This is an edited version of Remembering Who We Are: Community, Connection and Creativity - Dr. Pat Bracken in Conversation with Dr. Feargal MacIonnrachtaigh, that took place in Newhill Youth and Community Centre on Monday 11 May 2026, as part of Féile na gCloigíní Gorma.

You can view a video recording of the event here.

Introduction: Why New Script Matters

Dr. Bracken began by saying it was "a real pleasure" to return to Belfast and to support New Script for Mental Health. He described the campaign as "an inspiration," not only in Ireland but internationally, because it is challenging dominant ideas about mental health and encouraging society to think differently about distress and healing.

"I don't know of another organisation like it... the campaign that's at the heart of what's going on here is inspirational."

He praised New Script for creating space for new conversations about mental health that move beyond traditional medical approaches and place communities at the centre of finding solutions.

Question: What first drew you towards psychiatry?

Dr. Bracken explained that his first love was art rather than medicine. As a teenager he became fascinated by surrealist artists and the way they explored madness and extreme states of mind without fear or stigma.

Although he realised he lacked the talent to become an artist himself, psychiatry seemed another route into understanding those questions.

The reality proved very different.

Beginning his psychiatric career in the early 1980s, he found institutions dominated by control rather than creativity. He struggled with the contradiction between wanting to care for people while also having the power to detain them or compel treatment.

At the same time, his studies in philosophy encouraged him to question accepted assumptions rather than simply accept professional knowledge as unquestionable truth.

Question: How did Uganda change your thinking?

One of the defining experiences of Dr. Bracken's career came when he and his wife Joan travelled to Uganda to work with survivors of torture during an ongoing conflict.

Almost immediately they recognised that trying to introduce Western psychotherapy into communities living through war could actually cause harm.

"What did I have to teach African people about talking to each other?"

Everywhere they went, people gathered naturally to speak, support one another, and make sense of what had happened. Healing was already taking place within communities, families, and relationships.

Uganda taught Dr. Bracken that Western psychiatry was only one way of understanding suffering—not the only way.

He left with a much broader appreciation of community, culture, and local knowledge as foundations for healing.

Question: Why is critical thinking so important?

Dr. Bracken argued that philosophy is fundamentally about asking questions rather than accepting ready-made answers.

Mental health professionals, he said, hold enormous power—not only through legislation but through the language they introduce into people's lives.

A diagnosis can shape how someone understands themselves and how an entire family interprets a crisis.

He stressed that diagnoses sometimes serve useful purposes, particularly when people need access to services or benefits, but they should never be treated as absolute truths.

Instead, professionals should openly discuss diagnoses with people, recognising that psychiatric classifications are human constructions rather than objective scientific facts.

Drawing on the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, Dr. Bracken argued for a more critical approach—one where professionals continually question their own assumptions rather than simply applying established knowledge.

Question: How did psychiatry become dominated by medication?

Reflecting on four decades in psychiatry, Dr. Bracken described witnessing a profound shift.

When he first trained, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis were highly influential. Over time, pharmaceutical companies helped transform psychiatry into a much more biologically focused profession.

He recalled refusing meetings with pharmaceutical representatives throughout his career and criticised the increasingly close relationship between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry.

He argued that enormous marketing campaigns encouraged both doctors and the public to understand sadness and anxiety primarily as medical problems requiring medication.

That shift, he believes, fundamentally changed both psychiatric practice and wider public attitudes towards emotional distress.

Next week in Part 2: Dr. Pat Bracken discusses over-prescribing, why he is not anti-medication, what decolonising mental health looks like, and why community-based initiatives like New Script for Mental Health point towards a different future for emotional wellbeing.