There are many kinds of adult adversities that can provoke severe psychological distress, including debt and unemployment, dysfunctional marital relationships and occupational stress. The reality is that the social causes of mental ill-health are all around us.

If we are to believe the evidence from clinical trials there are many effective pharmacological and psychological treatments for mental illness. Epidemiological data, on the other hand, says otherwise.

Childhood trauma is not necessarily a prophecy of doom, because some children are resilient or because later experiences help to restore mental health.

At the population level, making the world more just and less unequal, while trying to figure out the toxic aspects of the urban environmental will probably help prevent a lot of psychosis.

Countries with the best-resourced medical services have the best outcomes for physical illness (it is better to have a heart attack in Washington or London than in rural Africa) whereas precisely the opposite is the case for mental illness (developing nations with limited psychiatric resources have better outcomes and lower suicide rates).

There are many kinds of adult adversities that can provoke severe psychological distress, including debt and unemployment, dysfunctional marital relationships and occupational stress. The reality is that the social causes of mental ill-health are all around us.

Conventional psychiatry has emphasized the genetic roots of psychosis based on the claim that twin and other studies show that schizophrenia is 80% heritable, which means that 80% of the cause is genetic.