Mad to be Normal film followed by discussion

Balliol Medical Society will present an impressive film about the outrageous, inventive and iconoclastic psychiatrist RD Laing (1927-1989) whose extensive writings challenged the orthodoxy of chemical and electroshock therapies. He believed in the talking cure, reinforced by the occasional tab of LSD. Laing is played brilliantly by David Tennant.

After the film there will be a panel discussion with the film's director (Robert Mullan), psychiatrist-cum-anthropologist (Roland Littlewood), the founder of SANE (Marjorie Wallace) and GP and prison doctor (Farnaz Arshid). This distinguished group will be chaired by Athar Yawar (1994), psychiatrist and a one-time senior editor of the Lancet.

The discussion will cover important basic questions about what psychiatrists do, what they should do and how they should do it. We hope it will be educational, possibly encourage some of you to consider a career in psychiatry, and engage all of you in some of the incredibly important questions in the field of mental health.

There is no parking in the Science Area. There is some street parking on Mansfield Rd, Keble Rd etc. No bicycles are to be brought onto the MSTC site. Use cycle racks nearby.