# Psychiatrist, Pharmacist, Executioner: The social life of acute behavioural disturbance

Psychiatrist, Pharmacist, Executioner: The social life of acute behavioural disturbance at Birkbeck College, Tuesday 3 November 2026, 17:30.

- Venue: Birkbeck College, WC1E 7HX London
- With: Adam Elliott-Cooper
- Go to page: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event/64392/psychiatrist-pharmacist-executioner-the-social-life-of-acute-behavioural-disturbance

A public lecture examining how psychiatric categories like Excited Delirium and Acute Behavioural Disturbance are used by state agents to justify violent force against people in mental health crises. It is delivered by Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper, Senior Lecturer in Social and Public Policy at Queen Mary University of London, with Carson Cole Arthur, Lecturer of Criminology at the University of Law, as discussant. Using the case of Darren Cumberbatch, who died in such circumstances, it analyses how the legitimating power of medicalisation is deployed by police and those challenging it. Elliott-Cooper is author of Black Resistance to British Policing and co-author of Empire's Endgame: Racism and the British State.

## Dates

- Tuesday 3 November 17:30 — Birkbeck College

Written by a model, sources: [bbk.ac.uk](https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event/64392/psychiatrist-pharmacist-executioner-the-social-life-of-acute-behavioural-disturbance)

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