The New York Times invites readers to respond by this Thursday for a dialogue about psychiatric diagnoses and the forthcoming DSM-5. The dialogue is initiated by a letter from Ronald Pies, which concludes ““Diagnosis” means knowing the difference between one condition and another. For many patients, learning the name of their disorder may relieve years of anxious uncertainty. So long as diagnosis is carried out carefully and respectfully, it may be eminently humanizing. Indeed, diagnosis remains the gateway to psychiatry’s pre-eminent goal of relieving the patient’s suffering.”
It is long time that psychiatrists be held criminally liable for the devastation they leave in the wake of their unites ting, and inherently dangerous and lethal drugs. As the DSM V is nothing but a bunch of unqualified opinions, it needs to go the way of last years phone books. Immediately and safely recycled.
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I like the name.
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Is it broken? Did the Doctor really fix it, or just appear to fix it?
“relieving the patient’s suffering” There was just a comic of that. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2879#comic
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Another attempt to shore up the crumbling facade of the sham that is psychiatry and the flim flammery of diagnosis with no basis in science or fact. Smells like a lot of bull manure to me.
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Let’s see what responses are published before we hail this as some great open dialogue. “diagnosis remains the gateway to psychiatry’s pre-eminent goal of relieving the patient’s suffering”. That got a laugh at of me.
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Indeed, who knows anyone with more than one diagnosis?
Who knows anyone with more than one diagnosis who got the same treatment for each diagnosis (drugs and neglect)?
Who knows a bunch of people who got different treatments for the same diagnosis (a mix and match combination of different drugs depending on the practitioners favourite drugs plus, if you are lucky, a partonising chat from a worker once a fortnight who suggests doing the washing up do add structure to your life)
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Ronald Pies believes that “there is nothing inherently dehumanizing or “stigmatizing” about a psychiatric diagnosis”. Really? Tell that to someone who has been shunned by friends and employers because of a schizophrenia diagnoses, years after the person has recovered from a psychotic episode and learned how to recognize the causes of, and prevent, a recurrance. Most psychiatrists just don’t want to “get” that when they pretend that their opinions are science, and that some people have defective brains, that IS stigma. It diverts attention from the real roots of distress – sensitive people trying to maintain their humanity in the face of external difficulties and traumas, and a system that insists their problems are not systemic in origin, but lie within them. It looks to me that there are problems with this “dialogue” right from the outset – the issue is framed with false premises.
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That might have something to do with the fact that Ronald Pies is a colon.
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How dare you insult the colon!
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Re: “… sensitive people trying to maintain their humanity…”
I agree.
100%.
Duane
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Ding dong – roudn two.
This is the second round of pschiatry and DSM proponants deffending themselves. The first round was during the compilation of the new version.
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And just a year ago it seems Ron Pies was making a different argument. http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/01/07/why-psychiatry-needs-to-scrap-the-dsm-system-an-immodest-proposal/
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And there is research showing that psychiatric labels and the concept of “chemical imbalances” actually encourages people to indulge in their biases to a greater degree.
This is a typical “I’m a psychiatrist and I say it’s so” argument, without any scientific or evidentiary basis. I hope someone else will write in a rebuttal using the research. I would do it, but I got mine published the last time they brought up the subject, and I doubt they’d publish me again so soon.
Someone want to take this on?
—- Steve
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Oh, and “diagnosis” doesn’t really mean just distinguishing one condition from another. It should be a means of accomplishing a plan of treatment. But in truth, psych diagnosis doesn’t even accomplish his stated goal, as people with wildly different situations are lumped together with the same “disorder”. It would be like diagnosing someone with “a rash” without determining the cause and possible treatments for the rash. Could be they have poison ivy, in which case, Calomine lotion is appropriate. Could be they have syphilis, in which case, they’d better get antibiotics.
I’m looking forward to hearing the discussion.
— Steve
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Psychiatry’s pre-eminent goal of relieving the patient’s suffering? What an unbelievable git.
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It’s time for psychiatric survivors to come out of the closet and make a public stance against this chicanery.
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Another “futile” exercise. Expect the NY Times to published a long list of letters by “experts” claiming that a psychiatric diagnosis is as real as diabetes, that people should be put on “treatment” immediately and that because of “anosognosia” many “sick” people do not get the “help” that they need. Nothing new here, really.
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Yet another reason psychiatry is a big bunch of cow dung. I have diabetes(type 1). I would never have been disabled by. Diabetes. I was/am disabled by psychiatry. Insulin has basically two potential effects: low blood sugar, and maybe low potassium. Psychiatry has millions of negative effects. They all belong in prison.
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