From Patients to People:
Disability Rights and Survivor Narratives in Mental Health
Beyond Diagnosis:
An Introduction to the Power-Threat-Meaning Framework
The Power Threat Meaning Framework, published in 2018 by the British Psychological Society and co-produced by psychologists and service users, offers a conceptual alternative to psychiatric diagnosis.
It demonstrates the links between contexts such as poverty, discrimination and inequality, along with traumas such as abuse and violence, and the resulting emotional distress.
The Framework can be used as a way of helping all of us to create more hopeful narratives about the lives of those in distress, instead of seeing them as blameworthy, weak, deficient, or ‘mentally ill’. It is now available in seven languages, and is influencing practice in the UK and beyond.
Dr Lucy Johnstone is, with Professor Mary Boyle, one of the lead authors of the PTMF. She will describe its key principles and illustrate how it can help to challenge biomedical hegemony wherever in the world it is imposed, and promote social justice. As critiques of psychiatric diagnosis become louder across the world, PTMF provides practitioners with a legitimate alternative to understanding their clients’ lives, and convey that hope to them.
In response to traditional mental health and psychiatric models that ask patients, “what’s wrong with you”, the PTMF framework asks “what happened to you”.
📅 March 28 2026
🕕 7.30 PM IST; 2.00 PM London Time; 9 AM EST
Meet the Speaker
Dr Lucy Johnstone
Dr Lucy Johnstone is a consultant clinical psychologist, author of books including ‘Users and abusers of psychiatry’ (Routledge 2021) and ‘A straight-talking guide to psychiatric diagnosis’ (PCCS Books, 2022); and a number of other chapters and articles taking a critical perspective on mental health theory and practice.
She is the former Director of the Bristol Clinical Psychology Doctorate in the UK and worked in Adult Mental Health settings for many years.
She is Visiting Professor at London South Bank University, an Honorary Fellow of the BPS, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Lucy is an experienced conference speaker and lecturer, and currently works as an independent trainer. She lives in Bristol, UK.
