Incoming APA President Emphasizes “Positive Psychiatry”

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President-elect Dilip Jeste intends to lead the APA into an era of “positive psychiatry.”  “We should not be satisfied merely with treating symptoms in patients with mental illness but also with improving their overall well-being,” he told Medscape Medical News. “There are many studies that have shown that positive traits like optimism and social engagement are associated with a significant decrease in mortality, and I think as psychiatrists, we are in a good position to incorporate these into psychotherapy and psychosocial interventions.”

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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Kermit Cole
Kermit Cole, MFT, founding editor of Mad in America, works in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a couples and family therapist. Inspired by Open Dialogue, he works as part of a team and consults with couples and families that have members identified as patients. His work in residential treatment — largely with severely traumatized and/or "psychotic" clients — led to an appreciation of the power and beauty of systemic philosophy and practice, as the alternative to the prevailing focus on individual pathology. A former film-maker, he has undergraduate and master's degrees in psychology from Harvard University, as well as an MFT degree from the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia. He is a doctoral candidate with the Taos Institute and the Free University of Brussels. You can reach him at [email protected].

6 COMMENTS

  1. Why is this guy classifying dementia and Alzheimer’s as mental illnesses. They are not mental illnesses but actual organic problems with the brain itself. Could it be that he plans to continue the drugging of older people in nursing homes with antipsychotics, which makes them even worse off than they originally were. He thinks the stigma of mental illness is going to decrease. What planet is this guy from and what is the name of the spaceship that he flew in on? The stigma is as strong as ever and will remain so. This guy says a lot of nice-sounding things but I know a Trojan Horse when I see one! Same old same old with different clothes on. He worries me because he kept mentioning children and older folks; just more attacks on groups of people who can’t defend themselves. Thanks, but no thanks, Dilip!

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  2. If only psychiatrists bothered with psychotherapy or psychosocial interventions! I am glad he’s starting on this rhetoric, but there’s still no recognition that current treatment modalities are most likely making things worse. Positive psychiatry could start off by applying the Hippocratic Oath and stick to doing things that actually have been shown to work, or at a minimum have no risk of doing ongoing harm to the recipient while potentially being of service.

    Being honest would be a great start!

    —- Steve

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  3. These are the hatchet people for Big Pharma and the government authoritarian forces.
    Yep they are going after the children and the older folks – a big market there -pills and more pills.

    “we are in a good position to incorporate these into psychotherapy and psychosocial interventions.”

    They don’t understand anything about psychotherapy, if they did they would cure people instead of drug them. – they use ‘social interventions’ and support groups to enforce drug compliance.

    “We should not be satisfied merely with treating symptoms in patients with mental illness but also with improving their overall well-being,”
    Yeah the people on psychotropics have a shortened life span – it’s detrimental to the profit margins.

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