sami timimi

I am a UK-based child and adolescent psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and author

[sami timimi @stimimi]

As usually Naomi asks the important questions about reality and what we mean by concepts (such as ADHD and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria) that others simply accept uncritically

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

Why does it matter, if the claim that children with ADHD hear 20,000 more critical comments than other children isn’t based on any data, but was a thought experiment by a psychiatrist in 2010? Surely the point holds, because children with ADHD may well hear more critical comments than others?

It matters to me because we are building narratives on sand.

In 2010, a time when most people diagnosed with ADHD were hyperactive boys, a psychiatrist suggests that they might hear 20,000 more critical comments than other children.

In 2016, as more women are being diagnosed in adulthood, another psychiatrist suggests that women with ADHD are more sensitive to rejection than others.

Both just ideas. Not based on research.

The two suggestions are combined, so the story becomes ‘children with ADHD hear 20,000 more critical comments than others, and then this turns them into rejection sensitive adults’. Even though one suggestion was about early- diagnosed boys, and another about late-diagnosed women. No real reason to assume they have the same experience.

Many influencers lean heavily into this – with Alex Partridge, for example, referring constantly throughout his book to the extra 20,000 critical comments he feels he received in childhood, which, he says, turned him into a rejection sensitive adult. So much so that he says he is paralysed by his rejection sensitivity.

But there are so many assumptions here.
Many children are criticised, not just those with ADHD – in which case, why do they not all become rejection sensitive? Extra critical comments are not, sadly, confined to those with ADHD.

Many people are highly sensitive to rejection and yet describe a childhood of people-pleasing and being ‘good’ – so how does that happen?

Many people says they spent their childhood masking – which implies others did not notice – so how did they also attract 20,000 extra critical comments?

Can we conclude that one really leads to the other, because we know there are many different ways for children to react to criticism (and for adults to become highly sensitive)?

These are the sorts of questions that scientists have to ask, because assumptions like this have real world consequences and they aren’t all positive.

They can make parents feel terrible even though they know they were not constantly critical. They can make people think they have ADHD when in fact they are just sensitive to rejection (which is extremely common). They can make people look back on their childhoods with a highly negative lens, discounting the good and accentuating the bad. They could even make people more sensitive to rejection, by the nocebo effect. That’s the opposite of the placebo effect. Tell people they are likely to experience something negatively and many of them will.

And they can stop us asking important questions about the individual and what happened to them. These are explanations built on sand. They may feel true for many, but that doesn’t mean we should just all nod along. People deserve better than this.

[sami timimi @stimimi]

ADHD drugs can kill you

[Prof. Peter C Gøtzsche @PGtzsche1]

The insanity of psychiatry is limitless. When Zachary Miron suddenly died at age 15 after combining a single Red Bull with ADHD medication, his father, many school organizations, and others wanted the Quebec government to restrict teenagers' access to energy drinks. https://t.co/7QqJS71D8y. They focus on the wrong target. You don’t die from a cup of coffee, but ADHD drugs can kill you.

[Mark Horowitz @markhoro.bsky.social @markhoro]

I wrote a blog on "Why Doctors Don’t See Withdrawal:
Severe antidepressant withdrawal is often hidden in plain sight. Here's why most clinicians don't recognise it – and why I wouldn't have either until it happened to me." Link below. Please re-tweet.

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

Every time a country resists American power and survives, the story has to be managed.

Cuba has been under embargo for more than sixty years and still exists.

This does not fit.

The story requires that defiance leads to collapse.

Cuba did not collapse.

So Cuba must be described as a "failed state," a "humanitarian disaster," a "cautionary tale," even as the embargo itself remains one of the main causes of its material hardship.

The story requires that defiance to be punished.

When the punishment doesn't fully work, the punishment gets described as the outcome.

Venezuela chose a government Washington didn't approve of.

Sanctions followed. Financial pressure followed. Oil pressure followed. Isolation followed. The economy contracted.

The sanctions were never the headline.

The government's failures were the headline.

The fact that an economy under total financial siege will struggle is not presented as evidence that the siege is working.

It is presented as evidence that the government is the problem.

Then the story moved to its next stage.

The same government that had been sanctioned, isolated, criminalised, and described as "illegitimate" was no longer treated as a government at all.

Its president and First Lady were abducted, flown to the United States, placed before a court, and the whole thing was translated into the language of law.

The kidnapping became "law enforcement."

The violation of sovereignty became procedure.

And afterwards, the story adjusted again.

The same Venezuela that had been described as "too broken," "too corrupt," "too dangerous," and too "illegitimate" to engage with could suddenly be dealt with once the leadership had been removed from the equation.

That is the point.

The suffering was never the real problem.

The disobedience was the problem.

The poverty was not the crime.

The sanctions were not the crime.

The abduction was not the crime.

The crime was refusing to submit.

This is a closed logical loop.

Every country that resists is designated as "failing."

If they struggle, it proves they were wrong to resist.

If they survive, they are described as surviving in misery, which proves they should have submitted.

There is no outcome in which resistance is permitted to be legitimate.

No outcome in which the siege is the story.

Until enough people understand how the story is being told, the siege continues and the narrative covers it.

Vietnam understood this.

We told our own story.

We still do.

[sami timimi @stimimi]

It is not Tehran that is led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

Iran, now refusing to release its chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz and the global supply of oil, is demanding that the price of an agreement include an end to US backing for the Israeli-directed horror show in the Middle East.

Like a spoiled toddler, Trump is thrashing around – while cashing in on the volatility of the oil markets – trying to impose the old rules, when the terms of the confrontation are no longer under his exclusive control.

His latest tantrum – one cooked up in Tel Aviv as much as Washington – is that most Arab states, including Iran’s neighbours in the Gulf, be forced to sign the so-called Abraham Accords with Israel. This is being presented as the framework for a regional “peace deal” involving Iran. In truth, it is the very opposite.

The accords are designed to cement Israel’s status as the Middle East’s top dog, subordinating Arab states’ interests to Israel’s, and thereby isolating Iran in the region and leaving the Palestinian people and Lebanon to a genocidal Israel’s mercy.

This is another swindle, like Trump’s “Board of Peace”, which dresses up US and Israeli criminal aggression and genocide as peacemaking.

What the past 20 years of lies and misdirections have sought to hide is a simple fact: it is not Tehran that is led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington.

Since the pair launched their criminal war of aggression against Iran three months ago, Tehran has shown restraint, acted with caution, and displayed a willingness to negotiate in good faith.

Too bad there are no responsible adults on the other side with whom it can make a deal.

This is an extract from my latest article Israeli claims about an Iran 'threat' were always a lie. Now we have proof. Read the rest here: https://t.co/b7xm6lSLjl

[sami timimi @stimimi]

Like ADHD, autism is now big business. They are best understood as lucrative brands rather than medical conditions. Do you agree? https://t.co/1yLHT0W84g

[sami timimi @stimimi]

We continue to expose our young to dangerous and ineffective psychiatric drugs. A stain on my profession and medicine in general https://t.co/mKaYfmVFtN

[sami timimi @stimimi]

Couldn’t have put it better

[Dr. Roger McFillin @DrMcFillin]

Something has gone seriously wrong when a diagnosis becomes a personality.

ADHD becomes not just a description of attention difficulties but a coveted identity that explains away academic struggles. Anxiety transforms from a challenge to overcome into a badge that grants special considerations. Depression isn't just a state to move through but an identity that demands others adjust their expectations.

We did this. The mental health system did this. By treating every human struggle as a disorder requiring indefinite management, we taught an entire generation to build their identity around their wounds.
They can eloquently describe all the ways they're broken but struggle to envision how they might be whole.

The mental health system operates on a formula as seductive as it is simple: validate, diagnose, medicate, repeat. Validation is not nothing. That initial moment of being truly seen and heard can crack open the door to healing. But too often, that door never swings fully open. What begins as necessary acknowledgment calcifies into a ritual of stagnation, keeping people trapped in the very narratives from which they seek to escape.

The question nobody in the system wants to ask is the most important one: How do we promote resilience when identifying with fragility provides immediate benefits? How do we encourage personal responsibility when the systems young people navigate often reward its opposite?

We're not just talking about individual therapy outcomes. We're talking about how an entire generation understands themselves and their place in the world.

The stakes could not be higher. And the system profiting from this has no incentive to change it.

Link in comments for the full breakdown
AWAKEN.

[sami timimi @stimimi]

Tony Blair: was he the worst prime minister we ever had for workers rights?

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Tony Blair is the living embodiment of what happens when political office becomes a down payment on future plunder. Ejected in 2007 by his own MPs as a massive liability, he bequeathed Britain a wild casino economy primed for the 2008 crash. And when the British economy crashed and burned, Mr Blair kept quiet while honing his skills at securing power by other means.

His first job, after his ejection from 10 Downing Street, was as the West’s Middle East envoy, with a supposed emphasis on Gaza. It took six painful years for Mr Blair’s tenure to prove a failure so profound it amounted to active complicity in Israel’s ethnic cleansing, in Palestinian erasure, and in paving the ground for the ongoing genocide.

Soon after, the Chilcot Inquiry demolished Blair’s Iraq lies, exposing him as a liar, a chancer and a war criminal responsible for countless corpses of Iraqis, but also of British soldiers.

Then came Blair’s real innovation: the financialisation of the ex-premiership itself. The Tony Blair Institute, fuelled by £130 million from Oracle's Larry Ellison—coincidentally, the largest individual donor to the Friends of the IDF—became a shadow state, brokering governance contracts for autocrats and companies like Palantir that weaponise AI to produce mega-death abroad and full-on surveillance of Western populations.

Now, in May 2026, this corporate fixer issues a 5700 word tantrum demanding that Labour embrace Trump even more than Starmer already has, denounce what is left of Labour’s betrayed Green New Deal, and trash the remnants of workers' rights. This is not the wisdom of an aging statesman. It is the frantic squirming of a man fearing his grip on oligarchic power might soon wane and whose entire post-10 Downing Street existence depends on preventing the many from ever reclaiming what the few have plundered.

https://t.co/1Onlpx9Nkh

[Seyed Mohammad Marandi @s_m_marandi]

Netanyahu and the Israeli regime are desperately trying to wreck any potential agreement by carrying out mass slaughter in Lebanon.

[Naomi Fisher @naomicfisher]

This time of year, we put our 16-year-olds through a coming-of-age ritual. We make them sit in rows and write down things they have spent the last two years trying to memorise. We pit them against the clock, and prevent them from talking to each other. We tell them that this is the most important thing that they will ever do and their future life depends on it.

We don’t just do this once. For most of them, we make them sit in rows and write things down between twenty and thirty separate times in the space of about six weeks. Maths, English, History, French, Biology….Again and again, they have to keep at it. Each time, we tell them how important it is and they better not have an off-day or be ill.

Then we take their papers and we rank them. For some, the result will be accolades and glory. For others, failure and retakes.

We know for sure that this will always be true, because these rituals that we call exams are designed to rank them. A third will always fail. There would be no top grades if we didn’t also have the bottom. It isn’t possible for them all to pass.

And yet, every year, we talk as if this was not true. We pretend that it would be possible for them all to succeed, if only they and their teachers worked harder. Politicians talk about raising standards and accountability. We pretend that the problem is them not working hard enough, not an exam system designed so that hundreds of thousands fail. We blame them, not the exams.

For the truth is that we have a coming-of-age ritual for our teenagers which involves a third of them being told they haven’t met the grade, that they are not good enough. We launch them into adult life telling them that they will carry the stigma of not understanding quadratic equations for ever. We put them all through intense stress, and then when some of them cave in we say they have anxiety and send them to see a therapist.

And then we’re surprised when many of them say they just can’t carry on, that they don’t see the point. They don’t see potential in the future for themselves.

We need to take a step back and ask ourselves why we do this to our teenagers. For the problem isn’t our young people. It’s not their fault that a third of them fail and many are chronically stressed. The problem is what we make them do. We’ve designed a coming-of-age system with a very high cost in human misery.

Every year a new crop of teens will come of age, and despite their distress we just push them harder. We need to ask ourselves whether this is really the best we can do for our teenagers. We urgently need to think again.

[sami timimi @stimimi]

@hearic He said looking in the mirror

[sami timimi @stimimi]

You need to be a full on conspiracy theory nut job NOT to believe the fascist state of Israel is committing genocide

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The single dumbest conspiracy theory in the entire world is that every major humanitarian institution on earth is conspiring to falsely frame Israel for the crime of genocide.

And yet believing this bat shit insane conspiracy theory is the only way to think it’s not a genocide. There is no other way to claim that there is no genocide happening in Gaza without treating this self-evidently ridiculous theory as true.

In order to believe that there is no genocide in Gaza, you need to accept it as a given that the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory is conspiring to frame Israel for this crime.

You also need to believe that the International Association of Genocide Scholars is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, another Israeli organization, is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that Amnesty International is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that Doctors Without Borders are in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that Human Rights Watch are in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that the International Federation for Human Rights is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe the conspiracy is so widespread and pervasive that there exists not a single major human rights group which holds that Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza. You need to believe this conspiracy goes all the way to the top.

Toward what end are all these institutions conspiring to deceive the world into thinking that the innocent, virtuous state of Israel is guilty of these heinous crimes? Well, that’s where the “theory” part of conspiracy theory comes in. You need to have some reason why all these groups would be working together to trick everyone into thinking Israel is committing genocide. “Cui bono?”, as they say in conspiracy circles.

If you press the average Israel defender to explain why all these institutions would be lying about Israel’s actions in Gaza, you will eventually get them to admit that their theory is that all these institutions secretly hate Jews. That it’s a giant antisemitic conspiracy designed to discredit the Israeli state and make Jewish people feel sad.

I defy you to find me a dumber conspiracy theory than this. There’s nothing that can possibly compete. QAnon. Flat earth. Reptilians. They all seem fairly reasonable in comparison to this demented nonsense. They’re certainly a lot less harmful.

They’re a lot less harmful because they’re not being used to justify an ongoing genocide, and because they’re not being promoted by the most powerful people in the world. All the major western powers who’ve refused to acknowledge that we’re looking at a genocide in Gaza subscribe to the dumb conspiracy theory in question. All the mass media institutions who frame genocide as an unfounded accusation rather than an established fact verified by the overwhelming consensus of the world’s relevant experts necessarily subscribe to the world’s dumbest conspiracy theory as well.

It’s the dumbest conspiracy theory in the world, but it’s also the mainstream narrative. It’s what our governments and our media tell us is reality. They’re a bunch of tinfoil hat-wearing crackpots, and they rule the world.

The western empire is the craziest, most murderous, most deceitful, and most dangerous power structure on earth, and it is only getting more so. Which is why the narratives we’re being asked to believe are getting dumber and dumber by the year.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

The single dumbest conspiracy theory in the entire world is that every major humanitarian institution on earth is conspiring to falsely frame Israel for the crime of genocide.

And yet believing this bat shit insane conspiracy theory is the only way to think it’s not a genocide. There is no other way to claim that there is no genocide happening in Gaza without treating this self-evidently ridiculous theory as true.

In order to believe that there is no genocide in Gaza, you need to accept it as a given that the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory is conspiring to frame Israel for this crime.

You also need to believe that the International Association of Genocide Scholars is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, another Israeli organization, is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that Amnesty International is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that Doctors Without Borders are in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that Human Rights Watch are in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to accept that the International Federation for Human Rights is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe that the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention is in on the conspiracy.

You also need to believe the conspiracy is so widespread and pervasive that there exists not a single major human rights group which holds that Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza. You need to believe this conspiracy goes all the way to the top.

Toward what end are all these institutions conspiring to deceive the world into thinking that the innocent, virtuous state of Israel is guilty of these heinous crimes? Well, that’s where the “theory” part of conspiracy theory comes in. You need to have some reason why all these groups would be working together to trick everyone into thinking Israel is committing genocide. “Cui bono?”, as they say in conspiracy circles.

If you press the average Israel defender to explain why all these institutions would be lying about Israel’s actions in Gaza, you will eventually get them to admit that their theory is that all these institutions secretly hate Jews. That it’s a giant antisemitic conspiracy designed to discredit the Israeli state and make Jewish people feel sad.

I defy you to find me a dumber conspiracy theory than this. There’s nothing that can possibly compete. QAnon. Flat earth. Reptilians. They all seem fairly reasonable in comparison to this demented nonsense. They’re certainly a lot less harmful.

They’re a lot less harmful because they’re not being used to justify an ongoing genocide, and because they’re not being promoted by the most powerful people in the world. All the major western powers who’ve refused to acknowledge that we’re looking at a genocide in Gaza subscribe to the dumb conspiracy theory in question. All the mass media institutions who frame genocide as an unfounded accusation rather than an established fact verified by the overwhelming consensus of the world’s relevant experts necessarily subscribe to the world’s dumbest conspiracy theory as well.

It’s the dumbest conspiracy theory in the world, but it’s also the mainstream narrative. It’s what our governments and our media tell us is reality. They’re a bunch of tinfoil hat-wearing crackpots, and they rule the world.

The western empire is the craziest, most murderous, most deceitful, and most dangerous power structure on earth, and it is only getting more so. Which is why the narratives we’re being asked to believe are getting dumber and dumber by the year.

[Niall Stanage @NiallStanage]

Kit Malthouse, a mainstream British *Conservative* MP:

"If that is what Ben-Gvir and his henchmen are willing to do to British and European citizens on camera, what does he think they are doing to Palestinians off camera?"

[Laura Delano @LauraDelano]

For decades, those of us speaking about the harms caused by taking and coming off psychiatric drugs have been ignored, denied or dismissed.

I’ve been labeled everything from “antipsychiatry,” “anti-science,” and “Scientologist,” to “right-wing fascist” and “anti-vax,” to simply “too mentally ill” to understand what was happening to me.

Now the APA’s own annual meeting is full of panels on deprescribing, overmedication, withdrawal, and psychiatrists openly admitting they regret not helping patients come off these drugs sooner.

The hundreds of thousands of personal stories of psychiatric iatrogenesis have become impossible to keep waving away as meaningless anecdotes.

I have deep compassion for how hard it must be to face the possibility that you’ve been inadvertently causing harm to patients you’ve been trying to help.

But fear is the master distorter of truth, and the only way out is through.

We are eager to build a big-tent coalition to begin work on these changes we all know are necessary. I hope you’ll join us.

[sami timimi @stimimi]

There is no end to the brutality of the empire

[Prof. Peter C Gøtzsche @PGtzsche1]

Heart-breaking article by a Cuban surgeon: “Sanctions Kill.” https://t.co/hutXoc7BEx. The UN has voted, every year since 1992, to condemn the US embargo against Cuba. In October 2024, the vote was 187 nations to 2: The US and Israel. These countries have criminal regimes.

[sami timimi @stimimi]

@awaisaftab descends ever deeper into the reformist fantasy that he can save current failed psychiatric paradigm from its lack of scientific, philosophical and clinical progress through empty rhetoric

[Mad In The UK @MITUKteam]

Psychiatry’s Attack Dog Is at It Again
By Robert Whitaker

https://t.co/eCMg2kwiB8

#MentalHealth #Psychiatry #MadInAmerica #InformedConsent #PsychiatricDrugs

[sami timimi @stimimi]

@RITB_ Sadly it looks like I’ve been mistaken in imagining we are on the same side of understanding how the current paradigm has exploited and trapped those most marginalised and commodified distress. As a reformer you help the system survive and support that exploitation continuing

[sami timimi @stimimi]

@RITB_ So people not a named individual. By your logic you are free to insult anyone who points out that antidepressants have many harms because some say that they help, or critiques personality disorder diagnoses because some identify with it. I am due an apology