searching for Normal

How can we 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, Sami Timimi explores the political and cultural context of these phenomena and presents 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.

Review

Searching for Normal is so good I have been quoting its insights to friends ever since I finished it . . . A terrific book, timely and wise, thoughtful and thought-provoking ― Sunday Times

A brilliant book. I said “Hurrah!” and “Yes!” to every point Sami Timimi makes. A welcome antidote to the dangerous cult of overdiagnosis and the commodification of normal distress -- Philippa Perry

Sami Timimi is one of the most brave and wise voices in Britain. Everyone interested in thinking in a deeper way about what’s ailing us – and what isn’t ailing us! – should read this terrific, thought-provoking book -- Johann Hari

Searching for Normal is a really important book that compellingly dismantles the house of cards that is the medical approach to mental distress. Using a mass of research evidence, it exposes how the current mental-health system traps and disempowers people and makes us all sicker. The book also offers hope that if we reclaim our common-sense understanding of emotions and behaviour, we can help each other to develop our strengths and overcome our difficulties -- Joanna Moncrieff

Searching for Normal is a provocative and insightful critique of how we’ve come to understand and treat mental illness. It compels us not to blame (and try to fix) our brains for mental distress, but to point the finger at inequality, poverty and a culture of excessive competition and comparison -- Matthew Smith

Searching for Normal asks two hugely important questions: why has there been such a surge in mental-health diagnoses in the current century; and how helpful are the treatments and labels given by the medical profession to those in distress? The answers given by Sami Timimi in this radical and meticulously argued book overturn much of the received wisdom about mental health, and shine a fascinating light on the dysfunctional relationship between modern capitalism and human emotion -- William Sutcliffe, BACP-registered therapist and author

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.