No Such Thing as Normal: Disorders, Diagnoses and the Limits of Psychiatry

by Marieke Bigg

'Confronting, thought-provoking and hopeful' SARAH GRAHAM

'A rallying cry for the importance of social and systemic approaches to psychiatric distress' EMMA BYRNE

'Stimulating and timely on psychiatry's tendency to pathologise the 'abnormal'' DANIEL TAMMET

'A shocking and powerful critique ... this is essential reading' HELEN KING

There is no such thing as a normal brain, yet we live in a world that treats disorder as disease.

Psychiatry rests on the belief that mental distress can ultimately be explained by brain structures, chemical imbalances and genetics. Treatments from lobotomies to electroconvulsive therapy to prescription drugs have been touted as cures for 'disorder'. And somewhere along the way, the pharmaceutical industry has leapfrogged its patients, making millions designing drugs to treat disorders, then billions dreaming up disorders that require drugs.

We are now diagnosed and treated for mental disorders more than ever, despite increasing evidence that environmental factors play a far greater role than biological ones.

Laying out the steps for a mental health system that helps rather than harms, Marieke Bigg how can we heal when faced with an industry that banks on keeping us sick?

Genres: Medicine, Psychology

336 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 22, 2025

About the author

Marieke Bigg writes about bodies and culture. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, where she studied the technological transformation of human reproduction. She now writes both non-fiction and fiction about the cultural dimensions of biology and bodies. In addition to her books, Marieke writes freelance, hosts podcasts and panels, and collaborates with scientists and biologists to discuss and produce art that conjures new social worlds.

Reviews

[Alex Delogu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I flew through this. An urgent call to more person-centered forms of care. Personal autonomy is taken to be the most important aim for any serious form of support for people, over and above prescription. Some of the arguments are by now well known, the capture of care by big pharma, the time-compression of treatments, the criticisms of the medical model. That being said, they are handled in a critical way with particular focus on feminist readings. The chapter on psychedelics is notable for it acknowledges their strengths, in the emphasis on ritual and autonomy, while also being weary of medical capture, ie. excessive focus on the neuro-molecular aspects to the detriment of set and setting. The chapter on neurodiversity is also noteworthy, for it is a movement that uses the very tools of psychiatry against it, ie. the neuroscience model to open up the possibility for more individualised care instead of existing rigid diagnostic categories or one size fits all treatment.

[Sonia Baileys · Rating 3 out of 5]

Struggling through this book. It is an interesting and a very important topic, but it could have been written in half the size of this book. Basically reads like a research paper but with a lot of descriptors and an attempt at narration.

The facts themselves are great! Especially the history of hysteria and the contextual analysis of its development during the war and forth. But the style I am not the fan of as it isn’t engaging, and also some of the opinions are… well, they seem to be somewhat biased. Also the way in which the referencing is done personally annoys me, I would much rather have footnotes than end of the book referencing cause watch me not flipping back and forth when reading a physical book; also them being split into chapters where numbers restart takes more flipping to understand if I am even looking at the right section of the references.

So it is a 3 star for the organisation and the style of the text than the quality of the research and content itself.