Richard Bentall

Richard Bentall (born 1956) is currently appointed as a Chair of Clinical Psychology at the University of Bangor in Wales, UK, and is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist.

Born in Sheffield, he attended the University College of North Wales, Bangor as an undergraduate before registering for a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at the same institution. After being awarded his doctorate, he moved to the University of Liverpool to undertake professional training as a Clinical Psychologist. He later returned to his alma mater of Liverpool to work as a lecturer, after a brief stint working for the National Health Service as a Forensic Clinical Psychologist. In later years, he studied an MA in Philosophy Applied to Healthcare from University of Wales, Swansea. He was eventually promoted to Professor of Clinical Psychology at University of Liverpool. In 1999, he accepted a position at the University of Manchester, collaborating with the numerous researchers working in understanding the psychology and treatment of psychotic experiences.

He is particularly well known for his work in psychosis, especially delusions and hallucinations. He has published extensively in these areas. He also has an interest in differences between human and animal pedagogy and in the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome.

In 1989, he received the British Psychological Society's Division of Clinical Psychology 'May Davidson Award', an annual award for outstanding contributions to the field of clinical psychology, in the first ten years after qualifying.

In a 1992 thought experiment, he proposed to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder.

He has edited and written several books, most notably Madness Explained, which was winner of the British Psychological Society Book Award in 2004. He advocates a psychological approach to the psychoses, and considered symptoms worthwhile investigating in contrast to the Kraepelinian syndromes. (Refuting Kraepelin's big idea is the starting chapter of this book.) A review by Paul Broks in The Sunday Times summarized its position as: "Like Szasz, Bentall is firmly opposed to the biomedical model, but he also takes issue with extreme social relativists who would deny the reality of madness." In the book, Bentall also argues that no clear distinction exists between those diagnosed with mental illnesses and the "well". While this notion is more widely accepted in psychiatry when it comes to anxiety and depression, Bentall insists that schizotypal experiences are also common.

His latest book is titled Doctoring The Mind: Is Our Current Treatment Of Mental Illness Really Any Good? A review of this book by neuro-scientist Roy Sugarman found that it allied itself with the anti-psychiatry movement in its critiques of biological psychiatry. The review in PsycCRITIQUES was more nuanced, pointing out that Bentall did not reject psycho-pharmacology, but that he was concerned over its overuse.