In a new study, researchers found that normal human experiences such as grief and stress are increasingly considered illnesses to be treated medically.
“Some mental health concepts have become normalized and/or pathologized, a conclusion with important social and cultural implications,” the researchers write.
The researchers analyzed the words used to describe these concepts. This included academic and psychiatric texts as well as texts created and meant for a layperson audience.
The research was conducted by Naomi Baes, Nick Haslam, and Ekaterina Vylomova at the University of Melbourne, Australia. It was published in Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Computational Approaches to Historical Language Change, which contains the papers accepted at that event.
Nick Haslam has been interviewed by Mad in America regarding his work on “concept creep.”
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It’s true that grief and stress are wrongly being understood as an illness, but your words are an illness. Your thoughts are an illness. Your profession is an illness. Society is an illness, and the whole global social historical process that is destroying the Earth and is destroying your head is an illness. So in the grand scheme of things the little issue we highlight here is kind of insignificant. Just connect the dots – thought and language and society are all social historical accumulations that condition our thoughts and our actions and even our physiology and neurology which has to adjust to this vast structure. And it is destroying everything it touches – you can see that. It’s in your head as thought which comes out of your brain as words and writing. You can see that. But do you see that free action does not think – it acts, and free action is naturally more creative and enjoyable, and in free action you get to understand the dynamics of mind, heart and body in it’s freedom, and this growing understanding illuminates TO the mind, heart and body it’s own nature relative to others, which are then in turn more able to behave intelligently and harmoniously in their complex interactions with each other, building ever greater degrees of harmony and what the mind might call operational integrity, and ultimately a total harmony which IS the harmony of the Universe, because you are a principle that contains the Universe. It’s a long story but see that everything in you is the Universe. What else is in you? And it is only awareness, your awareness, that can take in the Universe in a single glance, and that Universe is inside of yourself. There is no outside of yourself in yourself.
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Psychiatry itself is a pathology of the spirit, intentionally medicalized to accommodate/disguise its drug pushing agenda.
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YES! I worked physical rehab for a few years and the was a man who was an amputee. He was still struggling to use his prosthetic leg and deal with a serious ulcer on the other leg. His doctor came in and broke the news that he needed his other leg amputated. When the doctor left, he was seen crying by a nurse. She immediately contacted the doctor for an order for an antidepressant and put him on a suicide watch. She admitted never speaking with him directly and didn’t see or hear any other issues other than he was quietly weeping. A totally normal response. The man refused the antidepressant and stated he needed to work through his grief and becoming a bilateral amputee. I’m a nurse, worked in psych and the medical and mental health community scares the hell out of me.
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Thank you, Sheila!
It’s terrifying how so many in the medical/mental health community seem unable to recognize the invisible brutality committed in the name of “mental health” and how when they do are unable to voice it.
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