ABSTRACT
The person-centred attitude to diagnosis present from the time of its origins (see Point 32) is also reflected in changing and developing attitudes to the labelling of people who experience mental distress. Examples include the positive psychology movement (see Point 94), the increasing recognition that mental and emotional distress has social and environmental causes (see Points 37 and 95) and a whole raft of books including the ‘A Straight Talking Introduction to …’ series published by
Johnstone and Dallos 2013; and Read and Sanders 2010). Sanders (2013: 18) points out that there is a natural alliance between person-centred practitioners and psychiatric service-user movements and ‘all efforts to destigmatise mental health problems by demedicalisation in both philosophy and vocabulary’. This too has been at the core of person-centred theory and practice since the outset.
