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ON 28 FEBRUARY last year I planned a meeting in London with Steve Baldwin, professor of psychology at the University of Teesside. I am head of the Overload Network, a charity based in Edinburgh that researches the trend towards medicating children who show emotional or behavioural disturbances. We weren’t exactly going for a night on the town—just an evening debate at the Institute of Psychiatry.

Steve, a social psychologist, had strayed into this field simply because he was interested in the politics of organisational dissent—and then became interested in the subject matter of our dissent. He found that a…

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