Hey there - we’re back in your inbox again with a second generous serving of delicious Camdenist pie in one week 🙂 

I hope you enjoyed Wednesday lunchtime’s EXTRA: Neil Kinnock on the local ‘metropolitan elite’ edition as much as I did putting it together.

Do forward it on or share it with your friends and neighbours who might be interested in reading the former Labour leader’s views on his successors and living in this part of London.

Congrats also to the six winners of our prize draw to win tickets to the upcoming HowTheLightGetsIn Festival at Kenwood (see below for our special 30% off tickets if it wasn't you).

Among the speakers that many entrants said they we’re most looking forward to seeing was Joanna Moncrieff, the outspoken NHS psychiatrist and UCL academic, who argues that today’s approach to mental heath is over-medicalised.

She completes the current series of Camdenist Guest Editors with her fascinating insights right here.

This week’s Guest Editor: Joanna Moncrieff

“As a psychiatrist and academic, my longstanding interest has been in the drug treatment of mental health problems.

I've always come from the perspective that we use too many drugs, and that we also fundamentally misunderstand and attribute too much specificity to them.

Obviously it's a good thing that people feel able to be open about their problems these days, but there are some issues with all the labels we’re talking about.

The major one is that people feel these labels are an explanation, as they would be if you were to get a diagnosis of lung cancer or pneumonia. The trouble is, mental health is not like that.

Labels just name the type of problem, they don't actually get you any further forward with treating it. Sometimes that can be a distraction, because people often try to fit themselves into boxes under the labels that they've been hearing about recently, and don't necessarily communicate, or become aware of, what their actual problems are.

There’s this idea that the issue is in your brain, so the solution is therefore to tweak or rewire your brain in one way or another.

We used to understand the sort of issues we label ‘mental health problems’ today as reactions to life events and circumstances.

I argue that the medicalisation of these reactions takes us away from that understanding, which I think is problematic, because it remains the case that most mental health problems are a reaction to people's circumstances.

There's lots of evidence that shows that being in poverty, having debts, housing problems, relationship or employment issues - all these things contribute very significantly to having mental health challenges.

So it's problematic that we've that we've neglected that in favour of this idea that it's an individual disorder - something wrong in the brain that requires a medical solution to put right - rather seeing that the solution might actually be in changing your environment, or the things that were making you unhappy, stressed or anxious in the first place.

At a psychological level, where people take medication and feel like they have found a solution, maybe they don't then pay enough attention addressing the external issues.

At the pharmacological level, we know that these drugs dial down emotions - positive and negative - and numb people. If they’ve been acutely distressed, that might be helpful temporarily, but generally in the long term, people don't find that effect helpful, they actually find it quite unpleasant and unnerving.

To me, we have to get away from the whole concept of diagnosis.

The main thing that people can do to improve their mental health is to identify what they're responding to; what's gone wrong in their life that is making them unhappy or stressed. Is it their job or relationship? A lack of purpose and meaning, or loneliness?

Then there are some other things that generally boost mental wellbeing, such as exercise and mindfulness. Psychotherapy can be helpful in circumstances where people maybe unsure what the problems are and need to work through it with someone.

Undoubtedly, our new thinking on mental health was driven by the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in the 1990s with big disease awareness campaigns to get people to see depression as a medical problem.

And there are various private health providers giving people diagnoses of ADHD and undoubtedly making quite a lot of profit doing that, too.

So, there is profit involved in all this, but there's also burden.

The health services that most people come to with mental health problems in this country (and many others) are funded primarily through state taxation, so we’re all having to pay for it.

The current situation is worrying, as millions of people seem to have bought into this idea that our emotional difficulties are medical problems that need medical labels and solutions.

We’re never going to know everything about how the brain works. Even if we did, that would not actually tell us what it is to be a human being, to experience living in this world, interacting with other people, and all the challenges that brings in life.

We might understand it partly through literature, music and art, as well as social science and looking at our history, but we’ve been persuaded that we can't.

Instead, we’ve been told that what we need is ever more neuroscience, and that that is somehow going to uncover the answer to everything and tell us who we really are.

It is not.

HowTheLightGetsIn returns 20th-21st Sept at Kenwood House. As the world’s largest ideas and music festival, you’ll hear from Joanna alongside Brian Cox, John Gray, Diane Abbott, Alastair Campbell, Alain de Botton, and loads more. With debates, talks, comedy, and live music across the weekend, you’ll listen to the world’s top thinkers give their views on the most urgent issues facing society today.

As partners of the festival, Camdenist is offering an exclusive 30% off tickets with code CAMDENIST2025. Get your discounted tickets now, and we’ll see you there…

OTHER FESTIVALS

😥 Street parties are hard work

Nobody said it was easy throwing delightful community bashes in our streets, allowing people to dance in the road with abandon and to eek out the last days of summer sun with streetfood, cake or pint in hand.

A case in point is next weekend’s promised 3-day Camden Music Festival.

Cancelled at short notice last year, it’s been devilishly hard to find out many details about the imminent 2025 event, which only started filtering through over recent days, and come with complicated-sounding ticketing arrangements.

It’s admirable and ambitious to try and shut down central Camden Town for a massive street party, and near impossible to please the multitude of stakeholders and authorities, so I’m not surprised the messaging has been a little disjointed.

Essentially, you can expect to find DJs and live acts celebrating the area’s rich musical history from Fri 12th - Sun 14th Sept, with plenty of names that will be familiar to Camden ravers and rockers of a certain vintage.

The Good Mixer are taking over Inverness St with the likes of Dirty Blonde and The Moonlight Sirens, (look out for Carl Barat’s after party at the pub on Sunday) Mi-Soul Radio are doing a Bagley’s takeover on the high street with Brandon Block, Ricky Morrison and loads more DJs and Hawley Crescent will see live music from Kenny Thomas and other big names, all of which you can see on their ever-changing Instagram.

🍺 Another annual street party that’s not quite made it to fruition in quite its usual shape this time around is the delightful, increasingly epic York Rise Street Party. In it’s place this Sat 6th Sept will be a smaller event called the Dartmouth Fair, bringing locals a taste of the usual antics via a single stage outside the Dartmouth Arms hosting some favourite live acts and Dig It Soundsystem DJs, some stalls and a call out to bring pre-loved children’s items for charity partner Little Village.

🎧 One street performer who is definitely bucking how tough it can be out there is DJ AG who, having originally been moved on from performing on the canal steps at Granary Square in his early days, has now been welcomed back by the King’s Cross Estate with open arms and given a 4-week residency, which kicks off at Lewis Cubitt Square tonight, Fri 5th Sept.

Expect his compelling mix of aspiring and celebrity guests on the mic, plus a series of free events including panel discussions, music careers advice workshops, a specially designed speaker stack installation and lots more, as the joyous AG juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down.

🎸 This Sat 6th Sept, Denmark Street Sessions sees a series of live performances, exhibitions, pop ups and talks, all centered around the area’s music and associated culture. There’s loads to see, hear and do at venues including the Farsight Gallery, where there’s a stunning exhibition documenting underground London raves by young photographer Yushy, who also joins a Q&A with author Stef Macbeth and journalist Emma Warren around Stef's new book 'FOLK'. You’ll find live music next door at Thirteen and music and talks in the street’s various historic guitar stores, too.

ART

3 very different local shows to catch

🎨 The latest show at the diminutive Spring Up Art Gallery is a show in the window by the celebrated Camden-based artist Maria Tomas. Find it on Spring Place, tucked in the Kentish Town backstreets.

⚰️ Memento Vivere is a new exhibition opening tonight at The Crypt Gallery beneath St Pancras Church on Euston Rd. It explores the subject of our shared fate - death - by making us appreciate being alive and enjoying art and beauty all around us, and has been created by outsider artist SLART. Look out for three special meditation sessions at the exhibition over the coming weeks too. Runs to 15th Sept.

🚺 Explore the transgressive Pissing Women project at Royal College Street’s Cob Gallery at Stream, which looks at the feminist defiance of Sophy Rickett and Rut Blees Luxemburg, as they transformed London streets into a stage for feminist defiance in the 1990s. Runs 10th - 27th Sept. 

DEVELOPMENT

Camden Town Xchange reveals new era for the Parkway Odeon

Big plans have been unveiled for the proposed reinvention of the closed Mecca Bingo hall site in Camden, that was initially slated to become a home to immersive movie operators Secret Cinema.

Soon after that particular project was abandoned, Parkway’s historic Odeon announced it would be closing next year, meaning an even bigger prime site would be ripe for redevelopment, and Camden Town Xchange is the first taste of what is likely to come.

As well as the 50 affordable and 250 student homes reported to replace the cinema, a ‘high-quality cultural venue, shaped to reflect Camden Town’s character’ is now part of the masterplan.

When we quizzed them this week, a representative told Camdenist, “the eventual use will depend on market demand and interest, securing the right operator and ensuring space is viable in terms of layout, demand, and long-term sustainability.

“Ideas we have heard through our consultation include immersive theatre, gallery space, performance venues, and music uses – we understand that locals want to see a high-quality modern experiential space.

“Our planning application will set out more detail on the proposed culture use. We are expecting to submit this in the next few weeks.”

So keep an eye on that website and lamp posts in the area for the next steps, is it’s exciting to think of such offerings in a revitalised use of the defunct space but, as reported with the music festival above, getting things done in Camden Town can hit up against all kinds of complex issues.

🎬 Meanwhile, up in Kentish Town, the next phase of consultation on the proposed Camden Film Quarter takes place next week, starting Tues 9th Sept, with an exhibition of the latest plans and a chance to air your views.

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