Awais Aftab
LightNews LightNews
banner
awaisaftab.bsky.social
Awais Aftab
@awaisaftab.bsky.social
7.8K followers 5K following 1.2K posts
Psychiatrist with philosophical interests | Conversations in Critical Psychiatry (Oxford University Press, 2024) | Psychiatry at the Margins www.psychiatrymargins.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
awaisaftab.bsky.social
David Mintz: “This is the most reasonable set of recommendations for our nosology that I think I have seen. Maybe, if the DSM committee integrated half of these recommendations, the DSM might actually become helpful to me in my work.”
November 22, 2025 at 8:23 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
Consider, for example, the psychotherapies that have empirical support for borderline personality. They are generally long-term, and they focus on things like transference, mentalization, dialectical behaviors, etc. [The table is from here: psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/...
Table comparing different types of psychotherapies for borderline personality disorder
November 11, 2025 at 2:46 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
Re-reading “Acute Religious Experiences” by @dranamorphosis.bsky.social this weekend, and God — what a bloody brilliant book!
A blue book cover with plain colors and the text “Acute Religious Experiences: Madness, Psychosis, and Religious Studies” by Richard Saville-Smith. Bloomsbury
November 9, 2025 at 7:17 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
“… the work of therapy is so difficult, and its strains on our normal self-esteem and exhibitionism so great, that [therapists] need narcissistic stabilization more than other people do and therefore seek out-of-the-office opportunities to be bigshots (McWilliams & Lependorf, 1990, p. 438).”
November 5, 2025 at 3:34 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
The back cover of the asterisk magazine for Fall 2025 is shown, listing contributors and their article titles in white text on a black background. Names include Awais Aftab, Cate Hall, Alan Levinovitz, Afra Wang, and others. The lower portion displays the same marbled pattern of blue, orange, red, and white circles and swirls seen on the front cover.
November 1, 2025 at 5:31 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
Asterisk Magazine ( @asteriskmag.bsky.social ) — the Books issue in print. The illustrations are beautiful!
A person wearing glasses and a red-and-blue checkered shirt stands against a plain beige wall, holding up a magazine titled asterisk. The cover features a colorful marbled pattern with swirls of blue, orange, red, white, and black, and a black header at the top with white text that includes the title and short preview blurbs.
November 1, 2025 at 5:31 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
I was at the Institute of Living (Hartford, CT) for the Bicentennial Lectureship award & the Radical Recovery symposium yesterday & today, and I am so impressed by the excellence of care and research at IOL and the culture of dialogue and openness that @javeedsukhera.bsky.social has facilitated!
I am receiving the award from Dr Javeed Sukhera, both of us are formally dressed A panel discussion with 3 individuals (Laura Delano, David Mintz, and me), and I am in the middle of saying something and moving my arm, and David is looking at me
October 17, 2025 at 9:00 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
Karl Jaspers Award is given for the best unpublished paper in the area of philosophy of psychiatry by a trainee in the disciplines of philosophy, psychiatry, or psychology.

Deadline for submission for 2025 Karl Jaspers Award is Sunday, December 7, 2025

aapp.press.jhu.edu/jaspers
AAPP logo
October 7, 2025 at 6:26 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
“The recognition that some instances of grief veer off course and enter pathological territory is not new. It goes back at least to Freud himself. John Bowlby, the father of attachment theory, recognized pathological grief.”
October 5, 2025 at 7:24 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
“The only thing the one-year requirement says is that it can’t be prolonged grief disorder before one year. It doesn’t mean that anything after one year is abnormal. The clinical significance, functional impairment, and deviation from sociocultural norms criteria mean that you cannot be diagnosed just because you experience intense or frequent grief. The point in both DSM and ICD is maladaptation and stuckness, not the passage of a fixed interval of time or a certain number of symptoms.”
October 5, 2025 at 7:23 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
🙏🏻
Substack ranking of “Rising” newsletters with Psychiatry at the Margins #1 today
September 28, 2025 at 3:58 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
these stories of “I can function better because I am doing work that I am highly interested in” aren’t counterexamples to ADHD as a “real” clinical disorder. They demonstrate how the distress and impairment of ADHD is a product of individual-environment interactions
September 28, 2025 at 1:21 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
🤓
Email with the text “Dr. Aftab, CONGRATULATIONS! Your promotion to Clinical Associate Professor is now official!!”
August 14, 2025 at 9:00 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
A mini-YouTube review of “Conversations in Critical Psychiatry” by Charlotte Fraza

www.youtube.com/watch?v=URiu...
A woman with light skin and straight, light brown hair is holding up a book titled Conversations in Critical Psychiatry by Awais Aftab, published by Oxford. The book cover shows a surreal sky with a crescent moon, a fluffy white cloud, and a large rock floating side by side above a dark horizon at dusk. The woman is indoors, with art and plants visible in the background.
August 10, 2025 at 4:52 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
A black-and-white photograph of a man (me) standing outdoors, wearing a light-colored blazer over a dark T-shirt with a graphic design. He has short hair and is smiling slightly at the camera. In the background, there is a blurred wall with strings of hanging lights and an open grassy area in the foreground.
August 9, 2025 at 12:33 AM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
“Elusive Cures” by @nicolecrust.bsky.social is a gem… thoughtful, reflective, engaging analysis of the current state of neuroscience and where it is headed. A must-read book! Will publish a detailed review in the coming weeks.
A man wearing glasses and a light blue T-shirt is standing indoors, holding a book titled Elusive Cures by Nicole C. Rust. The book’s cover is bright blue with a colorful abstract illustration of a brain at the bottom. The subtitle reads: “Why neuroscience hasn’t solved brain disorders — and how we can change that.” The background features a beige wall, a wooden-framed circular mirror, and a window with cream-colored curtains. The lighting is natural and soft.
July 28, 2025 at 3:55 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
“For some people, the only time they get to take control over their relationship to medical care is when they decide to reject diagnoses and come off psychiatric medications.”

sophialaurenzi.substack.com/cp/167996180
“For some people, the only time they get to take control over their relationship to medical care is when they decide to reject diagnoses and come off psychiatric medications. When that happens, it is easy to conclude that the problem was diagnosis and treatment to begin with, when in reality the problem was a lack of agency they experienced in clinical care and a system of treatment that often feeds off on it. When people do get the opportunity to engage with diagnoses and treatments in an informed manner and on their own terms, the outcomes are quite different.”
July 14, 2025 at 10:08 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
Print copies of the Lancet Psychiatry issue with my profile in it

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
A man (me) is standing indoors against a plain, beige wall, smiling at the camera. He is wearing a light blue t-shirt and holding an open issue of The Lancet Psychiatry. The front cover of the journal is visible, as well as an open page featuring a profile titled “Awais Aftab: a multidimensional approach to psychiatry,” along with a small portrait photo of the profiled individual on the right side of the page.
July 4, 2025 at 8:02 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
I’m writing a book for general readers presenting new scientific and philosophical approaches that reshape our understanding of mental disorders, and it will be published by Harvard University Press
Publishers Marketplace: Psychiatrist Awais Aftab’s REMAKING PSYCHIATRY, presenting new scientific and philosophical approaches that reshape our understanding of mental disorders, moving beyond the reductive debates between the biomedical and critical camps. Harvard University Press.
June 1, 2025 at 4:33 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
Me standing at the Oxford University Press exhibit in front of my book Conversations in Critical Psychiatry my book Conversations in Critical Psychiatry at the OUP exhibit
May 18, 2025 at 4:46 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
A neat summary, and Nesse shares an updated version of this list in the interview.
Table 1. Evolutionary explanations for disease vulnerability 1. Individual variations resulting from mutations and developmental instability 2. Species-wide vulnerabilities resulting from genetic drift and path dependence 3. Parasites that evolve much faster than hosts 4. Mismatch between bodies and novel environments 5. Trade-offs that increase the fitness of individuals 6. Traits that increase gene transmission at a cost to robustness 7. Defensive responses that are vulnerable to excess expression and dysregulation (Nesse, 2023)
May 17, 2025 at 1:25 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
The latest issue of Lancet Psychiatry contains a profile of me, in which they describe me as “one of the discipline’s foremost public intellectuals”!!!

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
Screenshot of the Lancet Psychiatry article. The heading says “Awais Aftab: a multidimensional approach to psychiatry”
May 15, 2025 at 12:49 AM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
Troubled by Faith: Insanity and the Supernatural in the Age of the Asylum (Owen Davies)

Book Review by Richard Saville-Smith ( @dranamorphosis.bsky.social )

www.psychiatrymargins.com/p/troubled-b...
“Davies tartly observes that it was often a matter of months not decades between the advent of new technologies and their appearance in case-notes. This incorporation of the novel into the vocabularies of the mad is a matter of fascination which allows the tropes of the supernatural world to be understood in terms of a cultural utility which has no fixed or finished from.”
May 5, 2025 at 8:58 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
I’m honored to be the recipient of the 2025 Bicentennial Lectureship award from the Institute of Living. Thank you @javeedsukhera.bsky.social — look forward to my visit to the IOL!

instituteofliving.org/about-us/bic...
“Awais Aftab, MD A sought-after expert and thought leader known across the country, his academic, educational, and public-facing work focuses on conceptual and critical issues in psychiatry.” Bicentennial Lectureship The IOL has a longstanding history and tradition of thought leadership. From its founding over 200 years ago to today, the IOL has been at the forefront of approaching healthcare in a dignified and humanistic way. As part of the 200th anniversary, we built upon past tradition and launched this new annual initiative described as the Bicentennial Lectureship.
April 25, 2025 at 10:04 PM
awaisaftab.bsky.social
DuBrul to Aftab 😇
DuBrul: From an IFS lens, I wonder which “parts” of psychiatry are speaking in your work—the pragmatic clinician who wants to do right by their patients but is bound by systemic constraints? The reformer who sees the problems but doesn’t want to alienate the profession? The defender of scientific legitimacy, wary of arguments that seem too radical?
March 29, 2025 at 1:18 PM