A new study published in JAMA Psychiatry finds that almost everyone will be treated for mental illness at some point in their lives and that their lives are worse in many ways after receiving diagnosis and treatment. About 80% of the population will be hospitalized or receive psychiatric drugs. After treatment, they are more likely to end up poor, unemployed, and receiving disability benefits, and they have worsening social connections.
The researchers conclude that their results “should add to changing our understanding of normalcy and mental illness by challenging the stigmatizing false dichotomy of individuals with vs without mental illness.”
Does this mean that the search for biological differences between the “mentally ill” and the “normal” can now be called off—since it appears that basically, everyone is “mentally ill”?
Their study also puts to rest the notion that mental illness is going undiagnosed and untreated. On the contrary:
“The present findings do document that citizens are getting attention and treatment for mental health disorders, at least in developed nations with universal access to health care, which can be viewed as encouraging,” the researchers write.
The study was conducted by Lars Vedel Kessing, Simon Christoffer Ziersen, and Per Kragh Andersen at the University of Copenhagen and Avshalom Caspi and Terrie E. Moffitt at Duke University and King’s College London.
The study data came from Denmark’s nationwide registry of healthcare contacts and included a random sample of 1.5 million Danes from 1995 to 2018. It included all diagnoses through hospital contacts and all drug prescriptions from hospitals, primary care, or private psychiatrists—meaning that this is still an underestimate, as anyone who received no treatment or psychotherapy rather than drugs was not counted.
It should be noted that these results, then, may not generalize to other countries, such as the United States, with its privatized, for-profit healthcare system.
According to the researchers, the likelihood of getting prescribed psychiatric drugs during your lifetime was 82.6% (87.5% for women and 76.7% for men). The likelihood of being hospitalized for mental illness was 29.0% (31.8% for women and 26.1% for men).
On average, the 80% who were treated for mental illness were already struggling before treatment: “At baseline, individuals with any mental health disorder were more likely to be unemployed or receiving a disability benefit, had lower earnings, were more likely to be living alone, and were less likely to be married, compared with control individuals from the general population,” the researchers write.
But after treatment, things only got worse.
After treatment, “individuals with any mental health disorder were more likely to experience new socioeconomic difficulties, compared with control individuals from the general population,” the researchers write. “During follow-up, they were more likely to become unemployed or receive a disability benefit, to earn lower income, to be living alone, and to be unmarried.”
The fact that those who received a diagnosis and treatment were worse off afterward was interpreted by the researchers as supporting the “validity of the diagnosis and treatment” since they concluded it must indicate the severity of the underlying mental illness.
They don’t address the notion that treatment might worsen things, especially if given for mild symptoms or normal human distress. Nonetheless, there is copious evidence that antidepressant use leads to worse outcomes in the long term, even after controlling for the severity of depression and other factors. The adverse effects of the drugs lead to worse health outcomes for those taking them, and withdrawal symptoms prevent people from being able to discontinue.
Likewise, long-term studies of antipsychotics show that, although those who discontinue the drugs are at a higher risk of relapse in the months after stopping, in the long-term, their outcomes are better than those who remain on the drugs, even after controlling for severity.
The researchers also don’t address the idea of overdiagnosis—that the reason almost everyone meets the criteria for mental illness is because the category of mental illness keeps expanding with each new edition of the DSM. Nonetheless, this remains a concern of many prominent researchers. For instance, Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-IV task force, has written extensively about the harms of overdiagnosis, as has Kamran Abbasi, the editor-in-chief of the medical journal BMJ.
The removal of the “bereavement exclusion” in the DSM-5 garnered controversy, with claims that psychiatry has “medicalized grief.” The DSM-5 text revision in 2022 went further, creating a new mental illness called “prolonged grief disorder,” with criteria indicating that someone is grieving for too long or too emotionally. Researchers argue that normal human emotions are now considered “illnesses” to be drugged away. Indeed, researchers have argued that the categories in the DSM are “scientifically meaningless.”
This isn’t the first study to show that the definition of “mental illness” is so broad that nearly the entire population meets the criteria. In a New Zealand study from 2020, researchers found that 86% of people will have met the criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis by the time they’re 45 years old, and 85% of those will have met the criteria for at least two diagnoses. Exactly half (50%) of the population will have met the criteria for a “disorder” by age 18.
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Kessing, L. V., Ziersen, S. C., Caspi, A., Moffitt, T. E., & Andersen, P. K. (2023). Lifetime incidence of treated mental health disorders and psychotropic drug prescriptions and associated socioeconomic functioning. JAMA Psychiatry, 80(10), 1000-1008. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.2206 (Link)
I shared this article to a local group acquainted with medical-psychiatric employment and care.
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Here, the very same research data while stripped off all the medical science terms:
At some point of life, for 80% of people, there will become a time of great peril, when they are unable to work while their body stays usable or their personal survival interests are in conflict with the other rules of the societal authorities.
In those cases societies give governing rights over them to group of people they have educated for those two cases and calling them publicly “ill” and “symptomatic” is a form of that transfer of civil rights under different kind of rules and authorities.
Medical science and research and classification of that “illness” comes only after that and is for those two goals. Therefore, it operates under the restriction not to question the goal or the transfer of civil rights and vocabulary used to justify it. That gives birth to conflict between reality and the science.
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Now I am more confused: It’s bad to receive psychiatric care but it’s good people receive it or ask for it?.
I think the study does generalize well since the biological effects of psychiatric treatment are generalizable enough. Otherwise the first paragraph of this review does not mean much.
To try to answer the question: Well, it means it’s normal to be mentally ill. However oxymoronic that sounds.
It’s psychiatry not quantum mechanics, in the psychiatric realm one can be in a state of psychiatric superposition, like Schrodinger’s cat: normal and ill. Very advanced theory of mental illness, almost quantum like, new agey…
If you are into informal logic see my comments in:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/10/maid-and-mental-illness-an-interview-with-dr-jeffrey-kirby/
The refered article:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/07/dsm-scientifically-meaningless-diagnoses/
Speaks of problems with classification of disorders. My argument is that there is no classification possible that is consistent based only reading the TWO, 2, quoted paragraphs of the intro to the DSM. More fundamental: there is no way to classify any mental thing on logical and therefore scientific bases. Invalidating the pragmatic approach, or any approach for that matter.
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“The likelihood of being hospitalized for mental illness was 29.0% (31.8% for women and 26.1% for men).” see, that is shocking because psychiatric incarceration carries a risk of dying around 2-4% per patient/year inside the hospital, admittedly underestimated. Higher in the first 2, two, weeks of incarceration, sometimes in the fist day!. Also underestimated and underreported.
And around 60 fold increase in suicide that stays very high for decades after discharge.
That means that if baseline risk of suicide is around 15 per 100,000 the increase in hospitalization alone would make the rate 900 per 100,000, which is 1 suicide for every 111 people because hospitalization alone.
If those were fentanyl overdose fatalities psychiatric hospitalization would be banned. And psychiatrists would be prosecuted like the Sinaloa cartel. Pharma would be excluded from the financial system and put under sanctions by the State Department.
Even banks and insurers dealing with psychiatric hospitalization would be subjected to at least fines, “due diligence”. People related to psychaitric hospitalization would be considered “exposed” individuals in financial terms, almost unable to open a bank account, except probably in fiscal paradises.
Yaicks.
See:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/06/involuntary-hospitalization-increases-risk-suicide-study-finds/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/11/study-finds-high-risk-suicide-following-psychiatric-hospitalization/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/06/risk-suicide-hospitalization-even-higher-previously-estimated/
‘The fact that those who received a diagnosis and treatment were worse off afterward was interpreted by the researchers as supporting the “validity of the diagnosis and treatment” since they concluded it must indicate the severity of the underlying mental illness.’
Reformulating: “They never were going to get any better, M’Ok?”, “We saved them from worst outcomes!”. Yipeee!.
I guess stacking a mountain of pebbles on the tomb of Oskar Schindler is a form of prolongued grief disorder…
Great review though…
i could not find in the MIA search a quotable piece for the in-hospital mortality rate, despite there are several published meta-analysis from around the world. It would be cool to have one for quoting it in the comments.
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Hey, thanks for compiling these data. I’m a person who’s kinda in between anti psych and pro psych. I have a question about the framing though. It doesn’t seem odd to me that that high of a percentage of people would deal with mental illness at some point in their lifetime. A very high percentage of people, if not all of them, deal with all kinds of illnesses at some point in their lifetime. It’s not really a gotcha that you seem to be making it out to be and doesn’t indicate over/misdiagnoses on it’s own. We’re talking a century for some people. Id be more surprised if the percentage was lower.
I’m also curious what the solution is for the psychosis issue. I have someone in my life with extreme paranoid psychosis who refuses all treatment and has only ever briefly been drugged in hospitals she ends up in against her will via police (that she attracted with her actions, not that I called.) I have only watched her mind deteriorating over time in ways that i believe anti psychotics would have mitigated. She also has the cognitive decline that comes with long term untreated schizophrenia.
I don’t blame people for going off of the drugs either with their awful side effects. I’ve been on them for other problems. We need better options. But, a lot of these points draw in people who’ve never been or never been close to psychosis. They think of inaccurate movie clips and artists just being different or whatever. Even the negative portrayals in media don’t capture the horrors I’ve seen. I’ve watched this person lose absolutely everything and any time she makes progress she does it all over again ending up worse and worse. All the whole existing in a living nightmare of her mind’s design. The psychosis, like many with it, causes her to integrate everyone she meets and every place she goes into the delusions, further isolating her. Anyone I’ve met who’s stable w/ a disorder causing psychosis has told me the meds and hospital were what did it. This includes in radical mental health circles- people with psychosis have a very different experience than everyone else. So, what is the answer if not meds and hospital when a person’s brain tells them everyone that could help them is “in on it?” I’ve read so many books and tried so many communication styles and none work.
Thanks in advance.
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There are several articles here at MIA of the peer respite approaches, including Soteria.
They are quite good.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/10/grant-interrupted-report-oregon/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/09/a-new-vision-for-mental-health-care-at-soteria-jerusalem/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/09/whats-eating-oregon-peer-respites-the-lund-report-beyond/
And there is a directory of providers here at MIA that list peer respite providers/partners:
https://www.madinamerica.com/provider-directory
I am not diagnosing, but sometimes exhaustion, lack of sleep, excessive worry can look like “mental decline”.
And neuroleptics, antipsychotics do cause cognitive decline. Particularly when used in spikes: like intramuscular injections.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/07/discontinuation-antipsychotics-improves-cognitive-functioning/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/03/antipsychotics-worsen-cognitive-functioning-first-episode-psychosis/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2014/07/antipsychotics-linked-cognitive-memory-impairments/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/09/new-study-sheds-light-antipsychotic-use-leads-dementia/
There is a pdf by Robert Witaker here at MIA about the real benefit of neuroleptics.
The Case Against Antipsychotics | Mad In America
The benefit imputed to neuroleptics short term, seems to be explained in most by proper sleeping and less anxiety.
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You’ve, to me, just depicted why someone would think that everyone that [YOU say] could help her, she thinks is “in on it.”: ‘So, what is the answer if not meds and hospital when a person’s brain tells them everyone that could help them is “in on it?” You’ve stated quite a few things that are anecdotal, while the material on this site that isn’t anecdotal would contradict it. When you maintain: “Anyone I’ve met who’s stable w/ a disorder causing psychosis has told me the meds and hospital were what did it.” this might simply refer to the society you are in, as this assumption categorizes an anecdotal conclusion “This includes in radical mental health circles- people with psychosis have a very different experience than everyone else.” Every experience of every single person is different than everyone else’s. All phenomenon of cognition, all feelings are different. The science remains that those getting off of their medications or never having been on them have a higher recovery rate, and yet you maintain that as the solution, given anecdotal evidence, as being what works, and then state this friend of yours believes anyone promoting what doesn’t correlate scientifically with recovery sees them as being in on it, and you say that’s non reality based. You’ve given clear data that could point to where her fears are coming from, being from her environment, and then you blame it on her brain, which might just be trying to express what she’s not allowed to see: “So, what is the answer if not meds and hospital when a person’s brain tells them everyone that could help them is “in on it?” I’ve read so many books and tried so many communication styles and none work.”
You state: “The psychosis, like many with it, causes her to integrate everyone she meets and every place she goes into the delusions, further isolating her.” there are people that could work with her on the inherent fear animating such thoughts, but that would be with people not causing more fear in her life. I can see her fears only increasing with what you’ve stated as being what would help her, while you dismiss her fears as being baseless (while they seem to have had to contort in exaggerations when there must be stuff on the inside causing such fears that have never been given legroom, or never uncovered and remain not understood).
Your post, to me, is literally cluttered with statements that deny there’s any cause for people’s “psychosis,” as in here: “I don’t blame people for going off of the drugs either with their awful side effects. I’ve been on them for other problems. We need better options. But, a lot of these points draw in people who’ve never been or never been close to psychosis.” Again, you seem to know that the drugs side effects are necessary for those with “psychosis,” when science, and statistics show differently. I don’t see that as reality based, except it falls outside of what would be called “psychosis” in that it’s an accepted norm in society.
You state: “I have only watched her mind deteriorating over time in ways that i believe anti psychotics would have mitigated. She also has the cognitive decline that comes with long term untreated schizophrenia.” A person having emotional memory they can’t express but in “paranoia” or living in an environment where they wouldn’t even be encouraged to understand for themselves what’s expressed in the emotional objectivity of fiction, because it’s constantly labeled as non reality based, this then is a cognitive decline. Although, would your friend accept that whatever her mind manifests by itself that’s not understood as expressing anything, would she accept that as being non reality based, and never understand what clearly isn’t going away, and what statistically and scientifically can lead to recovery when not chemically suppressed, would she dismiss any understanding then she would be accepted as not being ill. And you talk about cognitive decline. And you mention you don’t think that a method which: “The fact that those who received a diagnosis and treatment were worse off afterward was interpreted by the researchers as supporting the “validity of the diagnosis and treatment” since they concluded it must indicate the severity of the underlying mental illness.” this doesn’t point out a cognitive decline regarding those doing the “treatment,” the “diagnosis,” and the advertisement, and deciding they need to help others, and and and
I hope your friend finds someone who doesn’t have it as their MO that she must need what statistically and scientifically (to date all psychiatric medications correlate more with the cause for chemical imbalance in the brain then they do with treating any prior imbalance found) has correlated with more of the problem, I really do…..
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Yes, I’ve definitely noticed this pro-psychiatry arguing tactic: Stating that people who are against psychiatry and against psych drugs *have never actually known anyone who struggled with psychosis*.
We all just saw it in a movie? Where are you getting this from? Does it help you to know that my older brother who died ten years ago had psychotic episodes and was hospitalized multiple times and drugged and given a schizophrenia diagnosis? Do I now have the right to have an opinion on the matter?
I could go through the rest of your comment and point out more arguments based on fallacy and assumptions, but I’m tired.
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It’s quite something when someone comes on concerned, and then proceeds to state how they feel the one thing, that statistically and scientifically correlates with 1) less recovery and 2) a verifiable scientifically provable chemical imbalance, that this is what heeds to happen… and when statistically such a treatment has caused a spike in the problem: “I have only watched her mind deteriorating over time in ways that i believe anti psychotics would have mitigated.” What is this about, someone’s programmed ideology that they are helpful following mainstream method that correlates with the spike in the problem, or is it about the person? Oh, and the one already decided that she needs what statistically has caused more of the problems, they have also decided she thinks everyone that could help her (the ones promoting what correlates with a spike in the problem) is in on it, and that’s paranoia… (!?!?!?!)
It’s quite mind boggling, I lose track of it all. And one is supposed to patiently address it all…..
When in doubt, and you feel you really need to do something, just do what everyone else is doing mostly, even when it correlates with causing the problem, then you’ll feel you’ve REALLY DONE SOMETHING….
And it really sounds like fundamentalism, every turn back to the same programmed conclusions that haven’t panned out to statistically or scientifically help, but they are mainstream treatment.
She’s clearly quite lost with such an environment: “I’ve watched this person lose absolutely everything and any time she makes progress she does it all over again ending up worse and worse. All the whole existing in a living nightmare of her mind’s design. The psychosis, like many with it, causes her to integrate everyone she meets and every place she goes into the delusions, further isolating her. ” What is this emphasis on loss and nightmares? What is “RS” going to “lose” would they stop evaluating this person that they are supposed to adapt to a system that’s not working for them (and if they express this it’s listed as their life falling apart)?
She’s been in the asylum, would then have been forced on “meds,” had it drilled into her they were necessary, couldn’t express how they really made her feel, then she got off of them, and there’s this friend helping her that feels she needs to further be indoctrinated. If she doesn’t want to dismiss her “psychosis” then it can’t be expressing anything, and WHO has the problem with “cognition?”
What if she really has something she needs to uncover that’s generally not accepted in society? This would only explain her suspicions of people….
When you don’t give a person the space to express themselves, their feelings, they are going to get hurt, when you continue to act like they are supposed to suppress their feelings (and thus their feelings come out more and more out of sorts, it’s like putting pressure on ANYTHING and acting like the pressure isn’t building up)… this is because THEIR brain isn’t working…
When there is a severe situation, since when does resorting to EXACTLY what correlates with increasing the occurrence of the situation supposed to help, other than it SEEMS like you’re really doing something when it’s mainstream!?
It’s also quite something to think with such an attitude that those who actually simply reinstated a healthy brain by going off of what disabled it chemically (psychiatric drugs) that they are just going to pop up in one’s life and say: “you know not taking these drugs really stopped my “psychosis,” when they probably could be found non compliant would they. FURTHER MORE, had they actually integrated the feelings the “psychosis” was expressing, they REALLY are not going to say they needed something to turn it off, as in here: “Anyone I’ve met who’s stable w/ a disorder causing psychosis has told me the meds and hospital were what did it. This includes in radical mental health circles- people with psychosis have a very different experience than everyone else” The meds and the hospital did what!? And what exactly are these “radical mental health circles,” that are referred to as if whoever has gotten to know all of them, and everyone had the meds and the hospital help them? I really haven’t noticed that “hospitals” have an ability to relate to the expression of psychosis, they more are in the way of someone even conceiving they could understand their normal reaction to an abnormal situation and were happy to have their “symptoms” suppressed chemically, believing the chemical imbalance destabilizing their brain from expressing said “symptoms” was treating a chemical imbalance, when it was the opposite in causing an imbalance.
If someone isn’t having a nightmare about this, their life has become a “nightmare.” If they haven’t wanted to suppress what causes difficulty, but they could learn to understand if they were allowed although society has a problem with it, then who is having the nightmare about it other than the people wanting to suppress it?
MAYBE the fear is on the other side.
MAYBE someone not adapting to such a society, whether you call it a ruined life of not, is better off!?
And AGAIN there are people who can talk to someone going through such a situation, that can give them the space to start to make the connections with what otherwise would remain hidden and not understood, but that ISN’T going on with people that have no ability to relate to such expression. Whether or not the whole “mental health” field had decided such expression is crazy, and from a broken brain. Those that CAN relate to it haven’t been given the freedom to even be there………And those that CAN relate to it don’t see a broken brain, they see a very vulnerable person who has things their brain is trying to express that aren’t allowed or understood, or tolerated even when completely non violent..
Instead of LECTURING us without such statements: “I don’t blame people for going off of the drugs either with their awful side effects. I’ve been on them for other problems. We need better options. But, a lot of these points draw in people who’ve never been or never been close to psychosis. They think of inaccurate movie clips and artists just being different or whatever. Even the negative portrayals in media don’t capture the horrors I’ve seen.”
Trying to help someone you’re not helping DOES NOT make whoever suddenly an authority on what helps. And some supposed insight as to what others think:”They think of inaccurate movie clips and artists just being different or whatever” is to me a fabricated statement. Where does this knowledge come from as to what other people (who apparently are made out to be wrong) base their knowledge on? For this one person someone is concerned about, you can dismiss all of the ideas that there’s another way because people that think that would help: “think of inaccurate movie clips and artists just being different or whatever.” I REALLY also wasn’t aware that there is such an abundance of movie clips that don’t make out drug treatment is necessary, and some sort of magic. Just to think of Don Juan De Marcos, where Johnny Depp’s character is made out to suddenly remember who he is from taking a pill, nor in any other such movie have I seen a content of what statistically DOES correlate with recovery. To not even start going on about Johnny Depp’s life since making that movie. There’s simply not content expressing what’s going on the inside, or what their behavior expresses. Again, there are those that can relate to what’s going on with this person that’s supposedly beyond help unless she starts turning her brain off, they don’t need to turn off what others have difficulty understanding, or don’t want to understand, or are discriminatory against because they can’t fathom what it’s expressing…… And beyond that simply healthy peaceful environment, like used to exist with the quakers, that promoted recovery, that by itself can help, so a person can in their own quiet heal…. but…….
TRY just listening to someone, without deciding how they are supposed to be. And do nothing else.
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So-called “mental illness” is something that EITHER NOBODY has, or else EVERYBODY has….
So-called “mental illnesses” are exactly as “real” as presents from Santa Claus, BUT NOT MORE REAL….
The DSM-5 is BEST SEEN as nothing more than a catalog of billing codes. Everything in it was either invented or crested, NOTHING in it was discovered, – there IS a difference….
And, yes, there is ONLY ONE HUMAN MIND….and we ALL SHARE it….
Wrap your head around THAT ONE….
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What is the percentage of psychotherapists and other “mental health professionals” who have been treated for so-called mental illnesses? If they were forced to undergo the same neurotoxic, ECT, and other brain-disabling treatments administered on such a wide scale to their hapless patients, no doubt this absurd profession would quickly experience a drastic decline in its unwarranted social authority.
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There is a number quoted I think in the NYT that around? more? than 50% of medical students are on, hehe, antidepressants, non-coffee stimulants and/or benzos.
But I could not find it, maybe it was not in the NYT, but even searching the web does not give me the result. Maybe it was down linked in the results by nefarious PR agencies?. Does happen…
Nevertheless, there is a french study that gives the higher odds of med students smoking, using marihuana and binge drinking, that depending on the base rate in the population could give more than half med students doing that.
There are quotes:
“Another report showed that 20.0% of medical students used stimulants during their lifetime and 15.0% used during medical school.”
“In 2013, Emanuel et al.2 conducted a multi-institutional census on 2732 medical students and reported a lifetime psychostimulant use of 18.0%, with 11.0% reporting use during medical school and 63.0% of those using stimulants non-medically. ”
In South Africa:
“Of the students, 42 (17%) reported a lifetime use of sympathomimetics for non-medical purposes and 33 of this group (79%) reported use within the past year.” So 13% used it during medical school non-medically.
From:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6138089/
And only six in that study had ADHD, and only 3 “were on treatment” for their ADHD in med school. So I guess only 3 took them for their ADHD. So non-medical sympatomimetic use in that study is around 90% in those who use it in med school. And apparently half of the ADHD diagnosed don’t need them?. Weird…
And the article I read, I could not find now on the vweb, did mentioned that some med students went looking for the ADHD diagnosis to be prescribed sympatomimetics when in med school. So claiming 37% is used medically might be innacurate in the sense that it’s inflated. And even then, maybe in half unneeded?.
So around 15-20% using non-coffee stimulants non-medically sounds ball parkish while in med school. But it is around the same for college students in general. So I think it’s a lower bound.
But, for context:
“Studies carried out in recent years have revealed that the global prevalence of psychotropic drug use among young adults can vary from 6.5% to 22.3%.”.
“In Brazil, the prevalence of psychotropic drug consumption among medical students is similar and varies from 10.7% to 22.6%,…”,.
From:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9514864/
In that study use of psycotropics started at 30%, no 23%, and:
“As shown in Graph 1, the prevalence of psychotropic drug use reached 45% of these medical students in the last two years of their course.” and at that point psychotropics were prescribed in “85.5% by psychiatrists”
Tellingly “Altogether, 25.5% of the participants reported having some kind of psychiatric diagnosis (95% CI: 18.4-30.4%).” that means at least 20%, similar to sympatomimetics users in college, or 44% of those using psychotropics during med school in that study did not report a diagnosis. Kinda self prescribed…
And guessing, many with “some” kind of psychiatric diagnoses might not even use psychotropics?. I browsed the article, I couldn’t see what percentage actually use them for that. Table 3 lists the “clinical indications” for using psychotropics, but seems an equivocation, given 45 use them, and only 25% had “some” diagnosis?.
And weirder, 85% get, I asume, prescriptions from psychiatrists?!.
“Overall, 28.9% (95% CI: 24.0-34.8%) of the participants reported using some illicit drug. ” or maybe for at least another 20% in an illicit way.
So even if I did not find my reference, more than 50% in the US sounds perhaps an underestimate. And 75%, even if questioned because it was self-reported may not be off the mark.
So, guessing, among the psys more than med students? Or do they actually know bettter?. Are they saddling the future competition/opposition?. That would be telling, and probably an industrial secret for pharma, given psychotropics diminish empathy, insight, increase impulsivity, increasse aggression and suicidal behavior. Even heavy sedatives like antipsychotics cause akathisia, mostly unrecognized.
I guess they did the web search hit of the artcile I read what they did to the Zyprexa papers. I did not confabulate that one, hehe.
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Mental health industry. Stated function: helping the afflicted. Actual function: punishment and control.
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Just shows the power of advertising.
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Many of the folks in the mental health system have chosen for a variety of reasons to use psychotropics. One finds this in twelve step groups where before 2989 ish? folks were totally off any chemicals and then it was so common many of the 12 step elders just ended up going with the glow because it was so massive. In rehab especially with DTs deliiurm tremors they use medication. And I am not up to date on other addictions. But in the old rehab places on and off as quick as possible.
The various systems involved over the last thirty years or so became a paper chase and helping turned into using the correct verbiage more than anything else. Many left.
The advent of calls created an opening for anyone to bring law enforcement to bear on an unknowing person. I would love to know how why how created this system. And the law enforcement folks were probably not super happy being put in this position as well. There was no or any type of filter or screen or scrim to vet the caller and never any legal or social ramifications if the call was uninformed and a reaction versus a valid concern.
Kindergarten teachers used to have the three times your out warning system tried and usually worked fairly well.
Just a morass of unaccountability in all areas and some folks tried but against a calvacade really hard and those who were damaged by ignorant phone calls or police ignorance and not just harm done folks killed. It’s a huge mess all around with some countries worse than others and WHO and UN doesn’t seem to have the UMPH to create an overall change so that each country innthe times we are living in can rework or create new ways of support for humans.
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There are 4, four, common ways to see a symptom without a pathological process does not exist, it can’t be called a symptom nor a disease, disorder, spectrum, etc.
A pathological process and it’s symptoms have to be linked by a causal relationship that explains the symptom as CAUSED, an expression in DSM lingo, of/by a pathological process:
1.- A symptom that is not explained by a pathological process is most likely explained by another disease.
A symptom caused by another disease is indistinguishable from a symptom that is NOT explained by a GIVEN pathological process.
2.- A symptom that has no pathological process to explain it, it never will have one for instance, for whatever reason, is indistinguishable of one WITHOUT a KNOWN pathological process that explains it now.
So why try to make a distinction of something conceptually and experimentally indistinguishable?.
3.- A symptom, called in the DSM pathological symptom, without a pathological process that explains it, is indistinguishable from a normal symptom, a non-patological symptom. From a symptom that is part of living, growing, maturing, developing, multiplying, dying, etc.
4.- As many legislators, judges, some physicians AND supreme court justices might explain very thoroughly: old age comes with a lot of complaints, and old age is NOT a disease and is NOT a disability.
And pathological process is SYNONYMOUS with disease process. Not of disordered or spectrumalized process…
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Receiving “get well” cards for bruises or broken bones never have made much sense to me.
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Emotional suffering is not a disease process.
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There are people who would understand all these “symptoms” of “illnesses” in another way. Healing does not mean a person has accepted ideology that’s contradictory to the results it maintains, EVEN when accepting such ideology presents a person with a pass into a society based on accepting a person when they “parrot” [sorry for insulting parrots here, I’m at a loss for words] what gives them approval, and thus the whole “developed country,” materialism ideology, social interactions etc. that again is deceptive when you look at how the WHO ([WORLD Health Association] determined that AGAIN people not put on psychiatric medications for psychosis, even when treated inhumanely in the asylum, recover more than those in “developed” countries…. and the rest of the “illnesses,” they don’t’ have the “resources” to “medicate.”
As is said: “The fact that those who received a diagnosis and treatment were worse off afterward was interpreted by the researchers as supporting the “validity of the diagnosis and treatment” since they concluded it must indicate the severity of the underlying mental illness.”
Well, they must have needed it, because they didn’t get better, in fact many more need this, and we’re up to what percentage!?
How much is induced addictions. How many people can’t get off of their psychiatric drugs because then they WOULD get sick, although the drugs don’t help? How much is a con job? How much is advertising with smiles butterflies, people walking on the beach, and then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C3Ao9Dw4KU more than half warnings…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5DdektRz2I&list=PL_V67p-zEfTFfSE2NNseE0FFKU1GEHNyT 2 our of 3 don’t get help so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5DdektRz2I&list=PL_V67p-zEfTFfSE2NNseE0FFKU1GEHNyT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsqJju3ePJU (here there’s more warning then the rest of the commercial).
This is from 2017, how much money is spent in 2023, when 30 billion would stop world hunger: “From 1997 through 2016, total annual spending on the marketing of prescription drugs, disease awareness campaigns, health services, and laboratory testing increased from $17.7 billion to $29.9 billion.” hardly from a site seeking to be negative towards the drug market: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2720029
Here, 6.9 billion left over (from the drug marketing budget): https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-much-money-would-it-take-to-end-world-hunger/We need about $23 billion just this year to meet the needs of people facing starvation and acute malnutrition. https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-much-money-would-it-take-to-end-world-hunger/
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sorry this was the link. I started a new sentence, without adding a space. So “We” got stuck on the end of the link, and it doesn’t open as it should. https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-much-money-would-it-take-to-end-world-hunger/
From this paragraph [with space added now, sorry]: Here, 6.9 billion left over (from the drug marketing budget): https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-much-money-would-it-take-to-end-world-hunger/ We need about $23 billion just this year to meet the needs of people facing starvation and acute malnutrition. https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-much-money-would-it-take-to-end-world/
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I’d posit that in any scenario whereby 80% of the human population have been treated for mental health issues, that the other 20% are either individually suspect or Anthropocentrically toxic. The fact that 20% of the population either owns the means of wealth creation, or otherwise fully organizes and manages (informs and constrains) societies, is just a tad more relevant than a curious matter…
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Maybe the other 20% are already dead.
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