From It’s a Mad World! Podcast: In the first episode of a new podcast on the politics of mental health and the mental health of politics, Irish psychiatrist Dr. Peadar O’Grady talks with Robert Whitaker about his books and how he became involved with the movement to rethink psychiatry.
I was just thinking the other day “What is their motivation to change?”
Who has the problem? Who is paying for all this failure?
People act on incentives. If they are getting paid to do dumb and destructive stuff, they will continue to do dumb and destructive stuff. Few people have the courage to stand up to injustice or even garden variety ignorance.
Right Steve. That day I was thinking specifically of city employee’s who do not perform there job. The public is paying the city workers when they pay their taxes, the public has the problem ( of no services).
Then I carried it over to psychiatry. What is a psychiatrists, or psychiatries motivation to change? When their (shrinks) common belief in the example of when someone is ill , the patients needs more psychiatric drugs, not less.
from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/aurora_shooting
“He did tell Fenton the medication hadn’t helped his obsessive thoughts. She doubled the dose of sertraline from 50mg to 100mg. “
Today in my news-feed regarding adding rather than subtracting.
“Less is more: Why our brains struggle to subtract” https://youtu.be/1y32OpI2_LM
It’s the Elephant in the Living room. Its widely accepted that Psychiatric drugs can trigger disasters – but when they occur everyone looks out the window.
Would have liked to have heard more from Robert himself in this interview.
Thanks Bob and Peadar,
This is a great podcast!
I think as far as non first world high rates of ‘schizophrenic recovery’ go – these countries can’t afford a drug induced, psychiatric social work, disability payment structure.
So some people might not survive at all but the vast majority recover completely, or ‘breakdown’ from time to time and recover completely again – while having the same life expectancy as normal.
Africa was Africa before “Schizophrenia” appeared as an “illness”.
I’d wonder how much damage is going to be done in post Covid 19 by First World Psychologists, Psychiatrists and Social Workers.
Providing a person has enough to eat and a roof over their head and basic comfort and occupation – it’s reasonable to think that they might be happy, at least some of the time.
