Keith Kahn-Harris

Keith Kahn-Harris, PhD, is an Associate Lecturer in Sociology, Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and a writer who has authored several books. Dr. Kahn-Harris writes on a variety of topics for news media including Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). He is a critic of the psychiatric model of ME and use of Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) on ME/CFS patients.

Keith developed ME after glandular fever at university in 1993 and considers himself "lucky" as he has relatively mild ME. "I work part-time in the sociology department of Goldsmiths, University of London, I have a wife and two children, I have travelled and experienced many of the things that people of my age have."

Academic positions

 * 2008-9: Research Associate at the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths University of London.
 * 2007-8: Research Associate at the Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths College.
 * 2005: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden, Campus Norrköping of Linköping University.
 * 2001-2: "Jerusalem Fellow" at the Mandel School for Advanced Educational Leadership in Jerusalem.

Notable articles and blogs
"For many years, psychiatrists dominated the research and treatment of ME. The treatment of first choice remains various forms of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which, applied crudely, can end up suggesting to patients that their illness is 'all in the mind'. The ME community is full of stories of patients being forced into exercise programmes that make their health worse, of benefits and insurance claimants accused of lying, of parents of children with ME accused of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Sophie Mirza, who became the first person to be classified as having died of ME in the UK in 2005, was even forcibly sectioned."
 * May 5, 2008, What it really means to be healthy


 * Oct 25, 2017, Towards an Exhausted Sociology

Of interest
On August 3rd, 2018, Professor Michael Sharpe, a key author of the PACE trial and BPS model proponent, tweeted out Dr. Kahn-Harris' article Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth which discusses flat-earthers, climate change denialists, and anti-vaxxers all of which critics of psychiatry in ME/CFS including the patients have been compared, and by Prof. Sharpe at his 2017 'Special Ethics Seminar'. It is unclear if Prof. Sharpe knew Dr. Kahn-Harris is an ME patient and critic of psychiatry's "crude applications of the psychiatric model of ME" perhaps making an academic faux pa, or jeering Dr. Kahn-Harris for being a "denier" himself.

Open letter to The Lancet
Dr. Kahn-Harris added his name to the list of signatories for the open letter to The Lancet. David Tuller sent a third letter to Dr. Richard Horton of The Lancet on August 12, 2018.
 * Aug 12, 2018, Trial By Error: Open Letter to The Lancet, version 3.0

Online presence

 * Academia.edu
 * Amazon
 * Good Reads
 * LinkedIn
 * Metal Jew
 * Twitter
 * Website

Learn more

 * Wikipedia