Comments by Steve McCrea

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  • You are sharing the “general consensus” that we’ve all been taught to believe. I suggest you read some of these stories from real people who totally believed what you say and had not so great or horrible experiences.

    I’m puzzled also hoe “the right medications” are going to help with anything but #1. And of course, research has never really shown “chemical imbalances” to be real, measurable things. So you actually make a great argument that medication is at best a very small part of any treatment approach, yet you seem to be arguing it’s the whole thing.

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  • “Depression” is not caused by one thing. That’s the first error of psychiatry – lumping all “depressed” or “manic” people together as if their behavior or emotions tell us what is wrong with them or what they need. Saying someone “has depression” tells us very little about why or what to do about it. “Treating” something makes no sense if that “thing” isn’t really a thing at all, but a phenomenon with many possible causes and solutions.

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  • It is not about Clozapine per se. It’s about doctors playing fast and loose with the facts and the system being based on incorrect assumptions and guidance. I’d say it’s one more example of how patients are assured that doctors have all the know-how to use these drugs responsibly when they really do not, no matter how responsible they are. By the way, I consider it a pretty cheap shot to toss out that doctors have to be “lazy and negligent” to make Clozapine use a risk not worth the benefits. There are very good reasons it fell into disuse, as you very well know, and they had nothing to do with negligence.

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  • If I can’t discuss concerns about a comment or thread, then I can’t work with you. It’s part of the rules of posting. Otherwise, you can post whatever you want and I have nothing I can do except not publish your posts. Obviously, I have a concern to discuss. If you can’t do it, I’m sorry, but that means you won’t be allowed to post.

    Steve

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  • You say a lot of things here you have repeated because you heard them somewhere, but most of the people on this site have a lot of direct experience with the system themselves and understand it’s not so simple. Clearly, Brittney’s life didn’t suddenly get all better when she got treatment, did it? Additionally, the issue of the guardianship was fraught with all kinds of conflicts of interest and personal agendas above and beyond any “mental health” concerns. You might want to read Anatomy of an Epidemic and get an idea why people have concerns about the “mental health” system instead of assuming everything you’ve heard is automatically true and people who don’t agree are irresponsible or ignorant.

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  • Whether or not someone receives treatment is not an “outcome.” An outcome is a result of the treatment approach. The study does not state or claim or suggest or imply that no one has a good outcome using antipsychotic drugs. It suggests that ON THE AVERAGE, those who receive light or no intervention are more likely to have a better outcome at two years onward. A better outcome ON THE AVERAGE. There can be plenty who got a better outcome with drugs or a worse one with drugs as well. Your story is one story of millions. Yours can be 100% true and yet the average person can still be worse off in the long run on antipsychotics. You are one data point. A scientific study is made up of hundreds or thousands of data points. It’s not the same.

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  • Please explain how any one DSM “diagnosis” is derived from scientific observation and research. Specifically, please describe how exactly one can distinguish who “has” the “disorder” from who does not ‘have it.’

    This is not to say that people don’t like or benefit from biological interventions. But that’s nothing new – folks have taken substances to alter their mental/spiritual reality since the beginning of human history. That’s very, very different from claiming that something as vague and amorphous and subjective as “major depressive disorder” or “adjustment disorder” or “ADHD” is derived from the scientific method. In fact, the DSM admits they are not in its introduction, in no uncertain terms. You ought to read it some time.

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  • Your comments reflect not having read the many testimonies of people here who were diagnosed with “major depression” or “bipolar disorder” or even “schizophrenia” and were treated with drugs for years or decades with really poor outcomes, including a significant number who did far better after they came off the drugs and did other things.

    There are most definitely big medication success stories. There are also disaster stories. Same drugs, same “diagnoses,” very different outcomes. If you really want to understand a site like this, that has to be your starting point. You can’t decide people are ignorant simply because they had different experiences than you. Maybe you should stop and read some of the stories before you assume that no one here has suffered any “mental illnesses” just because they had very different outcomes than you expected to hear?

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  • Here are the references I quoted. Barkley and Cunningham 1978. Swanson et al 2003. Oregon Medication Effectiveness Study 2002. Montreal ADHD Study. Raine study from Australia. Finnish comparison study to USA cohort. Not to mention Whitaker himself, who summarizes the extant literature.

    How are these not citations of clinical studies? Barkley in particular is a super pro-ADHD researcher. It seems you didn’t read my earlier posts yourself. My comments are firmly rooted in years of long-term research, which you’d know if you’d bothered to read Whitaker’s work before deciding you already know all about the subject. It’s not too late to educate yourself, but I get tired of repeating the same lessons for folks who don’t seem interested in seeing another viewpoint.

    And the author mentioned his “clinical experience” including a specific case, as I recall, which is 100% anecdotal. I am very clear what anecdotal evidence looks like.

    I think it would be nice if you would learn to respond without putting down the person you are disagreeing with.

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  • ADHD being “more recognized” would in no way make it more likely that people taking stimulants being more likely to develop heart problems. It’s not a new suggestion. Probably not a common event but it sounds like more common if you take stimulants. Knowing what we know about stimulants, the increased risk of heart disease associated with them should not be surprising.

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  • The average “seriously mentally ill” person, most of whom have received years of drug “treatment”, die 15-20 years younger than the general population. There are, of course, multiple reasons, but psychiatric drugs and ECT are high on the list.

    The antipsychotics are known to induce diabetes and other metabolic issues, and to increase heart disease. If you think inducing diabetes doesn’t kill people, you are confused.

    Sometimes, psychiatry does kill.

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  • Anecdotes are not scientific evidence except in the crudest sense. I’m not saying the drugs have no effects or that “ADHD” is trivial or that people so diagnosed don’t do worse than the general population in a number of significant ways. I’m saying that, for instance, the claim that “untreated ADHD leads to delinquency” is false, because “treated” ADHD kid aren’t less likely to become delinquent. BOTH groups are more likely to commit criminal acts, though interestingly, I recall reading a study where those identified early on as non-aggressive “ADHD” types did not commit more criminal acts later. But it makes sense, impulsive people are more likely to do impulsive things, and committing crimes is often impulsive. The point is, IN THE COLLECTIVE, we do not reduce the delinquency rates by “medicating” the subjects. This does not mean a particular individual wouldn’t, say, feel better about school, improve their grades, or even say, “This stuff saved my life!” But those are anecdotes. Scientifically, we have to look at the overall effect, and overall, the effect of widespread stimulant use on the population is not large, if we look at the data rather than stories.

    I would submit to you that there are plenty of people whom you don’t know whose situations might have gotten worse to the same degree your client base got better. I don’t know what kind of selection bias you have in your population, but I worked with foster youth and saw plenty whose lives deteriorated after starting stimulants, particularly due to aggression toward others. Many ended up with more drugs and worse “diagnoses,” one ended up psychotic until she herself stopped the drugs and went back to her old “normal.” So anecdotes can tell many stories. Collective data is more reliable.

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  • Multiple long-term studies show no significant advantages to those taking stimulants vs. those who don’t when diagnosed with “ADHD” in childhood, other than the accidents you mention, and I believe clearly overstate in your comments. Delinquency rates, HS graduation, college enrollment, social skills, not even self-esteem scores were better for those taking stimulants. This has been confirmed since Barkley and Cunningham’s first review in 1978, confirmed by Swanson’s “Review of Reviews” in 1993, and in the OSU medication effectiveness study back in 2002 or so. Also confirmed by the Raine study in Australia, the Quebec study, a comparison study between Finnish and US kids who had very different medication rates but similar outcomes, and more.

    Read Whitaker’s works if you want to fully understand what’s going on at MIA. Not everything is the way the professionals have told you it is.

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  • It’s not really a legitimate approach to say, “What else should they have done?” It assumes that doing SOMETHING is essential and that NOT doing what they propose is foolish unless you have something “better” to replace it. It is possible that antidepressants were destructive AND there was not a “better treatment” available. We should not assume “antidepressants” as some sort of minimum standard of treatment that is the default unless we have something “better” to propose. Sometimes nothing is better than doing things that are destructive.

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  • I think you are missing the larger point, Donna. You say our “knowledge” of these things is in its infancy. But the “diagnoses” themselves are not explanatory of anything, regardless of the education and experience of the person involved. How is saying, “Joe feels really hopeless and sees no point in his life” any different than saying “Joe has major depression?” Is there some way to distinguish Joe’s “Major Depression” from Mary’s “Anxiety disorder with depressive features?” They are simply descriptions of what is observed, and clinicians will make a lot of noise about “clinical depression” vs. “reactive depression” but look in the DSM, there is simply NOTHING there to make a distinction. You meet 5 out of 8 criteria, you “have major depression.” Only meet 4, you don’t. Nothing about cause, nothing about ongoing stressors, nothing about culture – just a description. That’s not a “knowledge in its infancy.” That’s just making stuff up, plain and simple. There is no way any “knowledge” can advance from that kind of basis. The DSM is not knowledge. It’s a fantasy that makes people believe “knowledge” is behind it.

    Not sure what the answer is, but calling people names based on arbitrary checklists isn’t it.

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  • The fact that you worked through it yourself and found out what worked and did not work for you has to be a big plus for you. Additionally, I hope you learned that not everyone responds to the same things and that a therapist has to be creative and responsive to the individual needs of their client. It’s been proven again and again that these therapist characteristics are far more important than the modality used, in fact, in many studies the modality was not a contributing factor to positive outcomes.

    Bottom line, it seems you learned empathy for your clients and haven’t forgotten that lesson.

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  • I think it showed that administering group DBT training doesn’t lead to improved outcomes. If I’m a school administrator, that should be enough for me to think, “Well, we’ve got only so much time in the day, why waste time on something that doesn’t have a significantly positive effect?” An intervention doesn’t have to be proven harmful to be avoided. It just needs to be shown not to be significantly helpful.

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  • These “differences” are AVERAGES – They can never be used to determine if person A “has schizophrenia” or person B does not. There are tons of “schizophrenic”-diagnosed people who do NOT have frontal cortex atrophy. It’s also well known that frontal cortex atrophy and other brain shrinkage can be caused by the antipsychotics themselves. PET and f-MRI studies are absolutely useless in “diagnosis.” And of course, this must be the case, because there is no reason to believe any 5 people with the same “diagnosis” have the same kind of problem or need the same kind of help.

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  • I would add that psych ward staff also need to learn and practice these things. Some do this well, but some don’t. The real problem is POWER. The people with power are telling the kids how to “manage their emotions” and whatnot, but they are still free to be as abusive, neglectful, and thoughtless as they wish and suffer no consequences. Whether its parents, teachers, staff, doctors, pastoral leaders, or even just adults who are comfortable exercising power over those they feel are beneath them, as long as the person in the one-up power position is unwilling to step down, no amount of “emotional management” will make things any better.

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  • I would add that the teachers need to learn and practice any skills they want the kids to have.

    I had a neighbor kid who was in middle school. He explained to me they spent a one-hour assembly working on Carl Rogers’ reflective listening skills, including “I statements.”

    He was sitting on the stage after the session and a teacher came up and said, “You, get off the stage!” in a very loud and aggressive manner. He said, “I don’t like it when you yell at me. I’d prefer we speak in calmer tones.”

    He got sent to the Principal’s office immediately. What was the real lesson here?

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  • I would add that being told over and over that their emotional struggles are a “mental disorder” has contributed to younger peoples’ lack of ability to cope. Used to be parents, teachers, and the kids themselves got the message, “Hey, you’re good at x, but not so great at y. Let’s work on your Y skills.” No excuses, you just were how you were and everyone dealt with it, admittedly poorly much of the time, but at least the message was, “Don’t feel sorry for yourself – you can figure this out.

    I also remember the crazed maniacs who sometimes passed for school teachers back in my day. I’d hardly say the school environment has gotten more stressful!

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  • When I was a counselor and sometimes had to do these “diagnoses,” I viewed them the same way, and told my clients as much. I said they’re just descriptions of behavior/emotion/thoughts that are used to bill insurance companies. I told them I’d select the one most likely to get them the kind of help they needed. I always favored PTSD or Adjustment Disorder because they would incline toward talking solutions rather than drugs.

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  • Are you saying anything is better than telling someone they have an incurable brain disease and there’s nothing they can do about it except hope that the doctors have a magic pill that never seems to develop?

    A sensitive 8 year old can do better than a standard psychiatric intervention. On the average, listening to someone is going to help, but who needs to be a therapist to listen? And what guarantee is there that a therapist can and will listen anyway?

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  • It is also possible that some are NOT there to make you feel better.

    On the other hand, the bartender and the heroin peddle are there to make you feel better, too.

    Making someone “feel better” is generally only effective as a short-term objective. People who set their long-term goals at “making myself feel better” generally don’t have very livable lives.

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  • That does seem to be the message. At least from the incompetents. Just “think different thoughts” and your emotions will change! A bit of magical thinking, there. I mean, in the LONG RUN, it’s probably true, but to make out that a person can just “change thoughts” on command, especially after years of trauma or living in current danger, chronic or acute, is patently ridiculous. There’s a lot of trust building and examining patterns and detecting the purpose of certain behavior/thinking from the client’s viewpoint and a lot of “what ifs” and “Let’s imagines” before anyone gets around to saying something as monumental as “I’ve changed my viewpoint. I don’t need my mother’s constant involvement to survive.” People believe what they believe for a reason. It doesn’t work for a therapist to say, “That’s a bad belief, you need to change it!”

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  • Nobody is saying the medications are not valid. We’re saying PSYCHIATRY is not valid! The idea of taking a substance to make yourself feel better is as ancient as human history, maybe even older. It’s not an amazing 21st century discovery of the psychiatric profession. The biggest problem is these damned DIAGNOSES, which have no scientific reality but are used to promote certain products and discourage people from exploring their own solutions.

    If the drugs work for you, more power to you! This website is not about that. It’s about bringing some kind of sanity back to the world of “mental health treatment,” including stopping psychiatrists from involuntarily forcing people to take these drugs when they do NOT work for the recipient!

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  • CBT as practiced by many often does encourage clients to ignore or minimize or intellectualize social causes of distress. I find it useful in certain contexts, but see it as a tool, not a therapeutic school. It works fantastic for some people in some situations (I use it all the time myself), but there are times when “empowering oneself” has to take a back seat to taking an honest look at what’s going on or has happened in the past. For instance, a domestic abuse victim might learn to “think different thoughts” so they find their abuser’s comments less upsetting. This might be a useful skill, but it does not BEGIN to address the needs of the client. If all we gave our DV victims was CBT, we’d be doing them a gross disservice. Same with folks with big tramua histories. Telling them to “think different thoughts” is a short step from “get over it, you wimp!” And lest you think I’m exaggerating or making this up, several people have reported on MIA that they are told by their therapists that they should “not think of the past” and that processing historical emotions is a waste of time and they need to “Be mindful” and “focus on the present.”

    A good therapist can use CBT to get good results when it is appropriate. A bad therapist can use CBT to create an emotionally unsafe environment for their clients and effectively make their “mental health” status worse.

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  • Hi, Molly,

    I certainly have no intention of attacking psychiatrists. But you are saying things that are said by psychiatrists but not scientifically accurate. Antipsychotic drugs HAVE been shown to do brain damage, including reduction in grey matter volume, altering the size of the Corpus Collosum, and inducing neurological problems like Parkinsonism and Tardive Dyskinesia. No psychiatrist worth talking to will deny these things are known facts. There are now ads on TV to fight off TD, which is directly stated in the ads to be caused by their “mental health meds.” The idea that antipsychotics offer some protection from brain damage caused by schizophrenia or other “mental illnesses” is a nice concept, but again, I know of no evidence that this is actually true. Can you attach a link to a study or two to show where you’re getting this information?

    It is hard sometimes for people who have used the MH system and feel they have benefitted from it to hear from others who feel it has harmed them. I don’t think anyone here wants to upset you about this stuff, but they’re mostly just telling their stories, and I believe they have a right to do that, even if these stories don’t jibe with what you’ve read or heard or been told. And if it causes others to be a little more careful how they engage with the system, I think that’s all to the good. An informed patient has the best outcomes, but our practitioners mostly have conflicts of interest that prevent them from giving out the honest information that everyone needs. A lot of that information is available here, albeit often in anecdotal form, but still, don’t you think folks have a right to tell their stories? If you came on and told YOUR story and someone told you it was “wrong” or was damaging people, how do you think you would feel about it?

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  • It’s worse than that, Molly. They don’t know what they should be aiming at. The drugs hit parts of the brain they ARE intended to hit as well, and THOSE parts of the brain get broken down and stop working properly, too. They’re not quite shooting at random, but the targeted parts of the brain do not heal under their attack. And destroying them isn’t good for the brain, either. It is a poor solution.

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  • I don’t consider this obvious. A person may need PROTECTION, yes, and others may need protection from THEM, but why does “treatment” in the form of enforced drugging necessarily emerge from feeling angry or confused or despairing? How about giving folks a safe place to calm down and some sane people to talk with if they want, plus some food and sleep and the like? Why start with forced drugging as the only “answer,” especially when we see how poor the outcomes are for those experiencing such “treatment” in the long term?

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  • I learned early on that “intellectualization” is just one more coping measure, having its value and its drawbacks, just like every other coping measure. We all need coping measures, including denial, splitting, minimization, and intellectualization, in order to survive. There is nothing wrong with using any of them if they are working for you. The times we have problems is when we learn these measures early in life and come to believe they are our only options in certain situations. Becoming aware of the coping measures we choose and getting a broader range of options in any given situation is a valuable set of lessons. A lot of times, using intellectualization to “block childhood trauma” is the smartest thing to do. There are also times it can get in the way of moving forward. Just like any other coping measure. It is not good or bad in itself, it’s about how/when these coping measures are used that matters. And who is really in a position to judge that other than the person deciding how to “cope?”

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  • The answer is simpler and more grim – they prescribe it to keep them quiet. “Antipsychotics” reduce aggression, so any sign of violence or aggression from an “autistic” kid and out comes the Risperdal or Abilify prescription. Also often used to calm down aggression that’s actually CAUSED by stimulants for “ADHD”. Doesn’t even require a “psychosis diagnosis.” If they’re annoying enough and have a label, they are fair game for antipsychotics.

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  • Labeling terms is a very human practice. People come up with words to describe what they observe, and I have no problem with that. It’s the fetishizing of these words into “diagnoses” and “disorders” that upsets me, when the “diagnoses” have no more meaning or validity that saying someone who picks his nose has “excessive digital-nasal insertion disorder.”

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  • There is a difference between using a term to describe something (My husband is an ABUSER) and being DIAGNOSED with something (My husband beats me up because he has “Bipolar Disorder”). One is simply a linguistic means of describing people who have certain traits in common, the other implies some kind of deeper “causal” relationship between these people such that some sort of “treatment” will generally be helpful to all of them. Psychiatry blurs these lines badly, and I believe intentionally, such that people are confused between a description (These children all have trouble paying attention in school and get into trouble) and a diagnosis (all children who have trouble paying attention are suffering from a ‘disorder’ called ‘ADHD’ and there is a ‘treatment’ for this condition). Of course, this sells a lot of drugs, but the confusion does a great deal of damage to our society, as it prevents any real attempts to identify the actual causes in individuals, as well as taking perfectly normal behavior (being distracted when bored to death by the school curriculum or process) and making it into a disease state. But when we get as silly as calling something “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” because a person is oppositional and defiant, it should be obvious to any rational person that these “disorders” are absolute irrational nonsense! Might as well say someone picks their nose because they have “Nose Picking Disorder.” It wouldn’t be any less ridiculous.

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  • It also always seems hypocritical when they expect someone ELSE to prove their drugs cause dependency, assuming safety, while normally we expect drug trials to assume non-safety until proven otherwise. How many drugs have we been told are “not habit forming” and yet later turned out to have horrible addiction profiles? Benzedrine, Valium, Xanax, Oxy, Ativan, SSRIs… the list is pretty long at this point. Why aren’t we making the drug companies prove their drugs are NOT addictive/dependence-forming before they’re allowed to market?

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  • It did seem odd to me that after dismissing the claim that science understands the mind, the IFS approach still “diagnoses” people with “conditions” based on their “understanding” of the mind. Better to just admit it’s a mystery and work with the person in front of us and stop trying to “understand” them separately from their own conceptualization of their own situation.

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  • From what I understand of recent studies, the scientific consensus is about 30% of people taking antidepressants express finding improvement. When you take the placebo effect into account, that number drops even lower, and if you talk about an ACTIVE placebo, Kirsch puts the effectiveness rating near zero, at least in terms of any kind of significant clinical benefit.

    The drugs do DO something (mostly a stimulation effect, with a dampening of emotional reactivity), and some people find that SOMETHING positive for them. And more power to them. But we should remember that some people find marijuana or controlled doses of alcohol or taking DSMO or St. John’s Wort helpful, too. The problem isn’t that some people don’t report benefitting, it’s selling the idea that there are NO harms and that EVERYONE who is feeling depressed needs some, and even worse, that people who have adverse reactions or simply don’t improve are “treatment resistant” or are being dishonest!!!! Just because a person or persons report they like this and it helps them feel better is no reason to create a false narrative and make people who don’t feel such a benefit into some kind of monsters for “preventing effective treatment”!

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  • I’ll just remind everyone here that “bad science” isn’t really science at all. It is mostly attempts to use a scientific veneer to justify things that REAL science doesn’t support. The way to tell the difference is what happens when real science comes out with data that contradict the “opinion leaders.” If they attack the data or those who promote or share it, they’re not involved with “bad science.” They’re involved in marketing!

    But you ARE right, we do have to engage with anyone who is a real ally and not expect total agreement, except on the point that psychiatry as currently imagined needs to GO!

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  • To be clear, I as moderator am not in the business of deciding what content or claims are accurate or inaccurate, thank the Lord! All I do is make sure that the comments fit the Posting Guidelines. There is no censorship on any kind of content-based grounds, and people are welcome to say more or less whatever they want, with very few exceptions regarding taking over the site with off-topic conversations that don’t advance the purpose of the website. It is the job of the Community at large to add their feedback and “correct” anything that seems exaggerated or unproven, just as you are attempting to do.

    MIA needs to be judged on the articles. No website anywhere I know of is judged by the comments people make on the articles. I assume “professional” people understand this and act accordingly.

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  • While I agree with your sentiments, having been “behind enemy lines” for a number of years, the problem is that the workers, while some struggle with the ethics of their situation, also have the power to easily pass on their frustrations and “moral injuries” to the very people they’re supposed to be caring for. The “consumers” or recipients or victims of their care have no such luxury. It is imperative that those working in the system who DO recognize what’s happening fight to change it, even if it means losing their jobs. Saying, “I had to harm them, I would have lost my job otherwise” is very similar to saying “I was only following orders.” Not a valid ethical “out” for someone who really understands the harm being done.

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  • I always found “Behavioral Health” to be a bizarre term. How does behavior have “health?” Though I guess it provides a somewhat more honest glimpse into where these industries are really coming from. If we were healing “brain disorders,” wouldn’t it be “brain health?” No, it’s about controlling BEHAVIOR based on what Those In Charge think is “appropriate!” Not much science involved, but a lot of force and lies and manipulation!

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  • I think he’s saying that the people RUNNING the system exhibit “psychopathic” tendencies, which include lack of empathy, willingness to commit crimes to accomplish desired goals, willingness to lie, cheat or steal to get what they want, sometimes even a certain perverse enjoyment in watching others suffer. Overall, it speaks to a massive need to control others’ lives at their expense, and a lack of any concern for the welfare of anyone but themselves. This is a very rough and incomplete description, but such people are only rarely ever “diagnosed” with any kind of “Mental illness,” but rather tend to skate through life making trouble for others and getting others blamed for things they themselves have arranged. Those who are “caught” are more likely to be in jail than the “mental health” system, but plenty such people get into positions of power in businesses or government agencies where they have enough control to harm people while being protected from any kind of consequences. Of course, the world of psychiatry provides many such opportunities, and it would hardly be surprising if that field attracted a disproportionate number of psychopathic individuals, some of whom may be actually directing the course of the organization/profession.

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  • I agree. The only therapists of any value are the ones who recognize that there is no such thing as “professional objectivity.” In order to be truly helpful, we have to understand that everything we do is at all times influenced by our own desires and motivations, and that we are only aware of a small percentage of them. It requires “constant vigilance,” not some fantasy belief that professional training somehow cancels out subjectivity!

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  • I think you hit on something EXTREMELY important! It is those wounded by the abusers in society who are “diagnosed” and sent to “therapy,” while the perpetrators walk around harming others. Therapy at its best is about helping those harmed cope with the damage and the horrible awareness that abusers are running the show. I was fortunate to have a caring and competent therapist, so it’s very hard for me to even imagine what would happen to me if my therapist had joined forces with those authority figures responsible for the damage!!!!

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  • I will suggest here that per the scientific method, we assume something is NOT effective until it is proven to be effective. The “null hypothesis” in this case is that antidepressants do not reduce suicidal thoughts or behavior. If such controversy and conflicting studies continue to exist 30-40 years after ADs were introduced, I think we can conclude at this point that they DO NOT reduce suicidal thoughts and behavior.

    Of course, in the “antidepressants cause suicidal thoughts and behaviors,” the “null hypothesis is that they don’t. However, the fact there is a Black Box warning on all drugs impacting serotonin suggests there is enough evidence to concern people about their safety, especially in the young. Since there is almost zero evidence of any AD effectiveness in youth, and literally none in young children, even a chance of increasing suicide rates ought to be enough to eliminate these completely from the psychiatrist’s toolbox, at least for children.

    At a minimum, the evidence to date is more than sufficient to conclude that antidepressants do not decrease the suicide rate for any subgroup of identified “depressed” people. The fact that certain “researchers” and “thought leaders” choose to cherrypick the studies they like should not divert us from this conclusion. Any decent review of the literature shows no positive effect, and many show possible increases in suicide rates, even in studies involving people who were screened for suicidality before starting. It’s not really that much in dispute, except for people who want to believe otherwise.

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  • It has always infuriated me when therapists expect their clients to automatically trust them! Don’t they get that this is Step One of any decent helping process? I used to work with foster kids, and I’d often say to them, “I suspect you don’t trust me. That’s pretty smart. I wouldn’t trust me, either – you have no idea who I am or what my agenda is! And I don’t automatically trust you, either. I’m hoping as we get to know each other, we could develop some trust.” Or words to that effect. Oddly enough, I managed to earn the trust of many of them. I wonder why?

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  • I agree with you for the most part. I would never have gotten where I am from psychotherapy. I did have a very good therapist and it was important in getting me started in seeing the limitations of my upbringing. But without Buddhism, meditation, exercise, a job that challenged me to overcome some of my anxieties, the support of important people (including my wife), an exploration of a wide range of spiritual practices, self-help books, and some good old fashioned hard work, I’d have never gotten anywhere. And from what I understand, the training for therapists these days has deteriorated, and they spend time studying the DSM diagnoses but don’t bother with little things like unconscious motivations or the long-term impact of trauma or domestic abuse dynamics. So I don’t want to deny that psychotherapy can play a role for some folks, but it needs to be one who really GETS what s/he is doing, and is empowering of the client to pursue his/her goals. My therapist told me her goal was for ME to become my own therapist and not need her any more. Not every therapist has such goals!

    Anyway, I think you’re right, the best even the best therapist can offer (and as I see it, most of them aren’t very good!) is to help you set your feet on a different path. Where you end up going is TOTALLY up to you, and there are as many ways to find the path as there are humans on the Earth!

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  • Forget about “borderline personality disorder” or any other of their anti-scientific labels. What does she really need? What behavior or issues does SHE think are creating problems for her? What does SHE want to be different? What does SHE think would be a good approach?

    Usually, people who get branded with the “Borderline” label are those who have difficulty trusting others in relationships. See if you can talk to her about trust. Most are also people who have had traumatic experiences early in their lives. What kind of historical trauma is she still dealing with?

    She needs support and understanding, not more labels. Psychotherapy CAN be helpful but only if you find the right person who can create a safe place for her to explore her life and what she wants to do with it. Another person bullying her around and telling her “what’s wrong with you” and what she needs to do will not be helpful. I don’t know what the best way to go about it is, but it starts with NOT accepting the labeling process and find some other people, professionals or not, who agree with you and are willing to help.

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  • Sorry, but psychiatry does NOT rely on “common sense.” Common sense dictates that people who have been emotionally distraught need to talk to someone. Anyone who has witnessed a car accident or experienced an upsetting incident has an immediate urge to tell their story to another human being, who helps best by listening. There is nothing common sensical about the idea that “mental disorders are caused by faulty brains.” That is a very non-intuitive idea that has been sold and sold HARD to the public through massive PR campaigns and through TV and movies and other media methods.

    Common sense says that psychiatry is BS. It is only the pretense of “science” coming from the mouths of pseudo-“doctors” claiming “special knowledge” that allows people to actually invalidate their common sense and believe this unscientific and intuitively offensive nonsense!

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  • I would also say that the training for “talk therapy” has deteriorated massively while classes on “diagnosing” with the DSM are hugely on the rise. I often wonder from talking to them whether today’s clinicians have ever even been introduced to the idea of subconscious motivation? They get trained that PTSD exists but to they get any kind of training on what to DO that might be helpful to a traumatized person (or what NOT to do?) Once one’s had “therapy” with a person who doesn’t know what they’re doing and makes things worse, the idea that “therapy” could work is canceled pretty much forever. Which leaves people with very few options!

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  • You are confusing an observable problem and a workable solution.

    Of course, no one here denies that people live on the street and talk to themselves. Believe it or not, A LOT of those people are “taking their meds” and still doing that, or have tried the “psychiatric treatment” path and it has failed miserably for them. Did you realize that the likelihood of recovering from “schizophrenia” is now a LOT WORSE than it was in the 1950s, before the “drug era” began? Did you realize that the likelihood of recovering is MUCH HIGHER in countries like Nigeria, Columbia, and other “developing countries” where “medication” is used far less frequently? Were you aware of the fact that a lot of people having first episode psychosis don’t have another, but that the likelihood of spontaneous improvement has REDUCED since psychiatric drugs are in regular use? Have you learned yet that the average “seriously mentally ill” person dies an average of 20-25 years YOUNGER than the rest of the population, and that the drugs used to “treat” these “illnesses” are largely responsible for many of these early deaths?

    The social myth is that there are magic drugs that make everyone all better, and if only the “homeless” and the “mentally ill” would follow their doctors’ instructions, they’d be “normal” people working jobs and going to college and raising families, just like on the ads on TV or the movies and TV shows where someone goes “off their meds” and crashes and burns, but as soon as they’re back “on their meds,” they’re totally fine again. The industries have worked hard to create this impression, but if you can put this myth aside for a moment and actually READ some of the stories presented below, you might start to realize that it’s not such a pretty picture.

    Psych drugs do seem to be helpful to a certain percentage of the population without serious damage to their quality of life, and more power to them. But the idea that doctors have some great “treatments” that make MOST people “normal” again if only they do as they’re told is completely false. The bulk of “seriously mentally ill” people who are in “compliance” with their treatment plans are poor, unemployed (on disability), and living lives that most of us would consider extremely low in quality. Those who do better often do so despite their “treatment plans” and “providers” rather than because of them, or at least have little to no support for improving their life quality from those supposedly “treating” them besides the drugs they are prescribed. Considering the massive adverse effects most experience, ranging from involuntary movements to severely blunted emotions and motivation to loss of sexual function to enormous weight gain to diabetes and heart disease, it might seem that living on the streets is hardly any worse to some recipients. And that’s not even mentioning the tremendous loss of autonomy most experience, being constantly monitored and told what to do and threatened with incarceration, framed as “hospitalization,” if they step out of line or their “symptoms” increase.

    It is very easy to judge if you’re not someone who has had these experiences yourself. Why don’t you suspend the judgment for a while and try reading some of the many stories here about what has happened to people here who “complied” with their “treatment plans” and ended up devastated? There’s a LOT more to the story than you seem to have heard to this point!

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  • The key question would be whether one could distinguish in some objective way between “biological” and “situational depression.” Of course, no one has come close to doing that, and they don’t even bother trying any longer. It’s just “let’s try these drugs out and see what happens.” No pretension in reality of any kind of scientific diagnostic process. But as long as the big money keeps coming in, no one has an incentive to look deeper.

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  • Where can you have come up with such statistics? As far as I know, there is no objective description or measurement of a “neurotypical” brain that is possible. So a “neurodivergent” brain, while I think can be a legitimate identity to choose, is not a scientifically observable phenomenon, and as a result, its frequency of occurrence is not something we can claim to know.

    I personally find the term “neurotypical” to be to some extent demeaning, as it seems to imply that I have somehow gotten a “normal” brain and that therefore any struggles I may have are of less significance than the “neurodiverse” brain. I can tell you with absolute certainty there is nothing “typical” about how I have experienced life and I had plenty of struggles in school and elsewhere, even though my particular “brain” (if that is indeed the variable in question) allowed me to be quite successful in the educational environment and to scrape by socially, “it” has provided plenty of challenges in non-academic arenas. Of course, you could now decide (or I could) that I really am NOT neurotypical, that I’m “neurodiverse,” but again, that would be a decision of identity that I (or someone else) made, and not one that can be verified in any scientific manner.

    I don’t believe there are “neurotypical” brains out there – my observation is that everyone’s brain is different and everyone has certain things in common, and our society is highly intolerant of certain personality characteristics or behavior, which leads to bigotry and discrimination against certain people who don’t BEHAVIORALLY fit what is expected, whether because of their brains or some other reason. Does neurology factor into that? No doubt. But until there is a means of drawing some kind of objective line between the “neurotypical” and the “neurodiverse,” I’m afraid these terms remain social constructs without any objective meanings. Like I said, everyone should feel free to identify themselves as they wish, but I’d appreciate you and others not choosing MY identity for me!

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  • It would indeed be interesting!

    My point is that having a goal over which you have no direct control is a setup for failure, in my experience. Empathy in particular is VERY difficult to teach, especially to an adult. Not saying it could not happen, but I’d be more likely to look at something more along the lines of not engaging when negative stuff is coming from her, drilling how to convey the necessary message most effectively, and how to set good boundaries when she becomes abusive. All things the person himself can control. I’ve seen way too many people spend way too much time trying to “get their viewpoint across” or “help him see how he’s hurting me,” etc., with absolutely no success and enormous frustration. I recommend setting goals that a person can accomplish, regardless of whether someone else chooses to “understand” or not!

    Hope that makes some sense.

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  • The question is, how can anyone POSSIBLY determine where such a “line” lies, or if it even exists? And if we DON’T objectively define what it is, then we get arbitrary and subjective rules, leading to “diagnostic drift” toward whatever makes more money for the providers and less trouble for those in control of society’s institutions.

    And why do we need to define such a line anyway? Why can’t we simply say that “those who suffer need and deserve support” and provide it without pretending there is something physiological going on? Now, if there IS something physical that is off, like low thyroid, anemia, sleep problems leading to depression or hyperactivity, or whatever, then THAT is what should be treated, not “depression” or “anxiety.”

    I’d really be interested in knowing why you think such a line can be and/or needs to be drawn to be able to provide full support to those who are suffering?

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  • I hope that you found people with this label were a lot more different than they were similar to each other. That was my experience. The main thing they mostly had in common is that their early lives were shitty. Other than that, I saw a huge range of human interests, abilities, and personalities carelessly lumped together simply because traumatization had made it more challenging for the poor professionals to figure out what was going on.

    I actually have no patience for this “diagnosis.” Why not just say, “Mary was abused as a kid and has trouble trusting people” or whatever else is going on? Why talk about this group as if they had anything in common besides being labeled and discriminated against by the “system” personnel?

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  • Actually, the “comorbidity” is, in my view, not because these “conditions” share things, but because they are not actual medical “conditions” at all. What should be diagnosed is neuroinflammation, histamine intolerance, vitamin D deficiency, etc, rather than wasting time on these meaningless DSM “diagnoses” that don’t tell us anything about the actual problem at hand.

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  • That’s one of the most insidious dangers of the “label and drug” approach. It gives the impression that your environment is harmless and YOU have the problem. If only your brain worked better, you wouldn’t MIND being worked 60 hours a week at a mindless job that challenges your personal ethics on a daily basis! It’s all about Bad Brains, never about fixing the environment and expectations that lead to burnout!

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  • And we can see exactly how helpful the psych drugs were in preventing further violence!

    I agree with you, people should be judged on the danger and disrespect of their behavior, not some label affixed to them or some lenience based on “compliance with medication” or whatever else. We can see that compliance and safety don’t necessarily bear any relationship to each other.

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  • I am not surprised to hear any of that. The system is set up so that narcissism is rewarded. Back when I got my own therapy (1982), there were requirements that therapists go through their own therapy before being allowed into the office, and there was strong recognition that the therapist could do a lot of damage if s/he had not dealt with his/her own issues and instead acted them out on the client. Nowadays, I’m not sure they even train counselors on the fact of unconscious motivations they might have. I’d say one takes one’s life in his/her hands applying to a random “therapist” for help today. Odds are better that you’ll get screwed over than helped. I think that was already true in 1982, but it’s far worse today.

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  • I think we see here that chatGPT is simply regurgitating what the most common or popular responses are to this kind of question on the internet as a whole. It is not the act of “artificial intelligence,” it’s the act of a very fast collector of other people’s ideas and statements, collating these into some “safe” statements that fit into the mainstream of what’s already been said. It’s INCREDIBLY unlikely that any AI program will look at the situation and conclude, “Well, a lot of people say that antidepressants improve imbalances in chemicals, but research by X, Y, and Z have proven this trope completely false. Evidence is that it originated in propaganda from pharmaceutical company marketing schemes.” ChatGPT is going to amplify the most commonly held beliefs. It will never be able to challenge them, because it can’t really think.

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  • I will only take this moment to state that not ALL therapists see their role as to identify and/or correct defects in their clients. I think you are acknowledging that in your choice of words, but I want to make that explicit. My view has always been that the only ones who can tell us if therapy “works” are the ones receiving the therapy. They’re also the only ones knowing if something is “wrong” with them and/or what if anything they need to do about it. A good therapist works to help the client discover their own truths about themselves. Anyone who thinks they can “fix” or “improve” the client should be avoided like the plague!

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  • The science does not support your assertions. No medication has been found to reduce suicide rates, and most antidepressants increase rates. Recovery rates have been shown to be LOWER when taking antipsychotics over the long term. Only 30% of users report significant benefits from antidepressants, which is barely more than benefit from placeboes. This is what the science says. Repeating mythology doesn’t make it true. How do you KNOW these things you have claimed to be true?

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  • I don’t hear anyone saying the drugs don’t work. I hear someone saying that the data saying they DO work is biased. We already know that they work for less than half of the population at clinically significant levels – the most objective evidence says 30%. Don’t you think it’s fair to the other 70% to let them know they may not see the purported benefits? Do you think it wrong to let people know the actual adverse effect, including withdrawal, oops, I mean DISCONTINUATION effects, that plague many if not the majority of users? Do you deny that these drugs CAN cause harm to a significant subset of the population, based on the scientific data we now have available?

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  • ChatGPT gives back from what it’s read, that’s all. It can assemble a ton of information from multiple sources, and maybe even modify its approach if you find it offensive and say so, but it’s not going to provide much outside of the accepted mainstream views. It might outline alternative views, but will identify them as potentially controversial. It’s just a distillation of the “conventional wisdom,” with some acknowledgement given to less popular viewpoints.

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  • It is true that most psychiatric prescribing is done in a very robotic fashion, and would probably be BETTER done by robots, because at least personal prejudice and emotional reactions would be removed from the equation, and the robots wouldn’t hunt you down just because you didn’t follow their advice.

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  • That’s what chatGPT and other AI seems to do – it gathers a huge amount of data and then mimics human responses using “information” it has gleaned from other sources. It does not have any kind of individual thinking or critical analysis, and it works based on what it is programmed to do. It would be easy as heck to program such an entity to simply not publish anything negative about psychiatry or drugs. The only thing that surprised me about Bob’s response is that it has not already been programmed to a pro-psychiatry bent.

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  • That’s a great idea, actually! I’m guessing it would hem and haw about it, saying it’s “controversial” without really addressing the complete lack of scientific foundations. But who knows? The Chat app bases it’s “comments” on data gathered from billions of sources, and depending on the programming, it could come up with something critical.

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  • My point is only that psychiatric “theories” are mostly mythology. This is only one more example. EVERYBODY said that back in the 70s, even though there was no actual research supporting this idea. When the research debunked the concept, it had some effect, but the myth, much like the “chemical imbalance,” was already so ingrained that few gave it a second thought, despite the research. This seems to me to be the core of psychiatric “theory” – come up with an idea that supports their desired narrative, put out lots of propaganda to promote this idea and pretend it’s all very “scientific,” and don’t research or ignore research in any area that might threaten the narrative. Not much science actually going on!

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  • It is deeply disappointing to hear that professionals still toss around that idiotic trope that “ADHD kids react differently to stimulants.” That notion was debunked way back in 1978 by Judith Rapoport, et. al. It’s worth noting that Rapoport has been a big supporter of stimulants. She gave stimulants in low doses to non-ADHD diagnosed teens and found exactly the same response – less movement, better concentration on dull or repetitive tasks, etc. The only reason she said that people assume the “ADHD” kids react differently is because people are looking for that reaction. She called it “an artifact of observation.”

    The fact that such nonsense is still spewed about by “professionals” proves to me how little actual basis any of these “diagnoses” and “treatment” are founded upon. They have to lie to themselves and others to even justify their interventions. It’s such bull!

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  • I only wish I found this the least bit shocking or surprising. Dr. W is not an aberration – he’s the average “clinician” in a psych ward, as far as my experience goes. Someone who shows compassion and caring, let alone even the vaguest awareness of his own “countertransferrence,” would be incredibly rare. In fact, seeing someone act in a compassionate and genuinely caring way is what would shock me. Dr. W is just “business as usual.” It does disgust and horrify me, but it does not surprise me in the slightest.

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  • This was my experience as well, working “behind enemy lines.” I wasn’t even a psychologist, just a “mental health professional.” We had very little power to alter what the psychiatrists decided to say or do. It was a constant battle, but had to be conducted as a “reasonable conversation” or you were quickly branded as an “anti-meds” worker. I eventually gave up on trying to change the system from the inside. I don’t think it’s possible. I’ve become more of an “abolitionist” the longer I work with this crazed system.

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  • Can’t disagree with a word of that. The current system makes it as easy as possible to dismiss a client/patent’s concerns, ideas, plans, motivations, etc. and to blame the client for “having the disorder,” and blame “the disorder” for any failure or damage to the client. I think it is much, MUCH harder to find someone today working for the system who is worth seeing than it was back in the 80s when I went. And I was still lucky!

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  • I meant the therapist. I have no problem with the client using his/her own power to his/her own benefit.

    It matters because it applies to everyone, whether a therapist or not. What you’re saying is most therapists TAKE ADVANTAGE of their one-up power situation. But not all do so, even if it’s tempting. Same is true of humans you meet on the street, though they have less of a natural advantage in the power department, so it’s probably safer. But lots of “regular humans” take every advantage of their power over others and seek to maximize their influence at the expense of the person they are engaged with. It’s not fair to paint ALL therapists with that brush, any more than all humans. There are even psychiatrists here and there who have a heart and understand their power advantage and don’t use it to hurt their clients. Admittedly, not a common experience, but it happens. I had a fantastic therapist who REFUSED to “diagnose” me or interpret anything I said or did, but always put the question back to me. I kind of hated her for it, but it was the right approach, and I was much the better for my 15 months of weekly meetings with her. Worth every penny I spent. So it’s important not to overgeneralize about people we don’t know, just because they have a certain assigned “role” in “the system.” There are and have always been mavericks who do it their own way. I like to think I was one such.

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  • In the case of the DSM, the very nature of the “diagnoses” makes them diminishing and insulting automatically, as they presume the doctor is able to decide what is wrong with you lacking any concrete testing or evidence of anything being wrong at all. It’s hard to see how a label ever improves anyone’s psychological well-being, unless it’s a label they themselves choose to apply. I see nothing helpful about doctors or psychologists or counselors buying into the DSM fiction campaign.

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  • Exactly. The frontal lobes are the center of planning and organization, and hence motivation. It would be almost impossible to execute any kind of complex plan with the dopamine flow to your frontal lobes being so dramatically curtailed. And of course, there is permanent damage from which a person may or may not recover. All to “treat” a “disorder” that no one has any clue if it exists or what is wrong or what is being “fixed.”

    Chemical stun gun is a great description!

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  • I agree with this. In my own practice, I never “diagnosed” anyone except to make sure they got a kind of help we agreed they needed. And I told the client from the start that the “diagnoses” are just descriptions of what they already told someone and had no meaning beyond getting insurance reimbursement. Lacking a “diagnosis” never prevented any client I had from making progress. I’m guessing it made it easier for them to make progress, as I “normalized” their experiences and never gave the idea that there was something “wrong” with them that they couldn’t fix, which is the opposite of what these “diagnoses” do.

    What’s wrong with saying, “You get scared when you go outside” instead of “You have agoraphobia?” How does the latter help in any way?

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  • You are absolutely right! These behaviors serve a definite purpose, and unless it’s a truly safe environment, they will be needed again and again! It has to be up to the person him/herself to decide which of those historical coping measures remain relevant. In a typical psychiatric environment, defensive measures are generally quite essential!

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  • Hi, Donna!

    It sounds like you’ve been through hell and are still kinda there!

    With all due respect, it appears to me you’ve figured out these “doctors” don’t know the first thing about what they’re doing and their “diagnoses” are fantasies. Are you still looking to them for help? Or are you simply trapped in “the system” and having a hard time getting out of there? What do you see as your path forward?

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  • I am sure there are such people. What’s unfortunate is that they do not appear to be the “thought leaders” in the field, and are in my observation frequently set upon by those with a different agenda. The problems with psychiatry are not those of individual psychiatrists being good or bad people or even good or bad clinicians. It is a matter of the profession itself being committed to misguided values and priorities, including the priority of making money as a profession and maintaining status, and the actual needs of the patients/clients in such a scenario too often take a back seat, if they get a seat at all.

    I am always encouraged to find psychiatrists who take a saner approach, but in my experience (and I have more than a bit), they tend to be the minority, and with few exceptions, have little influence on how the profession as a whole considers the problem of “mental illness,” which they seem to have somehow obtained the right to define for the rest of us.

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  • Quite so. It is my experience that telling another person what to think/believe, even if you’re 100% correct, robs them of the ability to realize it for themselves, so they have to either agree or disagree with you instead of realizing their own path. I think exploring possibilities/brainstorming can be fine, but as soon as we start telling the other person what to think of their life and what to do about it, we start doing damage.

    Even the girl with “diabetes” can be talked to about how best to frame it from her viewpoint. Perhaps she comes up with, “I have to eat a special diet/take a drug to help” or “My body has trouble handling sugar and I have to take special precautions” or even “Sugar and I have a love-hate relationship.” Why not help her come up with what she feels comfortable instead of deciding what to call it and taking her options away?

    Interesting story – I used to work for a crisis line. A woman I had talked to many times called in and said angrily, “Those doctors told me I have Borderline Personality Disorder! I don’t have Borderline Personality Disorder! How DARE they say that about me!” I asked her, “What did they say that meant?” She says, “Well, they didn’t exactly explain it, but they said I have it and I don’t!”

    I said, “Let me get out the DSM and read off what they say defines this ‘personality disorder.'” So I read them off to her. “Emotionally volatile?” “Well, yeah, definitely.” “Sometimes feigns suicide for attention?” “Yes, I do that.” “Difficulty with trust in intimate relationships?” “Oh, yeah, for sure.” After I read a few more, she very calmly said, “Well, I guess I DO have it!”

    How different would this have gone if they simply started with saying, “It seems to me like you get pretty emotional about things compared to most people. Does that seem true to you?” Or better yet, “What kind of things do you tend to do that you wish you didn’t?” And just describe the behavior instead of the label. She clearly had no trouble acknowledging the behavior she engaged in, was quite aware of it, in fact. But the act of labeling pissed her off big time! So why bother with the label? Why not start with the client’s framing of the problem and go from there?

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  • Sorry, Jukia, but there is exactly zero evidence that the drugs increase suicidality by giving suicidal people the energy to commit suicide they were already planning. For one thing, almost all of these studies ELIMINATE anyone having any hint of suicidal ideation, so even if a few are being deceptive, the majority of these new cases of suicidality come from people who were NOT feeling suicidal before taking the drugs. The explanation you provide is a convenient one for drug companies and doctors who want to convince people that increased suicidality is not a concern, but Prozac in particular was kept off the market in Germany and I think also Italy initially back in the 80s because of increases in suicidal and aggressive behavior in those taking the drugs, so the claim has long been known to be false.

    I’m not disputing that some people report getting great benefits from taking these drugs. But it’s not ALL people, and a lot of folks report having little to no effect or becoming worse on the drugs. To claim that being off psychotropic drugs is “FAR more dangerous” than being on them for “most profoundly mentally ill people” is an opinion which is not based on scientific study. In fact, read up on the Wunderlink and Harrow studies, among others, which show that those diagnosed with “psychotic disorders” who don’t take psychotropics actually do better on the average than those who do. Again, not saying some don’t benefit, but generalizing from anecdotes to broad sweeping statements of “truth” is not how science works.

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  • Not surprising to me, but this is important research! The industry relies heavily on claims that “accepting you have an illness” and that “treatment” is just like “insulin for diabetes” reduces “stigma” and makes it easier for people to feel OK about their “mental illness.” Those in charge know these claims are not actually TRUE, but justify using them as PR because “people are more likely to seek help.”

    Like other stigma-based research on labels, these findings fly right in the face of these claims. There is no excuse or justification for lying to your clients in the first place, but this kind of research takes away the justification and exposes their “theories” for exactly what they are – propaganda to get more people onto psychiatric drug regimes!

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  • Sounds brilliant, honestly! I will say from my own experience as a counselor that my goal was always to help the person study their own decisions and experiences and make new decisions (if need be) based on their own observations and conclusions. This seems like it cuts out the middle man and just takes people right there! Perhaps the most important point is that it communicates to the person that s/he CAN figure out what’s going on and what is needed through study and sharing, essentially the opposite of what they hear from the mainstream “mental health” system!

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  • Wait, now the PSYCHIATRISTS are claiming “moral injury?” I suppose it DOES inflict “moral injury” of some sort if you’re constantly claiming to help people and yet so often make no improvements or make their lives agonizingly worse? Perhaps it’s time for a “Truth and reconciliation” circle as they ran in South Africa to help heal the “moral injuries” of the Apartheid regime? Do they expect us to feel sorry for them that their failures don’t feel very good to them???

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  • I agree 100%! I always counted on my clients alone to provide whatever useful information was in play. THEY are the only ones who really know what’s going on or what might help! But that’s the opposite of the mainstream view. The DSM itself admits it doesn’t even bother to attempt to evaluate cause. What’s the point of a “diagnosis” that doesn’t try to identify what the actual problem is!

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  • Well, I worked first for the Long Term Care Ombudsman program, which provides advocacy for seniors in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and adult foster homes/care homes. This is a US program that exists in every state, and while I was a paid employee, most of the Ombudsmen are volunteers. There are plenty of issues with psych drugs in nursing homes, I can tell you!

    Then I worked for 20 years for the Court Appointed Special Advocates program (CASA), sometimes known as the Guardian Ad Litem program. This provides volunteers for kids in foster care who advocate to get them to a safe, permanent home as quickly as possible, and for them to be safe in the meanwhile. The number of kids on psych drugs is beyond comprehension, and the longer they are in the worse it gets! So I found plenty of opportunities there to get into the grill of the psych profession, in an effective way.

    Mind Freedom, Inc. is also a more or less worldwide association of advocates for those in the “mental health” system, so the advocacy there is more direct.

    There are no doubt other organizations I have not mentioned who do advocacy for those in psych “hospitals” or other “mental health” facilities. You’d have to look around where you live and see what’s happening there.

    I’m glad to hear you are ready to take that step! It sounds like you certainly KNOW enough to do a great job – the trick is getting through the insane levels of resistance from the people who should know better, especially the psychiatrists themselves! But it’s worth it when you get a victory. I encourage you to go in that direction!

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  • I really wish I could refer you to someone! Have you considered support groups for people traumatized in childhood? It hurts my heart to hear that such therapy, which used to be considered at least one of the main approaches, is virtually unavailable to you now.

    I have found people associated with the domestic abuse or sexual abuse worlds to be much more likely to understand about trauma and approach it differently, in an empowering way. Perhaps a local women’s or domestic abuse helpline has a referral for a therapist who understands how to be helpful in these situations? They may also be a source for peer support groups, where you would at least meet others who have been through what you have (including the incredible rigidity and blindness of the so-called “mental health” services) and might have some support and/or ideas for healing? And maybe make a friend or two and feel a bit less lonely?

    I’m much more inclined to recommend peer support these days than therapy, as so many therapists (as you report) have become handmaidens of the psych industry. Anyone starting off with diagnosing and recommending drugs should be immediately eliminated from consideration, and in your case, that sounds like everyone!

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  • Well, that’s certainly true, and that’s why I’m very distrustful of anyone coming out of current “psychology” or “mental health” training. I believe they focus a huge amount of time on DSM diagnoses and very little on actual ways to improve one’s own awareness and emotional availability to the clients, or actually helping to discover and evaluate what the CLIENT thinks is helpful and desirable. It’s very arrogant and disempowering, the opposite of what is actually helpful!

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  • There is also a big difference between those who use scientific EVIDENCE as proof of their position and those who use scientific CONSENSUS (what ‘scientists’ tend to agree on) as proof of their positions. As has become very clear, many of the so-called “scientists” in the psychiatric field not only don’t rely on science for their conclusions, they actively attack any real science that contradicts their desired narrative. Corrupt “scientists” who benefit from their position of power should not be accorded any kind of special status. Only the science itself is worthy of discussion if we’re really interested in facts and knowledge!

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  • I don’t disagree with anything you said. Except that “diagnoses” are not PART of the “therapy process,” they are the justification for assuming authority over the “clients,” and as such are the opposite of therapeutic. The “diagnoses” are an evil that extends FAR beyond the “treatments” it is used to justify. It starts the process of “othering” and allows people to discriminate and downgrade the “mentally ill” (as they call them) with impunity. If there were no “therapy” at all, the DSM would still be incredibly destructive!

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  • I’m not ‘favoring the therapist’s position,” just describing what has to happen for it to work for the client. I fully acknowledge most “therapy relationships” don’t occur in this way and are mostly destructive or at best do nothing helpful.

    And “borderline personality disorder” is a DSM diagnosis and has literally nothing to do with therapy, except as providing an excuse for certain kinds of “therapeutic interventions” that ignore the needs of the “client.”

    I engaged in therapy that worked very well for me, and I wouldn’t be who I am without having done so. But I was lucky, very lucky. I’d have to be much MORE lucky today to find such a person, as I see most of those claiming to be “therapists” being guided down the wrong path. You yourself have acknowledged in the past that there are exceptions where people do benefit from a therapist, but we both agree it’s rare and in many cases not even possible. I’m not promoting therapy as a profession. I’m just describing what I see as necessary for it to work. Again, I’ve already agreed and acknowledged that most therapists are incapable of this level of awareness, and that one is just as likely to benefit from talking to someone they know who has some good listening skills. Therapy is a setup for most people, because of the inherent power imbalance and most “therapists'” inability to recognize let alone manage their own needs to heal their own power relationships. Alice Miller had it right.

    I hope that clarifies where I’m coming from. Definitely not of the “everybody needs therapy” school of thought!

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  • It CAN happen and DOES happen in some cases, but the incentive is to use one’s power for one’s own benefit. And you are right, this motivation is almost always unconscious and therefore very difficult to recognize for the therapist, even if it becomes obvious to their “clients.” Which is why I say you can’t really train someone to be a good therapist. They have to develop an acute awareness of power relationships and their own issues with power and be aware of these at all times when interacting with someone they are trying to assist. I’d say very few therapists ever meet this goal, and in fact, unless I’m wrong about what happens today in “training,” most of them aren’t even aware of it as a problem. So going to a random therapist is, indeed, a very dangerous undertaking. As research shows, your odds are just as good choosing a friend or colleague as someone with a degree.

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  • My view is that a person can’t really be trained to be a good therapist. I agree, it has to do with the essence of the relationship between two people, and techniques or schools of therapy are borderline irrelevant. “Diagnosis” via the DSM is completely irrelevant. It’s not a “cookbook” procedure, it has to do with creating a safe space and respecting the right of the client to decide what is “right” or not and how to define and pursue “improvement” in their own worlds. I’m not sure what they train “therapists” to know these days, but I know they spend a lot of time on the DSM and “brain scans” and neurology, and it seems not very much on what actually helps people grow and develop in their own way.

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  • This is all very well said!

    One approach I sometimes used with traumatized clients is to say, “I am guessing you don’t trust me at this point. I wouldn’t trust me either if I were you. You have no idea who I am or whether I’m a safe person, and distrust is very appropriate in such a situation. I’m hoping I can earn your trust over time.” Or something like that. Acknowledging the “rightness” of them being skeptical seemed to give the clients some sense of getting some power back. It always used to bother me when clients were dinged for “not trusting their therapy team.” I always said, “How do you know they can trust the therapy team?”

    I wasn’t very popular with a certain kind of therapist…

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  • I’m assuming the intent of a good and respectful therapist is to help the person before them to free up energy used to protect themselves from past traumatic experiences so they can use it to create a better life in the future, by their own definition, not the therapist’s. It is true that not everyone is prepared at a given time to go there, and such resistance should be respected as a behavior that meets a need for the client, something DBT seems not to recognize at all.

    In any case, what I’m pointing out is that “resistance” (which is a word I would never use) has historically been viewed as an indicator of exactly what you said, that the person is feeling it is necessary to protect him/herself from danger. These mechanisms are developed for very real reasons to protect from very real dangers at the time, and one HOPES that therapy becomes a safe place to identify what these mechanisms are (help the person be conscious of them rather than having them be automatic), and for the CLIENT to re-evaluate for him/herself whether and when such approaches remain necessary. This should leave the client with all necessary defense mechanisms intact and usable, but cut down on the times they are used on a knee-jerk reactive basis when not really needed, such as becoming hostile to the butcher because he wears the same had your dad wore all the time and his voice sounds similar so he must be dangerous like your dad, etc. Gaining personal awareness and decision-making power over such responses should leave a person feeling more in control of his/her life in general. That’s the theory anyway, and it appears to have been very successful for the clients whom I worked with.

    So the idea that the CLIENT is supposed to somehow abandon any “resistance” and just go along with what the “therapist” says is very, very damaging to the client. It is reinforcing the idea that they were WRONG for judging the past situation as dangerous, that the “authority figure’s” feelings are more important than the client’s, and that the big problem is not that the authority figure was abusive, but that the client wasn’t “understanding” enough of the needs of the authority figure and should try HARDER to repress and undermine any actions they took to feel safer. This is exactly the OPPOSITE of what I’ve found to be truly helpful, which is validating the client for taking necessary actions for self-protection and admiring their courage in doing so.

    One of the very first things I did as a counselor/therapist was to help the client validate that the “crazy” things they tended to do were not crazy at all, but made perfect sense to them at some time in the past. I would share that I’ve found it helpful to look at what DOES make sense about the behavior (AKA to what extend DOES it act to protect them) and validate them for coming up with effective “coping mechanisms” for a difficult situation. Only after getting very clear on that point would I propose to the client the possibility that such mechanisms are often used by all of us humans in situations where they aren’t as helpful as their original intended purpose, and that becoming more aware and intentional about them, or even developing some new ones with our adult intelligence and recognition that in many cases the danger is not current, might be a good path to follow.

    That gives maybe just a little feeling of how important it is for me to respect whatever behavior the client has come up with to survive in their world. I always assume that ALL their actions have purpose, and the question is only whether these actions continue to serve the purpose they were intended for in the present. I have never intentionally tried to force a person to drop or dismiss any behavior they feel is important to their safety and survival. I have tried to run only based on their own stated desire to change a certain pattern of behavior, and “resistance” is important in recognizing when the actual reason for the behavior is coming to light. Naturally, a person is entitled to hang onto whatever “resistance” they feel they still need. Therapy should only be in service of meeting their own goals, not mine!

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  • It’s not the client’s responsibility to avoid “distracting and annoying” the clinician. “Resistance” is supposed to be part of the treatment, at least it used to be back when therapists knew what they were doing. If a person is “resisting,” it was supposed to indicate that you’re getting to an issue that needs to be addressed. It’s not a reason to punish the client!

    If clients have to act in certain ways to keep the clinician happy, there is no therapy going on. That’s usually what got the client into their problems in the first place!

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  • That’s exactly what my therapist said to me at the beginning. She said the goal was to develop my own internal “therapist” which I could consult directly and for her to become unnecessary for me as quickly as possible. She did a lot of good for me, but only because she was focused on helping ME become more independent, not in dragging out therapy so she’d get more fees and feel superior!

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  • And this is how genetic testing COULD be helpful. Instead of testing for ONE GENE that creates ALL cases of “depression,” we should be testing for genes that explain a SMALL PART of the cohort which can actually be “treated” at its cause! Such discoveries will remove a certain number of sufferers, while not raising the belief or expectation that some magical one-gene solution will mean EVERYONE suddenly gets better!

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  • Thanks for your thoughtful reply! I agree that these things are complicated, and I appreciate the acknowledgement that “fitting in” to the so-called “social norms” is NOT a sign of “neurotypicality” but of ability to adapt to what are generally unreasonable expectations. The “ADHD” kid in class can’t adapt, and so is identified as “divergent.” Of course, it’s better for him than being identified as “mentally ill,” but that classroom is FULL of kids who are just as miserable as he is and yet don’t act that out for whatever reason, whether better suppression skills or more fear of punishment or whatever. Those kids are not any more “typical” than anyone else, they just don’t make trouble for the adults and are therefore identified as “normal.”

    Maybe the term “neuro” is what gives the word its “bioessentialist” undertone. Maybe if we simply identified ourselves as “divergent,” as in “diverging from expected social norms,” then everyone can get on board with “diverging” and maybe even find some new and better “social norms” that are easier for more people to live with!

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  • Frank, while I agree that paying for a quality therapist (if one is fortunate enough to find one) is hardly a form of oppression, I have to say that I’ve seen PLENTY of garden variety straight-up intentional oppression of psychiatric “patients” in the name of “helping” them that most definitely would meet any definition of oppression you can come up with. Dishonesty, use of force, holding people against their will without cause, forcing “treatment” that causes brain damage and early death while claiming that all of these issues are the patients’ problem and were not caused by the “treatment. All of these things are offensive to any sense of justice, freedom, equality of rights and basic respect due to any human being. It seems to me you are singling out the relatively rare case of a free and relatively well off adult engaging in a more or less fair exchange of money for services, and assuming the purchaser has both the information and the wherewithal to resist efforts to indoctrinate or mistreat them at the hands of the therapist. That’s a lot of assuming!

    If you slow down a minute and read some of the experiences shared here on MIA, you will see that the vast majority of commenters do not have the kind of experience you are describing. Many are forced against their will to do things they object to with neither information nor consent. Many more are lied to and emotionally manipulated into accepting a very unhealthy framing of their situation and into accepting “treatments” whose benefits are overblown and whose dangerous consequences are minimized or denied completely. This is the oppressive situation we’re dealing with. And it CAN happen in a paid therapy relationship, too.

    I’m sure you are a caring person who probably does a good job helping your clients. What I don’t think you get is that you are an outlier in the world most of the posters live in. It’s very understandable that most are extremely skeptical of therapy in any form. It’s been used to hurt them!

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  • My biggest problem with the term “neurodivergent” is that it implies there is a “normal” kind of neurology that “most people” have, and that one has to be “autistic” or “ADHD” or fit some label to be considered “neurodivergent.” I object very much to the idea that there is such a thing as “normal” vs. “divergent” neurology, in fact, genetic diversity is critical to species survival, and one of the great joys of humanity is the amazing degree of divergence that exists within the “normal” range of human behavior. Ultimately, I see us all as “neurodivergent” which means the term really has no meaning. It seems to me that the term “neurodivergent” reinforces the idea that “mental illnesses” are somehow neurological and are discernible by “divergence” from some kind of theoretical “norm.”

    I have no problems with individuals identifying themselves as “neurodivergent,” but I can’t agree with such people deciding that I or others are “normies” and that one has to have special qualities to qualify as “neurodivergent.”

    That’s my view of it. I’m sure others have their reasons that will diverge from mine!

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  • As I intimated, I don’t think most psychiatrists understand or care about fast- vs. slow-metabolizers and so forth. I do appreciate your research, and that was specifically what I was recalling and referring to.

    The difficulty with this approach is that it totally begs the question of what we are supposedly “treating” with these drugs. What we’re doing is manipulating brain chemicals and hoping we get lucky and find a drug that a person can live with that helps reduce his/her “symptoms” without saddling him/her with intolerable adverse effects. But of course, we have no idea if brain chemicals are in fact a causal agent in any of these cases, or how to distinguish the ones that are (if they exist) by any kind of objective means. It’s not really very different from observing that some people can take opioids or drink alcohol and be fine, while some are quickly overwhelmed by the drug’s effects and others seem to take a lot to have any effect at all. All fine information to have, but it hardly substitutes for figuring out and addressing WHY this person is distressed enough to be heading down to the bar every night to imbibe, and what we might do to alter that reality!

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  • I don’t believe that is completely true. They can apparently test for people who are “slow metabolizers” of different drugs and so perhaps avoid creating homicidal/suicidal ideation by SOME people taking SSRIs, but these tests appear to be far from foolproof, and just as importantly, almost no physicians regularly use such testing in their practice, despite your assertion that “ANY WISE PHYSICIAN” will do so. I’d be happy to be proven wrong about this, but that’s my understanding of the current situation. I have yet to meet a person currently engaged in the MH system who was offered such testing by their doctor, though I’ve heard of a few who demanded it themselves. Do you have any links to recent studies showing anything more promising than what I’ve identified above?

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  • Unfortunately, a great deal of what passes for “psychotherapy” these days does not incorporate any of the important philosophical underpinnings you mention above. A lot seems to now be focused on “neurobiology,” on DSM “diagnoses,” and on compliance with “medication” and other “treatment plans” like DBT or CBT. I did therapy for a number of years in various settings, some formal and some informal, and saw and heard what others were exposed to by their “therapists,” who in my view did not deserve the name. I’m not sure they are even taught about unconscious motivations or ideas of consciousness or striving or attachment or awareness of one’s own process, let alone touching on the existential issues of the bizarre expectations and abuses of modern society. The focus seems to be on making “symptoms” go away, as if “depression” or “anxiety” were the problem rather than the observable manifestation of the actual issues causing distress. This is the inevitable result of “DSM” thinking – reducing the complexity and spiritual richness of human experience to “desirable” and “undesirable” emotions or behavior, which the therapist and/or psychiatrist is tasked to change, by force or manipulation if needed. It is small wonder that folks faith in psychotherapy as you describe it is very low – very few people seem to ever experience it these days!

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  • I’m glad Ketamine therapy works so well for you! But I do want to remind you that this doesn’t mean it works for everyone. The idea that all people who are depressed have the same problem or need the same solution is not scientifically valid. I rejoice that people find Ketamine or any other approach workable for them. I just want to be cautious about using anecdotal data to extrapolate for others who may have very different circumstances and very different results than you had.

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  • Clearly, the most fundamental fallacy with the entire psychiatric edifice is the assumption that all people who “have depression” or whatever “mental illness” is under discussion are all ILL and have the SAME PROBLEM and need the SAME INTERVENTION. The DSM itself invalidates this assumption in its introduction, but this apparently has no impact on people’s viewing these “diagnoses” as some kind of valid scientific entity that can somehow be “researched” as such, even though the people in the study group often have little to nothing in common with each other. In fact, it’s been shown that multiple people can “qualify” for the same “diagnosis” and have not a single “symptom” in common! How it’s not obvious to anyone of a slightly scientific bent that this whole system is a house of cards built on nothing but opinion and bias is beyond my comprehension.

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  • Which once again reinforces the idea that the person one is interacting with, their maturity, skills, openness to experience, ability to create a safe environment, ability to help a client focus on their own goals and purposes, is what really matters in any kind of “therapy” or healing practice. I find calling MDMA “medicine” in itself to be an absurdity. It is not a “medical” process you are describing, it is a spiritual/emotional/intellectual journey that is very personal to each individual, and there is no way to create a repetitive “treatment” that can obtain any kind of consistent and predictable results for all people. The key is who is helping “guide” you and what kind of “guidance” they tend to provide (empowering vs authoritarian) rather than the particular drug or other method used. This is not to say that MDMA or any other drug may not be able to contribute to increased spiritual awareness or skills in life, but it’s not “medicine,” any more than alcohol or marijuana are “medicine” because they have certain effects that a person may or may not desire or benefit from.

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  • I do think it is of great concern that the number of contacts appears to have a direct relationship to the number of detentions. This would imply that the increase in contacts would have the same demographic distribution of seriousness as the ones already contacting crisis lines previously. Unless this is simply a redistribution of people who would have contacted another crisis line if 988 did not exist (which of course means there is NOT really an increase in contacts at all), one would expect that the new callers would have a LESS serious distribution of issues, because we should be courting new contacts who otherwise might not have called (the purpose of the 988 easier access).

    So there are two likely conclusions: first, that these callers are the same people who already used local crisis lines, and we have spent millions and millions of dollars to accomplish essentially nothing at all, or second, that calling a crisis line gives a particular probability of having the police dispatched, regardless of the average severity of the call. Neither one is a happy conclusion!

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  • We shouldn’t have to prove they are dangerous. The standard is that the doctors/pharma need to prove they are safe. I think the biggest problem is we have hired a lot of foxes guarding the henhouse of drug safety. If we had a REAL set of standards with honest, non-corrupt people applying them, we’d all be a lot safer and it would be a lot easier to get complaints heard and acted upon!

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  • It is easy to confuse “These categories are not scientifically valid diagnoses” with “debilitating anxiety doesn’t exist.” They are VERY different statements. I doubt anyone here would state that debilitating social fear and apprehension don’t exist or are not painful and difficult. The argument would be that just because you feel anxious in social situations, no matter how severe, it doesn’t mean you are “ill” in a medical sense.

    I say this as a person who suffered debilitating anxiety and depression in my youth, and now at 65 rarely experience anything similar. I did get therapy for a while and do a lot of self-help stuff but never was “diagnosed” with anything at all by my therapist. It is not necessary to validate these “diagnoses” in order to agree that someone needs help and support and to assist them in getting to a better place. I’m also not invalidating the potential usefulness of psychiatric drugs, just saying that the “diagnoses” themselves are not valid medical/scientific entities, and that saying so doesn’t invalidate ANYONE’S suffering!

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  • That is exactly my point. How is “standardization” even possible when there are no objective standards possible regarding what diagnosis to give, how to do a danger assessment, optimum “treatment,” what “good outcomes” are, how to measure them, etc.? It’s all so completely arbitrary! How can “imminent risk” ever be anything but haphazard and varied?

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  • I am sure this is an accurate summary of what is happening today. One of the main reasons I left the crisis line was the “professionalization,” which meant more fear of lawsuits, more rules and expectations and rigidity, and a greater likelihood of sending the police out on calls that did not really pose any danger at all. And the lack of any kind of objective standards for police dispatching or diagnosing or anything at all in the “mental health” world makes “quality control” almost impossible.

    But it does encourage me to know that crisis lines do still exist where dispatching is not an option, and I wanted to make sure I shared that fact. Of course, it’s a volunteer crisis line, not a “professional” one!

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  • My experience (and I have a lot) is that crisis lines I’ve worked at or volunteered at had a wide range of different views on what to do about suicidal callers. I was a supervisor for a volunteer crisis line in Portland, OR, and we tried only to talk unless a person had a specific plan and intent to carry it out. The line contract was taken over by a “professional” service and the likelihood of a dispatch went up quite significantly, though they did eventually develop a “crisis team” who would see some of the people without police being involved. I later volunteered at a crisis line that never traced or dispatched under any circumstances. So it’s not legitimate to overgeneralize – different crisis lines have different philosophies, and it may also depend very much on whom you reach when you call. I can see people being VERY cautious about sharing that they are suicidal with such a crisis line, without knowing what their general philosophy about such calls is and how frequently they tend to dispatch the police!

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  • I’m not sure I’d say the act of a stimulant improving concentration temporarily represents “healing” per se. Smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol reduces anxiety for many, but I’d not suggest they are “healed” by the process. There are no doubt some healing processes that are mediated by drugs, but I consider this to be more or less incidental to psychiatry’s intent. For instance, I know of a guy who took stimulants for a little while and said he discovered a mental state he could get to that way, then he STOPPED taking the stimulants and found other ways to achieve that same kind of mental state. I’d call that a kind of healing, and the stimulants were a part of it, but no psychiatrist would recommend or approve of the real healing part of that action.

    Anyway, that’s just my personal view on it. Some people find psychiatric drugs beneficial for whatever reason, and more power to them, but I don’t think it’s a form of “healing” to take a drug that makes you feel better temporarily. It might be the first step in healing, but psychiatry as a rule discourages any attempt at any further “steps,” in my experience. Healing tends to happen despite their interventions, not because of them.

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  • It does feel more than a little ironic to hear that she was attacked for questioning the efficacy of antidepressants, and yet failure to take antidepressants is assumed to be the cause of her suicide. As I said earlier, wherever you come down on the “cause” of her suicide, which of course, we will never really know, it is VERY clear to me that psychiatry did NOT get her to a place where she achieved “good mental health.” She clearly eventually gave up on psychiatry because it failed her. It is more than a little disingenuous to imply that her abandoning a practice that never really worked for her is somehow responsible for her despair.

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  • My reality is that therapists who can create a kind and secure environment for a client to share and to some extent be challenged to seek new perspectives have success, regardless of the model they use. “DBT” will work well in the hands of a highly competent therapist, and will be a disaster in the hands of an incompetent one. CBT will similarly be successful to the degree the therapist can create a safe and connected environment where a person can share their fears and explore new options without feeling judged or threatened by the therapist. Whereas an insensitive or self-involved or “rote” therapist will have no success with CBT or any other approach.

    There is no way any person can become a “good therapist” by studying a manual and following instructions without truly understanding the nature of the delicate and emotionally sensitive interactions they need to become a part of. There is solid research supporting this viewpoint. I don’t think DBT is good or bad in and of itself, I just think it’s a bunch of possible tools that a competent therapist can use to build up their client’s feelings of success and control, or a bunch of possible tools an incompetent therapist can use to make their clients feel worse and then blame the clients for the therapists’ own failure.

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  • Here is one study showing how stigma is INCREASED by explaining “mental disorders” as biological problems.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9842491/

    Here is another:

    https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/biological-explanations-may-not-reduce-mental-health-stigma-0124181

    Considering there is absolutely NO evidence that any of the DSM “mental disorders” are fully or primarily caused by biological problems or issues, it’s mystifying why “anti-stigma” campaigns focus so much on convincing people that “mental disorders” are “illnesses like any other.” Unless the intent is not, in fact, to fight stigma, but to fight resistance to accepting drug therapy as the first line intervention for these ostensible “disorders.” Then and only then does this focus make any kind of sense. But then calling these “anti-stigma campaigns” isn’t very honest, is it?

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  • They also screen out suicidal people from the vast majority of these clinical trials, so these are not “suicidal people getting the energy to do it.” These are people who, for the most part, were not suicidal until they took the drugs. They most definitely can and do cause suicidal thinking. Hence, the black box warning. That warning ought to be enough for anyone to acknowledge the possibility.

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  • As extreme and simplistic as the idea that “schizophrenia” is in all cases caused by genetic or biological malfunctions which no one has ever been able to detect but we KNOW must be there?

    I’m always the enemy of extreme and simplistic. I just want to make sure that everyone is fully aware of the extreme simplistic basis for these ridiculous psychiatric “diagnoses” and the insistence on “treatments” being determined by such laughably unscientific claims. The proper attitude toward any case of “schizophrenia” is that we have a NAME but very little knowledge of what is going on IN THIS CASE and need to explore what’s happening IN THIS CASE and what might work IN THIS CASE. Trying to generalize based on these laughable “syndromes” where two people can both be “diagnosed” and literally have no symptoms in common (try it some time, it’s quite possible in at least schizophrenia and major depression by my direct observation) is almost as far away from scientific as one can get.

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  • I always find it odd that defenders of the current psychiatric paradigm so frequently conflate criticisms of that paradigm with ‘stigma concerning mental health.’ The two have literally nothing to do with each other. There is, in fact, HUGE “stigma” for people suffering emotional pain who DON’T use psychiatric drugs as part of their treatment, and those who choose to discontinue such treatment are often attacked relentlessly by the very people who are supposed to be helping them.

    There is certainly general discrimination in the public sphere against people who qualify for or identify with a “mental health diagnosis.” On that point, I’m sure you will find no disagreement on this site whatsoever. However, it is actually shown by scientific research that teaching people to view “mental illness” as a brain disorder of some sort INCREASES “stigma” and discrimination by making it easier for people to emotionally distance themselves from those who are suffering, while a “trauma-based” framing increases empathy and DECREASES stigma.

    So please don’t blame “stigma” on those who question the accepted psychiatric paradigm. It is the accepted paradigm itself which is responsible for most of the stigma, according to their own research. There is nothing wrong with questioning the scientific validity of psychiatry’s unproven assumptions, nor does questioning those assumptions mean or imply that those finding psychiatric drugs helpful are wrong or need to be forbidden from using them. Again, the two issues have literally not a thing in common.

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  • There is a VERY high correlation between childhood sexual trauma and psychosis.

    https://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/schizophrenia/23087

    It is not at all far fetched to suppose that childhood abuse can contribute to the eventual development of psychotic states. There is also strong correlation with being an immigrant and living in an urban environment.

    As in all of the so-called “mental disorders,” the situation is FAR more complex than the “mental health” world would like us to believe. There is “no proof” (to use your words) that ANY “mental illness” as defined by the DSM is caused by any measurable biological/genetic factor either. I’d agree that current drug use and current trauma are often overlooked as contributing factors in psychosis. Maybe the problem is regarding “psychosis” as if it must always be caused by the same things or “treated” in the same fashion. Maybe there are many “causes” that work differently in many different people, and we ought to scrap the idea that “schizophrenia” is a “thing” that has a specific cause.

    Steve

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  • Additionally, a very significant percentage of studies use a “placebo washout” design, where they screen people who DO respond to the placebo out of the trials! This is obviously designed to minimize the placebo response and make it more likely that the drug will meet “statistical significance” vs. placebo. So far from using active placeboes, most studies actually try to weed out those who will respond to an INACTIVE placebo in order to bias the study in the direction of their drug. And somehow, this is not considered a violation of the scientific method!

    Here is a published article in a solid, scientific journal for the original poster to read. It goes over why the author concludes that more than half of all published scientific studies can’t be replicated, and hence are not valid. It ought to make him/her more cautious in assuming that anything published in a scientific journal is de facto proven truth!

    https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

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  • One article in an online publication has “done society a disservice!” Why refer back to Freud or Szasz to try and discredit the arguments of the author through the reverse “argument by authority” approach? Don’t you have your own arguments to make?

    It would appear to me you might want to re-read Szasz again, as he never claimed that the phenomena describes as “mental illness” did not exist, but that the idea that these were discrete and identifiable “disease states” of the body was mythological, as this concept is not supported by scientific facts.

    There is nothing “unqualified” about the argument that traumatic events alter people’s concept of who they are and how the world operates and what relationships are about. In fact, the entire movement toward “trauma informed care” is based on scientific proof that not only their behavior, but that people’s actual brain structures and activities can be dramatically altered both by early life trauma AND improved by healthy relationships later on in life. It is pretty regressive at this point for anyone to claim that traumatic events do NOT impact all of the so-called “mental illnesses” as defined by the DSM, however fuzzy and arbitrary those definitions may be. Even the most medicalized psychiatric supporters at this point know that the idea of a “chemical imbalance” or other purely physiological problem creating any “mental illness” being detectable by tests and repairable by drugs is completely unsupportable by scientific studies.

    Ironically, there is far MORE support for the remnants of Freud’s “trauma theory” through the “trauma informed care” movement than for the idea that any discrete “mental illness” described by the DSM is a scientifically valid description of reality. Even more ironically, the DSM itself admits these things in its introduction, where it says that:

    “In DSM-IV, there is no assumption that each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries dividing it from other mental disorders or no mental disorder.” (APA, 2000, p. xxxi).”

    And even more tellingly: “There is also no assumption that all individuals described as having the same mental disorder are alike in all important ways.” (APA, 2000, p. xxxi).”

    So not only can the DSM criteria NOT distinguish between having one “disorder” or another “disorder,” or between having a “disorder” or having “no disorder.” Worse, two people who both CLEARLY QUALIFY for a given disorder may not have the same problems, needs, or possible solutions! What is the point of having “diagnoses” where the people who are so diagnosed are NOT “alike in all important ways?” Isn’t the point of a “diagnosis” to group together people who have similar needs and issues and distinguish people who have similar presentations but different underlying causes? These two clauses admit outright that these “diagnoses” are scientifically and practically meaningless!

    So before you go about accusing others of “unqualified arguments,” it might be wise to spend some time to qualify your own arguments. No one arguing in favor of the DSM “diagnoses” being taken seriously in any scientific manner is in a position to criticize anyone else for being “unscientific!”

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  • It is easy to move from “she wasn’t taking her meds” or “she engaged in recreational drug use” to “she killed herself because she stopped her meds” and/or “she killed herself because she’s an addict.” Neither of those premises has any more evidence backing them up than the “psychiatry killed her” idea. Any of those are possible, none are provable. But one thing we DO know for sure – this person had the best of available psychiatric care for decades, did not “resist” or “rebel” but in fact embraced the system for most of that time, and all of that “help” did not prevent her eventual suicide. It is certainly NOT valid to suggest that everything was going just fine before she “quit her meds!” It sounds from her blogs like she struggled the entire time she was “in treatment” and went another direction for whatever reason she chose. It would be EXTREMELY naïve to look at her situation and say, “if only she’d stayed on her meds…” Whether her suicide was caused by her engagement or disengagement with “the system” is not something we can determine, but I think it is more than fair to say that psychiatry failed her in many ways, and it’s never appropriate in my mind to blame the client for quitting services when the services have not been successful. If psychiatry were the answer for her, 20 or more years of committed engagement with the psychiatric system would have led to a different outcome. I think it’s more than fair to suggest that psychiatry AT BEST did not help the situation, despite her being fully committed to following their instructions for many years. Let’s not blame “not taking her meds” so easily, since we’re hearing we’re not supposed to be so “black and white” in our thinking as the author supposedly is.

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  • It is true that we don’t ever know what prompted a particular person’s suicide. What we DO know in this case is that decades of psychiatric treatment did not prevent it. Whether it contributed substantially to the event or not will always be speculative, but it’s equally speculative to say, “Antidepressants save lives,” when we don’t know how people would have acted under differing circumstances.

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  • It sounds like you might need some help getting away from an abusive partner! Are there any domestic abuse hotlines or programs in your area? There is hope, but you will have to figure out a way of putting at least some emotional distance between you and your husband. No one should be forced to live with someone who hates them so much they intentionally make an addict out of her!

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  • I would add that the presence of psychiatric drugs not only can do damage itself, but it also diverts young people (and older people) from other approaches that have been successful over time, both formally and informally. It may be the lack of developing support networks as much as drug side effects that are helping cause the deterioration of youth “mental health” today.

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  • There are actually plenty of hard scientific studies showing that psychotropic medications IN GENERAL tend to create worse clinical outcomes. Harrow et al for instance showed that people with poorer prognoses that took antipsychotics only briefly or not at all did BETTER than those who had better prognoses and took antipsychotics long term. So on the average, they were worse off taking psychotropic drugs.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5661946/

    Studies on antidepressants and “ADHD” also show no average benefit or worse outcomes for those taking drugs over the long term.

    Multiple studies show an increase in suicidal thinking and acts in those taking antidepressants, especially when younger.

    Many studies show the “severely mentally ill” have shorter life spans than the average person, much of it due to heart and metabolic problems that are known to be caused by antipsychotic drugs (clearly, there are other contributing factors as well, but treatment is associated with reduced life span).

    Your analogies are completely inappropriate. Taking diabetic treatment does not INCREASE the number of amputations, it decreases them. The same can’t be said for psychosis and antipsychotics or suicide and antidepressants. Not to mention, diabetes is known to be caused by a lack of insulin in all cases. No one suffers from psychosis for a lack of antipsychotics.

    Perhaps a more open mind and some honest research will help you see that the situation is not as black and white as you currently believe. You might start by reading Whitaker’s book, “Anatomy of an Epidemic.” It could be quite enlightening.

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  • MIA is mostly interested in looking at alternatives to the “medical model.” It is unlikely we will want to promote any “antipsychotic” drugs given the history of failure and worsening of “symptoms” and in fact the shortening of lives resulting from the “antipsychotics” currently in use. It seems very unlikely that the “new” drugs will be doing anything beyond trying to suppress dopamine and maybe suppress the uptake of Serotonin like Risperdal and Seroquel and the other current drugs.

    It is truly a problem to be unable to continue. I’m betting no one warned you this could be an outcome of taking them in the first place! Have you talked to anyone who specializes in getting off drugs? There are such people around, but most psychiatrists either don’t know or actively try to prevent any effort for people to get off.

    Anyone else have thoughts?

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  • The use of the term “inclusion” already marginalizes the peer support workers. Who gets to decide if they are “included” or not? Obviously the REAL workers, who are by definition more important than the “peer workers” because they can “include” them or not at their whim.

    Reminds me of the concept of “shared decision making,” where clinicians are “encouraged” to “take the views of their clients into account” before making decisions. Obviously, the people being asked to “allow” their clients to have a “voice” are already trampling the rights of clients to true informed consent, and asking them nicely to please ask my opinion before you decide what to do to me is hardly a viable solution.

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  • To be clear, I am not against systematic interventions to help people who are struggling, as you seem to suggest. I just want to focus on things that actually work FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE CLIENT. There are some people I know who have used the drugs as a means to help themselves, and have suffered minimal adverse effects. I’ve also known others whose lives were destroyed following that path. I used to be a counselor/therapist and I believe helped lots of people find their way to a new path or direction for their lives. My approach helped a lot of folks, but I know it didn’t help everyone I came in contact with. I had a philosophy that allowed me to connect more directly with people about what their concerns and needs were, and I’ve taken people who had all kinds of different labels and been successful when they experienced failure in “the system.” I could share some pretty impressive stories of monumental changes in people who the “Mental health professionals” had decided were intractable.

    Others needed things I couldn’t provide. I tried to help them find some other pathway. I have never had or expressed the viewpoint that there is no such thing as suffering that requires some sort of advanced intervention. I am not sure where you ever got that idea, but I would appreciate it if you drop that as it applies to me. As you are against “bullying” as you so aptly put it, I’d really appreciate you not deciding for me what I believe and drawing conclusions on the basis of those assumptions.

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  • The problem is not that people don’t fully use the criteria (even though they almost never do), it’s that the criteria themselves are subjective, speculative, and completely unscientific in nature. You can’t judge “overdiagnosis” if there is no objective way to tell who “has” or “does not have” a particular “disorder.” The DSM itself admits in its introduction that 1) you can’t really tell who has which “disorder,” or where the line between “disorder” and “no disorder” can be drawn, and 2) any two people who COMPLETELY FIT the criteria at a given moment may not have the same problem or need the same kind of help. Of course, almost no one ever READS the introduction, and it’s couched in very squirmy language that requires interpretation, but it’s a pretty damning admission, don’t you think? We have no way of objectively determining which diagnosis you have, and even if you and another person are right in the center of the target, your diagnosis means nothing about the cause or your needs or what treatment to recommend. What is the value of such a “diagnosis?”

    When I did clinical work in the past, I simply talked to the client about his/her own conception of the problem and what they thought might have helped. While of course I asked good questions and made observations and brainstormed options with the client, in the end, the client was responsible for defining the problem and whether or not a particular intervention was “working.” It is arrogant in the extreme in my view for a clinician to enforce his/her views on what is “wrong” or what “should be done” on a client, as the main reason people suffer from “mental health issues” in the first place, ESPECIALLY when we’re talking about depression and/or anxiety, is because OTHER PEOPLE have taken over their lives and told them what to think, say or do and what was “right” in opposition to allowing the to follow their own personal “voice.” I consider it more abuse for a “professional” to boss a client around and disempower them the way they were disempowered by others in their pasts. Empowerment is the answer, not more powerful people exerting their control over the clients’ lives.

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  • Exactly. If the current model were working, people who USED TO BE disabled would now be OFF disability and working again! If someone’s disabled with, say, a bad knee, and gets knee surgery, we would expect that the corhort of such people would be LESS disabled than before the surgery! There may be a few for whom it did not work and they didn’t get better or got worse, but overall, the average disability level would have to go DOWN for this intervention to be considered effective! If people are MORE likely to be unable to work and participate in society AFTER receiving psychiatric “treatment” than before – well, there isn’t a much better definition of “ineffective” or indeed “counterproductive” available than having a “treatment” actually INCREASE the disability rate of its recipients!

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  • Again, I think you are confusing efforts to help with effectiveness. Stating things like “ECT is effective and safe” is just as dangerous or moreso than saying, “ECT can have serious adverse effects which should be considered before undertaking such a course of action.” Are you seriously claiming that there are NO or MINIMAL adverse reactions to “ECT” despite all of the hard and soft data showing that the results for some people are devastating? You do realize that “ECT” is the intentional induction of a convulsive seizure (hence the name) and that under normal circumstances, such seizures are considered dangerous and people take drugs to avoid them because of potential brain damage? Why would an intentionally induced seizure NOT be likely to produce brain damage when a spontaneous one IS likely to produce such damage?

    My beef with psychiatry is mostly the blithe dismissal of very real concerns that exist, as you demonstrate in your comment. It is not HATEFUL toward psychiatry to report on actual events and studies that challenge the conventional wisdom. “Trust me” is a dangerous comment for ANY physician to make, but more particularly those working in psychiatry, where knowledge is scarce and speculative on the ground and no one really understands the exact cause of ANY “disorder,” or even if such a “disorder” syndrome is a legitimate entity for study rather than a broad collection of phenomena which have been cast together into a syndrome because we don’t understand them, purporting to “know all about it” is just a blatant deception.

    Psychiatry would be a lot better off as a medical specialty if it took a big dose of humility and started to understand that these bad results are very often NOT random or made up or the result of “lifestyle issues,” but are very real and potentially dangerous side effects of the “treatments” they are handing out. That way, at least some measure of “informed consent” can be practiced, rather than providing bland and scientifically empty reassurances such as “ECT is safe and effective.”

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  • I worked for 20 years in the foster care system and the stories are all too familiar. I helped get a law passed to require such evaluations of kids before they were ever put on psych drugs, and with the help of a state-level nurse, we also managed to implement a triggered review of any case involving certain polypharmacy criteria. The drugging rate HAS dropped since then in Oregon, but it’s still way too high. It is the inevitable result of inventing “diseases” that can’t be objectively determined and giving people drugs for them. There will always be “diagnostic creep” if there is no hard line to decide when intervention is needed, as is the case with essentially every psychiatric “disorder.”

    Another interesting fact was that those kids cared for by relatives had a MUCH lower rate of psych drugging than those being fostered by strangers. I have the greatest respect for the many excellent foster parents out there, but think it really helps to have someone in the room with the doctor who feels a familial obligation to care for the child’s needs. It’s way too easy in the current system to believe we are acting in the child’s interests when we’re actually acting to make the adults’ lives easier. That won’t change until we get rid of these bullshit subjective “diagnoses” as excuses to drug kids into compliance or docility.

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  • It depends on how frequent the adverse effects are and how seriously they damage people. There are plenty of banned therapies for various physiological problems that are considered too risky, even if they work for some people. I agree some people seem to report positive results, and I don’t particularly want to take that away from them, but it’s a cost/benefit analysis that transcends the needs of individuals.

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  • I also think we should remember that Vioxx, for instance, did provide pain relief for a lot of people. It also killed a certain small percentage of them, far from a majority, actually a very small minority. It was taken off the market. Because it killed people. But some people found it very helpful. The FDA decided it wasn’t OK to risk people dying, even a small percentage, in exchange for pain relief.

    It isn’t always OK to allow a potentially unsafe intervention even if some people do fine on it, especially when you have no way to determine a head of time whom you might accidentally kill or whose life you may accidentally ruin.

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  • Saying that these folks need help does NOT translate into we should assume and accept that what the psychiatric profession has to offer is the kind of “help” that they need. It is absolutely wrong to postulate that needing attention means needing the kind of abusive and destructive behavior that is often accepted and even encouraged in the name of “psychiatric care.”

    Those “helped” by psychiatry with psychotic disorders die on the average 20-25 years YOUNGER than those who don’t receive such treatment. While it’s obvious that there are many variables involved, I challenge you to name another profession where receiving treatment REDUCES average lifespan. Something is not right here. The problem is not that these individuals need attention, it’s that the kind of attention they receive is not the kind of attention then need in a large proportion of cases.

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  • Sadly, I can validate all of your observations in the people I’ve seen have to go through the system. Professionals who are prepared to be vulnerable and really care are rare and are themselves often attacked for doing so. I apparently had “bad boundaries,” according to those who wanted me to toe the line and stop giving my time and energy to actually trying to help people get OUT of the system and manage their own affairs. Eventually, I had to give it up because it was clear that the intention of “the system” was VERY different than my intention!

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  • The idea of the “paradoxical effect” was disproven in about 1978 by Judith Rappoport, et. al. They gave stimulants to non-ADHD teens after doing a baseline behavior check. They found the same effects – better focus, less easily distracted, less movement of extremities. Rappoport said that the idea this was different for “ADHD” kids was because people were looking for that change and therefore found it, while the “Normal” kids weren’t particularly hyperactive so no one would notice if their activity levels dropped. She called it an “artifact of observation.”

    “In the 1990’s, it was thought that stimulants worked “paradoxically” in those with ADHD. That is, in people without ADHD, stimulants would cause agitation and over stimulation but in those with ADHD, they would act paradoxically and calm them down. In fact, it was considered by some to be a kind of diagnostic test- if the medication helped, then by default the person must have ADHD.

    This is actually not the case.

    We know today that stimulants stimulate the whole brain- in everybody. Those that have ADHD and those that don’t respond in kind. Stimulants can help everyone to focus, regardless of meeting criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD or not.”

    https://www.adhd.nyc/single-post/2018/03/28/the-paradoxical-effect-from-misunderstanding-how-stimulants-worked-to-understanding-whe

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  • My understanding is that it’s far worse than most who haven’t experienced can imagine. I went through a VERY brief period after taking too much caffiene and being up all night. I couldn’t stand up, sit down, lay down, close my eyes, walk around – it didn’t matter what I did, it felt wrong. I’m sure this is a tiny fraction of what it would be like to have full-on akathesia, all day, every day, especially if your doctors didn’t warn you of it, or deny or minimize the effects on you. It sounds perfectly horrible!

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  • Uncontrolled sense of restlessness and discomfort in remaining in one place, induced by many different psychiatric drugs. The name literally means “Can’t stay still.” It is mostly a subjective internal experience that most folks would not notice unless they asked about it. It is reportedly very uncomfortable! I’d love it if someone who’s had this experience can add some to this description, as it seems very clinical to me and I don’t think conveys how awful it is to have to put up with.

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  • It sucks that they invalidated you like that! Seems like one of the worst things that happens as a result of the labelling process – soon nothing you say can be believed, they can dismiss anything you say as “symptoms.” It’s dehumanizing!

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  • “I’ve met no clinician dedicated to the care of those with neurobehavioral disorders whose repertoire of treatment possibilities didn’t span the entire biopsychosocial spectrum.”

    Well, I have. Plenty of them. Not all of them, but I’d say 50-50 would be optimistic in the psychiatry world.

    This sentence also subscribes to a certain viewpoint, calling people “those with neurobehavioral disorders,” and assuming that “treatment possibilities” are the answer. This lens in and of itself can blind you and others who see people this way to the many options available for approaching people who are finding the world difficult to sort out at a particular moment. You are assuming you can identify these “disorders” and can assign them to people, which is in and of itself a dehumanizing process. Additionally, seeing these issues as “neurobehavioral disorders” has been shown to DECREASE empathy and INCREASE bias and “stigma” against them. So it is possible that you and many others who see things this way may fully believe you are being open minded and humble, yet still believe you can “know” what is “wrong” with another person and can “tell them” what “treatment” they need. This disconnect can prevent trust from your clients, and can allow you to unconsciously judge people who don’t meet with your expectations.

    This is not casting aspersions – this is a simple truth that has been supported by scientific investigation. NONE of the DSM “disorders” have a consistent and testable biological basis, and so none of them are objectively “diagnosable.” Why not simply talk to each person about what THEY think is needed and what they want to change about their lives, and help them based on their framing of reality rather than forcing a “neurobehavioral” frame on what is often simply normal reactions to difficult circumstances?

    I hope that makes some sense to you.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    It sounds like we’re getting into different interpretations of the same statements here. My read of the comment was that the commenter was criticizing the labels as not being helpful in general, not saying that the poster/blogger for choosing that label for him/herself. It’s a very touchy area, and I can understand Lisa taking it the other way. I think I understand both viewpoints, and I think both have legitimacy, and I’m hoping we can respect that there are differences of viewpoint expressed at MIA and that they are generally not aimed at a person just because they disagree with that person. I’m glad both of you got to say what you needed to say, but I’m hoping we can move on from this discussion soon, as I don’t see any way to really resolve such a value-based disagreement. I leave it to you to decide if another comment or two is needed to come to some sort of closure.

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  • It is odd that he says no one’s heard of it but they all think it’s garbage! How can “they” think such things if “they” never heard of it?

    Sure sign that someone’s afraid to be found out when they start coming up with irrational attacks! Of course, a lot of his friends probably DO think it’s garbage, but I think the same thing about their “model!” Depends who you hang with, I guess!

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  • Very well put. The biggest difference in psychiatry is that psychiatrists can seriously make things up out of whole cloth and use “reference to authority” to “prove” they are right, since there are no actual criteria for success. As much as it may not be proven that reducing cholesterol levels has any positive effect on frequency or heart attacks or life expectancy, at least the “treatments” DO have to reduce cholesterol numbers. There’s no such measurement in psychiatry, so they can REALLY go wild with their claims, as soon as anyone believes their bogus “diagnoses” are real.

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  • It shouldn’t be the patients’ job to act on outcomes, it should be the doctors’ jobs. It is clear they have totally abdicated that responsibility, and that they insist on using the same “treatments” despite actual WORSENING outcomes for the clients.

    Though as someone else pointed out, if the desired “outcome” is to make money for the practitioners, they’re doing a fine job of it.

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  • Of course, no real analysis has been done on causes, because they’re afraid to find out the truth because they suspect it’s their wonderful drugs.

    Of course, life survival strategies and poverty and other stresses would contribute to this, but some of those strategies are actually a result of “treatment” in many cases. For instance, smoking is incredibly common in the “chronically mentally ill” and is often blamed for these dramatic statistics. But it is well known that cigarettes increase dopamine, and a discussion with the “patients” shows that many of them smoke to reduce the adverse effects of their “medications” that dramatically reduce their dopamine levels. And of course, being a “mental patient” almost ensures that poverty will result from long-term “treatment.” Drug abuse is also common among the “CMI” population, but I’d still maintain that this is another failure of the “mental heath” system, as an effective system would make people less likely rather than more likely to use street drugs.

    It’s all fine and good to blame the patients, but the hard reality is, more treatment leads to shorter lives, and there is no “explanation” that absolves the “doctors” from this horrible statistical result. No other “treatment” modality for any other disease state would allow this kind of statistic stand.

    There MIGHT be subgroups whose lives are extended by psychiatric intervention, but I have seen no study that has even looked at this question. If there were such findings, I’m pretty sure we’d see huge headlines saying “Psychiatric treatments increase longevity!” even if it applied to only 3% of the population!

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  • Just for the record, I’ve never studied psychology in any depth. My specialty is actually education, in which I have an MS. I sort of snuck into the “mental health” field through the back door, which may be part of why I never really bought into the “DSM worldview” or the psychiatric dogma. I agree with you 100% that the DSM is a complete scientific fraud.

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  • In fact, they will tell us over and over again that there IS no cure and taking their drugs will be our only hope of “managing the illness.” The choice of “Insulin for diabetes” was not one made by chance. That’s the reality they have always wanted to create, because it justifies endless drug prescriptions and the denial of other approaches meant to actually eliminate the problems they need to sell their products.

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  • I appreciate you sharing your experience, and I agree that lived experience should include everyone who has such experience, regardless of what that experience is.

    I do wonder, however, where you get the idea that if alternative approaches were identified, they would have been identified by psychiatry and adopted. I just finished posting on the article about Martin Harrow, who was apparently castigated and attacked for publishing research that did not agree with the psychiatric mainstream position that all “schizophrenic” diagnosed people must be maintained on antipsychotics for the rest of their lives. Harrow was no radical, he was a mainstream researcher who simply reported his findings of a very well-designed study. They attacked him simply because he challenged the status quo belief system and threatened the hierarchy’s control of the narrative. It seems very likely that the very best evidence of any alternative approach would be attacked and buried, rather than identified and accepted. That’s my view of it anyway, and I think that’s what the evidence tells us. Mainstream psychiatry is not particularly interested in alternative viewpoints.

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  • All very well said.

    RE: iron deficiency and “ADHD”:

    “The lower the levels of ferritin — a protein found inside cells that store iron — the more severe the symptoms. A small study, published in Pediatric Neurology, showed that symptoms improved when iron-deficient children with ADHD took an iron supplement.”

    https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-mineral-iron-supplement/#:~:text=Low%20Iron%20and%20ADHD&text=The%20lower%20the%20levels%20of,the%20more%20severe%20the%20symptoms.&text=A%20small%20study%2C%20published%20in,ADHD%20took%20an%20iron%20supplement.

    This is from ADDitude Magazine, hardly a bunch of antipsychiatry rebels!

    Of course, some “true believers” try to claim that “ADHD reduces iron levels!” No accounting for human stupidity, I guess.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR: I just want to be clear in approving the above comment that I am assuming the author means the abusive families of those “Mad people” who HAVE abusive families, as there are plenty of “Mad people’ who don’t have abusive families, though there are also plenty who do.

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  • That’s exactly my reaction! If you have two options, one of which is completely safe and without notable adverse effects, while the other has all sorts of possible damage AND stops working as soon as you stop it, and both are “equally effective,” clearly, the first is FAR preferable! But the researchers never seem to say this. Maybe they’re not “allowed” to!

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  • My point is that “mad” and “crazy” have both been used historically as more or less synonymous. There is nothing about “mad” that implies “mentally ill” in the modern sense. In fact, it is also synonymous for kind of wildly creative and spontaneous. There is also the usage of “mad skills,” meaning incredibly fantastic. And of course, “mad” also has the meaning of “angry,” which makes the choice of the word “mad” kind of interesting for a website like “Mad in America” – it can reflect any of the above meanings, including having difficulty with the weird expectations of modern society AND pissed off that we are expected to “be OK” with all that AND angry at the “system” for driving us all “mad!”

    So I think it’s a very rich word with a lot of nuances, very, very different from the extremely specific word, “Mentally ill,” which was created for the very purpose of “othering” folks by the “professionals” or “experts” claiming they have some authority to determine who is or is not “normal.”

    Anyway, that’s my take on it. And I’m not making comments as moderator here, just me as a person expressing my views on the point. I see no reason not to have “Mad Camp” as long as the more empowered uses of the term “mad” are intended and understood. The problem to me is not the word, it’s the intention behind the word, and I don’t see “mad” as necessarily having the the intent to disempower or other a person, especially if that person chooses to identify with “madness” as a means of empowering him/herself.

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  • As I think I’ve said before, we’ve kind of aired this out pretty thoroughly. There are people who want to “reclaim” the word “mad” from the psychiatric profession, and those who consider it unredeemably contaminated. I think everyone is entitled to their own view on that point. “Peer” is a different issue to me, as I believe it’s fair to say the term was invented BY the psychiatric profession for the purpose of “defanging” the antipsychiatry movement, and has some associations that are hard to shake. But the term “mad” (like the word “crazy”) has a long and varied history of use over centuries. In fact, I have seldom if ever heard psychiatrists or psychologists using the term “mad” at all. They usually eschew it for terms like “mentally ill” or “mentally disordered” or even “consumers.”

    But in any case, I think “mad” is going to remain an interesting and ambiguous term, and I can’t see these ambiguities being resolved in the MIA comments section any time soon!

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  • I agree. The drive to define things as “psychiatric” is as far from scientific as it could be. It’s a big-time marketing scheme, as the inventors of the DSM III have admitted out loud. And it of course is an effort to protect the status quo social dominance system from criticism by attacking anyone who isn’t “loving it” or at least keeping quiet about their objections as being “ill” rather than “damaged” or “oppressed” or simply “dissatisfied” with the current state of affairs. As in any “dysfunctional family,” those with the power are protected and those without power are blamed. The last thing anyone suffering from emotional stress and difficulties needs is to be blamed by those in power for their own distress!

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  • I agree absolutely. The framing of these problems as “disorders” and the semi-arbitrary division of such issues as being some sort of unitary problems is in itself hugely problematic, and accepting that framing means we’ve lost 3/4 of the battle already. The DSM is the key to psychiatry’s claims of legitimacy, and I don’t think we can undermine psychiatry’s hegemony until we challenge the legitimacy of their bogus “nomenclature” and pretense of knowledge about things they have no real understanding of.

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  • I will once again point out that fearing retaliation from one’s peers or superiors for reporting abuse is not STIGMA. It is DISCRIMINATION, plain and simple. The person is not ashamed of reporting, s/he is AFRAID of the consequences of reporting the event, and for very concrete and real reasons. They are being treated in a violent and threatening manner for seeking justice. VERY different from the concept of “stigma,” if it ever actually does apply to any kind of violent victimization such as rape or sexual assault.

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  • Yup. You can’t diagnose a “disorder” from averages. Just because something is more common in a particular population doesn’t make it a causal factor, as many in the non-identified population still have the same “something,” just in somewhat smaller numbers. This is the big problem with both brain scans and “genomic” studies – they rely heavily on correlations, but as any beginning scientist knows, “Correlation is not causation.”

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  • I do get that. But most of that is in the context of “diagnosis.” I’ve heard lots of arguments about whether someone qualifies for a “PTSD diagnosis” based on whether or not their experience could really be called “traumatic.” I think this is very damaging. Traumatic experiences are at the discretion of the person feeling traumatized. Minimization is another act of discrimination that is unfortunately encouraged by the whole idea of dividing people into the “mentally ill” and the “sane,” which as we both know is not a scientifically valid distinction.

    That’s my take on it anyway. Everyone on Earth has experienced trauma of one sort or another. Who is to say that being abandoned temporarily by one’s parents at the age of 6 is more or less of a trauma than being sexually molested by the babysitter or being told day after day that you’re too stupid to succeed? Something is as traumatic as the effect it has on the person being affected. No one else is really in a position to judge.

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  • Psychiatric drugs and demon dispossession have some common roots back there historically. Both identify a vague and unidentifiable “something” that has “taken over” the victim and needs to be “driven out” by physical and or psychological means, even when the ‘exorcists’ have no actual comprehension of what the entity that has “taken over” actually might be. On the whole, I’d be more in favor of demon dispossession, though – fewer ill effects on the body in general!

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    The use and meaning of the word “Mad” has been a constant controversy here for years. I totally understand the conflict from both sides. I hope we can all accept and understand that others’ use of the word is for their intended meaning, even if it means something else to us as individuals. I find “all or nothing” statements about this unproductive, and hope we can own our own beliefs and meanings without having to accuse everyone who doesn’t agree with us of some sort of misbehavior. As the prior poster says, “language is a tricky beast,” and I think we are best served by discussing how we find the word “mad” affects us or how we might seeing it affect others without the assumption that everyone has to see it the same way.

    Hope that makes sense. I don’t think we’re going to come up with a black and white answer to this nuanced question!

    P.S. I just came across this from Laura O posting earlier on this same thread. I hope she doesn’t mind my using it as a model. It is a perfect example of how to critique the use of this word without attacking others who see it differently:

    “I, too, would never label myself or others as “Mad”. For me, it’s a condescending, disparaging word that minimizes the very real suffering survivors experience in their lives.”

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  • The biggest problem with Freud is that he chickened out. He had it right at first, that many young women were being sexually abused by their relatives or others, and that their “Mental health issues” were largely caused by this. But his colleagues attacked him and he backed down, deciding that these recollections were “fantasies” in order to protect the men of the day from scrutiny. It took another hundred years before we finally came back to the point, and there is still a TON of resistance to the idea to this day. A large part of the effort to blame “mental illness” on the victim’s brain is that it deflects attention from the real causes, which are generally abuse/neglect, poverty and social dysfunction.

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  • I agree 100%. I had a dog who was neglected in her early life – she was constantly anxious and needed to be petted all the time to keep from freaking out. She also used to compulsively run away, much like abused/neglected teens in foster care often do. My friend also had a parrot who behaved quite “normally” most of the time, but whenever a wooden stick or rod was brought near him, he totally freaked out, going back and forth between attacking the stick and trying to hide from it. Sounds a lot like “PTSD” to me! (I mean the parrot, not my friend!)

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR:

    To yinyang: I have revised this comment slightly so it will pass our Posting Guidelines. I was unable to send you an email to discuss it, not sure exactly why, . If you want to be informed of or have feedback into moderation decisions, I’ll need a functioning email address from you. Thanks!

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  • It has always been my belief from observation that the main action of “antidepressants” was a general blunting of emotion. That result is described by many who take the SSRIs in particular, and fits with both the “positive” and “negative” reported effects. If one is very anxious all the time, a blunting of emotions can be associated with reduces anxiety, which might seem positive. If one is being held back from doing impulsive things (including killing oneself or harming others) by fear of the consequences, blunting may result in manic episodes, increase in suicidality, or increase in impulsive violence, including those occasional murderous acts we all have heard about. Loss of sexual function is also consistent with blunting of physiological sensations and with impairment of the motivational system to rewards (rewards are less rewarding, hence not as much worth pursuing, or sometimes not even physiologically feasible). There isn’t much that the SSRIs do that isn’t explained by emotional blunting. I think that is their main mechanism of action. And I think it is well worth recognizing that these are not “antidepressants” but “antiemotion” pills, and to ask whether this is really something that society as a whole really wants to be promoting as a benefit.

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  • That is exactly how I used to work. I always used the client’s exact words or as close as I could get in framing the problem. The only purpose for DSM “diagnoses” was to obtain reimbursement, and if the topic of “diagnosis” ever came up in discussion (and it usually did not), I would tell them exactly that. I’d say I gave them the best “diagnosis” I could to get them the kind of help they were needing/asking for, and that the “diagnosis” meant nothing else but that. I always told folks that they were the only ones who knew what, if anything, was “wrong” and what would work. I was just helping them to sort that out for themselves.

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  • You are not taking responsibility for the impact of your invalidation of others. You have not demystified anything that I can see, it comes across that you have simply told another poster they were too stupid to figure out how to get EMDR paid for. It came across as condescending and had a hurtful effect. I would hope that you as a professional carer would want to know that so as to avoid doing similar harm in the future. At a minimum, you could own your own experience (“I personally haven’t had that problem” or “It’s my understanding that most insurance will pay for EMDR”) without telling the other person they were wrong for saying otherwise. You don’t know enough about their situation to presume to tell them what can and can’t be covered in their context, and I think you’d be well served to remember that next time you comment on another person’s experience.

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  • Rachel, I’m baffled how many times you seem to have taken the exact opposite from my words that I am intending to communicate! I am a HUGE believer in the impact of environment and family upbringing as the MAJOR CAUSE of most of the DSM “diagnoses,” and science backs me up on this point. Where on earth did you get the idea I thought otherwise? I need to figure out what I’m saying that is not getting across to you. It’s really confusing to me how you are mistaking my meaning so frequently, even though I sense that you are doing your best to make sense of it!

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  • Touche! It is fascinating that the psychiatric mainstream claims that these “mental illnesses” are all or mostly genetic, yet they have to use torture of animals to create similar circumstances. Wasn’t the “wire monkey” set of experiments sufficient to establish that early childhood mistreatment/neglect leads to a host of “mental illnesses” for adults? How many times do we have to do the same experiments and still fail to see the real results?

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  • Quite so. But you and I are in no position to judge how easy or difficult it may be to find a provider willing to support/justify the treatment the client wants. I’m saying it’s important that folks with professional backgrounds, like you and I, learn to step down from our one-up power positions and listen to the people actually in the trenches seeking services. If someone says, “I can’t get a therapist who will provide EMDR because I have a BPD diagnosis,” it is our job to listen to and believe them, because we are not in their position. A more respectful approach would be to ask some questions, like, “What state are you in? What have the therapists said to you when you asked? Is it the therapist refusing to ask or the insurance company refusing to cover it? What kind of “reasons” are you getting from the insurance company?” Then maybe we can help that person find a path toward getting it covered. Just saying, “No, you’re wrong, it’s covered by your insurance” comes across as both condescending and invalidative of the very real experience of the poster. It is, for lack of a better word, a rather unprofessional approach, IMHO.

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  • As I have always maintained, people act a certain way because on some level it seems necessary or wise for their own survival. To think that folks can simply “think away” their own history and the reasons for their fears and their insistence on or avoidance of certain situations is actually quite invalidative of their experience. And suggests simplistic answers, such as “Just think the right thoughts and you’ll feel better soon!” which are hardly realistic for people struggling with past and often current abuse, often by the very system that’s claiming to help them. And it provides cover for blaming the victim for “failing to think the right thoughts” or “failing to take the program seriously” when it doesn’t work for them.

    I’ve been told by several people that DBT practitioners sometimes FORCE people to engage in “mindfulness” activities. Nothing could show more ignorance of how mindfulness really works than thinking you can force someone to do it and expect any kind of results. These manualized “therapy programs” are of very little use in most cases, as what the person really needs is someone to LISTEN and UNDERSTAND them, and help THEM make their own minds up about what they want to be different and whether or not a certain approach is working for them.

    And your last comment is most important. There is no way to completely set one’s issues aside as a therapist. The best one can do is to be aware that you DO have issues and you WILL bring them to the session, and to be aware enough of them to distinguish between your own needs and the client’s needs. The number of people who can actually do this is incredibly small!

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  • Not saying that at all. I’m saying to do legitimate scientific research, you need a legitimate research group of people who have something that makes them the same. Murderers don’t qualify as such a group, as they are selected by a specific kind of behavior AND by the fact that they got convicted. It could be an interesting subject that might LEAD to some scientific hypotheses, which could then be tested, but simply comparing brains of convicted murderers smacks of “phrenology,” where the head shapes of criminals were compared to conclude what commonalities criminals shared in order to predict criminality. It was, of course, a complete bust, but it all sounded very “scientific.” So far, brain scan research has been used to “explain” a lot of things that it doesn’t explain at all. I’m very skeptical based on the sketchy history of brain scan research as well as the obvious heterogeneity of the group of “convicted murderers” and would have to see the basis for the research to judge.

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  • It’s always interesting to listen to these ideas, but they are mostly very unscientific, relying on the assumption that correlation = causation. The fact that there may be some similarities between brain scans of two people who happen to be murderers proves absolutely nothing at all. Until we can see that most or all murderers have the same brain activity/structures and that no one or almost no one who doesn’t murder doesn’t have them, we have nothing of use scientifically. Murder, like all human behavior, is extremely complex, and there is no reason to believe that it is “caused” by a particular physiological state.

    I just wanted to clarify where I was coming from. My main point is that you can’t vote diseases in and out of existence. There needs to be some sort of objective means of distinguishing between who does and does not “have” a particular “diagnosis,” and such means simply do not exist for ANY “DSM diagnosis.”

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  • I think you are speaking in technical terms of what is theoretically possible, while the other posters are speaking in terms of what ACTUALLY HAPPENS in the real world. It’s probably neither possible nor appropriate for those of us who haven’t been in the position of seeking “treatment.” I defer to those who have been on that side of the table.

    That being said, I really do appreciate your efforts to destigmatize the BPD “diagnosis.” I think your framing of these “diagnoses” is about as sane as anyone working within the system can make it. But I do think it’s important to remember that you (and I) are/were outliers and that most clients of the “mental health system” are not treated with anything close to the degree of respect for their context than what you are describing.

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  • I refer to it only as a way that some people identify themselves. Of course, I don’t see psychiatry as a “product” in the same sense as a tube of toothpaste. First off, toothpaste doesn’t pretend to be more than it is. Second, no one can legally force you to accept their “toothpaste” as a “product” that they can force down your throat! I suppose the person is a “consumer” in the sense that they are forced to “consume” the drugs that are selected for them, but the social meaning of “consumer” suggests a person who can use their buying power to influence what products are available. That certainly does not apply to the bulk of psychiatric “participants,” willing or not.

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  • It is extremely easy to describe a behavior without a label. Some examples: “I feel worried every time I go out of the house. I’m not afraid of anything specific, just have this big surge of anxiety.”

    “When Mary visits her mother, she sees things in the house that remind her of her sexual abuse as a child by her father, and she often experiences flashbacks of the event.”

    “Monique has never left her children with another caregiver in 5 years. She states that she is afraid that her children will be sexually abused. When asked, she relates that she was also sexually abused as a child.”

    These describe what is happening far more accurately than “I have agoraphobia” or “She suffers from PTSD” or “She’s got an adjustment disorder.” And they invite an exploration of why these things are happening, and what might be done about them. In the latter case, a very short intervention inviting her to find someone she knew would NOT sexually abuse her child and make a plan to get a break led to a COMPLETE TURNAROUND in her life, from suicidal to passionately pursuing a sexual abuse recovery program. I met her two weeks later and she was virtually unrecognizable, she was so pumped. So why did she need a “diagnosis?” She did not. She needed someone to be interested in her situation and to drill down as to her motivations and to help her take some sort of effective ACTION to challenge her unproductive but understandable fears.

    Some doctors THINK “mental illness” is a ‘misfiring of the brain,’ but no one really knows what that really means, even though they say that. There is no evidence of “proper firing” or “misfiring” that they can point to, no measurement of correct “chemical balances” that they can perform, no “normal brain” they can compare yours to and show some sort of abnormality. I find (and science supports me in this) that this kind of explanation leads many folks to feeling hopeless and disempowered, and deflects attention from the causes and possible interventions that might let the person herself take more control of her life.

    I am certain that different people have variations in their genetic makeup, and I don’t exclude the possibility that in SOME cases, this may create some kind of vulnerability. But that does NOT make the genetic differences a “disease” marker. First off, there is absolutely no reliable evidence that any “mental disorder” associates with any “genetic abnormality” in the brain. The best correlations are in the single digits for large groups of genes considered together, but none is even close to being able to predict ANY “mental disorder” in the entire manual. Whereas most “mental disorders” correlate at over 80% levels with childhood adversity and mistreatment. Since genes are the one thing in the entire equation we can NOT change, it seems pretty silly to spend billions researching genetic causes when we know that childhood adversity is a very ADDRESSABLE reason for these “disorders” occurring.

    In your case, you yourself identify that others with similar genetics have some similar behavioral tendencies, but your case became more severe because of the abuse you suffered. It seems if you need a “diagnosis” it ought to be “Victim of childhood violence,” which is at least observably true. Saying someone “has OCD” and trying to blame it on your brain is very typical psychiatric narrative, but it is pure speculation on their part, they know NOTHING about the actual causes of these behaviors and emotions.

    If their approach works for you, more power to you. I would never want to take that away from you. But your personally benefiting from what they did with you does not legitimize the DSM, which the head of the NIMH himself said “lacked validity” a few years back. The NIMH even stopped using the DSM diagnoses for research after that time. It is VERY legitimate to question the DSM categories scientifically, and it has nothing to do with believing or not believing that people in distress need assistance. I think everyone should do what works for them, but I am opposed to lying to people about what is known just so they’ll be more comfortable accepting whatever treatment is offered.

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  • I am not calling you “brainwashed,” and I have never suggested eliminating all treatment, and I don’t know how you would draw that conclusion from what I wrote. My comments clearly criticize not TREATMENT but the idea that the DSM can “diagnose” people accurately of some kind of medical problem using checklists of problematic behaviors, thoughts, and emotions.

    Perhaps you are thinking that DSM “diagnoses” are the same as treatment? I understand that people benefit from getting outside help, and professional assistance CAN be quite useful to some folks if you have the right professional and the right approach.

    But pretending that somehow professionals can distinguish between “obsessive thoughts” and “intrusive thoughts” and normal thoughts is not scientific, and the DSM itself says it is unable to do that. I’ve helped lots of people over the years improve the condition of their lives, and never once did a “diagnosis” play any role in helping bring it about.

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  • Most psych survivors were psych consumers at one time. I’d say it depends on the “consumer.” Those who are invested in promoting the current system need to be left alone, but there are many “consumers” who are confused, angry, frustrated, and beginning to doubt the veracity of the psychiatric narrative. Such people need to hear from survivors rather than those other promotors of the status quo referred to above.

    I consider it bigoted to assume that all “consumers” are the same.

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  • I understand that you believe these “disorders” have some real scientific meaning. I do not. Being very familiar with the DSM, these “disorders” are very simply descriptions of behavior or thoughts or emotions a person might have which tend for whatever reason to occur together.

    Intrusive thoughts are VERY common with people recovering from traumatic experiences, and seem to actually be part of the DSM description for PTSD. So how can you tell if you have “covert OCD” or “PTSD” or simply have thoughts you don’t want to have that seem to come from the outside? I’m not against DESCRIBING things I just think putting a name on something one observes is not the same as “diagnosing.” A diagnosis ought to be aimed at establishing cause, distinguishing between seemingly similar presentations based on cause, and distinguishing between effective treatments/interventions for the situation. As a former counselor/therapist, I found little to no value in labeling a person’s experience based on the DSM. I simply went directly to “What are you experiencing?” and then looked for the underlying reasons the person may be experiencing these things. “Intrusive thoughts” can have many different origins, and I’d start by asking what the thoughts were and when they arose and go from there. No “diagnosis” is needed – all I needed to know was that the client was willing to share their experiences with me and help me understand what was happening to them. The only reason I ever gave a DSM diagnosis was for insurance reimbursement, and that’s about all they are good for, IMHO.

    I’m sorry if that clashes with your beliefs, and I don’t expect you to agree with me or think less of you if you don’t. But my opinion is based on decades of experience and I’m not likely to change it, as I feel I have a very good handle on exactly what these “diagnoses” really represent.

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  • I don’t care how the DSM 5 “organizes” their fictional definitions of “disorders.” As I noted, the DSM itself admits it can’t clearly distinguish between someone who has Disorder A or Disorder B or Disorder A and nothing at all wrong with them. It goes on further to say that “There is also no assumption that two people with the same disorder are alike in all important ways.” In other words, two people with the same “disorder” may have very different needs and very different causes and very different approaches may be needed to help them, even though they have the same “diagnosis.”

    What is the point of “diagnosing” people with something that they may or may not have, when even those who fit the same “diagnosis” may have totally different problems requiring totally different solutions? It makes the concept of “comorbidity” more than a bit of a joke. Do I have “excessive digital-nasal insertion disorder” or do I have “itchy nasal passage disorder?” Maybe it’s comorbid, because my nose itches AND I pick my nose to relieve it? Or is the latter simply a consequence of the former diagnosis?

    The real question is, why should anyone care what label you put on my behavior? Why not just let me pick my nose, or help me with the itchiness or find something useful to do besides “diagnosing” something you have absolutely no understanding of?

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  • It is so obvious how biased they are toward the evidence by how they talk about it. For abuse to have CAUSED “schizophrenia,” apparently we need proof beyond a reasonable doubt that EVERY case of “schizophrenia” is caused by abuse, despite there being no reason to assume all cases of “schizophrenia” are caused by any one thing, it being a behavioral syndrome that could have many causes. But for biological causation, a tiny correlation of hundreds of genes associated with less than a tenth of cases is evidence that “schizophrenia has a biological cause,” even though correlations with childhood abuse are ten or a hundred times stronger. How is it that the world of science and medicine is still willing to entertain and publish such obviously biased nonsense?

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  • The very concept of “Comorbid disorders” presumes that the DSM is able to distinguish between one “disorder” and another, while the DSM itself asserts its own inability to do so.

    “In DSM, there is no assumption that each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries dividing it from other mental disorders or from no disorder.”

    In other words, there is no clear line between “disorders,” so the concept of “comorbid disorders” is totally invalid.

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  • I would also ask why we would assume that the woman would NOT have lay down on the bridge just because she was “medicated.” And the term “leaving [her] unmedicated” reflects a very paternalistic attitude, as if we have a right to “leave” or “not leave” her in a particular degree of “medicatedness.” As if she herself has no particular rights to decide her own course of action.

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  • I think any medical diagnosis needs to be able to differentiate between a “normal” and a “diseased” state, objectively and consistently. Medicine is to treat the BODY. “Psychiatry” and “Psychology” are supposed to deal with the “psyche,” aka the Human Spirit. Attempts to treat spiritual issues with drugs and surgery and electric-shock-induced seizures are doomed for failure. So I think the “treatment” of any spiritual/emotional condition does not belong in the realm of medicine, and therefore the idea of “diagnosis” in the medical sense is irrelevant, and likely unavoidably destructive.

    I much prefer the use of descriptive language. “Mary hears voices speaking to her that others can’t hear. She is feeling very anxious and worried that the voices are going to tell her to kill herself, as they have done in the past. She feels safest at her sister’s house, who is good at calming her down.” That sort of thing is a LOT more helpful than saying, “She’s got schizophrenia!”

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  • I never have agreed with almost anything Dr. Pies has said. He’s a marketing agent for psychiatry.

    What he’s saying in the article is technically true, but he is not taking into account HOW the DSM is used. The fact that someone has a “medical diagnosis” opens the door to stigmatization, which has been proven over and over again to be greater the more medically the causes of these “diagnoses” are viewed. A lot of the text he includes are from the introduction and clinical guidelines, which I’m sorry to say most clinicians don’t bother to read, or if they do, fail to put into practice. Pies also fails to give any reason, and in facts argues AGAINST it, for putting people into these “fuzzy categories” in the first place. Any reasoning he uses is more sociology/anthropology than medical in nature. By admitting there is no clear boundary between one “disorder” and another, and between having a “disorder” and having “no disorder,” he acknowledges that the whole house of cards blows down with the slightest puff of air.

    Here is an example in his own words: “When a patient presents with the complaint, “I hear threatening voices in my head,” we simply must diagnose—a word whose etymology means, “knowing the difference between.” For example, we must know the difference between “threatening voices” stemming from combat-related trauma, on the one hand, versus schizophrenia or anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis15 on the other. Otherwise, our treatment is likely to be misguided.”

    Note he gives NO real reason why he “MUST DIAGNOSE,” and defines diagnosis as “knowing the difference between.” But he just admitted above that the DSM itself asserts no ability to “know the difference” between being disordered or not, or between having one diagnosis or another! So giving a DSM diagnosis does NOT provide “the difference between,” it actually confuses such efforts by lumping people with widely differing problems into the same “diagnosis!”

    Notice also in his example that he is NOT talking about differentiating between “mental disorders,” but between causes (Combat trauma, encephalitis, or the mysterious and undefined “schizophrenia,” which is such a vague “diagnosis” that the Japanese are not even using it any longer.)

    In short, Pies and company talk a good game, but when you look at what he’s REALLY saying, it’s simply more marketing of ideas that don’t have any scientific basis at all.

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  • Again, this would not be a “cause” of “ADHD,” as the large majority of those so diagnosed do NOT have this mutation, and there are apparently lots of people who have the mutation who DON’T get diagnosed with “ADHD.” There may be a VERY small subset of those diagnosed who have this problem, and I have no objection to folks testing for this anomaly and doing some sort of research on the tiny subgroup. But at that point, they are no longer diagnosed with “ADHD,” they are diagnosed with CDH2 mutation, which has to be made very clear in order to get any useful outcome.

    As to stimulant “treatment,” as I indicated earlier, there is little to no evidence that using stimulants in the long term improves overall outcomes for the “ADHD” cohort, and there are notable adverse effects, including growth retardation, loss of appetite, and psychotic symptoms in up to 10% or more of users at “therapeutic” dosages. But one would have to look at the CDH2 subgroup and look at them separately to really answer that question. In my book, if there are risks and no real long-term benefits, I don’t care if there IS a biological cause, there is nothing to recommend assuming the risk of drugging kids without a clear and substantial benefit.

    The other problem is who gets to define what is beneficial? If the teachers are telling the story, they might decide that being relatively inert and sitting quietly in a chair all day is a beneficial outcome. But what about from the kid’s point of view? Nobody bothers to ask what THEY find helpful in most cases. It’s an intervention for the benefit of the adults. As I said, why is there no “hypoactivity disorder?”

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  • I agree, to be scientific, one must be skeptical and always open to new data that disconfirms your hypothesis. To the exact contrary, the psychiatric/psychological industries have a marketing approach, searching for and emphasizing every tiny snippet of data that supports their contentions, and going far out of the way to bury or discredit even bury data that disagrees with their preferred narrative. As soon as you start selecting which data you want to pay attention to, you’ve left the ship of science!

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  • I would submit that Buddhism, for instance, does not require or teach conformity, except to the extent that certain practices are recommended to improve one’s understanding of one’s own spiritual nature. I’ve also been to Quaker meetings, where there is no preacher or designed program, but the attendees are encouraged to get in touch with their “intuition” and speak as they feel moved to speak. I don’t see much conformity there, except that you need to be quiet while others are speaking and not invalidate or criticize what they share.

    I definitely see that organized religion tends very strongly toward enforcing conformity of both belief and actions, and often uses fear to create compliance. I have never had any patience with such practices. I think we should all be in touch with our own inner sense of what is “right” and true, rather than following some outside interpretation of reality. That’s one of the reasons I love the Quaker approach. Nobody gets to tell you what God (or whatever spiritual reality a person might believe in) has to say to you. You get to seek those answers for yourself.

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  • That’s the other good point – we know that healthy relationships can “heal” whatever changes to the brain occur as a result of trauma, at least to an extent. Why we waste time on all these biological cause studies when we KNOW that social conditions can be improved and result in improved outcomes is quite puzzling. Unless we postulate that those providing “treatment” aren’t really that concerned with people’s outcomes being improved?

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  • I think we’re overgeneralizing a bit, though. Not ALL religious are about conformity. There are lots of brands of religions, and the same nominal religion can have sect with WILDLY different approaches! But I do agree that humans tend to turn any religious practice in the direction of conformity, and the more “organized” it is, the more authoritarian it seems to get. But that’s just my observation.

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  • So are you saying that large pharmaceutical companies DON’T frequently promote their products by hiding data and lying to the public and overstating the benefits and downplaying the adverse effects of their product? Do you remember Vioxx? The lawsuits they “settle” out of court, like the one for falsely advertising antipsychotics for children? You don’t think that PharmA lobbyists are buying influence in Congress? And I’m not just talking about checking labeling – I’m talking about assuming that doctors are always telling the truth and have your best interests in mind.

    Take the antidepressants as an example. It was a known fact that they caused aggression and suicidality in a small but significant number of recipients, way back in 1987. Prozac was initially banned in Germany for that very reason. But it took until something like 2003 for that warning to get onto the label. Why do you think that happened? Do you think no one NOTICED? Or perhaps they suppressed this information in the interests of making profits? Do you really think they are beyond this? Or that doctors are all above board and honest and well educated when they get a ton of their information from drug reps?
    I don’t think the regulation of the drug industry is any better than it was 40 years ago – in some ways it’s worse! Did you know that you can get a drug approved with just TWO studies that show it’s even marginally better than a placebo, even if there are 80 studies saying it doesn’t work or makes things worse? It used to be three were required. Hardly an improvement in the regulatory system.

    I’m really not sure why you seem to be making this into a black and white issue. The world isn’t divided into those who qualified to interpret medical information and those who are doomed to accept their judgment. I notice you have not acknowledged that an intelligent person CAN personally read scientific research and draw his/her own conclusions without the intervention of a “medical professional.” Do you think that is impossible? Are doctors automatically smarter than I am? Are there no incompetent or corrupt doctors out there who can’t be trusted with my body and my life? If I can’t decide that, who can? And how would I decide if I’m too dumb to do my own research?

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  • Who said only trusting oneself? Clearly, I’m advising doing scientific research, speaking to other doctors and medical professionals for second opinions, looking at proven alternatives, etc. I’m saying that AUTOMATICALLY trusting that what a doctor is telling you is the truth just because they are a doctor is foolish and dangerous. It’s also bullshit that no one is smart enough to learn on their own a good bit of important information that doctors may or may not share with you. You don’t need qualifications to read scientific studies in many cases, or to simply read the patient handout for any drugs you are prescribed, especially when we’re talking about psychiatry/psychology. Not saying I would determine for myself what drugs (if any) to prescribe, but it’s not that hard to discover that your physician is talking through his/her hat with a little research.

    My dad was taking blood thinners after a heart attack. He went to a doctor, told him all about every drug he was taking, and was given a second prescription. Within a day or two, he was having instant bruising when he put his elbow on the table or pressed his finger into his arm. He looked up the second drug he was prescribed, and it said in BOLD LETTERS: CONTRAINDICATED WITH BLOOD THINNER X. DEATH COULD RESULT. He was hemorrhaging at the slightest touch. A minor car accident or a fall off a chair or small ladder would have certainly killed him on the spot. Yet the doctor knew all his medications and still prescribed this deadly combination. Are you suggesting he wasn’t “qualified” to look up the drug and discover it is contraindicated with the blood thinner he was prescribed, nor to conclude quickly that his subcutaneous bruising was almost certainly caused by the noted negative interaction between these two drugs?

    Every since that time, I NEVER take any drug until I’ve looked it up and examined side effects and contraindications. If my dad had fully trusted that doctor without question, he’d almost certainly have been dead at 40, instead of living until he was 85. Unquestioning trust in doctors is as dangerous as going it alone with no advice. In psychiatry in particular, going it alone may in fact be safer in many cases.

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  • It is saying that you can’t trust that the doctors or Big Pharma are going to give you honest information. I don’t think it’s promoting the “untrained public” to “self medicate,” it’s promoting asking questions and doing one’s own research and getting multiple opinions before assuming that the “information” you have been given by the professionals is automatically to be trusted.

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  • Yes, animals do appear to commit suicide:

    https://qrius.com/humans-commit-suicide-animals/

    I think it is EXTREMELY damaging to “put thinking suicidal back in the closet.” This will make it MORE likely that people will kill themselves because they can’t talk about it! I used to work a suicide hotline and have talked to hundreds of people who said they were considering suicide. The vast majority were not “threatening,” they were simply desperate to end the pain they were experiencing and wanted some kind of help.

    I have heard of people, especially domestic abuse perpetrators or child molesters, threaten suicide when consequences ensue for their bad behavior. This is a different matter and should be dealt with much more harshly, I believe, as it is an attempt to use the threat of suicide to manipulate or control others and avoid accountability. But the vast majority of suicidal people are looking for someone to talk to and connect with.

    Of course, there are also those who rationally decide that suicide is the best next step in their lives, based on health conditions or something of that nature that has a very grim future prognosis. It would seem cruel to deny such people the right to talk over the pros and cons of their options, including suicide, so they can make the best decision they can.

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  • I am saying all of those things. When “ADHD” is defined by a set of behaviors, most of which are based on school behavior, and none of which are even slightly objective observations, you’re going to get a group that has little to nothing in common with each other except the behavior. It could be totally normal for that child at that age and stage of development. It could be the result of nutritional deficiencies, particularly iron, or sleep problems. It could be an indicator of problems in the home that are not addressed, particularly domestic abuse. It could be an indicator of prior trauma and possible “PTSD” symptoms, where there is a huge overlap with “ADHD.” It could be an incompetent teacher who doesn’t know how to manage a class and provokes resistance from the more sensitive or the bolder kids. It could be the child is bored to death because s/he is way ahead of the class and isn’t being challenged at all. All of the above considerations could cause the “symptoms” described as “ADHD.”

    Here are a few of these “symptoms:”

    making careless mistakes – for example, in schoolwork
    appearing forgetful or losing things
    being unable to stick to tasks that are tedious or time-consuming
    appearing to be unable to listen to or carry out instructions
    excessive physical movement
    excessive talking
    being unable to wait their turn
    acting without thinking
    interrupting conversations

    Not one of the above is in any way objectively measurable, and none require any kind of medical “explanation.” Most are just ways that kids act when they are young and less mature. Ever know a kid who acts without thinking, or interrupts conversations, or had a hard time waiting their turn? More importantly, how many kids do you know who do NOT engage in these behaviors at least some of the time? How could you possibly tell when a kid “interrupting conversations” reached some critical level that it becomes a “symptom?” And why would we assume that any of this is caused by some sort of “brain problem?”

    A very interesting study shed some light on the advantages this “ADHD” behavior actually conveys on kids and on society. They took groups of three kids and gave them a set of three problems to solve. One bunch had two “normal” and one “ADHD” kid in each group. The control groups had three “normal” kids in each group, no “ADHD” kids. They measured how often the group was “on task,” working on solving the problems. The control groups did significantly better on this measure, while the “ADHD” groups goofed off or screwed around more and spend a good deal less time working on the problems. But NONE of the control groups solved any of the problems, while all of the “ADHD” groups solved at least one and I believe a couple solved all three! So their goofiness and off-task behavior allowed for more creativity and outside the box thinking and meant these problems got solved.

    Now if they’d had groups with THREE “ADHD” kids, it’s quite possible nothing would have gotten done at all! But it shows that we NEED these “ADHD” types to help us solve problems, and that having ALL conventional thinkers in our society will most likely lead to stagnation and failure.

    It takes all kinds to make a world, as they say, but apparently psychiatry has no idea what that means, as they want to make all kids act in ways that keep the adults happy. And that’s what I believe “ADHD” is really all about.

    Notice there is no “Hypoactivity” disorder? I think that says a lot!

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  • Some have claimed that “ADHD” brains are smaller on the average, but those studies did not take into account medication use, which shrinks the very parts of the brain they say are smaller, particularly the cingulate gyrus. Additionally, even if these studies were accurate, they are AVERAGES, which means that lots of people WITHOUT “ADHD” diagnoses have smaller brains and lots of people WITH “ADHD” diagnoses have larger brains. It is obvious that if these were “causes,” it would apply to all of them. There is no evidence that everyone with “ADHD” has any kind of similarity in brain structures, so that claim is BS.

    Of course, a lot of psychiatrists will tell you that your kid needs “treatment.” That’s just what they do. Until and unless they have some evidence that this “disorder” is actually a disease state, you are safe ignoring them. It’s also VERY important to note that kids who are “treated” with “ADHD” drugs do not do any better in the long run, academically, socially, or physically, than those who are “diagnosed” but don’t receive any stimulants. So the “treatment” is not worth anything much in the long run on the average, even if some seem to do better taking the drugs.

    My final point is that even if the “ADHD” child is in some way biologically different, difference is not the same as disease. Species survival depends on genetic diversity. There is no reason to think that being less patient with boring stuff and wanting to move around and not follow rules is evidence of anything “wrong” with the child. I think the main problem is that we try to expect kids to do things that are abnormal to expect kids to do. The strong evidence of this is that fully a THIRD of kids diagnosed “ADHD” in Kindergarten prove NOT to get that “diagnosis” if they wait a year later to enroll in school. A third grow out of it in one year. That’s not a “disease,” that’s a problem of inappropriate developmental expectations.

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  • Who is trying to take away your Adderall? Certainly nobody here. If it works for you, that’s your decision. The problem is not with people taking Adderall if they feel it’s helpful, the problem is telling everyone that these difficulties are the result of a “disease state” despite having little to no evidence that such a “disease state” is valid and verifiable.

    It’s not about the drugs. It’s about the “diagnoses.”

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  • I don’t think it’s broken. I think it serves a different purpose than it pretends to. It does quite well in making money for certain people and keeping other people under control or sufficiently diminished in capacity to not be threatening to the status quo.

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  • Excellent counterexamples of the “need for forced treatment!” I’m so sorry you had to go through this kind of crap. And I think you are right, it remains invisible to most “insiders,” because those who have been essentially arrested and held against their wills are totally willing to say whatever they need to say to get the hell out of there. So if you ask a forcibly incarcerated person in a “mental” ward if they were OK with being detained, the smart ones will say, “Oh, yes, BLESS you, I’m SOOO lucky you put me in here, I’m SOOO much better now, can you please unlock the door and let me go home?” This is not even taking into account the phenomenon of “internalized oppression,” where some of the victims spend a lot of energy trying to explain why their abuse is “understandable” and somehow deserved, as a means of avoiding the conflict of being the adverse effect of an overwhelming power that they can’t possibly match. I’m usually all for asking the client to let us know the truth, but asking people in the hospital psych ward involuntarily if they agree they ought to have been detained is going to give you a very distorted picture of reality.

    Thanks for sharing your stories. I hope some of those “insiders” take a good look at the utter randomness of these events!

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  • Not only do they “report” data, they distort it, hide it, or sometimes make it up from whole cloth. If they were real scientists, they’d have given up on the “bio-medical model” decades ago. These professions are more like marketing agents, only putting forward such “data” as promotes the products they are selling, and hiding or minimizing or distorting anything that might harm their bottom line.

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  • I would say that psychiatry shares many similar aspects with religion, but is not itself a “religion” per se. I’d say it’s more of an anti-religion, deleting any kind of theology but instead “preaching” that the spirit does not exist and that all of our behavior is the result of chemical interactions and that human beings lack any of the essential qualities of will, intent, values, priorities, and also lack the ability to have an impact on their own psychological/emotional welfare.

    I would have no objection with psychiatry being a competing “philosophy of being”. The problem is, it is claiming to be a scientific endeavor and part of the field of medicine! This tends to give this nihilistic philosophy FAR too much influence far beyond what its arguments have merited. Additionally, Spinoza and Kant and Hegel did not have the power to forcibly detain people based on their philosophies.

    So psychiatry can make all the claims it likes about “useful fictions,” but in the end, it’s not OK for “doctors” to use “fictions” of any sort to manipulate people into using drugs they don’t need or want, and particularly to use such fictions to forcibly detain and drug people whose only crime is having a hard time fitting into our strange and challenging social expectations.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    Bill aka Thomas Schnell,

    I have warned you several times by email that failure to respond to email communication is a violation of the posting guidelines. As of now, I have heard nothing from you. Nothing you post will be published until you email me directly at [email protected] or [email protected] and agree to abide by the posting guidelines and respond to feedback given to you via email. This is not in opposition to posting viewpoints that are supportive of the mainstream psychiatric model, it is due to constant disrespectful posts and other violations of the posting guidelines which can’t be addressed without direct email communication with the moderator. Until I hear from you via email, your posts will all be blocked, no matter the content or form. This is the last time I will talk to you about it. The next step is to simply block all communications from the email you are using. It’s up to you to decide.

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  • As I’ve said before, in what other area of “medicine” do we have to have a discussion of “shared decision making,” with some doctors OPPOSING the idea of sharing with the very person being “decided” about? It is the CLIENT who should be deciding how much decision-making to share! What happened to “informed consent?” We shouldn’t have to be talking doctors into SHARING the decision making with patients. Patients should ALWAYS be the decision-makers if they are in any way capable of communicating their intentions, and doctors should be ADVISING them. The fact that patients have to ASK to be a part of the decision-making process shows how screwed up the power dynamics really are.

    The only barrier to “shared decision making” is prejudice and discrimination by the practitioners.

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  • The big error that the DSM perpetuates is the idea that a particular “diagnosis” has a specific cause in all cases. The DSM itself disclaims that they mean this, but that’s how people interpret it, and I don’t think it’s by accident that it works out that way.

    It should be obvious that at least SOME of the time, crappy parenting IS the cause of a person’s “mental disorder,” and addressing that early life trauma is an essential part of their healing from the resulting injuries to their spirit (speaking metaphorically, of course). The idea that exploring parents’ behavior as a possible causal factor is “blaming parents” is downright childish, and plays into the hands of those parents (and they are NOT rare) who will use a “mental disorder” as a cover for their own abusive or neglectful behavior.

    It’s also important to note that parents can do damage without intending to. They don’t have to be “bad parents” or be overtly abusive to simply not understand the child’s needs and make mistakes that contribute to their anxiety, depression, or inability to exert control over their behavior at times. So it isn’t a matter of “blaming parents,” it’s more a matter of helping the child/adult come to terms with ways in which their parents may not have been able to meet their needs fully.

    It’s not a “black and white” thing. It’s just as bad (or maybe even worse) to let all parents off the hook as it is to blame parents for everything that goes wrong with a child’s life.

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  • You and our society are combining two separate issues. Society needs to be protected from people who are behaving dangerously or disrupting the ability for society to function. That does not automatically mean they need “treatment” in the form of drugs, or that the drugs will automatically make it better, or that the full civil rights of a person need to be eliminated in order for society to be protected. There are people who have experienced both jail and forced psych hospitalization who prefer jail. Not saying that’s the answer, either, but forcing drugs on someone isn’t necessarily the answer, either. Maybe we need to be creative and start coming up with some new answers that nobody’s thought of yet.

    A reminder that shooters at Springfield High School, Columbine, Red Lake MN, and many other places were taking psychiatric drugs at the time of their shooting sprees, not to mention the Germanwings guy who flew a plane into a mountainside on purpose. The media makes it appear that the drugs somehow magically make a person fine and stop any possible threat they may pose, but the hard facts of reality don’t fit that rosy picture. And the damage done by enforced psych hospitalization can be substantial.

    How do YOU propose balancing the safety concerns you mention with the high rates of damaging adverse effects of both the drugs and the process of being essentially arrested without committing a crime and forced to take a drug that may not only not help but make a person’s situation worse, and take away any right of that person to place a rational objection to the force being applied?

    My personal view is that once force is involved, you can no longer call what you are doing “treatment.” It becomes enforcement of social norms via drugs, and that is absolutely NOT the same thing as trying to help someone get better.

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  • “The incidence rate of bipolar disorder was 30 times higher in people with a prior diagnosis of ADHD and anxiety than people who weren’t diagnosed with either.”

    https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/adhd-and-bipolar

    Stimulants can cause “bipolar” symptoms:

    https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.2006.163.7.1149

    “The FDA notes that usual doses of stimulants like Adderall can cause psychotic or manic symptoms, like hallucinations, delusional thinking, or mania, in children. They also note aggressive behavior or hostility in children and adolescents with ADHD.”

    https://cliffordsegil.com/this-is-how-adderall-really-affects-your-brain/

    “Emergence of New Psychotic or Manic Symptoms
    Treatment emergent psychotic or manic symptoms, e.g., hallucinations, delusional thinking, or mania in children
    and adolescents without prior history of psychotic illness or mania can be caused by stimulants at usual doses. If
    such symptoms occur, consideration should be given to a possible causal role of the stimulant, and
    discontinuation of treatment may be appropriate. In a pooled analysis of multiple short-term, placebo-controlled
    studies, such symptoms occurred in about 0.1% (4 patients with events out of 3482 exposed to methylphenidate
    or amphetamine for several weeks at usual doses) of stimulant-treated patients compared to 0 in placebo-treated
    patients. ”

    https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2007/011522s040lbl.pdf

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  • Very true. There can be good information in actual research which is not available to the public due to obfuscation or inappropriate framing of issues. One of the worst things about the DSM is that it prevents any real research on subgroups of any “diagnostic category” because it’s assumed that research has to be done on the entire cohort, heterogeneous as they all are. If 10% of “ADHD” diagnosed kids are improved by addressing low iron, this is viewed as a failure, because only 10% of the cohort is “helped,” while supposedly 70% are “helped” by stimulants. But this 10% can be COMPLETELY CURED by this approach and removed from the cohort! No one knows of this because such research is buried in drug company-supported study manuscripts intended to bury it. It’s not really science to corrupt findings in this way!

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  • It sounds like you worked VERY hard to find the right practitioner! Not everyone has the resources, time, or freedom to do such a search, unfortunately. It is true, most of the people here had bad to horrible experiences, and in a way that’s a bias. But there are SOOOO many places folks can go to talk about their positive experiences, it’s super helpful to have a place where ALL experiences are welcome to be shared. I know of a person who got kicked off of a “bipolar support group” because she questioned psychiatry’s approach to her case. I’ve gotten ‘feedback’ on an “ADHD” site for using the term “Drug” – I’m supposed to say “medication” so as not to suggest any connection with street drugs, even though all the “ADHD” drugs are, in fact, sold on the street. There are many practitioners who view any skepticism toward “medication” as a sign of “lacking insight.” It is a lot of hard work to find the kind of help you need, and it shouldn’t be. That’s what MIA is about, IMHO.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I am posting this here because I have no other means of sending this message to you, Thomas. I apologize for posting this publicly, but I appear to have no other option to contact you.

    Thomas, a WORKING EMAIL ADDRESS is a requirement in the posting guidelines, as I have stated before. I have no email I am able to use to contact you. You sent me a home address, which is of no use to me at all. You are unresponsive to emails at the email address you have provided. Your posts have become increasingly problematic, and I am unable to talk to you about them due to your own choices, yet you complain in your comments that you are not informed of why your posts are being moderated.

    At this point, I have no choice but to let you know that, if I don’t get a response BY EMAIL, or receive a functioning EMAIL ADDRESS from you to which you are prepared to respond within the next day or so, I will be forced to stop posting your comments. Please contact me by email WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS at [email protected] or [email protected] if you wish to continue posting here.

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  • I can read the list of “criteria” as well as anyone. They’re not exactly complicated. And I have an MS and experience as a counselor, and used to diagnose lots of people using the DSM (though I saw it only as a means of getting their insurance to pay, not any kind of scientific “truth” about their condition). It was pretty obvious that if I sent my oldest to a standard school classroom, it would be days before I got “the note” telling us to take him in for an “evaluation”.

    Here are my responses for Patrick, our oldest:

    Displays poor listening skills (yes)
    • Loses and/or misplaces items needed to complete activities or tasks (frequently)
    • Sidetracked by external or unimportant stimuli (frequently)
    • Forgets daily activities (yes)
    • Diminished attention span (Compared to whom? But less than most kids his age)
    • Lacks ability to complete schoolwork and other assignments or to follow
    instructions (not sure if it was ability or motivation)
    • Avoids or is disinclined to begin homework or activities requiring concentration (Absolutely!)
    • Fails to focus on details and/or makes thoughtless mistakes in schoolwork or
    assignments (yes)

    • Squirms when seated or fidgets with feet/hands (yes)
    • Marked restlessness that is difficult to control (yes)
    • Appears to be driven by “a motor” or is often “on the go” (dumb criterion, but if they mean he didn’t like to sit in one place, absolutely)
    • Lacks ability to play and engage in leisure activities in a quiet manner (Are you kidding? No volume control!)
    • Incapable of staying seated in class (maybe not incapable, but had a hard time with it)
    • Overly talkative (not really – this is the only criterion that did not apply to our oldest)

    Symptoms present prior to age 12 years (from birth, more or less)
    • Symptoms not better accounted for by a different psychiatric disorder (e.g., mood
    disorder, anxiety disorder) and do not occur exclusively during a psychotic disorder
    (e.g., schizophrenia) (This is a fascinating criterion, meaning even if ALL the criteria are met, you might NOT have “ADHD” if, in someone’s OPINION, you might have something else. VERY scientific! But no, it wasn’t)
    • Symptoms not exclusively a manifestation of oppositional behavior (Again, very silly. How would anyone ever make this determination?)

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  • Sorry, Thomas, but even the most mainstream of psychiatrists will tell you that there is NO brain measurement, PET scan, SPECT scan, MRI, or other objective measure that is diagnostic of ADHD or any other “psychiatric disorder.” The DSM itself admits that these “diagnoses” group together people who may have little to nothing in common physiologically – they are grouped based entirely upon subjective and unmeasurable criteria like “Acts like driven by a motor.” How would you measure THAT?

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  • Your premise is contrary to research data. I’m not going to go into agreement with you that everything has been tried when it has not. If an open classroom has not been tried, it should be.

    The other thing I’d look into is what kind of family life or conditions the child is experiencing. There is hard data showing that kids in foster care have MUCH higher diagnosis rates, and that the overlapping symptoms between “ADHD” and “PTSD” quite commonly lead to PTSD sufferers being “diagnosed” with ADHD without looking at the underlying trauma, which is often ongoing.

    However, it is appears to me that you are not really interested in having this discussion, as I gave you a very legitimate answer to your question, which you intentionally dismissed on speculation without considering it at all. Two of my three kids went to “open classrooms” and did absolutely fine despite moderate to severe “ADHD” symptoms in elementary school. You make no comment and give no credence to the fact that similar results have been observed with many who fit the “ADHD” criteria. It appears to me by this behavior that you are simply selling your viewpoint and trying to invalidate others who have given perfectly rational responses. This is not productive and I frankly find it extremely irritating. I could be wrong, but it appears to me at this point that the only answer you will accept is, “You’re right, Thomas, I’d totally put my kids on Ritalin.” I’ve already faced EXACTLY the situation you described and HAVE come up with an effective plan to handle it without any stimulants at all. So no, I would NOT put my kids on stimulants, because I did not need to, as we came up with a more effective plan.

    See my remarks on Thomas Edison. There are other examples (like Einstein) of kids who didn’t do so well in school yet contributed mightily to our society. The ability to apply oneself to concentrating on schoolwork is a massively overrated skill. And you’d have a lot more influence on the people you are so passionately trying to convince of your viewpoint if you’d start by acknowledging the multiple successes of “ADHD” people who have succeeded without “treatment.”

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  • A person with diabetes has a measurable deficiency in insulin, and giving insulin directly repairs that deficiency and leads to physiologically measurable results.

    No child or adult has ever been shown to have a measurable deficiency of Ritalin or Adderall, and giving Ritalin or Adderall is not repairing any such deficiency.

    The situations are not in the least comparable, as anyone who looks beyond the surface arguments should easily be able to comprehend.

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR:

    This kind of claim is completely disingenuous. You know very well that I’ve contacted you a number of times to discuss why your comments are being moderated, and you have chosen not to respond. If you don’t check the email you have included with your registration, please send me an email you DO read and I’ll be happy to keep you informed. It is extremely inappropriate to engage in this kind of backhanded attack in the comments section, and I normally would not have posted it or any reply, except for the fact that so far, your comment is completely contrary to reality and I want to know if there’s a legitimate reason you have not been reading the emails I have sent or if you’re pretending I have not tried to reach you in order to try and create dissention.

    Do not respond to this comment, as it will not be published. If you care to have a genuine discussion of the problems created by some of your posts, please direct it to [email protected].

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  • Funny how Edison is often referred to as a sufferer of “ADHD.” He did horribly in school and was kicked out of elementary school with the comment he was “incorrigible.” Educated at home by his mother. No stimulants. Yet he appeared to turn out quite well in the end, didn’t he? Why didn’t he become a criminal or a drug addict? How was he able to learn so well without the benefits of a standard classroom? Is it possible that he always had the capacity to learn, yet could not do so in the sterile and rigid environment of a school classroom?

    “Edison had strong opinions about education. Most schools, he believed, taught children to memorize facts, when they ought to have students observe nature and to make things with their hands. “I like the Montessori method,” he said. “It teaches through play. It makes learning a pleasure. It follows the natural instincts of the human being . . . The present system casts the brain into a mold. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning.”

    Frequently Asked Questions – Thomas Edison National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service)

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  • An open classroom, as I’ve already stated more than once. You are making the assumption that paying attention to schoolwork is necessary to succeed in life. The long-term studies on stimulant treatment belie this assumption. Kids taking stimulants complete more homework, pay more attention to the tasks at hand, yet don’t learn more as a result. This should raise questions as to whether they may be daydreaming simply because the “work” they are presented with is inherently dull and ineffective as an educational tool.

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  • “Candidate gene…” “association/linkage…” These are speculative ideas, probabilities, not causal factors. A causal factor will be present when the situation is occurring and absent when it is not. In these GWAS tests, the “candidate gene” is present in the unaffected population in large numbers, just somewhat larger numbers in the “test” population. It doesn’t really explain anything at all.

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  • And another 24 million who may have been told that “this is the answer” and remain in despair, and are prevented from seeking other solutions by the faith they put in their doctor’s promises.

    I would love to see what percentage of doctors tell their clients there is about a one in five chance you will get a significant benefit, let alone how many inform their clients of the wide range of other options available. I talked to a woman on the crisis line I worked one time, and she’d been seeing a psychiatrist for well over a year and seen no benefits. She was frantic, telling me she thought nothing would ever work and she’d feel that way for the rest of her life! I asked her if anyone had told her there were other things she could do for depression besides drugs? She was silent for a moment, suddenly calm. “No,” she said. “Well, there are,” I told her. “Oh!” she said. “Well, THAT’S good!” Her despair was gone in a moment as soon as she learned there were other options, but NO ONE had discussed these options with her!

    There is a very great harm in telling people that you know the cause of their suffering when you don’t, and even greater harm when you tell the person you have a solution when that solution has a 4/5 chance of failure.

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  • I mostly agree, but I can’t really agree that science has resisted the colonization of its methodology and discoveries against the forces of greed and capitalism. The very existence of “biopsychiatry,” which is the only real psychiatry that exists today, is proof that greed and corporate control can take over a supposedly scientific endeavor and turn it into a gigantic marketing campaign. When we are hearing that more than half of today’s “discoveries” are false due to corruptions in the scientific method and in some cases outright fraud, it’s hard to see how science has been able to avoid being coopted by the forces of capitalism and greed. True scientific method is value-neutral, but how many scientists have the courage and integrity to continue to do real science when the results they discover are covered up or they are attacked for coming up with the “wrong” findings for those looking to make more money?

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  • It really sounds like the medication was a life saver for you. I have also heard other stories of this nature, and I have no doubt they were true. Where I object is when you assume that “we” (meaning all students suffering from attentional issues for whatever reasons) will all benefit in the same way as you did. As you say above, many factors impact learning. Stimulants are only one factor, and according to the literature, not the determinative factor for most kids. Again, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t determinative for YOU and for others who had such a favorable response. It just means we can’t generalize from personal experience to scientific conclusions on a population level. I believe you, 100%. I also believe the statistics. I also believe the stories of people whose lives were made just as much worse by stimulants as yours was made better.

    So I hear your personal experience, and your understandable passion for this subject. I’m just not down with the assumption that because you had this experience, everyone who is diagnosed with “ADHD” will have a similar one.

    I’d still be very interested in hearing your response to the established fact that “ADHD” kids do far better in open classrooms than in standard ones. I have two kids who both qualified for “ADHD” diagnoses, and we used homeschooling and alternative child-centered schools, no medication or other “treatments,” and both graduated from HS with honors, and the youngest graduated from a university with honors. Both are gainfully employed, have never gotten into drugs or delinquent behavior, and appear to feel pretty good about themselves and their lives. I really think it is a possible answer for a lot of kids who get this label. What do you think?

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  • https://news.fiu.edu/2022/adhd-medication-alone-doesnt-improve-classroom-learning-for-children-newresearch

    From James Swanson, et al, who is a proponent of the use of stimulants for “ADHD.” This is a review of ALL reviews to date (in 1993) and so is a compilation of ALL research to that date, not just one study:

    What Should Not Be Expected
    1. Paradoxical Response
    a. Responses of normal children are in same directions
    b. Responses of normal adults are in same directions
    c. Responses of affected adults and children are similar
    2. Prediction of Response
    a. Not by neurological signs
    b. Not by physiological measures
    c. Not by biochemical markers
    3. Absence of Side Effects
    a. Infrequent appearance or increase in tics
    b. Frequent problems with eating and sleeping
    c. Possible psychological effects on cognition and attribution
    4. Large Effects on Skills or Higher Order Processes
    a. No significant improvement of reading skills
    b. No significant improvement of athletic or game skills
    c. No significant improvement of positive social skills
    d. Improvement on learning/achievement less than improvement in behavior/attention
    5. Improvement in Long-Term Adjustment
    a. No improvement in academic achievement
    b. No reduction in antisocial behavior or arrest rate

    https://escholarship.org/content/qt4jr2777t/qt4jr2777t.pdf

    “In the short term, stimulant medication is effective in reducing the symptoms of ADHD and appears well tolerated with relatively minor side effects. In the long term, much of the benefit of stimulant medication disappears after medication is ceased. Studies have demonstrated only marginal improvements in adult outcomes following a period of treatment in childhood.”

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16623654/

    There are also the RAINE study in Australia, the Quebec ADHD study, the long-term data from the MTA study in the US, and a comparison study between Finnish and US “ADHD”-diagnosed children showing that there were little to no differences between groups, despite the Finnish group using far less stimulant treatment. And the OSU medication effectiveness study, though somehow the original reports on long-term outcomes don’t seem to be available any longer.

    I’m afraid the jury is in on this point – there is no general long-term benefit to stimulant treatment of any significance. One can certainly find individual studies that claim these effects, but large reviews of huge amounts of data show no real benefit of mass treatment of “ADHD” with stimulants. This of course doesn’t mean that some individuals are not positively affected, perhaps in very significant ways, but as a group, stimulants have not proven to improve long-term outcomes for “ADHD.”

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  • I have responded many times directly to comments you have made, and asked you questions to clarify your position. If you ask me a question, I will always respond to it if we are engaged in a discussion. I have acknowledged points that you have made that seem to be supported by the literature. I simply have a different set of experiences than you. So far, I have not seen any interest from you in finding out why I hold the beliefs I do, nor have I gotten responses to clarifying questions I have asked you, nor do I recall having gotten any response to the research data I have provided regarding ADHD kids doing better in open classrooms or outcome measures not being improved in the long term by stimulant treatment alone. I don’t think it is at all true that I have not listened and responded to your comments. I don’t see you listening to or responding to mine. I don’t expect agreement from you, but I would hope some kind of acknowledgement would be forthcoming when I take the time to respond to your comment. If you don’t want to, that’s up to you, but I don’t appreciate being judged as unresponsive when the facts say otherwise.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    It is. If you feel any specific post has been allowed that has personally attacked you or your character, please either hit the “report” button or better yet, email me and explain what you are seeing.

    However, as I have said before many times, disagreeing passionately with a person’s viewpoint is not considered a personal attack, it is simply disagreement. It is important for folks to keep this in mind when evaluating whether a comment constitutes a “personal attack.”

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  • It sounds very much like your parents were emotionally abusive, simply because you didn’t fit their expectations of you. I consider that horrible on their part, and I empathize with having to put up with that kind of horrible behavior. I would be very angry and disappointed by them, but I’d imagine I might always feel somewhat like I could “never be good enough” to satisfy them. Their behavior was cruel!

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  • Consensus of “experts” has absolutely nothing to do with science, Thomas. Scientists agreed at one time that formula feeding was as good or better than nursing, that Thalidomide was safe and effective, that DDT had no harmful side effects, that Valium was not addictive, that Xanax was not addictive, that Benzedrine was not addictive, that Tardive Dyskinesia was a consequence of “schizophrenia” rather than the drugs given to “treat” it, that Viiox was safe and effective, and that SSRIs had a mild side effect profile and no withdrawal effects at all. None of these things that “experts” agreed to proved to be true in the long run. “Experts” have lots of conflicts of interest these days, making the problem even worse. You can hire an “expert” to claim almost anything these days.

    And we already have a means to help these children that is drug free and proven by actual scientific research. It’s called an OPEN CLASSROOM. “ADHD” kids are indistinguishable from “normal” kids in such an environment. The only thing stopping us is laziness, narrow vision, and the financial conflicts of interest mentioned above.

    I continue to notice that you tell other people what you think they should believe but do not respond to my comments relating to your assertions. Again, I ask you, are you here to have a conversation or to try to get others to agree with your pre-determined viewpoint? A failure to answer this will indicate the latter, and I will no longer bother trying to have a conversation with you, though I may still post scientific evidence to counter any claims about “experts” agreeing as some sort of proof of anything.

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  • I do agree with you, 100%! But I guess I’d put it another way: people who have physical brain lesions resulting from accidents or actual diseases are NOT diagnosed because someone labels them with a psych disorder instead of actually finding out what’s wrong with them! I guess I have a big problem calling these labels “diagnoses” instead of recognizing they are meaningless labels, no different than saying, “He’s socially awkward” or “she’s pretty aggressive in conversations.” They are opinions based largely on biases and stereotypes and tell us NOTHING about what is really going on for that person. And as you point out, they also deflect attention from searching for ACTUAL medical diagnoses that we CAN do something about!

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  • I would submit that there is no way to “misdiagnose” “bipolar disorder,” as there is no legitimate, objective way to “diagnose” it correctly. If we can’t objectively distinguish between those who “have bipolar disorder” and those who do not, the idea of a “diagnosis” loses all value except as simply a discussion term. If you can’t know you are “right,” how can you know if your “diagnosis” is “wrong?”

    But I agree with you completely – the lion’s share of “mental illness” is simply each person’s response to trauma and difficulties in survival which we all face in one way or another.

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  • “The findings suggest that the serotonin theory was endorsed by the professional and academic community,” the authors write. “The analysis suggests that, despite protestations to the contrary, the profession bears some responsibility for the propagation of a theory that is not empirically supported and the mass antidepressant prescribing it has inspired.”

    https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/04/psychiatry-ever-endorse-chemical-imbalance-theory-depression/

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032200038X

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  • Yet oddly, these behavioral changes contributed nothing to long-term outcomes, as multiple studies have shown no academic advantage for taking stimulants over the long term. Kids who took stimulants and kids who did not had very similar academic outcomes, including test scores, HS graduation rates, college enrollment, or even other measures of social outcomes like delinquency scores and self-esteem. So apparently, doing more problems more quickly might get approval in the classroom, but has no actual impact on learning.

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  • And my observation is that the most helpful professionals are the ones who simply back down from the “expert-user” dynamic and talk to the person like one person to another. Which is what they are!!! The most important lesson I learned as a counselor is that I never had the answers, the client did. Sometimes I had the right questions, that was about it. The rest was all an exercise in giving a shit about the other person’s life.

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  • I have as well. I’ve also known insensitive, thoughtless, means-spirited psychiatrists. And I’ve known compassionate and intelligent psychiatrists who have done a lot of harm by following “protocols” instead of getting to know the patient. I’ve seen psychiatrists who insist on increasing the dosage of something that has harmed their patient or not been helpful.

    I have also noticed something about you, Thomas. I notice that when I ask a challenging question, you don’t answer it.

    Why is it so important for you to convince everyone here that your viewpoint is correct? At least, that’s how it seems to me. I see little to no effort to understand others’ feelings, experiences, and logical objections, and a lot of effort to promote your own viewpoint. Is that why you came here?

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  • Commenting as Moderator:

    Just so everyone is aware, ALL comments are “held in moderation” initially until I or someone else can approve them. Since I am doing 5-8 hours a week in this role, it can sometimes take hours, or even up to one calendar day, for comments to be approved. There is no meaning to having a comment “held in moderation” unless it’s been more than a day, in which case folks should contact me to make sure the comment isn’t lost and to discuss any concerns the comment might have raised. But this one was approved as soon as I read it.

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  • See my later post for examples.

    At this point, Thomas, I’m not sure you’re really willing to engage in a meaningful conversation. Are you here to discuss different people’s realities and to learn from each other, or to promote your own viewpoint? I’m not sure I want to waste more time trying to present an alternative viewpoint if you’re seriously not open to hearing alternative viewpoints. Are you?

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  • Actually, stimulant treatment has not been shown to increase self-esteem in the longer term in “ADHD”-diagnosed children.

    https://www.additudemag.com/impostor-syndrome-adhd-treatment/

    “However, they also found a negative effect on the youth’s sense of self with youth reporting that they no longer felt like themselves, were happier off the medication and noticed a change in their personalities.”

    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40474-015-0039-5

    “Studies have demonstrated only marginal improvements in adult outcomes following a period of treatment in childhood.”

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16623654/

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  • Of course, the theory that “ADHD” is caused by a genetic malfunction is also not based on double-blind, controlled studies, despite what we’ve been told. Let’s not set a double standard. Of course, the idea that something so nebulous as “having difficulty paying attention” or “being overly active” is ALWAYS caused by the same thing is absurd. But here is one article supporting that poor parenting DOES have an effect on attention span and hyperactivity in some kids:

    https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/sc-adhd-critical-parents-health-0224-20160211-story.html

    Other causal factors that have been identified include poor diet, low iron levels, high lead/heavy metal concentrations, and sleep apnea. And trauma has also been implicated, particularly kids who have “PTSD” symptoms have a huge overlap with “ADHD,” and a study I recall said that family doctors in particular are more reluctant to diagnose “PTSD” over “ADHD” even when children clearly meet the criteria for the former.

    https://life-care-wellness.com/how-childhood-trauma-could-be-mistaken-for-adhd/

    This in my mind is the inevitable result of having such sketchy, subjective criteria for “diagnoses.” Kids can meet the criteria for both “ADHD” and “PTSD,” and there is not a clinician in the world who can objectively tell the difference. All we have is their opinion on the matter, because the “criteria” don’t make the distinction for us, do they?

    We all know there is no definitive cause of “ADHD”, despite decades of research. I’m not holding my breath that there ever will be, because it’s obviously caused by a whole lot of different things, since the only thing these kids have in common is that they have a hard time paying attention to things they aren’t very interested in, and similar subjective “criteria,” not all of which they have to even share with others with the same “diagnosis.”

    From the DSM: “[In DSM]… There is also no assumption that all individuals described as having the same mental disorder are alike in all important ways.”

    So we can’t assume that all “cases of ADHD” are “alike in all important ways.” This strongly suggests that the assumption all such cases are CAUSED by the same phenomenon is completely inappropriate.

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  • We always seem to be “on the cusp,” yet those razor-sharp understandings and interventions never seem to have developed. I’m glad at least that you recognize that we’re trimming hair with a scythe right now. It is difficult to understand, though, why you don’t consider giving someone a shave with a scythe is a pretty dangerous undertaking, especially when there are less dangerous options, including letting one’s beard simply grow out!

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  • The “proper diagnosis” of ADHD requires the subjective evaluation of “traits” with pseudo-scientific foundations. Such concrete and measurable things as “loses and/or misplaces items needed to complete activities or tasks” and “Appears to be ‘driven by a motor’ or is often ‘on the go'” or “is overly talkative.” You know, the kind of things that a Scientist can Measure with his “Talk-o-meter” and such.

    It is also very obvious from my own observation that these criteria are almost never consulted. Most doctors simply go with what their “impressions” are, usually based on parent and/or teacher report. The main reason more and more kids are “diagnosed” is not because we’re looking better or there are more kids developing this “disorder.” It’s called “diagnostic drift” – when subjective criteria are used to establish a boundary, over time, that boundary gets pushed so that more and more people “meet the criteria” due to pressure from parents and/or teachers to “diagnose.” This was very clearly seen in autism as well as “ADHD.” I have also NEVER in my entire career seen a doctor document “more than one person” providing evidence in “more than one setting.” To the contrary, I’ve seen dozens, probably more like a couple of hundred cases where the school was the only source of “information” and where parents agreed to the stimulants under pressure from the school. I’ve also seen some where one parent decides to “get him/her diagnosed” when another (usually non-custodial) parent disagrees completely. I’ve seen kids who ONLY take stimulants for school time because they “don’t need it” at home. According to you, these kids should not be “diagnosed.” Yet they are, by the wonderful, caring, competent medical professionals you speak so highly of in your next post.

    I get the impression that you really want us to believe that all or most mental health professionals are competent, caring and thorough, and track closely on family history and the success of their interventions as well as the potential side effects. I would bet big money I’ve seen a hundred times as many “ADHD” cases as you have in my career, and I can tell you that those assumptions are very, very wrong.

    I recall one girl who had graduated from an eating disorder clinic. Shortly afterwards, she was put on Ritalin for “ADHD” by her caring and competent medical professionals. Oddly enough, she started eating less, an obvious and very well documented side effect of the stimulants which started almost immediately after their administration. They started talking about her “relapsing” in her “eating disorder!” It took my VOLUNTEER, LAY-PERSON advocate, about 5 minutes to figure out what was going on, and we eventually convinced them to stop the stimulants. Lo and behold, the “eating disorder” went away! Her argument was, “What’s more important, eating or finishing homework?” But the professionals were apparently unable to make that value judgment.

    I also saw many cases where kids became aggressive when taking Ritalin or other stimulants, a fairly common adverse effect that is noted on the patient handout for every one of the stimulant drugs. Very frequently, instead of stopping the stimulant, such kids were put on antipsychotics, like Risperdal. Now antipsychotics, as you may or may not know, have the primary action of increasing dopamine uptake to lower the amount of dopamine between the brain cells. While stimulants have the effect of reducing dopamine reuptake and increasing the amount of dopamine floating around in the brain. It doesn’t take a neuroscientist to figure out that if giving something to INCREASE dopamine leads to aggression due to TOO MUCH DOPAMINE, the right thing to do would be to STOP INCREASING THE DOPAMINE SO MUCH! Why would it occur to ANYONE to give ANOTHER drug to decrease the dopamine you’re increasing with the stimulants???? Again, these are the same competent, caring mental health professionals who are trying their best to provide good service. But a high school student could figure out what’s going on in a 15-minute internet search. And this was not an outlier, Thomas. This happened ALL THE TIME. Probably seen a hundred or more such cases over 20 years, maybe a lot more than that.

    I could give you a lot more stories, but you get the drift. I’m not saying the medical professionals are all incompetent or don’t care, I’m saying they are operating on FALSE INFORMATION which warps their decision making in very bad ways. It’s not a matter of incompetence – the basic assumptions of the system are faulty, and unless you luck out and get a maverick who does his/her own thinking, the training in those basic assumptions turns potentially good clinicians into feckless authoritarians copying behavior they don’t really understand but feel compelled to repeat because their boss/trainer/insurance company says that’s what they’re supposed to do.

    I will allow that I did run into some really competent clinicians in my 20 years working with foster youth, some of them quite impressive. But they were very much in the minority. The majority, as anyone would expect, followed their training and pretty much locked up and stopped thinking when their training let them to poor results.

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  • You are absolutely right, there are a lot of honest, hard-working individuals in the medical industry (though I hope you will concede that like any profession, there are also plenty of dishonest, lazy ones as well). The problem is, when you work in a SYSTEM that is designed poorly around false assumptions and is corrupted massively by financial conflicts of interest, even the best people will end up mostly doing damage control, and the bad ones will do massive destruction.

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  • This is straight out of Irving Goffman (The Total Institution). The needs of the institution ultimately trump the needs of the individual, and the emphasis on “safety” in the short-term, physical sense is primarily a means of keeping the staff and institution out of legal trouble. To really change this would require a reconsideration of priorities that a large institution is rarely interested in or capable of, as it goes against their own interests, and the patients have no power to prioritize their own needs and have to simply put up with whatever the institution decides to do. Hence, the institution has no real incentive to do other than what they do – protect themselves first, whatever the cost to the patients’ emotional safety.

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  • Certainly, the correlations between childhood abuse and “schizophrenia” labels being assigned is orders of magnitude higher than the most optimistic estimate of “genetic contribution.” We’re talking over 80% vs. at best single digits, and that’s not even allowing for the biased research and reporting you properly identify. Plus, childhood abuse is something we CAN do something about!!!!

    Someone simply doesn’t want that information to be discussed! I wonder who?

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  • Posting as moderator:

    It seems I made an error in approving the initial comment in this thread. Now I’m feeling like having to allow each person respond to the last person’s assertions, but it has become increasingly non-productive as time has gone by.

    At this point, I’m going to ask folks to swallow up whatever hurt feelings and misunderstandings and move on to other posts. I’m no longer going to publish the back-and-forth discussion about who said what. It’s clear there are some disagreements, and that’s OK, but let’s move away from the subtle personal slights that have started to emerge in this conversation.

    Thanks!

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  • Who here has said that chemicals can’t change one’s cognition? Nobody here would believe such a silly, obviously incorrect thing. It’s just that altering cognition does not constitute medical treatment per se. People have taken drugs to alter consciousness since the beginning of time. Tons of people drink coffee to increase alertness, a lot of anxious folks (like me) have used alcohol to moderate social anxiety, people use hallucinogens to have altered perceptions of reality. Sure, people can take stimulants to help them concentrate, or antidepressants to help them focus less on what is worrying them and more on what is happening now. Why the hell not? But it’s not like it’s some great technological discovery that drugs alter consciousness. The concept has been around for millennia, undoubtedly from before recorded history. They’ve invented some newer drugs recently, and MAYBE they are better in some ways for some things. But they have no idea what they are “treating” with these drugs, and they can’t predict ahead of time whether or not the drugs will “work,” they don’t really understand WHY they have the effects they do, nor is there any kind of broad agreement on what “works” even means (Is it better NOT to be anxious about the fact that your husband might come home drunk and possibly kill you and the children? Is it a positive to take a drug to be OK with your dead-end job and your crappy boss? Is it an improvement to be able to “stay on task” in school when the long-term studies show that those kids who “pay attention” don’t learn any more than the ones who are goofing off?)

    And there are ALWAYS costs for taking any mind-altering substance, and almost every one of them leads to tolerance over time. One of the very worst failings of psychiatry is their unwillingness to be honest about the real costs vs. long-term benefits so clients can make an honest cost/benefit analysis.

    You may not be a scientist, but I am by training (a chemist). And I’m telling you, the fact that a drug temporarily ameliorates a particular condition or state of mind is no big discovery in medicine. If someone could actually discover WHY a certain 20-30% of people responded to Drug X, that might be the BEGINNING of something of significance. But a pretty decent percentage of people respond to mega-vitamin therapy or changes in diet or improved exercise plans or meditation, too. So which is the real “treatment?” Or is the “disorder” not really a medical condition at all, but simply an inconvenient mismatch between one’s personality and the expectations of the society one lives in? And as such, would there not be multiple possible “solutions” to the problems so created, including the solution of simply not playing by the rules one is expected to comply with?

    “It works for me” is not a scientific argument. It’s a personal testimonial, which is great, but there are a lot of varying testimonials out there that have to be taken into consideration, and some of them are VERY different than yours.

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  • So why not simply have kids who struggle with Kindergarten wait another year to enroll, and have kids who don’t do well in standard classrooms assigned to open classroom environments where “ADHD” kids do so very much better? These are two things that we KNOW help and do absolutely ZERO damage.

    Perhaps the need to “pay attention” to what other people think is important is very much overrated in our society. Maybe we need to help these kids build on their strengths rather than making them feel ashamed of not being able to or interested in doing what the adults have decided is “essential” for kids to do.

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  • I pretty much agree with all you said, except that I don’t think “social defeat” is caused by the genetic phenotype, it’s caused by the society’s unwillingness/inability to be flexible enough to deal with the wide range of “phenotypes” that are around. “ADHD” is the best example. It is caused almost entirely by inflexible social expectations in schools. Kids who go to school a year later have a 30% lower chance of being “diagnosed.” Kids with an “ADHD” diagnosis in open classrooms are virtually indistinguishable from their “normal” peers. A great study showed that groups of 3 with an “ADHD” kid in the group did FAR better solving problems than groups of 3 “normal” kids. If we didn’t expect young people to sit still for extended periods of time “studying” subjects they have no interest in or have already mastered, “ADHD” would mostly disappear, regardless of the fact that some kids will always be ‘more active’ than others in any group.

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  • Many people do better when they STOP taking their psychiatric drugs. Not everyone benefits, in fact, the latest solid review of decades of data suggest that perhaps 30% of users have a substantial improvement on psych drugs. You just happen to be one of those who benefited, and more power to you. It doesn’t mean that these people will deteriorate if they go off the drugs. Many have had no benefit or have been harmed by the drugs, and are pleased to get back to a more “normal” state, even if it is not optimum.

    You are not doing anything wrong at all. You believe based on your experience that the antidepressants are essential for your survival. Not everyone believes or experiences that.

    If you were made psychotic by your antidepressants, your feelings about them might be very different. If you were essentially arrested for saying you were suicidal, handcuffed, taken in a police car to the hospital, “evaluated” by a person who didn’t seem to care, locked in a ward with a lot of other people who are struggling and possibly acting out in a frightening fashion, given drugs you did not choose to take without any semblance of informed consent, and told when released that you HAD to take these drugs or you’d be hospitalized again against your will, your feelings about antidepressants might be very different.

    There is nothing wrong with taking psychiatric drugs. There is also nothing wrong with NOT taking psychiatric drugs. Each person has to decide for him/herself, and we should not criticize them for making their decisions on their own best data. We SHOULD criticize the psychiatric industry for being dishonest with their patients, though, because they owe folks an honest rendition of what they do and don’t know, including that chemical imbalances are NOT implicated in depression and that only 30% of people taking antidepressants experience significant relief, as well as the common side effect and withdrawal effects of the drugs they are prescribing.

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  • Science has been contaminated by the profit motive. There have always been concerns regarding authoritarian approaches to science, which is why a lot of new discoveries come from people not in the field of the discovery. But since they started allowing professors to profit from their work, and allow drug companies and others to fund fellowships and chairmanships, the situation has become far, far worse, to the point that someone estimated over half of recent scientific “discoveries” are actually false. The news media also contribute to this by blasting the commercially favorable results they are given in a press release when some new “discovery” is made, but never bothering to publish a correction or retraction when the original researcher had to “eat crow.”

    Science is at this point highly corrupted, especially where pharmaceuticals are concerned.

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  • I would add to that cultural dislocation and living in an urban environment.

    The example I use is that not ALL kids who get hit by cars at a crossing near a school have their legs broken. Should we do research into why certain kids have “weak bone disorder” and try and come up with some “treatment” to make their bones tougher? Or should be maybe put in a traffic light and a crosswalk?

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  • Well, since until recently the industry has DENIED that there are any withdrawal effects, they certainly wouldn’t bother HELPING you deal with the effects they are trying to pretend don’t exist!

    It is criminal to let someone deal with that kind of crap without support, especially if you’re the one who created the dependency in the first place. But unfortunately, the industry appears to have no sense of shame.

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  • Per Alice Miller, the only thing that would distinguish a “good therapist” from a “bad therapist” would be the degree to which they are aware of and have processed their own childhood trauma, so that they would not act those needs out on the client. The “school” of therapy or the degree of the therapist would have essentially no impact on the outcome. Which I think is why they found that talking to a friend is just as likely to be helpful as talking to a professional. Not all friends will be helpful, only the ones who have dealt with their childhood trauma, but the odds of finding someone who has are not improved by seeing a “professional.”

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  • Truly. They find a SET of genes that has a 1.065% correlation with the “condition” in question (not even dealing with the impossibility of locating a legitimate study group with the subjective criteria used for “diagnosis”) and say, “We’ve proven that “ADHD” is genetic!!!” You look at the article and find that only 5% of the study group has this combination, while 4.7% of the control group has the exact same set of genes! How is that causation? But people lap it up. I guess if you WANT to believe something badly enough, you find a way to justify it.

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  • And yet adults diagnosed with “ADHD” report on the average lower quality of life. Which means for every success story, there is someone made at least that much worse. Decades of research show no improvements in long-term outcome for ADHD kids treated with stimulants over those who are not. So whether it has a “biological etiology” or not, stimulant treatment by itself does nothing to make life better on the average for those so treated.

    I do rejoice for your personal success, and hope it continues to go well for you. But the idea that we are “nearing an understanding” of “ADHD” is not supported by the literature. In fact, the BEST “treatment” for ADHD seems to be to put kids in a non-traditional classroom where they get more control of their activities. No “medications” needed. On the average, of course.

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  • My favorite is “Treatment resistant depression.” Not, “We failed” or “we don’t know what we’re doing,” but “Your depression RESISTED my efforts to treat it!” What would we do if we had a plumber come by and we paid him $200 dollars and he said we had a “repair resistant toilet?” We’d fire him and get a new plumber! What kind of professional blames his/her client for his/her failures?

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  • This community consists of a huge majority of “affected people,” Tmason. They just weren’t affected in the same way as you were. I find it disappointing to see how easily you seem to dismiss other “affected people’s” experiences while wanting others to value yours. It is not “at your expense” that people share their stories, even if you find these stories confusing or contradictory to your own experience. It is for their own benefit. If you want to be respected, you need to start with respecting the fact that not everyone experiences the “system” the same way you do. If you’re not interested in that kind of discussion, where each person is entitled to share their own story and experiences and no one is entitled to invalidate them for doing so, then I think you may have come to the wrong place.

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  • I agree that “treatment” and involuntary detention need to be seen as COMPLETELY separate issues. It does not follow that because Person A is having a hard time managing in society without worrying or annoying people, that person needs “treatment” forced on them, or needs “treatment” at all. It makes sense that society might need to protect its members from someone who is out of control of his/her behavior, but as soon as a person is arrested (and let’s be honest and call a spade a spade, that’s almost always what happens, they are arrested and handcuffed and put into a police car), it stops being “treatment.”

    I don’t see why there can’t be “calming centers” where people go to be away from chaos so they can regain their perspective without having to label that person as “mentally ill” or force drugs on them. Maybe there can be things on offer if people want them, but literally forcing pills down a person’s throat can’t really be seen as therapeutic, IMHO.

    I also think Miranda rights are appropriate before every “mental health” detention evaluation, including the right to not answer and the right to legal representation.

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  • I would add that there is no real way to TRAIN someone to listen respectfully in all cases. There are “techniques” that can be taught to a person who is really open to experiencing how others feel, think and behave and their motivations for doing so. But there is no way to guarantee that any individual is capable of or interested in having that experience, and if they are not, no amount of training can get them there. So someone having a degree in psychology or counseling is no guarantee that this person is any better than a random person on the street at listening and caring about another person. And research reflects this, as I recall. But for some reason, I can’t find the study that applies on the internet – it is drowned out by dozens and dozens of articles on “why therapy is different than friendship” and the like.

    What people need is a non-judgmental listener who will support them in figuring out their own path. What they are offered is often VERY different from that, unfortunately.

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  • I don’t think it’s fair to say everyone thinks anything in particular. There are plenty of people here who are still involved in the psych system, voluntarily or not, and who use psych drugs, voluntarily or not, and some who have found therapy helpful, while some have not. Some give credence to mental health labels from the DSM, some (perhaps most) do not, but no one is required to disbelieve in them or to believe anything in particular. There are people who post here who are supportive of the current mental health system and who report research findings in support of the status quo paradigm.

    I think what most people have in common at MIA is that they have either been harmed or seen people harmed by the “mental health” system as it is. I doubt that ANYONE would question that the phenomena listed in the DSM as “mental health disorders” occur and exist and are troublesome or even extremely distressing to many people who experience them. From my own point of view, I think the question to be posed is, just because a set of phenomena happen and can be identified as happening, does that lead to the conclusion that the person experiencing them is medically ILL, or requires medical intervention? Does it automatically imply, as many doctors claim, that one’s brain is malfunctioning, and even further, that there is nothing that YOU as an agent in the world can do about such phenomena?

    The second, and extremely closely related, question is this: Are psychiatrists, psychologists, the news media, entertainment media, the internet, telling us a true story of what science really says about these phenomena? For instance, if schizophrenia is a purely biological phenomenon, why is it so much more common among immigrants and urban populations? Why do sufferers in third world countries have so much better recovery rates if the don’t use our “state of the art” drugs to manage their condition? Why is it that people in countries that accept “hearing voices” as a culturally appropriate phenomenon tend to have “nicer” voices compared to those in cultures where hearing voices is shamed and looked on as a “disease?”

    Also, the history of pharmaceutical research is rife with manipulation of results and downright dishonesty. This is not confined to the psychiatric field, but it seems to be far, far worse when dealing with phenomena that can not be objectively distinguished from “normal” situations. We’ve been told that antipsychotics were responsible for “emptying out the psych wards,” only to find that it was a policy decision having nothing to do with antipsychotics, and that people diagnosed with “schizophrenia” are much less likely to recover today in the age of pharmaceuticals than they were in 1955. We’re told that Prozac and other SSRIs have a very mild side-effect profile, only to find out that they can cause some people to become suicidal or homicidal, and can have devastating withdrawal effects that were swept under the rug for decades. We hear that “depression” is caused by low serotonin, only to find out that this theory was debunked back in 1985 or so, and psychiatrists now tell us that “no competent psychiatrist has believed this for decades.” There is a fundamental DISHONESTY about the system and how it “works.” A skepticism about the intentions of the system may be the thing most of us here have in common.

    I appreciate your asking that question. I take it to indicate you are concerned with understanding the community you are entering.

    You are welcome here to have your own views and share them, as long as you are respectful about it. Others may disagree with you, as long as they are respectful about it.

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  • Judith Rappoport et al proved this back in the late 1970s. She and her colleagues gave stimulants in therapeutic dosages to teens who were not diagnosed with “ADHD”. They measured things like movement levels and activity levels and ability to concentrate. All were improved in a similar manner to those who were diagnosed with “ADHD” (or whatever they called it back then – hyperkinetic reaction of early childhood or MBD or the equivalent). She called the “paradoxical effect” a myth which was “an artifact of observation,” meaning that people noticed that the “ADHD” kid concentrated better because they were LOOKING for that, but did not notice the same effect in non-diagnosed people because they weren’t looking for that result.

    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.341313

    Note that Rapoport has been a supporter of stimulant treatment for “ADHD” for her entire career. This study has been considered conclusive (in 1978) and the idea of the “paradoxical effect” was dropped afterwards by researchers, though the popular myth of the “paradoxical effect” survives in some communities to this day.

    More recent scientific commentary on the subject:

    https://www.adhd.nyc/single-post/2018/03/28/the-paradoxical-effect-from-misunderstanding-how-stimulants-worked-to-understanding-whe

    The idea that “ADHD” kids react differently to stimulants has long since been discredited.

    As to WHY they increase concentration, we’d have to get into talking about the role of dopamine in concentration, an area where I have not studied extensively at all. But it is VERY clear that all kids (and by extension adults) taking stimulants will react in a very similar manner.

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  • The idea of “using one’s voice” as a means to combat insensitive or bullying people is that it doesn’t work very well if you don’t have the power to make your own voice heard. Speaking up when involuntarily committed to a psych ward or living with an abusive partner or abusive parents can be extremely dangerous! Certain bosses specialize in firing anyone who “uses their voice” in any way that challenges the boss’s power and control. I do think we should trust our intuition, but we need to be selective where we “use our voices” if we don’t want to get injured!

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  • Clearly, being “highly sensitive” is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain. Research has proven that insensitive and thoughtless people fare better in society, experiencing less anxiety and depression and being more successful in certain professions like sales, law, or politics. There are special drugs now to help people care less, the most popular being “Fuckidall,” promoted by famous comedian, Robin Williams. Our next efforts will be to create psychoeducational presentations in schools and other places teaching people the importance of insensitivity and teaching them specific “Fuckidall” skills that can be practiced even without medical intervention.

    Stop worrying! Stop caring! Buy some “Fuckidall” today!

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  • There is certainly no denying that physiological damage CAN cause psychological phenomena. The problem, as you intimate, is the assumption that physiological damage is the ONLY thing that can cause psychological phenomena, or worse, that physiological DAMAGE (and let’s be honest, that’s what every drug intervention AND so-called ECT does to the brain, and usually to other parts of the body as well: physiological damage) is the only way to address psychological phenomena. It’s like saying insufficient memory can cause a computer to slow down, so the answer to any computer slowing down is adding more memory chips. Illogical. Except adding memory chips at least enhances the machine’s capacity, while psychiatric drugs without exception decrease the body’s capacity to do something, whether the reuptake of serotonin (SSRIs), the reuptake of dopamine (stimulants), or whatever process these drugs disrupt.

    So if some observable physical defect can be detected, it should be addressed as best we can. But ASSUMING that we’re addressing a physiological deficit that no one can actually identify is a very dangerous pathway.

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  • I have to disagree with you that “we” (meaning all ADHD-type personalities) “function at a level so far below our potential.” This is only true to the extent that you accept the normal capitalistic go-to-work-and-do-what-your-boss-says-for-a-paycheck kind of standards as one’s “potential.”

    A fascinating study was done not too long ago where they took kids and put them into groups of three. The study groups had two “normal” kids and one diagnosed with “ADHD.” The control groups had three “normal” (non-ADHD) kids in each group. They gave them a set of three problems to figure out the solution to. I can’t remember the age level, but I think they were elementary, something like 8-10 years old.

    They measured “on-task” behavior, and the non-ADHD groups did far better. The groups with the “ADHD” kid in them screwed around more, focused less on the problems and more on just hanging out together. But when it came to solving the problems, NONE of the so-called “normal” groups solved ANY of the problems, while each of the ADHD-inclusive groups solved at least one, and if I am recalling correctly, a couple solved all three.

    Now if you’d run groups where ALL THREE kids had an “ADHD” diagnosis, it’s quite possible nothing would have been accomplished at all in terms of the problems at hand. But it’s clear from the results that the off-task, goofy, creative, “what about this” kind of behavior from the supposedly “mentally ill” child played a very important role in getting the task at hand done, even if less time was spent at the task itself.

    I think the implications of this study are quite huge. Perhaps instead of trying to FORCE the “ADHD” kids into becoming more willing to do as they are told and focus rotely on the “task at hand,” we ought to be looking at figuring out how to make the most of this skill set that clearly our society needs to survive! I think that’s why the “ADHD” kids in the open classroom settings were almost impossible to detect – they weren’t being expected to be rigidly “on task” doing something they found dull or pointless, so they had far fewer problems than their counterparts in “regular” classrooms.

    Another interesting study looked at employer satisfaction with their “ADHD” – diagnosed employees. One might expect they’d be less satisfied because these employees would come late, be disorganized, say offensive things to other workers, etc. But as it turned out, their satisfaction levels were quite similar to “normal” employees. The experimenter observed that the “ADHD” employees tended to CHOOSE jobs where promptness and adherence to assigned tasks were not as important. They became ski instructors, computer programmers, entrepreneurs, salespeople, whatever suited their personality best.

    Which goes back to my original thesis: “ADHD” is a real phenomenon, but it is mostly a problem only because we expect these kids to do things that they are not ready or able to do, and then punish them for failing to do so. When they have more control of their environment, deciding what to do and when to do it and when to shift to the next task, as in an open classroom, on the whole, they do MUCH better than if they are being constantly directed by authority figures on what to do next and when to start and stop their activities. So much better that they look “normal” to professional observers who are looking to pick them out.

    This does not even take into account the HUGE percentage of kids “diagnosed with ADHD” when something else is really the problem. 20 years working in the foster care system showed me how frequently kids with horrible home lives and super high anxiety levels or even frank PTSD symptoms are labeled “ADHD” because they “have trouble concentrating on their work!” Well, if YOU were removed from everyone you ever knew after years of being abused and neglected and were forced to live with a family who had to be PAID to take care of you and could dump you at a moment’s notice, you might find concentrating on schoolwork a bit difficult, too!

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  • No one can be totally “nonjudgmental.” The best we can do is be AWARE of our judgments and decide not to act on them, but take them into account when evaluating what is the best thing to do. A person who pretends to be “nonjudgmental” is usually not being honest with him/herself and will have to rationalize any decisions as being “for the good of the client.” I always knew there was a danger I was acting to meet my own needs rather than the clients,’ making it a lot more likely I could avoid that danger. At least, that’s how I saw it.

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  • Oh, absolutely, for me, any therapist who thinks s/he can be “above” countertransferrence (aka an emotional reaction to a relationship with another human being!) is highly dangerous!

    In my relatively brief stint as a counselor, I viewed my reaction to the client as a) my responsibility completely, b) something that told me about how I might potentially make this situation worse by making it about me instead of them, and c) information about how the client is affecting me that may give me some insight into what’s going on with them. It is completely NORMAL to have an emotional reaction to an interaction with a client or any other person for that matter. The only thing that SHOULD distinguish the counselor from anyone else is that they understand how to use that information to get their own issues out of the way and make sure they are responding to the person asking for help. Anyone pretending they DON’T have an emotional reaction to their client is just plain lying to him/herself.

    The only way I see to be able to be successful as a “counselor” or “therapist” is to have your own shit together enough that you don’t end up acting it out on the client. That means that far from being “above” your emotional reactions, you are 100% aware of those reactions AT ALL TIMES and are humble enough to know they are there and respect them, both as an expression of your own needs and as a conduit to information that might be of help to the client. There is no training for this ability. It means you have to have done your own “work” on yourself by whatever means you can. I found clients respected me because I was genuine and in touch with my emotions and was honest with them about what was going on for me without putting responsibility on them for my reactions. They liked it that I was human and real with them, and that I think was what worked when it did work – nothing to do with any training or “method,” just being one human honestly there with another and willing to share their pain without trying to “fix” it to make myself feel better.

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  • A few good studies back in the 1970s showed that “ADHD” diagnosed kids placed in open classroom environments were indistinguishable from “normal” children. Additionally, a bunch of studies in very different places ALL showed that if you wait a year to enroll kids in Kindergarten, the rate of “ADHD” diagnosis goes down by 30%! A very odd “disease” indeed that is reduced by 1/3 if you just let kids develop for another year before enforcing your expectations on them, and pretty much disappears completely when you stop enforcing those expectations entirely!

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  • It sounds like literal torture! I have also noticed that whatever “treatment” is being provided, there is no requirement that it actually improve the client’s condition, either by the client’s report or any of their subjective “screenings” that are supposed to be objective. If things get worse, it’s raise the dosage or try a new “treatment.” And then they say you are “treatment resistant” if their shit doesn’t work, rather than saying, “Well, I guess our shit didn’t work this time.” And if you somehow get better in some way despite all of this nonsense, they are the first to step up and give their wonderful drugs all the credit. No, logical reasoning doesn’t seem to be in much supply.

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  • The amount of lithium used as “treatment” for “bipolar disorder” is many, many times the daily required dosage for nutrition. One estimate I just read suggests that one mg of Lithium a day is sufficient. Another measured the amount in micrograms (thousandths of a gram). A “therapeutic dose” is defined as 300-600 mg three times daily, or 900-1800 mg, one to two THOUSAND times the needed amounts. No one will specify what actual daily dosage of Lithium will kill you, but it is recognized that the “therapeutic” dosage and the toxic dosage of lithium are so close together that regular blood tests (once a week or so to start with) have to be done to ensure you are not receiving a toxic dosage.

    Lithium at high dosages is most definitely a drug. And a potentially deadly one. For those who don’t happen to die as a result of overt toxicity, Lithium at “therapeutic dosages” is known to be very hard on the kidneys, and can lead to kidney failure.

    https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/lithium#:~:text=Lithium%20may%20cause%20problems%20with,you%20have%20been%20taking%20lithium.

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  • There is more than a “dearth of long-term data on impact and safety.” There is PLENTY of long-term data saying that the impact and safety profile of these drugs is questionable at the VERY most optimistic. I’m not OK buying into this “more long-term studies are needed.” The studies we have are more than sufficient to call the use of these agents into question, particularly the blithe way they are prescribed so broadly with little to no standards of care. It is the job of the doctors and the medical community to prove they ARE safe, and they have failed to do so. No one should have to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that they are dangerous!

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  • In other words, you know of no such stories you can share. Your are unwilling to support your claim with data, yet expect others to accept your claim or else they are “not hearing your voice?”

    This is not a matter of viewpoint. Either the media is slanted toward success stories or it is not. I’ve given a long list of examples of that slant. You claim I am wrong. Where’s your data?

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  • Consensus is not science. Scientists have had “consensus” on all sorts of things that were stupid or dangerous in the very recent past. Thalidomide was safe, bottle feeding was as good as or better than nursing, Benzedrine was not addictive, Valium was not addictive, Prozac had a only few mild side effects, Viiox was safe and effective, schizophrenia was caused by overproduction of dopamine, depression was caused by low serotonin, Tardive Dyskinesia was a consequence of being schizophrenic and was NOT caused by antipsychotic drugs… all of these things were agreed upon by “consensus” and turned out to be totally wrong. So scientific consensus is not worth wasting our time on. People agree to false ideas all the time and swear by them, even in the world of science.

    You seem to have spent a great deal of time reading research on these genetic factors, which is great! I’m interested to know what PERCENTAGE of those “diagnosed” with ADHD have the specific CDH2 mutation you mention, and how many have that mutation who do not have an “ADHD” diagnosis? This information is essential if one is going to assume causality of a particular gene. Most of the genetic studies I have seen have found only probability correlations, and I seem to remember someone talking about this one and it was also a correlation – more people diagnosed with “ADHD” had this variation, but most did not, and a lot of folks having the variation did NOT get diagnosed with “ADHD.” Which suggests it could be A causal factor in SOME subset of those diagnosed with “ADHD”, but does not explain the phenomenon overall. Which might be good if that subset is in some way able to be identified and “treated” in some specific way. But it would not be proof that “ADHD is genetic.”

    But I could be wrong. Please share.

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  • Lovely hypotheses. No actual facts presented. Who cares who yawns, seriously?

    These presentations are 100% relying on emotional arguments. It is factual that people have been told for decades and still are told by some practitioners that they have a “chemical imbalance” that is “corrected” by psychiatric drugs. What you share is a bunch of professionals using plausible deniability to say, “Oh, we never really SAID that. Or at least none of us actually BELIEVED that, even if we did say it. So who cares if everyone still believes it’s true?”

    The “black bile” comment is particularly egregious. No one has every told anyone in recent times that their depression was caused by “black bile.” While fully 80% of Americans in a semi-recent survey said they believed that depression was caused by a “chemical imbalance.” The latter circumstance did not occur in a vacuum. Whether they themselves believed it or not, psychiatrists sold this idea of “chemical imbalances” hard, along with the pharmaceutical companies, because it was good for business. They only backed away from it when forced to by hard scientific research, and many still promote it in their literature or their practices. These after-the-fact disclaimers are in no way convincing. If they thought this such a silly, simplistic theory, why have they not spoken to discredit it publicly until Moncrieff’s study finally shone some public attention on the subject?

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  • I completely disagree with you. My experience is that the “success stories” are the only thing you ever hear in the media, and that those who have problems with this approach are silenced. Sure, there is the odd “horror story” that is sensational enough to make the news, but the idea that “ADHD” is a “neurodevelopmental disorder” that affects millions of children and can be specifically diagnosed (usually implied that “brain scans” or a response to stimulants are diagnostic) is almost never, ever questioned in the mainstream media. There are plenty of “celebrity stories” (Ty Pennington, Simone Biles, Michael Phelps, Justin Timberlake, Jim Carey, Howie Mandel) where the message is “Stimulant treatment saved my life.” I can’t think of one celebrity who has come out saying, “I tried this stuff but it really didn’t work for me” or “They tried to say my kid had ADHD but he moved to a new school and things went much better.” You’re welcome to prove me wrong by getting me some of these stories about how stimulants don’t work or made things worse or weren’t needed because X was really the problem, but that’s not what I see in the media at all. Seriously, I can’t think of a single story off the top of my head where such a story is told. I’m open to hearing evidence to the contrary.

    But my point was not about Big Media, it is about each of us being willing to accept it when other people have different experiences and don’t agree with our own viewpoint. My initial impression left me wondering if you’d be open to hearing things that don’t fit with your own narrative experience. But I could be wrong. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion here, and we all have to respect each others’ views, even when they disagree with us, as long as it is done civilly and with respect for the diversity of experience that exists in the field.

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  • You are absolutely welcome to tell your story here. We value all voices of anyone who has been through the system and want to hear how things look to you. At the same time, it’s very important to remember that others have had different experiences than you have had, and that you owe them the same level of respect that you are asking. Different people have different experiences, and hearing that one or two or ten or a hundred people feel their lives are turned around by by stimulants doesn’t alter that one or two or ten, or a hundred people share having experienced harm or confusion with the same approach. It also doesn’t alter the statistics and scientific studies about the overall results of stimulant treatment on the whole group of people diagnosed with “ADHD.” You may learn a thing or three from them as well, and it might help you not take it personally when other people’s description of their experience is quite divergent from your own.

    I hope that makes sense to you.

    BTW, I HAVE seen objective interviews of people diagnosed with ADHD and treated with stimulants or some other approach, and have spoken personally to a large number of such kids. I can assure you that there is a very wide range of responses, some of which reflect your own, some of which are more lukewarm, and some of which reflect feelings of resentment and betrayal. For instance, I worked with a ten-year-old foster kid who was put on stimulants while in foster care, and I asked her how she felt about it a year and a half or so after she was put on the drugs. She said, “Well, I guess it did help me focus better… but on the other hand, maybe I was just going through a lot of stuff at that time.” I would ask you to reflect on why she might not have been as enthusiastic about stimulants as you are. Food for thought.

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  • I agree. Folks who are looking for help don’t need another person whose ego they need to protect. Most of the time, that’s what got them into the trouble they are in, having to take care of people who were supposed to be taking care of them. It is ridiculous for a professional to create this kind of expectation, consciously or not. It’s not the client’s job to make them feel good about their work.

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  • If you would actually read Whitaker’s work, he was originally fully supportive of the status quo system. He only reduced his support as he observed SCIENTIFIC STUDIES showing that people AS A WHOLE were getting worse, not better. As far as I know, Bob Whitaker has never said that psychiatric drugs are worthless, that all psychiatrists are evil, or that no one has benefitted from psychiatric drugs. In fact, he has spoken out in favor of a targeted use protocol for psychiatric drugs, to use them for what scientific study says they are useful for, primarily for short-term symptom reduction, while seeking to look at other approaches which COULD be used by psychiatrists or anyone else to try to get past “symptom management” and create some viable long-term change. He even gives a couple of examples of how this mixed-use protocol would work, including real world examples of where it has been effective. Given the disastrous “recidivism” rate among users of psychiatric drugs and repeated studies showing that long-term use can make things worse for many users, indeed perhaps the majority, this seems a VERY rational viewpoint to take.

    You seem to be making this a personal thing, as if critiquing psychiatry as a SYSTEM is the same as saying psychiatrists AS INDIVIDUALS are no good. This is simply not the case. You are arguing for a chance to have a civil exchange about these questions. It seems to me that would start with you as an individual dropping the assumption that people at MIA are out to destroy people’s “mental health,” which VERY clearly seemed to be your assumption from the first words you put down in your first comment. If you come into a web community and start off insulting everyone here, it should hardly be surprising if you don’t get a warm welcome. If, perhaps, you REALLY want to have a meaningful discussion as you claim, it would seem to me the most sensible thing would be to start by saying, “Wow, I have a really different experience of psychiatry from y’all. Can you help me understand how you came to these conclusions, and maybe I can tell you how I reached mine?” But I don’t hear you expressing any interest whatsoever in the people who have experienced psychiatry as something unhelpful, insulting, demeaning, or downright dangerous in a very physiological way. I am hearing in you a desire to tell such people their experiences are wrong, or their conclusions are wrong, but wanting them to listen to YOUR viewpoint “nonjudgmentally.” I don’t think that is a realistic plan.

    Have you actually read “Anatomy of an Epidemic?” That might be a really good starting point before you start forming conclusions about Bob Whitaker and the entire community simply because they see things differently from you.

    And I absolutely respect your right to have your opinion, and you are welcome to post it here. But others are also welcome to theirs, and I kinda want to see you find the same respect for them you are asking for yourself.

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  • I think it’s a scientific fallacy for them to suggest that success of “pharmacological treatment” with a particular drug equates to some “pathology” of a “disorder.” They made that assumption for “ADHD” (that insufficient dopamine was indicated because increasing dopamine “helped”) and this was found to be false. They assumed low serotonin caused depression based on response to SSRIS/trycyclics affecting serotonin. Recent publications have finally put this idea to bed. They assumed that psychosis is caused by TOO MUCH dopamine, because of the response to dopamine inhibitors. Again, they have been proven completely wrong on this. I’m sure the same would be true of OCD. It’s undoubtedly FAR more complex than such simplistic answers want us to believe.

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  • Why is it a criticism of “antipsychiatry?” Sounded like a fantastic critique of psychiatry itself! And I agree with you, which is why I argue that the only person qualified to tell if something “works” is the client comparing what they got to what they wanted to get out of the deal.

    No one has to tell you if your shoes fit or if you liked the meal you were served.

    Thanks for sharing!

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  • The challenge comes when someone is walking behind you, undermining the incremental changes you have gotten implemented before. That’s what drove me out of the profession eventually. I realized there are some people whose idea of “positive change” was very different than mine, and in fact, MY ideas of “positive change” were threatening and destabilizing to their safe (if utterly ineffective) worldview. And a lot of those people seemed to be the ones running the show.

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  • I agree if you’re going to do therapy, the client has to be the one to decide on what a “good outcome” looks like! No one else can do it but them and have them feel self-determined about their successes. “Therapy” or any other intervention done “for the client’s own good” is almost always the opposite of “therapeutic.”

    The biggest problem with THAT idea is that at the beginning, many of the clients I had did not know what they thought a “good outcome” would be for them. The first part of my approach for such people is to help them get to the point where they could make a decision as to what they wanted their life to look like, or what they wanted to change about their lives. Sometimes that’s 90% of the problem – the client has had so many people telling them what to do, think, or feel that they have lost any sense of their own purpose and intentions in life. They do NOT need a therapist or psychiatrist or anyone else piling on more “shoulds” and “should nots” to their already burgeoning heap of them!

    But of course, every client is different. Those who already know what they’re trying to achieve have been the easiest to work with, as a few questions helps them identify such barriers as they are encountering (or putting up themselves) and they’re off to the races! But such folks are rare in my experience.

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  • I do agree that social indicators are a legitimate way to measure success – is the person working or involved in activities of some sort, do they have any kind of social interactions, are they sleeping better, are they off of disability payments, are they exercising, etc. But even there, we can’t assume one set of outcomes for everyone. For some, disability is an unavoidable reality. For some, working in a capitalistic 9-5 job is not going to be realistic, regardless of “therapy.” So again, there does need to be some sense of what “success” looks like, but I think we agree it needs to be very much individualized to the person in question, even if some kind of generalized guidelines are agreed to. And it seems we both agree that “symptom reduction” is not a very useful “outcome measure!”

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  • The brain imaging stuff is almost all smoke and mirrors anyway. They find that on the AVERAGE, people who “have major depression” have lower activity in X area. They DON’T tell you that not all people labeled with “MDD” have lower activity in the area, some have HIGHER activity, some “normal” people have lower activity and are NOT depressed. So their findings are meaningless.

    Add to that the fact that the brain is constantly changing and that PET scans and SPECT scans measure activity levels, and the whole thing really comes apart. I recall an experiment where they had people think about something sad that happened. Their brain scans changed. Then they had them think about something happy that happened. Their brain scans changed back. So thinking a THOUGHT changes your brain activity levels, and the whole idea that higher or lower activity in a certain area means something chemically or structurally wrong is completely debunked.

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  • You are making generalizations about therapists. Some of them very much DO tell you what to do. There are also plenty of inadequately trained therapists out there, or therapists whose own issues make them dangerous no matter how much training you provide. Since there is no agree-upon means of helping clients in the first place, it’s pretty presumptuous to assume all have “adequate training” and know what they are doing. There are competent and incompetent people in every profession. Why would therapists be an exception?

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  • The problem I’ve seen over the years is that reform efforts are only funded initially, but once the “testing” period is over, they are either discontinued or left to scrabble for grant money every year, because the system “can’t afford them.” The reason we “can’t afford” the reform efforts is because all the MONEY is going toward paying for overpaid psychiatrists and overpriced drugs for overhyped ‘conditions,’ and no one is willing to get their snoots out of the trough so the money can go to something workable.

    That’s my experience, anyway.

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  • I’d also submit that if they have the same “outcome measures,” whatever that means, then mindfulness is MUCH more “effective” because no one has to tolerate the potentially horrific and even dangerous “side effects” of the drug. Any non-drug alternative that is judges to have similar effects should be considered a HUGE improvement over any drug option for that reason, even within their own strained structure of “reasoning.”

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  • The importance of self-determination in any kind of “therapeutic” intervention cannot be overstated. I can see how the “home version” might have some real advantages in that the variable of whether the therapist feels safe to talk to is removed, as are the therapist’s own emotional reactions which so often interfere with that sense of safety.

    I’d be interested to know if there is any data on the experiences of people who did this in the office, particularly as to whether certain therapists worked or didn’t work for people.

    But anything that gives people more ability to chart their own course seems very much worth exploring. Not to mention the price!

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  • All true. The problem is, the psychiatric profession, far from fighting “stigma,” has demonstrably increased it, and the psych diagnoses are actually BUILT on pre-existing social stigma and discrimination. And when we start talking about PSYCHIATRISTS being somehow “stigmatized,” we’re really leaving the original meanings far behind!

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  • Well, I don’t know if this is true for her, but I associate the term “stigma” with sleazy psychiatric propaganda efforts to make it OK for everyone to be on psych drugs. So I don’t like to use it, either. Maybe that’s her take on it, too. I think we should not say “stigma,” I think we should say “discrimination,” and NO, that does not apply to the poor psychiatrists! They are the “discriminators!”

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  • The idea that “all behaviors are purposeful” has been central to all of my work as a counselor and/or social worker, but it seems an utterly foreign concept to those steeped in the DSM/psychiatric worldview. If all “mental illness” is a result of “brain dysfunction,” then NO behavior has any meaning or purpose at all. Could not be a more opposite approach to what I know to work!

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  • I know I’m not Dr. Murphy, but I think you have put your finger on a most important issue: how CAN one measure success when the “diagnoses” themselves aren’t even based on any kind of objective test, let alone the outcomes! But insurance companies have become accustomed to accepting DSM “diagnoses” for purposes of reimbursement. In fact, that is what the DSM was invented for and the only actual legitimate use for the manual. It is psychiatry itself that has tried to parlay a very subjective billing document into some kind of pseudo-scientific diagnostic tool for “disorders” that can’t be objectively defined, let alone tested for.

    What, indeed, is success in such a scenario? And who gets to decide?

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  • They probably wouldn’t phrase it quite that way, but I have certainly known psychiatrists, mainstream and considered competent, who had exactly this attitude. They express seeing the mind as some sort of mechanical device, and that they are simply tinkering with the parts like a mechanic with a car, to get it “running smoothly.” There seems from some to be no recognition that there is a person in there taking in information and making decisions and having emotional reactions to what’s happening to them, including what the psychiatrists themselves are doing. They seem to view people as bodies, and to discount any sense of agency that an individual may have. It’s not hard for me to see them discussing whether or not treating the “patient” as a human being is a good idea.

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  • OCD is a description of a way of behaving. No one has ever said that such behavior doesn’t exist, only that it is not a valid medical “diagnosis” of a “disease state” or “disorder,” as labeling a set of behavior “OCD” does nothing to identify either cause or appropriate “treatment,” as any good diagnosis must do, of course. You seem like a bright fellow and that difference should be VERY easy for a bright fellow like you to understand. And the idea that drugs can induce or exacerbate a particular kind of behavior should also not be surprising to anyone with the slightest education in the area. I’m sure you can think of some examples.

    I get the distinct impression that you are not really interested in understanding the answers to your questions. It seems you are trying to provoke people or prove “us” or Whitaker wrong. Am I wrong?

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  • You are missing nothing. There is no objective means to assess “success” in any “mental health treatment” modality. This is why psychiatry/psychology are not actually scientific endeavors. There is no way to even select out a legitimate group for experimentation, let alone obtain an objective measure of pathology or success, for ANY DSM “diagnosis.” Perhaps it’s the last point you are missing after all!

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  • Those are all assumptions on your part, which could be true or not be true. It does reflect where folks choose to spend their time, but I have no idea why someone chooses not to respond to comments. I am sure there are lots of reasons, and for some, your assumptions are probably true. But I’m not really in a position to know that. That’s my take on it, anyway.

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  • Replying as me, this time: I don’t think we know whether or not she’s read the comments. I hope she has and that it informs her further work. I am glad she is challenging some of the psychiatric shibboleths with her work, but I also hear a someone apologetic tone in her critique, which I find inappropriate when critiquing those with great power vis a vis their “patients.” The fact that her colleagues are even having a discussion as to whether or not “patients” ought to be treated as human beings suggests that there is a lot worse going on here than a few people being misguided or not quite understanding the experience of their “patient” cohort. It seems there is a built-in dehumanization process going on which can’t be explained by individuals being “misguided” nor altered by a bit of “sensitivity training.” This is ingrained, systematic behavior that is encouraged and enforced by those in charge of the system, and needs to be recognized as being intentional and enforced, such that any (such as her) who challenge the dominant narrative will be punished. Given her own experiences and sensitivities, I’m betting the author will gradually come to that conclusion (as I did), but in the meanwhile, I see no reason not to point out this inconsistency, as long as we do it as respectfully as we can. I value her work and have hope for her in the future, but I do see a need for a more blunt assessment as to why her colleagues are not receptive to her observations.

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  • I agree completely. Except that I also believe oncologists and other doctors of actual medical conditions damage their patients’ care by treating them as objects rather than people. It is well established that assertive, empowered patients actually live longer and have fewer ongoing issues than those who simply passively accept whatever “care” is doled out for them. So even oncologists ought to be engaging with their patients as human beings, for their own health and the success of their interventions.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3005070/
    https://www.patientbond.com/blog/patient-empowerment-impact-health-outcomes
    https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2019/02/01/12/42/the-patients-voice

    If PHYSICAL health outcomes are significantly affected, how much MORE would mental/emotional outcomes be impacted by how the “patient” is treated? This is one more reason why the idea of providing “medical treatment” to those with mental/emotional/spiritual issues is so destructive – the transfer of the “patient as object” attitude so common (yet still ineffective) in medical care is transferred to an area where it does a tremendous amount of damage, being essentially the exact OPPOSITE of what is required for actual improvements in “mental health,” though that term itself reinforces the idea of illness that is not appropriate to the situation 99% of the time. It boggles the mind that anyone who actually has the vaguest comprehension of what people are suffering from and what they need would have to have a discussion, let alone an argument, about whether treating their patients “like a human being” was a good idea!!!!

    It is bizarre that the world of physical healthcare is making more effort to alter this attitude while our “mental health professionals” seem to be arguing to continue it!

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  • It is just an unsupportable claim, the sort the industry makes all the time. There are plenty of people who have no history of “bipolar” diagnosis who get manic on ADs, and it’s even worse for SSRIs or SNRIs. Aside from which, there is no way to actually determine if someone does or doesn’t “have” “bipolar disorder.” So they can (and often do) claim after the fact that the REASON the person became manic on their drugs is because they WERE ‘bipolar’ but didn’t know it. I recall specifically the rhetoric that “the drugs uncovered a latent underlying ‘bipolar disorder!'”

    The fact is, these drugs can make ANYONE act in a manic manner, it’s simply an adverse effect, and no one has EVER drawn a connection between such a reaction and “bipolar disorder,” except anecdotally and after the fact. In other words, it’s bullshit!

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    Why would you think “this comment won’t survive long?” You haven’t violated any of the posting guidelines, have you? We don’t moderate for content here. You can say whatever you want, as long as you are civil and respectful about it. I hope the continuing presence of your comment makes this very clear.

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  • We eventually had to invent an alternative school that was child centered. Our youngest went through this school from K-12 and was very successful in college and is now a very powerful, intelligent, and capable adult, despite his “ADHD” tendencies that might well have gotten him “diagnosed” if we weren’t well enough educated to avoid it. The school didn’t last long after we left, but a lot of kids did have a different kind of school experience, one where the kids actually had RECOURSE if they were being abused or mistreated by the adults or other kids. It was a beautiful thing while it lasted, but eventually it knuckled under to the forces of “human nature.”

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    It occurs to me that posters in the MIA community are ALSO a group, and I have unintentionally allowed slanderous generalizations about that group, as Nijinsky so powerfully reminds me. In the future, any comments about the MIA community of commenters will be moderated as generalizations about a group based on their membership in the group.

    Nijinsky is also correct that any allegation of an inappropriate comment should be specific, and actually needs to be referred to me as moderator, rather than to the community as a whole. In an effort to be fair, I have allowed violations of the Guidelines, and will be correcting that mistake in the future.

    Any criticisms need to be of specific ideas, not of the MIA community as a whole. It is acceptable to critique MIA as an organization, but not groups of individuals who contribute to it, especially in such a generalized manner.

    Thanks to Nijinsky for reminding me of this requirement.

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  • I thought about this very point last night. The Posting Guidelines forbid attacking a person or making attacking generalizations about a group. But there is nothing saying we can’t attack IDEAS. Perhaps some folks find that confusing. You are all welcome to visit and share your ideas, but your ideas are going to be vulnerable to attack and may need to be defended with logic and data. There is nothing mean about letting someone know you disagree with them, especially if you provide legitimate data, either research data or personal experiences or both. It’s part of the price of coming here. If a person wants to challenge the ideas of others, they should expect that they may be challenged in the same manner. That’s how this community works.

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  • Have you ever read John Taylor Gatto? He was an award-winning elementary school teacher who wrote “The Seven Lesson Schoolroom.” He gets down to the actual meta-lessons that lie behind all of the supposed educational activities, and breaks them down into specific “lessons,” including “Never trust your own observations” and “Always ask permission from the authorities.” It is quite on the point of what you’re talking about. And sadly, though individual teachers challenge this thinking “under the table,” I would posit that it is essentially impossible NOT to reinforce these “lessons” when you participate in the system. I was a teacher for three years, and approached it with a growth and reform concept, and found it quite impossible to make more than a tiny scratch on the bigger system. It is a very unhealthy place!

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  • I accused you of nothing. I simply disclosed my intentions. It appeared to me that you came her with a pre-existing viewpoint and have “attacked” others who don’t agree with you in exactly the way you are claiming others are “attacking” you. I consider it valid for people to express an opinion and to have an intention, and it is not an “attack” to me if someone expresses an opinion I don’t automatically agree with. Of course, you don’t need to justify being here. But in my experience, if one wants to actually relate to people, rather than merely irritating them, it might work better to spend more time listening and less time telling others what you think of their ideas. But of course, that’s just my viewpoint. If you want to disagree with people, you’re going to get a lot of arguments, that’s just how people are. If that’s how you want to conduct yourself, you have every right to do so. But you don’t have a right to have everyone respond supportively, especially when you don’t show them the same courtesy, IMHO. I prefer to have honest but civil exchanges of viewpoints, with each side presenting the evidence to support their views. It doesn’t have to be viewed as a “win/lose” “right/wrong” kind of thing. Maybe people just have different experiences and are sharing them with each other? Maybe no one means to “attack” you at all, but just want you to understand what has happened to them without you judging them for sharing it? Maybe you can share YOUR experience and let others know how you came to the beliefs you have? And they can do the same, and each of you will be a bit wiser for understanding the universe isn’t always the way we ourselves experience it?

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  • Posting as moderator:

    If you are feeling abused by a specific post, please inform the moderator by emailing me or hitting the “report” button. It is unfair to community members to make blanket assertions that you are being “discounted, insulted or abused” without citing specific instances, not in the comments, but to the moderator to be handled, edited or removed. Everyone is welcome to their own viewpoint, and passionate disagreements to occur and are welcome, but only as long as they remain civil, which means no personal attacks and no generalizations about groups of people based on their belonging to a particular group.

    Please contact me at my email address if you need further clarification. Respectful disagreement is not the same as insults or abuse, and I am here to make sure that we allow the former but not the latter.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR: Brenda, I want to clarify that EVERY viewpoint is welcome here, and we NEVER moderate anything based on the content. Clearly, anyone claiming that the medical model is “correct” is going to have to deal with a range of varying opinions, some expressed with more passion than others. But that is hardly different than what you have offered above. So everyone is always welcome to offer differing points of view, but everyone else is also entitled to respond with theirs, and there is no rule against disagreeing or challenging folks to come up with data to support their viewpoints. As long as those disagreeing with you are civil in their replies, they have the same rights as you do to express whatever opinions or viewpoints they have.

    I hope that makes things clearer.

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  • I’m afraid there is no science behind the medical model, either. Not one of the DSM “diagnoses” has a legitimate, objective way to differentiate it from a “normal” person, let alone differentiate those WITHIN the “diagnosed” group on the basis of what is CAUSING the problems.

    The DSM itself says this: “In DSM, there is no assumption that each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries dividing it from other mental disorders or no mental disorder.” It also says that, “There is also no assumption that all individuals described as having the same. mental disorder are alike in all important ways.”

    What do these two admissions mean? First, they are saying that they can’t tell which category a person fits into, they could fit into more than one category, and there is also no way to tell with any certainty if a person even has a disorder or not.

    Second, and perhaps more important, the second comment says that even if two people fit the same diagnosis, center of the target, same symptoms etc., it doesn’t mean they necessarily have anything of significance in common with each other.

    So in other words, any person “diagnosed” with a “mental disorder” is so diagnosed subjectively, with vague and undefinable boundaries deciding whether they do or don’t “fit the criteria.” AND any person diagnosed with a particular “disorder” may have nothing in common with another person having the same “disorder” diagnosed, meaning the “diagnosis” doesn’t even tell you what kind of “treatment” they would need.

    Of course, everyone ignores this and pretends we somehow “know” that all “mental disorders” are caused by “biochemical/neurobiological” problems with the brain. Does that sound scientific to you?

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  • It seemed to me you were selecting your examples with a bias toward making your point, and by selecting and mentioning them, you seem to be suggesting they are more valid. I showed that by creating a similar list of psychiatric disaster stories from people just as famous. Why did you select those and not others? Your comments also seem to imply that having a “diagnosis” means needing “treatment” and that the “treatment” in question will generally work. Have you take the time to read Whitaker’s book yet? Have you taken the time to read some of the comments and articles from survivors of the psych system? Try reading the recent podcast regarding a psychologist studying what happens to people who are exposed to “involuntary treatment.” Her commentary on her OWN forced “treatment” as a teen and a young adult is CHILLING. I only wish it surprised me.

    I’m trying to get you to open your mind here. If you want validation that “treatment works,” there are plenty of places you can go. I assume you came here to look at things more broadly. There are very FEW sites where survivors can share their stories of what DOESN’T work about the system without being attacked or censored. This is such a place.

    The “Reply” button sometimes disappears when you get too many comments in the same thread. You just go back to the last one that has a “reply” button and it will appear at the bottom of the comments currently approved.

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  • So what? Who says he’d have been better off seeing the psychiatrist? Marilyn Monroe, Del Shannon, Stevie Nicks, Jordan Peterson, and Ernest Hemmingway, among others, certainly were not.

    And Edison was a classic “ADHD” kid who was kicked out of school and his mom told he was “incorrigible.” Mom knew better and educated him at home and he became one of our greatest inventors and marketers of new ideas. Would he have been better off being “diagnosed” and “treated” in his youth?

    Depression exists. People get depressed. Nothing new. Drugs can be used to alter people’s emotional reality. Also nothing new. Giving drugs to people without having a clue what is wrong with them and hoping that some of the spaghetti sticks to the wall when tossed is hardly an impressive medical approach. Proving that people have issues doesn’t prove they are medical problems, and CERTAINLY doesn’t prove that drugs are the answer.

    Actually, long-term studies on antidepressants, stimulants, and antipsychotics have shown that NONE of these drugs improve long-term outcomes on the average, and that’s from studies mostly TRYING to prove they work. Read Whitaker’s work and see what you think afterwards.

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  • You are operating at a level of privilege that allows you to ignore the fact that others don’t always “have a choice” like you do. “I don’t have to allow myself to be oppressed” sounds very New Age, but being born black or female or poor or in a third-world nation where multinational companies extract all of our resources and pay people pennies a day to work and there are no other employment options available is not a choice for those people. I’m guessing you’re privileged enough to insist on the ultimate privilege, the privilege of pretending you don’t have privilege and that others are suffering simply because they are too lazy to “insist” on becoming “unoppressed.” I hope you are able to open your mind and realize how incredibly FORTUNATE you are to be able to believe you “don’t have to allow yourself to be oppressed.” A lot of the world doesn’t have that option.

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  • Here’s a hint: there are cultures where “postpartum depression” essentially does not occur. These cultures are characterized by providing instant and ongoing support to new mothers, surrounding them with folks to cook, clean, sew, heat the home, etc. so the mother has only to care for the child. In our “enlightened” culture, we give moms next to zero support and six weeks of “parental leave,” often unpaid, and threaten the mother and family with poverty if she decides not to come back to “work” soon enough.

    I wonder why we have more “postpartum depression?” Must be genetic…

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  • I do have a lot of respect for Marx. But I also think there are lessons to be learned from the Russian experiment and other efforts at collective living and governing. Clearly, something went awry between the Proletarian Revolution and the melting away of the ruling class. What happened? Why? Was it inevitable? What can be learned from the collective farming efforts? What is worth keeping and what part of it was problematic?

    I think it’s fair to say that communism AS PRACTICED in the USSR and in China most definitely devolved into something pretty oppressive, which was what the joke was really about. And sure, you can say “That’s not really communism,” but you know what I’m talking about.

    The Israeli kibbutz might have come the best to emulating what Marx had in mind. What worked about that? What did not? How did they come to be slowly undermined? How can that be altered?

    Communism has yet to prove itself functional in the real world. Doesn’t mean it won’t. Capitalism has certainly proven to have some very serious adverse effects on a worldwide basis. I find these effects horrifying. I’d love to find a viable solution. Just not committed to the idea that Marx has the solution. We should keep working on it!

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  • The DSM III was specifically and intentionally designed to make psychiatry seem more “scientific” and claims of “biological causation” were intended to do the same. Its own creators admit this.

    “While the successive framers of the DSM have attempted to base it on scientific evidence, political and economic factors have also shaped the conceptualization of mental illness. These economic and institutional forces have reinforced the DSM’s use of a medical model in understanding psychopathology. Though the scientific evidence for a medical model is mixed and evidence for other types of conceptualizations have been given less attention, the medical model provides for reliable diagnoses that allot diverse benefits to treatment providers and researchers, as well as to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries.”

    https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-psychiatry/article/abs/influence-of-corporate-and-political-interests-on-models-of-illness-in-the-evolution-of-the-dsm/EBDA0C7701E89B6C85B28FA4A34EE4F8

    “During our interview, Spitzer mentioned openly, almost proudly, that one of the reasons he pushed for adoption of the term “disorder” for conditions such as anxiety was that it eliminated psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as treatment options. He added that opponents of the change could have mounted a legitimate defense if they’d spotted a key discrepancy with the ICD system, where the term “anxiety neurosis” was still included, in ways that made the DSM change look arbitrary and loaded. And he openly acknowledged that the addition of new conditions to the DSM was in part “a function of ‘Do you have a treatment’? If you have a treatment, you’re more interested in getting the category in” (qtd. in Shyness 75). Such pressure from drug-makers and their academic sponsors highlights a cart-before-the-horse dynamic often borne out by the DSM-III papers, as in the above linking of Panic Disorder to Upjohn Pharmaceuticals.”

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/side-effects/201601/the-problem-heroizing-robert-spitzer

    It was about competition for market share with various therapists/counselors/support groups, and psychiatry could only claim primacy if they promoted the one product they could offer that others could not, which was drug prescriptions. So they designed the DSM to be “atheoretical” (meaning none of the “diagnoses” were concerned with WHY that person acted/felt/thought that way) and left the “theory” to be filled in by those applying the “diagnoses.” This left the door wide open for unscientific claims that because drugs affected people’s moods and behavior, these “disorders” must be caused by brain abnormalities, even though the DSM specifically avoided saying any such thing (knowing there was and continues to be scant scientific evidence to even suggest such a thing might be true). It worked a treat, especially with the massive marketing assistance they received from the drug companies, who could see a bonanza coming their way. What is better than a chronic condition which has no identifiable cause but which can be “treated” with drugs for the rest of a person’s life?

    So it doesn’t have to be a “conspiracy,” merely a capitalistic coming together of financial and guild interests, which neatly dovetailed with a society who was anxious for an “explanation” for the vast emotional distress that citizens of more industrialized countries seemed to be experiencing, without having to question the basic assumptions of such a society’s status quo.

    The DSM was not and will never be a scientific document. It was at first a list of billing codes, but Spitzer and the DSM-III committee turned it into a political document that intentionally redefined “mental illness” as a medical problem treatable by doctors and drugs. That decision was made intentionally and had nothing to do with the eventual well being of the clients. It had to do with psychiatry’s bid for domination over the less expensive and frankly more effective (though the bar is VERY low) therapeutic approaches that were threatening to take away their client base.

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  • Ah, rehab centers are for drug and alcohol use, I believe.

    I see your Dwayne Johnson, and I raise you Ernest Hemmingway, Marilyn Monroe, Stevie Nix, Jordan Peterson, Robin Williams, Michael Jackson. I could go on. All of the above were massively failed by psychiatry and report being damaged by their “help”. Some even died. Hemmingway’s famous line, “The operation was a success, but we lost the patient!” was in reference to receiving electroshock therapy. He committed suicide.

    There are lots of people (including me) who have struggled with difficult emotional experiences, including feeling suicidal. That doesn’t mean the system will be of help to them. Perhaps it’s time to stop writing and start reading some of the many testimonials available here. Admittedly, it’s a skewed sample, but to claim that psychiatry is “there to help” seems a bit of a stretch, especially after reading the recent article referring to a study of psychiatric inpatient “treatment!”

    Try to open your mind to others’ experiences. This website exists for a very good reason, and it’s not to make people like you feel uncomfortable. There are a lot of stories out there that you may not want to hear, but perhaps you NEED to hear them anyway.

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  • You could also look at the illegal drug industry and say exactly the same thing. But we at MIA decide medical efficacy by science, not popularity. And BTW, there are PLENTY of “customers” of these drugs who are not voluntary in the least degree.

    I think we can look at the amazing success of these companies, including their ability again and again to absorb multi-million dollar lawsuits, as a sign that marketing far outreaches science in terms of selling products.

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  • My humor reflects the reality that people in any political/economic system will to a significant extent be tempted toward greed and the desire for personal power. This is what has happened throughout human history, and I’m not holding my breath for it to change anytime soon. I think Marx’s analysis of capitalism was absolutely brilliant, genius, unparalleled in any other writings before or since. I am not sure his solution is workable based on the fundamentals of human nature. And to date, history has proven my observations to be accurate.

    You’re welcome to disagree with me, of course, but the real point of my comment is that psychiatry doesn’t really care who is in control, they simply want power. Or to put it another way, the problem isn’t which form of government or economic system we endorse, the problem is that we allow the exploitation of other human beings.

    It is hard to see how you would twist that bit of humor into accusing me of suggesting that capitalism is the pinnacle of human achievement. The joke says that the essence of capitalism is that “man exploits man.” Do you see that as some sort of recommendation of capitalism as a superior form of economic system? That’s a pretty bizarre spin to put on a joke that clearly indicates both Capitalism and Communism (as practiced in the real world so far) to be flawed in their exploitation of human beings for power and profit. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider your political analysis of my joke. Or maybe simply file it away as a momentary attempt at humor in a very grim world.

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  • Your psychiatrist is simply telling you what they believe. I know of no data suggesting that “untreated” anxiety is any worse than “treated” anxiety, and the same for every other “mental health condition” in the DSM.

    As to whether or not it’s worth it for the “benefits,” that’s something each individual has to decide. My personal view, though, is that the less drugs I take, the better. ALL of them have adverse effects, and the list for antidepressants is quite long. Read up on the issue and see what you think. And remember, recovery rates were MUCH higher before antidepressants existed, and there are LOTS of other things you can do instead that DON’T have these bad effects on your body!

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  • You are right, it is essential to find solidarity with people with similar realities! But that is VERY different than someone else deciding FOR you what group you belong with on some arbitrary criteria, and particularly telling us what we have to DO about our supposed “condition!” We should be the ones deciding for ourselves what group we belong to and who are our “people” and what it means to be part of that community!

    I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir, but I just wanted to emphasize that point!

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  • With all due respect, many businesses profited mightily from the Third Reich, and Hitler’s rise to power would never have happened without the huge support of capitalists in Germany and around the world:

    https://www.adl.org/news/op-ed/german-businesses-and-nazis
    https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/how-big-business-bailed-out-nazis

    Many US industrialists supported Hitler as a bulwark against Communism:

    https://therealnews.com/d-day-how-the-us-supported-hitlers-rise-to-power
    https://www.truehoop.com/p/hitlers-american-business-friends

    So the evidence is not that Capitalism saved us from the Nazis. Rather, the Nazis and Capitalism were rather friendly. It was the courageous nations whose people sacrificed by going to battle on the air, sea, and ground and were willing to sacrifice their lives who ended Hitler’s power. And let’s not forget that this effort would never have succeeded without the enormous Russian army, from a Communist country at the time.

    Hitler’s demise occurred because a number of countries agreed that they needed to stop him. Regular citizens of both Democratic and Communist countries battled Hitler while most of the Capitalists sat back and sold goods to one side or the other or both.

    As to rebuilding Europe, perhaps you are forgetting the Marshall Plan, one of the most “socialistic” efforts ever put out by the USA, not to mention the GI Bill, where formerly poor kids were given college educations and cheap housing loans and started the biggest expansion in the middle class in the history of the world? Hardly the work of capitalism! More the result of smart investment of tax dollars leading to great results.

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  • So very true! A lack of philosophical clarity about meanings and values and intent and language dooms any “scientific” effort to failure. In this case, the most basic tenets of science are violated from day one: You can’t do a scientific experiment by assuming a heterogeneous group has something in common with each other. Lacking a clear distinction of an “in” and an “out” classification, no further experiment can be done. Of course, there are tons of other problems with psychiatry, such as whom is it intended to serve, what the purpose of the enterprise is, who gets to decide what “works” means, and on and on. It astounds me that any thinking person can take psychiatry’s pretense seriously!

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  • But the real problem is not having an objective way to “diagnose.” It is human nature to allow “drift” in any non-objective line that is drawn, and that drift will always tend toward what makes the powerful more comfortable and the less powerful even less powerful than before. When it was first proposed, “ADHD” (or MBD as it was called at the time) was supposed to affect a tiny proportion of the population, kids who’d had some kind of trauma or disease that made them unusual. By 1980, suddenly 3-5 % of the population “had it,” and they were 90% boys. Not long after, it was “discovered” that girls got it, too, and that kids don’t grow out of it, and that adults also had “ADHD.” The requirement that the child showed signs of “it” before 6 was removed, and now we’re seeing rates of 10-15%, and some places 20% of boys in a particular school or area are “diagnosed” with this “disorder.”

    I don’t see any way to stop this slide without hammering away at the utter spuriousness and subjectivity of these “diagnostic criteria.” I really don’t see “better diagnosis” as a way out of the mess. You can set up the best “standard diagnostic interview” in the world, but people will use it in ways that fit their worldview, and the industry will continue to chip away at these soft boundaries until more and more and more of the population will be seen as “mentally ill.” Because that is the INTENT of the system. At best, a standard interview format can slow the drift, but it will not stop it, because the force is pushing in that direction, and there is no objective standard one can point to and say, “No, you’ve really gone too far on this one.” The “diagnosis” is, in the end, a matter of opinion, and that opinion quickly deteriorates into “whatever the clinician wants to see.” That’s the problem I see as unsolved by the diagnostic interview. Not that I want to minimize the thought and good work that’s gone into this for you. I’m sure if we had honest clinicians and an industry truly focused on helping people, such an interview could be conducted in the knowledge that these “diagnoses” are indeed only ways of describing situations and don’t actually tell us what (if anything) is wrong or how to “treat” the patient. Of course, that begs the question, what use is a diagnosis that doesn’t tell you what is wrong or how you should treat the patient? But that’s for another post.

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  • Well, that’s not a bad standard if you want to set one. I get that you’re using this to battle the status quo. I’m just saying that the fundamental of the status quo that needs to be changed is not going to change by better outcome measures. I do care about the people who have to put up with the system as it is, and I used to be the clinician “behind the lines” and feel like I made a huge difference for some folks I encountered. But I got worn down by the general acceptance of the DSM diagnoses and the abusive treatment of clients that resulted. It’s hard to see what can really alter the deep issues with the current disingenuous “philosophy” of the system.

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  • Of course not. But most people haven’t the first beginnings of a clue about what happens in the “mental health” system. Most still believe in the TV “psychiatrists” who are wise and compassionate and good listeners who do therapy. They see the MH system as protecting them from dangerous “schizophrenics” and dispensing magical pills, and the only reason a “mentally ill” person is suffering is because “they’re off their meds.” I’d love to see psychiatrists held accountable to some sort of client-based outcome measure, but they’ll fight anything sane and if it did happen, they’ll find a way to doctor the results (sorry for the pun!)

    Sorry for being so cynical, but it seems we have an entire profession run on false assumptions and secret ill intent, and it’s hard to see any measures to create honest accountability being successful even if such a measure could be found and validated.

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  • The fundamental error of the whole “DSM” model is the assumption that you can group people together based on how they feel, think or behave and that somehow all those people not only have something “wrong” with them but that they all have the SAME THING “wrong” with them. It is an absurd proposition, but I don’t think it’s by chance that they came up with it. It’s a great strategy for selling drugs!

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  • You mean some kind of quasi-objective outcome measure.

    I do agree that the status quo is able to CONTINUE because there is no “yardstick” of success that psychiatry has to adhere to. My problem is that any such yardstick is ultimately not really objective, largely for the reasons you enumerated earlier. Cancer can be tested for reduction in tumor size or in certain chemicals present in the bloodstream. Heart disease can show better outcomes through increased QT intervals or other such electrical measurements, as well as blood flow measurements. If a drug REDUCED blood flow through the coronary arteries, no amount of flim-flam could be used to say that this led to “improved outcomes.”

    But there literally is no such measurement possible for matters of the mind/spirit. It is only when such testing and measurement fails that we should even be considering something a “mental health” problem. It’s not a body thing, and trying to pretend it is is just misleading. The real truth is, “mental health” intervention should not be considered part of the medical system, and demanding “outcome measures” is simply allowing the ruse to continue that any such objective measure is even possible. So I have a problem with the idea of “outcome measures” in the sense of “treating” some kind of physiological illness. Hell, they can’t even define WHAT they are “treating,” let alone what a good outcome would be! And of course, they always fall back on “symptom reduction” as their “outcome measure,” even when that may have nothing to do with the goals and purposes of the client. And “symptom reduction” is, of course, the area where the drugs are most likely to look “successful,” and I don’t think the choice of these “measures” is in any way disconnected from that fact.

    Bottom line, the whole idea of “treating” “mental illness” as a disease state is wrongheaded and destructive. I can’t see any way to get around that, and I think we’ll be a lot better off simply stating that fact than trying to come up with quasi-objective measurements to keep the insurance industry happy. Impractical, yes, but at some point, I think we have to stop pretending!

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  • I’m really talking about simply asking the person to tell you what did and did not work about their experience. Clearly, a third party not associated with the therapist or his/her agency would be ideal. But I’m not advocating for any kind of “outcome measures.” We don’t have a homogeneous group of people to apply this concept to anyway. We just have to give a shit enough to listen to the client, whatever s/he said. I do think that a person who REALLY cares and wants to know will be honest in their response, but there’s no guarantee. It’s more of an integrity thing to me. There is no mathematical way to evaluate the success of any “mental health” intervention.

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  • I have always thought that the only one in any position to evaluate our “outcomes” is the person receiving the “help.” No “independent assessor” will be in a position to truly judge what is helpful, unless they are looking at therapy as a way to improve the behavior of the client for the benefit of society at large. Which is a VERY slippery slope!

    The client is the one who knows IF something is wrong, WHAT exactly is wrong, and what an improvement would look like. The therapist’s job, in my view, is to help the client come to understand their OWN view of what they want and what the barriers are to accomplishing it, and to help them circumvent or remove such barriers so they can succeed. It is not the therapist’s job to tell the client what is wrong or what they “should” do or not do. Most people are messed up specifically BECAUSE other people told them what was wrong with them and/or what they “should” do or not do. As such, the therapist is not in a position to decide for the client if therapy “worked” for them. If I think therapy was great and the client said it was worthless, it was worthless. All the more so with drug interventions. There is a balance between “reduced symptoms” and reduced quality of life that only the client can assess.

    So skip the outside assessor. Ask the client. They are the only ones who can define ‘success!’

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  • Ways to help people get a grip on their own moments of “irrationality” and the reasons behind them, to manage to set boundaries on those who would harm us regardless of how they try to resist, as well as means to address ACTUAL health problems that are observable and can be addressed by physiological means, are all very welcome and needed. I do think it naïve to imagine that the death of psychiatry would lead to a sudden move to sanity and peace and good communication and respect in the world. But it sure would help NOT to have them around trying to make it worse by creating pretend “solutions” based on a complete misunderstanding (often an intentional one) of what a human being and a mind actually might be. We most definitely need to be working on real ways for people to learn to respect each other, to not react out of fear and hatred, to detect and avoid people who are dangerous to them, etc. But I don’t see physiological interventions being more than a tiny part of that approach. I don’t think we disagree on that point.

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  • I always loved that one. It’s NOT that we failed the client, their DEPRESSION resisted us! It’s not our fault, not even the CLIENT’S fault, it’s DEPRESSION’S fault! As if it is a separate entity with an ability to resist despite everyone’s best efforts. Why not just say, “We haven’t been able to find a way to help her so far.” But that would mean admitting that their wonderful “treatments” may not be quite so wonderful! We can’t have THAT, so let’s “blame the disorder!” It’s a win-win! Oh, except for the client, who remains depressed and looses all hope, but hey, it’s not OUR fault that Depression is so mean to her!

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  • If we’re going to talk spiritual, I’d consider the mind to be more of a relationship or interface between body and spirit. I would still maintain “Mind” is not something that has a location in space or in the brain as psychiatry and related disciplines assume. What’s going on at a micro-microscopic level (electrons and fields and so forth) is beyond my current understanding, but it’s absolutely certain that “treating” the body per se is not going to be effective at this level.

    It is silly, of course, to pretend that people don’t feel depressed or anxious, or behave in irrational ways that are not productive based on past experiences. I just don’t consider such things to be “illness” in the sense that a specific and measurable part of the BODY is somehow out of whack! The definition of “illness” is very problematic if we’re talking about disturbances in an electrical field around the body, let alone the damage to the “spirit” (whatever one considers that to be), which to me seems to be the main reason for the kinds of emotions and behavior that are currently identified as “mental illness” by the crackpots who created the DSM. I seriously think we need to get far away from that term, as it’s been claimed completely by the DSM propagandists, and doesn’t really describe the situation in terms that the average person can wrap their heads around.

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  • In this case, I’m using the term “improvement” exactly as those claiming the “benefits” of psych interventions are using it. By their very own measurements, they are incapable of “improving” any situation, and their approach is about as “effective” as going to the bar after work to get a buzz on. They can’t even “succeed” in their own paradigm, let alone address the fact that the entire paradigm is based on a fantasy “model” with no connection to physical reality.

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  • I think we’re talking about semantics here. Obviously, mental DISTRESS exists, difficult EMOTIONS exist, dysfunctional BEHAVIOR exists. But to call a mind “ill” in the same sense as a body is “ill” is a logical fallacy, which is what Szaz was talking about. If there are ways of helping with mental/emotional distress that folks are aware of, we absolutely need to engage with these approaches. But it’s not a MEDICAL problem. The mind can’t be “ill,” as it is not a thing of the physical universe. The term “illness” is an analogy or metaphor that can’t literally be true.

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  • It is fascinating how psychiatric apologists are allowed to distract from the topic with irrelevant associations of religion or politics. Science is science, and when there is no science behind your position, it doesn’t matter the political or religious affiliations of the person pointing that out, any more than the race or sex or country of origin has anything to do with it.

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  • Lots and lots of people have questioned it, but they are shot down by the orthodoxy and massive “group agreement.” It eventually became so bad for me that I realized I could not ethically continue in the “mental health” field, as the purpose had shifted away from trying to find ways for people to live better to trying to find ways for people to “stop feeling bad,” and that drugs had taken the center stage despite all the very rational arguments against them. It became clear, I suppose, that rational arguments would never win the day, because the field had become predominantly irrational, and rational critiques led to shame, punishment, and shunning.

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  • “Diagnostic Drift” refers to when a soft line is drawn with no objective determination of who “has” or “doesn’t have” a particular condition, the line tends to move to include more and more people over time. This has been proven over and over again, particularly when there are incentives in place to “diagnose.” For “ADHD”, the incentives include explaining failure to be able to teach children or manage a classroom, justification for failing to learn sufficient parenting procedures, finding an “identified problem child” to maintain a dysfunctional family unit, creating a cadre of “specialist” who can make money off of making these “challenging diagnoses,” writing books and giving lectures, and of course, the financial remuneration for psychiatrists, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies.

    And of course, you are correct, when “treating” something that hasn’t been actually established as a bona fide physiological problem and includes an incredibly heterogeneous group of “diagnosees,” one will certainly see “treatment failures” over and over again. And the soft “diagnostic criteria” of course make it easier to put the blame for any failures on the client instead of the person administering “treatment.” Instead of saying, “My treatment failed,” you can say “X is ‘treatment resistant,'” or “It’s really Bipolar Disorder” and off you go down another “treatment” path. I suppose that’s “reification” in action. We’re “treating” a metaphorical concept that is indistinguishable from “normalcy,” so the entire “treatment” process is by definition fantastical, having no concrete connection to reality. Except the damage done to the victims, oops, I mean “patients”, of course. That is very real and concrete, unfortunately.

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  • Well, they will never be able to help the 1% until they start admitting that the 20% that are diagnosed are 19% having a hard time with a traumatic existence. And I agree, the severity is not related to whether or not it’s a “biochemical depression,” if such a thing is proven to exist. Many, many cases of experiential depression are incredibly severe! And as you say, there are some people who have depressive tendencies that are mild but chronic who may very well fit into the same category with someone who is genuinely “seriously depressed for no reason.” Until there is some effort to actually make this distinction, any case of ACTUAL biological depression will be totally submerged in the flood of experiential depression cases and will never be identified or detected as a valid group for study. And I don’t see psychiatry being willing to go there any time soon. There is WAAAY too much money being made under the current model, even when they themselves know it’s not a valid model at all.

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  • But they have not yet realized what you said, that “depression” is not a “homogeneous disorder.” They continue to comment on and “diagnose” “major depression” based on subjective criteria, and studies are done over and over on groups of people “diagnosed with major depressive disorder.” The only way anyone will make ANY kind of progress on if there is a subgroup who actually DO have something physiologically wrong with them is to STOP grouping heterogeneous people together as if they all had one “disorder,” and instead start breaking down the subgroups and try to find some who actually DO have something in common with each other.

    And I have no faith that brain scans are the way to do this. But even the link you mention still talks about “different types of depression” rather than “some depressive symptoms may have a biological cause.” They are still running on the assumption that ALL cases of depression are “medical,” that ALL of them are caused in some way by biological anomalies, and that sorting these “depressed people” into categories will solve the problem. Until and unless they begin to recognize that MOST cases of “depression” are NOT caused by biological problems, but by a wide variety of social, interpersonal, and individual psychological needs, and that even those cases which DO have biological causes need to be checked for things like sleep deprivation, nutritional deficiencies, anemia, and so forth before jumping to the unwarranted conclusion that something is wrong with their brains and that brain scans will somehow answer this very complex question.

    And finally, if “they are not there yet,” why do “they” pretend that they ARE there and claim things are true that they don’t know about? Why do “they” get so threatened when people point out there are 80% or higher associations between MDD and childhood adversity/trauma and that attacking THAT problem will probably be a lot more fruitful than experimenting on people’s brains when you don’t really know what you’re doing?

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  • I would frame it more as a lack of any concrete means to MAKE a “diagnosis” from the DSM. As soon as you create “diagnoses” based on totally subjective “criteria,” the process of “diagnostic drift” will almost immediately take place. First, only the “really severe cases” are “diagnosed,” then the “benefits” to a less serious level of “dysfunction” are touted, and pretty soon, any kid who doesn’t want to sit still for yet ANOTHER round of math instruction on a point he already understood 3 months back is now “disordered” and “needs medication” for his “attentional difficulties.”

    It also lets the adults off for creating poor environments for kids. I’d have had a lot less “attentional difficulties” if I weren’t bored to death all day every day throughout my entire tortured elementary school years. Why should the kids have to “pay attention” to whatever drivel the adults turn out? Maybe the adults suffer from “Boring Teacher Disorder!” It is exactly as logical and scientific!

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  • Not only are academic measures not improved, but not one significant outcome measure is better for those “treated” with stimulants vs. those diagnosed but not “treated.” This study shows that not only is there no benefit of long-term labeling and “treatment,” it actually makes kids’ lives measurably worse! Yet MILLIONS and MILLIONS of kids are getting labeled and “treated” every day. More proof that psychiatry not only doesn’t improve lives, it makes them worse, and despite doing so and KNOWING it is doing so, it makes no effort to change its theories or approaches.

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  • Interestingly, during my brief stint as an official “therapist,” my goal was always to have the person NOT need me as quickly as possible. I didn’t WANT them to keep being my “clients!” Of course, I got paid by an agency regardless of who I saw, and there were always more “clients,” so the financial conflict of interest really wasn’t there in that role. So we’d get down to business, almost from the first words out of their mouths. But when it comes to GOOD therapy, the least necessary to get the client functioning on his/her own should be the goal! Yet I know it often is not.

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  • I am not arguing against anyone using Ketamine as a means of relieving their suffering. It is apparent that this works for some people. But to try and codify what appears to me to be essentially a spiritual experience, to market it and sell it at huge cost to people while representing it as “the latest breakthrough” without mentioning that it won’t help everyone and can be harmful and that similar or better processes are quite possibly available through religious/spiritual practitioners is very damaging. There are lots of ways for people to get help for their situations, and everyone responds differently to whatever approaches are taken. The sooner the psychiatric world cottons on to this fact, the more likely it is they might actually be helpful to people. There’s a big difference in my mind between trying something and seeing if it works and selling a supposedly scientific “treatment” based on flimsy evidence and a lot of marketing.

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  • There are any number of critiques of psychiatry, and even medicine in general, identifying similarities to religious practices. Please don’t minimize this as related to Catholicism. Here are a few examples:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2625374/#:~:text=Psychiatrists%20have%20reserved%20powers%20to,prized%20virtues%20within%20mainstream%20psychiatry.

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/27506042

    https://www.drugtopics.com/view/opinion-modern-medicine-religion

    It’s not a new idea of Gina’s. Heck, folks refer to the DSM as “psychiatry’s Bible!” Do you think there may be a reason for that comparison?

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  • Wow, great article, Patrick! I’m kind of surprised they published it. Your analysis of the actual trial data is very informative. I only wish that more people would think with that kind of information. If you did a hundred trials, and 80 were negative, 18 were neutral, and two supported the “treatment,” you could still apparently get it through the FDA???? And they didn’t even manage to get TWO positive trials! I’d bet Jack Daniels would meet statistical significance in a four-week, controlled dosage trial. Why do we allow this antiscientific nonsense?

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  • I really think that’s the core of it. We are taught not to trust ourselves and our internal intuitions, starting VERY young! We are taught to “trust the adults, they know what’s going on” and to dismiss our own valid observations over and over again. Then, as adults, if we find we’re having difficulties, once again, we are taught to ignore our own instincts and just do as we’re told. Well, that’s how we got INTO this mess in the first place! I have no objection to true collaboration and agreed restrictions based on the needs of a group or community, but simply dismissing a large proportion of the populace’s observations as invalid or unimportant is certainly not going to lead to a better world, or even better “mental health” for the individuals involved. It’s kind of like saying I slammed my finger in a door, and the “treatment” is to now hit it with a hammer! Doing more of what made us “crazy” in the first place is not a solution!

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  • What happens when the “client” starts applying these skills to the staff that are teaching them how to do so successfully?

    I had a young friend who was in 5th or 6th grade. The school had a training on Carl Rogers’ “reflective listening” skills. During the assembly, they even did role plays. Afterwards, Jeremy sat on the edge of the stage, and a teacher came up with a raised voice and told him he’d better get off the stage. Jeremy said, “I feel uncomfortable when you yell at me. I’d like it if you could talk in a quieter voice.”

    He was immediately sent to the Principal’s Office for “talking back” to the teacher.

    I think the lesson is clear enough.

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  • DISEASE: a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms : SICKNESS, MALADY

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disease

    Clearly, the boundaries between medical disease and social “disorder” have become very fuzzy. But to me, a social disorder is something CAUSED by social conditions. As you can see, the definition of “disease” above reflects something wrong with the BODY, and because medicine (at least in the Western countries) consists primarily of prescribing drugs and surgery, as well as lifestyle recommendations (which are not considered “treatments”), the idea of “treating” a “social disorder” by medical means seems stupid, kind of like drinking alcohol to deal with having a dead-end job and an unsatisfying relationship.

    Here’s a decent description of a “social disorder:”

    “When disorder and immoral events occur in society, it is called social disorder. From the beginning of the world’s existence, there has been chaos, heartache, catastrophe, and disorganization all of which can mostly be attributed to corrupt human behavior. Societies, countries, cities, communities, and families all experience this disorder in different ways, depending on their environment, population, and circumstances. This lesson will review some of the immoral dilemmas and misconduct that influences social disorder.”

    As you can see, this definition involves issues of morality, order, corruption, environmental circumstances, social expectations, and even geography. Why would medical “treatment” be appropriate to deal with immorality? Or geographic trends (did you know that schizophrenia rates are MUCH higher in urban environments?) Or environmental problems? Medicine addresses the body. The major error that psychiatry makes is assuming that physical “treatments” can be used to address social/emotional problems. That assumption is 100% wrong. The only thing medicine can do for “mental illness” or “social disorders” is to “medicate” away the emotions involved with feeling oppressed or alienated or angry about the social conditions that prevail. Unless you are more going down the line of eugenics, and want to use “medical” interventions to reduce the ability of rebels to take action, or in fact incarcerate or sterilize or even kill them, as psychiatry has done in Nazi Germany and in the USSR, among other places.

    Social disorders are social problems and need social solutions. I’m not opposed to thinking differently about that, but I am having a very hard time seeing what doctors are able and willing to do about a social problem like boring classrooms or domestic abuse in the home.

    Using your example, how is “ditention” caused socially, and what medical intervention would stop it from happening? Or are you just talking about ameliorating the consequences and allowing the cause to go “untreated?” Which I think puts us back in the Jack Daniels category of “treatment.”

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  • BPD isn’t just dubious, it’s entirely subjective. So the only thing they CAN measure is “people who have been diagnosed with BPD.” Which is an extremely heterogeneous group, so the assumption that all will respond to the same or similar “treatment” is absurd.

    I think you are correct, good therapists use what seems to work and discard approaches that are ineffective. It’s very intuitive, and the diagnosis is essentially completely irrelevant to good therapy. It’s also increasingly rare, as the DSM approach has dominated trainings and courses nationwide. So you’re right, measuring “effective therapy” for “DBT” is a fool’s errand.

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  • Well, a “cultural disorder” is by definition not medical. So I actually agree with you there. The question is why we want doctors “treating” social disorders with drugs, when the obvious answer is to alter social conditions that are causing the “disorders.” Schools are a fantastic example. “ADHD” is actually DEFINED to a large extent by behaviors in school that teachers find inconvenient or annoying. The same kids who are “diagnosed” with “ADHD,” when served in an open classroom environment, where they have more choices about how to spend their time and when to switch activities, are literally indistinguishable from “normal” children by trained professionals, per controlled scientific studies! So why give them drugs, when transporting them to an open classroom alleviates most of the “symptoms” without any of the risks of drug “treatment?”

    One could even build on your comments and suggest that the actual purpose of psychiatry is to deflect any attention from the social causes of these “disorders” and instead blame people’s biochemistry so that no changes will happen to the social status quo.

    What are you recommending I read that I have not responded to? I don’t remember that. I’m almost always willing to look at anything that provides new perspectives. I’m not willing to spend much time rehashing psychiatry’s spurious arguments about “mental disorders” being caused by biological problems in all cases (even their own DSM says otherwise), but if you’ve got something refreshing to share, I’m all ears!

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  • It remains a legitimate question as to whether this difference is a “disorder” or “medical condition,” which is a philosophical problem of great magnitude that psychiatry has always dodged. Difference is not disease. And there is still no clear line of demarcation as to who “has” or “doesn’t have” ditention or what causes the condition or situation.

    Thanks for the interesting information. I’d also suggest that if the DSM were organized around things that could actually be distinguished from each other and from so-called “normal,” there might be SOME outside chance of finding a small subgroup of people who actually DO have something wrong with them. But this would require psychiatry to give up on their fictional DSM “bible” and start being a hell of a lot more humble about what they do and do not know. I’m not going to hold my breath.

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  • I have to say, that particular course of events is VERY rare, in my experience. In fact, I can’t think of one person who ever went in and asked for ECT. It generally occurs when someone is told they have “major depression” and is told it is a “neurobiological disorder of the brain” and that there is no cure, but that antidepressants can make it so you can live with it, yet antidepressants don’t seem to work despite multiple attempts of different drugs and combinations, and the doctor tells the desperate sufferer that ECT is the only “treatment” left and in desperation, they agree with it. That’s my experience, having talked to at least a few dozen “voluntary” ECT clients.

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  • As far as I recall, “ditention” is not a current DSM diagnosis. And I’d need to see how this “ditention” is objectively distinguished from “normalcy” in a consistent way.

    That being said, if we have one example of a “biological cause” (though it sounds more like a correlation in any case), that’s not a very good advertisement for the idea that “mental illnesses” are biological “diseases.”

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  • Reading the DSM would not have helped. Believing in the DSM was the doctor’s first error. Once you start down the path of “diagnosing” your clients based on prejudice and subjective checklists of behavior, any “intelligence” one might have will have to be suspended. It’s not a matter of “misdiagnosis,” it’s a matter of not having a clue to start with what the significance of anyone’s mental/emotional suffering is, and not caring enough to find out.

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  • I believe the latest research says about 15% have significant improvements with antidepressants. And I’m very glad you managed to be in that group!

    I think you might be missing the point a bit, though. The drugs are drugs, and they work for some people and they don’t for others. That’s not the sham. The sham is the PRETENSE that there is some way to “diagnose” people with the highly subjective DSM, and that these drugs “rebalance chemicals” in the brain that are associated with these subjective “diagnoses,” and that all ‘mental illness’ so defined is caused by faulty brain chemistry.

    There is nothing wrong with finding that a particular substance works for you to enhance your life. But there’s no new “science” of the brain involved here. People have been experimenting with substances since the beginning of human history, from alcohol and inhalants to herbal medicine, not to mention any number of spiritual interventions from many different cultures. I object to none of these, as long as they don’t damage more than they help. What I do object to is people pretending to know things they don’t know, and using that pretend knowledge to sell things, despite data that belies their own assumptions. That’s the sham, not the drugs. It’s what they TELL you about the drugs and diagnoses that is fraudulent.

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  • Looks like absolute proof that “stigma” is caused by the diagnoses, or the person applying them, rather than some pre-existing social biases. If it matters which “diagnosis” you have, it’s clear the discrimination experienced is applied to the diagnosis itself and what we have been “taught” about these “diagnoses” by our wonderful Mental Health System and drug industry. In other words, no “diagnoses,” and the “stigma” doesn’t happen.

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  • I always found the best “screening” to be: “How are you doing?” Then ask questions depending on the answer and figure out what the person is worried about or frustrated about or angry about or whatever. Then try to help them come up with a plan. It ain’t rocket science, folks.

    Of course, the PURPOSE of “routine anxiety screenings” IS to create “overdiagnosis and overprescription.” That’s the whole idea. That’s also not rocket science. Screenings exist to get new “customers” and sell more product. They are marketing tools, not medical screening processes.

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  • A very interesting study was done a number of years ago. The experimenter created groups of three children who were assigned three problems to solve. One set of threes had an “ADHD-diagnosed” child and two non-diagnosed children, and the control groups had three non-diagnosed children in the group.

    They measured “on task” behavior, meaning how much time did the kids spend trying to solve the problems rather than goofing off or doing something else. The “ADHD” inclusive groups did far worse on this measure, much more joking around and goofing off than the control groups. However, the primary outcome was which groups solved the problems more effectively. All of the “ADHD” groups solved one or more of the problems presented and as I recall, a few completed ALL the problems. NONE of the control groups solved any of the problems presented.

    “ADHD” behavior still has survival value. Sure, if you put three “ADHD-diagnosed” kids in the same group, they’d probably have been very unproductive. But hard work from the “conventional” thinkers did not lead to solutions. We need ALL types in our society, and discriminating against certain children because they make life a little (or a lot) more difficult for adults to manage is both short-sighted and overtly destructive to our success as a society.

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  • Not merely “not required,” but not CAPABLE of “diagnosing mental illness.” Of course, why would we expect they would be when “mental illness” is defined by a somewhat arbitrary collection of thoughts/feelings/behavior as “criteria” and set at TOTALLY arbitrary levels of how many “criteria” are required for a “diagnosis,” such that in many if not most “diagnoses,” two people can be “diagnosed” when they have not one single symptom in common with each other. The very idea that such a wide range of heterogeneous behavior/emotion/thought could ALL be caused by some specific genetic anomaly is absurd on the face of it. But logic is not the basis for “mental health treatment.”

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  • With all due respect, this seems to shed more heat than light on the matter. Finding partial correlations doesn’t give us any real sense of cause, because most of the people diagnosed “ADHD” or “bipolar” or whatever don’t share these genes in common.

    More importantly, these genetic findings provide absolutely NO guidance as to what, if anything, one can do to assist those having this highly subjective and heterogeneous “diagnosis.” What good is it to know that 10% of “ADHD-diagnosed” individuals have “altered dopaminergic firing patterns” if this doesn’t lead to any understanding of how to help even this minority of such individuals.

    Finally, the fact that there are genetic variations between people that express themselves behaviorally means absolutely nothing about whether or not such states are, in fact, pathological. The assumption that kids who struggle in a standard classroom setting are ipso facto “disordered” deserves extreme scrutiny, which seems to be avoided by most advocates for the idea that “ADHD” is some kind of biological dysfunction rather than simply a common variant of behavior with survival value that teachers and parents tend to find inconvenient.

    So again, not much light shed here. No one should be surprised that different behavior might be associated with different genetic makeup. Genetic diversity is the key to species survival. Different is not “disordered.” When THAT question gets addressed, maybe we can talk about some “light” being shed on the subject.

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  • I think you are still making unfounded generalizations, as if you can read the mind of all therapists, and as if all therapists have the same thoughts and intentions. This is obviously untrue. I think it’s possible to make generalizations about psychology/therapy as an industry, but individuals have different experiences and individual therapists are a VERY diverse group.

    I’m not making apologies for the horrible state of affairs that exists today. I’m just saying that you can’t know what every therapist is thinking or intending, nor can you judge the experiences of those who employ them as being invalid or unhelpful based only on your own subjective opinions.

    I am wondering – do YOU personally have experience with therapy?

    I’m also with you on political action being necessary, and I hope we can get organized enough to make it happen.

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  • I generally agree with your sentiments, however, I have noted there are times in one’s life where the other party is simply not interested in collaboration. This is particularly the case when there are substantial power differentials and/or when there are financial conflicts of interest. I am afraid to me that psychiatry has reached the point where both of those issues have made them impervious to logic and compassion as a profession, even if individuals are capable of seeing the damage psychiatry has done and want to change it. The latter deserve to be reached out to and asked for specific actions that would be supportive, but the former are safe enough with their power to simply deny reality and keep on with the “theories” that have made them so much money and given them so much control over the industry and their “mentally ill” charges. Bob Whitaker himself has always been open to discussion regarding his findings, and has appeared with psychiatric industry luminaries to “debate” the issues at hand. The result is almost always the same – they don’t debate, but they attack and undermine and lie and manipulate their way into defending psychiatry’s entrenched position. They can’t AFFORD to face reality. How is one supposed to collaborate with that?

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  • A psychotherapist, whatever their value, is not an attorney and is not required or expected to follow case law. It does not follow that a psychotherapist is conning anyone, though clearly some of them are doing so. Many people report improvements in their lives following therapy. How do you account for such people? Are you simply dismissing them as dupes because they don’t fit into your preferred narrative of reality?

    I’m not a big fan of psychotherapy, especially when it serves as a handmaiden to the DSM and the psychiatric “mental health” drug-and-pray paradigm, which much of it does these days. But there have always been people with a particular ability to listen and be present for others who are seeking to make sense of their lives. Not too many attorneys are any good at this, but some of them are, too. So are some friends and acquaintances, doctors, dress makers, etc. Just by the odds, I’d say more than a few therapists must fall into the category of people who are good at listening and can help people sort out what direction they want to go with their lives. Just because YOU don’t value that kind of assistance doesn’t mean it’s not helpful to anyone.

    I think it’s important we not fall into the trap of deciding what is right for other people. That’s the biggest problem with psychiatry, when it comes right down to it. It tries to force its views and actions onto other people without any concern for whether or not these things are actually of any assistance. I hope you will see that viewpoint and stop trying to tell everyone else what their experiences are supposed to be, instead of letting them decide for themselves.

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  • That’s about right! My wife just got a note about “splitting” in her chart for SURGERY because she got in a conflict with a nurse who was being condescending. Her response would have made any competent DBT leader proud (if there is such a thing), she simply stated how she felt and asked for a change in the nurse’s behavior, but somehow, she had “Cluster B personality traits” because she complained about this person’s treatment of her. It’s a sleazy cover for saying, “This person’s a jerk and I don’t want to deal with them!” And it prevents any analysis of what the STAFF PERSON may have done to induce the supposed “cluster B personality traits” in their charge.

    What ever happened to “The customer is always right?”

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  • Quite so! Biological causes are popular because “no one’s to blame!” (Except the poor client, but really not, because it’s not YOU, it’s your DISORDER that’s at fault!) The idea of social causation might mean someone has to DO something, to alter their own behavior or the structure of our institutions, and that is just TOO HARD! So let’s all blame the brain, whether or not it makes sense, because it makes us all FEEL less responsible! (Except the client, of course…)

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  • Weird how many people report things that “never happen!” Anyone who says something “never happens” is obviously either deluded or intentionally covering up. Humans are capable of all sorts of heinous behavior, and it’s naïve at best to imagine that nothing of this sort happens just because people belong to a particular profession. Reminds me of when a colleague who contacted a suburban school to offer a talk on sexual abuse, and the principal said, “We don’t have that sort of problem here.” RIIIIGHT.

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  • It was actually apparent if you listened carefully to the ads that they were not supported by the literature. They always would say, “Some scientists BELIEVE that depression is caused by an imbalance in chemicals…” but then would say, “Zoloft can correct these imbalances…” So they admit in part one that this is NOT established fact, only something “some scientists believe,” but they follow it up with a sentence that assumes these “beliefs” are correct. Very sleazy advertising, should not have been allowed, but that’s how they got by the rules about “false claims.”

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  • I am sure the Big Cheese of psychiatry are well aware that these drugs impair normal functioning in the brain. The problem is, they are not there to find the best solutions for their patients, but to assure their continued dominance and high incomes. So no amount of studies and proof will change their minds. Their intentions are not the same as yours and mine.

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  • I like to say that the system is successful, it’s just successful in doing things that have nothing to do with improving anyone’s “mental health,” whatever that even means. If you go by making money, creating dominance for the psychiatric profession, selling concepts that have become part of society’s fabric despite their veracity or lack of same, it’s been wonderfully successful!

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  • Loneliness is chronic in our weird society and is of course causal in many “mental disorders” as described in the DSM. But if they admitted that, they might have to DO something about the situation! Instead, it’s easier to assume that everyone should love our society just the way it is, and that anyone who doesn’t is deviant, oops, I mean “mentally ill” and must be “helped” to stop those “bad feelings” that are making the so-called “normal” people feel bad, because it reminds them that THEY are lonely and confused and hopeless as well.

    It’s quite a conundrum!

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  • And as I have pointed out elsewhere, by this definition, alcohol, marijuana, and heroin also “work” in that they have discernible effects on the mind and on the brain, which some people find desirable or relieving to take. I would hope that a medical specialty would aspire to a higher goal that, “Here, take some of these, you’ll feel better.” Anyone with a drug-seeking auntie can get as good service from her: “I’ve got valium, Percocet, klonapin, oxy, what do you need?”

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  • One cannot allow a fear of being accused of something deter one from doing the right thing. However, Bob Whitaker has of course been accused of being a Scientologist and all sorts of other things despite his determination to maintain a hard, factual stance. I actually don’t know that you or I or anyone else are in a position to criticize his approach, as he has had an enormous impact on exposing the truth about psychiatry, as much as anyone I can think of. So I say, WELL DONE, BOB WHITAKER! We need an antipsychiatry movement, but having a source of reliable information as well as a forum for discussing issues that aren’t discussed anywhere else on the Internet in these kinds of numbers is invaluable.

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  • It may also cause a decrease in distressing thoughts like, “If I killed myself, my mother would be so upset, maybe I’d better try something else” or “If I shoot these people, I’d go to jail and I’m really scared of that!” So instead we get a suicide or a homicide.

    “Decreasing distressing thoughts” is not always a great thing. And even if it were, I can go down to the bar and suck down a couple of ales and a few shots of Jack Daniels and decrease my “distressing thoughts” without medical pre-approval, and with similar results.

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  • Exactly. A “true” finding should prompt a forceful attempt to disprove it. Only after vigorous efforts to come up with any and all reasonable alternative explanations and finding them wanting is something “true,” and then only until any further data that brings the “true” datum into question. Psychiatry certainly does not operate that way, never has, and most of Medicine is similarly plagued with favorite theories and beliefs that are untested or are believed because that’s what everyone believes, not because of any intent to find the actual truth.

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  • That’s a bloody understatement! He was fired from his job and treated with such derision that he eventually went mad with frustration – he had proven his point beyond all doubt, and yet was punished for it! I believe he ended his life in a mental institution. There is some question of whether he belonged there or was put there by his enemies. It is a story of arrogance, bias and mutual backscratching allowing the death of thousands and thousands of women in the face of absolute proof of the medical profession’s wrongheadedness.

    Does that sound familiar to any of us?

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  • Numbing seems to be the most common experience for ANY “antidepressant.” I think it’s the main “therapeutic effect.” If you’re too worried about everything, not giving a crap might feel like “relief.” Of course, if you were not murdering someone because you were worried about the consequences, not giving a crap might turn you into a murderer. It’s a very dangerous game.

    Exercise is probably the #1 best health treatment for almost anything, but particularly good for depression/anxiety!

    Remember there WILL be withdrawal effects, so be prepared for them and don’t give up just because it happens. You can do this!!!

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  • The reviews on antidepressants of all types are very similar. The fact that something that works on dopamine instead of serotonin is still considered an “antidepressant” shows that they doctors haven’t the slightest idea what is causing “depression” nor whether “depression” has anything to do with “disordered brain chemistry” at all. Any drug you use is an experiment on your own brain, which you’re entitled to do, of course, but it’s not based on any good literature support for Wellbutrin over any other kind of drug. I am of the opinion that it’s similar to trying alcohol or marijuana to deal with your issues. Some people find it helpful to have a few drinks, while others lose control of their lives. But alcohol is not “treating” anything, it’s just a way to temporary feel better. Same with Wellbutrin or SSRIs or any other psych drug. Until and unless someone really finds a subgroup of “depressed” people who actually have some specific, testable issue with brain chemistry, drug “treatment” is similar to taking aspirin for leg pain. It might make the pain go away temporarily, but it’s not going to fix what’s causing the problem.

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  • It’s kind of a weird reversal to me when those who are in charge want their charges to be empathetic, curious, and respectful. Isn’t it a basic of “mental health” treatment that the clients shouldn’t have to take care of the clinicians? How about psychiatrists start by being empathetic, curious, and respectful toward their clients who are criticizing them? Maybe that mutual respect could be created on the impetus of the professionals instead of expecting the clients to set the tone?

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  • I’d say screening works, in this case doing exactly what it was intended to do: create more customers for the psychiatric profession and the drug industry. The problem is the INTENTION of those doing the screening. If they actually wanted to help, the screening itself would look VERY different, and the range of responses would be much larger. So I agree with you, the screening itself is not the problem, it is the lack of intention of those providing “mental health treatment” to actually improve the situation that is at the core of the difficulties.

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  • These claims of multi-gene associations are really just window dressing. It means absolutely nothing that 4% of those “diagnosed” with “ADHD” have a set of certain genes in problem, when only 2% of “normal” people have such an association. There are still 96% of the affected population who don’t even have the genes in question! Why does anyone take this crap seriously?

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  • You are right, of course. If 16% are significantly helped and the overall benefit is barely noticeable, there must be a significant number who are harmed to balance out that 16%. That number rarely seems of interest to psychiatry. They don’t seem to be interested in finding out who the 16% are who DO benefit from these drugs and letting the rest look for other help. It would destroy their and the drug companies’ bottom line.

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  • Really, in my view, nobody can “have” “bipolar disorder.” They can be labeled with BPD, they can identify with BPD, they can “fit the DSM criteria” for BPD, but there is no way to distinguish who “has it.” It is completely subjective and almost totally arbitrary, having almost no coherent meaning except that someone acts in certain ways that other people don’t like.

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  • I agree. The intent is pretty much sociopathic. Whatever gets the power and money is what they’ll do. They will serve communism, fascism, corporate capitalism, state-controlled capitalism, even anarchism, as long as they can gain the power and money they wish to compile. This is true of most industries, of course, but in this case, the scope of the damage done is so vast, and the insult to human self-determinism so blatant, and the lack of accountability so complete, I think it is a special case of extreme danger to the survival of any system which allows its participation.

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  • I object to the statement that the “prevailing view” is that nothing can be wrong with a brain. I haven’t heard anyone say that at all. Just for the record.

    But I do get what you are saying, and it ought to be carefully considered, whatever “treatment” is being administered. The mind affects the whole body (including the brain), and the body affects the mind. The idea that some little spot in a brain can be “treated” and have no effect on the rest of the body is a very dangerous idea. But it’s also true that imagining the body can be ignored when working on the mind can lead to a lot of errors and potential damage. Psychotherapy for Lyme Disease is not going to help any more than giving antidepressants to a mother in a domestic abuse situation. Everyone is different and deserves an individualized approach not based on dogmatic insistence of the “helper” that their approach is the RIGHT way regardless of how the poor client feels or reacts!

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  • Well, I am sure that most on the front lines psychiatrists do their best and probably believe sincerely they are being helpful. What I don’t understand is why the thought leaders are so committed to biological explanations. It can not be a result of not having enough time. People in high places continue to alter the known research in order to continue to justify biological treatments.

    A very simple example: Stimulants are claimed to be effective in “reducing the core symptoms of ADHD.” However, decades of long-term research have shown little to no benefit in ANY long-term outcome. This was first observed in 1978 by none other than Russell Barkley. It has been the same result in 1993 (Swanson) and 2003 (OSU medication effectiveness study). Several long-term naturalistic studies (Quebec, Raine, MTA, Finnish/USA comparison) have supported these findings. It was demonstrated in the 1970s that open classrooms work very well for these kids, to the extent that professionals can’t even tell them apart from “normals” in this kind of setting. It has also repeatedly and undeniably been demonstrated that fully a third of “ADHD” cases go away if you simply wait a year before enrolling a child in kindergarten.

    So why are we still insisting that ‘untreated ADHD’ leads to negative outcomes, when “treatment” does not improve them? Why is it insisted that ADHD is a biological problem that requires a biological solution, when it appears that a change of setting resolves most of the “symptoms”? Why is most of the research money still invested in “medication?” It’s not because clinicians don’t have enough time in the field. It is because the profession supports biological research even when the data does not support it.

    This is most definitely not about “serotonin.” It is about psychiatry as a profession/industry needing to continue to support “medication” as a primary intervention, because that’s where they make their money. As an INDUSTRY, not as individuals. So sure, the system is designed so that doing therapy is not remunerative, that “med checks” make more money in less time, and so that people who question the biological paradigm (like Moncrieff) are attacked for doing so. It is easier to follow the path of least resistance. But what that means is providing “services” that are either ineffective or sometimes destructive over time, meanwhile making any other approach unable to be researched and so criticized as “not evidence based.” All the while spreading misinformation about the nature of these “disorders,” which are in actual point of fact simply descriptions of sets of “symptoms” that tend to occur together. Perhaps the most egregious damage is the prevention of research into ACTUAL causes of these “syndromes,” because we spend our money researching the DSM categories which embrace totally heterogeneous groups.

    I’m not asking you to fix all of this, or even explain it. I’m asking you to acknowledge that psychiatry AS AN INSTITUTION is committed to following the biological track, regardless of whether it leads to results or not, and are frequently quite hostile to folks like Bob and Joanna who have the temerity to point out the facts that diverge from their desired narrative. Why else would Joanna be so roundly attacked for presenting information that supposedly “psychiatrists have known for years?” If psychiatry has known this for years, why else would official sites and training literature and even textbooks continue to portray this falsehood as truth? And why is the search for some “deeper biological reality” instead of being willing to question whether the quest for biological explanations is simply misguided and should be dropped for some more fruitful path? It is hard to deny that psychiatry is not on this path by accident, and that it is committed to biological explanations in a way that a scientific enterprise can not be allowed to be.

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  • I’m glad we are on the same page. Then I challenge you in this way: are you suggesting that most of your colleagues are NOT using the idea that drugs are the solution because these issues are primarily biological in nature? Does the evidence not suggest that such colleagues (and reading the comments here should disabuse you of any notion that your views are in the majority) continue to spend most of their time and energy trying to promote or prove that biological solutions are the best solutions? What else does the average psychiatrist have to offer besides the drugs?

    Whether or not it is stated overtly, in practice, the basic business of psychiatry appears to be to get people taking pills. And what about the hostility that Dr. Moncrieff has received for simply stating the scientific conclusion that 50-60 years of research has provided: that a serotonin imbalance is NOT associated with major depression. If the psychiatric profession is NOT invested in promoting primary biological explanations for “mental illness,” why is it so upsetting to have the actual science on that question reported?

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  • Very well said. It appears we agree once again wholeheartedly!

    In my time as a therapist, I always assumed I knew NOTHING about a person I met, regardless of what I might have read in the file. I always knew that if anyone had the answer, it was the person in front of me, and it was my job to help them tell me about it, verbally or nonverbally. And every single situation had different contexts and reasons and possible solutions. Sometimes I had to be very quick on my feet and try something totally off the wall! And the most off the wall strategies almost always worked!

    The fact that the person was “depressed” told me exactly NOTHING about what I had to do. I considered “diagnoses” mostly a waste of time, if not a detriment to progress. Every single case is different!

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  • Sorry, I had to chuckle when you used the term “outweighs” in reference to Zyprexa! I think in this case the risks LITERALLY outweigh the benefits!

    Not meaning to minimize the incredible harm done to folks by the massive weight loss and other health insults caused by these horrible “atypical” antipsychotics. There’s really nothing funny about it – it’s a systematic criminal act!

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  • With all due respect, is it possible that the reason we “don’t know what’s going on in the brain in the deepest and most important ways with depression” is because we’re making an errant assumption that all depression is related to something “going on in the brain?” If that assumption is wrong, every attempt to discover “the answer” will fail to provide an answer, because we are barking up the wrong tree. That seems to be what the research is showing. Sixty years later, we still don’t know of a biological ’cause’ for depression, despite billions of dollars and millions of person-hours dedicated to the project. At what point do we admit that this is most likely because there IS no biological cause? What if “depression” is simply a description of a very complex state that organisms go into when exposed to a threat they can’t immediately manage? Would not then each case of “depression” result from potentially completely different “causes,” with the only thing shared in common being the depressive experience? Pain is a great analogy. What is the biological cause of pain? Is it certain neurons firing in a certain pattern? Or is it putting one’s hand on the stove or getting one’s foot run over by a car or being unable to digest X or Y or having a cancerous growth on an organ or experiencing extreme emotional distress that is expressed as physical pain or just not getting enough sleep for 5 nights in a row?

    Why is the psychiatric profession so dedicated to proving a proposition that has yielded no deep understanding of the situation despite over 60 years of intensive research? When is it time to admit that the theory you’re investigating simply is incorrect, and start on a new hypothesis?

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  • There is another option to deal with “cognitive dissonance:” Accepting the fact that facts don’t fit with your conclusions to date, no matter how uncomfortable that process may be, and reconsidering those conclusions based on the new data. This is what we expect of actual SCIENTISTS, 100% of the time. Anyone who can’t deal with facts contrary to theory needs to stay far away from any scientific field!

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    Let’s recall that this thread is on “psychiatry, fraud that the case for a class action lawsuit.” I am not allowing further discussion of COVID on this thread, as it is far off topic. We all know it is controversial, and both sides have now been stated, so I’m calling a stop to further back and forth on this, because experience says that this will be unproductive and will escalate to hostility.

    Thanks to both of you for your viewpoints.

    Steve

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  • Well, there is is in black and white.

    I think anyone with a truly therapeutic orientation would find this prioritization horrifying. To prioritize the needs of the therapist and/or program over the needs of the client simply reinforces all the bad “lessons” these folks have learned from teachers, parents, clergymen/women, and abusive partners or caretakers prior to showing up for DBT. It quite frankly is going to make the DBT provider into another abuser, and reinforce the very “coping mechanisms” DBT supposedly is there to help us learn how to circumvent.

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  • I really related to what you said about “postpartum depression.” My wife did some cross-cultural research on “postpartum depression,” and discovered that there are several more “primitive” cultures where “PPD” simply does not occur. If it were hormones, wouldn’t the rate be pretty much the same across cultures? And guess what characterized the cultures with low or completely absent “ppd” rates? They provided excellent support for the new mothers, freeing them up from any other job besides raising the baby. Friends and neighbors cooked, cleaned, took care of the other kids, hauled water, whatever was needed so the mama could just focus on taking care of baby.

    But sure, it’s all chemicals!

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  • The idea that ingesting substances to alter consciousness is neither new nor particularly scientific. Pretending that a response to a drug means anything about cause or constitutes “treatment” is the central sophistry used by psychiatry to “explain” its outrageous corrupt actions. I have NO trouble with people ingesting substances to alter their consciousness, and I’m sure in some cases something good can come out of it. I have BIG trouble with calling such ingestions “medical treatment” and charging people and governments ridiculous amounts of money to run an uncontrolled experiment on our brains.

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  • You are right, re-learning who can be trusted does require trusting someone for at least a period of time to find out if it will work. The key is figuring out WHOM to try it with. There are ways to gauge trustworthiness with some level of accuracy, and this CAN be taught to a willing student. But of course, the person playing the “helper” role has to be the first one trusted, and that can take some time and mean dealing with some hostility and other emotions. At least that’s my experience. But to keep in mind who is behind this and that it’s all about trust to start with can help me be patient with the process. Sometimes the FIRST level of trust is to say out loud, “I know you probably don’t trust me, and I don’t blame you for that.”

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  • Wow, so it is worse to have criticisms or just a general dislike of your therapist than to be bulimic or massively depressed or be unable to go out of your house? Though I suppose the last might be “treatment interfering,” because you’d be inconveniencing someone who might have to come and get you.

    This is sounding more and more insane. From what little I do know of DBT, this certainly sounds like some “interpretations” that were willfully entered into by people who just didn’t like the clients and wanted to whip them into line! How can anyone consider any of that “therapeutic?”

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  • You have an amazing DBT THERAPIST. There is excellent evidence that the quality of the relationship between client and therapist is more important than the school of therapy practiced. It is great that you found the right therapist taking the right approach with you. But I can tell you, after years of experience as a professional in the mental health industry, that not all therapists are capable of doing what needs to be done for people with traumatic pasts, and reading these stories should give you an idea that simply saying “I do DBT” does nothing to guarantee a positive experience, or even a neutral one.

    The therapist’s ability to connect and create a safe space is more an art than a science, and you simply can not learn that ability by reading and abiding by a workbook. It’s MUCH more complicated than that, but the therapist/client relationship is at the core of quality therapy, regardless of the “brand” of therapy practiced.

    Good for you for finding the right fit and getting yourself on a new path!

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  • As I’ve said many times, the “right” isn’t friends to anyone who feels psychiatry has harmed them, either. They get money from the same pharmaceutical and insurance industries, who are happy to paper both sides of the aisle with warbucks. Looking to the current political parties to support this movement will lead to nothing much worth discussing. They will both be dragged kicking and screaming to any real resolution, because it will mean tweaking the noses of people who have lots of money and power and make big campaign contributions!

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  • Wow, they SERIOUSLY tell you this nonsense? I’d think they’d maybe teach you the skill of “how to tell whom you can really trust” rather than “give everyone the benefit of the doubt.” How many abuse victims got that way partly BECAUSE they gave someone the benefit of a doubt whom they should not have?

    I am finding that particular “skill” kind of disturbing!!

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  • You got it right. This is NOT a left/right issue, it’s an issue of economic power and investment. Neither party will sign off on something that their contributors will freak out about because it loses them big, big bucks! Carlson is willing to put this on because he is famous for spitting in the face of anyone he wants to, and he’s tolerated because his comments are considered so biased as to not be believable. Mainstream media will not cover this kind of thing or will minimize or spin it somehow, because they depend on the same contributors who own our representatives.

    We need to ditch the left-right axis. We need to replace it with the greed – integrity axis. People on the greed end of the axis should not be supported by anyone, regardless of party. Unfortunately, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of representatives left on the integrity end!

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  • I am thinking you have missed the point of this article. Johanna did not say that SSRIs can’t work nor that all psychiatrists are telling their clients that they have a “chemical imbalance” or something wrong with their brains. She is saying that the claim that “depression” is caused by low serotonin is FALSE. It has been shown that over 80% of US citizens polled believed that depression is caused by low serotonin. Someone is telling this story, and if you read others’ posts, you can see that this story is indeed told to many by their doctors. The reactions she has received also seem to indicate that some of the psychiatric establishment is quite upset at her for stating this fact out loud.

    Science is not built on individual experiences. Nor is culture. I am glad that you have had such a positive experience yourself. But that does nothing to invalidate Johanna’s summary of the research. Depression is not caused by low serotonin. That is all she is saying. She is saying nothing about what works for you. I hope I have made this distinction clear enough.

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  • Very well said. The comment “Depression causes hopelessness” is an absolute meaningless sophistry. It’s akin with saying “A sore knee can cause your knee to hurt.” The attempt to make “depression” into some kind of an active, evil entity that “does things” to us is the most destructive and disempowering way one could possibly view the situation. It is the opposite of the kind of thinking that can actually help us move past feeling hopeless. It is hard to fathom how they continue to get away with these syntactical idiocies!

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  • All too true, Rogier. The hard question is why their shenanigans and dishonesty are still not obvious to those in society at large. It’s not even a very good con. I think it’s only our culture’s faith in “science” and “medicine” that allows them to get away with it, that and a massive dose of pharmaceutical company marketing. Hard to know what to do with such irrationality!

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  • It may be of interest to know that lots of good research has shown that the relationship with the therapist is much more important than what school of therapy is being followed. I am guessing that the reason it “worked” for you and “didn’t work” for others is because your therapist extended genuine caring to you while theirs followed a “cook book” approach to DBT without recognizing the damage their lack of engagement did to their clients.

    It is easy to assume that “DBT” is the same for each person who experiences it. That assumption is absolutely wrong, as the evidence here suggests.

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  • It also shift the blame to the “client/patient,” so the actual powers that be can pretend everything is OK and that anyone having a hard time with the status quo is themselves to blame for not “adjusting properly to reality.” It can be a seductive idea for troubled individuals as well, as it promises path to feel better without having to examine any of one’s own beliefs or behavior. Of course, this leads to further troubles, because no one is looking for root causes, but it does keep the Benjamins coming in to psychiatry and their close cousins in the pharmaceutical industry.

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  • You sound like the kind of therapist someone would be more likely to benefit from seeing, and you clearly travel in such circles. I had a great therapist way back in my 20s. I know it can really help. But you can also see that many people do not have that experience. I believe the newest crop of therapists are trained much less in meeting the client where they’re at and much more in DSM diagnosis and brain chemistry and brain scans and a lot of pseudoscientific “facts” that get in the way of the real deal in therapy, which is getting to know and respond to your client as a unique individual rather than a collection of brain cells.

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  • I am sorry, but the DSM is really a bunch of gibberish to me. And not because I’m not smart enough to understand it. It’s because I am smart enough to recognize gibberish when I see it. How, for instance, would one determine if a client is having an ‘untreated mood episode?’ It would be entirely a matter of the opinion of the clinician, and 50 clinicians might come up with 50 different answers. It also presumes that ‘treating’ the ‘mood episode’ would resolve it, and if it does not, the personality disorder should be applied, even though there is a ton of information suggesting that the ‘treatment’ of ‘mood episodes’ is extremely unpredictable and can make things worse. It also presumes that the ‘mood episode’ is not caused by another psychiatric drug, even though stimulants and antidepressants are well known to create manic episodes in some of their recipients. So we have an undefinable criterion (mood episode) ‘diagnosed’ by pure clinical opinion, being ‘treated’ with something that may or may not help, and assume that the failure for ‘treatment’ to help means the person has a ‘personality disorder,’ without considering that lack of treatment effect, or even the ‘treatment’ itself, may be responsible for the subjectively ‘diagnosed’ ‘mood episode’ which failed to be ‘treated’ successfully. Not to mention that the ‘personality disorder’ diagnoses themselves are even MORE subjective and vague than the ‘mood episodes’ whose ‘failure to respond’ to ‘treatment’ can apparently lead to such a diagnosis by default.

    From a scientific viewpoint: gibberish! Science should make things clearer, simpler, more successful. These ‘diagnoses’ clearly make things vaguer, more complex, and impossible to even define let alone improve success measures. How on earth can anyone make sense of this bizarre and unhelpful array of subjective ‘diagnoses’ all of which lack any legitimate scientific underpinnings to speak of, and are essentially constructed by committee and most commonly voted in or out of existence by a bunch of ‘professionals’ without any resort to any kind of scientific verification?

    Gibberish!

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  • Here’s the thing. In science, the hypothesis is considered FALSE until proven otherwise. It is not anyone’s job to ‘disprove’ the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory, it is the claimant’s job to prove that there IS such an imbalance present. Moncrieff is quite specific in stating that there is no proof of a ‘chemical imbalance’ in serotonin in depressed patients. That’s her conclusion, and her only conclusion. And that is sufficient. The claim has been out there since the 1960s, it is now 60 years later and there is no evidence that it is true. In the world of science, this means it is considered FALSE. Especially given how many billions of dollars have been invested in unapologetic attempts to prove it is true. At some point, we have to accept that failure to prove truth is ultimately proof of falsehood, and Moncrieff is saying we have reached that point.

    Of course, it does not mean no one has a ‘chemical imbalance’ or that some other chemical might or might not be ‘imbalanced’ or that no one experiences relief from feeling depressed via taking antidepressants or other psychoactive drugs. It simply proves that what is currently defined in the DSM as ‘depression’ is not CAUSED by low serotonin. This truth was actually known as far back as 1985, before Prozac was even brought to market. The main reason people believe in this idea is pharmaceutical marketing, product placement and script alteration in TV shows and movies, and the support of the psychiatric industry for this fiction. There was never a time when the serotonin theory was supported by hard data.

    Finally, the argument that the drugs make people feel better by mysterious means does not suggest that these drugs are correcting chemical imbalances. Alcohol is possibly the world’s best short-acting anti-anxiety agent. Are you arguing that getting mildly intoxicated corrects a chemical imbalance? Humans have taken in various substances to alter their mood since the beginning of history. Saying that ‘psychiatric drugs make people feel better’ is a trivial result. So do non-psychiatric drugs. Discovering that ingesting substances can alter moods is hardly new news. What would have to be in place to prove something of this nature is that people lacking a particular chemical ALWAYS or ALMOST ALWAYS feel a certain way, and that altering that chemical ALWAYS or ALMOST ALWAYS makes them feel OK again. People lacking in iodine have certain characteristic symptoms. Most have some or all of the same symptoms. Taking iodine almost always resolves the situation. This shows a lack of iodine is the cause of the symptoms. Nothing of this nature exists for any psychiatric ‘disorder’ or drug. That is what Moncrieff is saying. No evidence means no evidence. Depression is NOT caused by low serotonin, regardless of how people feel when they take serotonin-enhancing drugs. That is science, not opinion.

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  • I agree with your general premise. But what if psychosis isn’t caused by one thing? What if different episodes of psychosis are caused sometimes by emotional stress, sometimes by reactions to other drugs, sometimes by Lyme Disease or syphilis, sometimes by nutritional deficiencies, sometimes by opening oneself up to a higher level of spiritual awareness? What if there is more than one ‘spectrum’ involved? What if the idea that finding THE cause of psychosis is like trying to find one cause for ‘pain?’

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  • In other words, our society forces us to adapt to circumstances that we are not adapted to genetically. Reminds me of the book ‘A Hunter in a Farmer’s World,’ by Thomm Hartmann, which critiques how we blame and devalue kids with so-called ‘ADHD’ characteristics for not fitting into a world they were not designed to fit.

    Notwithstanding this important point, genetics are still the part we can’t change. Why not work on helping people figure out how to adapt better, or even work on creating a more flexible society where we appreciate and value differences and create niches where everyone can find a place to fit? Open classrooms for ‘ADHD’ sufferers is one very good example. The idea that all kids must ‘learn’ in a standard classroom and that those who don’t are ‘ill’ is simply nonsense. We force them to attend classrooms that are specifically designed to frustrate and defeat them and are surprised when they end up feeling frustrated and defeated?

    Genetics may help explain certain problems raised by modern society, but it doesn’t do much to help us solve them, except by perhaps reminding us that rigidity of expectations is bound to reduce the quality of life for all of us in the long run.

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  • Plus genes are the one thing in the equation that we can’t ever change! Why spend billions studying genetics and getting tiny little ‘correlations’ from sets of hundred of genes, when we KNOW that certain environmental conditions will cause or exacerbate these problems and those CAN actually be changed?

    A great example is the so-called ‘ADHD’ child. It was shown in the 1970s that such children to incredibly much better in an open classroom, to the point that professionals can’t tell them apart from ‘normal’ children in that setting. Yet we spend tons of money promoting ‘genetic’ explanations that can never seem to be proven, instead of spending a lot less creating open classrooms as an option for kids who struggle in standard classroom settings.

    Sometimes I think the only reason they are so married to genetic explanations is because it lets the adults off the hook for trying to fix anything. ‘Oh, well, it’s just genetics, nothing we can do about it.’ Highly irrational!

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  • Psychosis is a definable phenomenon. It can be seen, felt, observed, verified by discussion.

    Schizophrenia is a concept, and idea, that idea being that people who experience a very real psychotic phenomenon are ‘ill’ with a specific ‘disease’ or ‘disorder’ which is caused by a purported ‘chemical imbalance’ that can’t be seen or measured in any way and is now being denied by psychiatrists they ever claimed was true. Clearly, something is happening when a person is experiencing psychosis, and no one can rationally deny that. But for medical doctors to claim that they know this phenomenon is caused by a ‘disease state’ in the brain is reaching far beyond what any kind of scientific or observable data can tell us. It also gives power to the psychiatric system to claim the need to force ‘treatment’ on those who don’t want it or have observed already that it doesn’t help them or makes their situation worse.

    So in my view, anyone claiming psychotic experiences don’t exist is full of crap. But it does not follow that those experiences are definable as ‘schizophrenia’ as described in the DSM, nor that they are caused by faulty brain chemistry, nor that drug ‘treatments’ will automatically help the person experiencing psychosis.

    Again, I’d go to the mat to protect YOUR right to call the phenomenon whatever it is you believe best explains it. I do NOT support the idea that someone else can tell YOU that something is wrong with you called ‘schizophrenia’ until and unless they can objectively define this condition in ways that can be validated and verified objectively.

    Perhaps an easier analogy is the term ‘ADHD.’ Do kids act in the ways described as ‘ADHD’ in the real world? Of course, they do. It is a very common set of behaviors, especially in boys. Does the fact that they wrote down descriptions in the DSM and voted on how many ‘criteria’ are needed for a ‘diagnosis’ mean there is anything at all ‘wrong’ with kids who happen to fit that description? Absolutely not. It doesn’t even mean that kids who act that way have anything in common at all – they may each act that way for totally different reasons, and assuming that just because they act that way means they are ‘mentally ill’ is ridiculous.

    Same holds true in my mind for ‘psychosis.’ There may be one or ten or a hundred reasons why this phenomenon occurs. Maybe SOME such people really DO have a chemical or structural problem in their brains – but we don’t know if they do or which ones do. They may in fact be reacting to stress, but assuming ALL are that way because of stress is, as you correctly observe, not close to a valid inference. There may be thyroid problems, brain tumors, head injuries, huge anxiety, nutritional deficiencies – who knows? Because all they have done is collect a bunch of thoughts/emotions/behaviors that tend to occur together, described the behaviors and claimed it is an ‘illness.’

    So no, saying that the DSM-invented description of ‘schizophrenia’ is not an illness does NOT mean someone is saying that people who have psychotic symptoms are making it up or should just get over it or are all victims of trauma or any such thing. It is simply saying that there is no scientific proof that all or most people fitting that description can be claimed to have something specific in common that is ‘wrong’ with them that can be measured, identified, and ‘treated’ by a doctor.

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  • Do you think ‘mainstream physics’ is pretty much the same in all countries, or ‘mainstream biology’ [Q] [sorry my question mark isn’t working] If psychiatry is a scientific endeavor, as it claims, it is fair to assume that variance from country to country would be cultural, not in the mechanics or philosophy of psychiatry itself. Psychiatry portrays itself as the ‘scientific’ approach to ‘mental health’ and promotes very much the same messages around the world. How that is applied, of course, varies by country and community and even by facility to facility. But it is most definitely fair to say that ‘mainstream psychiatry’ is pretty much the same in all countries, as to its objectives and fundamental beliefs. Or all ‘developed’ countries anyway. It is interesting to note that recovery rates for schizophrenia in ‘less developed’ countries are far better than those getting the ‘full benefit’ of ‘mainstream’ psychiatry. When it comes to psychiatry, it seems that the dictum ‘less is more’ is supported by the data.

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  • I agree with your sentiments in a lot of ways – insurance companies do drive what ‘services’ are available and reimbursable. However, if we really want to ‘just be friends,’ it is going to require an acknowledgement of psychiatry’s role in perpetuating a lot of dishonest nonsense. There is good quality evidence, not even disputed among research psychiatrists, that antipsychotics don’t have long-term benefits and probably decrease chances of survival over time, that the ‘seriously mentally ill’ die 20-25 years younger than their non-diagnosed counterparts, and that the drugs play a role in shortening lives, that antidepressants’ effectiveness is pretty limited and fades with time, that some who take antidepressants become manic and often end up with ‘bipolar’ diagnoses, that there are no long-term outcomes that are improved by long term use of stimulants, and on and on. When these studies and reviews are brought to light, just as with Johanna’s honest hard work, the authors are attacked with accusations of connections with unsavory or dishonest people, their motivations are impugned, their characters are attacked, their observations are minimized, and they are ridiculed and often shunned for speaking the truth.

    Having any kind of respectful relations begins with psychiatry’s leaders agreeing to acknowledge and abide by honest research findings instead of trying to spin everything to make psychiatry look right and anyone questioning their absolute authority to declare what is ‘true’ as insane or ill-intended. And I don’t see that happening any time soon. Psychiatry in the institutional sense has cast their lots in with the pharmaceutical industry, and many people’s reputations and standing in the medical community depend on maintaining the fiction of the DSM and the fictionalized ‘research’ that is used to back it up. I’m not opposed to folks on the front lines who are trying to do the best they can. I am opposed to the massive amounts of false information that is forwarded and enforced on those who do have to do that hard work up front.

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  • Still sounds like straight up philosophy to me. I have never doubted the value of instincts, but while they are an excellent guide to personal action, they don’t provide a structure to build a mutual understanding upon. To claim a scientific explanation for emotions, we need some kind of verifiable agreement, whether by measurement or by predictive ability or elegance of explanatory power – like the sun-centered view of the planets – which is clearly simpler and more useful in predicting future events. It seems you have an interesting hypothesis and some possible theories on how it might apply, but I don’t see a useful explanation of the origins and location of emotions that helps understand and predict emotional events and outcomes in the future.

    Best to you in your future.

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  • OK, I did a quick search for concrete evidence of 4e cognition and found exactly nothing. I found a LOT of philosophizing on the ASSUMPTION that cognition is a full-body process, but there is nothing I’ve seen so far that even slightly approaches a falsifiable premise, let alone an actual experiment. To suggest that this very arcane theory is a scientific explanation of emotion doesn’t appear to be close to a valid claim, from what I’ve read so far. Perhaps you can direct us to an article that exemplifies an actual scientific experiment demonstrating the validity of 4e cognition and its applicability to emotions.

    Sorry, my question mark doesn’t work. I urgently need a new keyboard.

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  • There have been plenty of groups of ‘scientists’ who have been dead sure and published lots of papers and so on. Sorry, but if this makes any kind of sense, it ought to be readily explainable to the lay person. Einstein’s theory of relativity is as complex mathematically as any theory known to man, but it can be explained in terms of bending space and the effects of travel as the speed of light is approached, etc.

    I have yet to hear anything from you that suggests any kind of grasp on the practical implications of this philosophy. Surely, you can come up with a simple example showing how this approach works out in the real world. But I am skeptical that such a thing can really be done, as we simply haven’t the vaguest idea what a ‘mind’ is or how it ‘arises’ or where it resides. Nothing, not a clue.

    I will give this a quick look, but it sounds like a very complex and difficult theory to explain, and in the end, good science tends to provide simpler solutions, not more complex ones. In any case, we really need to see a falsifiable premise that is vigorously tested before admitting something to be scientifically valid. I see no such premise here. The idea that the mind is distributed throughout the body is not one I can see being testable. Though I’ve been wrong before, I’ll have to see the actual hard testing before I get too excited about a particular philosophical viewpoint.

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  • I am not saying you are wrong. I’m just saying we’re not talking science any longer. When you have to talk about moving away from Cartesian dualism and ‘centering’ the mind in the body, not to mention declaring that something is ‘all the rage,’ we are definitely not talking about straight science anymore. We are talking about philosophy. Nothing wrong with talking philosophy, in fact, one of psychiatry’s most fundamental weaknesses is its lack of any coherent philosophical agreements and structure, but a possible viewpoint on what the mind or a thought or an emotion might be is a very far cry from a scientific understanding of it. I defy you or anyone else to design a scientific experiment to prove where the mind is located. I guarantee you can’t do it. So whether the mind is in the brain, in the body as a whole, or impinging on the body/brain from some exterior viewpoint, is simply not a question science can answer at the moment, and may never be able to answer.

    But I am still interested in hearing the ideas involved. I love philosophy, actually.

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR – I appreciate the exchange here, but let’s not get too far off of the focus on mental/emotional wellbeing. We all know this is a hotly contested topic and that there is little chance that a lengthy discussion will lead to anything but a lot of conflict and disagreement. Everyone’s entitled to his/her opinions and views, but I don’t want to get into the kind of back-and-forth where one person’s opinion has to dominate and the other person has to be ‘wrong.’

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  • Hey, Nick,

    I really appreciated the first part of your comment – I agree that psychiatry has relied on ‘naming’ and ‘categorizing’ to the detriment of understanding and using actual relationships between two human beings as the primary ‘healing’ agent. But of course, it should be understood that relationships are not really within the aegis of medical practice in the first place, so perhaps the first error is for medical folks to try and ‘heal’ emotional/spiritual/relationship concerns.

    As to your second statement, your explanation of emotions seems extremely shallow and limited, and not particularly scientific. ‘Seeing’ ‘mind’ as located in the body sounds a lot more like philosophy, as does ‘describing’ emotions in terms of ‘subtle neurological-muscular movements.’ I don’t think it’s fair to claim an irrefutable or even generally agreed-upon scientific understanding of emotions. Sure, there are lots of theories, but all that I’ve seen doesn’t come close to a fully tested falsifiable understanding of what emotions really ARE.

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  • The ‘conservative media’ is honestly not much better. Both ‘sides’ are owned by their big corporate supporters, and greed and graft knows no political affiliation. I know of no nationally recognized leader who has a clue or gives a crap about the plight of the ‘mentally ill,’ on either side of the aisle, beyond the idea of giving more money to the ‘mental health’ authorities or refusing to do so.

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  • Such a mass action would require the current beneficiaries of SSRI sales to agree that such a mass action would be beneficial, or for society at large to strip such people of their power to insist that we use “antidepressants” widely regardless of their actual utility and risks. That is the reason that “logic” becomes important in such cases, though it must be admitted that logic and facts don’t seem to have much effects on the beneficiaries mentioned above.

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  • Your answer is disrespectful and invalidative of my personal experience, and that of anyone else who has had a positive experience. How is it possible for you to know if my therapy experience was or was not helpful to me? You have decided what you believe to be true and insist that the world conform to your belief, even if the evidence suggests a more nuanced approach would be closer to the truth.

    Your contention is: “What the psychotherapist does is make you afraid of your feelings and instincts. It is very much like the religious doctrine of original sin. You are to believe that there is something innately wrong with you.” My therapist did none of those things. In fact, she encouraged me to believe in and respect my own experience and emotions and instincts, and to discard all kinds of crappy ideas I’d amassed to protect myself from those emotions and instincts. So she actually did the exact opposite of what you claim “the psychotherapist” does. By the end of our association, I felt a lot more “right” about myself than I ever had. It was the adults around me who wanted me to believe there was something innately wrong with me, and my psychotherapist who supported me in discovering that there was nothing “wrong” with me at all.

    And ironically, with these comments, you are the one telling me there is something “wrong” with me for following my own instincts in evaluating my own experience, telling me that I should disrespect my own feelings and instincts.

    I don’t think we help anyone by being as rigid and judgmental and bigoted as those we are criticizing. If we are going to defeat psychiatry as you say you want to, we can’t dismiss the experiences of its users as “you can’t have benefited, because it ruins my thesis.”

    As I like to say, “Generalizations are always wrong.”

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  • It should not surprise us that benzos, at least, will of course increase the rate of traffic accidents, as the effects and mechanism of action are very similar to alcohol. But this seems to be a very general increase, suggesting that at least in a fairly high proportion of users, a level of intoxication and impairment results from ‘therapeutic’ doses of these drugs. Of course, leaders in the psychiatric world would want this to come out. But I have long had concerns that many long-term benzo users are on the roads under the influence. Now there is even more to worry about!

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  • I think the more relevant fact is that a century ago, most “depressed” people recovered without any help from the “authorities.” Depression as a “chronic condition” was very, VERY rare back in the day. The frequency of chronic “depression,” however defined, has only increased since the helpful insistence of giving everyone who feels bad a ‘diagnosis’ and prescribing drugs that can be harmful and giving up on the idea that a person has the resources to address their own emotional condition, even if they may need some assistance with that. Trying to redefine episodes as really ‘mixed’ vs. ‘manic’ vs. ‘depressed’ is very much an act of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The iceberg has long since been hit and we should be trying to help people escape rather than sorting them out into which room they are to go down in.

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  • I’m afraid I can’t agree with you. I had a very good psychotherapist. I would not be who I am today without her support and intervention. Sure, most of them these days are dogs, but it’s not right that there is no such thing. I think that is a bias you hold, but the evidence speaks to the contrary. I’m sure others here will agree with me that such people DO exist, however rare they may be today.

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  • I’d more refer to that as “social problems that have medical consequences.” Defining the problem as “medical” is the first mistake. Feeling bad is not a medical problem. It could be the result of a medical problem in some cases, but emotions themselves are not medical problems. If it’s a social problem, no amount of “medical treatment” will solve it, and their pretense to the contrary is making things worse.

    On the other hand, it’s also possible (and I think likely) that the “treatments” that have “improved so much” are actually making the situation worse, above and beyond any social problems that do exist. At least treatment for resperatory conditions improves those who are treated. In psychiatry, it may mean you die 25 years sooner with “successful” treatment.

    I know you’re not arguing with me about these things, I’m just responding to the “Devil’s advocate” position you put out there.

    Maybe I’m just not feeling too inclined to be “fair” to the psychiatric profession today!

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  • I think that is a very insightful comment. It is the judgment about a particular mechanism adding emotion that seems to make it “automatic” and unable to be rationally processed. There is nothing wrong with having mechanisms to deal with reality. Feeling we HAVE TO or CAN’T or “SHOULD” or “SHOULDN’T” with intense emotion is what gets us stuck, I think. I can say in my own case that learning to view such mechanisms more dispassionately (“What was I trying to accomplish with that approach? Why did I choose to handle it that way? Did it work? If so, what makes me keep trying to use that approach?”) has been what has helped me gain more control of my life.

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  • Alice Miller and I would both agree with you on that last point! In fact, I think one of the very worst aspects of the DSM is that it enables the “professionals” to blame the “clients” for their own (the professionals’) discomfort with the helping process. It is not only not helpful, it seems to me that the very WORST thing one can do in such a situation is to put the client at a distance by providing a label and to call his/her experience “symptoms” caused by a “faulty brain” that need to be suppressed! In actual point of fact, it is almost always the SUPPRESSION of their own emotions and experience that CAUSES their “mental illness” in the first place! Other than “surgery” on the brain, it’s hard to think of anything worse that one could do than the label/blame/drug model that the DSM was constructed to encourage and justify.

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  • You are far from alone. I used to work at a crisis line (a volunteer-based one), and people would report calling us because they knew they couldn’t talk to their therapist or else they’d be sent to the “hospital.” This was especially true for people who cut on themselves and were not in any way suicidal. We never would send out police on those calls, but we did sometimes trace suicidal calls on those who appeared to be about to act on a plan to kill themselves. I know that this and other hotlines have been “professionalized” (no longer volunteer based) and are much more likely to send the police on callers than we were. I volunteered for a hotline here in Olympia, WA, who did not ever trace or dispatch on anyone unless they asked us to do so. But such hotlines seem to be disappearing. I also have known many who found being hospitalized so traumatizing that they’d rather suffer their “symptoms” forever rather than risk being sent there. It is a sad commentary on the level of “help” that is currently available.

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  • Exactly! Every “mechanism” has a motivation behind it. Most of them made some sort of sense when we invented them, but aren’t very useful today, or we use them when they aren’t helpful. I think that’s most of what is classified as “crazy” in the DSM, people using coping mechanisms they once found helpful in places where they’re not helpful any longer.

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  • Well, to me, it’s just a habitual thing we do with our minds to accomplish something. ‘Survival’ and ‘coping mechanisms’ that you mention would qualify in my view. In my analogy, it would be the equivalent of the “program.” I think there are mechanisms that are conscious and intentional (like how do you drive a clutch car, or how do you make a curried chicken dish). And some are unconscious (like how to deal with someone who tries to make you feel small, or how do you deal with your sister tattling to your mom). I think we get fucked up most by the unconscious kind, because we don’t remember why we feel like we have to “run the program,” but we just know we HAVE to. Conscious ones we can change if circumstances require it (like I buy an automatic!)

    That’s how I think of it, anyway. Don’t mean to speak for lecox or anyone else. It’s definitely NOT a physical universe thing to me!

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  • I don’t think that’s necessarily true. “Mental mechanisms” may have zero to do with the body. The “mind=body” equation is central to psychiatry’s worldview, but there is no reason to believe that “mental mechanisms” don’t exist entirely independent from biochemical operations. To use the hackneyed computer analogy, there can be lots of mechanisms in a computer program that are completely undetectable in the physical operation of the machine. From the outside, the computer looks the same no matter what program or calculation is going on. Just ones and zeros and switches and connections. But the code that is run is vastly, perhaps infinitely flexible. I don’t at all believe the mind is a computer or even like one, but I think the analogy is apt. Messing with the “hardware” is a dumb way to solve a “software” problem, let alone a problem with the programmer him/herself!

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  • No specific “thing” causes “depression.” Depression is a state of mind, not a medical entity that can be “caused.” Many things may “lead to” depression, but this research thoroughly disproves that any commonality in serotonin processing or levels has the slightest thing to do with it in a general sense. Researchers need to get a clue and start looking for subgroups who might actually have things in common with each other.

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  • So their final recommendation is, “We have to do something, so let’s do something stupid that makes things worse, because otherwise we’d be ‘turning a blind eye.'” How does that make sense?

    I also noticed that the study doesn’t mention the very high possibility that screening led to SSRI “treatment,” which is associated with INCREASING suicide rates, especially in youth. This seems a likely explanation for at least some of the increase in ED visits.

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  • It is beyond silly to “screen” for something that you can’t objectively detect, and for which you have no effective “treatment” or intervention to offer. Such “screenings” are clearly an effort to increase their client base, and fit better into the rubric of marketing than they do of medicine. I recall a doctor once saying, “So I got a positive screen for depression. Now what am I supposed to do about it?”

    Depression screenings are a scam and should be illegal.

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  • I think it is unconscionable that they would increase your medication levels without so much as a “by your leave.” I wish I found it shocking. What is your best response to this? If you let them know your strenuous objections, are they responsive in backing off to where you were most comfortable? You are a voluntary patient – they ought to be consulting you at every turn in the road.

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  • I agree 100 percent! People need HELP, but not because they are BROKEN and need some sort of “repairs.” They need compassion and interest and maybe a few ideas for new perspectives. And they need some HOPE for a better future. Some people can be helpful, but a big part of being helpful is NOT thinking that you know better than the person needing the assistance. The person him/herself is the only one who knows what is going on or what will end up being helpful. The best we can do is facilitate the process.

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  • It has to be OK for people to experience suffering without having it “fixed.” Psychiatry’s main thrust is to STOP people from feeling x or doing y. Good therapy should rather make it safe for people to experience whatever they are experiencing without judgment or a need to “fix it.” A person isn’t broken because they are suffering. They are just suffering. It’s part of the human experience.

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  • That is also my general experience. Once someone is labeled “borderline,” they are sometimes the butt of denigrating “jokes,” and are often spoken of in condescending terms, and regarded as “problem clients” who can’t really be helped. Not everyone behaves this way, but such behavior occurs without sanction or challenge, it is accepted to trash talk “borderlines” in a most dehumanizing manner.

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  • It seems you will not be able to understand and/or accept what I am saying, as your response appears to again criticize without specifics, and does not seem to address what I see as the central conflict we are having. So I will choose to back out of this conversation. I would just appreciate it in the future if you do not accuse me of offensive behavior without giving a specific example and a specific reason, but if you do continue to make such nonspecific accusations, I will choose to ignore them.

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  • I am concerned that you are making assumptions about the meaning of my comment that are not my intentions.

    I have never stated or implied that TREATMENT BY SOCIETY is better/kinder/not abusive in every tribal culture. What I said was ONLY that the content of voices is affected by culture, per the studies I have read:

    “https://news.stanford.edu/2014/07/16/voices-culture-luhrmann-071614/”

    I find that fact very interesting. I think it adds some complexity to the picture of how one might best approach someone who hears voices to get a better idea of what might be helpful. It is not meant to disrespect your views of your own situation.

    I have also not heard people here “denigrating your schizophrenia” in general, and I certainly have never meant to do so. There is general disagreement about whether “schizophrenia” is the name of a “disease” or “disorder” or merely a description of phenomena which really do occur but are not attributable to one, concrete, biological “disorder” or possibly a wide range of causes, such that one case may have little or nothing to do with another. This is very different from specifically attacking or “denigrating” you for your view of your own situation.

    With all due respect, we all have a right to disagree about things that are not determined to be “factually true” in a general sense. I have never once disrespected your right to label yourself with “schizophrenia” and to believe that you personally have a problem with your brain that causes your voices and other symptoms to occur, and in fact have state repeatedly that you absolutely have that right and that I do not question it. I also agree with you 100 percent that bullying others into agreeing to comply with someone else’s belief system is a huge problem. I would like you to grant me and others the same right to believe differently than you about THE CONCEPT OF SCHIZOPHRENIA IN GENERAL, without taking it to mean I intend some criticism of you individually and your beliefs. In truth, I find it likely that some people do, in fact, have difficulties with brain functioning that lead to some cases of “mental illness” as described in the DSM. I just don’t believe that we can define a “disease” for OTHER PEOPLE by looking at their thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Until there is some way to distinguish which people have or do not have a biological problem, and what exactly that problem may be, I’m afraid the final assessment will remain up to the individual client, not to the psychiatric “thought leaders” or individual mental health professionals.

    My objection is not YOU believing in schizophrenia and biological causation for you, and I have no criticism of you for choosing to approach the situation in ANY way you feel would be helpful. My objection is to DOCTORS and other MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS telling their CLIENTS that they “have a chemical imbalance” and “need drugs” when they have no real idea what is going on with that particular person. I have NO problem with the CLIENT identifying as “ADHD” or “Autistic” or having an “anxiety disorder.” I just don’t think it’s someone else’s job to pretend that they know things about the client that they do not.

    If you believe I have in some way “denigrated your schizophrenia,” I would appreciate you directly stating exactly what I (or someone else) might have said that you find denigrating. That way, we might be able to come to some kind of an understanding. But I really don’t like being treated as if I’ve done something wrong without knowing specifically what it is that you are objecting to and why.

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  • An interesting fact you might want to know is that studies of voice-hearing people in cultures where hearing voices is accepted or viewed as a gift have their voices say a lot more positive things. There is excellent evidence from the WHO studies that people in developing countries have MUCH better long term outcomes, despite (or because of) using a lot less psychiatric drugs in the process. Culture and expectations apparently DO have a very significant impact on how “schizophrenia” is experienced.

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  • The comment makes it sound as if stigma “rubs off” on the providers, when in actual point of fact, the providers themselves create the stigma they are complaining of. The main reason psychiatry is viewed as a sketchy, unscientific, unprofessional branch of medicine is because psychiatry IS sketchy, unscientific, and generally unprofessional. Psychiatry has earned and deserved the reputation is has. Its patients have not earned or deserved the prejudice and discrimination that the psychiatric “profession” has brought upon them by their own unscientific and unprofessional behavior.

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  • I would have to disagree that these drugs are not coerced or that there is no visible violence, except to the extent that folks who have never seen the inside of a psych ward have not witnessed such violence being applied. There are tables in there with wrist and ankle and waist restraints, and people get wrestled into them, or held down and injected with psych drugs (as “masculine” an act as I could ever imagine.) Additionally, mothers do not own the market on telling people they aren’t responsible for their actions.

    Perhaps more importantly, history shows us that women are, in fact, the targets for certain interventions, in particular ECT, and for certain diagnoses, in particular, “Borderline Personality Disorder,” among others. Phyllis Chesler has written extensively about this in “Women and Madness,” but she is certainly not the only one.

    Finally, psychiatry is fully the invention of white European males, with very little contribution from other sources. While it has become more “diverse” as the decades have passed, the basic assumptions, particularly the idea that a “sane” practitioner can determine the “insane” patients by observation and can use force or coercion to get them to behave “properly,” have never actually changed. The more recent marriage to the pharmaceutical industry to use drugs and ECT to alter someone’s brain to stop them from feeling the “wrong” things and/or behaving the “wrong” way certainly fits with a historically “patriarchal” worldview, namely that the “authorities” get to decide what YOU ought to do, and dissenters are to be punished. It’s true that the “punishment” has taken on a different color, mostly due to the presence of mass media and drug company marketing of “diseases,” but when push comes to shove (sorry for the ironic analogy there!), psychiatry is a top-down, fully authoritarian effort to “make people behave,” and it is very much backed up with the full use of government and social force to make its pronouncements stick OR ELSE.

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  • That is pretty damned offensive – makes “the seriously mentally ill” (who of course could be anyone “the authorities” so deem, given there is no objective way to assign such a label) sound like the enemy and psychiatry frustrated to be unable to defeat them and their “unattractiveness.” This kind of comment reveals a lot about the contempt in which such people are commonly held by those running “the system” that is supposed to be there to help them.

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  • I agree, it’s worse in a way. Kind of like how the culture of Nazism in WWII allowed more “normal” Germans to feel OK about committing atrocities against Jews and Gypsies and so on. An individual narcissist can be dealt with once you know who and what s/he is. A culture set up with discriminatory rules is much harder to fight!!

    And of course, it does make it easier for true narcissists to find a spot to do their dirty work!

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  • Well, that’s what I eventually had to decide. I realized that it wasn’t because they “didn’t understand” that their interventions were harmful. The people in charge actually believed that “stopping symptoms” was the actual GOAL and that quality of life issues or trauma history or WHY people had the feelings they had were actually not relevant. I remember talking to one psychiatrist about the “medical model” and drug “solutions,” seemed like a perfectly nice person, and I asked him about PTSD. I said, “Well, at least for PTSD, we can say with certainty that it is caused by traumatic events, not malfunctioning brain chemistry.” And he said, “But not EVERYONE who is traumatized gets PTSD! So there must be SOMETHING different about their brains that makes them vulnerable!” I gave up on the conversation at this point.

    But this guy was not “narcissistic” in his presentation in any way. I think he was just trained by and believed in a system that treats ‘the mentally ill’ as objects or lesser humans. As I’m writing this, I think that’s the basic problem. There are plenty of non-narcissistic people who believe that black people “should get over slavery,” that feminism means hating men, that gay people are dangerous pedophiles, and all sorts of stupid things, because cultural prejudices allow them to entertain these beliefs without challenge. Bottom line, the system trains people to DISCRIMINATE against “the mentally ill,” and those who resist are themselves ostracized, ignored, or attacked for challenging the system. It’s not a matter of individual narcissism in most cases. It’s a culture of bias and disrespect and prejudice that these individuals are participating in that makes them feel OK about treating “the mentally ill” as “less than” without any pangs of conscience disturbing them. And of course, Alice Miller’s considerations play strongly into this, as the culture provides ample cover for the “professionals'” need to punish or silence their clients for making them feel uncomfortable with their drama.

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  • In fairness, I started out in the “mental health” system because I wanted to help people, as I had been helped by my therapist, who frankly did a great job in many ways and really helped me get onto a new path in my life.

    Of course, I was never a “follower” and always was suspicious of the “medication” advocates and the DSM never made sense to me, and was viewed as a rebel and often tossed monkey wrenches in the system, but still I had opportunities to be helpful in a genuine way, and people seemed to appreciate what I could do, so I continued for over 10 years in the profession. It wasn’t until I worked doing “involuntary detentions” and saw what happened to people in psych wards and how many “mentally ill” people were labeled, drugged and forgotten, their quality of life total shit but their caseworkers interested only in whether they were “on their meds” and what their “symptoms” were, that I felt I had to get out for ethical reasons. Don’t get me wrong, the people who got me for their “evaluations” were quite fortunate, I had by far the lowest rate of detentions in our agency, and I sprung some inmates from the joint as well, but I could not ethically hold people against their will in such horrid conditions as prevailed in the psych wards.

    So people do learn and grow and sometimes grow out of their excuses or explanations for overlooking the real horrors of the “mh” system. Of course, the system is far worse today, and I doubt I’d have lasted 3 months, but there are people in the “system” who don’t really believe in it fully, and we ought to give them some credit for operating behind enemy lines. It’s not a fun role to play!

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  • I’m not totally sure about that. I think it may be that a certain “brand” of narcissist is attracted to the field, kind of like police and the military. There are also lots of people approaching it with good intentions, but the DSM does make it easy to indulge in narcissistic fantasies. It’s also true that when things get difficult in a “therapeutic relationship,” there is, in my experience, a very strong drive to “fix it” because it is VERY uncomfortable to have to sit with someone else’s pain right in front of you. But I’ve found the key to success is being WILLING to tolerate that pain being there and NOT knowing what to do about it and letting that be true while looking around and exploring what that pain is looking like. The DSM/drug model unfortunately allows someone looking for an “out” to simply say, “Wow, you must have ‘major depression'” or “I think you need antidepressants” instead of hanging in there and believing that a good direction will emerge if we are patient and willing to sit with that discomfort for a while.

    So I think the major challenge is that therapists enter in totally unprepared, have NOT done the work to deal with their own pain, have that pain brought back to the surface by their client, and then feel they have to stop the client from having those feelings because they want to feel better themselves. And the label-and-drug model makes it all too easy to act out those “savior” fantasies within the expectations of your supervisor or “the system.” It’s pretty much a setup for failure. I admire those who are able to work within that system and still help people. I finally gave it up and decided advocacy was the better path for me to go.

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  • I don’t think that diagnosis is a priori wrong in the “mental health” area. I just think that such diagnoses should represent something actually distinguishable from a different “diagnosis.” The DSM itself admits it fails to do this (actually that it doesn’t even ATTEMPT to do this) in its introduction. CBT is just a way of engaging a person’s thinking process in interfering with their habitual behavior. It’s possible it may be more effective in disrupting anxious thoughts than in stopping, say, hyperactive behavior, but that’s just a percentage based on the kind of “symptom” we are dealing with. The fact that CBT may be more useful for someone feeling anxious does nothing to confirm that anxious people are anxious for the same reason, that anxiety is de facto a “disorder” or “disease” state in all or in fact in ANY case, and studying “anxiety disorders” means studying people who most likely are quite diverse and heterogeneous, meaning that even if 80 percent of people can apply the list of definitions and come up with the same “diagnosis,” there is no reason to believe that these people have anything in common other than the fact that they happen to fit the list. It’s sort of like saying that if 80 percent of people can be identified as suffering from “knee pain,” it means that “knee pain” is a valid diagnosis. Of course, it’s nothing of the sort. Knee pain can be caused by a score or two of different actual diagnoses, including a bruise, water on the knee, arthritis, a torn ACL, MCL, or other ligament, a torn cartilage, etc, etc, etc. “Knee Pain” is simply not a useful diagnosis. Pretty much every psych diagnosis is similarly useless. What if one person is depressed because of thyroid issues, one because of childhood abuse/neglect, one because he’s in a dead end job, another because she’s suffering from domestic abuse, another because he can’t figure out the meaning of his life, another because he just got diagnosed with cancer, and another because she’s got severe anemia. Feeling depressed, losing sleep, losing joy in things we used to like, these are subjective, almost arbitrary items that could all be caused by dozens of reasons. It’s scientifically incredibly weak to try and do “research” on these so-called “diagnoses,” not because diagnosis is wrong but because these diagnoses don’t provide any explanatory model for what is wrong and what might be done about it, except on the most superficial level. It’s very much like diagnosing “knee pain disorder.” If we accepted that as a diagnosis, guess what would always be the most effective “treatment?” That’s right, drugs. Do you think the “atheoretical” diagnostic plan was created by accident? Or is it perhaps intentionally done to make marketing biological “solutions” a lot easier.

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  • Actually, advanced imaging has contributed to proving that the DSM concept of “mental illnesses” is complete bunk for almost all so “diagnosed.” It is showing that folks with the same diagnosis have almost nothing in common, except for common damage from the drugs they may be taking.

    And my retort to your neurologist relative is this: I’m a very smart person. If you can’t explain it to me, it’s probably not because I can’t understand it. It’s because either you don’t want me to know, or you don’t understand it yourself.

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  • By the way, I do support doing research on “diagnoses,” but only for the purpose of demonstrating the fecklessness of “diagnosing” people in this slipshod manner, or the lack of effectiveness of a given “treatment” for such “disorders.” I consider any research done using the DSM categories to be prima facia false, as the groupings of people on that basis have no scientific validity (they are heterogeneous groups having no known, measurable qualities in common). The main error in the DSM is assuming that people who have the same “diagnosis” have something wrong with them, or the SAME thing wrong with them all. The DSM itself even admits to this failing. But what is the use of a “diagnosis” that groups together people who have nothing in common? It is literally possible for two people to have “Major Depressive Disorder” or “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” and have not one single trait in common with each other! From a scientific viewpoint, the DSM is utter garbage!

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  • How can a “diagnosis” be reliably made when the criteria are totally subjective in almost every case? What is the standard for reliability, merely that other people’s opinions agree with yours? And if that’s the case, shouldn’t we be using language such as “people typically labeled as ‘bipolar'” or “people typically labeled with ‘major depressive disorder?'”

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  • I found the same thing with foster youth or their parents or foster parents. No one was really given informed consent. One facility had a “clients’ rights” sign on every wall that said they had the right to know the intended benefits and potential adverse effects of any medications they were given. When my CASA volunteer asked the therapist when that had happened for her charge, the therapist said, “No, we never do THAT! They might pretend they had the side effects or decide not to take the medication!” Which is kind of the point of “informed consent,” isn’t it? That was the attitude I met every day. Doctors knew best, people needed to do as they were told or horrible consequences would ensue, and anyone who said otherwise was brainwashed or “anti-science” or just didn’t understand how important these “meds” were. Yet 9 out of 10 kids stopped their “meds” or cut down to one almost immediately after they escaped foster care, and very few that I knew of suffered any adverse effects in the long run. And when asked at multiple “foster youth panels” what kind of intervention they found most helpful, not one of them ever mentioned “medication” as a key to their success. It was always a person or a relationship that they identified as what helped them through. Sometimes a therapist, but never once a psychiatrist or his/her “medications.”

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  • Part of the problem is that “overdiagnosis” and “overmedication” are not concepts that can be applied to psychiatric “treatment,” because there is no objective way to determine who does and does not qualify for a “diagnosis” made from a checklist of behaviors. So we decry “overmedication,” but the next person who comes in “depressed” for whatever reason can be reasoned to “qualify” for “major depressive disorder” and thereby be drugged once again. Add in the strong financial incentives to drug anyone who comes in the door, and you get the disaster that is “mental health treatment” today.

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  • I notice that you seem to continue to view clients from a viewpoint of “diagnosis” and “treatment.” CBT to me is simply one of many techniques that can help certain people get a perspective on what THEY can to do improve their lives in ways that they find helpful. I never cared one whit what “diagnosis” they had. All I cared about was what THEY saw as the problem (often requiring some pretty good interviewing skills to help them figure out) and what THEY felt was helpful in moving forward. Sometimes CBT was perfect, sometimes it was useless, not depending on the “diagnosis” but on the person’s personality and goals and viewpoint on what they are trying to accomplish. Similarly, some people did REALLY well with regressive techniques, others wouldn’t consider it or it wasn’t really realistic given the circumstances or timeline or it just plain didn’t work. Some do well “brief therapy” techniques (what did you do the last time this happened?), while some find them insulting. Sometimes I made stuff up on the spot specific to that particular person. My primary rule was, “Gather information. Try something that seems to make sense. If it works, do it more! If it doesn’t, stop doing it, gather more information, and and do something else!”

    Milton Erickson said that therapy needed to be “reinvented” for every client/case. He was correct. I tried to approach each case with a “Beginner’s Mind,” as they say in Buddhist teachings, open to experiencing what is before me, no preconceptions or judgments or plans. I found that “diagnoses” did nothing but confuse and distract me from getting to know the PERSON in front of me, which was the key to my success in the field. The question to me was never, “What is his diagnosis” or “what is wrong with her?” or “what school of therapy should I follow?” It was more like, “Who is this person? What’s important to them? What are their goals and what do they see as barriers to those goals? What kind of fixed beliefs or behavior do they seem committed to that don’t make sense to me, and why do they make sense to them? How can I assist them in stepping out of their normal ‘scripts’ and see what alternatives might exist?” There is no formula for doing this – one has to simply roll up one’s sleeves and be humble enough NOT to “know” things about this client that you really don’t know at all.

    People are mysterious. Psych “diagnoses” don’t help us understand the mystery, they trivialize and confuse the real issues that we ought to be looking at. If I were you, I’d consider dropping them from your vocabulary.

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  • We definitely agree on that, and that’s a good start to a deeper conversationn. It’s very important to understand not everyone has your kind of experience. I have thankfully never been held against my will, partly because I’m older and grew up in an era where “mental health professionals” were more interested in relationships and experience and less in proving biological causation, and because I lucked out and got a really good therapist on the first shot. Plus I am a white male with a college education, privileges the majority of those held against their wills don’t have. But in today’s environment, it’s quite possible I would have been “hospitalized,” because I definitely did express feelings of suicidal ideation during my therapy. I’m happy to have dodged that bullet. Others are not so fortunate.

    My distrust/disdain for psychiatry is not based on my personal direct experience as a client, it is actually based on comparing the conclusions of real scientific research to what front-line psychiatrists and “thought leaders” tell us is true. It started with “ADHD.” My son clearly fit the criteria, and I was concerned it would come up when he got to school age, so I did some research on long term outcomes. I was STUNNED to find that there was no long-term research suggesting that ANY long-term outcome, including academics, school completion, college enrollment, delinquency rates, teen pregnancy rates, social skills, or even self-esteem, was improved for “ADHD” kids taking stimulants vs. those who don’t or who take them only short term. I’ve tracked on the research since then, and that continues to be the case. Yet I heard psychiatrists and school personnel saying things like, “Untreated ADHD leads to school failure and higher delinquency rates,” when “treatment” did nothing to improve those outcomes!

    I have since tracked research on antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs, antipsychotics, and to a lesser extent, “mood stabilizers,” and the exact same pattern emerges. Antidepressants are insisted on as “life-saving” for suicidal people, yet there is no evidence they reduce the suicide rate, and suggestion that they may actually increase it. Antipsychotics are supposed to be essential long term to prevent “relapses,” yet those who take them long-term are MORE likely to be re-hospitalized or otherwise deteriorate than those who use them short term or not at all (see Harrow’s work, referenced in Anatomy of an Epidemic). These are large scale studies of many people, and don’t imply that no one is helped by these interventions. It means that on the average, people are better off not taking any of these drugs for the long term. And people are not told this, and ought to be.

    So the reason I distrust psychiatry as a profession is because they’ve been dishonest. They’ve claimed that all their DSM diagnoses are entirely or primarily biological in origin, despite a lack of research suggesting this is true, and a commonsense critique that claiming the same cause for everyone’s “depression” or “anxiety” flies in the face of reason. They’ve lied about the research that IS done, and have attempted to suppress real data that comes out which contradicts their desired narrative (Harrow, Kirsch, the WHO intercultural studies, etc.) They accuse people like Robert of being antiscientific or cultists just because their findings challenge that narrative. So no, I don’t trust them, and it’s not for emotional reasons, though I consider a person having been personally brutalized an excellent reason to distrust them anyway. But I’m not one of those. I worked IN the system for years, and I saw what really happened as a result of this system. Not saying that all psychiatrists are evil or stupid, nor that people for whom these treatments work should be denied access to them. But I don’t think medical professionals should lie to people about what they “know” in order to get them to agree to a particular approach. Do you think it’s OK for an entire “medical” industry to misrepresent the facts in order to increase their market share? I don’t, and that’s why I have no trust or respect for psychiatry as a profession, regardless of my positive interactions with some psychiatrists and the reported successes of some percentage of patients.

    I hope that makes things clearer on where I’m coming from. If you haven’t read Anatomy of an Epidemic, you really ought to. It is very well researched and non-emotional in presentation, and might help you understand the “rest of the story” for people who have not been as fortunate as you and I have.

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  • I challenge you to show me hard evidence that there is “some kind of chemical disruption in the brain” of all or most people who fit the criteria for “MDD.” The idea of the “chemical imbalance” theory was disproven back in the ’80s, before Proac even came to market. Even mainstream psychiatrists are disavowing this theory and claiming that they never supported it. They’ve moved on to the idea of “circuits” and of “genomic analysis” because their original theories on cause have never panned out.

    Of course, nobody knows if it’s nature or nurture, and as in pretty much everything, including hard biological illnesses like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, it’s no doubt a combination of both. The “diagnosis” is not made by any kind of brain scan or measurement of brain chemicals or EEG or any kind of measurement – it’s just a list of “symptoms,” and most doctors don’t even bother using those. How would it be possible to distinguish “clinical depression” (supposedly caused by biology) from any other kind of depression just using a checklist of symptoms?

    Your case may be particular, you may have some biological vulnerability, but I would bet that no one has shown you what exactly is wrong with your family inheritance. In any case, just because your case may be biological doesn’t lead to the conclusion that any other case is biological. The psychiatric profession makes a common but serious scientific error in assuming that all subjects with similar presentations have the same problem. This is, of course, nonsense scientifically, as something like a rash can be caused by dozens of things, including poison ivy, prickly heat, the measles, or syphilis. I’d sure want my doctor to be able to tell the difference before they started ‘treating’ my rash!

    The other interesting scientific question is: If there is no objective way to tell who “has” “clinical depression” caused by a “chemical problem,” how would anyone be able to determine what “overprescription” would mean? What’s an appropriate level of prescription look like for a disease that has no reliable physical markers whatsoever? That’s one of the biggest problems with the DSM approach – no one can really tell if the doctor is right or wrong, because it’s all a matter of “clinical opinion.”

    Again, I support anyone who finds antidepressants useful, or anything else that helps them. I don’t deny that depression can be a HUGE problem in a person’s life – been there, done that. But that doesn’t make it a medical problem. The burden of proof should be on those claiming it is, and they haven’t met the standard.

    Additionally, the article itself makes it clear that most people do NOT benefit from antidepressants. Why do you think that is, if it’s a biological problem? Or how can you distinguish the bio-depressed from the psycho-spiritually depressed? Or those depressed because their lives are depressing? How can you tell?

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  • Just to be clear, Maggie, I don’t think anyone here thinks a person should “just get over it.” That’s a trope that is tossed out by the psychiatric industry to try and discredit their critics, pretending critics are saying, “There’s nothing wrong, just quit whining.” But that’s not the critique here. The proble is the CLAIM that “depression” is a DISEASE STATE without providing any evidence that this is the case, and then pretending they can somehow TELL who “has clinical depression” and “needs medication” while in practice recommending drugs for pretty much every single case they run across.

    I have suffered a lot from chronic depression and it took years, decades really, to truly get a handle on it, and it still is a problem sometimes for me. But I don’t hold that I have a “disease” that can be somehow cured by messing with my brain functioning, because there is no evidence that either of those things are true. I also know that some people find antidepressants helpful on a personal level, and I have no concern about that. But I do have a concern about professionals making claims of scientific support for something they have no actual understanding of, particularly when they approach it in a completely biased manner and deny evidence that really IS scientific, such as the fact that most people do NOT get better on antidepressants, as this article shows us.

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  • “Treatment resistant” is such a ridiculous term! It implies that EVERYONE should respond to “treatment,” and that anyone who doesn’t is either personally resisting, or their “disorder” (a mental construct!) is resisting! Why not just say, “Our treatment failed” and leave it at that?

    What would you think if you took your car into the garage, the guy worked on it for two weeks and then gave it back and said, “The problem is, you have repair-resistent fuel injectors! I can’t fix them, but if you come back once a week we can treat the symptoms…” You’d get a new mechanic double quick!!!

    “Treatment resistance” is a loaded term meant to blame the client for the doctor/therapist’s failures.

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  • No, that is NOT what I want. I simply want you not to classify people who experience hallucinations/delusions as “schizophrenics who believe they have that” or “schizophrenics who believe they don’t have that.” You are ‘diagosing’ that person against his/her will, even if you accept that they “don’t believe they have that.” Why not call it “people with delusions/hallucinations who call it an illness, and people with delusions/hallucintions who don’t call it an illness?”

    It is more like a Muslim trying to convince ME that I have to do Ramadan, because she’s a Muslim and that’s her lens. I hope we are capable of rising above that.

    But thanks for the clarification. I believe I understand your views much better now, and my prior confusion is quite fully cleared up.

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  • You are clearly empowered to believe in your doctor – s/he may even be right! What I am saying has absolutely nothing about you or your diagnosis or your belief in your psychotic experiences as an illness or agreeing with your doctor. The objection I have is to you saying that because YOU believe your doctor and his/her diagnosis, it means other people who view it differently are “choosing to believe” something you regard essentially to be wrong. And you’re entitled to believe that, just as others are entitled to believe you are “wrong,” but most of your comments reflect an “open minded” attitude, live and let live, believe as you see fit, which I agree with. I was just pointing out that others should have the same right as you, not to be talked to as if their belief that their situation is NOT caused by biochemistry or is NOT called “schizophrenia” just because the doctor says so is irrational, which is what I was getting from your post. People don’t just have the right “believe their schizophrenia is something else,” they have every right to believe that they don’t have schizophrenia or that doctors’ “diagnosis” of schizophrenia doesn’t meet minimum scientific standards as a “diagnosis,” even if the condition described does exist.

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  • With respect, DW, I have to note that you said:

    “IF…
    anyone has schizophrenia and prefers to regard it as not schizophrenia but some other ailment or stress or trauma or government plot or even extra terrestial indoctrination…

    I will be encouraging of this YOUR CHOICE of way you know YOU”

    It seems you are saying that others DO HAVE schizophrenia but are REGARDING it as “not schizophrenia.” This seems to violate your own principle – you are telling them that they DO have schizophrenia even when they don’t regard it that way. You want others to allow you to BELIEVE or ASSERT you have a disease called “schizophrenia.” Why do you not respect others rights to BELIEVE or ASSERT they do NOT have schizophrenia? If you respect that right, how can you say that they “have schizophrenia” by your own or the doctor’s definition and are REGARDING it as “not schizophrenia?” It sounds as if you are saying that you know they DO have it but are willing to tolerate them claiming otherwise. Is that how you see it?

    Or does the other person have a right to DEFINE their experience as they please, since there is no objective way to “diagnose” schizophrenia beyond a list of thoughts and behaviors made up by a committee of psychiatrists? If everyone has a right to their own interpretation of reality, why would you or the doctor be in any position to define their condition as “schizophrenia” and then magnanimously grant them the right to “regard it” as something else?

    Perhaps your concern is not that others won’t allow you to define your own condition, but that others choose to define it differently than you do?

    I ask this with the utmost respect. I have had a hard time understanding where you’re coming from, and I sometimes think I do, and yet you sometimes talk as if you think I don’t. Maybe I didn’t really understand you in the first place? Some clarification would be appreciated!

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  • I certainly never said any of those things. What I DID say is that DOCTORS should not be able to tell YOU or ME or ANYONE ELSE what is “wrong” with them when they have no idea or scientific or even intuitive basis for their claims. I get frustrated when you claim I am saying that you have no right to choose your label. I have literally NEVER said that. I have said that no one ELSE has the right to label YOU (or anyone else) without your (or their) agreement. I hope the distinction is now clear.

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  • As usual, I agree with you almost completely. The one exception is your comment that you are sure the “mental health” meme was entered into with “good intentions.” Nothing expands that quickly without funding behind it, and that funding comes from our friends in the Pharmaceutical Industry. I am certain this phrase was chosen specifically because it had the effect that was wanted, and it was spread as propaganda through the usual “advocacy” groups and social media sites with the intention of making it ‘popular,’ as a means of marketing their wares. The more “mental health” is normalized, the less people look for other explanations, and the more drugs and “services” are sold. The intentions are NOT good!

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  • People who don’t want to change anything should be left alone. I was assuming we were talking about a person seeking assistance. I see no need for an outside “professional” to label their experiences as “mental disorders.” I think it should be up to the person seeking help to define what they want to change and whether or not a particular approach is of interest or appears to be “working.” I hope that is clearer. No one should be forced to entertain “help” for something they don’t want help with, nor should someone else be able to define what “help” looks like for a particular person.

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  • Parents don’t have to be monsters to cause harm to their children’s psyches.

    No one is all good or all bad. We are all human and make errors and do good things and mess up and recover. It’s not about good or bad parents. It’s a lot about what adults went through when they were kids and pass on, and about what adults/parents are expected to do in our society and what they are supposed to do with their kids.

    Most people would say my parents were fine people. They did a lot of things right. But they did some things wrong, too. Additionally, schools were full of well-meaning folks who often did a lot of harm because “that’s how we do it.”

    An example: Good parents were expected to leave their kids to “cry it out” in their cribs when I was a baby. They were expected NOT to nurse their babies and to feed them solid food at way too young an age. Some were told that taking Thalidomide was safe and ended up with hydrocephalic babies or other birth defects. All were expected to send their kids to schools without question, even though some of my teachers were absolutely crazy and dangerous. One hit me in the head after she tossed a book across the classroom in second grade and I protested. Was that my parents’ fault? The teacher’s fault? The school’s fault? Society’s fault? It doesn’t matter whose “fault” it was or whether the teacher was a monster or just a sad old lady who never was loved. What matters is that I had experiences that were not healthy for me. They hurt me, whether they were intended to or not. It was helpful to recall those hurts and what decisions I made at the time, so I could learn to make different decisions today. There were no monsters. Just adults trying to do their best. But I still got hurt, and I don’t have to make excuses for them. I can take care of my own needs and let them be upset about it if they want to. Which my parents were, but we healed some as I grew up and was better able to express myself. I loved them, they loved me, and we were better off facing up to the painful moments where things didn’t go so well.

    No blame or monsters or heroes required.

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  • I’m not sure they were ever “bedazzled.” If you listen to the discussions around the time of the creation of the DSM III, they were quite blatant about their political goal of establishing psychiatry as a “real science” by pushing claims of biological causation and treatment. Of course, Big Pharma was happy to help out for a price, and they developed a symbiotic economic relationship that continues today. Many lower-level “mental health professionals” are, in fact, bedazzled, but the leadership premeditatedly planned to sell this concept to the public, whether or not it was true, and they have succeeded.

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  • Why bother forming a model of a “mental disorder?” The term is already so biased and polluted it’s not worth trying to rescue. Why not simply help people identify what they want to change about themselves and help them find a way to do it? Or work to alter the known social conditions which create such emotional distress in the first place? Why not work on building a world that respects people’s mental/emotional condition instead of making diseases out of them?

    Humans’ biases will not ever allow for a rational “model of the mind,” let alone of “mental disorders,” in my humble opinion. It’s a case of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle brought to life: as soon as a mind starts studying “the mind,” the mind itself is altered by the process.

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  • I think you have hit the most fundamental problem with the “helping” professions. Anyone who thinks they can tell another person what is wrong with them, what they need, and/or what they need to do about it is inherently dangerous. People don’t need someone to define things for them, they need someone to help them figure out what they need and how to get their needs met. Humility and empathetic listening, along with a few carefully-selected pointed questions, is what most people find most helpful, whether it’s from a professional, friend, family member, or a stranger on the street. As soon as a person forgets that the only one who knows the ‘right answer’ is the person seeking assistance, they become a hindrance rather than a help. And when they expect the person seeking support to “appreciate” whatever “help” they choose to provide, they become inevitably damaging to the person they are claiming to “help.”

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  • It is also very possible that the best of parents make errors and their kids end up hurt. It is very important that parents are willing to take responsibility for their contribution to thhe problem, and the best parents are willing to do that, and make it OK for their kids to give them feedback about their experience as children. You don’t have to be a “bad parent” to contribute to your child’s emotional struggles!

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  • I agree, that is exactly what happens, even to other health professionals. We’ve all been taught that “mental illness,” and suicide in particular, is very, very DANGEROUS and that anyone NOT a professional will no doubt mess it up, with the corrolary being of course that you’ll get sued if you don’t get it right. I remember a kid in residential treatment who would claim he was “suicidal” because he knew it meant a trip to the ER and he could get out of a day of school. The res staff were too afraid to handle it until they got approval from the psychiatrist to do a “planned ignore” and not automatically transport him every time he said the “s” word. It really is quite ridiculous – we are removing what is probably the BEST assistance a person thinking of ending his/her life can get – support from friends and loved ones – in favor of forced hospitalization and drugs that present no evidence of doing anything to reduce suicides, and may actually increase them. Who is insane, now?

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  • The term “recover” is often used in terms of injuries or illnesses. It is the assumption that a mental/emotional challenge is an “illness” of some sort in the individual that needs to be challeneged. And I would submit that many people need help “recovering” or “recuperating” from the assault on their lives and their integrity that psychiatry itself has perpetrated!

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  • You are quite right. There was a quite open discussion of this back in the 90s. They chose the term ‘medication’ instead of ‘drug,’ and substituted ‘discontinuation syndrome’ for ‘withdrawal,’ to differentiate as much as possible their psychiatric “medications” from their close cousins, street drugs (and sometimes they actually USED street drugs and called them “medications” instead.) There is no doubt what you say is absolutely and intentionally true.

    “Severe and persistent withdrawal syndromes from antidepressants have long been neglected or minimised. Obscuring a potentially serious risk, the pharmaceutical industry coined the term “discontinuation syndrome” to avoid association of antidepressants with psychotropic dependence. This term is unnecessary and misleading, suggesting antidepressants cannot cause dependence and withdrawal.11,16 Thus, patients and prescribers may misattribute withdrawal symptoms as relapse or emergence of new mental disorders.11,16,21”

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7768871/

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  • I think for some people, “recovery” means “accepting of diagnosis and taking all drugs prescribed by doctor.” The idea of recovery WITHOUT or IN SPITE OF medical intervention seems to be heretical in some circles. It’s almost like you’re saying it’s not a medical problem at all! Which might suggest that maybe THEIR acceptance of their diagnosis and medical intervention could be called into question. EEEK!!!

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  • That meme also assumes that psych drugs always or consistently make people’s “symptoms” better. There are plenty whose “symptoms” get worse, or who get new “symptoms” of new “disorders” that they never had before because of reactions to the psych drugs they were prescribed. Many of the foster kids I worked with got significantly BETTER when taken off their psych drugs that clinicians claimed were so essential to their survival, and there were many more who were no better or worse on or off the drugs, which of course means the drugs contributed nothing to their “mental health!” I’ve seen a girl diagnosed with an eating disorder put on stimulants, after which folks were very alarmed that she stopped eating! Who would have guessed? I’ve seen a girl diagnosed with diabetes, and we advocated for her to be taken of Seroquel, and a few weeks later, the diabetes was GONE.

    Why the assumption that these drugs are always positive, or that the pros always outweigh the cons? It is a very disturbing assumption that harms a LOT of people!

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  • https://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrehpp/19/1/24#:~:text=Despite%20many%20scientific%20and%20governmental,or%20degree%20of%20brain%20damage.

    I’m afraid that the literature shows brain damage to be quite common in ECT. In this review, they suggest some level of damage is always present. ECT “works” by inducing a grand mal seizure in the individual receiving it. When people have seizure disorders, we do everything we can to STOP them having seizures, specifically BECAUSE there is damage to the brain when uncontrolled seizures occur.

    I’m not trying to invalidate your personal reality, because what works for you is what works for you. But it is not accurate to suggest that loads of studies show no brain damage from ECT. It is most likely that any therapeutic effect for ECT is the result of minor brain damage. But sadly, it is not always “minor,” as many survivors of ECT can attest. It is, at best, a very risky procedure whose benefits are unpredictable and generally very short lived. That doesn’t mean that no one finds it beneficial, but it does mean that claims of “safety” are not supported by the scientific literature.

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  • I would not call that “overmedicated.” Of course, there is no way to determine the “proper” level of “medication” when the “disorders” they claim to see have no actual, objective definition. But being on 9 drugs is not “overmedication,” it is MALPRACTICE! And I’m willing to bet that despte (or because of) her massive “medication” load, he’s still doing poorly and has a crappy quality of life. That is not healthcare. It’s malpractice.

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  • I agree with you for the most part. The only objection I’d make here is that psychiatry is not to me “science done badly.” It is pretend “science” used in the service of marketing drugs. You and I both agree that enforcing drugs on people as “the only solution” is oppressive, especially when done so without the consent of the “drugged.” I am adding that pretending that “science” supports such an action, that the reason you should “go along with the program” is because “you have X disorder” or “you have a chemical imbalance in your brain” is not science, but pure marketing, promoting something they know is NOT supported by science as if it were, because it sells drugs.

    If psychiatrists said, “These phenomena happen to people. We don’t know why, but we have discovered some drugs that may stop some of these phenomena temporarily, with x and y adverse effects,” then they’d be a lot closer to being scientific.

    So a person can believe fully in science as a means of determining the truth (or I should probably say, a means of determining what is NOT the truth, as science is a lot better at that) without having a minute to give for psychiatry’s effort to use people’s vulnerability to sell them drugs. I will add that I don’t worship science and recognize its limitations, and have a full spiritual life and believe in lots of things that Science can’t explain. But psychiatry has nothing to do with science, except to the extent that they can study what effects these drugs actually have on people, and they’re not even honest about that.

    I never confuse psychiatry with science. It’s a marketing scheme, plain and simple. You or anyone else can certainly use the psychiatrists’ framing of disorders or diseases if you choose to, and more power to you for it. I even use some of them on occasion. But I don’t view such “disorders” as scientific entities, any more than describing someone as “courageous” or “a slow runner” or “has lovely hair” as scientific descriptions.

    I don’t mind you viewing yourself as “ill” and describing yourself that way. I do mind a doctor pretending that they have proof that I am “ill” and therefore need to accept their “treatment” of me as a legitimate medical practice, especially in the absence of any evidence that they can identify a definitive cause and test me for it in some objective manner. Just as someone is free to be a Christian or a Muslim or a Hari Krishna if they want to, but I object when they start telling me I have to agree with them, especially if they try to claim that “Science proves that Christianity is the ‘right’ religion.”

    I hope that clarifies the point.

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  • I think there is a big difference between one citizen telling another one what to think/not to think about their condition, whatever it may be, which I think would be a bad thing, and a person with big social power, like a doctor or psychologist, telling people that “science” says that you have “X disorder” and that it is biological in nature, and that drugs are the solution, especially when there is no scientific evidence that is the case. So I think the two of you may be talking about different subjects. It seems like DW is not liking it if people tell HER that she “is not ill” or that “schizophrenia is not an illness,” which I completely understand and agree with. What I understand YOU to be saying (and I agree with you 100 percent) is that the PROFESSIONS of psychiatry and psychology have intentionally perpetrated misleading or downright dishonest representations of the truth, and that these misrepresentations have damaged those they claim to help. To me, these are completely different subjects, and I hope we can all be careful to make sure we make that distinction. If DS or anyone else wants to frame their experience as an illness or attribute a biological cause, they are free to do so. When a psychiatrist or psychologist or an MD makes that claim about someone ELSE, then it is THEY who are bullying and telling others what to believe about their own condition, without scientific backup for their position.

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  • In fact, the data suggest that antidepressants, far from saving lives, actually INCREASE the odds of someone committing suicide. And the fact that the suicide rate for folks leaving a psych hospitalization is so amazingly high does not speak well of the “treatment” they are receiving.

    There is no drug on the market today that can legitimately claim to reduce the suicide rate. Even the drug companies don’t claim that in their advertisements. They count on psychiatrists to do that bit of marketing for them.

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  • I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. To me, the idea of talking to a “professional” who pretends to some “superior knowledge” in order to “diagnose” me with a “disease or disorder” is VERY different from sharing my experiences with someone who has been there and understands how it feels to be in a similar situation. Human beings have communicated and shared with each other in times of trouble or to mitigate traumatic experiences since the beginning of human language. It is a natural and healthy thing to do. The problem I see is that this natural, human process has been coopted by those claiming special skills or knowledge in the area of “helping,” while presenting no evidence that a degree or professional position confers any kind of advantage in doing so. Folks need to recognize when they’re being scammed. But to suggest that sharing one’s experiences with another human being is ipso facto proof of being a fool or a sucker is just plain nonsense to me. I’m all for fighting back against the system and have done my share over the decades, but I also know that without other caring individuals to listen and help me through life’s challenges, including one very helpful therapist in my 20s, I would not be in the excellent place I am today, and in fact, would never even have fully realized that I needed to fight, and whom I needed to fight against. Dismissing the need for human sharing of experience is simply not a workable theory, no matter how many barriers are manned. But people DO need to learn, or re-learn, since we all once knew how to do this intuitively, how to discern those who we can trust from those who are not really there for us. Many revolutions were brought to a standstill by people’s inability to realize which leader ought to be trusted and which should not, so it doesn’t just apply to therapists or “peer supporters,” either.

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  • Actually, I respect people’s inherent ability to discern who are and are not their allies. Unfortunately, that ability has been messed with starting at a very young age, and it is the lack of that ability that allows people to be taken advantage of, including by “professionals.” If people need anything in terms of “help,” the thing they need most is the ability to learn whom they can and cannot trust. If you ask me which is more likely to be trustworthy, a psychiatrist, a therapist, or another person who has “been through the system,” I’d bet on the third by a mile. It’s true many such have been coopted, but that should become obvious in 5-10 minutes of conversation.

    And I’d ask you this: if people are to join in some kind of resistance movement, would that not involve disclosing their affairs to people who may or may not be their actual allies?

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  • No we don’t. We want real Peer Support to be paid for by all the money that we save when we fire all the psychiatrists and stop wasting so much money on non-working “Treatments.” I think the objection to referring to “mental health conditions” is mostly that it makes “peers” into automatic subordinates to the “mental health” system. I’d love it if the “system” were subordinate to y’all and especially the clients themselves, but that’s going to require a total re-do of the model where peer support is an “adjunct” or an “alternative” or “supporter” rather than the main deal.

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  • I know how ETC “works.” After the “patient” gets 3-4 “sessions, they assure the doctor, “I feel SOOO much better now. THANK YOU for this wonderful experience! I don’t feel even a TINY bit depressed! Now, can you unlock that door so I can get far, far away from you and your ‘help?'”

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  • I think it is also important to remember that not all “logic” is logical! But I agree completely, it is the suppression of feelings, not the feelings themselves, that lead to real trouble. Not all feelings need or deserve to be acted upon, but all of them can be safely EXPERIENCED, and in fact, feeling “negative feelings,” as people call them, generally leads to them being LESS likely to be acted upon in a destructive way.

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  • You should keep in mind, though, that how a country is RULED (monarchy, etc.) is not the same as how the economy works. Capitalism is an economic model. We kind of know at this point that uncontrolled capitalism leads to monopolies, price-fixing, decreasing wages, and an increasing gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.” At the same time, we know that a fully government-controlled economy does not allow for sufficient freedom and motivation to create solutions to problems. Both are susceptible to corruption, of course. So it’s not a simple question of how the government is organized. Private enterprise has its own set of rules. There are plenty of capitalistic countries that have despotic governments or monarchies or even ostensibly “communist” governments like China or Viet Nam. It’s a very complex problem!

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  • Actually, the best “treatment” for childhood trauma has been shown to be a healthy relationship with a caring adult or adults. Dr. Bruce Perry has written extensively on this point, as have others. The psychiatric community, as usual, has focused on the ostensible “brain damage” caused by childhood trauma, but have bypassed (or intentionally ignored) the brain-science solution, namely a safe environment with caring parents, which is shown to heal a good part of the damage you describe.

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  • It is also “surprising” because doctors and other “wise ones” have blamed “hormones” for all cases of “postpartum depression,” in the interest of promoting their biological solutions to women’s “hormone problems.” This, of course, is an ancient trope used in service of oppressing women through asserting that their “hormone swings” make them incapable of thinking, voting, holding political office, owning land, etc. The idea that MEN might suffer from “postpartum depression” shoots a gigantic, cannonball sized hole in the side of the “it’s women’s hormones” ship, and so of course must never be considered. If MEN can become depressed after a birth, well gosh, that means it might have something to do with the CONDITIONS new parents have to tolerate rather than some random “hormone imbalances” caused by God’s poor design of women’s bodies.

    Of course, the industry will now embark upon an effort to prove that MEN’S hormones are somehow altered after their partner gives birth, spending millions of dollars and assuring us that “the solution will be right around the corner” instead of observing the obvious and trying to work on improving post-birth support for both men AND women.

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  • Good post, Jessica. It might be of interest for you to know that a number of studies in different places in the US and Canada show that simply waiting one year to enroll kids in Kindergarten reduces the “ADHD diagnosis” rate by a third! It should be obvious to anyone that this has more to do with developmental levels and adult expectations not matching, not a “disorder” centered in the child because they can’t do what the adults arbitrarily expect of them. And the worst of it is, “medication” over the long term does not improve ANY outcome that we care about vs. kids who were not “medicated” for the same “disorder.” The whole thing would be funny if kids weren’t getting hurt by it!

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  • I appreciate your scientific mindset in not ruling things out when you really don’t have data to draw a conclusion. I wish more folks had that attitude.

    I will add here that it is in my experience very difficult, in fact often next to impossible, to detect “signs of akathesia” beyond a person telling you what is going on. There are sometimes external signs, like being unable to stay in one place for long, or restless legs and that sort of thing, but it is described as an INTERNAL sense of restlessness and agitation. It may or may not be accompanied by obvious externals symptoms, and a meaningful discussion with the subject would be necessary to make a definitive diagnosis. It is also easily overlooked or seen as symptoms of “the disorder” rather than recognized for what it is.

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  • I agree absolutely. The veneer of “medical treatment” allow the adults to pretend they don’t really know what’s going on. But the kids pretty much always know, and will tell you if you ask them in the right way. They’ll tell you “I have to take drugs because I can’t control myself” or “They give me these because I get in trouble too much.” They have no illusions about “mental disorders.” Which tells me the adults know this on some level, too, but they’ve learned to suppress their awareness.

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  • Oh, steroids are a different question, not pretending to be “medical treatment,” and all done under the radar. I’m talking about creating a “medical diagnosis” that X person has “athletic deficiency disorder” that is caused by “genetic abnormalities” and is “treated” by giving them stimulants. The reason I bring it up is because most people would find such an idea disturbing, but when it is for academic performance, they’re OK with it. They don’t get that it’s the exact same kind of activity, just with a different focus.

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  • They would do it if they could get away with it, I’m sure. I think there is a visceral cultural taboo on “performance enhancing drugs,” and I think trying to “sell” that concept would make their intentions and their “treatments” too obviously counterintuitive for the general public, and start some unwanted scrutiny. I think they know this on an intuitive level and so they don’t try that play. Drug-enhanced school performance is OK. Drug-enhanced athletic performance is a no-no. So they go for what sells.

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  • I particularly agree with your point that everyone’s “cause” is unique to their own life situation, both physiologically and psychologically/spiritually. Trying to come up with one answer for everyone denies this obvious fact. “Depression” is a false category of “disorder.” It is an effect, not a cause. If we want to handle the situation, we have to find the cause, and calling “depression” the problem implies that all “depressions” are caused by the exact same circumstances, which is a silly thing to think.

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  • But pretending that we “know” the cause and providing “treatment” on those assumptions clearly leads to destruction. You can provide aspirin or morphine for a broken leg, but you’re not treating “leg pain disorder.” On that basis, getting drunk can be called a “treatment” for “anxiety disorders.”

    And of course, in many, many cases, we DO know the actual cause of a particular case of “depression,” and it is usually NOT due to a physiological event, though sometimes it IS and we know it and we should “treat” the actual problem rather than the “symptoms” (low thyroid would be one example). We certainly know enough to know that “depression” is itself a “symptom” rather than a “disorder” that “causes symptoms.” It would be best for the clients involved if we dropped the whole notion of “depression” as a disorder and started viewing it a symptomatic of something else.

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  • I would define it a bit differently – I see “scientism” as being the believe that Scientists are Authorities and that we peons are too stupid to understand their deep wisdom, so we have to simply believe what Scientists tell us and do as they tell us, even if it makes no sense to us at all. Because Scientists are All Wise, and we mere mortals couldn’t hope to understand the depths of what they are telling us about.

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  • This was another trope of the psychiatric/psychological community to justify their drug interventions. There was never any means to distinguish “endogenous” from “exogenous depression.” It’s kind of dropped out of use, since it has served its purpose and allowed the drugging paradigm to take full hold. Now most psychiatrists assume that all “depression” is biologically caused, despite still having no evidence to prove or even suggest that is the case. Note at the end it states “The exact cause of depression is still unknown.” Which really means, “We have NO CLUE of the cause of depression, and we’re making this up!”

    https://psychcentral.com/depression/endogenous-depression#history

    “According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), anyone experiencing endogenous or exogenous depression will likely receive a diagnosis of major depressive disorder (MDD).

    Medical professionals no longer give endogenous depression as an official diagnosis, and the DSM-5 no longer lists endogenous depression as a diagnostic category. Still, some researchers and mental health professionals find that locating the sources of depression — internal or external — could help you with finding treatment that best suits the specific needs.

    The exact cause of depression is still unknown.”

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  • Don’t think I ever claimed that “liberals” and Democrats have done anything but support psychiatry’s agenda 100 per cent. Most “conservatives” support it just as much, of course, but any of the rare moments of resistance I have seen has come from the political Right, based on the idea of “government overreach” or protecting the rights of individuals. Still, their numbers are tiny, tiny, tiny, and the overwhelming majority of both parties are fully bought off and supportive of the pharma-psychiatric industry.

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  • You once again assume the condescending attitude that I somehow “misunderstood” when I have explained myself very carefully. I have misrepresented nothing. I have used quotations from the paper itself. Those who understand the demanding, rigorous logic of the scientific method will know what I’m talking about. And I notice that you did not even bother to try and refute my arguments logically, but resort to ad hominem attacks to try and make your point.

    Meanwhile, it’s clear that you have already decided that you are “right” and are unwilling to accept the most rational possible feedback from me (did you even bother to read and digest my arguments?), so I am not intending to get into further discussion with you about it. The article says what it says, and I have directly responded to the logical flaws and the actual data presented. If that’s not good enough for you, please at least refrain from your condescending swipes at my intelligence and/or integrity. It is not a becoming look on you.

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  • I agree completely with you. These attempts to “prove genetic causation” by finding some tiny correlation involving dozens or even hundreds of genetic markers really are a joke and can never prove anything close to what they’re claiming. Especially when we have massive correlations with traumatic events that vastly outstrip the most optimistic (aka delusional) interpretations of the genetics data. Basically, they REALLY REALLY want there to be a genetic basis, they REALLY want it to be true, so maybe if they close their eyes and click their heels together three times and say, “There’s no cause but genes… there’s no cause but genes… there’s no cause but genes…”

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  • Just to be clear, “white male authoritarianism” can be and is enforced or enacted by non-white people and/or by women. It is the “thinking” or the philosophy or the “system” behind the actions that is authoritarian, and that system was most definitely constructed by white, male authoritarians over many decades or even centuries. The question isn’t who is doing it, it’s more who is impacted, and history shows us that women are regarded “by the system” as being more “sick” or “disturbed” or “mentally ill.”

    Consider the idea of “hypersexuality.” That concept is almost NEVER applied to men, but is a big “problem” for women, according to psychiatry. This reflects male privilege in our culture, in that men who sleep around are considered “players” or “studs” or “Ladies’ men,” whereas women who do the exact same thing are considered “sluts” or “whores” or “slags” or any number of unflattering things. No man was ever diagnosed with anything because he slept around.

    That’s just one example, and it’s very clear that women have long been a part of enforcing this condemnation of women who are “promiscuous.” The term I think that applies is “internalized oppression,” where members of an oppressed group are expected to enforce “norms” that come from the group in control in order to avoid punishment themselves.

    So in my view, psychiatry incorporates many biases and prejudices about women from the general society, and as a result, is even more likely to attack women than men for being “different.” It is also clear that racism is part of the underlying structure of psychiatry, as the disproportion of black people being diagnosed “schizophrenic” is way higher than the general population. The fact that black psychiatrists may participate in this set of discriminatory practices does not make it any less racist.

    I hope that makes some sense.

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  • Just to be clear, Joshua, with almost no exceptions, “conservative” representatives are just as supportive of incarcerating the “mentally ill” as the “liberal” ones. Big Pharma donates big money to both sides of the aisle. I agree that the rare politician who opposes such efforts will likely be on the conservative side, but the vast majority believe strongly that the “mentally ill” are dangerous and need to be locked up. In fact, one of the most common arguments against increased gun control based on mass shootings is that the “shooters” are “mentally ill” and should not be out on the street, hence blaming the shooter’s “mental illness” to redirect attention away from gun availability as a possible cause. I’m not meaning to hash out the gun control debate here, just pointing out that “conservatives” in general don’t give a half a hoot about the plight of the unlawfully incarcerated “mentally ill,” an even less so about the damaging scourge of mindless labeling and “medication” of millions of their constituents.

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  • Oh, believe me, I understand only too well how this kind of study is misinterpreted to indicate causation.

    Here is the operative statement:

    “…which damage functioning are found more often in people with schizophrenia than in controls.”

    Clearly, if these genes are only “found more often” in those diagnosed with “schizophrenia,” there are large numbers of controls who have the same genes, and there are large numbers of people labeled with “schizophrenia” who do not have such genes.

    Further, they state: “… here pathological changes in DNA sequence, can at least sometimes result in a severe illness characterised entirely by abnormalities in mental functioning.”

    Of course, this statement is not a legitimate conclusion from the data presented. All that we know is that a certain genetic pattern is associated to some degree with the probability of developing the subjective set of symptoms that are called “schizophrenia” by the DSM’s authors. Since 1) that set of symptoms does not objectively define any specific “condition” that can be tested for and verified, and 2) the pattern is only ASSOCIATED with increased probability, with a huge percentage of the people having this set of genes NOT developing said “condition,” and a similarly large proportion of those “diagnosed” with this “condition” NOT having the set of genes in question, there is no way to conclude that this genetic pattern is causal.

    There is also no specific evidence that the genes in question are “pathological changes,” since they don’t create any kind of “pathology” in the majority of people who have it. The comparison with smoking is, of course, odious, since we are talking about a carcinogenic agent being ingested vs. a genetic pattern possessed by many “normal” people. To claim genetic causality of “schizophrenia,” either all or most cases of “schizophrenia” must have this genetic pattern present, or an objectively verifiable subset of such cases, which can be unequivocally distinguished from those not so affected, would have to all have this same genetic pattern. It is not proper to assign causality to genes which neither cause most cases of the “condition,” nor which are present in large numbers of people without the condition applying.

    Note that I predicted this would be the case before I even read the article. All recent claims of such “causality” are based on the same flawed “logic,” confusing correlation with causation, I would at this point say intentionally.

    Do you always assume that someone disagreeing with your viewpoint can only do so because they “don’t understand?” I personally found that assumption both condescending and insulting, and I strongly suggest you avoid making such assumptions in the future. I am correctly interpreting the data presented in the study, and comparing it to prior efforts to make the same arguments, all of which fail for the reasons identified above. You may choose to disagree with my evaluation, but I think my reasoning is quite solid and disagreement would be difficult to rationally accomplish given the barriers cited above. You’re welcome to give it a try, but trying to deny the premise that causal conclusions can only be drawn when all or the vast majority of such cases have the specific genetic variations in question seems to be an unconquerable flaw in this and other such claims’ reasoning.

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  • Honestly, I do think there is such a thing as “good therapy.” The problem is, there is no guarantee nor even probability that anyone advertising as a “therapist” has any clue how to do it. And there are any number of non-licensed, non-trained people who are quite capable of assuming an effective helping role. I think we need to respect folks who say they had a good experience (I did, 40 years ago, and I can still see how it was very important to my growth), but it appears that such experiences may be the exception rather than the rule. And it’s certainly not wrong to say that being randomly assigned to “a therapist” is potentially quite dangerous!

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  • First off, there have always been claims of “causes” for schizophrenia and other DSM-identified “conditions,” and none so far have panned out. These “genes that contribute” will undoubtedly contribute in a small way to a limited number of cases, and such genes will no doubt appear in many in the general population who do NOT “have schizophrenia,” and will NOT be present in many cases who “have schizophrenia.” This is not to say there may be a small subset of people so diagnosed who will have a large genetic contribution to their situation, but so far, we have at best tiny correlations with large sets of genes, all of which overlap to a huge degree with the “normal” population.

    Whereas correlations with events like sexual abuse, early childhood neglect, domestic violence, head injuries, sleep loss and others are much, much higher than any genetic correlation to date. So why are we spending so much time finding tiny correlations with genes when we have HUGE correlations with traumatic events?

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  • Seriously! I always find it oddly hypocritical for the psych professions to claim that all of our “mental illness” is biologically based, and yet create their model animal subjects by scaring the shit out of them! Why don’t they just find some “genetically ill” mice to test their drugs on? Oh, wait, is it because they actually realize that the main cause of “mental illness” is being terrorized, tortured, or ignored or mistreated, and know that there are no “biologically ill” mice (or humans) in the real world?

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  • He didn’t so much moderate this view as recant his earlier theory, which was of course very much on the right track, but made Victorian male society VERY uncomfortable (especially as so many of them had themselves engaged in sexually abusing girls and young women). He was roundly attacked by his colleagues and society at large for putting forward a theory that put the blame on the more powerful members of society, and under this pressure, he backed out and came up with a theory that was less threatening to the status quo. It was almost 100 years later before the incredible frequency of childhood sexual abuse and its connection to what is now called “mental illness” was finally revealed. Even today, there is great resistance in many quarters of the psychiatric world to understanding and attributing causality to childhood abuse and neglect when discussing ‘mental illness.’ It’s always easier to blame the victim.

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  • To be clear, I never meant to suggest that YOU said anything about charlatans’ use of diagnosis. I am merely pointing out that there is a difference between YOU selecting the descriptor(s) or terms that YOU want or relate to, and other people (like the psychiatric hegemony) pushing diagnostic labels on people and NOT giving them the opportunity to choose. Based on what you have said many times, I think we agree wholeheartedly on this point.

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  • I am kind of appalled by the invalidative attitude you take toward those youth who happen to reside in residential treatment facilities. I have known dozens and dozens of such youth, and have found them no less reliable in general than the staff who report on them. They have no particular motivation to lie to perfect strangers, and I’m quite confident that the collective statistics are indicative of a very real phenomenon. Their comments are also quite consistent with my own experiences that show psychiatrists in particular to overlook or minimize the importance of traumatic phenomena and cast blame upon the patient/client and/or their “disorder” or their brain for otherwise obvious connections between a child’s behavior and events in their lives.

    I agree that these kids are often coerced into agreeing with statements their caretakers/doctors are forcing upon them, but that argues 100% in favor of the above observation, as the “mental health” personnel are usually very invested in proving their “diagnoses” are correct and explain everything, and that their “medications” are 100% justified, even if the kid is deteriorating in front of their eyes. The days of therapists coercing their clients into admitting to “abuse” are long gone. They are much more likely to coerce them into the idea that they have “bipolar disorder” and that the fact their father sexually abused them (or continues to do so) isn’t really that important.

    And while I am not sure the 80% figure is verifiable (though SomeoneElse provided a link supporting that claim), there is no doubt in my mind that a large majority of those diagnosed with “mental illnesses” have experienced multiple “ACEs,” as the current parlance calls it, which contribute massively or actually are the primary cause of their distress. This is based not only on research, but on decades of personal and professional experience. The percentage of women I interviewed diagnosed with “bipolar disorder” who had enormous histories (and sometimes current experiences) of abuse as a child or young adult is probably at least into the 80s. Even higher for people diagnosed with “Major depression” or “anxiety disorders.” And there is plenty of evidence that the likelihood of childhood abuse (especially sexual) in diagnosed “schizophrenia” cases is many times the population average.

    What you seem concerned about was common in the 80s, when everyone’s problems were attributed to bad mothering. Now parents are totally off the hook – it’s all the fault of the brain or the “disorder.” As you say, no one knows what a “disorder” really is, and yet these vague, spurious “disorders” seem to have amazing powers! In the 80s, a kid who never was sexually abused was convinced that s/he was in order to feed the egos of the psychologists/psychiatrists. Nowadays, a kid who WAS sexually abused is “diagnosed” with “ADHD” or “bipolar disorder” and no one bothers to look any further. That’s the current reality, at least in my very broad (25+ years) experience. Things are VERY different today than they were in the days of the McMartin Preschool!

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  • Missing my point. I am not arguing that charlatans don’t use DSM “diagnoses” or generally accepted social concepts to fleece people – they most definitely do, in fact, that’s psychiatry’s stock in trade! I’m saying that phenomena do exist absent the approval or disapproval of a bunch of corrupt old mostly white farts, and the ridiculous behavior of many “modern” “mental health” personnel doesn’t preclude the existence of phenomena they have made such powerful efforts to misunderstand and abuse.

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  • Sybil was not by any means the original case of “MPD.” The phenomenon has been reported since ancient times:

    “The amazing history of dissociative identity (DID), some say, dates back to Paleolithic cave paintings in the images of shamans. Others suggest that the history of dissociative identity disorder dates back to reports of demonic possession that are now thought to be incidences of dissociative identity disorder. Either way, it’s clear that dissociative identity disorder has a long history and is not a new concept (while the terminology now used may be new).”

    https://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/dissociative-identity-disorder/the-amazing-history-of-dissociative-identity-disorder-did

    Of course, like any so-called “psychiatric disorder,” there is no objective way to determine if someone “has DID” or “is faking” or to do anything but express opinions. It is a phenomenon that appears to occur rarely, it has been sensationalized and abused as a concept, and I don’t trust psychiatry’s ability to define or evaluate the phenomenon or any other phenomenon in any meaningful way.

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  • Perhaps a little exaggerated, but not by much:

    https://annals-general-psychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12991-019-0239-1

    And we don’t know how the presence of childhood abuse was determined. There are plenty of people who experience childhood abuse and neglect who don’t realize that they have – they view their treatment as “normal” based on their experience. There is also the question of screening. I recall a research study where volunteers went into a children’s psychiatric residential facility and asked questions of the residents. As I recall, about 80% of the residents reported childhood trauma to the volunteers (total strangers to them), and yet less than 25% had this documented in their charts! So either the residents were more comfortable sharing their childhood trauma with total strangers than the staff they see every day, or the staff never bothered to ask, or the staff considered the presence of childhood abuse not to be of sufficient significance to write into the log.

    I worked doing involuntary hospitalization evaluations in Vancouver, WA for a while. I spoke to at least a few dozen women diagnosed as “bipolar disorder” during that time. I’d estimate that 90% of them had significant trauma, right on the surface, which was ignored or never considered by their prior care providers. One girl was a MR/DD kid of 17 whose intellectual level was estimated at age 6. She had been raped a couple years before. For a year or so, she was very depressed and withdrawn, which was very different from her previous personality. After a year, she disclosed her rape to her mom. After this point, she became randomly aggressive at times. Her diagnosis? BIPOLAR DISORDER! I gathered all this information in a 20-minute interview with her mom. I actually got them to change her dx to PTSD, but seriously, how OBVIOUS was it that the rape was the event that caused the distress, as there was no distress before, and as she shifted from depressed to angry after disclosure?

    It is important to be objective, but that also means being honest about the limitations and massive conflicts of interest that are part and parcel of the field. Underestimation of the impact of environmental impacts is absolutely a basic assumption of the current diagnostic system. It claims to be cause-neutral, but in practice, it is extremely biased toward prioritizing biology FAR over any other potential cause.

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  • She is talking about the assumption that children exist to meet the needs of adults. Pedagogy is simply a way of codifying the expectation that children will do as they are told “for their own good” (another title of one of her books). Putting adults in the role of helping kids (or other adults, for that matter) figure out what THEIR needs are is a radical action, and people who do so are generally attacked by the society at large.

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  • “Works” is the operative term often used by the psychiatry/psychology to justify their “treatments.” They often say, “The drugs work” or “treatment works” without any real criteria for what that’s supposed to mean. If a foster parent says that stimulants are “working” for their foster child, do they mean that the child feels better, the child is being more compliant, the child is feeling more successful, the teacher SAYS the child is “doing better,” the child is less annoying than previously, the child is completing more busywork while not learning anything new, the child is more willing to do things that are boring without complaining… the list of possible definitions is almost limitless. If we don’t ask what “works” means and for whom the intervention is supposed to “work,” we get kids/adults who are nearly catatonic being identified as “treatment successes.”

    I can’t read my prior comment, but I’m guessing by “plays” I meant “participates in the agreed upon social processes/procedures.”

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  • Well, I completely agree with you, of course. The overwhelming problem with the whole idea of “what works” is that we’re not talking about something concrete and measurable here. “What works” can be defined in many different ways, and there is no way to determine who is “right” about the answer to that complex, highly philosophical question. And absent agreement on that point, there is really no sense it trying to “scientifically” determine anything about this whole area! “Mind” is a mysterious thing, and “science” hasn’t even begun to touch on the vaguest understanding of “Mind.” Of course, they want to CLAIM that mind=brain, because it feels more “scientific” and less “superstitious,” but that’s really just a philosophical position, not a scientific one.

    The first barrier to understanding anything is deciding that you already know all about it! Humility is in very short supply in the psychiatric “professions!”

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  • Mind definitely does affect brain. There was a great study out of the University of Chicago where they did brain imaging on a number of Buddhist monks who mediated many hours a day. The part of their brain associated with calm and focus was significantly larger than those of “control” subjects. WE also know that taxi drivers, for instance, have a bigger part of their brain committed to geographical and spatial reasoning. Also, the folks studying the brain in the “Decade of the Brain” research found that damage can be done to the brain by early trauma, but also that healthy relationships with caring adults can actually heal the physiological damage done by early abuse or neglect (for some reason, that second part of the research always seems to get buried. I wonder why?)

    What we think about and how we behave most definitely affect the brain. I don’t think it’s a “maybe.” There is solid evidence that it’s a “yes!”

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  • That study sounds like a bit of semantic hocus-pocus. Of course, “benzodiazepine use disorders” is another loosely-defined, subjective description of behavior that no one can objectively verify. But be that as it may, 17.1 percent acknowledging “misuse” is pretty damned significant. I’d also submit that most who ARE dependent on these drugs are probably not aware of it, and would not be until they tried to come off the drugs. All in all, this article doesn’t seem to contribute much to my understanding of either abuse of or unintentional dependence on Benzos as a social/medical/philosophical problem.

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  • It is important not to misinterpret Miller. She’s not saying that our parents are abusive assholes, she’s saying they are suffering from THEIR parents’ shortcomings, who were suffering from THEIR parents’ shortcomings, etc., and that unless the parents are able to face and feel the pain of their own childhoods, they will repeat what happened to them and pass it on to another generation. Blaming parents is NOT what she’s about – the idea is to learn where your parents went off the tracks and EXPERIENCE the pain you were avoiding, so that you have a chance NOT to pass this pain on to others. But if the therapist him/herself has not does their own work, they pass on THEIR parents’ pain and shortcomings (and maybe their therapists’) on to their clients.

    So in the end, it is kind of dangerous to go see any therapist, as they may be working out their shit on you. You’d have to carefully screen for self-awareness, humility, and ability NOT to put their shit onto others before you ever consider a therapy relationship. That’s what I see, anyway.

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  • “We don’t know how it works” is quite an admission. I’d challenge the “but it works” part with, “Works for whom?” or “Who gets to decide what ‘works'” means?

    I was an advocate for nursing home residents at one time in my career. I visited one facility because a family member said her dad was overdrugged on Abilify or some other “antipsychotic”. I went to talk to the guy, and he could barely keep his eyes open, couldn’t even stand up without assistance. He had bruises on his forehead from running into the door jamb on the way to dinner. I talked to the activities director, who said a week ago, she’d been hitting a volleyball back and forth in the courtyard with this same guy.

    Did the Abilify “work?” Well, if your intent was to induce a near coma so the guy was incapable of doing anything at all, I’d say it worked great. If the goal was to enhance his quality of life, I’d say it did the opposite. Those who claim it “worked” clearly consider his quality of life to be a secondary concern, or of no particular relevance. So it “works” for them, even though it destroys the client’s life.

    Beware of anyone claiming something “works” on someone else!

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  • I also know a person of privilege who had a hallucinatory experience, and was “diagnosed” as “bipolar” and discriminated against in their work and other settings for this label. It was interesting to note that this person claimed that they were “misdiagnosed” and were having a “spiritual awakening,” but continued to believe there were “real” bipolar people out there, only she wasn’t one of them. This person’s emphasis was on proving she was not “one of them” instead of identifying the labeling process itself as opening the door to very real and serious discrimination and abuse, which of course anyone labeled “bipolar” would likely experience, regardless of the reason for their label being attached. I understand why this happens, but I think it shows how hard it is to arrange a sense of “comradeship” when the entire process is so fraught with danger for anyone participating as a “client” or “patient.” When people are scared and isolated, they tend to search for a way to save themselves, and the plight of others may not occur to them until well after the incident, or in many cases, it may not occur to them at all.

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  • I think the biggest problems with screenings are a) screeners who don’t care (employed in a cold way is a great way to put it) and b) the person or organization doing the screening has no idea what to do about the situation. I read a doctor one time saying, “So we screen for suicide and the answer is positive. Now what the hell am I supposed to do about it?” Of course, the “right answer” is to refer them to a psychiatrist, but we know that doesn’t generally do much to solve the problem.

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  • The problem I see is that there is no way to ever prove them wrong. If they claimed you had high blood pressure, you could have someone measure your blood pressure and say, “See, it’s in normal range.” But with psych “disorders,” it is always a matter of someone’s opinion, and anyone with an MD gets more autotmatic credence than the average Joe, and a LOT more than someone they’ve labeled with a “mental illness.” As long as there are no concrete criteria for deciding who “has” and “doesn’t have” a “mental illness,” the psychiatrists/psychologists/doctors will always be in control!

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  • In my experience, the act of invalidating someone’s ability to decide what is happening and what to do is the very SOURCE of most instances of what the DSM calls “mental illness.” To provide “treatment” that involves further invalidation and “I know what’s best for you” energy is like putting out a fire with gasoline. It is literally the LEAST helpful thing you can do, besides overtly abusing the body of your patient. Yet people get paid to make other people’s lives worse.

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  • I tend to laugh at the idea of “treatment-resistant depression!” As if “depression” is a sentient being that can “resist!” What they mean is, “My approach to helping you failed completely,” but instead of admitting this, they blame the patient. It’s like the car mechanic saying, “Your car has repair-resistant fuel injectors” instead of admitting he doesn’t know how to fix the car. That way, he gets to charge you for it and offer to charge you for another “treatment” next week, even though he hasn’t the first clue what he’s “fixing!”

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  • Some patients want someone else to tell them what’s wrong with them, even if doing so is the opposite of helpful. But some most definitely are looking for someone to help them explore their own needs and thinking and emotions to find a better way to live. There is also a group in the middle who are willing to believe the psychiatric story because “they’re doctors” and it sounds very “sciency,” but are to one degree or another disappointed that the promises they were given don’t come to fruition, and eventually, these people rebel, either quietly or loudly, but sometimes it takes years or even decades for them to really “get” what happened.

    I remember when I worked on a suicide hotline, I got a call from a woman who said she’d been trying different antidepressants for over a year. She was quite frantic, saying she was working on her 5th antidepressant and none of them worked, and she told her doctor that it wasn’t working and all he would say was, “You have to give it time” or “let’s try another one.” She was panicked that she’d always feel depressed and be waiting for something that would never happen. I acknowledged that this was very difficult, then asked her a simple question: Had anyone ever told her that there were other things she could do besides taking drugs for depression? She was suddenly calm. She said, “No.” I said, “Well, there are.” She said, “Oh. Well, that’s good!” and then we got to talking about what else she could do.

    I don’t think she “wanted” a diagnosis. She wanted help with a situation she didn’t understand, and the doctor told her what to do, and she tried it, having no other frame of reference. If the doctor had told her something more sane, she would have taken it up in a moment. Her only fault was trusting the doctor, not wanting to avoid responsibility for her condition.

    It is easy to make generalizations, but as I like to say, “All generalizations are always wrong.” People are different, and we ought to consider that when making our analyses.

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  • I actually screen my doctors ahead of time. I let them know that I’m in charge of decisions, they’ll advise me but I may or may not take their advice, and if that’s not OK with them, they should let me know right away and I’ll find another provider.

    Though I prefer to avoid doctors altogether. I usually get a nurse practitioner or a physician’s assistant to be my PCP. I actually now have a naturopath as my PCP. The less I see of doctors, the happier I am, generally speaking.

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  • A doctor almost killed my father when I was 8, as he was taking blood thinners (which he reported to the doctor) and was prescribed something that created uncontrollable bleeding when combined with blood thinners! His arm bruised if he just set it on the table. If he’d fallen off a ladder or been in a minor car accident, he’d have bled to death in minutes. I learned at that young age never to take ANYTHING I hadn’t personally looked up for adverse effects, no matter what the doctor told me.

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  • Nothing irrational about being afraid of people who are dangerous to you!

    As for depression screenings, my understanding is that it’s totally OK to refuse to do them. It is also completely legit to just answer in the way that reflects best on you – they have no right to know your inner thoughts and feelings!!! So if they ask me, “Have you felt depressed in the last three weeks?” of course, I always say, “No” no matter what I’m feeling. I’m sleeping fine, my appetite is fine, etc, etc. until they are done. But the more I think about it, the next time I hear them starting in on this, I’m going to say, “Is this a ‘depression screening?’ If so, I decline to participate and will not answer any questions on the screening.”

    That may or may not be realistic for you. I find it obnoxious that they have the temerity to do such a screening when they have no idea what to do with a “positive” outcome (and of course are screening in the first place for something so vague and subjective that no one can tell if you “have it!”) But I do know I’m in charge of my own medical care, and the more I assert that right, the better I feel about my interactions.

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  • “Unaware of adverse effects” is absolutely no excuse – if they don’t know the adverse effects, they have no business prescribing them! And the truth is, most know enough about the adverse effects to know they’re not being honest when they prescribe. I believe point #2 is the main reason – they don’t want the truth to get out because many of their clients would then refuse to take what they prescribe, and that will cost them in some way or another. It’s quite intentionally dishonest.

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  • One could almost say there is an effort NOT to understand the cause of severe emotional pain. My experience as a provider was that it was rare that most “clinicians” asked such questions, or if they did, they’d simply “catalog” them along with other “symptoms” in order to claim a “diagnosis.” Very few seemed to understand the significance of such events, and of those who did, most didn’t really know what to do about it. I used to say there’s a one in five chance of getting a competent therapist. Nowadays, I think that would be a gross overestimate!

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  • The basic approach of psychiatry is to suppress the brain’s abilities and to impair normal functioning. Kind of like, if your hand hurts, numb your hand. If that doesn’t work, remove it. There is no effort to actually determine WHY your hand hurts or what else might be done. If “depression” is the problem, then the “answer” is to make the person less depressed. So “antidepressants” are the way to go. The idea that a person may have a good REASON to be depressed, or that some other physiological problem is causing it, doesn’t appear to be a relevant concern of theirs.

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  • He no doubt overlooks the most obvious reason: more “treatment” CAUSES more suicides and mental distress! The BEST spin you could put on it is that “treatment” is completely ineffective, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest it is more dire than that. Plus the widespread false propaganda that “mental illness” is caused by and helped by physiological processes prevents people from doing things that actually DO work.

    It is my belief and observation that the very act of labeling someone’s problems as an “anxiety disorder” or “major depression” is demoralizing from the get go, and even without the adverse effects of the drugs (which clearly DO make some people worse!), the labeling process most likely contributes both to mental distress AND suicides.

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  • My impression was that she died early due to years of “treatment” for “bipolar disorder.” She did some PSAs for “recognizing bipolar disorder” or some such “anti-stigma” memes. She is not alone, as the average lifespan of those diagnosed with “bipolar” or “schizophrenia” is literally 20-25 years shorter than the average person. I wonder why?

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  • There is also the question of grouping. If one treatment cures 10 percent of the “ADHD” population, but drugs “reduce symptoms” in 70 percent of the population, the 10 percent treatment will be regarded as “ineffective,” even though it cured one out of 10 people completely. If you have arbitrary and/or purely subjective groupings of subjects, you’re not going to get any meaningful information. A REAL scientist would look at that 10 that WERE cured, and say, “Wow, what is different about these people that treatment X worked so well?” Then they might actually be able to identify a true group that has something in common with each other, and THEN (and only then) can they actually look for causes.

    But too many people are hypnotized by the “Gold Standard” argument and think that anything producing a p value under .05 is “evidence based,” regardless of the triviality of the result or the heterogeneity of the group. It is a setup for drugs to “win” every contest, and I doubt very much if that fact is accidental.

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  • “Negatively influencing outcomes?” Don’t they mean “Negatively influencing profit margins?” As far as I can tell, outcomes for most any “mental illness” you define either remain the same or get worse with long-term “medication” (aka drugging). Stimulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, all are associated with either no change or deterioration over time when used long term. Not to mention killing people off 20-25 years younger with the antipsychotics, hardly an “improved outcome!” How do the doctors get away with this nonsense?

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  • I agree. It’s also true that correlation can be “significant” in terms of P values, yet there can be enormous overlap between those “having” and “not having” the anomaly in question. To be diagnostic, a particular “anomaly” has to occur in all or almost all of the test subjects, and in none or almost none of the control group. The fact that “ADHD” diagnosed kids have a 5 percent smaller brain volume (notwithstanding the issue of drug effects on brain size) means almost nothing, because 95 percent of the kids will have brain volumes that overlap with the “normals.” So the smaller brain size, whatever the reason, doesn’t indicate “ADHD,” because too many non-ADHD people have the same brain volumes as “ADHD” people. Of course, there is absolutely NO reason to expect that a random-ish list of behavior that adults tend to find annoying would somehow translate into a measurable “brain dysfunction.” So the whole effort is pretty much a waste of time.

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  • The problem with this kind of research is that lumping all people diagnosed with “Major Depressive Disorder” together for study is kind of like grouping people by “pain tolerance” or “tendency to breathe deeply” or “having a poor appetite.” The “criteria” for “Major Depressive Disorder” do not distinguish valid groups of people likely to have something neurological in common. The very idea is based on a logical fallacy, and can’t lead to any kind of valid scientific answers.

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  • There are lots and lots of citations re: long term outcomes not differing.

    Just a few:

    https://academic.oup.com/jpepsy/article/32/6/643/1021192 (Just ran across this by chance last night)

    The RAINE study in Australia: read the executive summary:

    https://ww2.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/Files/Corporate/Reports-and-publications/PDF/MICADHD_Raine_ADHD_Study_report_022010.pdf

    The Quebec study:

    “We examine the effects of a policy change in the province of Quebec, Canada which greatly expanded
    insurance coverage for prescription medications. We show that the change was associated with a sharp
    increase in the use of stimulant medications commonly prescribed for ADHD in Quebec relative to
    the rest of Canada. We ask whether this increase in medication use was associated with improvements
    in emotional functioning or academic outcomes among children with ADHD. We find little evidence
    of improvement in either the medium or the long run. Our results are silent on the effects on optimal
    use of medication for ADHD, but suggest that expanding medication in a community setting had little
    positive benefit and may have had harmful effects given the average way these drugs are used in the
    community.”

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19105/w19105.pdf

    Swanson’s “Review of Reviews” in 1993: https://escholarship.org/content/qt4jr2777t/qt4jr2777t.pdf

    Russel Barkley’s 1978 review: no academic benefits of long-term stimulant treatment – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22418/

    The long-term MTA study results show no advantage to stimulant use over time:

    “The latest follow-up, released in March 2017, further confirmed the association between stimulant medications and reduced height; patients who took stimulant medications consistently were an average of 2.36 centimeters shorter than their peers who had stopped taking medication or who took it only sporadically. But, in a confounding twist, the two groups (those who took medication consistently and those who didn’t) showed no difference in symptom severity — though members of the former had, on average, taken more than 100,000 mg. of stimulant medication over the course of their lifetimes.”

    The researchers do some pretty good pretzel twists to try and minimize these results, but it certainly suggests strongly that there are no long-term benefits to stimulant use.

    https://www.additudemag.com/latest-mta-results-putting-adhd-treatment-data-in-context/#:~:text=The%20Multimodal%20Treatment%20of%20Attention,adulthood%2C%20have%20no%20effect%20on

    Another one I just found:

    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29530108/

    There is also a comparison study of Finnish vs. US students. Far more US “ADHD” students took stimulants, but there were no differences in outcomes. I can’t seem to find a link to this study.

    So the jury is long since in on this question. There are no long-term benefits of stimulant use for “ADHD” diagnosed kids.

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  • The problem is the “honest” part – those benefitting from these “diagnoses” are not interested in having an honest debate, because they know they have no solid data underpinning their approach. But they have the power to deny any other view through use of their “authority” to suppress actual debate and known research.

    It’s not about debate or facts, it’s about power.

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  • I can’t seem to find it – not sure what I did with my old “ADHD” article copies! I think it might have been done by Dr. Sydney Zentall, because she’s been talking for decades about how changing the environment to create optimal stimulation is best for “ADHD” kids, rather than trying to artificially stimulate them with drugs. But I’m not sure. I’m sad I can’t find those documents! But I assure you, that was the result.

    The other important result, and I can get citations on this one, is that “ADHD” kids taking stimulants don’t do better academically (or on any other outcome measure) than kids who don’t in the long term. So why are we doing this to kids, if it doesn’t even help their long-term academic outcomes????

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  • It is somewhat stunning that people can’t see the utter shallowness of the psychiatric/DSM worldview. Just reading the names of the “disorders” is enough to make a rational person laugh out loud! “Oppositional Defiant Disorder?” How do you know you have it? Because you won’t do as you’re told!!! “Intermittent Explosive Disorder?” “Disorder of Written Expression?” How is any of this taken seriously???

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  • I think you make an excellent point. “Crazy” behavior is almost always a result of someone feeling trapped or used or as if they failed based on someone else’s judgment of what they ought to be doing. It would have been interesting if you and the teacher could have sat down years later and talked about what happened, and maybe understand what was going on for each of you. But I do hold people in positions of responsibility to a higher standard of controllinng their behavior when vulnerable young people are in their charge.

    I apologize for my use of that language and appreciate your feedback.

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  • I have often used the “canary in a coal mine” analogy for the “ADHD” kids. If these kids are having a hard time paying attention, it means that 9 out of 10 of the rest of the class feels the same way, but they are restraining themselves to stay out of trouble. The only “problem” with the “ADHD” diagnosed kid is that they aren’t as skilled at repressing their boredom or sense of frustration or outrage as the rest of us. Hardly a “disease state!”

    I also agree that we do try to change the kids instead of the environment. Some seminal research was done on “ADHD” kids back in the 70s, where two well-matched groups of “ADHD”-diagnosed kids were put half in a standard classroom and half in an open classroom. They then had teachers come in and try to identify the “ADHD” children. In the standard classroom, they were over 90 percent successful. In the open classroom, there was a very slight but not significant trend toward the “ADHD” being picked. In other words, put these kids in an open classroom, and you can’t tell them apart from “normal” children! Now this was done way back in 1978 or so. So why haven’t we created open classrooms for our “ADHD” children? I guess no one profits from open classrooms, while selling stimulants is a lot more profitable. Plus changing the environment means the ADULTS have to take responsibility, while “ADHD” means we can blame the kids and keep doing whatever we want as adults. It’s disgusting to me.

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  • Thanks for a great post!

    I’d just add that is possible medical doctors don’t go for “mental health treatment” because they know better than most people how dangerous some of the “treatments” are. If you ever read the entire label for Abilify or Seroquel, or even an SSRI antidepressant, you’d be a lot more careful about ever being “treated” with one of them!

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  • I am aware of a case from near the Mexican border, where all angles of “western” psychiatry had been tried on a so-called “schizophrenic” in a hospital there. They brought a shaman from Mexico over the border to do a spiritual exorcism. The person got better.

    There are also shamans involved in the hospital system in Brazil, from what I understand. I don’t have any idea if “spirit possession” is a real thing or not, but spiritual cleansing of various sorts has been arguably more effective than anything psychiatry has to offer. And the side effects appear to be WAY less!

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  • I am not sure if the title is meant to be sardonic, but of course, psychiatry’s real failure lies in the last part of the title. If your goal is to “stop” self-harming behavior, you’ve already missed the boat. Self-harming behavior meets a need, and the key is understanding the goal/purpose of self harm and to help the person evaluate for him/her own self whether or not s/he wants to change that behavior. Attempting to force someone to “stop” self harming has been demonstrably destructive any time I’ve seen it attempted. If self harming is about having control of one’s pain, how can trying to force a person to stop be a good idea?

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  • Sure. A farmers’ market. People bring their goods, put a price on them, other people decide if they want to buy or not. No fakeo marketing, responsibility to the community putting up the farmers’ market not to violate basic rules, real competition for prices (no monopolies), consumers determine what is too high a price or what is popular enough to bring more of or charge more for. Workers have basic control of their workplace (most work for themselves or family). No money leaves the local community. If you’re mean or pollute the environment or are unsafe, you’re not asked to come back, or no one is willing to buy from you. It’s a nice model of what a free market COULD look like without billionaires and mass marketing and monopolization.

    Hope that clarifies!

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  • Right. It appears the only “normal” people are the mildly sociopathic, because they never get too excited or too upset about anything. Looking at the DSM, it appears that having any kind of emotional reaction to anything is the sign of “mental illness.” Even annoying OTHER people makes you ill! Those people with no personalities in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or “The Stepford Wives” are the epitome of “good mental health” by DSM standards!

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  • Having worked at a number of “mental health” facilities in my younger days, I can tell you there is ALWAYS at least one psychopathic/sociopathic person on staff. Never worked at a place that didn’t have one. Half my time was spent undoing the damage of these one or two people who either had no clue or didn’t care or actually enjoyed messing with people’s lives.

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  • The other thing they fail to mention is that these differences are AVERAGES. There are TONS of “depressed” people with higher IQs or larger hippocampi and non-depressed people with smaller ones. If there really WERE some kind of neuropathology, we’d see more like 90% of depressed people having smaller hippocampi, or 85% having much lower IQs. This kind of research is horseshit, but it passes for “scientific” because they can tease out a P value of .05 on an average of hundreds or thousands of subjects. Any meaningful finding would have to clearly distinguish the “haves” from the “have nots.” This doesn’t even come close. It’s a joke.

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  • Not to mention having a depressing life: dead end job, stuck in an unhappy or literally dangerous relationship, dealing with childhood abuse and abandonment, or just dealing with the inherently stressful lifestyle that we’re all expected to “love” today, and if we don’t, we’re considered “disordered” for wanting to make major changes in our current reality.

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  • Of course, such a project is a failure scientifically before it starts. Because it starts assuming that “Major Depressive Disorder” is a unitary THING that has a unitary CAUSE. Why would we assume that ALL people who fit a subjective list of “criteria” that have little to nothing to do with the body itself would have a “neuropathology” that causes them to fit this subjective list? It would be like asking, “What is the neuropathology of cowardice?” or “What is the neuropathology of spontaneity?” Why would we assume that all depressed people even HAVE a “neuropathology” without evidence that this is the case. It might be viable to ask if SOME cases of “major depressive disorder” might have neurological underpinnings, but we can’t assume the conclusion, as these “researchers” appear to have done. In order to do a REAL scientific inquiry, it would first have to be identified WHICH cases have some kind of neurological problems, how to distinguish them from people who just happen to feel really bad for a long time, and to create a group of people who actually DO have some kind of evidence of neurological “causes” as a study group.

    But instead, these folks just assume that there IS a “neuropathology” and their “research” is to find evidence to support the conclusion they want to find. That’s not science!

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  • I know. It’s not really capitalism when it’s part of a local community. The local community asserts its values and requires social behavior of local producers. It’s kind of like unspoken socialism – you have to behave or you are shunned. But that stops working pretty fast when the person doing the production is no longer invested in the community they produce in. As soon as people become expendable, things spiral very quickly out of control.

    To be clear, I’m saying I have no problem with the local farmer bringing in food to sell, and using his money to buy shoes at the shoe store, with farmer, shoemaker, and whomever profiting from their honest labor. That’s the level where I see the “free market” working. As soon as the rich guy can move out of town and pollute the river or undercut local businesses to create a monopoly without any fear of community consequences, we are in trouble.

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  • I don’t disagree with you, but I am quite sure that psychiatrists in both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany made plenty of money. It is true, their malfeasance and ill intent appears to go well beyond that simple motivation, but my original point was that the psychiatric profession has absolutely no intellectual or philosophical connection to Marxism. It seems to be quite adaptable to whatever form of government is present, which I suppose provides more evidence that the intent goes beyond cupidity. But there is no question that greed plays a very large role in the current application of psychiatry, and the “profession” (if we may use that term VERY loosely) would be quite upset if a Marxist revolt took away their gravy train.

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  • Do you not see pharmaceutical corporations as fully complicit in the structure and marketing of psychiatry in the 21st century? Or the 20th for that matter? How could psychiatry sell its wares without Big Pharma? And is not Big Pharma the ultimate end game for corporations – almost unlimited profits with almost no accountability? Isn’t this where unfettered capitalism inevitably leads? What forces oppose this natural tendency of corporations to get bigger and richer and to eliminate the competition? Isn’t that what international Corporate Capitalism has always brought us?

    I think capitalism can work on a very localized scale, but only because there is a natural set of checks and balances whereby the local population can call the capitalists to account. If the local mill is dumping waste into the river, the citizens downriver can get together and say, “Hey, knock that shit off” and they have to listen, because they are neighbors and if people get pissed at them, they will stop buying from them. But if someone in Taiwan or Chicago or London is polluting my local river in Washington, what the hell can I do about it? There is no one to complain to, and the big company doesn’t give a crap if I live or die, as long as the money keeps coming in.

    That’s why I see psychiatry as a fully capitalist enterprise they exist to make PROFITS, they collude with others making even BIGGER profits, and they are utterly unaccountable to the population they claim to serve. That’s as capitalist as it gets in my book.

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  • Nobody’s saying the current system is working, Richard, or I’ve certainly NEVER said anything remotely like that. I told you I agree with Marx’s analysis of capitalism, which was and is indeed genius. I just don’t see him providing a workable alternative system, that’s all. Maybe more practice is needed, maybe I’m too cynical about “human nature,” maybe I can’t envision enough people being educated (or even interested) enough to learn the reasons why cooperation matters. My observation is that current society requires a HELL of a lot of cooperation, yet this is all very much taken for granted and people are easily manipulated and taken advantage of by posing “us vs. them” scenarios. I would love to see the “workers unite” and create some better conditions. I just don’t see Marx as providing us a pathway there. I get stuck in how the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” leads to the classless society. It has not yet happened in reality. Israeli Kibbutzes are probably the very best example to date, but my understanding is that they are now a very tiny part of Israeli society.

    You’re free to disagree, but I think you could ease off the suggestion that I think “capitalisms is the highest pinnacle of human organization.” You know very well I never said that, so please refrain from “strawman” arguments in the future.

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  • Marxism as practiced has been a disaster. I think Marx’s analysis of what was wrong with capitalism was quite accurate, but his solution fails to take human nature into account. Humans need to feel like they are competing in some way, that their individual efforts make a difference. They don’t do very well working for “the good of the collective,” much as many like to think they do. Collective farming was the best example – production was very low, until they gave everyone their own 10 acres or whatever to farm. The productivity on the private land was many times that of the collective farms. I suppose you could say that people need a game of some sort, a way to “win” or “lose,” and collectivist farming doesn’t seem to provide it.

    But of course, the other verity of humans is that “power corrupts,” and it was ironic to see the Communist Party leaders hanging out in the same dachas of the aristocracy they claimed to want to get rid of.

    So sure, communism in practice was a total failure, and led to dictatorship in seemingly ever case. But that doesn’t make psychiatry communistic. It’s just plain authoritarian, and so naturally will do well in either fascist or communist or any other authoritarian state where the need to control other people is prominent. However, it should be observed that while the communists USED psychiatry to keep their rebels under control, psychiatry was part and parcel of the planning and implementation of Nazism in Germany, up to and including mass murder. So I’d still say psychiatry proved a better “fit” with fascism overall.

    Regardless, it appears to me that psychiatry is less interested in economic theory and primarily concerned with making money and establishing power over others. They will do so in whatever economic system is in use. They are very, very comfortable with capitalism, as drug company profit margins on psych drugs should make very clear. Communists are anti-capitalists. Psychiatry, simply put, is not.

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  • It is always ironic when they go on and on about the dangers of Vitamin B3 or others because they “haven’t been fully tested,” while they give out drugs that they KNOW reduce people’s lifespans by 20-25 years. Hey, I think I’ll take my chances with the “untested” vitamin B3!

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  • I have a hard time seeing anything “Marxist” about the “mental health” system. There is no effort or intention to create equality between workers and the wealthy, nor any effort to redistribute control of the means of production to the masses. If psychiatry had “Marxist” roots, it would create collective wards where no one had any economic incentives to push drugs on another person.

    Psychiatry is a strictly capitalist enterprise. It is about making profits, regardless of the effect on the “consumers.” It is about projection of the power of the wealthy over the rest of us. Nothing Marxist about it, in my view.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    We are now getting off the topic pretty far. I will allow this statement, but I do not want to deteriorate into a hostile exchange about COVID or about Gavin Newsome, and I see this as a very real possibility, based on past experience. The article is on “The Danger of Marginalizing People,” and comments need to be focused on that topic, specifically as it regards the “mental health” system. If we get into political discussions of other topics, I will intervene to keep the discussion on topic.

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  • Well, of course, I agree 100%, a “personality” can’t have a “disorder,” it is not a thing of the physical universe, it’s a consequence of thought and decisions made by a person. And I’d say that of course, a personality CAN be changed – I see it more or less as an invention a person creates to deal with the decisions they need to make to survive in the physical universe. I like the question of “genetically inherent” or “culturally inherent.” I might also add “spiritually inherent,” because I see it as entirely possible we bring some history with us when we arrive on the planet. But that’s getting deeper than we need to here. The very idea that a “personality” is something that can be “ill” or “disordered” is pretty outrageous, and yes, obviously has to come from someone else judging a person’s “personality” as being good or bad or inadequate. It is observable, but I don’t think anyone but the person him/herself is in a place to judge the quality or usefulness or need for change of the personality. It’s something we own completely ourselves. Criticisms of a set of “personality disorders” is rank prejudice and nothing more.

    So I’m totally with you – psychiatry is utter bullshit, because it starts from a false premise that there is a “right” personality or “right” mind that only THEY can determine, even when they have no idea how they possibly could begin to make such judgments. Such is the hubris of psychiatry!

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  • Yes, I most definitely have considered that question in detail. I think you ask an excellent question, and one to which I nor anyone else I know of has a real answer. It could be viewed as a metaphor, certainly. I think it is one of those things that we only observe by seeing the results of it, kind of like magnetic force or gravity – you only know it’s there because of what effects it has on objects within its sphere of influence. That being said, the “mind” is a similarly problematic force. Assuming that the “mind” is simply an effect of the brain leads us to psychiatry or other empty conclusions. It appears there is something that is able to INFLUENCE the brain, to the point of actually altering its STRUCTURE (look at the studies on altered brain structure in meditating Buddhist monks, for instance), yet no one can really say what it is?

    But I’m not one to say something is “bullshit” just because I can’t explain it. That’s not really scientific, either. I am much more inclined to simply say that personality is a pattern of behavior that a person tends to engage in, sort of the interaction between his/her mind and the environment s/he encounters, that some of it appears to be “inherent” and some learned, but that we don’t really know what it is or how it comes to exist, any more than we know what the mind is or how it comes to be. It’s a mystery, and I’m OK with that.

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  • Eh, I still think you’re talking about rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. “Effectiveness” is a very problematic term when your “diagnoses” are voted on by committees and there is no objective way to create any kind of legitimate study groupings. Beyond that, the concept of a treatment “working” requires some agreement on desired outcomes, and no such agreement exists in psychiatry/psychology, nor probably ever can or will. For instance, is the goal of working with an “ADHD” child to make them “less hyperactive, distractible, impulsive?” If so, then stimulants seem to “work” pretty well. But if the goal is to have them become more academically competent, stimulants are a complete bust, may actually make things worse in some cases. So what’s the goal? We all know that in practice, the goal is to make the kids more compliant (dosing studies bear this out in every case). Is that really a legitimate measure of “working?” If it is, gagging and tying someone to a chair would also be judged to “work.”

    Psychiatry has massive philosophical conflicts preventing it from successfully studying anything it its realm of interest. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

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  • HiTop still doesn’t bother to look at the causal factors in whatever presentation is seen. Ten people could all exhibit “OCD” symptoms for 10 different reasons and need 10 different interventions. Until a “diagnostic” system is based on finding the actual CAUSE of something, it is worse than useless. And since the causes of so-called “mental disorders” primarily exist in a realm called the “mind” which psychiatry has not the vaguest understanding of (still confusing “mind” and “brain” and insisting they are the same), the odds that they will somehow sort this all out are about zero.

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  • I have talked to plenty of adults and kids before and after stimulants. Some do talk like you do about it. Of course, these are the success stories. Most in my experience appear to view it as a somewhat helpful intervention in the short term, but complain a lot about the costs. A small number complain that it nearly destroyed their lives. You appear to communicate mostly with people who found it worked for them, so you have clearly decided that this is “reality” and other people who have different experiences are “wrong.” That’s what I’m objecting to. I’ve never said that you or others like you did not have positive experiences. I have said that these experiences are not uniformly positive. I’ve also said that other people have managed to have very positive experiences without drugs. What is wrong with that? Why are you unwilling to hear that viewpoint, if this stuff makes you “listen better?” Not everyone has your experiences.

    I’ve also shared hard research with you backing up my viewpoint that a) not everyone benefits, b) most benefits are short term, and long-term outcomes have been shown over and over again not to be altered by stimulants or the lack of stimulants, and c) there are other things that you can do besides/in addition to stimulants that really do help.

    Again, what is your problem with any of that? Do you NOT want there to be other ways to help? If some kids can do well without stimulants, why do you begrudge them that opportunity? Why not keep a child back a year and see if they do better after a year of maturity? Why not put your kid in an open classroom if kids like him/her do well in that kind of classroom? Why take the viewpoint that a person (me) who has raised his kids successfully without stimulants has somehow deprived his kids of “clear vision” when it’s obvious they are none the worse for wear? Why can’t you simply allow that what you did worked for you, but others may take different approaches? I have NEVER told you that your approach was wrong, or that people who medicate their kids with stimulants are abusing them or doing them harm. Why am I and others like me not afforded the same decency from you?

    Please don’t respond with more insults. I need an acknowledgement that your way is not the only way, and that people who use other approaches are not wrong for doing so. If you can’t manage that, please don’t say anything at all.

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  • I think that comment is very telling, and it supports my contention that most of the suffering that occurs to the “ADHD” child is due to the unrealistic expectations adults put on them in order to attend school, as I stated above. This comports 100% with the observation that ADHD-diagnosed kids are found to be essentially “normal” in open classroom settings where they are encouraged to move around and have more control of their environment (fewer unreasonable expectations). That approach certainly worked wonders for our kids.

    It also helps explain why a third of the ADHD diagnoses go away if kids go to school a year later – they are older and more developed and it’s easier for them to follow the expectations set for them by the school. It also helps explain why so many kids “grow out of it” in their teen years – they are developmentally older and more ready to adjust to outside expectations of the school and others (this was certainly true for my oldest).

    More importantly, it also explains why kids who take stimulants over the longer term don’t actually end up with better outcomes, even though their grades and adult approval ratings are better on stimulants. The stimulants make the adults happier and less concerned with the kid. The child’s learning environment is not improved, he is not doing anything different than his non-stimulated ADHD classmates, but “everybody else is being a lot nicer.”

    So effectively, stimulants create an environment where the adults are more willing to leave the poor kid alone!

    I know this is a perspective that you, Donovan, may disagree with, but I think the logic presented here is very consistent with Insel’s report from his son. The main benefit to his son was not being able to concentrate or learn more, it was that others were nicer to him! I hope you are able to listen and hear this perspective as I have listened to and heard yours.

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  • I agree with you. It is pure “cultural bias” to believe something like “borderline personality disorder” even exists at all. It is clearly skewed against women for starters. And how can you “overdiagnose” something that is not objectively diagnosable by any known standard? It’s like saying that beauty or cowardice or kindness is “overdiagnosed.” If there is no objective standard, there is no meaning to “over-” and “underdiagnosis.” We’re just making shit up, and no one’s “diagnosis” should be invented arbitrarily. But if it IS invented arbitrarily, it’s nonsense to talk about “overdiagnosis!”

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  • I am glad that you found stimulants helpful to you. But you continue to argue a point no one is making. And you are now getting insulting implying that those making these arguments don’t give a crap about the children involved. I can tell you that I spent over 30 years in the field of helping children and saw and talked to hundreds and hundreds of kids diagnosed with “ADHD,” as well as their parents, their teachers, their counselors, their siblings and others involved with them on a daily basis. So I am not basing my opinions on some intellectual exercise. They are informed by much direct experience, including with my own kids, and calling me “criminal” for drawing the conclusions I have made after decades of research and direct personal experience is most definitely beneath you.

    Additionally, your personal experience is important, but does not mean that your own experiences are “average” or “expected” from all or most “ADHD” diagnosed people. In fact, decades of evidence show that there are no reliable improvements in ANY long term outcome areas for long-term stimulant use, including academic test scores, high school graduation rates, college enrollment, delinquency scores, social skills, employer satisfaction, or even self-esteem. However YOU may feel about YOUR treatment, or others you know, you can’t claim that children are being cheated out of this special advantage that science says does NOT happen for the large majority of recipients.

    I’d really appreciate it if you can constrain yourself to presenting your personal experiences and such scientific data as you feel you’d like to share, as well as directly addressing the science and experiential data that has been presented to you in good faith, and leave off on the disparaging comments on individuals who happen to disagree with you, especially when those objecting have presented their own data to which you could choose to directly respond.

    Bottom line, you have your experiences, others have their experiences, they aren’t going to be the same, and all such experiences are welcome to be shared. Please be respectful that not everyone is going to see things your way, and that disagreeing on science is not a personal thing.

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  • I have never said that stimulants can’t be effective for people in the short term. My premise, if you will read more carefully, is that the appearance of stimulants “working” doesn’t mean there is something biologically wrong with the subject. Alcohol is an excellent “antianxiety” agent – used to calm me right down in social situations. Why? Because that’s what alcohol does. Not because I had some “diagnosis” that alcohol “treats.”

    No one is arguing that psychotropic drugs don’t affect people in certain ways that some people will find helpful. I am trying to separate that easily observable fact from the scientifically tortured concept that we can somehow “diagnose” someone with a “medical disorder” based on a subjective list of behavior, or from their response to certain drugs, as you seem to be claiming is true.

    As for humiliation, I want you to consider carefully how much of the “humiliation” that kids experience is based on how others treat them for not ‘fitting in’ with the schools’ expectations rather than because they “cannot concentrate as they need to.” There are kids younger than TWO YEARS OLD being “diagnosed” and “treated.” How on Earth can this serve the needs of the toddler to “concentrate as they need to?” Aren’t we talking about inappropriate developmental expectations at some point? Also, did you know that a couple of good experiments with open classrooms have shown that “ADHD” kids who are put into such an environment are almost impossible to distinguish from “normal” children? Or that a number of good studies in various locations have found that comparing kindergarteners who are 5 vs. almost 6 when entering Kindergarten consistently shows a 30% reduction in ADHD diagnosis rates SIMPLY BY WAITING A YEAR LONGER BEFORE ENTERING SCHOOL! And this finding has been replicated in a range of different geographic settings in different states and countries. That’s what I call a robust finding! Why aren’t we simply delaying the entry of kids diagnosed with “ADHD” for a year, or sending them to open classrooms, when that would give us a 30% cure rate?

    If “ADHD” were a detectable biological problem, why would it matter what kind of classroom the kids are in? Why would waiting a year to enter school suddenly eliminate a third of these “biologically deficient” children? Isn’t this proof that maturation and developmental expectations play a huge role in who gets labeled “ADHD?”

    Now, if you’re just going for the idea that, “We should be able to give kids stimulants if it makes it easier for them to fit into the classroom, and if they and their parents don’t mind,” that’s a very different argument. But the fact that some kids/adults happen to find the effects of stimulants desirable means absolutely NOTHING about the condition of their brains. It just means they like the effects, just like I like the effects of alcohol. Read some stuff from Johanna Moncrieff on the “drug model” rather than the “disease model” – she describes this WAY better than I can. You don’t have to have a “disease” for a drug to have an effect, and just because a drug HAS an effect doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. I hope you can agree to this rather obvious and scientifically unarguable premise.

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  • They are “suggesting” that the structure of the brain is a problem. But there is no evidence whatsoever that this suggestion is accurate in the slightest degree. When the brain is compromised, you see a neurologist. “Mental illnesses” are not “brain abnormalities,” however much the psychiatric profession continues to pretend that is true. There is not one single “mental illness” in the DSM where most or even a significant minority of people so diagnosed have any physiological problem in common. And this is not for a lack of trying. They’ve been searching for DECADES for “brain problems” that explain “mental illnesses,” and have found nothing of the sort. Absent actual PROOF, the “suggestion” you mention is as useful as the idea that there are living inhabitants on Mars.

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  • Great article, as usual. The one thing I might have included is the multiple studies on “ADHD” diagnosis and admission to school, showing that a one-year delay in school entry leads to a 30% reduction in “ADHD” diagnoses. This both undermines the idea that “ADHD” is something objectively diagnosable, and also extrapolates to say that if you just leave these poor kids alone, a third of them will most likely “grow out of it” in a given year. Probably even a higher percentage of preschoolers. Which anyone with “common sense” would expect. Though I guess it isn’t as “common” as it used to be!

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  • Again, I think you miss my point completely. It is not scientific to ASSUME that a cluster of behavior/emotion/thoughts that tend to occur together are a “diagnosis” that is caused by something biological. You are taking a PHILOSOPHICAL position, called Materialism, in assuming that there is no other possible cause. What EVIDENCE is there that any two cases of “depression” have or need to have a common cause? I already gave you a half a dozen reasons why a person might be feeling despairingly hopeless. Are you really suggesting that a person who is depressed because they feel trapped in a domestic abuse situation should have the SAME DIAGNOSIS as someone who is depressed because they are suffering from a low thyroid situation or Lyme Disease or a head injury? Do these cases have ANYTHING in common other than the similarity of emotional reaction? Would any sane person prescribe the same “treatment” for all four situations? If you gave antidepressants to a person in a DV situation, and they suddenly felt more comfortable being abused by their partner, could you consider that a good result? Are there times when feeling anxious and/or depressed is a NECESSARY, NATURAL process that helps humans decide to alter non-optimum living or social situations?

    I am certainly not asserting that there are not biological correlates to the actions/experiences of the mind. For instance, we know that Buddhist monks who meditate regularly actually CHANGE THE SIZE OF PARTS OF THEIR BRAINS. But consider what that means – their CHOICE of mental activity alters the physical structure of their brains. So how can we assume that the brain is entirely causing their mind’s actions if their mind can alter the structure of the very brain it is supposed to be created by? Clearly, there is something far more complex going on here. Is the “biology” of depression (which btw has never been found to consistently exist for depressed people) the CAUSE of a person being depressed, or is it the RESULT of their framing of events as hopeless? If the mind is just a function of the brain, how is it that ASSUMING A DIFFERENT VIEWPOINT can “cure” depression or anxiety without any physiological intervention whatsoever?

    It is incredibly simplistic to believe that there will EVER be a simple, scientific, objective, biological explanation for why people get depressed, because the number of variables is ENORMOUS, including the direct impact of the MIND on the BRAIN. Of course, being a materialist, you no doubt reject my premise that the mind can transcend the brain and act upon it, but that is again a philosophical and not a scientific position. You can provide no proof that people who meet the criteria for “Major Depression” have anything in common at all, and the DSM itself admits that the “diagnosis” does not lead one to that conclusion. So what’s the point of grouping those who feel depressed together at all? Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to group together people who have domestic abuse histories with others who do, even if some are angry, some are depressed, some are anxious, and some are feeling pretty objective about the situation? But of course, being a “domestic abuse survivor” will also never be a biological “diagnosis,” because it’s not a biological condition. It’s a social one.

    I hope I make myself clear.

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  • They work short term the same on everyone. Judith Rapoport et al showed this way back in about 1978. They gave stimulants to non-diagnosed people to test the “paradoxical effect” theory. She found that non-“ADHD” kids on stimulants had longer attention spans, were harder to distract, and lower motor activity levels, all the same things they do for “ADHD” kids. She said the reason people though the “ADHD” kids were reacting differently was because people were LOOKING for these changes and so found them, but would not notice on kids where they were not trying to “solve” attention problems. This issue was laid completely to rest scientifically at that point, and anyone being honest these days will tell you that you can’t “diagnose” someone by their reaction to stimulants, because most people react the same way, diagnosed or not.H

    “However, it is now established that the focusing effects of stimulants in ADHD are not paradoxical; these agents have the same effect in ‘normal’ human subjects (albeit a more subtle response given ceiling effects) (Rapoport and Inoff-Germain, 2002).” https://www.nature.com/articles/1301164#:~:text=However%2C%20it%20is%20now%20established,Inoff%2DGermain%2C%202002).

    Also, Rapoport’s original study from 1978: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.341313

    It has come to my attention that this mythology is still promoted by many sites who pretend to be objective about ADHD, but the science has long since proven them wrong. There is no “paradoxical effect.”

    As to longer-term effects, I think we’ve exhausted the literature on that point.

    Enrico, please give it a rest. You will not convince me by repeating the same things over and over again. I heard you, I read your evidence, I acknowledged your position, I’ve established mine with the necessary evidence. I’m sure I won’t change your mind, and you won’t change mine. Let’s just stop arguing!

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  • Just to add a little extra evidence, I looked up “causes of depression” on Google. Here is a list of the titles that turned up:

    The 4 major causes of depression
    The 7 major causes of depression
    3 major causes of depression
    The 8 forms of depression
    The #1 cause of depression (Research suggests that continuing difficulties – long-term unemployment, living in an abusive or uncaring relationship, long-term isolation or loneliness, prolonged work stress – are more likely to cause depression than recent life stresses.)

    That’s on one search. Doesn’t sound like anyone has a grip on what “causes” depression, and there are as many theories as their are people tossing the label around. I think it’s because depression isn’t a “thing” that has one “cause.” It is an EXPERIENCE that can have hundreds of potential causes, and depending how it is handled, can lead to deterioration or to the opening of new perspectives on possible interventions that may improve one’s life. Any attempt to try and come up with one “diagnosis” for such a varied and nuanced experience is doomed to failure.

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  • I think you are overlooking a rather obvious point – the manifestations called “diagnoses” in the DSM, however real the suffering involved, are assumed to be (even by you) some sort of physiological experience. Hence, if the person’s brain were “right,” they would not be depressed, anxious, intense, or whatever. This is an absolutely nonsensical assumption! These “illnesses” are “intangible” because they don’t actually represent physiological illnesses at all. These diagnoses represent a potpourri of different emotions and behavior that are literally VOTED into or out of existence. The emotions and behaviors so designated are all things that occur with some frequency in “normal” people, and the “criteria” are very much arbitrary distinctions between “normal” and “abnormal,” which the DSM itself admits in the introduction are not able to distinguish groups of people having actual problems in common with each other.

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-control/201908/mental-health-diagnosis-just-say-no

    “One of these innovations was that the new DSM was “a descriptive approach that attempted to be neutral with respect to theories of etiology” (p. xxvi). So, even though diagnosis is the identification of the nature and cause of a phenomenon, the APA somehow reconciled publishing a diagnostic manual that made no reference to the cause of that which was being diagnosed.”

    [Direct quote from the DSM:] “In DSM-IV, there is no assumption that each category of mental disorder is a completely discrete entity with absolute boundaries dividing it from other mental disorders or no mental disorder.” (APA, 2000, p. xxxi). So, the categories that DSM offers us do not have boundaries demarcating one disorder from another or, indeed, one disorder from no disorder. This is an extraordinary revelation. This means, according to the DSM, there is no assumption that the category “schizophrenia” has boundaries that separate it from other mental disorders or from not having schizophrenia.”

    In other words, the distinctions in DSM diagnoses are ARBITRARY, they are not based on any legitimate grouping of people who have a problem in common.

    Take “Major depression” for example: It COULD be caused by physiological events, such as drug side effects, low thyroid, anemia, Lyme disease, brain tumors, etc. It could be caused by social events: death/loss, current abusive relationship, unemployment, neighborhood violence, racism or other discrimination, being stuck in a dead-end job, poverty, etc. It could have psychological causes, such as a particular attitude toward life and events, high stress, prior abuse/trauma history… you get the idea. It is just SILLY to think that a person who is depressed because his mother died when he was 17 and he’s feeling a deep sense of loss has the same needs/problems as a person who is currently being abused by her partner, or has the same needs/problems as a person who was just diagnosed with cancer and is having side effects from chemotherapy. These people CLEARLY do not fit into the same category for either study or for planning, and yet the DSM makes absolutely no distinction between these groupings – these people, if they meet the criteria, are “diagnosed” with “major depressive disorder,” regardless of the cause or what their actual needs of the moment are.

    Now I’m not saying that individual practitioners don’t make these finer distinctions. I hope that most of them do. But the DSM itself is useless as a “diagnostic” manual if it can’t distinguish between a cancer patient taking drugs that affect the mind (not to mention having a big existential problem regarding their prospective death), and a person whose mother just died and a person who has a malfunctioning thyroid.

    That is what people mean when they say “mental heath diagnoses are not real.” They’re not saying that people don’t experience depression or anxiety at sometimes severe levels. They’re saying that the DSM “diagnoses” are of no value in establishing either cause or optimum “treatment” or prognosis. They are scientifically meaningless labels that are at best useless except to bill an insurance company, and at worst can be extremely destructive by papering over the real issues involved and invalidating the knowledge and experience of the client.

    Given all that, I very much doubt that a “more objective diagnostic system” can ever be achieved, because the very idea that people who have difficulties emotionally or behaviorally are medically “ill” is absolutely without basis in reality. There may be a very small subset of these conditions that can be attributed to actual medical problems, and they should be, but calling everyone who finds life pointless at a particular moment “ill” as if someone whose mom just died is supposed to be cheerful is an absurdity that is not redeemable except by scrapping that concept and starting over.

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  • I am certain he deserves firing, as this was hardly “one misstep.” He really should have been fired long, long ago for corruption. He is almost singlehandedly responsible for making the “juvenile bipolar” craze happen, by creating a justification for millions and millions of unnecessary and damaging prescriptions. He actually PROMISED the drug company funding one of his trials that the trial would be positive for their drug, BEFORE the trial even started.

    Maybe this particular tweet could be forgiven, but his other crime can not. He ought to be in prison, IMHO.

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  • How about providing them with every other possible source of non-drug support possible, including full physical workups, checking for ongoing abusive relationships, nutritional analysis, exercise, spiritual guidance, support groups, reading, music, art, coaching, etc, before even considering giving drugs that by their very nature disturb the normal functioning of the brain and nervous system?

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  • “Mental health diagnoses” serve a lot of social needs that have absolutely nothing to do with the health of the individuals so labeled. It has more to do with defining acceptable behavioral norms, removing blame from those in power, and silencing direct or indirect objections to the status quo. A kid gets “diagnosed” with “ADHD,” for instance, not because there is any identified medial problem, but because the child’s behavior is inconvenient for the adults involved. “Diagnosis” enables the adults to name and blame the child without the bother and the risk of finding out what is really happening. This is of course doubly beneficial to those who are guilty of abuse or neglect of the child, because they have something to cover up, and the “diagnosis” provides cover for them to continue to act out their own problems on the child without the danger of being called out or consequenced for it.

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  • That, of course, is the total downfall of psychiatry and the DSM – there IS no valid definition of “normal” on the psychological/spiritual/behavioral level. There is no way to extract “normal functioning” from the society and culture in which such functioning is defined. So their definitions are actually simply a collection of social biases described in some fancy language designed to obscure the fact that they’re basically saying, “Stuff that we don’t want” or “stuff that is hard for society to deal with.” And of course, completely denying that our social system itself is the proximal cause of most of the “stuff we don’t want.” The real challenge is why so many people believe this nonsense that is so easily debunked.

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  • Hi, Ted!

    Have you ever made the legal argument that a person DOES meet the criteria for civil commitment (danger to self or others), but that this does NOT entitle the “doctors” to force “treatment” on them? It is very much taken for granted that civil commitment automatically confers this right on doctors and removes the “patient” (AKA inmate)’s right to informed consent. But why is this legally valid? It makes sense to get someone off the street if they’re walking in front of cars, but why does that confer anything more than the need to clothe and feed them and keep them warm until the crisis passes?

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  • Dang, you got me, Bradford!

    You know, sometimes people who get hit by a truck and have a near-death experience suddenly realize their life priorities have been wrong and make a big turnaround. Maybe we can start pushing people in front of trucks, testing out varying speeds of impact, to see if we can get the right force and level of shock to induce the intended reorientation. It would make as much sense.

    Actually, I think I understand how “ECT” actually “works.” After two or three “treatments,” the recipient says, “Gosh, doc, I’m feeling SOOOO much better now! That ECT really did the trick. I’m TOTALLY healed! Now, can you please unlock the door so I can get the hell out of this place!”

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  • It is hard to see how anyone who is in their right mind could possibly imagine that electrocuting someone to induce a grand mal seizure could possibly be “therapeutic!” It take some SERIOUS bending of reality to try and make that one work, yet somehow, they manage to justify it anyway. Fraud is right!

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  • It is fascinating how the arrogance and corruption of these “leaders” are there right out in public for anyone to see, and yet so few see them. “Consideration” of the social determinants? As if THEY are in the position of deciding what is true, rather than observing the known facts? And their “customers’ mental health” – are we admitting here that the APA is a trade marketing organization that doesn’t give a crap about science as long as they maintain their market share? And why would a professional want to come and beg these folks to include something in their manual when it’s obvious that they don’t give a half a crap about the patients’ “social determinants” as long as they’re making sufficient profits?

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  • Actually, there is no way to judge “overdiagnosis,” because with the utter subjectivity of EVERY DSM “diagnosis,” there is no way to determine what the “correct” level of diagnosis really is. So how can you “overdiagnose?” That’s part of the brilliance of the DSM – you can’t tell the they’re wrong, because there’s no way to prove it!

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  • That is true, it should not be. Yet that is all too often what is on offer. My point is that it has to be done in the context of a bigger process of self-discovery. How to create a scenario which is “intellectually satisfying” is, indeed, the challenge. For some, it’s pretty natural, for others, it is quite a foreign concept and a lot of processing needs to happen before this is a reality to them. For others, it simply doesn’t work very well. I think a good therapist has a wide range of tools available, and CBT should just be one of them, and “tool selection” should be based on the needs of the client, not the need of the therapist to feel superior or skilled or whatever their needs may be.

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  • It is also often a gross oversimplification. Yes, thinking about your mother having abandoned you IS painful, and it IS over, and you are not benefiting yourself by thinking about it over and over. But there are reasons why we are attracted to events in the past that are painful – we are still looking for some compassionate person to step in and make it RIGHT. And telling a person, “Just think of something else” when there is that much emotional charge on an event, be it fear, anger, grief, apathy, confusion, or whatever, is often counterproductive, leaving the client feeling like a failure for continuing to think “wrong thoughts” and feeling blamed for having “reacted badly” to the very real trauma they experienced. It also adds insult to injury if the “counselor” tells the client which feelings/thoughts need to be changed and/or what they need to tell themselves to change them.

    I certainly used CBT techniques when I used to be a counselor, but only at times when the client appeared to be able to process the past experiences attached first, or was dealing with fairly recent material. I would never try to ‘change the thinking’ of a person to the thoughts I believed they should have, nor would I ever blame their suffering on their own need to process harmful things that happened to them before being able to ‘let go’ of thoughts and feelings they may at one time have felt essential for their survival.

    Nobody should do CBT as a primary therapy approach in my book. It’s a set of techniques that have their place when carefully applied, but therapy had better be a whole lot more than that if you want your client to get anywhere close to where they want to go.

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  • And to use science for what science is good for, but not forget that it has its limitations. Science can’t absolve us of the ethical/philosophical activities such as deciding what is good and bad in society, determining the scope of freedom when one’s activities impact another, deciding what purpose society has, whether and to what degree to enforce compliance vs. encourage creativity and free expression, and so on. Science (if used properly) is great at helping eliminate bias when determining truth. But it doesn’t help much with ethical issues where there is no absolute “True” or “False” involved. The entire area of “mental illness” is fraught with these ethical conflicts, such that no real “science” is currently possible in the field, since there isn’t even vague agreement on what a “mind” is, let alone whether a mind can have “health” and what a “healthy mind” would encompass. Not to mention the question of whether having an “unhealthy mind” would ever qualify one for involuntary imprisonment in the name of “health!”

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  • True enough! When you are engaged in a very unscientific enterprise, it is almost impossible to define an outcome. But I’d still maintain that under such subjective circumstances, the only one who can even formulate an “outcome” is the client. Of course, any clinician who tries to manipulate his/her client into deciding they had a “good outcome” just to make the therapist feel better deserves to spend eternity in purgatory.

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  • It means they’d have to deal empathetically with the patient’s actual needs, and be willing to admit it when they didn’t know what they were doing, which is most of the time. That would be intolerable, because they’d lose their superior status and have to be a vulnerable human being, just like the client is. Ironically, my experience tells me that the key to actually BEING helpful to a client is the willingness to be a vulnerable, genuine, humble, fallible human being who is willing to meet them where they are at and not think you know more than them about their own problems.

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  • The difference between a good therapist and a bad therapist is that the good therapist is concerned with the perspective of the client, and a bad therapist is concerned with their own perspective. The bad therapist wants to look/feel good about their work. The good therapist wants the client to regain control of their own perspective. The only valid measure of success in a therapist is the empowered client’s satisfaction with the process.

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  • The difference I see in your analogy is that no one is promoting cigarette smoking as a “treatment” for “ADHD” or any “educational disability.” Drugs can be useful for many things. I’d be dead today without modern medicine. But it sounds like we’d both agree that just because a drugs is perceived as helpful in a particular situation for a particular person, it doesn’t mean that person was “ill” or that the drug “cured” or “treated” a condition.

    A shot of Southern Comfort definitely reduces my anxiety, but it’s hardly a medical treatment!

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  • Unfortunately, most people are unaware of their philosophical assumptions, and have a hard time distinguishing these assumptions from fact. I agree, our educational system really needs to make the study of philosophy and its application to practical decisions a priority again. Back in ancient Greece, ALL learning was recognized to be a subset of philosophy. That’s why the highest degree is a Ph.D. – Doctor of Philosophy.

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  • I think a lot of folks have been convinced that it is “unscientific” or “mystical” or superstitious” to entertain any possibility of a spiritual existence beyond our bodies. It’s odd, because most people in the world appear to believe in such a spiritual existence continuing beyond our physical existence in our bodies, yet somehow this doesn’t seem to conflict with claims that ‘science’ does not include the possibility of spiritual existence. I’m personally of the opinion that scientifically, there is no way to rule in OR rule out such spirituality to a certainty. But that means science ought to remain open to the possibility. There are certainly bits of circumstantial evidence, such as the placebo effect and neurofeedback, that suggest there is something about our existence as beings of whatever nature that allows our mental processes to control what happens to the body. How that effect occurs, no one really knows. So discounting the potential that we are spiritual beings that transcend our earthly existence on “scientific” grounds seems ungrounded in factual evidence.

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  • Yeah, let’s not waste our money on the things that have a 50 times greater correlation! Let’s spend more money researching stuff that is barely better than chance at distinguishing “depressives” from “normals.”

    You know what my approach was for distinguishing depressed individuals from non-depressed individuals? I asked them if they felt depressed! It was a remarkably accurate “marker.” People who say they are depressed are statistically FAR more likely to be depressed than those who say they feel fine!

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  • It should be clear that any brain-affecting drug could cause brain shrinkage, based on your research. I’ve never found the “neurogenesis” explanation/claim for SSRIs to be particularly convincing. But you are very correct, depression is almost always a symptom of something else. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that “depression” is not the “cause” of anything. It’s an experience people have, which could mean a hundred different things. Calling it a ‘disorder’ is always euphemistic.

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  • “Voluntary” electric shock “therapy” (no, I won’t use the euphemism) is also an abomination, since there is absolutely no way to give “informed consent.” Anyone who really understood what this “therapy” involves would run the other way full speed! Though it seems more than a tad counterintuitive that inducing a grand mal seizure through electrocuting the “patient” would in any scenario be advisable.

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  • We must also remember that psychoanalysis was not accepted until after Freud disavowed his trauma theory and blamed the patients’ woes on his own “complexes” instead of focusing on the causal traumatic factors. I’d say that psychoanalysis was thoroughly defanged before it was allowed to become popular, and hence was reduced to a tiny fraction of its potential effectiveness. The removal of the right of the clinician to “interpret” seems like a critical move. But I wonder how many clinicians are fully capable of resisting the urge to foist their evaluations onto the client.

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  • Remember always that such studies are not always controlling for psychiatric drug use. We know at least in “schizophrenia” that brain shrinkage is causesd by the drugs themselves, and there is suggestive evidence that this happens with stimulants for “ADHD” as well. Any generalized measurements like brain volume are not valid if substance use, legal and illegal, is not accounted for.

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  • I particularly find the possessive form, “My mental health” or “My depression” or “My diagnosis” a disturbing trend. As I said once, depression isn’t something you HAVE, it’s something you DO. And framing it that way means you can do something to change it. Whereas if it’s something I simply HAVE, then I no longer have agency, I’m stuck with it, as if my own decisions and beliefs and actions have no chance of altering my fate of having “mental health problems.” I don’t mean to blame anyone for feeling bad, but the idea that someone else is making all that happen and that someone else can “fix” it sells lots of drugs and keeps people dependent for life instead of teaching skills to regain control of our lives.

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  • It has always seemed to me that everyone’s body is different, and so a different approach needs to be considered for each person. Psychiatry’s biggest failing is assuming that everyone who feels “depressed” (or whatever other manifestation they identify as “illness”) has the same problem and needs the same kind of help. We should not fall into this trap! I think the advice about starting slowly and observing how much a person can tolerate is very, very important, but assuming that 10% or 5% will work for everyone means that some people who could get off a lot faster are restricted, and others who may find this rate too fast will feel hopeless. I think flexibility and respect for each person’s own sense of what works for them should be the center of any effort to wean off of dangerous drugs.

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  • Everything you’ve said is speculative. There is nothing you provide that shows any actual EVIDENCE that a particular chemical problem in the brain is associated with depression. In fact, this idea was disproven way back in the mid 1980s, before Prozac even came to market.

    I’m not interested in opinions of people. I’m interested in EVIDENCE. And so far, you have presented anecdotes and opinions. No one is saying that some folks don’t feel better when taking antidepressants. I am contesting the idea that the primary CAUSE of depression has ever been established as being biological.

    “The chemical imbalance theory as a cause for anxiety and depressive disorders never was true. In fact, no experiment has ever shown that anyone has an ‘imbalance’ of any neurotransmitters or any other brain chemicals. The entire theory was hypothetical.

    Over the last ten years, independent research has continually shown the chemical imbalance theory to be false. Furthermore, independent research has shown medications used to ‘correct’ the imbalance were largely ineffective with many fairing no better than placebo.”

    Please read the following for an overview of scientific challenges to the “chemical imbalance” concept.

    https://www.anxietycentre.com/articles/chemical-imbalance/

    https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/debunking-two-chemical-imbalance-myths-again

    You might also benefit a lot from reading Anatomy of an Epidemic. It might help you understand the scientific reasons why Bob and others question the standard psychiatric narrative. It does not come from a place of hostility, it comes from a place of wanting to get it RIGHT for people who need the kind of help that drives them to psychiatrists.

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  • Can you please provide citations demonstrating convincingly that, say, “Brain chemistry” or “biological differences” are “causes” of depression? I am very familiar with the research in this area, and am aware of no consistent biological difference that characterizes depression or accounts for more than a tiny fraction of cases of “depression,” even in the most optimistic interpretation. In fact, luminaries such as Dr. Ronald Pies and Thomas Insel have assured us that psychiatry never took the “chemical imbalance” theory seriously, and that it was, in fact, drug companies that made such tropes commonplace beliefs.

    On the other hand, I can provide oodles of evidence that the correlation between childhood adverse events and cases of “depression” is extremely high, much, much higher than the most optimistic “biomarker” research has ever been able to accomplish.

    You are welcome to your own opinion, but not your own facts. I’d like to see what scientific data you are basing your stated opinion about “causes of depression” on.

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  • Thanks for sharing this! As a “therapist” who received almost no therapy training, I found exactly the same things you did. CBT is not a form of therapy, it’s a set of techniques, which have applicability to certain clients under certain conditions. It’s not something you can do with everyone, and the response easily determines the appropriateness if you’re using it poorly.

    Most importantly, all therapy depends on an empathetic relationship with the client, and as you put it so well, an ability to respond dynamically to events in the therapy relationship and alter one’s course as more information comes to the therapist’s attention.

    Milton Erickson said that therapy has to be reinvented for each client. I agree with him 100%. No workbook or theory or set of “skills” or homework can substitute for the hard work of legitimately gaining the trust of the client and helping him/her climb into the chaos and start sorting things out. The idea that one response will suit everyone with a particular ‘diagnosis’ is not just wrong, it’s utterly destructive.

    And well done escaping that “funny farm!” Probably the greatest gift that you received from them – realizing that you are smarter than they are and can figure out what you need as far away from them as you can get!

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  • I wrote a book about how to avoid abusive partners early on in the dating process (“Jerk Radar”). The last chapter, and in many ways the most important chapter, is called “Trust your gut.” It goes into how abusive people give off a ‘vibe’ or engage in certain behavior that raises one’s hackles, as it were, or sets of alarms intuitively. Little kids tend to go by these “gut level” assessments consistently, but I talk about how we are trained as kids by adults to not believe ourselves, and eventually stop believing our very accurate perceptions of reality. “Uncle Eddie is just being friendly, dear, they kiss on the mouth in his family” or “Don’t say such things about your grandfather, show respect for your elders!” or “Oh, Johnnie, your teacher doesn’t HATE you, they’re just trying to teach you some DISCIPLINE!” The ‘gut level’ instinct is trained out of most of us rather systematically, and this makes us extremely vulnerable to predatory people. Almost all of us need to find ways to re-learn how to listen to and respect our intuitive warning flags.

    Of course, those subjected to abuse by caretakers have this sense utterly trampled in most cases. Up is down, in is out, love is hurting, you love me means I have to take care of you, and on and on. Your perception of reality is brutally attacked at every turn in the road. Is it surprising that a person subjected to such atrocities would have some difficulty knowing whom to trust? Why would you tell them to explain away their considerations by a call to “be reasonable” or “understand the others’ point of view?”

    Clearly, the most helpful thing for such a person is to a) acknowledge that their sense of trust has been systematically violated and that difficulties with trust would be totally normal under the circumstances, and b) help the person to re-learn how to trust and act on their own gut-level instinct that has so thoroughly been invalidated, so that they learn that while not everyone is untrustworthy, it makes good sense to keep one’s boundaries up and to listen to and respect our intuition.

    The idea of teaching such a person to automatically “give the benefit of the doubt” is quite outrageous. It’s the very last thing in the entire world you’d want to teach them!

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  • Calvin, it sounds like you were looking for a way to establish more control over your life, and psychiatry gave you the opposite. I found it sad hearing you decided that staying silent was your only remaining way to accomplish that. I’d say your story is far more compelling than you may think it is. I found myself thinking, “Man, if they told me what they told him, and gave me as little hope, I’d have wanted to kill myself, too.”

    You were VERY badly served by psychiatry. They did less than nothing – they undermined your belief that anything COULD be done, and I find that unforgivable!

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  • I don’t know why this is published as if it were some kind of new news. The first review of stimuants for academic performance was done way back in 1978 by none other than Russell Barkley, the eventual advocate for putting massive numbers of kids on Ritalin. His review showed kids taking stimulants barely outperformed their non-medicated peers, and commented that the difference was so small it was “easily explained by reading the questions more carefully.” Repeated reviews by Swanson (1993) and by the OSU Medication Effectiveness Study in about 2002 or so found no significant improvement for long-term stimulant use in any academic measure. Naturalistic studies like the MTA, the Raine study in Australia, the Quebec study, the long-term MTA results, and a comparison study between Finnish and US children showed again and again that stimulants provide no improvement in any academic measure, and in fact, no improvement in ANY long-term outcome that adults would wish to see improved by “treatment.” This is just one more nail in that coffin, but the sad reality is that psychiatry has not noticed so far that the patient has been dead for decades.

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  • Even if there WERE a way to make Ketamine-assisted therapy effective (which I still have very serious doubts about), it is a certainty to me that in the hands of the commercial/economic incentives of today’s system, any chance of general effectiveness will be very quickly overwhelmed by the authoritarian, disrespectful, and degrading conditions that pertain in almost all “mental health” agencies. It seems like another boondoggle for the drug companies and their minions.

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  • What you observed for decades is absolutely correct. None of this was truly intended to help, except for those low-level people who think that forcing people to do things they don’t want to “for their own good” is some form of “help.” I can see how reading this stuff can bring back the pain, but don’t ever believe anyone who says that your observations were “wrong.” Honestly, I think the first step to healing from crap happening to us is learning to trust that we were RIGHT when we knew we were being fed a line of crap!

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  • Posting as moderator:

    To be clear, we welcome those who feel psychiatric diagnoses are “helpful” to them – all are always welcome to post at MIA as long as they follow the Guidelines. We welcome all viewpoints. However, it is important that such posters respect the fact that they will encounter alternative viewpoints here, and to own their own viewpoint as theirs and not try to force is on others or to invalidate others’ attempts to communicate their own views. We are all free to disagree, but with respect. I am getting the feeling that some folks are feeling their views are not being respected. Which is ALSO a free topic of conversation, as long as we make sure it’s not getting to personal attacks on people for disagreeing.

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  • So it is less the existence of these labels than the way they are USED. The DSM was originally used only as an insurance billing document, and no one took the categories as anything but vague categories used for general communication. They evolved into these pseudo-scientific labels which doctors and others can use to avoid looking at causes and to justify the use of drugs. I have never objected to an INDIVIDUAL choosing to identify with a particular diagnostic DECRIPTION. When it become untenable is when scientists pretend that “depression” is a unitary category with a unitary cause which should be “treated” by a unitary “treatment plan.” Such a viewpoint simply invites and justifies ignoring the complex causes and influences on something so universally present and natural as anxiety or depression, and the blaming of the patient as well as using drugs as a first-line intervention. None of this can happen if the DSM doesn’t serve as a means for doctors to justify condescending to their patients and subtly or not so subtly blaming them for feeling “too depressed” or “too anxious” instead of looking at what has happened in their lives (including known physical problems) that might explain one or another particular instance of “depression.”

    So I have no hostility or disrespect for someone who calls himself/herself “ill” or “depressed” or “schizophrenic” or “autistic” if those labels work for someone. I do have a big problem with a doctor or other authority figure telling someone ELSE that they “have depression” or “have schizophrenia” as a means of labeling and downgrading the client’s experience without any actual scientific basis for their claims. It is very different to say that no one has the behavior labeled “ADHD” (which is NOT true) and to say that “ADHD” is not a valid scientific entity for a doctor or anyone else to assign to a person who presents to them, particularly over the client’s objection.

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  • “You are too complex” seems to me to translate into “I don’t have the skills to figure out how to help you.” Same facts, very different framing. If you take your car to the mechanic, and he says, “You’re engine is too complex,” you’re going to know he means, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on.” There is no difference, except that MH “Professionals” are allowed to get away with it.

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  • Thanks, Ed. I have read parts of the article, though it is quite long. I get the idea we’d probably agree on a lot of things. I do think it feasible that psychedelics can be used in a helpful way, but there is little to no chance that the psychiatric profession, or even the profession of psychology, will be able to use it in a helpful manner. Psychiatry in particular specifically denies the validity of the spiritual world, while those who HAVE used psychedelics historically in a helpful fashion are shamans or other spiritual leaders who are helping expand one’s viewpoint of the world, not trying to “cure mental illnesses” that don’t even exist. Without a big change in viewpoint and philosophy, I believe psychedelics will be as dangerous in the hands of psychiatry as any of their “medications.”

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  • Wow, that’s an awesome article! This guy sounds a lot like Bob Whitaker. My only objection is the use of the term “overprescription.” How can you “overprescribe” when there is no ability to determine what the “proper” amount of “prescribing” would be? But besides that, he hits on the key issues of ineffectiveness, permanent damage, long-term deterioration, and removal of personal agency. I’d love to see this guy write an article for MIA!

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  • Without even reading the article, I found I objected to the title. Why are we calling this “psychedelic medicine?” It is NOT medicine! It is at best “psychedelic therapy,” not a medical intervention at all, but a mental/spiritual one. I find it continuously offensive when things that are potentially helpful to our spiritual needs are coopted by the medical establishment, such that going for a hike becomes “nature therapy,” and doing fun things becomes “occupational therapy” and on and on. “Psychedelic therapy” is distorted enough – PLEASE let’s get away from calling it “medicine!”

    Similarly, taking the flashback phenomenon and giving it a “medical” name does nothing to advance our understanding of what is going on. Flashbacks are pretty mysterious, there appears to be no understanding if there is any physical reason for flashbacks, let alone what it might be. People who have flashbacks aren’t “HPPD patients,” they are people who have experienced flashbacks. Why do we feel this need to dehumanize folks by grouping them together, as if experiencing flashbacks is again a failure of the “patient” to respond “properly” to “treatment?” Just as we excuse the failure of antidepressant “treatment” by calling the victim “treatment resistant” instead of just admitting that the drugs have failed to help or have harmed the recipient?

    I know that “medical language” tends to get things published, but it’s an insidious slippery slope away from treating people as human beings. I’m not categorically opposed to the idea of using psychedelics to help people find some level of mental/emotional perspective, but the idea that it can become some kind of standardized “medical treatment” is a very damaging absurdity that could very well ruin any chance that the use of psychedelics can develop into something that might actually be helpful to people’s spiritual growth.

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  • More stunning research! This is somewhere on the level of “serious injury to the knees is associated with increased knee pain later in life!” Seriously, is anyone surprised that having major frightening experiences earlier in life might make it more likely that one is more easily frightened? “People who have been major car wrecks are shown to be more worried about getting in car wrecks.” And they get PAID to do this research???

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  • There has never been any good evidence, or even mediocre evidence, for the use of antidepressants in kids. There was one study that showed Prozac to have some positive effect on kids over 12, but that study had significant flaws and was never replicated. It seems to be pretty clear that prescribing antidepressants to kids is malpractice, plain and simple. But apparently, if enough doctors do something, no matter how stupid, it becomes “standard practice” and can’t be called malpractice for legal purposes.

    The only issue I’d take with your comment is that some adults DO believe that restraining kids chemically IS “helping” them. Clearly this applies to people who don’t really like children very much. But such people do exist in significant numbers.

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  • This is just a comment on the comment I just read, not a critique of anyone’s arguments.

    I think it is relevant to note that “placebo effects” have taken on (largely due to pharmaceutical company pressures and narratives) a negative connotation, the implication being that “placebo effect” are not real or are imaginary. Placebos of many kinds, including group rituals, can have very powerful, very real effects. The only relevance of calling it a “placebo effect” is that the effect is not caused by the drug or whatever specific intervention is being looked at. I think this can create a negative emotional reaction when people hear “X appears to be a placebo effect” about something they’ve seen be effective.

    I think the placebo effect is FASCINATING and says a lot about what’s wrong with psychiatry’s narrative. If believing something can actually change outcomes, even if the “something” has no direct effect on the brain or body, it suggests that what we believe or imagine or strive for is FAR more important than the “brain=mind” theory can possibly begin to explain.

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  • I think it helps people to avoid dealing with real but semi-conscious conflicts that are really at the root of feeling hopeless about life in many cases. Certainly was true for me! It’s a lot of work to re-think one’s view of life and one’s habitual behavior. It’s easier to blame it on the brain and take the pill. At least in the short run. Especially if someone in authority is doing the hard sell on it. I did not WANT to get therapy – I NEEDED to, but it took two other people dragging me kicking and screaming to get it started. Very glad I did.

    Of course, a lot of “therapists” these days don’t do what I consider therapy. Many seem to use a forced and very shallow form of “cognitive behavioral therapy” and aren’t interested in childhood trauma or internal conflicts. I was very fortunate in getting a good one on the first shot, but it still wasn’t any fun, and I felt like quitting partway through. A pill would have been a LOT easier, but of course would never have been a tenth as beneficial in the long run.

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  • I would say that physicians almost NEVER direct someone to discontinue ANY psychiatric drug. Additionally, “return of symptoms” is often a euphemism for “withdrawal symptoms” occurring upon withdrawal. Support is, indeed, needed, but medical providers almost never provide the kind of support that is helpful. If we all waited for a physician to “direct” their patent to withdraw, almost no one would ever get off psych drugs, no matter how bad the effects of the drug in question.

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  • Just to be clear, I’m not calling the article disempowering, I’m saying the concept of “shared decision making” presumes that decision making is normally NOT shared with the client, but made by the doctor without any input from the client whatsoever. And doctors are arguing as to whether they SHOULD consider “sharing” what is really the client’s decision with the client. I don’t see it as a salvageable concept, as it is tainted with the idea that sharing decision making with the client whose life is being impacted is somehow optional!

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  • As I’ve said before, the very framing of this as “shared decision-making” is disempowering by definition. They are talking about DOCTORS deigning to “share” THEIR decision making with the client! And the doctors are ARGUING about this! The decisions should always be the CLIENT’S decisions, unless the CLIENT wants to share it with the doctor or someone else! The fact that they even need to TALK about including the client in the decisions, and that NO ONE sees this as hypocritical, shows just how far into authoritarianism the medical establishment has sunk.

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  • That’s always been my biggest challenge with this whole “chemical cure” mythology. If I take a pain reliever and I still have as much more more pain than before, do I have “treatment resistant pain?” Or did the drugs fail to have the advertised effect? If I take an antidepressant and am still depressed, THE ANTIDEPRESSANT DIDN’T WORK! It’s not because I’m “resistant” or “need an adjunct medicine” or whatever. It means the treatment FAILED!!! Why is this not obvious? Why do intelligent people fail to observe this rather obvious conclusion?

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  • Do you actually want to know the answer to that question?

    I would guess that most doctors have not ever read the 35 pages of warnings and could not tell you half of it. My father was almost killed by a doctor prescribing something when he was on blood thinners after a heart attack. He told the guy exactly what he was taking, and the drug warnings included a BOLDFACE warning NOT to prescribe this second drug with blood thinners because DEATH MAY RESULT! Yet the doctor prescribed it anyway, and my father luckily noticed he was getting bruises by simply resting his elbow on the table or pressing his arm with his finger. HE looked the drugs up in the PDR (the “internet drug site” equivalent of the 1960s) and discovered that the doctor had acted incredibly irresponsibly and could very well have killed him. A minor car accident, a fall in the garden, the most minor injury could have resulted in death. I have heard stories and had direct experiences myself over time to reinforce the idea that doctors don’t, and given the volume of new drugs, really CAN’T, know and convey the actual dangers of these drugs. I will NEVER take a drug that I have not personally checked out on more than one source.

    So no, it is not hard AT ALL to imagine doctors either not knowing these things, or not caring to communicate them, or intentionally NOT communicating the possible dangers because they are worried that the patient would decide not to take the drug if they knew the actual risks. I would assume it far more likely than not that the doctors would NOT communicate such things to me, based on personal experience.

    I’ll leave it to others to explain what ACTUALLY happened to them on antidepressants, though of course, you can easily find that out for yourself by searching this site. Sometimes other people have different experiences than you do. Maybe you could generate some interest in listening to them instead of dismissing their experiences as “hard for you to understand.”

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  • How do they, Enrico? You don’t know any more than I do. Nor do you even know that cells DO create thoughts. That’s what you believe. There is no proof or evidence of what thoughts even ARE, let alone what creates them. You believe the brain creates them, because you are a MATERIALIST philosophically. Not everyone in the world is a materialist, and materialism isn’t inherently more “scientific” than any other philosophical viewpoint. There are other philosophical viewpoints that are just as valid as yours.

    You are sharing your beliefs, not scientific verities. Which is fine, as long as you allow that every other person here is just as entitled to share their views and beliefs as well, and you don’t somehow entitle yourself to be the arbiter of truth when you’re sharing your personal views. I don’t see you granting others that right very often. I more commonly see you presuming to know more than those who are here, and talking down to others who don’t agree with you. It is not a very respectful way to conduct a conversation, in my personal view. I guess that’s philosophical, too – one philosophy is that conversations to be “won” by trying to overwhelm or dominate the other person until they submit. I don’t take that philosophy. I like conversations to be a sharing of information from different viewpoints so I can learn things and expand my viewpoint to include more data and observations and experiences beyond my own narrow path in life. You have a great opportunity here to open your mind and learn from others who have had different experiences than you have, to actually WANT to know why some people find the very things you consider to be miraculous advances in science to be sketchy, unscientific, and even dangerous and destructive. Do you want to know? Or are you primarily engaged in trying to convince the “misled” or “misunderstood” on this site to the “real truth,” which of course means the “truth” you’ve already decided is “right?”

    The point re: Insel’s comments is a case in point. You “don’t understand” the relevance. Do you WANT to understand it? What if you actually asked the poster to HELP you understand it, and tried to put yourself in his shoes and see it from his viewpoint? I’d say the reason is quite obvious: Insel RAN the NIMH for years. He spent lots of time doing the kind of research you seem to value (at least when it fits with your narrative), and at the end of his tenure, states that the DSM approach has led to literally NOTHING of lasting value. That one of the key thought leaders in the psychiatric community would publicly announce this should be of GREAT interest to anyone with a real scientific bent. The fact that he was called on to walk back his comments by that very psychiatric community he is a part of should tell you a LOT more. My read is that the psychiatric community knows that the DSM is not worth the paper it’s written on, but they can’t admit it to themselves, or they don’t want the word to get out. Does it seem POSSIBLE to you that this explanation makes some sense? What is YOUR thought on the significance of the lead psychiatric researcher in the #1 center of psychiatric research in the USA says that the DSM actually makes it harder to make sense of “mental illness?”

    I have noticed again and again that you do not respond to solid, well-argued, positions that don’t correspond to your views. Will this again be the case with this one? Will you pretend that I didn’t write this because it’s too uncomfortable to face the truth contained herein?

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  • I am saying it is a contributing factor, and that at least SOME of the high rates of smoking among those diagnosed “schizophrenic” are due to the “treatment.” I’m also pointing out the irony of the psychiatric industry using “treatments” that are known to reduce lifespan, and yet trying to blame it on habits that their own drugs actually encourage/reinforce.

    But you’re right, poverty, discrimination, and trauma are related to “poor lifestyle choices” AND to being swept up by the psychiatric industry as a “patient.” It is a very complex system. But a part of that system is a “treatment program” that doesn’t actually work in the long run in many if not most cases, and which can create or exacerbate the exact “symptoms” they claim to “treat.” And meanwhile reducing people’s quality of life and life expectancy, while trying to deny this is true.

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  • Writing just as me, here, not as a moderator.

    Why do you continue to post here if you find the basic premise of the site to be so wrong? Do you really think you’re going to convince your audience? Why not go somewhere else where people who agree with you share their views? I don’t see much interest on your part in hearing anything anyone else says, or learning anything you don’t already believe you know. So why are you posting here? What is your purpose? I’m not being snide, I really want to know what you’re trying to accomplish?

    I would bet my bottom dollar you’ve never even read Anatomy of an Epidemic or Mad in America. Am I right?

    I don’t believe from my observations here that you really want to engage in a conversation about any of these topics. I assume from your behavior that you mostly want to tell us all that none of us know what we’re talking about and you know better than us. Am I correct?

    I predict that you will not respond to this question.

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  • I understand that since cigarettes increase dopamine, and the antipsychotics massively decrease dopamine, many antipsychotic users (forced or voluntary) smoke in order to reduce the side effects of the antipsychotics. Many probably don’t even know that’s why they do it, they just feel better when they smoke. So ironically, the psychiatric industry wants to blame shortened lifespans in the “severely mentally ill” on “lifestyle issues” like smoking, while the drugs used to “treat” these “disorders” in fact dramatically INCREASE the rate of smoking among the “treated!”

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  • Scientifically speaking, there is no need to “prove that ADHD isn’t real.” And the existence of people who fit the description is not proof of anything. It is the responsibility of those claiming it is a disease state to prove that it IS a disease state. Anyone can describe a condition and claim it is a “disorder.” As I’ve said before, genetic diversity is the key to species survival. I’ll remind everyone of the study where groups of three kids having one “ADHD” – diagnosed child were WAY BETTER at solving problems than groups of three who did NOT have an “ADHD” child in their group.

    The point is not to prove that people can be identified as “fitting the criteria” that were chosen to describe “ADHD.” The point is to prove that such people a) have significant things in common besides acting a certain way, b) that there is some means of objectively distinguishing those so identified from the general population, and c) that the variation is a malfunction rather than simply a variation in genetic inheritance.

    For instance, running slowly has a very large genetic component. Failure to be able to run quickly leads to significant psychosocial distress, as any such person who has had to go to PE classes can testify. Giving stimulants to such people would improve their running speed to some degree in most cases. Is slow running a disease state? Who would need to provide proof of this? Would I have to prove that it WASN’T a disease? Or would someone claiming it was be responsible for the proof?

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  • Thanks for sharing this – it includes some good information that is new to me.

    I would pose this question to you: if, as you show above, fluoridation of the water supply can significantly effect the rates of “ADHD” in the population, how does that jibe with your earlier researcher’s claim that it is entirely caused by a mutation in a certain gene? Does this not suggest that the environment can and does have a huge impact in the expression of one’s genetic inheritance? Does it not suggest that people who do NOT present as “ADHD” to begin with can BECOME “ADHD” cases due to environmental influences?

    Taking this further, could there not be “psychologically toxic” environments that might “cause” a person to “become ADHD” when they otherwise would not have presented that way? Does it not similarly follow that there might be “psychologically healthy” environments that, if applied systematically, would REDUCE the likelihood that someone would present with “ADHD” syndromes or would reduce the severity of these “symptoms?”

    Doesn’t it make more sense to suggest that a person may inherit a “vulnerability” or a “tendency” to engage in this kind of behavior, but that the expression of this tendency is strongly affected by the environment they are forced to contend with? That it is not a “nature vs. nurture” situation, but rather a combination of nature/nurture, as most behavioral syndromes (and even major physical health problems, like heart attacks and diabetes) appear to be?

    If this is the case, which do we have more control over, nature or nurture? Genes or environment?

    I would ask why do we spend so much of our time and money focusing on the one element in the equation, the genetics, that can’t be changed? If we really want to help these kids, why would we not focus our energies and attention on altering the environment to improve these kids’ lives?

    Examples might include NOT fluoridating the water, creating open classrooms for kids who find them more workable, teaching parents how to handle these kids without accidentally reinforcing negative behavior, valuing and taking advantage of the kids’ strengths, and even holding kids out of school for an extra year to allow additional maturation?

    (Did you know that there is a 30% reduction in “ADHD” diagnoses for kids who start in school one year later? THIRTY PERCENT! We could avoid a THIRD of “ADHD” diagnoses by keeping kids who aren’t ready out of school for a year! Why aren’t we doing this?)

    I am not and have never been arguing that some kids don’t often “come that way.” My own kids are a good example – their personalities reflected an intensity, a need to be active and busy, an intolerance of boredom, that were certainly not a result of anything we did or did not do that we are aware of. My point here is that genetic diversity is the key to species survival, and being genetically “different” does not imply being genetically “disordered,” and genetics is in any case the one part of this equation that is completely unchangeable. Why don’t we acknowledge that both nature AND nurture are involved, and spend more time addressing environmental things (like water fluoridation and classroom structure and parent training) that CAN be changed to give these kids a better chance at survival?

    I hope everyone will consider the full implications of these findings. Something that is completely genetic in origin (like, say, eye color) would not be so variable depending on environmental impacts. It’s got to be both. Let’s accept that differences most likely exist, but spend our energies on trying to control the environmental variables that we CAN control!

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  • Yet in the 3-, 5- and 8-year follow-ups on this very same study, kids who continued or started to use stimulants did no better (and in some ways worse) than kids who discontinued or never used stimulants. Which fits in exactly with the data I just shared in another post, and which is generally well known but kept very quiet among researchers: stimulants do work to “control the core symptoms of ADHD,” as they usually put it, but have been shown again and again not to lead to any improvement in long-term outcomes. In other words, stimulants can make it easier for you to pay attention to your schoolwork and complete your homework, but apparently, paying attention to your schoolwork and completing your homework doesn’t lead to you becoming more successful later in life.

    In fairness, there are many who claim that stimulants destroy kids’ lives, and while that may be true in individual cases, in the collective, there is no evidence of stimulants doing great HARM to long-term outcomes in the collective. But they don’t really help, either, if you care about things like delinquency rates or high school graduation rates or social skills. And there are risks, outlined in my other post, that a rational parent might be well advised to consider when that risk is set against only short-term gains. It is a matter of informed consent, and it’s pretty dishonest at this point to claim that stimulants are going to magically change kids’ lives for the better in the long run. Some may choose to use stimulants for their short-term ability to “reduce the core symptoms of the disorder,” but if they’re aiming for longer-term improvements, it appears they have to look for additional interventions to help.

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  • Sounds like a very idealistic picture. I guess we will see how much of it comes true.

    I thought this article speaks to the idea of long-term use and loss of efficacy. Have you considered WHY tolerance develops over time? In the world of substance abuse, tolerance is related to significant brain changes.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3036556/

    Have you ever heard of “neurological down- or up-regulation?”

    “In 2013 they compared the brains of kids with ADHD before and after a year of treatment with stimulant medications. The studies showed an increase in the density of dopamine transporters—those molecules that take dopamine out of action—in the brain after treatment. This suggests that the increase of dopamine stimulated by the medication may have prompted the brain to develop more dopamine transmitters to clear it away. How long that change might last is not clear, as the level of transporters in the brain fluctuates. But it could result, researchers note in their conclusion, in the medication not working as well as it had to reduce symptoms over the long run.”

    https://childmind.org/article/will-adhd-medication-change-my-childs-brain/

    More on the long-term alteration of dopamine transmission with long-term use of stimulants over time:

    https://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-long-term-adhd-medications-increase-dopamine-transporters-051613

    Anybody here want to share your personal experiences with stimulants?

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  • As I’ve already demonstrated, long-term studies show no difference between “treated” or “untreated” subjects on all major outcome measures, including academic test scores, high school graduation rates, delinquency rates, college enrollment rates, social skills, and even self esteem, which is the one even I would expect to be affected. I was actually quite stunned when I first discovered this fact way back in about 1989 or so, when I first started researching this topic for my own son’s needs. Stimulant treatment is simply not a major factor in long-term success in “ADHD” – diagnosed children. Other factors appear to completely overwhelm any benefits of temporarily paying more attention to or completing more school work. Stating that certain psychiatrists “believe the evidence proving it is a bio-chemical problem, is overwhelming” is absolutely irrelevant. The data speaks for itself, and saying otherwise over and over doesn’t change the science.

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/000992287801700112 (This is Barkley and Cunningham’s study, where Barkley, one of the biggest ADHD advocates around whose income depends greatly on accepting ADHD as a valid construct, states that the VERY slight improvement in test scores for the “treated” groups was easily explainable by the subjects simply reading the questions a little more carefully than the control group. He called the long-term results “Disappointing.” But that has not stopped him claiming later on that anyone NOT putting their child on stimulants for “ADHD” is committing child abuse!)

    “Jacobvitz et.al. acknowledged the short-term benefits outlined earlier but focused on the same limitations of stimulants noted by Schrag and Divoky
    (1975), McGuiness (1989), and Kohn (1989). As a conclusion, Jacobvitz et al. urged “greater caution and a more restricted use of stimulant treatment” (p. 685). In contrast, Stevenson and Wolraich acknowledged the limitations outlined here but focused on the temporary suppression of symptoms.”

    https://escholarship.org/content/qt4jr2777t/qt4jr2777t.pdf (Swanson et. al, 2003)

    ““Good quality evidence … is lacking” that ADHD drugs improve “global academic performance, consequences of risky behaviors,
    social achievements” and other measures.

    What is absolutely fascinating is that they revised the report later to eliminate ANY MENTION of long-term outcomes, as if this conclusion were NOT drawn from the study. I think that says more than a bit about the desire of the psychiatric profession to cover up this embarrassing conclusion. (In fairness, they DID find one study of decent quality that showed a reduction in accidents for stimulant users. That was the only positive long-term outcome they found.)

    https://www.iacaf.org/assets/Uploads/Documents/DERP.pdf (OSU Medication Effectiveness Study)

    “Our results are silent on the effects on optimal use of medication for ADHD, but suggest that expanding medication in a community setting had little
    positive benefit and may have had harmful effects given the average way these drugs are used in the community.”

    https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w19105/w19105.pdf (Quebec provincial study)

    “No significant differences based on medication-use were noted for the following
    measures taken at 14 years of age: depression, self-perception, and socialfunctioning.
    • Whilst no statistically significant results were noted, a trend toward slightly higher
    depression scores was noted with the use of medication.
    • A trend toward slightly lower self-esteem and social functioning was also noted with
    medication use at one time point or two time points. However, consistent medicationuse at all time points, including at 14 years, trended toward slightly improved selfperception and social functioning.” There was also a finding of a MUCH higher percentage of grades repeated for those taking stimulants.

    https://ww2.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/Files/Corporate/Reports-and-publications/PDF/MICADHD_Raine_ADHD_Study_report_022010.pdf (Raine study from Australia)

    I can’t find the USA/Finnish comparison study right now, but it showed that medication rates were MUCH lower in Finland, yet outcome measures like delinquency and school failure were no different in these comparable populations.

    The studies referenced above involved MANY THOUSANDS (probably more) of “ADHD” diagnosed children in the USA, Canada, Finland, and Australia. The OSU study looked at every single reference they could get their hands on at the time that had to do with stimulants and ADHD. There is a mass of strong evidence that stimulants don’t alter long-term outcomes, and at this point, most research psychiatrists have accepted this as factual.

    This Web MD article is most significant in what it does NOT say about long-term outcomes. If there really WERE known benefits in the long term, don’t you think they’d mention them right here? But they don’t, do they? I wonder why?

    “Long-term effects. Some children continue taking ADHD drugs as adults. Decades of research has found no major negative health effects from taking them for a long time. Some studies have suggested that children who keep taking stimulants into adulthood may grow up slightly shorter. But other studies have found no link between medication use and adult height.”

    https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/childhood-adhd/adhd-kids-med-use

    The lack of long-term benefits from stimulant drugs for “ADHD” diagnosed children is an open secret. It is known but not talked about. Anyone claiming there IS some benefit for any of these long-term outcome measures has a big hill to climb. Simply stating that “I believe that” or “Dr. So-and-so says that…” is not going to come CLOSE to cutting it in this case.

    For those who actually believe in unbiased scientific analysis, the jury is IN on this question. The burden of proof is now on anyone claiming some long-term benefit. Stimulants are effective in short-term suppression of “ADHD” symptoms in the majority of children so diagnosed. That’s about all that can be said. Depending on one’s philosophy of education, and to some extent, on available educational options, this may or may not be considered beneficial. But claims of long-term benefits are mythological, not scientific.

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  • The average lifespan of the “seriously mentally ill” has steadily DECREASED since the advent of psychiatric drugs. Such people now die 20+ years younger than their non-diagnosed counterparts. A significant part of that decrease in lifespan is the result of treatment with antipsychotics. As many as 14.5 years lifespan may be attributed to antipsychotic use.

    https://www.hcplive.com/view/is-treating-schizophrenia-with-antipsychotics-worth-the-risk

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  • Well said. The only caveat, and a big one it is, is that whatever philosophical approach one takes, the results have to reflect some apparent improvement, at least within your own philosophical structure. It becomes a BIG problem when one becomes so committed to his philosophical views that actual data that doesn’t support one’s theories is ignored or minimized or denied.

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  • I have seen way too many kids “flip” to bipolar in my career as an advocate for foster kids. It is not rare that a kid gets aggressive in response to stimulants, but it is unfortunately VERY rare that doctors see that for what it is, and it almost always leads to more drugs and more serious diagnoses, instead of saying, “Gosh, those stimulants seem to have made things worse! Maybe we should stop and start over!” I had one who went two years deteriorating, until she herself decided to stop all three drugs she was on. She had become psychotic and aggressive on the stimulants, but when she stopped, she was back to her old self within days. But the doctors never had a thing to say about it. Did not even acknowledge they’d done her wrong. That happens WAY too often for my comfort!

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR:

    Hi, Gina,

    I have moderated the comments you reported, as I understand in context why these might have come across as offensive to you. I am sorry we didn’t catch them sooner.

    In the future, please email me rather than posting complaints about posts in the text of a comment. I am very responsive to such complaints, but it doesn’t help the community at large to have to process these complaints publicly, and as such, it is stated in the Posting Guidelines to handle such complaints by talking to the moderator or simply reporting them through the “report” function at the bottom of every post.

    Steve

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  • I think another vitally important question is how/why the current “mental health” apparatus does not SEE the very obvious connection between childhood adversity and adult “mental health” diagnoses. They spend decades researching the “biological underpinnings” of these “disorders,” and come up with 2, 3, 5% correlations, when childhood abuse/neglect/abandonment has associations at 80% or higher to most “disorders.” Seems like a case of intentional blindness. We’ll never be able to teach kids sufficiently about neurodiversity and the importance of healthy child rearing when the bulk of the “mental health” industry appears committed to denying that it matters!

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  • Thank you, Jonathan. As I have said, there are philosophical differences that lead to different approaches. Different approaches are absolutely allowable. Claiming that all kids who present in this way “have a biological deficiency” is NOT scientifically valid at this point. It is VERY important to make the distinction between philosophy, which entertains the possibility and effects of different worldviews, and science, which attempts to discern facts and predict precise outcomes. Confusing one with the other leads to a lot of false conclusions.

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  • Your comments continue tot be insulting. I never said “no biomarkers exist.” I said that your study did not prove that all or even most cases of “ADHD” are biological. I have also proven again and again that there are other alternatives to stimulant “treatment.” You are assuming the outcome and dismissing my example of my own kids because you don’t want to accept that your viewpoint is limited by your own biases. “Misdiagnosis” is common because there ARE NO OBJECTIVE STANDARDS FOR “DIAGNOSIS.” In fact, if there is no way to know who “has it” or doesn’t “have it,” there is no way to determine if someone is “misdiagnosed.” This leaves the door open to biased advocates to decide that anyone who IS helped by non-chemical methods “must have been misdiagnosed” to preserve their preferred belief system.

    My kids absolutely fit the criteria to a tee. They were helped to lead productive lives with no stimulants. You apologized earlier for minimizing that accomplishment, yet you continue to do exactly the same. You assert that I was making my blind children go around pretending to be able to see. That is incredibly insulting, and you don’t even realize it.

    I don’t “strongly disagree,” I have the best possible example that your generalization, which you repeat over and over again, is not true. I also have presented excellent proof that your insistence that “treatment” with stimulants is essential is absolutely not true, since in the long run, there are no significant advantages to “treatment” over “non-treatment” or “medical treatment” over psychosocial intervention.

    Seriously, PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND if you’re going to keep insisting that I’m a child abuser forcing my blind children to pretend to see! If you don’t agree with me, DON’T AGREE, but I don’t want to hear you telling me I’m wrong. If you can’t accept that the world is bigger and more complex than your data to date, you are no scientist and will fail to ever learn anything about why some people find your approach so horribly offensive.

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  • Nonsense. Reviews by Barkley and Cunningham (yes, the same Barkley who makes millions selling the idea that “ADHD” sufferers are being abused if not given stimulants) in 1978, Swanson in 1993 (“Review of Reviews”), and the Oregon State University Medication Effectiveness Project (which looked at EVERY piece of literature on the subject every published in about 2002) ALL concluded that there are no long-term outcomes improved by stimulant treatment when comparing those “treated” and “untreated” who were diagnosed with “ADHD”. Also, long term studies like the Quebec study, the RAINE study in Australia, and the Finnish study (compared kids in the USA with very HIGH “treatment” frequency and duration to kids in Finland with much lower treatment levels, no differences found) ALL found that there was NO long term benefit to those “medicated” vs. “unmedicated.” The highly-touted MTA study showed that the stimulant group had some advantages in reading at the end of a year, but by the three-year followup, that difference had vanished, and later followups showed that those who continued to be “medicated” had DETERIORATING outcomes in comparison.

    Here is a more recent revivew:

    “In the short term, stimulant medication is effective in reducing the symptoms of ADHD and appears well tolerated with relatively minor side effects. In the long term, much of the benefit of stimulant medication disappears after medication is ceased. Studies have demonstrated only marginal improvements in adult outcomes following a period of treatment in childhood.”

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1586/14737175.6.4.551

    Have you actually READ “Anatomy of an Epidemic?” This is covered in Anatomy, though more data has come in since Anatomy to provide even more support.

    Repeating quotes from some guy with a degree does not constitute evidence. The jury is in – long term “treatment” with stimulants DOES NOT improve long-term outcomes. 40 years of studies should be sufficient to prove this point. If you want to pretend it’s not true, that’s your choice, but don’t try to convince me or anyone actually familiar with the literature.

    I have the data on this, Enrico. Probably best not to try and argue this point, and instead either retreat or consider the real implications of the REAL science, rather than relying on quotes from “professionals” who probably have a conflict of interest.

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  • My kids NEVER felt they were lazy, crazy or stupid. Unfortunately, most of the kids I knew (and I knew dozens, probably hundreds) who were “diagnosed” with “ADHD” were pretty sure they were being told they were crazy. Some rebelled against it, some accepted that they were “crazy” or at least “incapable,” none of them I can recall escaped without feeling their “diagnosis” meant they were either dumb or crazy or incapable.

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  • “I will state with confidence that those children learned just as much when they were not trained. ADHD is a biological/chemical/electrical/organic malfunction of the brain and training will not and cannot improve concentration.”

    I already gave you a clear and thorough demonstration of exactly how this can be done. Your latter claim is not supported by the literature. As I’ve said all along. It appears you already “know” the answers, so why are you bothering to have a “discussion?” It sounds more like you want to force anyone who disagrees with you into submission.

    If you really care, do your own research. But I don’t think you’d accept it if the results were right in your face.

    And talk about not answering questions – if chemical stimulation to enhance concentration in a regular classroom environment is such a great solution, why is it that study after study shows no improvements in long-term outcomes for medicated vs. non-medicated “ADHD” diagnosed cases? Answer that if you want others to ask your (possibly disingenuous) questions.

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  • Or maybe some kids learn differently than is expected of them.

    Look, we’re not going to agree on this. It’s a philosophical problem, not a scientific one. You have a set of assumptions, mostly that kids learn best by doing what they’re expected to in a regular classroom, and that being unable to do that is a problem with the child. I have a different set of assumptions – that it is the adults’ job to figure out the best setting for children to learn in and that adapting your approach to the children’s needs obviates the need to come up with ways to get them to fit into the “normal” classroom. Within our own sets of assumptions, we’re both right. And it doesn’t seem that either of us are ready to accept the other’s philosophical assumptions. And it’s starting to get personal.

    Let’s just agree to disagree and have done with it. Diversity of perspective is the sign of a healthy community.

    All the best to you.

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  • How on Earth do you know that my children were “not as limited as many?” How could you possibly know that without meeting my children, and without attempting a similar intensive behavior program based on the individual needs of other similarly “impaired” children and seeing what the results were? Your comment continues to come across as condescending, as I find quite common with people who are advocates for stimulants, rather than objective observers looking for the best approach and open to new ideas.

    Where in my comments have I ever criticized you or said you should hate or disrespect psychiatry or psychiatrists? And I don’t condemn teachers, I am criticizing the SYSTEM of education that requires children to engage in behavior that meets the needs of the adults and not the children. I’ve even given you alternative educational approaches that work for “ADHD” diagnosed children, in which you have shown not the vaguest interest. What would happen to those kids who “can’t learn” in a standard classroom if they were given a different venue to learn in? What if 70% of them suddenly did not “need medication” any longer? Would you consider that a GOOD outcome? Or a BAD outcome?

    And if it’s all biological as you claim, why is it that there is a full 30% reduction in kids getting diagnosed “ADHD” if they wait one year longer to enter school, as has been shown in several quality studies? The 30% figure is remarkably stable over these studies, too. What would happen if these kids were given yet another year to mature before enrolling? Could we reduce that figure by 50%? Would you view that as a good thing, or a bad thing? Especially when there is NO evidence that taking these stimulants over the long term has any positive impact compared to kids who quit early or never took them.

    Your view of the situation is extremely monochromatic. I’m just trying to broaden your perspective, not tell you that stimulants are wrong or bad. I’m encouraging you to take a wider view, instead of assuming that using chemical means to enable a child to sit still and pay attention in a standard classroom is not only the best but the ONLY way to help kids who are struggling to learn in that environment.

    It doesn’t suit you very well to claim you are sorry for condescending and then continue to condescend. But maybe you can’t help it.

    This time I’m REALLY done. I’d appreciate it if you did not add more disrespect and condescension to the pile. Maybe best if you just stop trying to convince me of something I very well have established to be a very narrow and ineffective view of “ADHD” to my own satisfaction.

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  • After re-checking my post, I find your diminishment of the accomplishments described to be even more offensive. Did you even bother to read what I wrote? Do you have any comments or thoughts on the idea that using of rewards of intense stimulation to help kids learn new behavior? Do you have ANY experience in behavior change theories? Do you even understand the point I’m making, or are you just choosing to ignore it because it doesn’t fit your narrative?

    BTW, I have used these same approaches professionally with lots of kids, and also with adults, with some modifications. They WORK. It’s not because “my kids didn’t need medical interventions.” It’s because these interventions are smart and on target and very, very effective. But they require analysis, creativity, and months or even YEARS of HARD WORK! Maybe most people just don’t know how or don’t want to do that kind of work, and stimulants give them an “easy answer.” But one thing you have NEVER responded to is decades of research showing that long-term outcomes are NOT improved by stimulant treatment. My way DOES appear to affect long-term outcomes, at least in my kids’ cases. No learning problems, no delinquency, no school dropouts, continued high academic test scores, academic honors, and for one, a complete college education, again with academic honors. Stimulants can make no such claims. If you’re so interested in science, why not look for better solutions? Why spend all your time railing about genetics when it’s the one thing in the equation that can’t be changed?

    I assume you’re aware of the research on brain plasticity, that the environment molds and changes the brain based on how it needs to be used to survived. What if our approach altered the epigenetic conditions in the brain by teaching our kids to use their brains differently? Would that not be a great outcome, and exciting outcome? Why is that not of interest to you?

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  • My children functioned without medical intervention, but with a HELL of a lot of non-medical intervention. We EARNED their positive behavior through YEARS of hard work. You are trivializing it by trying to pretend that “they functioned without medical intervention,” as if what we did had NOTHING to do with their success! You are building a strawman argument to bolster your own case, rather than listening to the story and trying to find the core of meaning behind it.

    What if lots of children could function without medical intervention, and nobody ever tried? What then? What if we are exposing children to years of drug side effects without really addressing their issues? What if 90% of those children COULD “function without medical intervention,” yet never had the chance to because people like you insisted it was impossible? Are we not cheating them out of an opportunity to grow and learn by telling them and their parents it is impossible?

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  • Poor vision is objectively measurable, and is nearly 100% correctible by lenses. “ADHD” is a social construct “diagnosed” by a list of behavioral characteristics, some of which are, frankly, pretty ridiculous. “Acts like ‘driven by a motor’?” Isn’t that just a BIT different than “Is unable to read letters of X height from a distance of 20 feet?” Additionally, there is a very significant minority of “ADHD”-diagnosed, probably 30%, who don’t even respond positively to stimulants in the short term, some of whom actually get demonstrably worse (aggression, lethargy, psychosis in over 6% – hardly rare, eating problems, growth retardation – the list is pretty long).

    Your comment is clearly disrespectful to those of us who choose not to buy into drugs as the solution. And they ARE drugs. They are generally schedule II controlled substances that can be sold on the street for money. Pretending they are NOT drugs in order to preserve middle-class sensibilities is just plain dishonest.

    But yes, you are being extremely condescending to anyone who disagrees with your approach. “If someone doesn’t want improved vision, fine.” That implies that I have somehow neglected my children by forcing them to go around unable to see. As you can see from the results, my kids are NOT blind or limited in their capabilities in any way. They are just as capable as you or me, absent any stimulant “treatment” in their lives. It appears you are extremely invested in your idea that stimulant drugs are the only answer for kids who have what is at best a behavioral syndrome that is “diagnosed” by utterly subjective means. It’s insulting in the extreme, and I ask you to stop doing it, to me, and to anyone else you meet. Maybe instead of telling everyone else what is “right,” you could start listening and perhaps expanding your viewpoint. Instead of an analogy that I let my kids go around with poor eyesight, perhaps you can open your mind enough to say, “Wow, that sounds like you did a good job! Maybe there are other options I haven’t considered that could work for some kids.” I am not ascribing ANY immoral motives to you or anyone else who chooses to take stimulants, and I made that point more than once in this thread. I have been arguing ONLY from the scientific perspective that one study on a very limited population does not establish a “cause” for “ADHD” nor that it is a biological phenomenon only, nor that it is even a legitimate entity for scientific study. Your comments have been and continue to be dismissive and disrespectful of other viewpoints, and I’m calling you out on it. If anyone is ascribing ill motives to those who don’t agree with them, it is you who is doing so. You might want to take a very hard look at your own behavior instead of spending all your energy criticizing those who have good reasons to disagree with your assertions.

    And I have provided you a VERY concrete example of training that has had proven results. How is that “off the topic?”

    If you want to learn anything, you have to open your mind to the possibility that you have not been told the whole story. So far, I don’t see much if any openness to hear anything that contradicts your own preferred narrative.

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  • Just to be clear, there are plenty of women who embrace “patriarchy,” and also plenty of men who don’t. Internalized oppression is a very real thing, and there is no reason that a woman can’t engage in sexist behavior or operate on sexist assumptions and values. Remember Anita Bryant? I’d have to say that even proposing the idea that PTSD is caused by women being on their periods is offensive on the face of it. Though the I agree with the rest of what you said – the lack of “common sense” in such a study is startling!

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  • How long to you have? I can write a book on the subject.

    Just for starters: what do you know about “ADHD” kids? They need STIMULATION. They can’t stand boredom and routine. They often create behavioral issues in order to get the reward of adult engagement, even if it costs them getting in trouble. Which reinforces their negative behavior.

    So why not create a situation where they get intense stimulation for DOING WHAT THEY ARE ASKED TO DO?

    Example: My youngest didn’t like to lie still as we got ready for bed (reading time). He’d wiggle around, hide under the covers, smuggle in little toys to play with, and on and on. He was 5 1/2 at the time. I decided to create a program – I bet him a quarter that he couldn’t stay quiet for 1 minute without moving. Of course, he assured me he ABSOLUTELY could do that, NO PROBLEM! The first night, it probably took him 3 minutes to get settled down to the point I could even start the clock. But I waited until he was able to keep some semblance of calm for a minute, then I dramatically expressed GREAT frustration and coughed up the quarter begrudgingly. But I told him, “Tomorrow, we’re going to go for a minute and a half, and I KNOW you can’t do THAT!” We continued this process for a couple of weeks, and worked all the way up to 5 minutes. The last night, he took one deep breath, and completely relaxed, was totally still for five full minutes without a twitch. As I coughed up the last quarter, I said, “Well, I guess I was wrong. You CAN control your behavior, you just have to decide you WANT to do it!”

    Several months later, he and a friend (who happened to be diagnosed ADHD and on stimulants, but I did not know this) were jumping on our trampoline. His friend was violating the safety rules (he was older, more like 7, quite bright, and knew and remembered what the rules were). I reminded him of the rules, closed the door, and a minute later saw him doing the same thing! I went outside again and asked him why he kept violating the rules? He said, “I ate red dye this morning, and it cancels my medication, so I can’t control myself.” And Kevin immediately said, “Yes, you CAN control your behavior, you just have to decide you want to!” This was a very real, very deep learning experience for him which he was now applying to his friend. And all for only
    a few bucks and less than an hour of my time!

    Did this mean he was never wiggly or disruptive or oppositional again? Of course not! But it gave a context to have further discussions and to face bigger challenges building from this solid base. Plus it taught ME an important lesson – he WAS capable of facing pretty significant challenges, if he could WIN at the end, and especially if I got “upset” about his “defeating” me. I used this principle again and again throughout his childhood, and even as he grew older and recognized the “game” behind it, he still was tickled pink when I got “upset” with him for “beating” me, even when he knew I WANTED him to win.

    That’s just one short example of the kind of learning that can happen with a highly “ADHD” child when the adults, instead of getting angry at him for doing bad things, get “angry” at him for doing what we want!

    So rather than deciding to define my kids’ behavior or actually their entire personality as “wrong” or “disordered,” we spent most of our time validating the strengths of their personalities and identifying and helping them overcome their challenges through fun and challenging reinforcement programs. We regarded every moment as a possible teaching moment, and always had a goal and a focus for what we were working on next. I don’t want to suggest this was EASY – it was a lot of work, me made a lot of mistakes, and there was plenty of yelling and tears and accidental reinforcement of bad behavior. But we had a plan and stuck to it, and it worked. Eventually, Kevin himself started to set his OWN goals and pursue them with the passion he always brings to his life. He continues to this day to challenge himself to do better and to discipline himself to make his life the best it can be.

    There was never a need to pathologize their behavior, to label them as this or that, or to provide artificial stimulation through physiological means. We used what we knew about our kids and the behavioral patterns that were common, and we focused on building their strengths and using them to attack their difficulties and challenges.

    Does any of that sound irrational, punitive, or harmful to our kids? I think the success we achieved together speaks for itself.

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  • You are assuming that the “ADHD” child WANTS to learn but is UNABLE to learn. If that is the case, why is it that one review after another over decades shows that stimulants create more “on-task” activity but do NOT translate into more learning/understanding in the long run? Is it possible that the child is being forced to do “work” that is not actually educational for them? That they already understand the material and are simply bored by having to “practice” over and over and over again doing something they already have down? Or that if offered a more hands-on, active, self-paced opportunity to learn, they would thrive on it, but such an opportunity is simply not made available to them?

    I’d also ask you to explain why long-term outcome studies show no discernible effect on self-esteem, if these shaming experiences are theoretically reduced in number? Is it perhaps that we are replacing one shaming experience with another, telling a child he “needs his meds” in order to learn things? Singling him out as “disordered,” often in ways that are obvious to everyone in the classroom? What does it do to a kid’s self-esteem when told that his brain “doesn’t work right” and that he needs a drug to “rebalance his chemicals?” What happens later on in life when he discovers that he was actually lied to about that supposed “fact” (because as we should all know by now, the “chemical imbalance” theory is dead, even in mainstream psychiatric research circles)?

    I was a shy kid in school. I had no trouble understanding anything the teachers were trying to teach us, though I did get frustrated at the ridiculously slow pace. Frankly, I was BORED TO DEATH, and no amount of increased “time on task” was going to teach me anything I didn’t already know. And trust me, I daydreamed like mad, and often completely tuned out the teacher droning on about something I already understood. I needed some NEW TASKS in order to learn more, not more time on the same boring tasks that I’d long since mastered!

    I was very good at “complying,” so stayed out of trouble, but was terrified to talk because of the potential shame involved in exposing oneself to possible ridicule from the teacher or the other kids. I got embarrassed, turned red, and could not respond. I was laughed at. I avoided talking so as not to keep having that experience.

    So what was the problem, Enrico? Was I “disordered,” because I was sensitive and easily embarrassed? Was my constant daydreaming an indication of me having “ADD without hyperactivity,” or a sign that I was in an incredibly dull and unstimulating environment for hours on end every day? Was I “disordered” because I didn’t want to risk getting humiliated? Or was the problem PERHAPS that the environment was a complete and total setup for a shy person like me to be exposed to? Was the fact that no one gave a shit whether or not I was shamed or embarrassed, or that the teachers themselves often PARTICIPATED in the shaming behavior perhaps a factor in why I was so reticent? Today, I would no doubt be “diagnosed” with “Social Anxiety Disorder” and efforts would be made to make me more participatory and to be able to “control my emotions” so I was “tough enough” to handle the inevitable shaming experiences that would ensue. My needs would be invalidated, and I would be accused of being a failed person because I couldn’t easily “fit in” to what I was expected to do.

    Kids should not have to learn in a shaming environment. They should not have to learn in ways that risk trauma if they participate. They should be able to learn in ways that work for them, instead of having to be forced into a rigid structure that takes their normal ways of learning and makes them a source of shame and embarrassment? Instead of trying to alter the kids’ personalities, maybe we ought to teach our teachers how NOT to shame kids and how NOT to set up situations where other students can shame them as well?

    Another interesting study showed that kids diagnosed with “ADHD” actually LEARNED MORE WHEN MOVING AROUND! So by forcing them to sit still and “pay attention” to the teacher talking, we are STOPPING them from learning. If giving them stimulants makes them more willing to sit there and take in all the boring “information” being tossed at them, that apparently doesn’t translate into them learning any more than they would have if they goofed off the entire lecture. In fact, they’d probably learn MORE if they were allowed a half hour of searching the internet and reading about what they’re interested in than they do sitting through a lecture in a chemically altered state.

    I’ll again refer you back to the 1970s era study on “ADHD” kids in open classrooms. They stood out like sore thumbs in a “normal” classrooms, but professionals COULD NOT TELL THEM APART FROM THE “NORMALS” in an open classroom. So instead of drugging kids so they can sit still through a boring lecture and get higher points for “Stayed on task,” why not create open classrooms for anyone who needs or prefers that style of learning?

    Remember also the study showing that these supposedly “disordered” kids were a critical element in groups of elementary school kids actually solving problems. They brought something to the table that three “normal” kids would have benefitted from. Why do we want to suppress that strength, just so that teachers and parents have an easier time?

    The fact that teachers and other students hurt, shame and confuse other kids who don’t function well in a standard classroom is the fault of the teachers and the system they work with. As I’ve said before, my own kids had NO STIMULANTS despite pretty severe “ADHD” symptoms, but both graduated high school with honors and are paying their own way in the world and have functional relationships and goals and are functioning in every way as a contributing member of society. No one today would “diagnose” them with anything at all. What was different? We didn’t try to force our “square pegs” into the “round holes” of the school system until THEY decided they were ready for it. We loved and respected them, but of course taught them things they needed to know, including how to discipline themselves and how to get along with folks they disagreed with. Neither of them were in the tiniest degree unable to learn. In fact, they are both brilliant, fast learners! But they did not learn the way that schools expected them to learn. We never considered that their fault.

    You are asking others to consider your hypothetical scenarios. What about my very REAL scenario of my two kids, and the research that supports what we did to help them mature into functional adult citizens? Does that suggest that alternative viewpoints may not only exist, but in fact be viable ways to view the situation that lead to positive results?

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  • This is a nice story, but does not reflect reality in the vast number of cases I see, nor does the research support the “transformed overnight” meme, except in the most mundane of aspects, namely that many kids behave more acceptably to the teacher’s (or parents’ or professionals’) eye on stimulants. Long term studies and literature reviews have repeated ad nauseum that long-term stimulant use does not improve outcomes in academic, social, behavioral, or emotional areas. I’ve listed some of these in another post. Try googling “long-term outcomes stimulants ADHD” and read through the results. There will be a few individual articles claiming positive benefits, but the reviews of the literature and the long-term outcome studies, including the Montreal, Raine, the Finnish study, and the highly touted MTA study, all show “disappointing” results.

    I would also submit that your characterization of how adults treat these hypothetical “ADHD” children amounts to verbal and emotional abuse. Giving drugs to avoid verbal and emotional abuse by adults seems a little ass-backwards to me. Perhaps the parents need to learn how to treat a child who doesn’t naturally fit into the largely arbitrary social expectations foisted on them by schools and often by the parents themselves?

    As I’ve said before, I speak from direct experience in this case. It is VERY possible to create a positive environment that is both nurturing and sets reasonable and attainable expectations for kids based on their personalities. It’s just that very few children ever experience these conditions, because parents are expected to send their kids to schools that are not suited to their needs.

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  • I’m not resisting what Birk shows. Saying that this mutation is ONE POSSIBLE CAUSE of the syndrome called “ADHD” is absolutely fine. Saying it IS THE CAUSE of ADHD is not fine. That’s what it sounded like you were saying. The big problem I’m pointing out is taking a single finding and extrapolating it to everyone, going from a subset of “ADHD”-diagnosed people have this particular anomaly to “ADHD” is a disease state that is caused by this genetic mutation. It presents an interesting template for further study. But there are many other interesting templates for examination, including low iron, sleep apnea, nutritional problems, exposure to abuse/neglect, exposure to domestic abuse in the home, inappropriate expectations set on younger children, maturity at admission to school, classroom structure, skills of parents and/or professionals managing these children, and on and on. As I explained to you earlier, I have two of my three boys who fit the “ADHD” criteria to a tee, and both were successful in high school and one in college with no drug intervention whatsoever. Should we not be grateful that at least some “ADHD” kids can be TAUGHT the skills to concentrate when they need to? Would this not be a topic for investigation? Isn’t that information that can be used to help others? Isn’t that what we are all striving for?

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  • OK, I’m going to try one more thing here and then that’s it for this discussion for me. I will keep it very simple.

    Let’s say we did a study and found that poison ivy causes skin rashes. We had a large sample of people and found that 90% of those exposed to poison ivy got a skin rash.

    Can we now conclude that skin rashes are caused by poison ivy?

    Or can we conclude that a certain subset of skin rashes are caused by poison ivy?

    What would we need to do to demonstrate that ALL skin rashes are caused by poison ivy? Would this one study be sufficient to show that?

    This is what you’re doing here. You are saying that people who have this mutation are likely to fit the description of “ADHD.” This is not something I’m arguing with. I’m asking you how you could possibly conclude from this one study that ALL cases of “ADHD” have this cause?

    The answer is, you can’t. If you can’t see that, you can’t try talking science to me. It’s a fundamental tenet of science – correlation does not imply causation. There could be 500 different, distinct causes of the syndrome called “ADHD,” and this could be one of them. We could do the same with abused children – take 100 abused children and 25 of them are diagnosed with “ADHD.” Does this mean child abuse causes “ADHD?” No. It means at most that SOME “ADHD” behaviors are caused or increased by child abuse. It could even mean that abused kids are more likely to be taken to a psychiatrist for a diagnosis. Or that foster care placement makes kids more anxious and that this creates more “ADHD” symptomology. And there are many people who are diagnosed with “ADHD” that have no child abuse in their background. But it is a factor that contributes. That’s all we can say.

    Like I said, you could be right, maybe every single case of “ADHD” has this mutation. But this study certainly doesn’t come anywhere CLOSE to proving such a thing. It shows that people who have this genetic mutation are likely to show “ADHD” symptoms. And that is ALL it shows. The rest will require further study.

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  • Sorry, can’t agree with you here. I can’t argue with the result that a certain very small subset of people diagnosed with “ADHD” had the genetic mutation that Birk has located. I don’t want to argue with that. But science is limited to answering the question asked. This study showed that a small sample of humans diagnosed with “ADHD” had a certain genetic anomaly. That is ALL that it proved, whatever the researchers theorize it means. Science is inherently SKEPTICAL. It is supposed to doubt its own conclusions and try to come up with alternative explanations and to DISPROVE anything that it wants to prove. No real scientist has the attitude that one study, particularly with the small sample size involved, can “prove” that “ADHD” is biological! It’s an outrageous assertion scientifically. Consider that we all “knew” for a certainty the formulas for acceleration and force and the gravitational constant and so forth for CENTURIES before Einstein showed them to be an approximation rather than a precise description of reality. Science is always working to improve itself, and that means questioning assumptions and conclusions that are not established beyond a reasonable doubt, and even those that ARE established as “laws” are STILL subject to revision when contradictory data arrives on the scene.

    Replication is the core of scientific verity, moreover, replication in the face of efforts to establish alternative explanations. You can’t take one study and extrapolate it to apply to the entire population in question, ESEPCIALLY when this population is defined by ridiculously subjective criteria like “displays poor listening skills” or “appears to be ‘driven by a motor’ or is often on the go.” Seriously, “Often on the go?” You think that every child who is “often on the go” would not be “on the go” except for some genetic anomaly? It is absurd to so readily believe that one study, which establishes nothing more than an ASSOCIATION with these “ADHD” traits, proves causality.

    Anyway, you seem to have convinced yourself and are not really interested in discussion. I’m not sure why it is so important to you to make more of this study than it offers, but maybe you’ll be right and I’ll be wrong in the long run. But I certainly will not concede that a single study on a tiny subsection of this population proves “causality” of “ADHD.” Come back to me when you have at least three studies from different, non-biased sources that indicate that over 90% of those “diagnosed” with “ADHD” have this anomaly, and that less than 10% of the general population have the same anomaly, then maybe we can talk.

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  • Your comment comes across as extremely arrogant. Neither you nor Dr. Birk has come anything close to explaining why a subjective list of behavior that adults and especially school personnel find annoying is 100% “caused” by a genetic anomaly that is seen in mice.

    I am the first to say that kids (and adults) who have a hard time concentrating on the daily drudgery of the average school classroom should not be abused, neglected or treated as second-class citizens. But the problem in my mind is not the kids, it is the school structure itself and the ongoing justification of mistreating children who don’t do well in that structure that is to blame here. I totally allow that there are some kids who are born not being tolerant of boredom and repetition, not liking to sit still, etc. just because they came that way. Two of my three boys who fit that description. Both of them graduated high school with honors and have social lives and have successful jobs and are no less happy and productive than the average person, despite neither of them ever having had a milligram of stimulants in their lives. We did have lots of frustrations, especially with the older one (we learned so much from him that the younger was MUCH easier!) and I’m certain if we’d sent them to “normal” schools with “normal” classrooms, they’d have struggled and probably learned to hate school. So we didn’t do that. We sent them to alternative schools and homeschooled for several years, and spent a lot of time learning creative ways to approach discipline that worked better for their particular personalities. And yes, they COULD and they DID learn how to concentrate when they needed to, how to alter their approach to relationships, to accept losing and failure as learning opportunities, and even how to accommodate arbitrary restrictions an expectations in order to get what they wanted/needed out of life.

    I would also add that if YOU find stimulants helpful to YOUR life, I certainly have no objection to your choosing to use them in whatever way seems helpful to you. I do object to your attempts to narrow the discussion to Dr. Birk’s single, small-sample, narrow and unreplicated study as some kind of proof that you have all the answers and that everyone else’s conception of “ADHD” is wrong and that it’s 100% biologically caused and that anyone who acts that way has a “disorder” and that anyone who thinks otherwise is sadly ignorant. There is PLENTY to talk about both philosophically and scientifically that is unresolved, and I am extremely well versed in a wide range of research on this topic, in addition to having personal and professional experience over many years in the area. So please, do not condescend to me and pretend that your single study has proven anything. I hear and understand and agree that there are most likely biological conditions that are ASSOCIATED with “ADHD” symptoms. But that is a tiny, tiny piece of a very large and complex puzzle that involves not only biology, but culture, history, sociology, philosophy, and education, among other variables.

    I have not even touched on the very important question of long-term outcomes. There is at this point a pretty solid range of literature showing that stimulant “treatment” alone does nothing overall to improve long-term outcomes like high school graduation rates, college enrollment, academic test scores, delinquency rates, teen pregnancy rates, drug abuse rates, social skills, or even self-esteem (even if they may help one or more of these things in a PARTICULAR person at a particular time). Even if it is absolutely proven that EVERY person who fits the subjective “ADHD” profile has this genetic anomaly, which I hope you are able to acknowledge is NOT claimed nor proven by your Birk study, there is scant evidence that taking stimulants does anything more than temporarily make it a little easier to concentrate (just like it does for most adults, “ADHD”-diagnosed or not – see my other post), which doesn’t even lead to better educational outcomes on more than a short-term basis. So why spend all this time arguing about whether or not “ADHD” is caused by a genetic anomaly while not addressing the major concern that taking or not taking stimulants doesn’t seem to make a big difference in the long term for the “ADHD” sufferer? Maybe we should spend less time on arguing about genetic causation and more on figuring out how to make the school environment more workable for these kids (and for other kids who also find it oppressive but are “genetically” more able to pretend they’re OK with it)? After all, genetic diversity is the key to species survival. Why are we picking on these “ADHD” kids when we know that, for example, putting them in an open classroom environment (that’s what we did for our boys and it worked!) makes such kids virtually indistinguishable from “normal” kids?

    I am sorry you have suffered at the hands of the system. It didn’t have to be that way. But I don’t think the evidence suggests a simplistic, biological answer to what is a complex sociological problem.

    I’ll leave you with this: a recent experiment took groups of three elementary school kids and gave them three problems to solve in a specified period of time. The experimental group had one “ADHD” diagnosed kid and two “normal” kids, while the control group consisted of three “normals.” They were rated on percentage of time on task as well as on how many problems they were able to solve. Not surprisingly, the groups with the “ADHD” kid in them spent considerably more time “off task” doing and saying things that had nothing to do with solving the problems at hand. The surprising outcome (to the experimenters, though not to me) was that NONE of the groups of “normal” kids were able to solve any of the problems they were presented with, while the “ADHD” groups consistently solved one or more of the problems, despite spending less time focused on finding a solution. Of course, if they’d had groups of three “ADHD” kids vs. three “normals,” the results may have been quite different. But I think the lesson from this study is that people who are off-task, silly, have scanning rather than fixed attentional focus, are ESSENTIAL to the survival of our species. They are the ones that come up with new ideas, that “think outside the box,” the ones not constrained by convention but who can dedicate themselves to finding a way to make things work, regardless of what anyone else thinks of their approach. We need these kids and adults!

    Just in case you think I’m making this up: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freedom-learn/201603/adhd-creativity-and-the-concept-group-intelligence

    It has been observed that folks like Edison and Einstein and Gauss and Lincoln and Van Gough and Leonardo Da Vinci might have been diagnosed with “ADHD.” I have to wonder what marvelous contributions to the world might have been lost if these folks had been “properly medicated” in their day? Maybe the world just needs to make more room for people who don’t like to sit at a desk and do as they’re told all day long. Maybe it IS genetic, but why would 10% of the population have this particular genetic inheritance if it didn’t have a purpose in helping our species survive?

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  • Could you PLEASE respond to my very valid points regarding the CDH2 mutation NOT being established to exist in all or most or even any kind of percentage of so-called “ADHD” sufferers? Or help us understand why early childhood abuse and neglect is associated with 4-5 x increase in “ADHD” diagnosis if this is all about the CDH2 mutation? I could add more, but I want to keep it simple so we can see if you have any kind of answer to these key questions. So far, you have avoided them and keep repeating the details of this rather limited study.

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  • Just to be clear, Judith Rappoport, et. al., showed unequivocally (back in about 1978) that non-labeled people respond exactly the same way as “ADHDers” to stimulants. She called the claim of differential response “an artifact of observation” due to the fact that people are LOOKING for a particular response from the “ADHDers” and so notice and value that response, while the same response from “normals” doesn’t get any attention because no one is trying to “fix” them. So the improved concentration you attribute to “ADHDers” responding instantly to stimulants is the same improved concentration that ANY PERSON would gain as a result of stimulants.

    “Since the positive effects of stimulants on disruptive behavior were described (Bradley & Bowen, 1941), further pediatric study has been limited almost exclusively to samples of hyperkinetic school-age children. Because these agents normally were viewed as arousing in their effects on the central nervous system, but were calming in their therapeutic effects on these children, stimulant effects on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) were interpreted as being ‘paradoxical.’ Investigation of effects in normal children and adolescents and in those with disorders unrelated to Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), as well as in young adult samples, however, indicate that stimulants appear to have similar behavioral effects in normal and in hyperactive children. This brief report is an update (as of August 2002) on studies of stimulants in ADHD and normal children, with particular focus on MPH.”

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/10812795_Responses_to_methylphenidate_in_Attention-DeficitHyperactivity_Disorder_and_normal_children_Update_2002

    Since you seem to have respect for researchers in the field, I will assume that we can consider that particular topic closed.

    Steve

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  • I have made my points, and you appear to have no response other than “Dr. Birk said so.” The fact that Dr. Birk said so is of absolutely no consequence to me or to Science as a whole.

    I don’t need to contact Dr. Birk – s/he has overstated the case by any level of scientific analysis. It appears we will be unable to agree on these points. You are free to believe Dr. Birk’s analysis if you wish, but it is still important for any real scientific discussion to point out the limitations of the research presented. Since you appear to have no interest in responding to the points I have raised, it appears that no further discussion is possible.

    Best to you in the future.

    Steve

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  • Ah, now we get down to it. It is ASSOCIATED with “familial ADHD.” Associated means it occurs with a higher percentage in the “ADHD” population than in the general population. It does not mean it is a cause, as there may be many, many cases of the same mutation in people who don’t fit the “ADHD” criteria. “Correlation is not causation.”

    We know for certain that familial domestic abuse is highly associated with “ADHD.” It occurs more frequently in the “ADHD” population than in the general population. Does that mean that familial domestic abuse causes “ADHD?” What about the many children who are exposed to the same kind of parental behavior who do NOT develop “ADHD” symptoms? What about the large number of “ADHD” diagnosed children who don’t have domestic abuse in their history?

    Other associations are low iron, sleep apnea, younger age of starting school, being in a traditional classroom vs. an open classroom, abuse/neglect at an early age, etc. Are all of these “causes” of “ADHD” because they are “associated” with “familial” ADHD? Does a traditional classroom “cause” ADHD because more “ADHD” behavior is associated with it? Or does a traditional classroom structure simply not WORK for a certain percentage of children, for a wide variety of reasons?

    Correlation is not causation. And you continue to avoid the most important question of why this particular set of subjective behaviors are automatically a “disease state” even if a consistent physiological cause were found.

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  • Sounds a lot like “blaming the victim” to me. Of course, people don’t want to feel marginalized. But why is it their job to carve off parts of their personality in order to “fit in?” Why is it not the job of society in general to help people feel more welcome and accepted, even if their behavior is unusual or confusing, yet does no harm to anyone? Isn’t a lot of “mental illness” simply the consequence of society’s narrow view of what is “normal” or “acceptable” behavior?

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  • That is more than possible, since they seem to know very little about either on the whole. But I think that would make you more of a shaman than a doctor. Of course, if I wanted to use psychedelics for any reason, I’d of course seek out a shaman and avoid anyone claiming to be a “medical practitioner” using psychedelics as “treatment” for some manufactured “disease” s/he decided I supposedly was afflicted with.

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  • Again, claiming “cause” requires establishing that all or almost all “ADHD” sufferers HAVE the CDH2 mutation, and that no or almost no “normal” people have this mutation. To claim this from the data presented is pretty laughable. They’ve shown that a very small sample of people/mice subjectively judged to “have ADHD” without objective measures happen to have this particular mutation. Does EVERYONE with this mutation have “ADHD?” Or is it 10%, 20%, 50%? Does EVERYONE diagnosed with “ADHD” have this mutation? Do some have the mutation and NOT develop “ADHD symptoms?” Is the presence/absence of this mutation determinative of a person’s long-term success in life? Does “treatment” for this putative problem actually do anything to improve long-term outcomes for those so “diagnosed?” Is there even an objective way to determine who “has” or “does not have ADHD?”

    It is scientifically absurd to declare that this mutation “causes” ADHD when the “disorder” itself is not objectively discernible, nor is there any indication that those so “diagnosed” have any kind of physiological problem or are just a normal variation of behavior that doesn’t work so well in modern society. After all, genetic diversity is central to species survival. Why is a genetic variation, even if it is 100% associated with this behavioral syndrome, automatically a “disorder” when our species depends on a wide variation of genotypes and phenotypes to survive?

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  • There are no long-term outcomes that are improved by “ADHD treatment” with stimulants. This has been shown by Barkley in 1978, by Swanson’s “Review of reviews” in 1993 or so, and by the OHSU comprehensive study of long-term outcomes, which looked at essentially every study ever published on the subject up to somewhere around 2001. There were NO improvement in long-term outcomes for “treated” vs. “untreated” subjects noted in the OHSU study, including academic test scores, high school graduation rates, college enrollment, delinquency rates, teen pregnancy rates, social skills measures, employer satisfaction rates, or even self-esteem. The only variable that was improved is a slight decrease in accident rates. In Barkley’s 1978 review, he said that the improvements in academic test scores were so small that they were easily explainable by reading the questions more carefully. And yes, this is the same Russell Barkley who has become one of the keenest advocates for “treatment” for “ADHD,” so we can hardly blame researcher bias.

    Additionally, long-term studies like the Quebec study, the Raine study in Australia, the Finnish comparison study, the long-term follow-ups to the MTA study in the USA, all lead us to the inevitable conclusion that long-term outcomes are not positively affected by stimulant treatment. To claim “we know there is a biochemical basis to ‘ADHD’ is, of course, utter nonsense scientifically. But we are not even at the point where we can say that “treatment” leads to any significant long-term improvements in any significant outcomes.

    The small study that is referenced doesn’t even come close to touching any of these long-term effectiveness questions. It ignores the obvious environmental impacts on “ADHD” behavior, including later entry to school, having open classrooms, and the impact of psychosocial stressors on the “diagnosis” (studies have shown “diagnosis” rates of 5-10 times higher in children who have experienced serious abuse or neglect). Nor does it address finding some objective way of even determining who “has” or “does not have” “ADHD.”

    Repeating something over and over again doesn’t make it true. From a purely scientific viewpoint, “ADHD” isn’t even something that can be objectively determined to exist, let alone to be a “disorder” or divergence from “normal.” This study barely scratches the surface on questions of etiology, differential “diagnosis,” and long-term effectiveness of proposed “treatments.” It is ridiculous to claim that this proves any kind of “biological basis,” when the condition you have identified hasn’t even been established to exist in all or most or who knows what percentage of “ADHD” diagnosed people, nor the percentage of the people having this variation who may NOT have any “ADHD” symptoms to speak of. And of course, the entire enterprise is called completely into question by an inability to objectively even define who does or does not qualify for the “diagnosis” of “ADHD” in the first place.

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  • Nonsense. We would need to see that all or almost all cases of “ADHD” have this same mutation, and that no or almost no person with this mutation does NOT have the “ADHD” features. Given that “ADHD” is defined by subjective behavior and sociological variables, the odds that EVERY case of “ADHD” so “diagnosed” is caused by this mutation is exceedingly questionable. In any case, this question does not begin to be answered by a handful of mice, or even a very small number of “ADHD” cases studied. We also know that, for instance, waiting one year before enrolling a child in school leads to a 30% reduction in “ADHD” diagnoses (a number of studies confirm this), that sociological stress such as neglect and domestic abuse increases the rate of “diagnosis,” that placing such children in “open classrooms” makes it practically impossible for professionals to distinguish them from “normal” children, and that prior comparisons of “genetic markers” have proven extremely heterogeneous, that is, that many “diagnosed” with “ADHD” did NOT have the markers, and many who were NOT “diagnosed” did in fact have the same markers.

    And of course, the entire line of inquiry ignores the rather obvious question of why a particular challenge in paying attention to boring activities is considered a “disorder” in the first place. I recall an article (which I can’t seem to locate now) that showed employer satisfaction with historically “ADHD” employees did not differ from those not so diagnosed. The explanation offered was that those with this “diagnosis” simply chose employment opportunities that fit with their personalities, rather than being forced, as they are in schools, to do what they are ordered to do with no ability to choose the activities they prefer. This is strongly supported by investigations in the 70s indicating that “ADHD” children are virtually indistinguishable from “normal” children in an open classroom environment.

    In short, there is a huge number of variables involved in this analysis that are ignored, most particularly the problem of “selecting” subjects based on a subjective list of behavioral characteristics that are not truly measurable in any objective manner. This particular study does nothing to answer the bulk of questions that the diagnosis itself raises, yet even within the context of the accepted nomenclature, there is no way to draw the conclusion you claim from the extremely limited study you present.

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  • My objections remain unanswered. This is a speculative effort to establish a correlation between “ADHD diagnosis” and a certain genetic pattern. It is performed on a very small number of MICE. It does not address questions of rearing variables, does not establish probability of the “error” being found in the “ADHD-diagnose” population, nor in the general population vs. “ADHD-diagnosed.” It does nothing to establish any kind of “abnormality” of this genetic combination to distinguish it from normal genetic variation. One more “promise” of a “biological cause” which is nothing of the sort.

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  • As usual, you are identifying an “association.” Nothing in your article speaks of a “cause,” nor does the degree of “association” appear anywhere here. There is no comparison stating what percentage of people who have this mutation who are “diagnosed” with “ADHD” vs those who are not, nor what percentage of “ADHD” sufferers actually have this particular mutation. To claim “biochemical cause” as you imply in your first sentence, we’d need to know that almost all “ADHD” sufferers had the mutation and almost no one who has the mutation is NOT diagnosed with “ADHD.”

    The article also avoids the very important question of whether or not this is simply a normal genetic variation that has been pathologized because the associated behavior is annoying to adults.

    It is tiresome to keep hearing of these “breakthroughs” which don’t address the most basic scientific questions yet claim “proof of biological causation.”

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  • I like some of what you said, but I don’t agree that the DSM would shrink in the absence of child abuse and neglect. The DSM serves a purpose that is very different than helping people recover from trauma. It enables psychiatry to justify intervening in situations where they don’t have the first idea how to help, and it also justifies blaming the victim when their “treatments” don’t work or do harm. There are WAY too many people making money off of the current system to think they’d just back off if humans suddenly became more sane. I think the greater hope would be that humans who were NOT abused in childhood would find it easier to recognize the false “authority” of psychiatrists in the area of “mental health” and that psychiatry would die a well-deserved death in the face of actual approaches that help people learn and grow spiritually rather than ones that try to “help” by disabling people’s brains with dangerous drugs.

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  • That data was from two WHO studies in the mid-90s, which Whitaker reports on in Anatomy of an Epidemic. They re-did the same study because the mainstream psychiatrists didn’t believe the results. They still try to explain it away by saying it is due to “cultural factors,” while ignoring the most obvious difference – fewer people on fewer antipsychotics.

    You are fortunate to hear Seikkula in person! I’d love to have that opportunity!

    Steve

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  • That is a pretty MASSIVE disparity! Of course, the psychiatrists would like to blame it on “the disease,” but the almost certain culprit is the drugs they use to “treat” it.

    Would love to see someone do a comparison with “untreated schizophrenia” and see the prevalence in that population compared with those “fortunate” enough to get the best of modern medical “care.”

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  • I appreciate that you say you “prefer it.” As I said, we’re talking philosophy here, not science. Until we know something of how neurons “generate inner realities,” we’re speculating. We don’t KNOW a single thing about the “mind” except indirectly by its apparent effects. My opinion is that we will not ever get there, because we’re using the mind to study the mind. The Buddhists have probably come the closest to getting a handle on it, but again, they are focused on effects, not on where the mind actually comes from or what it particularly is.

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  • So how have these studies led you conclude that “mind” is an emergent property of neurology? What concrete observations show this to be the case?

    BTW, I admire you commitment to these studies. I totally support the study of the mind/spirit or whatever you want to call “it” by individuals and groups. I just don’t see this leading to any scientific conclusions. But I’m open to new information, of course.

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  • But why does the mind as a virtual extension of neurological activity “stand on its own?” It only does if we adopt a “materialist” philosophical viewpoint. Science can tell us that we have a brain and what the brain is doing and how it happens, but so far, it can’t really identify what “mind” really is. So how can we conclude that it’s a neurological phenomenon? That only holds if we pre-judge that it can’t be anything else. Which is not a scientific position, it’s a philosophical one. There are plenty who would say that the world doesn’t make sense without a “creator” on a spiritual level. They don’t have “proof” either but are just as convinced of their viewpoint.

    Psychiatry, in fact, relies on a “materialist” interpretation of the world to conclude that “Mind must derive from brain, therefore Mind can be altered only by altering the brain.” I think it’s important to take a stand that psychiatry has NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what “mind” is. And my observation is that as soon as we concede that a materialist worldview is the ONLY worldview that is “rational,” we spiral very quickly down the slippery slope into pseudoscience and violent acts on the body to affect the mind. So I think it’s essential NOT to accept that we “know” that the mind is a function of the brain, and that it is, in fact, a mystery. I’m not claiming I know any more about it than anyone else, but the truth is, any speculation about the mind is not based on scientific knowledge, because we don’t really know what it is we’re talking about.

    Until you get me a spoonful of “mind” or in some other way demonstrate what it is in a replicable manner, it remains beyond the scope of science to study.

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  • There is also nothing to prove that it is an emergent property, nor anything to prove it is NOT of a spiritual nature. The mind remains a mystery which Science has so far not made a dent in. Questions of philosophy must be answered (such as what IS a mind? or Do non-material things potentially exist?) before any claims can be made about the nature of the mind.

    You write as if failure to prove a spiritual reality exists means that it doesn’t. It does not. Most people don’t realize that there are THREE conditions for any scientific question: True, False, and Insufficient Data to Determine. The Mind belongs to the latter designation.

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  • They apparently need two “statistically significant” results from two separate studies. Unfortunately, there can be 150 studies showing no response or negative response, and it doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter if “statistically significant” changes are meaningful to the patient/client, nor whether the client regards the benefit as not worth the cost. Study dropouts are often not counted as failures in the results, placebo responders are often filtered out at the beginning to give the drug a better chance of “success,” and still the “improvements” are often tiny and not of clinical significance.

    It’s a racket!

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  • Reading this has led me to look at my own eating behavior and attitude towards food, and how pervasive this idea of controlling food and weight has become in our culture. It seems to happen without thinking. It seems “normal” for us to be anxious and compulsive about weight gain and about food!

    It seems to me that we ought to be collectively attacking those attitudes, which it appears that many if not most of us share, rather than labeling those at the more extreme end of the spectrum as somehow “deficient” or “wrong” because their particular adaptation to these bizarre expectations and attitude about food and bodies happens to fall into a certain range. I will be thinking differently about my own relationship to food after this. Thanks, Shira!

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  • It’s like trying to find the “cause” of abdominal pain. If you try to find one cause, you’ll be completely baffled and decide it is “incurable,” and spend a lot of money on pain relievers and Ex-Lax. There is no reason to believe that “schizophrenia,” itself definable in so many different ways even within the DSM paradigm, is a “thing” that is caused by another “thing.” It is, at best, a syndrome that could have a wide variety of causes and potential solutions. Should be obvious to anyone who understands science, but apparently a hell of a lot of “mental health professionals” aren’t in that group!

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  • What if getting help from the medical field is not going to be that person? Is it possible that someone from a very different background could provide the listening and support you need?

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  • I would submit that there is plenty of evidence from many sources indicating that doctors/psychologists/therapists, having an inordinate power balance vis-a-vis their clients, will not infrequently abuse that power imbalance to their advantage, consciously or unconsciously. Why this would somehow NOT apply to therapy using psychedelics would be a big mystery to me. There are capable therapy practitioners out there, for sure, but there is little to no accountability or quality control. Once you have your degree, you can do just about anything that can be framed as “for the client’s good” and get away with it. I am glad you’ve had good experiences, but I don’t think we can assume from either your or Will’s experience that any particular practitioner will not take advantage of his/her position. They may do so without even realizing it, and the client then has no recourse, and often lacks the sophistication to even know they’re being misled or taken advantage of.

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  • First off, much of Western medicine is in fact based on fantasy, psychiatric care being the most prominent example. It is a TOTAL FANTASY that we can “diagnose” someone with a “medical disorder” by observing their behavior and comparing to some semi-arbitrary checklist created by someone laden with personal/cultural biases against some of the behaviors on the list. The clearest example is “ADHD.” We take a set of behavior that adults find annoying and put it in a list, and then “diagnose” kids who meet these “criteria,” which were created from whole cloth from the fantasy of the “acceptable student” that the creators have imagined. There is no possible way to prove you DON’T have “ADHD,” because there is no test – it is 100% “clinical opinion.” Moreover, there are studies showing that “ADHD” kids are indistinguishable from “normal” kids in an open classroom, that 30% of “ADHD” kids become “normal” if they just wait a year before starting school, or that groups who include an “ADHD” child in them are greatly improved in solving concrete problems. Yet they are “disordered” because someone didn’t like how they behaved, because they were inconvenient to adults.

    Can’t get much more fantasy-based than that! There is nothing “scientific” about psychiatry when the “diagnoses” are meaningless fantasies from the powerful projected on the powerless. Basically, they have drugs, they hit you with them, they see what happens. Half the time, when it doesn’t work, or makes things worse, they raise the dosage or add more rather than removing the offending drug. There are no real standards and no clear accountability for errors or abuse. No science involved.

    Second, there is plenty of evidence that many folk practices work just fine. In fact, the entire idea of drugs and pharmacies came from the use of herbal medicine, many of which have been in use for tens of thousands of years. I trust 10,000 years of human experience over a couple of biased 6-week trials from drug companies.

    It is simplistic to dismiss 10,000 years of folk medicine and pretend that Western medicine has all the answers.

    Oh, just to add, full operations have been done using acupuncture as anesthesia. Very unscientific? I don’t think so.

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  • Wow, that is a horrible story! I am so sorry you have had to deal with this level of abuse and idiocy!

    I really believe the only way any of this will change is when it starts costing them more money than they are making. We need some kind of class action lawsuit where psychiatrists and drug companies and hospitals and insurance companies (especially insurance companies!) have to pay for their errors in big money.

    My sincerest condolences on your loss.

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  • There are many who believe that drug residues are stored in our fat cells, and can be released at later time by activities of normal living.

    But half lives have a lot to do with withdrawal symptoms. Short acting drugs like amphetamines act quickly, but also leave the system quickly. The withdrawals can be extreme but the half lives are short, so the recovery is quicker. Long-acting drugs, like “antidepressants” and “antipsychotics,” take a while to build up but have very, very long half-lives. So withdrawal can last a long time.

    This is not even taking into account the brain changes that happen with psychoactive drugs. It can take a much longer time for a brain to fully heal, long after the drugs have mostly left the system entirely.

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  • I wouldn’t rule it out – they can make up anything and call it a “disorder” and no one bats an eyelash, no matter how stupid or insipid. Consider that “Intermittent Explosive Disorder” and “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” are assigned with all seriousness by “mental health professionals” despite the ridiculousness of such “disorders.” The DSM is an absurdity, so one more absurd “disorder” won’t make it any worse.

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  • It depends on the drug. The best you can do is use the drug’s half-life (the time it takes for half the drug to be eliminated) to make an estimate of how long it’s been in the body. Every drug has its own half life, and if you don’t know the dosage, it may be impossible to tell anything about how long the drug has been in the body at all.

    Is there some reason you need to know this?

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  • It seems to me like trying to tell someone it is NOT their decision to end their lives is counterproductive. What is the clinician going to do if they say they want to? The only option is to use force to stop them, which clearly is NOT their decision. So obviously, it IS the person’s decision whether they want to end their lives. When I was a counselor myself, I never told anyone that they should or should not end their lives. I simply asked them what was going on that made suicide seem desirable, or what problem was killing him/herself going to solve? Then we talked, with my effort being simply to understand and explore the pros and cons with the client. It actually was a very effective approach to help people consider other options. Whereas when I saw others take a more authoritarian approach, it tended to escalate the situation. I see no downside to acknowledging reality – it really IS their decision and it’s not the therapist/counselor’s job to “talk them out of it” or stop them.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    OK, so is it fair to say that “There are a wide variety of observations and opinions about COVID and vaccines, and we all have to come to our own conclusions. We all hope that folks draw those conclusions from observable data rather than rumor and fear.”

    I think this is as far as I want this discussion to go. It really is off the topic and is starting to move toward that “Right/Wrong” energy that I want to avoid.

    Can we leave it here?

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  • I’d be OK with this idea, if the title were changed. It’s not “mentally unhealthy” to be worried about climate change.

    It would be better to entitle it something like, “Climate Change is an Inherently Depressing Concept.” Or “People Feel Bad About the Idea that the Climate Is Deteriorating and there Is Nothing They Can Do About It.” Or “Climate Change is Pretty Fucking Scary!” Something that validates that it is not “unhealthy” to have real feelings about real events.

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  • It is very possible to be clear about one’s relationship and still be warm and friendly and caring. You simply have to say what you are and are not willing to do. The fact that a lot of therapists are not good at this doesn’t make it not possible. People are looking for authenticity and genuine caring. They don’t want an artificial relationship with a semi-robot, who asks questions but doesn’t care about the answers. Caring is the essence of being a good helper to anyone else. A person who can’t muster up some genuine caring should do his/her clients a favor and go into some line of work where they don’t have to deal with people in vulnerable situations.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I appreciate the ongoing interest in this topic, but again, this is not the forum to argue about COVID. People have stated their positions, which I absolutely support, but I don’t want to see us getting deeper into claims/counterclaims on this subject. I will begin disallowing posts as “off topic” if it gets into that kind of exchange.

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR:

    Thanks as always for everyone contributing their views to this discussion. As I’ve noted before, COVID and vaccines are a complex and controversial issue involving science and sociology and politics, and people have strong and sometimes passionately divergent views on the subject. I want to let people say what they need to say, but this discussion in the past has deteriorated into a very personalized and unproductive discussion. I’d like to make sure that does not happen, and I ask folks to own their own viewpoints and be very careful not to condescend or insult others who disagree with your views. If such a deterioration does occur, I will very quickly stop any further COVID postings as off topic. Though I know there is a relationship via Big Pharma, I’d prefer if we stick to talking about psychiatry!

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  • If that is the case, then psychiatry as a whole is provably and undeniably bad. It is well established that those in psychiatric “treatment” for “serious mental disorders” (read “bipolar” and/or “schizophrenia) die an average of 20-30 YEARS earlier than the “untreated” person. I’m sure similar outcomes are observable for “anxiety disorders” and “major depression.” It is the only profession where treatment measurably DECREASES life expectancy!

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  • It seems to me that you’re saying a person has a right to view him/herself as ill if he/she sees it that way. I don’t hear anyone arguing with you on this point. I think you may misunderstand that when someone says, “ADHD” is a bogus diagnosis, they don’t mean that no one acts or feels that way, just that labeling that set of behavior and calling it an “illness” is not a scientifically valid undertaking. I’m all for people identifying as they see fit, as long as they don’t do it for someone else. So for you to say you have an illness called schizophrenia is your right. For Doctor So-And-So to tell Mary that SHE has an illness called schizophrenia, despite his complete lack of ability to objectively tell her what that means, THAT is where the problem arises. Some (like you, apparently) don’t mind that label, and that’s all fine for them. But what of the person who doesn’t agree that s/he is “ill” by the DOCTOR’S definition? Where are their rights? By your philosophy, don’t they have a right to refuse that label put on them by a doctor without consultation or agreement?

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  • When there is no objective way to distinguish who “has schizophrenia” from who doesn’t, there is no way to actually DO a study, let alone draw legitimate conclusions from one. I agree with you, distinguishing what a person has DONE is much more useful that trying to tell them what the ARE, especially when the definition groups together people who have little to nothing in common other than certain arbitrary “symptom clusters” that are not subject to anything but the opinion of someone with letters after his/her name.

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  • Higher standards would be an improvement, in that fewer truly useless drugs will get to market. But it doesn’t really address the fundamental problem in psychiatry, namely that we are dealing with subjective phenomena and pretending that we can objectively “diagnose” something that has no objective reality in the physical universe. So if we say the HAM-D scores need to be a 50% decrease from baseline, there is nothing to stop investigators from diddling with the data to create the apparency that there is such an improvement. There is also the problem of “negative” studies being buried and only the “positive” studies being published. This is, of course, anti-scientific in so many ways, including the idea that a study that proves a drug ineffective is “negative.” We SHOULD be after objective evidence, not a particular “positive” outcome. But that’s just the starter. The whole system is so corrupted, it’s hard to know what can be done to fix it.

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  • Honestly, the attitude is worse than the worst of the drugs! You come in and they tell you, “Well, your brain is broken, this has nothing to do with your decisions and/or experiences, and there’s nothing you can do about it except take drugs and hope they work for you.” Talk about discouraging!!!! And then to tell you that “there are no good treatments” to your permanent brain disease? If you wanted to induce suicidal thinking, that would be a good way to get there. Very disturbing to think that is how far our “mental health” system has sunk!

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  • It is hard to see what ethical standards can be applied to making a totally subjective “diagnosis” based on somewhat random, subjective criteria and “clinical judgment.” I tend to agree that the truly ethical approach to such assessments would be to simply not do them, or at a minimum, make sure everyone knows that the results are utterly subjective and only as useful as the person receiving the “assessment” chooses to find it.

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  • It’s not about “assessments,” it’s about conflicts of interest. Unless those doing the “assessments” are completely free from any financial conflicts of interest, there will be both conscious and unconscious efforts to slant the data toward increased profitability. It’s not realistic to expect people to be objective when their financial well being and status are tied up in a “positive” assessment.

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  • I think the real point of The Emperor’s New Clothes is not that the Emperor will become enlightened, but that those in the crowd who were afraid to say what they saw were now free to make that observation, because someone spoke up and validated what they all knew. I think that’s our role here – we have to keep pointing out that there ARE no clothes to new people who feel like something is wrong but haven’t gotten to the point where they feel OK saying it out loud. People will arrive at that point at different times and different ways, but at least when they do get there, they’ll hear someone else saying, “No, you’re not crazy. They really ARE completely clueless AND dangerous, and they ARE making your life harder instead of easier!”

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  • OK, good to know. The reason I ask is that I’ve seen some excellent plans and projects funded initially and have great potential, but as soon as they have to compete with “mental health services” for actual dollars, they get defunded pretty quickly. The “mental health” industry is OK with things like this operating as a fringe or “alternative” approach, but as soon as they see their own funding threatened, the gloves tend to come off!

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  • “Could have been misdiagnosed?” What a ridiculous argument they make! If you STOP the drugs and you GET INSTANTLY BETTER, they OBIVOUSLY “misdiagnosed” you, because the DRUGS WERE CAUSING THE PROBLEMS! It is well known (and is on the consumer handout) that stimulants can cause mania and/or psychosis at typical, prescribed doses in children. What’s even more stupid is that anyone with the slightest background in brain biochemistry knows that stimulants increase levels of dopamine. Psychiatry’s own self-appointed gurus have long claimed that psychosis is a result of high levels of dopamine in the brain. So they “antipsychotics,” which you were no doubt prescribed, LOWER the amount of dopamine. So you were given one drug to RAISE dopamine levels, then another to REDUCE the artificially high levels caused by the stimulants. And they say you are “in remission?” The lack of responsibility is staggering! But unfortunately, not at all rare.
    m
    This is what happens when you “diagnose” people with purely subjective criteria. Someone’s opinion becomes “your diagnosis,” and you have nothing to argue against them except for common sense. Yet, as we see here, common sense is NOT particularly common amongst the supposed “experts” in the “mental health” system. The most obvious things in the world, such as the induction of psychotic behavior by a drug that is known to induce psychotic behavior, can be completely denied despite an again obvious “recovery” immediately following withdrawal of the offending drug.

    I’m so sorry you’ve been through this. I hope you and your family have drawn the proper conclusion that these people can’t be trusted to have your best interests or even basic logic at heart, and will stay as far away from anyone who tells you “you have X disorder” as you can possibly get.

    Humans survived for hundreds of thousands of years without brain drugs. You can, too.

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  • I think it’s a little presumptuous to state that they are “effective regardless of some minor unwanted side effects.” First off, they may be effective for you, but that doesn’t mean they are effective for everyone else, and it feels like it invalidates others’ experience to say otherwise. You wouldn’t want others to tell you they don’t work at all, so I think it’s fair not to tell others that they “work” as if your experience is true for everyone.

    Second, let’s not pretend that the side effects are always “minor!” There are many people on this site who have had awful “side effects,” including loss of sexual functioning, loss of feelings of pleasure, psychotic symptoms, suicidal and/or homicidal feelings, loss of appetite, and many more. Again, you are assuming that other people have experiences similar to yours, and I can assure you that this is by no means always or even most often the case.

    With all due respect, we work to be accepting of everyone’s experiences here. It would be appreciated if you would do the same.

    Additionally, I am not aware of ANY research ANYWHERE that identifies a particular “pathway” or “circuits” (or that even is able to objectively identify a physical “pathway” or “circuit” in any manner) that is associated with ANY DSM disorder. The psychiatric profession has finally disclaimed the “chemical imbalance” theory, only after decades of pressure from many quarters, including researchers themselves. The idea of “circuits” being involved is just another theoretical explanation that lacks supporting evidence. When I see research where a “pathway” in the brain is objectively defined and where some objective measurement of “flow” through the “pathway” is obtainable, I’ll start listening to talk about “pathways.” The psychiatric profession has spent decades manufacturing and falsifying and exaggerating or minimizing research to suit its own agenda. I don’t really care what “the experts” have to say, I want to see the research myself before I believe it.

    Finally, I will submit that, however well antidepressants or any other drug in question work for a particular person or group of people, the very idea that “mental illnesses” are purely physiological phenomena that will admit to a purely physiological cause in all or even most cases is, again, pure speculation, and indeed ignores obvious evidence to the contrary. If it’s all biology, why is it that immigrants and urban populations and people sexually abused as kids have much higher rates of schizophrenia diagnoses than the general population? Why is adult depression and anxiety associated at a 90% or better rate with childhood abuse and neglect? How do people get better without drugs or medical interventions at all? How did I overcome serious depression and anxiety with therapy, reading, and facing life’s challenges with support from friends and family and community? Do you wish to invalidate my experience by claiming that I “didn’t have depression, really” or that “it wasn’t that bad,” or is it that my brain chemistry somehow changed through my own thoughts and relationships and interactions with life? And if my brain chemistry can change (and there’s plenty of evidence that it can) through social experiences and alterations of thought and behavior patterns, why would you insist that drugs are the answer for everyone?

    How do you explain the actual PHYSICAL changes in the brain that happen with meditation or other processes that don’t involve any kind of physical intervention at all if it’s all biological?

    I am glad the drugs have worked for you. You are certainly not alone in saying that. But please, don’t try to talk down to people who have had different experiences. My belief is that “depression” isn’t even a legitimate category of “disorder” – people are depressed for a myriad of reasons, some physical, some psychological, some spiritual, some social. What works for one person doesn’t work for every other person. We all need to find our own paths. You have found yours – let other people find their own and explain to YOU how it is for them, instead of assuming you are in a position to tell the rest of us “what is true.”

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  • Out of control children have been managed without a “diagnosis” or drugs since the beginning of human history. I think the problem is not so much one of “out of control children” as isolated parents lacking support. We were not willing to consider any kind of drug intervention for our boys, so we had to figure it out. Much as you did, we used dietary changes, good parenting skills, and a lot of patience. And we read a LOT about how to manage challenging children. They both turned out OK without a milligram of “treatment.” The one who had the most problems was the one who was NOT difficult as a young child! So you’re right, every child is different!

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  • “True clinical depression” is completely subjective and indistinguishable from “mere sadness.” Not even the DSM has “criteria” for “clinical depression.” It sounds like a technical term, but it is literally meaningless in terms of any kind of research or statistical purposes, even within the sketchy confines of psychiatry’s own subjective “model” for understanding “mental illness.”

    I also don’t find it convincing that we ought to prescribe drugs “until something better comes along.” There are lots of people (including me) who find their own pathway out of feeling severely depressed. It is an error to assume that all “depressed” people have something wrong with them, or that all who DO have something wrong have the SAME thing wrong and need the same kind of help. “Depression” is a catch-all category that says absolutely nothing about what the person is depressed about or what can or should be done about it. When someone says “depression is a fake illness,” they don’t mean that depression doesn’t happen, they mean that “depression” is not a real entity that is valid for study and conclusions. It is not helpful to group all “depressed” or “clinically depressed” people into the same category when any two “depressed” people may have little to nothing in common with each other beyond how they happen to be feeling.

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  • I would say that there IS a consensual psychiatric model. That model assumes that 1) there are such things as “mental illnesses” which are distinguishable from “normal” conditions. 2) these “illnesses” can be “diagnosed” by “professionals” with sufficient training. 3) there are “treatments” available for these “illnesses” that can “reduce the symptoms” of the “illnesses.” 4) These “illnesses” are essentially physiological in nature and inhere in the person experiencing them rather than in the environment/culture or in the relationship between the environment/culture and the person. 5) That these “disorders” can be described and “diagnosed” using the DSM or the ICD or some other “diagnostic system.” 6) That these are “medical” problems that need to be handled by “services” provided by “medical providers” and paid for by insurance. 7) That sometimes, these “disorders” become so unmanageable that “treatment” must be forced on unwilling participants “for their own good.”

    Admittedly, there are plenty of free-floating and irrational interpretations that are pulled out when necessary, but I’d say all of these interpretations are expected to fit into the above. As a former “mental health” professional, I can attest that violating these tenets results in hostility and in some cases even shunning by the system insiders. Not sure how “consensual” it is, but it certainly seems to be expected that people will agree to these basic tenets, and in fact, clients/patients are “diagnosed” as more serious to the degree that they deny the “validity of their diagnosis.” It’s pretty solid in my view.

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  • A model is useful only to the degree that it correctly explains predicts the effects of actions we take into the future. The psychiatric model explains nothing, obscures real causes, and fails to predict even the success or failure of its own interventions. Therapy models to date similarly fail to account for observable facts nor are they able to predict the outcomes of their own interventions. I’ve got nothing against models, but they need to work!

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  • The other big question that is almost always avoided is, WHAT should the endpoint be? Is a “reduction in symptoms” really the result that is wanted? Is making a person “Less depressed” a legitimate outcome? Would we not want to look at “quality of life” variables as being more important to the client?

    Plus, Irving Kirsch’s work has showed clearly that the FDA rule of submitting two positive studies out of ALL studies being done totally skews the results. How much research is never even released because it doesn’t say what the manufacturer wants it to say? How many drugs are on the market as “safe and effective” when the TOTALITY of the data says that it doesn’t really work or is far more dangerous than claimed (Viiox being a great example)?

    There is much to be answered for in the area of “scientific” research, especially when it comes to psych drugs.

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  • Harrow’s study showed that “psychotic” patients with WORSE prognoses did BETTER off drugs than the people with BETTER prognoses did ON drugs. So the idea that those with “less illness” go off the drugs is a marketing scheme. It’s not true.

    I think the answer to the question is either 1) because it doesn’t work, or 2) because the “cure” is worse than the “disease.” As Hemmingway quipped, “It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient.”

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  • As I’ve stated before, the whole idea of “shared decision making” suggests that the CURRENT model is “non-shared decision making,” which equates to THE DOCTOR GETS TO DECIDE! In other words, “Shared decision making” means the DOCTOR deigns to “allow” the patient to “have a voice” in deciding what will happen to his/her OWN BODY! Something is VERY wrong with this whole idea!

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  • I’m not sure the system is “broken,” I think it just has hidden objectives that most of us find abhorrent!

    I had the same experience as you back in the 70s. I had a therapist, we met once a week, we talked about my motivations and barriers to my success, we reviewed some traumatic history, I practiced new ways of thinking and acting – no drugs were considered or needed! And I never got an official “diagnosis” from my therapist, though I’m sure she had to submit one to get reimbursed. It just wasn’t important. I wasn’t considered “ill,” I was considered one of the smart ones who realized that he could make his life better. My therapist and I both agreed that it is a lot saner to seek support than to continue pretending things are OK. It was a very supportive relationship – no “stigma” involved, and no drugs needed or wanted.

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  • I don’t see this so much as a dilemma. The simple expedient is to treat people who present as dangerous based only on the dangerousness of their behavior, not on any presumed “mental illness.” The truth is, one could say that any person committing a crime is on some level “crazy” because they are risking prison for some drama they want/need to act out. What is to distinguish someone who is willing to hold up a convenience store from the lady who tossed the baby out the window? The only real criterion that makes sense is to say that they did harm or threatened harm to others, and are therefore held in custody until that situation is resolved. “Mental illness” doesn’t have to enter into it at all. And even if we do decide we can “hold” someone for these subjective and legally vague and rhetorically nonsensical “illnesses,” it does not follow that they can/should be forced into “treatment” against their will. Their job is to demonstrate that they are no longer dangerous.

    Of course, help of many kinds can be offered, and people who don’t find a way to alter their circumstances might be incarcerated for some period of time, but that’s the same for any kind of criminal behavior. I’m all for completely decoupling the idea of holding someone for being “a danger to self or others” and the idea of them needing “treatment” of some kind. There is simply no way to figure out who is/isn’t “mentally ill,” let alone who will “benefit from treatment.” That being the case, it seems beyond unethical to force “treatment” on someone based on these totally subjective labels, especially when it’s entirely possible that the “treatment” you’re forcing on them may kill them before their time!

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  • I have had similar epiphanies many times in my life. When “everyone knows” that something is “accepted practice” and no one ever provides another perspective, sometimes some very weird or dangerous or just plain oppressive things seem “normal” and people who don’t adapt “abnormal.” Sometimes it’s very odd looking back on it that I’d ever accepted that viewpoint, that the obvious injustice or irrationality of it did not just smack me in the head before the scales fell from my eyes!

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  • I found 9.

    https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/antidepressants-and-fdas-black-box-warning-determining-rational-public-policy-absence-sufficient/2012-06

    The others are probably “antipsychotics” like Risperdal and Seroquel that act on both the serotonin and dopamine systems. It appears that messing with serotonin is what causes the increase in suicidal thoughts/behavior in some of the people who use them. Not that this deters doctors from prescribing them by the millions, mind you. But we all knew that!

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  • Again, why the “shared decision making?” I don’t SHARE decision making with my doctor or medical provider. S/he gives me information and advice and I MAKE THE DECISION. There is no sharing, it’s my call, every time. Why is this glaring violation of the rights and the self-respect of so-called “mental health consumers” not obvious to anyone looking at the situation? The very concept infantilizes the clients. And remember, we’re not talking about the client choosing to “share decision-making” with their doctor. We’re trying to convince the DOCTOR that s/he is not entitled to just do whatever the f*&k they want to the client without his/her approval. The argument is now, “Gosh, don’t you think you might CONSULT the client before YOU decide what you’re going to do to them?” This is totally ass-backwards in my world. I will never see a medical professional who thinks s/he gets to tell me what to do, and I’m glad that I have the privilege and the skills to carry out that intention. But many people don’t even see or understand what is being done here, let alone have the courage and ability, or even the legal right in many cases, to tell the doctor to go stick it where the sun don’t shine. That is not an acceptable situation!

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  • Of course, I agree with you that most such people are indeed quite uncomfortable. But there appears to me to be a small but solid cadre of folks who actually are quite comfortable believing they are “helping” even when all the evidence points the other way. They are very blithe about explaining away anything that doesn’t support their viewpoint, and seem quite comfortable as long as there are enough people around them to support their viewpoint. Admittedly, there is a lot of anxiety underlying their apparent ease, and that comes up when they are challenged, but their “comfort zone” appears to be quite compatible with people being harmed “for their own good.”

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  • The thing about this is, Buddhism and other spiritual approaches aren’t “treatment.” I don’t have a knee-jerk negative response to the idea of “alternatives,” but if they are “alternatives,” they should be alternatives to viewing emotional distress as “mental illness” and alternatives to pretending to provide “treatment” in the medical sense for problems that are not medical in nature.

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  • The FDA is populated by people who are part of the drug industry. That’s what I meant by my comment. We need people who don’t have a financial interest in the outcome. There are plenty of scientists in other fields who know enough to evaluate the studies – they don’t have to be doctors or drug company investigators, in fact, we’d be better off if those evaluating drugs had zero attachment to the medical field or drug research at all.

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  • I am sure that stuff like “neural atrophy” and other physiological phenomena both result from and contribute to what the DSM refers to as “mental illness.” I’m not familiar with the concept of neural atrophy, but it seems like it suggests that trauma causes certain kinds of neurons not to grow or to die off. This would not be at all surprising. There is also literal brain damage that comes from taking neuroleptics or other “psychoactive drugs” like stimulants or “antidepressants.” There are also real diseases like an underactive thyroid or Lyme disease or other conditions that directly affect people’s mental/emotional functioning. And of course, the fact that one has a chronic or terminal disease going on affects one’s psychological well being as well. So it’s very complicated. I don’t think a person severely traumatized in childhood can ever get to a point where their childhood traumatization is not relevant or impactful in their lives, probably on a physiological as well as a psychological/spiritual level. We know that traumatized people are more likely to contract or develop physiological ills, even controlling for ineffectual pseudo-medical interventions by psychiatrists and their subordinates. So there is a physiological effect of trauma, and there is a psychological effect of physical illness. It’s all interconnected, and we’re better off just focusing on individual situations and what works for a particular person rather than trying to generalize about “illnesses” that are not objectively discernible.

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  • I have never said that there is no biological contribution to what is called “mental illness.” I am only opposed to ASSUMING that any one “mental illness” as defined by the DSM is CAUSED by “bad biology.” I’m not even saying that SOME cases of what is called “mental illness” are NOT caused by “bad biology.” My main point is that something defined entirely by a list of social/emotional/behavioral indicators is VERY UNLIKELY to have a biological cause in all or even most cases.

    I hope you see the difference between a biological CAUSE that is consistent for all cases vs. a biological ASPECT that is present in some of the cases, which may or may not be causal. There are biological similarities between people who are feeling aggressive, as an example – elevated cortisol levels, for instance. But that doesn’t mean that elevated cortisol levels CAUSED the person to behave aggressively. It could be a cause, an effect, or simply a correlate of the body’s preparedness for fighting. It is biological, but “aggression” is not an “illness” caused by high cortisol levels.

    Does that make more sense?

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  • I agree 100%. If a plumber promised to fix your leaky pipe, then ended up flooding your basement, and “fixed” that by burning down your house, they would owe you the cost of replacing everything they ruined, plus additional for the inconvenience and emotional turmoil you experienced as a result. Why would this NOT apply to psychiatrists? If you are paying them to improve your “mental health,” and it observably gets worse, and your physical health deteriorates as well due to their “treatments,” at what point are they responsible for damages? Seems like simple breach of contract to me for starters, with aggravating factors involved with worsening instead of improving your condition. I guess normal rules of contract don’t apply to psychiatrists?

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR:

    I enjoy the exchange of views, and I do think political parties have some bearing on decisions to enforce “treatment” on people just because they happen to be homeless. I do want to make sure this doesn’t shift off onto a philosophical argument about which political party is “better.” Let’s keep focused on the issue of the article, planning to “force homeless into ‘treatment.'”

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  • You’re right, of course. Psychiatry has not failed, it has succeeded admirably. People are just confused as to its aims. If it were designed to help people be more effective in managing their lives, it would be a failure. But if the purpose is to deflect attention from the real issues and blame the victims of abuse and oppression for their adverse reactions, meanwhile making boatloads of money, it has been an unqualified success.

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  • I loved this article! It really gets to the heart of these eugenic, racial superiority themes, which have been around for centuries, probably millennia. It’s a bit shocking even to me how the exact same language is used today that was used 1-200 years ago. It goes to show that the real problem with psychiatry, and our society at large, isn’t a failure of honest people to understand the issues, the real problem is certain people believing they are superior to other people and looking for “science” to justify their continuing acts of oppression.

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  • I can see that. Self-desensitization seems like it’s very possible. But if someone is going to try and help someone else, listening is the starting point. I agree 100% that there is no special advantage to using “EMDR” or other “specialized” procedures. There are some tricks or techniques that can be used to help someone feel safe to share, but the basic is not trying to tell the other person what to do or think, but instead listening to their story. I’ve certainly seen writing, art, music, pets, etc. serve an equally valuable role to a “therapist,” or to a listening and caring friend. Whatever works is what works, and therapists have no corner on the market of “helpfulness.”

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  • It is a certainty that the action of Benzos is very, very similar to the action of alcohol on the brain. Both affect primarily the GABA system, and benzos have long been used as a controlled way to withdraw alcoholics from alcohol dependence without bringing on possible deadly withdrawal effects. I am quite certain it would work the other way if it were tried. So taking benzos is very similar to drinking. The only big difference is dosage control, and of course, lots of people increase their benzo dosage beyond what is prescribed. They are sold as street drugs, too. The one time I served on a jury, the defense tried to get his client off of a DUII by pointing out that he was taking Valium and that the effects were almost indistinguishable from alcohol. They are very close to being mimics of each other.

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  • Not sure what you’re saying here. What is there “more” than the fact that the therapist is listening non-judgmentally and interestedly? I know there are a few techniques tossed in there, such as the concept that if a trauma doesn’t lift, there is an earlier one of a similar nature that needs to be examined. But I’m saying the eye movement or tapping or whatever seems extraneous. Are you saying that “tapping” and that sort of thing was a staple of folk wisdom for a long time? I’d be very interested to hear what you have to share on that point.

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  • The best plan, I think, is generally to refuse them politely. Remind them that you have a right to refuse medical treatment, and you’re choosing to decline. This would only be a problem if you are already on their “radar” as a “crazy person” (oops, I mean “Person suffering from mental illness!”), in which case, I think a very careful lying strategy would probably be safest. “Have you had difficulty sleeping?” “No, not at all. Sleeping great!” Etc. If you read up on the so-called “symptoms” of what they’re screening you for, it’s pretty easy to stay ahead of them.

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  • You are talking individuals vs. societies. Societies can agree on pretty distorted things without needing the “leadership” of a sociopathic person. You have a very rose-colored view of society if you think that simply removing bad players will suddenly make people bright and perceptive and assertive and planful. Doesn’t Dianetics suggest that people have to deal with their own traumatic pasts before they can become rational? Do you really think everyone will suddenly become rational just because intentional oppression by individuals is removed? With respect, I don’t. People working as groups is a totally different thing than individuals getting out from under oppressive control of other individuals. At least, that’s my take on it. Surely, the concept of mis-education and distorted belief systems in the minds of people of good will is real and meaningful to you?

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  • Here’s the thing, though. Even if we eliminate the psychopathic types from our society, they have created ways of doing business that require sociopathic behavior in order to succeed. For instance, we could eliminate all the sociopaths from the field of psychiatry, but we have millions and millions of people who still believe that these “diagnoses” and “treatments” make sense, and these people will continue to pound this false data into those they train, and very little will change.

    The sociopathic types prevent positive change, so eliminating or restricting their reach makes positive change more possible. But there needs to be a concerted effort by the pro-socially-oriented people to create systems that don’t reward sociopathic behavior.

    Just as an example, I’ve always thought that “reading groups” were a horrible way to teach kids to read. It requires them to “sound out” words they don’t understand, and to pronounce words correctly that they have never said out loud before. There is little to no emphasis on actually understanding the passage being read, and those who decline to read out loud are shamed for it. I could go on.

    But those who apply “reading groups” believe wholeheartedly that it is a viable approach! They would be upset if someone told them differently. “It’s how we’ve always done it.” “How would they learn to read otherwise? How would we KNOW they were learning?” It doesn’t require a sociopath to continue this process, because everyone believes it’s necessary without really thinking about it. So there is a massive re-education and re-creation that would need to happen if we wanted reading instruction to improve. It’s true, this process would be much easier without the destructive people who are interested in control and punishment rather than education. But the system they are implementing continues to be oppressive, even if none of the teachers are personally sociopathic in the least.

    This same thinking can be applied to any system you’d like to think of. There are expectations, rewards, penalties, restrictions, processes, agreements, etc. that determine how the particular activity will be conducted. These systems have a “life of their own” in a sense – a complete turnover of staff can occur without the business/agency culture changing in any significant way. That’s what I’m talking about. Some people like to destroy stuff and people, and will try to twist whatever system that exists to their nefarious purposes. But that’s not the whole story. People need to learn how to communicate and work together as a group to improve or retool or trash the group agreements that exist but don’t really work very well, or to create new agreements. This takes a lot more than just getting rid of the bad players, IMHO.

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  • I will choose to take your words as honest and not intended to hurt. But they do hurt. I think it best we abandon this discussion. It appears that we are unable to understand each others’ words, which is OK. But I can never agree to “keep women’s stuff” out of it when in my view it has been built in from the start. Obviously, you are unable to see what I am looking at, and that’s OK. But let’s not take it personally that we disagree on these points.

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  • I can’t agree with your conclusions from this data. The fact that women are more likely to go into psychiatry does not mean psychiatry does not discriminate against women. This is where the individual vs. group viewpoint comes into play. The women as individuals are most definitely women, but they are buying into and implementing a model which at its core is discriminatory towards women. They are participating in an oppressive SYSTEM, regardless of their individual orientation, and after being trained in this system and surrounded by this system and criticized and sometimes attacked when they stray from the expectations of the system, they eventually quit or comply with the system. And if the system is based on assumptions that are sexist or racist or whatever, that person, regardless of sex or race or whatever, will enforce these norms and internalize them without even noticing that they exist.

    Let’s take the example of “Borderline Personality Disorder.” The description of this label generally encompasses typical reactions of a person who has been abused and/or neglected intermittently from early life onwards. They are describe as having difficulty trusting people, having volatile emotions, using indirect (“manipulative”) approaches to get their needs met, having a hard time maintaining relationships, anxious, distractible, etc. I worked for years with foster children, and a large number of kids fit these descriptions. So what does the system say to DO with that person? Whether male or female, younger or older, black or white, feminist or not, the system says you DIAGNOSE this person and then you TREAT them. The person is identified as having a “dysfunction” and the fact that they have been abused/neglected, placed in foster care, moved around, separated from siblings and extended family, currently in an overcrowded foster placement lacking in affection, had their schooling interrupted and had to move repeatedly and lost friends and support people every time, is of no actual interest or consequence. Since a third of women are sexually molested or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, and a quarter experience physical abuse from a domestic or dating partner, not to mention the myriad day to day abuses and “microagressions” women have to put up with, ignoring these experiences is highly invalidating and destructive to any effort to actually be of assistance to people who get these labels. In fact, having been labeled “borderline” opens them up to an entirely new brand of oppression, with of I am confident you are quite aware.

    The fact that your psychiatrist happens to be female has absolutely zero effect on this process. They are trained just the same as their male counterparts, and generally believe that “Borderline personality disorder” is a real thing that can be “diagnosed,” and that this person needs “treatment,” normally in the form of drugs and some kind of other-directed “therapy” like DBT. The person that abused her is considered “normal” and never gets identified, let alone “treated.”

    So the SYSTEM is discriminating against women, whether or not the practitioner is female. Unless the practitioner him/herself becomes aware of the anti-female, anti-abuse-victim mentality built into every aspect of the system of “diagnosis” and “treatment,” the practitioner will continue to perpetuate this mentality, regardless of the sex of the practitioner. That’s how systemic bias work. It transcends the intentions and experiences of the individual.

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  • I appreciate the clarification, and I do understand what you’re saying – in the end, it is not helpful to identify as “oppressed” and to blame “oppressors” for your condition. What I am concerned about is not an individual’s attitude, but a recognition that oppression is a very real thing that actually happens to people, regardless of what attitude they assume. It’s a delicate balance, but oppression really does exist and needs to be called out for what it is. Otherwise, saying “don’t view yourself as oppressed” becomes another form of oppression – we are not only told how to identify, but we are blamed for not having a “positive attitude” and told our reactions to the very real oppressions that have and continue to occur to us are the problem, rather than recognizing and attacking the oppressive attitudes in those doing the oppressing! It does not help anyone to be told that you are “inviting oppression” by identifying that women, dark skinned people, or psychiatric “patients” are being victimized by those in power. As much as I believe in empowering people to take charge of their lives, the real story of how we got where we are and what forces are arrayed against us needs to be told. I don’t see it as “identifying as oppressed” to say, “Men are allowed to get away with a lot of shit in this society that women can’t.” It’s just plain facing reality.

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  • I agree 100%. I was using the most concrete and unrefutable examples. I have worked with domestic abuse victims for decades and it is very clear that men and women doing exactly the same thing gets a very different response. There are way too many examples to cite here.

    In fact, one of the huge and appropriate criticisms of psychiatry comes from feminist writers in the 70s and later on. (Probably earlier, too, but I just haven’t read them yet.) They point out that many manifestations of surviving abuse at the hands of men, often sexual partners or husbands, are treated as “mental illnesses” by the very male-centric system. I’d suggest that anyone who wants to get rid of psychiatry needs to be aware of the deep and fundamental connections between psychiatry and the intentional oppression of women who speak up and try to have power in our society.

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  • Hi, Rebel,

    Are you staying that you DON’T think men as a class have oppressed women throughout history, and continue to do so? I’m not talking about individual men, though many individuals do act oppressively. But do you realize that it was legal for a man to rape his wife until very recently? That there was very little legal protection for a woman being beaten prior to the 1970s? That women could not vote until 1920? These are very obvious manifestations. When one looks at more subtle forms of oppression, they are rampant, even today. Let’s look at the question of sexual activity. What do you call a woman who chooses to sleep with multiple men? Slut, whore, bitch, tramp, hooker. What do you call a man who sleeps with multiple women? Stud, player, ladies’ man, heartthrob. There are no negative words for men who sleep around. There are no positive words for women who sleep around. Why does that happen? Why are women shamed for being sexual beings, while men are applauded for it?

    I could go on. There is real oppression out there. Enslavement of black people isn’t just a consideration. They were literally slaves, bought and sold human beings. I find it very hard to understand how this can not be obvious to anyone living on this planet. Women have been oppressed as a class by men as a class. It’s just a fact of life. Are you saying women should just have had a better attitude toward being treated as second class citizens (or non-citizens, as I said before, since they were not even allowed to vote)? If psychiatry is oppressive and its “patients” are targets of that oppression, why wouldn’t the same apply to other groups?

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  • I’m not arguing against 1) or 2). I’m saying that Carrie Nation and Jane Addams and Emma Goldman and Emmeline Pankhurst and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were not all stooges of the Rockefellers. Like I said, attempts to coopt such movements are very common, but it seems obvious to me that such a movement is a natural outgrowth of oppression. It is exceedingly unlikely that those in control would undermine their own control by creating more rights for those they have a natural interest in continuing to oppress. It also makes zero sense that the Rockefellers would free people in order to enslave them. Why not just keep them enslaved? Though it DOES make sense that they might want to claim responsibility for something they had nothing to do with, something our “antisocial” types very typically love to do. Just because a Rockefeller said it doesn’t make it true!

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  • I am not arguing the merits of the women’s movement, which is a much bigger topic than I can cover here. I’m simply saying that it is diminishing to the women who sacrificed their reputations and in some cases their lives to get the right to vote and many other rights as listed above, and more, to suggest that they were somehow dupes of some other forces. Women are certainly not monolithic, and I did not even vaguely suggest that in my comments. I dispute the idea that women were not the progenitors of their own movement toward freedom and civil rights. It seems nonsensical to me.

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  • It seems utterly confusing to me why you would not credit women with starting and maintaining an effort to strengthen women’s rights, or darker skinned people with starting and maintaining an effort to strengthen the rights of the darker-skinned population. It’s not just “conventional wisdom,” it is plain old logic. Whether other less savory individuals or groups may have done their best to coopt such movements is an entirely different question, but I think it’s pretty insulting to women to suggest that the monumental struggle to get the right to vote, to be protected from rape and violence, to raise their children, to be able to be employed and paid as men are, to be able to dress as they wish (I just read an article how two lady motorcyclists in the 1910s were repeatedly ARRESTED as the crossed the USA for wearing pants!), to use birth control, and on and on, is the result of some sort of manipulation and control by antisocial personalities. Are we then to conclude that absent such provocation, women would have been happy with their lots as second class citizens (or actually, non-citizens who could not even vote) and never gotten together as a group to try and make things better for themselves and society as a whole?

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  • Ah, but where does the “antisocial personality” come from? Personalities are not completely fixed, in my view. They are affected by experience! Suppose one could RID society of most of the antisocial types, by handling their fears and historical trauma, while containing those who were simply unable/unwilling to behave in a social manner? Or do you think people are just born antisocial, nothing they or anyone can do about it?

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  • I agree. A truly culturally aware approach would START by trying to learn from the culture we are encountering, and being humble enough to understand that they have much to teach us. The “schizophrenia” recovery rate is 10 times better in the “developing” world. Our “thought leaders” have tried their best to explain this away, instead of finding out what they’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong. That’s the real problem. However gently it is framed, we Westerners believe our culture is superior and that these “primitive” people need to learn how to do it our way.

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  • Humans make decisions. They have values, priorities, fears, desires, etc. Most of the ills of society come from humans making destructive decisions due to their lack of perspective or courage or their fears or desires to dominate others. The problem with psychiatry is that they don’t recognize this fact and instead try to pretend that these ills are the result of “bad brain chemistry,” as if people will suddenly all cooperate and be productive and stop hurting each other if only their serotonin levels were fixed! Psychiatry is about forced invalidation of reality, and about blaming people’s brains instead of helping them learn how to live better.

    Removing psychiatry will not stop people from being violent, racist, abusive or neglectful to their children or other charges, thoughtless, sexist, or otherwise obnoxious. It WILL stop psychiatrists and Big Pharma from making money off pretending that they have “treatments” for these social ills. It WILL stop people being incarcerated and “treated” against their will based on these pretenses.

    Improving society as a whole will depend on a lot of people working together. Eliminating psychiatry will be a positive step, but there is a lot more that we need to face up to before we have a functioning society. That’s my view.

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  • Is it not possible that a headache is a part of the traumatic experience chain being examined? I have found that I and others I’m working with will have a pain that comes up when thinking about a certain event, which usually resolves upon relating what happened in its entirety, sometimes several times before I get it all resolved.

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  • Oh, believe me, I agree with your observation! I have to fight to have “informed consent” many times when I see any kind of mainstream medical practitioner. I avoid MD’s like the plague for that very reason! And when I am forced by circumstances to talk to one, I start them off with a preamble that I am going to listen to their advice and make my own decisions, and if that’s a problem for them, let me know right now and I’ll find another practitioner. I rarely have to do so, but I have. You have to be an advocate any time you go see an allopathic physician. Some of the younger ones seem a little better, but I assume they’re going to be arrogant and self-absorbed until proven otherwise.

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR:

    I am getting concerned that this conversation is getting off topic and entering into one of those areas where people have strong emotions and where finding agreement is very difficult. This thread is about EMDR and should remain about EMDR. We do often allow conversations to wander off into other areas, as long as it is a productive discussion where people are learning and explaining thing to each other. When it degenerates into trading positions and making generalized statements without actual information or experience to share, that’s going too far. I know different people have had very different experiences with CCHR and the Church of Scientology, but this is really not the place to have that argument. I want to respect different people’s experiences, but I expect all of us to respect each others’ experiences as well. So I am not going to allow this to degenerate into a sparring match about the merits of a particular group or organization. I would ask you to keep to your personal experiences and respect and understand that others may have had different experiences.

    I hope I’m being clear. Comments need to be productive, or they will be moderated as “off topic.”

    Let’s get back to talking about EMDR!

    Steve

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  • You know, that’s a great point I never thought of! If someone is a client of a doctor or other professional, the doctor works for THEM! There is no “shared decision making,” the decisions are made BY THE CLIENT! And the interesting part is that the alternative to “shared decision making” is cutting the client out of the loop entirely! We’re supposed to be excited by the prospect that the PROFESSIONAL will deign to “share” decision making with the client. Whereas the CLIENT should be the one deciding whether s/he wants to follow the advice of the “professional” in every case.

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  • I think the difficulty understanding how EMDR works stems from assuming it works on the brain, as most researchers have done. There are many regressive processes that have focused on reprocessing past experiences, and results have varied, I think mostly because it’s not necessarily what everyone needs at a given time, or because people have other more pressing needs in the present moment that make regression less likely to be effective. The most fundamental error of the psychiatric/psychological professions is assuming that everyone having the same presenting issues has the same problem and needs the same solution. I’m more inclined to think of there being problems in the physiological, psychological, and spiritual realms, and the proper solution depends on the actual cause. Someone who is depressed because of his dead-end job isn’t going to get better with biological “treatments.” Someone with thyroid problems won’t improve with the best therapy imaginable. But people who really do have what I will refer to as ‘spiritual issues,’ by which I mean difficulties figuring out the meaning of things, their place in the world, or how to manage past events that have affected their thinking, will probably benefit from regressive processing like EMDR, whether you tap or roll your eyes or just lie their quietly while you relate what happened.

    The other critical part is that any regressive process MUST provide absolute safety from the listener, not to evaluate the meaning of things or stop or redirect the person or tell them that what they said wasn’t true or doesn’t make sense. It’s their story to tell and the processer, whatever the process may be, must be committed to letting the person tell their story without editing or invalidating or doubting anything in the story. I am guessing that’s where a lot of practitioners fall down on the job.

    Anyway, I doubt anyone looking for biological explanations for why EMDR works is going to be looking for a long time. I don’t think it’s a biological process, even if biological events are involved.

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  • The fact that these approaches are called “alternatives” is in and of itself a big problem. It implies that the MAIN way to do things is psychiatry, and these other “alternatives” are for either when it doesn’t work or someone wants to “try something different.” There is condescension in the very term. Same applies to “alternative medicine.” In fact, I’d prefer these approaches not be called “treatments” at all – I’d prefer they be called “approaches” or “strategies” or “opportunities” or “processes” or anything that doesn’t imply any kind of relationship to medicine or psychiatry.

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  • I don’t know that Robert would identify MIA as a “social justice site,” but it certainly provides a safe space for survivors to have a voice, and the forums here are populated primarily by survivors, and we have discussions that center on issues that would get commenters tossed off of a lot of “mainstream” sites. And there are many articles posted by survivors, such as Christine’s this very week. I think it is exceedingly unfair to call MIA a forum for “liberal mental health professionals.” There is a hell of a lot more going on here than that. In fact, I seem to recall certain “liberal mental health professionals” either changing their tunes or stopping posting here because they could not handle the intensity of the appropriate feedback from the survivors who are the core of the commenting communities. So I respectfully and firmly disagree with your assessment.

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  • Wow, they seem to be worried that you “voice hearers” will compare notes! Can you ask them what evidence they have that voice hearers getting together is harmful? The evidence I am aware of says that it’s quite helpful to get together with other voice hearers. Honestly, they have no idea what they’re talking about, or they’re lying. You should do what feels right to you, and to hell with what they think!

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I continue to be concerned we are going too far afield, here, even though I participated myself in getting us here. My sense is that no one is disputing that a lab release is a very plausible explanation for what happened, and that this explanation was quickly and summarily dismissed without investigation at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. I’m not seeing that anything else can be inferred from this fact, and I don’t really want to see this conversation go down that pathway. The question of how to distinguish a “conspiracy theory” from a feasible explanation seems like a topic related to the
    “mental health” system, but I want to make sure we do not get back into another endless loop about unprovable opinions regarding the intentions of various parties, good or bad. That is a conversation for another website.

    Just trying to head this off before we end up going down that pathway.

    Steve

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  • The doctors almost killed my dad when he was 40. He was on blood thinners from a recent heart attack, and they gave him something that was totally contraindicated with blood thinners, with a warning it might kill the patient. He had sudden bruising from barely touching his arm. He looked it up in the PDR and found out what was happening. If he had trusted them, a minor accident, a fall, a bump on the head could have killed him!

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  • You can tell by the intensity of the response who doesn’t have the real data behind them. Why would there be a need to put down someone sharing their own negative experience if you are SO confident that the drugs are great? Couldn’t you just listen and say, “Wow, that sucks! That didn’t happen to me, but if it happened to you, I’m really sorry to hear it. I guess they don’t work the same for everyone!” Is it that hard to be a tad empathetic? Apparently.

    But there is still that one out of 10, and that’s who we have to look for, I think.

    I also think it matters what site you go on. I used to post occasionally on the CHADD site (very pro-drug ADHD site, or was at the time at least, kind of like the NAMI of “ADHD” parents). Man, you had to tread lightly not to be attacked or tossed off the site! I stuck to sharing studies and alternative approaches, and my own experience with MY own kids, but still got attacked. I told them I had two “ADHD” type kids who grew up fine without drugs. I admitted it was a lot of work and required a lot of creativity and research and just trying things out. Still, they said things like, “It’s great if your kid has a mild case and you can get by without drugs.” (There was nothing MILD about Patrick, I can tell you, and Kevin would have been just as tough, except we learned from Patrick how to handle him!) Or, “I know this worked for you, but we don’t want you to discourage or shame other parents who might need the medication for their kids.” They “corrected” me when I said “drug” instead of “medication,” even when I pointed out that d-amphetamine was actually a street drug of abuse.

    I may have educated a few people but most of their minds were made up. So I stopped wasting time on it and started looking for sites that were less rigid and medical-model oriented. I still toss out some corrective data in that kind of site from time to time, but I don’t expect to be welcomed there! Mostly, I try to find communities like this one where my views are a little more “mainstream,” even when the site is totally NOT mainstream!

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  • Interesting how an ineffective “cocktail” of drugs leads to the conclusion that a “new cocktail” needs to be devised, rather than the more obvious but less remunerative conclusion that “cocktails” of random drugs simply don’t lead to good outcomes, at a minimum in this case at least. The answer is always more or different drugs, it seems, no matter how many times that screw just WON’T HAMMER IN PROPERLY WITH THIS HAMMER!

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  • They are also often used on children or the developmentally delayed or the elderly for “aggression.” As one can imagine, it’s pretty easy to conjure up some “aggression” in any of these populations by just putting hands on someone and trying to move them, and when they fight back, call them “aggressive.” Psychosis these days is the tip of a much larger iceberg when it comes to “antipsychotics.”

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  • It is disturbing that the kind of stalking behavior you are talking about is laughed at and minimized. The view that he is obsessive and stalking because he “loves you so much” is a common one that is strongly supported by our media. How many “romantic” movies involve a woman turning down a man’s advances, and him engaging in “romantic” behavior like following her home, strewing her walkway with rose petals, serenading her outside her window while the neighbors look on, proposing to her in an extremely public venue, and other obnoxious behaviors that show he “loves her so much?”

    I’m so sorry you were not supported by your coworkers. People who engage in that kind of behavior are almost always dangerous and need to be stopped very early in the process.

    Your insight that the “voices” that people here are often them fighting with someone from the past is a very good one!

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  • I agree, testing for those with “extra sensitivity” could easily be used as an excuse for not facing the fact that the drugs themselves are systematically destructive and don’t actually “treat” anything, any more than drinking “treats” anxiety by interfering with a person’s inhibitions. (Someone recently shared with me a study on using laughing gas to “treat” depression! The idea of it made me laugh out loud!)

    That being said, I do think it’s good for the common person to know that such genetic vulnerabilities do exist and to insist that doctors check for these before prescribing them random drugs. Apparently, the genetics affect a lot more than just psych drugs, and people who have this particular vulnerability deserve to know about it.

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  • That actually makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve seen kids get super aggressive on stimulants, then be put on Risperdal to “calm them down.” When someone prevailed upon them to stop double-drugging the kid, they always want to take them of Risperdal first, which of course then leads to the aggression they’d created with the stimulants, which leads to, “Oh, no, he’s having a relapse, we’d better abort!”

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  • I tend to agree with you overall, but I think we need to reserve skepticism for both directions. Choosing to believe a “theory” because it “feels right” isn’t really valid, either. We need evidence. And as you describe it, it has been very difficult to get true and honest information from anyone in this COVID mess. So sometimes all we can do is gather the information we have and make the best decision we can based on what we know and our intuition. My intuition tells me that intentionally releasing a virus to create a worldwide pandemic doesn’t really benefit anyone enough to be worth the effort to make it happen. I could be wrong, but it just seems way too far fetched for me. Whereas an accidental release seems much more believable based on history and probabilities. Others will have a different take. But if we are going to have a group discussion of what is/isn’t happening, it has to start with what is known. If the answer is “little to nothing,” I suppose intuition is all that’s left to us, but it’s not really appropriate for people (I’m not referring to you, of course) to cast aspersions on others’ characters because of personal intuition. There is a very big leap from, “I’m feeling uncomfortable with the information about the last election” to “there was massive fraud, the election was stolen and we need to break into the Capitol and stop the transfer of power by violent means if necessary.” Just as an example.

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  • I am not sure I can agree with you. I evaluate “conspiracy theories” like any other theory: 1) given what I know, how likely/unlikely is such a theory to be true? (Occam’s Razor, for instance – is it the simplest explanation? Does it require me to assume untestable proposals? How many times?) And 2) is there actual hard evidence to substantiate the claim?

    An example would be the recent claims of a stolen election. As to 1), the simplest explanation is that Trump simply lost the election. For any other theory to hold water, it would have to have a plausible mechanism by which it occurred. The idea that millions of people “voted fraudulently” and ALL voted for Biden illegally and somehow local election officials missed it requires believing unprovable premises that contradicts many decades of experience. The idea that there was a giant conspiracy to intentionally overlook these millions of irregularities that involved life-long Republican election officials somehow joining in to get a Democrat elected requires even more unprovable and very unlikely assumptions to be true. Which moves us to 2). If I am to believe these less likely scenarios to be accurate, I will need hard evidence, and the more implausible the theory, the more hard evidence is required. Dozens and dozens of cases were brought before a wide range of judges, both Dem- and GOP-appointed, some Trump appointed, and not one case was found to have sufficient evidence to go to a full trial. So we have two unlikely scenarios requiring unprovable assumptions to be accepted, and a lack of any concrete evidence. These “theories” can be dismissed out of hand. They are simply false.

    Whereas the “lab origin” theory does NOT stretch the imagination at all – historically, lab accidents have happened, if pretty rarely, including adverse consequences (remember the Killer Bees?), and safety protocols are not infrequently ignored (look at handwashing figures at hospitals for support for that premise). When it was denied initially, there was no specific evidence against it, nor was their evidence in favor of alternate theories. It was pure speculation, and I never did buy it. On the other hand, the idea that there was an international conspiracy to release COVID into the environment intentionally was a much more difficult premise to buy (WHY would “they” do this again? To sell vaccines???), and required a number of untestable assumptions, and is FAR less probable than a lab release origin. So until and unless I see specific hard evidence to show this far less likely scenario to be more feasible, I am ignoring that as a likely cause, and am putting my bets on accidental lab release.

    An old medical saying goes, “When you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras.” Unless you’re on the African savannah, of course!

    Steve

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  • I don’t see how science could ever prove or disprove the existence of a Supreme Being. Science is the study of what happens under earthly/celestial rules. The idea of a supreme being transcends the rules of earthly existence by definition. They are simply different realms. Science could totally follow exact rules that are completely knowable and still be the product of some form of creation. At the same time, the world could be filled with one mystery after another and still be the product of physical forces with no creator in sight. So to me, science is not required nor likely capable of proving or disproving the existence of a creator, and it can happily go on being scientific and reliable and helpful and viable without the question of a supreme being even being raised. Science and religion are simply two different realms that have little to do with each other. As long as religion doesn’t invalidate the facts we observe in front of us, it’s all fine by me for people to have and exercise their faith. I only object when one’s faith says that what is observed is wrong because some book or prophet says so. Otherwise, who am I to decide how we all got here?

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  • Ombudsmen can stand up for individuals in oppressive systems, and can collect data and stories relating to oppressive patterns that transcend individual cases. But advocates alone can’t create system change – I think it requires the “consumers” to stand up and demand different “solutions.” And some systems are simply too corrupt or ill-intended to start with and resist any effort to “reform.” Such systems need to be discarded and a new plan built from scratch.

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  • I think that stuff about “free will” has very little to do with science at all. It’s essentially a philosophical argument, suggesting that because there is not enough time to “think” before making certain decisions (such as a batter swinging at a ball) that therefore the person can’t have made a decision and must be compelled to be acting the way that s/he is. They pretend that this is “science” by measuring reaction times and the time required for a conscious cognition to be put into effect. The measurement of such times is scientific, but the conclusion is based on the (I believe quite errant) assumption that a conscious thought is required in order to make a decision. This is NOT a scientific, but a philosophical premise. A common fallacy these days is to measure something (like PET or SPECT scans) and then draw conclusions based on unstated philosophical assumptions, which invalidates the conclusions entirely.

    Anyone who watched Mike Schmidt (Hall of Fame third baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies back in the 1970s and ’80s) foul off one pitch after another after another when he had two strikes on him, waiting until he walked or got a good one to hit (as I did many times when I lived in Philly), has to conclude that the guy was doing it on purpose, no matter whether or not he had time to consciously decide where that ball was coming into the plate!

    Sorry if that’s too far down the “rabbit hole” for others. Feel free to ignore!

    Steve

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  • A big part of the problem is that there is no actual standard on what “helping people” actually means. Of course, it can be vastly different for each person from their own perspective -forr one it’s getting married, another it’s getting out of a dead-end job, another it’s recovering from childhood abuse, another is working on serious health issues – naturally, when you lump together people who have little to nothing in common, it’s going to be hard to define any kind of “improvement.” The only thing that makes sense to me as a standard is that the person in front of you becomes more capable of handling his/her life in as self-determined a way as possible. Nothing else really can make sense for everyone at one time. Not very “measurable,” but I’d say the client/helpee will know if they are feeling more in control of their lives!

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  • Your statements are unfortunately very valid. People are susceptible to being sold “wish fulfillment.” I’m not sure what anyone can do about that. What I think you’re leaving out is that this model primarily serves those who wish to label and dismiss the distress of others and have them take the blame for it. Is it really likely that the average person is going to stop believing in psychiatry, or in the infallibility of doctors in general, when they are blanketed with propaganda through their own doctors, the media, the schools, their churches, their friends, and so on? We can’t expect the mass of individuals to develop this kind of insight – action needs to take place on a MUCH larger scale than hoping that educated individuals somehow acting en mass to alter the economics of selling people drugs that don’t work at a premium price.

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  • You are talking about internalized oppression here. No one is denying it exists. I am saying that it is still the full responsibility of the abusive “doctors” in the system to NOT “tell people what they want to hear” but instead to tell people the truth, regardless of what they want to hear. That’s the responsibility their power conveys upon them. We can and should help people NOT view themselves as helpless, by all means, but that does not for one instant relieve psychiatry’s responsibility for pitching that narrative with all they have the power and money to do. Most people would have a much harder time convincing themselves they are hopeless without the unscrupulous support of those in power who know better, but pitch that narrative only so they can make themselves rich at their patient/victims’ expense. And even those who DON’T view themselves as hopeless/powerless are relentlessly beat upon to accept that viewpoint, not only by doctors, but by friends and relatives and TV shows and movies and the evening news, not to mention DTC advertising. We need to stop the onslaught instead of wasting our energy trying to talk the victims of the onslaught into ignoring the enormous social pressure to conform!

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  • Lawrence, I am not arguing that people are not making decisions. But a lot of times they are NOT aware of doing so, while the “mental heath” industry is quite aware and intentional in their deceptive practices, and takes advantage of common cultural beliefs to manipulate those who are not as aware of their ability or need to think independently. I don’t think it is proper to invalidate all responsibility for the clients, as reassuming responsibility is critical to improving one’s emotional state. However, there is a big difference in levels of responsibility. The client has a normal human desire to seek a quick and easy solution, just like almost all human beings on earth. They are responsible for choosing to trust and believe the doctors’ pronouncements and directions, which our society totally supports and even expects of people (I can’t tell you the flak I’ve taken over the decades for questioning doctors’ opinions, and not just from the doctors!) Whereas the clinician knows (or should know) about human nature and the tendency to look for easy solutions, and intentionally tells a tale that they know to be false, taking advantage of the subconscious need to trust them on the part of the client. They are also responsible for observing whether or not their intervention is helpful, for researching the outcomes for these interventions, and for changing the intervention if it doesn’t seem to be working. Failure to do all these things is 100% on the clinician, whatever level of awareness the client may or may not possess.

    Psychiatrists as a guild, in particular, are responsible for creating an utterly dishonest narrative for promoting their own financial and guild power interests and using what they know about human nature to create incentives for people to avoid their real problems and rely on the psychiatric profession for a “solution.” They spend billions and billions of dollars on this, invent new “disorders” in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry, create or alter “practice guidelines” in the direction that increases their power, influence, and income, and intentionally ignore or misinterpret their own industry’s research that says that none of this crap really makes a difference in the long run, and in fact can be quite destructive or even deadly.

    So on the one hand, we have the clients, the “marks,” as it were, who are guilty of being human and seeking an easy way out, and we have the gigantic collaborative shell game which is utterly committed to milking the “marks” for all they’re worth by lying to them and making them think such easy solutions are real, in contradiction to data they are quite well aware of. We know who is really running the show here. And that’s not even talking about directly or indirectly “involuntary” clients, which encompasses a lot more people than most of us are aware of.

    Blaming the clients for being gullible feels very much like saying that domestic abuse or rape victims should just learn to make better choices and avoid abusers, thus letting the abusers completely off the hook. Yes, it would be very good for them to learn to recognize abusers earlier (I wrote a book on this very subject), but the abusers are the ones making the problem. If there were no assholes out there looking to victimize them, they would not have to look out for them. The assholery is 100% the responsibility of the assholes in the world, and blaming the victims for having normal human emotions and reactions doesn’t help change the situation at all. The real goal should be for those authorities to actually BE trustworthy and tell their clients the real truth, even if the clients don’t want to hear it or believe it.

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  • I think it mostly works great for those in positions of power who want to evade responsibility for the results of their use of the power they have. This can be a parent who isn’t willing to figure out how they might better approach their child, or a teacher who would rather blame the student than change their educational approach, or even a whole system like foster care where it’s easier and less uncomfortable to “diagnose” their charges than to figure out what is actually going on and how to help for real.

    As in any oppressive system, internalized oppression is a very real problem. There have always been women, for example, who vociferously object to any discussion of altering gender roles, or foster youth who embrace the identity of “mentally ill” because that’s what is expected of them and rewarded, or kids who believe they are “stupid” or “bad” because they can’t make themselves fit into the abnormal expectations of the school system. But such internalization, in my view, is a consequence of the system, not a causal factor. It is true that being “diagnosed” with a “mental illness” can temporarily relieve a “client” from the responsibility of having to take action to move their lives in a positive direction, but it is psychiatry who is responsible for holding out this false hope of a ‘Medical solution’ and creating a Stockholm-syndrome kind of situation where hope of the “right answer” is always right around the corner, with the next “change of meds,” while the poor client gradually deteriorates and begins to blame him/herself for not being a “good enough” mental patient.

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  • Training and education are a part of how any culture transmits its knowledge to another generation or to other members of the society as a whole. There is nothing wrong with someone with higher skills in a particular area teaching someone who doesn’t have all those skills how to do what they know how to do. It would be silly for an expert blacksmith to not teach others their blacksmithing skills because it somehow prevents them from a purely egalitarian relationship. And I also see no reason why the blacksmith would be wrong to charge for that service of training.

    The serious problem we are really talking about is the cooptation of a movement to empower people by an institution dedicated to putting people down. The word “peer” has been so seriously coopted by the “mental health” system that it is difficult to use it in its original meaning. But KS is right, a “peer” is simply someone who is at an equal social status or standing as you are, rather than possessing some kind of power advantage. Co-workers are peers, as opposed to management. Students in the same class can be referred to as peers without any negative implications. It appears to me that it is only in the field of psychiatry/”mental health” that the term has come to mean something potentially nefarious. And of course, the “peers” who are buying into the system are no longer “peers” in the true sense, as they are granted a certain “power over” their ostensible “peers,” but only as long as they toe the party line.

    So the problem isn’t “peers helping peers.” The problem is the authoritarian power distribution in the “mental health” system that pits people against each other and requires compliance with certain dogma in order to be granted “power over” those deemed beneath you in the system. In my view, there is absolutely nothing wrong with teaching certain approaches or techniques or ways of thinking about how we help each other, as long as 1) these approaches are offered in a “take what you need and leave the rest” style, rather than a “this is the right way and anyone who disagrees is wrong” approach, and 2) the training is not offered in the context of an authoritarian system where those higher in the hierarchy are permitted, nay, are EXPECTED to put those beneath them in their proper place.

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  • My main objection is reframing what is likely a wide range of withdrawal effects as “relapse.” I find this quite disingenuous. It assumes that the “antidepressants” are automatically helping in all cases and that the psychotherapy is needed because not having the pills to keep their “disease” under control means they’d need therapy. The idea that they feel bad because of the known and often serious withdrawal effects of stopping the pills themselves is completely discounted.

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  • Hey, I have a better plan: if you just take a couple teaspoons of Epsom Salts in warm water in the morning, you’ll completely lose your appetite for anything, feel nauseated at the thought of food, and have a bad case of the runs within hours! A lot cheaper than taking the drugs with the same result. People who purge have been aware of this for DECADES! But seriously, folks, what kind of an industry comes up with solutions like this? What’s next, they burn out our taste buds so nothing tastes good? At least the stomach staple is honest in its approach and doesn’t pretend to be “treating” anything. What is wrong with these people???

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  • I feel compelled to ask a question here, not as moderator but just as a person. It seems you feel that someone is telling you that you don’t have a right to “be ill.” You have talked at great length and quite articulately about the importance of allowing multiple definitions or understandings of what is called schizophrenia in the DSM, and have acknowledged the sketchy and subjective nature of these DSM labels. I have also seen many posters, including me, support you in being able to view yourself as schizophrenic or ill or however it is that best describes what is happening to you. I honestly don’t recall one person saying you are wrong to view yourself that way, though it is possible I have missed it.

    So my question to you is – who do you feel is telling you that you don’t have a right to identify as ill or schizophrenic? And what are they saying that is giving you that message?

    It seems pretty clear that you feel compelled to say this same thing many times, which makes me think you are not feeling heard, yet looking from my perspective, I don’t really understand what it is that is not being heard? Can you help me understand this, in specific and simple terms? What is it that people are saying that upsets you and gives you the sense that your right to be ill is being taken away from you?

    I hope you will take this in the spirit in which it is asked. I really do want to understand.

    Steve

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  • “Normalization” was to me the most essential element in approaching people in distress. Letting people know that their reaction to their situation was pretty common, and that lots of other people had experienced similar struggles or engaged in similar coping strategies. Helping them see that their reactions were less the issue than the things they were reacting to. Which is pretty much the opposite of what most people experience when they encounter the “mental health” system.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    Everyone is welcome to post at MIA, as you say. There are no restrictions on language, other than what is listed in the “Posting Guidelines.” This does not mean that others will always see things similarly or won’t argue or disagree. It’s OK to argue and disagree about concepts/ideas as long as you’re not attacking a person or group or people. It gets stickier when one person feels that attacking a particular concept or idea is attacking them personally. This can lead to difficult conversations, but again, that doesn’t mean anyone is not welcome, it just means that words/ideas have different meanings to different people. It is always my hope that such conversations lead to some kind of Hegelian synthesis where everyone understands each other at a higher level. But sometimes we have to agree to disagree, and that’s OK. MIA doesn’t take sides, we just try to make sure the conversation is fair and respectful.

    Hope that clarifies things!

    Steve

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  • Sometimes I am just trying to meet someone where they are and create some common reality. Not everything I say is intended as advocacy for the cause of ending psychiatry. Sometimes I’m just talking to someone. I don’t like the idea that you are hovering around waiting to pass judgment on the adequacy of my communication. It was not intended for your consumption, and frankly isn’t really your business to critique, IMHO.

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  • You know, I find I agree with most of what you have said. The problem I see is, and I’m guessing you agree with me, it is (or should be) the job of the psychiatric profession to correct these misimpressions and to get people to focus on what really will improve their lives. So it’s definitely true that the residential treatment staff would often refer kids to a psychiatrist for such idiotic indications as “doesn’t want to go to school” or “stays in her room too much (isolates)” or “won’t complete their ADLs” (I kid you not, these are all three actual reasons provided by treatment programs to justify a “med increase.”) But I also think it’s true that the psychiatrists had a responsibility to say, “You know, it’s not OK to refer kids to me just because you can’t figure out how to get them to school. That’s really your job as a residential counselor.” Or “Yes, teacher, Joey can be hard to handle in class, but he’s super smart and tells me he’s bored to death. He needs to be challenged in class – what can we do to make things more interesting and challenging for Joey, instead of blaming him for being bored?”

    There are a lot of “reasons” why this epidemic of labeling and drugging has occurred, DTC advertising being a very big one. However, psychiatry as a profession has paved the way for this to happen, by redefining mental/emotional problems as “probably biological” and by selling the drug solution as the first line intervention, instead of a temporary or adjunct intervention on the path to empowering the client. At least, that’s my view of it.

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  • I am sharing only my own experience as an advocate for foster youth and earlier as a mental health professional. I don’t recall many psychiatrists in community settings trying to taper patients from drugs they got from family physicians. Most of the time, they got referrals from physicians who had prescribed either stimulants (for “ADHD” diagnoses) and/or SSRIs (for “major depression,” which was a very common “diagnosis” for foster kids). They usually got referrals because the physicians’ initial prescriptions didn’t work or more commonly made things worse (usually made them MORE aggressive instead of less), and most of the time, they increased dosages or added new drugs, even if it was kind of obvious that the drugs were causing the problem. As advocates, we usually had to move heaven and earth to get them to EVER reduce ANY drug, let alone drop something from their regime. Every once in a while, they might do a “med wash” if things were super messed up, but that was one case in 500 probably. Most of the time the answer was more “meds” in bigger amounts. There were only two psychiatrists I ever met who even understood that stimulants could make kids aggressive, and only one who regularly did anything about it. I could count the number of med reductions on two hands, and most of them were prompted by us or by the child’s attorney not by the psychiatrists. So my experience is very different than yours!

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  • I think the question of whether the “system is broken” depends on what we believe it was designed to accomplish. I think it is fair to say that the system works quite well for a certain kind of person, in particular, a person who is gaining money or prestige by pretending to know things about “mental illness” when they actually have little to nothing to contribute. To such people, any “improvements” in the system are seen rather as threats to their control. They don’t see the system as broken, they see those who challenge it as deluded or hostile!

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  • That is a good way to put it. The error that many make, especially those with conflicts of interest, is that they try to find evidence to support their preferred theory, and despite never finding evidence to reject the null hypothesis, they continue to believe that their hypothesis will eventually be proven true. At a certain point, failure to disprove the null hypothesis repeatedly proves the null hypothesis true.

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  • Your last line says it all for me. There is nothing “disordered” about reacting emotionally to adverse circumstances, whatever they may be. In fact, it is more likely the message from authorities NOT to be emotionally powerful, NOT to tell the story, NOT to “overreact” that creates most of what is so euphemistically referred to as “mental illness.” The label-and-treat (or -drug) method makes people worse!

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  • I’m not sure if the intent is specifically to marginalize and minimize, but marginalization and minimization are required to accomplish the actual goal of making money and amassing power and deflecting attention from larger social issues. Marginalization and minimization may be “means to an end,” but it doesn’t make a lot of difference to the patients. The most important, certain knowledge is that the intent is NOT to make the patients’ lives any better, whatever else may be intended.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    Very well said, and I thank you for taking the time to make this important point.

    From a moderator’s viewpoint, an argument about whether or not “Critical Race Theory” is being taught in the schools or should be or is dangerous or not dangerous doesn’t really get to the point of the article, which is about “mental health activism.” However, comments connecting CRT to “mental health” oppression such as you have done will continue to be welcome. I hope the distinction is clear.

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  • I’ve long said that the DSM categories make scientific research impossible, because they group together totally heterogeneous groupings of people, particularly if you’re studying physiology. Why would anyone assume that all people who feel depressed have the same problem??? Even if we assumed there WERE some physiological cause to ‘depression,’ which of course is also a ridiculous assumption, it’s like saying everyone with a rash has the same cause, or everyone with a sore knee should be diagnosed with “knee pain disorder.” (Of course, medicine IS moving in that direction, with things like “high blood pressure” and “obesity” being now accepted as “diagnoses.”) Naturally, if you studied people with “knee pain disorder,” you’d find that most did not respond to any single treatment, with only 20% responding to arthritis treatments, 15% responding to chiropractic adjustments, 20% responding to treatment for strained ligaments, 15% to orthotic shoe inserts, etc. All of these treatments would be dismissed because they only helped a small percentage of the “KPD” patients, and the only thing that would “help” the majority of them (temporarily) would, of course, be pain killers. So we’d decide that “KPD” is a chronic, untreatable condition, but that we can “manage symptoms” with pain killers for life. Works great for Big Pharma, but not so good for the person who could function fine in a few weeks or months if they got the correct treatment for their actual underlying problem!

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  • Oh, it IS based on a misunderstanding of their philosophy – anything that minimizes discomfort and maximizes profits for the “clinician” is good! Anything that increases discomfort or dilutes profit is “bad.” If people understood the REAL philosophy behind this “model,” they’d have a lot easier time deciding what to do with the “recommendations” it generates!

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    At this point, I’d like to bring the discussion of the use of the term “schizophrenia” and the related issues to an end, at least as far as this particular thread is concerned. It seems that all the positions and viewpoints have been aired and are at this point being repeated. I think anyone reading this thread will get a very good idea of the issues and the various ways to look at it. I don’t want to have things deteriorate into a more personalized exchange that could be hurtful, and in truth, the thread has veered pretty far from the original topic of the difficulties being a “mental health professional” who is out of agreement with the status quo model of reality that is so vociferously enforced by the “authorities” in the field.

    Thanks to everyone for their contributions – it has been a very interesting discussion!

    Steve

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  • Just to clarify, I was not talking only about “critical psychiatry” people from the “professional” ranks. I know of plenty of clients/survivors/victims who totally bought into the “mental health” narrative to start with, then began moving to “Critical” as they learned and experienced more of the failures and damage that the system doles out, and eventually to a more abolitionist stance. Laura Delano is only one good example. I agree it is true that most antipsychiatry activists don’t come from the professional ranks, but “peer workers” and some fringe therapist types (like me) who never did embrace the “medical model” are certainly worth spending time educating. Stephen was another good example of someone who worked in the system but never bought into it, and came to a more radical position through observing the way he was treated in his “peer” role. Such people to me are very much worth educating, as their evolution does happen with some frequency, in my observation.

    Of course, I agree that being “scientific” is a necessary but certainly not close to sufficient criterion for any kind of claim of “medical treatment.” And that there are many areas where science is not able to really provide any answers, such as the nature and function of the mind itself.

    Additionally, I’m not a pure “professional” type, as you may remember.

    Steve

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  • That makes great sense to me. It is easy to see how that could bring comfort. And as I said, I think you should do whatever it is that gets you through the day. I have no criticism for anyone who personally wants to embrace whatever label they choose. It is, indeed, the bullying aspect that I object to. I do think it’s very possible to be assertive and strong without being a bully. But it’s a skill that few truly develop.

    Take care of yourself!

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  • I am suspicious of the trope that any “mental illness” has a unitary cause at all. Trauma, nutrition, social conditions, sleep problems, immigration, urbanization, adverse drug events, grief and loss… there are many, many potential causes for any “mental illness” that exist and are routinely ignored.

    Treating people as individuals and looking for root causes instead of categorizing and discriminating against people based on social constructs seems to me more likely to lead to better outcomes, regardless of what the DSM/psychiatry wants us to call these phenomena.

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  • I hear and I think I understand what you’re saying, both of you. Here is where I think the conflict lies: I think that you, DS, are arguing about your right to view yourself as ill and having schizophrenia and find objections to these terms conflicting with those rights. I see you, Oldhead, saying that giving power to these words IN GENERAL means giving power to the system to label and judge people and also gives credence to the idea that psychiatry can define “mental illness” by coming up with a list of “criteria” voted on in a meeting of privileged “professionals” who are more or less arbitrarily condemning people to a label indicating that their brain is broken without any objective means of identifying what is supposedly wrong.

    Oddly, I agree with both of you. I think the use of the term “schizophrenia” by an individual, and/or a reframing or believe that you as a person “have an illness” is your absolute right as a human being that no one should try to take away from you.

    At the same time, I see the damage that these labels do to people, as you, DS, saw in my presentation on “ADHD.” So in general, having these labels ENFORCED on individuals who may or may not agree with these evaluations or the philosophy behind them is evil. And spreading the idea in society that psychiatrists have some inside knowledge of the causes and effective “treatments” for these “mental illnesses” that they claim to be able to identify is very destructive socially, as it reframes what are often completely normal reactions to difficult or oppressive social conditions as “diseases of the brain” or “of the mind” with no evidence that there is anything at all wrong with a person’s brain.

    So it’s no big deal for YOU to believe in schizophrenia and view it as a disease, if that is what you see and believe is going on. However, it IS a very big deal when psychiatry as a profession/industry is promoting a concept of “mental illness” that is not actually supported by science, or in fact is even able to define its basic terms (like “mind”), and that has huge financial conflicts of interest driving its claims, and which claims are very destructive to our society at large.

    And it is VERY difficult to engage in an honest discussion of the damage done by the current psychiatric system without directly criticizing the idea of “diagnosing” people with “mental illnesses” in the absence of any evidence that these sets of “criteria” they identify correlate with any kind of specific biological problem. This observation does not in any way suggest that you, DS, do NOT have an illness of some sort, nor does it suggest that you aren’t allowed to call it an illness or call it “schizophrenia.” What it means to me is that the PROFESSION calling EVERY situation where people have similar experiences to you “schizophrenia” is not supported by science, nor is it even philosophically sound for professionals to suggest that people have an “illness” that can’t be defined by any objective means. I hope that this difference is clarified by my remarks. This conflict is the cause of much consternation both by those identifying personally as “schizophrenic” and those who find the process of labeling BY PROFESSIONALS in general to be objectionable on the face of it. And this conflict, while understandable, is to me unnecessary. Because the first has to do with the right of an INDIVIDUAL to identify with their own terms and ideas, while the second has to do with the assumed authority of a large cohort of professionals to use their power to label a range of people as “mentally ill” without their agreement or even any objective scientific evidence supporting such claims. These are very different assertions that don’t actually conflict with each other, even though it may feel as if they do.

    I hope that helps a little.

    Steve

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  • I think there is a more fundamental problem – your comments (and Laing’s) presume that “schizophrenia” is a unitary condition with a unitary cause, whether it’s biology or trauma or “refrigerator moms.” There is, of course, no accurate, objective way to determine who “has” or “does not have schizophrenia,” since “schizophrenia” is “diagnosed” by a list of thoughts/behaviors that allow for a broad range of “clinical opinions” to enter in, to the point where people who have literally not one single “symptom” in common can all be labeled as “schizophrenic.”

    So we are left at a place where any explanation will fail, because no one explanation could possibly explain such a wide variety of experiences and behavior. So we get endless discussions of who “has it” or whether “it” really means anything specific at all, or what causes “it” if anything. And we have people like DS who perceive correctly that SOMETHING is not right, and yet the “help” she is offered is ineffectual, perhaps because they are given the idea that the psychiatrists “know” something that they don’t.

    So the most sense that can be made of “schizophrenia” is that it is a name for a certain broad set of experiences, and that some people (like DS) identify with it and others don’t. It does acknowledge the idea that SOMETHING is wrong, yet it does nothing to determine what is actually wrong or what if anything should be done about it. People should be respected for the identity that makes sense to them, yet the general use of the term will never lead to any resolution or effective “treatment,” because we are expecting people who have a wide range of different issues going on to ALL respond to the same “treatment.”

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  • I’m not aware that the requirement to do one’s own therapy before becoming a professional therapist is still in place in the USA, at least not in most places. It used to be a requirement, and in my view, it still ought to be. The big problem being that the “outcomes” for therapy are so disparate, and in fact, even the idea of what an actual positive outcome IS (lower symptoms? Less troublesome behavior for society? Opinion of the client? Achievement of agreed-upon goals? Avoidance of hospitalization?) that it would be very difficult to get any kind of consistency in our therapy candidates’ therapeutic “success” ratings.

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  • I agree with this. Many who eventually become antipsychiatry activists begin (like I did) with a “critical psychiatry” stance. There is an evolution of viewpoint that takes place as people gather more information, and I don’t think it’s proper for me to judge where people need to be on that path. I don’t hesitate to lay out facts for people to hear, and I don’t for a minute buy that doing so is somehow “shaming” people who don’t want to know the information. But I don’t expect people to agree with me just because I said so, and I try to meet people where they are and help them take whatever next step seems right for them. Psychiatry takes away people’s ability to make their own decisions about things. I’m not going to do the same, even if people see things differently from me.

    However, when we’re talking about systems of oppression, there is no mercy!

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  • That is another of the bad things about the drug model – it gives psychologists and therapists an “out” so that instead of admitting they don’t know what’s going on or what to do, they can blame the client for “failing therapy.” Sorry, if you’re being paid to do therapy, and it doesn’t help, the only one failing is the therapist! You (the therapist) aren’t delivering your product and should step aside, instead of blaming the client’s brain and passing on your failure to your client.

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  • There are lots of programs to help people with things that are not “mental illnesses.” Why would we not be able to provide a process for people to re-integrate their lives without requiring that they have a “mental illness?” Churches, support groups, hotlines, meditation groups, Tai Chi classes or meetings, community get-togethers, all of these things happen all the time with participants able to join without subscribing or being “diagnosed” with anything. Why not Soteria House?

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  • Posting as moderator:

    I am approving this post, as it does not specifically violate the Posting Guidelines. However, I am concerned that this will re-create the dive into off-topic interpersonal hostility, as it has done twice before. Richard has posted his view of things, others are welcome to post their view of things, but it is essential that this not deteriorate into an us-vs-them, “You are wrong and I am right” kind of discussion. I ask for your cooperation in keeping this a safe environment for all views to be expressed. I will be keeping a close eye and will intervene swiftly if I see this conversation deteriorating into personalized attacks.

    Thanks for your help!

    Steve

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  • I read a study one time where they sent volunteers into a residential treatment facility for teen youth with a handful of reasonable but kind of personal questions. Over 80% of the youth revealed a trauma history to these complete strangers surveying them. Yet less than 20% had their trauma history documented in their logs! So either the youth were more willing to trust a complete stranger than one of the staff they see daily, by a factor of 4, or else the staff never bothered to ask them, or considered their revelations so irrelevant they didn’t even warrant a log entry. I thought it said a whole lot about what “treatment” constitutes today.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    At this point, this discussion seems to be moving in a more personalized direction that I don’t think is going to be productive. A couple things are clear: 1) Everyone has a right to identify as they please; 2) Everyone has a right to object to terminology they find objectionable; 3) when there is a general objection a term that an individual might find workable for him/herself, there is a very distinct possibility of feelings getting hurt.

    It seems to me that the primary conflict is around whether the general discussion of the damage done by psychiatric labels is in some way disrespectful to those who identify with such a label. I’m not going to try and be the final judge on this point, but I will say that the conflict is one that is inherent in the subjectivity of the diagnostic system itself, and is unlikely to be resolved by further discussion of this nature.

    So at this point, I am going to ask that we leave this discussion where it is at, with the acknowledgement that the conflict is not resolved, and that different people have different feelings about it, to which each is fully entitled. Others who want to discuss this further with each other are certainly entitled to do so by direct communication off line. If anyone needs/wants to connect with someone through email for further discussion, I am always happy to assist with making such connections.

    Steve

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  • It’s a difference between a decision or direction being wrong, and a PERSON or their feelings/reactions being wrong. I agree 100% with your statement that “most ‘mental health’ problems result when people have a goal and then are doing things that actually get them going in the opposite direction without their awareness of that.” So the goal of therapy is to help THE CLIENT to gain an awareness of what direction s/he wants to be going and what barriers, internal and/or external, may be preventing that, including false beliefs that seem to force them to go in the opposite direction. Again, that is very different from saying that the person is wrong for feeling anxious or depressed or angry. Long ago, I learned that the proper approach is to validate/normalize FEELINGS, while challenging BELIEFS/THINKING that is getting in the way of the client’s success.

    And I think you are mistaking me if you think this is about the word “wrong.” It is about the invalidation of a person’s knowledge of or ability to know their own mind and ethics and/or to decide for him/herself what is right/wrong, effective/ineffective, valid/invalid. And it most definitely IS imposing one’s idea of rightness/wrongness when we tell or imply that a person’s emotional reaction is somehow “wrong” or that a person suffers from a “mental illness” simply because s/he engages in behavior that seems irrational or unproductive. I find it much more helpful to help a person identify the reason why something that I think is “irrational” makes sense to them. Once the problem they are trying to solve with the “irrational” behavior becomes clear, it may be possible to consider other solutions that are more coherent with their goals.

    Of course, this is more complicated when a person’s connection to what we consider “reality” is more distant. But I think the same principles apply. It is clearly very ineffective to start off telling someone who hears voices that they are imaginary, or telling someone with a “delusional” belief that their belief is wrong. It’s a question of what really works, not a particular antipathy to the word “wrong.”

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  • We do not withhold or approve comments based on opinion or topic. The only comments held back are those which violate the posting guidelines, which are available on the home page. You are entitled to post any opinion you have to share, as long as it’s done respectfully. Of course, others may respond in kind.

    That being said, I have to ask: are you suggesting that the poster is making up this story? At least in terms of the dosages prescribed? Or are you simply shocked that your colleagues would engage in such unscrupulous and unethical behavior?

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  • The point is more that I have no right to decide what they are doing is “wrong,” unless it is a violation of the rights of others. I would equally not want to tell someone that their behavior is “right,” as I also believe that is their job to evaluate. So telling them that “there is nothing wrong with you” is also not a viable position. It’s just plain not my call. This also doesn’t prevent me from expressing my concern for the direction someone is going, or pointing out potentially adverse consequences of their continuing on the path they’ve chosen.

    I do also agree that there are “better” or “worse” ways to do a particular task, and that we are doing no favors NOT to tell someone they’re going the “wrong way to get to the Pacific Ocean.” But that’s a different context, where the person has made their goals and intentions clear, and you have information to convey that will help them accomplish their goal. That is very different from saying to someone that feeling depressed about something is “wrong,” that it is “right” to listen to your doctor or teacher, that you are “wrong” not to want to go to school or find it dull, that your perception of the world is “wrong” and that if you agree with mine, you will be more “right.” In a therapeutic setting, it is my job to empower the person I’m helping to become more self-determined and to apply their abilities to creating their own lives. Something is only “wrong” to the degree that it fails to move them in the direction they want to go, and again, no one else is able to determine that definitively besides the client him/herself. Again, the only exception to that in my view is when the client is violating the rights of others, and even then, it is ultimately the client him/herself to decide what that means and how to handle the conflict. Therapy is about empowering the client, not enforcing my view of reality on someone else. And the proof is in the pudding – people who are told what to think and do, in my experience, tend to do worse and worse. And the vast majority of the time, the reason they present as “mentally ill” in the first place is because their sense of self-determinism has been systematically snuffed out of existence. The last thing most clients need is someone else’s needs and wishes to accommodate!

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  • I don’t agree. I would never say “there is something wrong with the way you are looking at yourself.” I would ask the person what they were trying to accomplish, and ask them whether they believe their current approach is getting them where they are trying to go. I would also listen for things they felt they “couldn’t do” or “have to do” and ask them to explain how they came to these conclusions. If the person had beliefs I saw as irrational or even non-reality based, I’d ask them to explain how they know these things to be true. I might challenge their beliefs with contrary facts and ask them to explain these differences. I might even say I disagreed with them about certain conclusions. But at no point would I ever tell them that something is “wrong” with how they were looking at themselves. That is simply not my job. It is their job, 100%.

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  • Absolutely. To determine “overdiagnosis,” one would have to determine objectively the proper level of diagnosis. With the shifty, subjective, hazy criteria designed for “ADHD” or any other DSM “diagnosis,” there is no possible way to objectively diagnose even one single person. So yes, ANY “diagnosis” is overdiagnosis. Or in other words, DSM “diagnoses” are fraudulent, 100%. Not that human suffering isn’t real nor that people don’t need extra support sometimes. But calling these things “diagnoses” is, scientifically speaking, a complete joke.

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  • Hi, Ron!

    I think there is a difference between a person deciding for him/herself that there is something “wrong” with their beliefs, assumptions, habits and someone ELSE telling us that something is “wrong” with us, or deciding exactly what it IS that is “wrong” with us. And deciding there is something “wrong” with our own belief systems is highly subjective and personal, very, VERY different than saying there is something wrong with my blood pressure or my ability to breathe or my immune system. The question of what “wrong” means and who gets to decide this is essential to having this kind of conversation make sense.

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  • It always bothered me a lot when institutionalized children/adults had hands laid on them by staff, and when they fought back, they were accused of “assault,” and sometimes even charged criminally! The “CLIENTS” were assaulted by the staff and were fighting back! It is stunning that this obvious fact seems to be lost not only on “mental health professionals,” but on our entire legal system. Defending oneself can’t be considered an assault!

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  • Couldn’t agree with you more! Detaining someone for being dangerous should NOT in any way be considered as or associated with “treatment” or “diagnosis” at all. Social control is social control. As I’ve said many times, without even arguing about the obvious failings of the destructive psychiatric model, as soon as you introduce force, it can no longer be considered in the realm of “treatment.”

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  • I am never one to justify violent behavior, just because someone is enraged. But I find it predictable and understandable, even if it is ineffectual and counterproductive in most cases.

    Of course, there ARE cases where violence IS justified, when one’s safety or the safety of others is involved. In such cases, the minimum force should be used, but the use of force isn’t always “wrong.”

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  • I would suggest that King was not advising or supporting violence (he was a VERY strong advocate of a nonviolent approach), but more putting the violence from the poor and disenfranchised into perspective. While he supported nonviolence, he understood that if you push people enough and deny them their voice, their frustration and anger will in many cases be translated into rage and violence. So a person wanting to reduce violence would be wise to start listening to those who are shouting but not being heard.

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  • Bruce Perry is a man who tells it like it is, backed by solid research. The psych mainstream really WANTS to dismiss him completely, but can’t, because he’s so solidly based in research. They have chosen to coopt and minimize his contributions, focusing on “trauma changes the brain” as a means to justify more drugging, and forgetting Bruce’s main theme, which is, “Healthy relationships can HEAL the brain, even in adulthood.” The latter message is unacceptable and has been muted by every possible means the psych professions have had at their disposal. This looks like an important read. I hope that Oprah’s stamp of approval gets it the wide viewing it most likely deserves.

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  • The whole idea that people can be divided into the “mentally ill” and the “normal” is brought into sharp relief by your analysis. A “normal” person who gets intimidated by his/her boss and starts feeling anxious and avoids him/her is considered to be “under stress.” A “mentally ill” person with the exact same reactions to the exact same situation is considered to be “having symptoms” or “decompensating.” It is nothing but rank prejudice and discrimination, not dissimilar in structure to white people engaging in violent acts being considered “lone wolves” or “troubled men” when black people doing the exact same thing are considered “thugs” and Muslim people doing the same thing are considered “terrorists.” This is perhaps the most important reason that “mental health” labels in general are ultimately destructive, even if a particular person doesn’t mind or appreciates their particular label. These labels are more or less arbitrary, and enable folks to engage in systematic discrimination without consequence against people who have them. In fact, these labels make such discrimination virtually invisible to most people who observe it happening. Instead of seeing it as condescending disrespect, the discriminators can frame it as “helpful concern” and the observers allow that framing unless they are quite enlightened.

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  • Same thing happens with “ADHD.” They give the kid stimulants to increase their dopamine levels. They often become aggressive, lose sleep, even hallucinate sometimes. Then they give them antipsychotic drugs to DECRASE the dopamine levels that they are INCREASING with the stimulants! Why not just STOP INCREASING the dopamine by giving them less stimulants? No, that would be too simple and not make them enough money, I guess! That is REAL insanity!

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  • All too true! I’m tired of hiking being called “nature therapy,” or expressing oneself through artistic media being called “art therapy,” or meditating on the meaning and purpose of existence being called “mindfulness therapy.” Some things are just good things to do. I would hate to think they will turn Harry Potter into “fantasy fiction therapy” instead of just being a good read!

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  • Bullying is, indeed, the more fundamental problem. Psych labels are merely the bully’s tools.

    I appreciate your clarity about why you wanted a “diagnosis.” I’m sure your feeling is shared by many, that lacking a “diagnosis” means you are not taken seriously. But I would toss out the question: why in our society is it necessary to have a “diagnosis” to be taken seriously? Maybe that is a problem even more fundamental than bullying itself!

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  • I agree absolutely. The word has been “polluted” by the cultural context surrounding it, at least for me. It is associated in our culture with violence, destructiveness, lack of value, and shame. It is interesting that in other cultures in which “voice hearing” is more accepted, “Voice hearers'” voices are actually more positive and helpful. How we choose to view phenomena and how we choose to name them has power. At a minimum, that power should not be usurped by the “professionals,” but I’m afraid most of these labels have already been appropriated culturally to the point that their personal meaning is difficult to untangle from their cultural meaning.

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  • You write very powerfully! And I appreciate your comments very much, and your kind words for me as well.

    I think the only REAL way to be non-judgmental is to understand that we are ALL judging all the time, and to become AWARE of and acknowledge one’s judgment, to the degree that one is able to view those very judgments themselves objectively enough to set them aside and not put them onto the other person. It is difficult to describe, but I do believe it is most definitely possible to accomplish, at least enough that the person we are dealing with doesn’t feel they are being judged and sees that you are able to hear what they really are saying instead of what you think they ought to say or mean.

    I am reminded of a quote from the Princess Bride by your closing paragraph: “Live IS pain, Highness. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.”

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  • I think the person suffering has every right to identify their “problem” or “issues” however they would like to view them. My objection is when another person tries to take that right away by deciding for you what your “problem” is. It would be one thing if they are saying, “You have a brain tumor” or “Your blood pressure is higher than normal.” But instead, they are judging their clients/patients/whatever based on some set of arbitrary rules and pretending they know what they’re talking about.

    I respect YOUR views on your condition/situation WAY more than any “professional” who might come along and condescend to “diagnose” you!

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  • Excellent analysis!

    I always figured the best assessment tool was to ask the client what s/he felt was troubling them, and then ask what they would like to see be different in their lives. Then ask them what barriers they saw to making that happen. Depending on what they said, there would be a whole lot of different things they could do to move in the direction they wanted to. No “clinical judgment” or “diagnosis” or “spectrum disorders” required!

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  • Waste of time. The “model” fails to alter the most basic and incorrect assumptions of the DSM, namely, that a “clinician,” by virtue of some level of training and education, can look at someone’s behavior, mood, or thinking and objectively determine if there is something “wrong” with them. It doesn’t matter how you slice it, we’re substituting human judgment for actual scientific observation and attributing “medical” legitimacy to someone’s biases and opinions based solely on what kind of degree or training they have. As long as we pretend that we are “diagnosing” a “mental illness,” it doesn’t matter if we use HiTop or the DSM or the ICD or a dart board, we’re wasting a lot of energy categorizing what kind of iceberg hit the Titanic instead of trying to keep the ship from sinking or getting the passengers to the lifeboats!

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  • Well, no community just IS that way, it has to be CREATED that way and continue to be created that way over time. I have experienced that from time to time in my life, but only for a little while. It is difficult to get everyone on board with that kind of ongoing creation. We’ve all grown up in an oppressive society and we all need healing!

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  • Humans are social animals/beings. Most don’t do well when isolated. We seem to thrive when living in communities. The failure of psychiatry to even notice let alone try to understand this simple fact makes it impossible for psychiatry to ever be of any help to anyone. The Rat Park experiment alone puts the lie to the vast majority of psychiatric research – obviously, if community and activities can change even a rat from a cocaine addict into a “normal” community member, the idea that addiction or “mental illness” is inherent in the person seems pretty stupid.

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  • That sounds like an AWFUL experience! I ran into quite a few of these situations when I worked with foster youth. The easiest “disease” to attribute to your child is a “psychiatric disorder,” because there is no objective way to prove that the “diagnosis” is right or wrong. It is the “Munchhausen parent’s” paradise!

    I hope you have found other adults to validate the bizarreness of this experience. I was not meaning to imply that you were validating the DSM “diagnoses,” I was just expressing my own discomfort with assigning a “disorder” that is in no way validated or validatable, rather than just describing the behavior that is of concern for what it is. You certainly did a fine job of doing the latter!

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  • I have always considered “transparency” a joke. “I’m taking bribes from Big Pharma to promote their drugs. Here are the companies paying me off.” And then the get to go ahead and make “recommendations” based on who is paying them, and no one stops them. How about disqualifying anyone on the take from participating in making practice recommendations? How about forbidding researchers at colleges and universities from taking any funds from industry directly, as used to be the case when I was a kid? As soon as you can use your research grant to get a patent and make a ton of money, your scientific objectivity is shot to hell, I don’t care who you are. Publishing one’s conflicts of interest is a useless and ridiculous measure. Preventing conflicts of interest is what we need to be doing.

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  • “Munchhausen’s by proxy” to me isn’t something to “diagnose,” it’s just another phenomenon that most likely has multiple causes and multiple effective interventions. Drugs obviously are not one of the effective approaches.

    Rather than call it “Munchhausen’s by proxy,” why not just say, “This person likes/needs to believe that his/her children are ill to meet some personal need of their own.”

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  • Generally, yes. If something doesn’t show up and I haven’t sent you a note, by all means, check in with me. Sometimes I think I’ve approved things that somehow don’t get approved, and sometimes I forget to write the note to ask you to explain. It is rare that I change or remove something without connecting with you in some way, so please check back in with me if you are wondering what happened.

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  • What it means is that the doctors are not prescribing based on scientific evidence. They are motivated by different factors, including keeping parents happy, feeling like they are “doing something,” fitting in with social expectation, and/or increasing their personal income, to name a few possibilities. It is not a problem of information or knowledge. It is a problem of improper motivation.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    I am allowing this comment, despite stopping this thread earlier, because the poster relies on personal experience and research data in her comment and is presenting the evidence she has encountered in a respectful manner. I am not inviting a return to the personalized, escalating rhetoric that was occurring previously. Others who wish to present their own personal experiences with COVID vaccinations are welcome to do so, particularly as it pertains to any pressures, oppression, or neglect based on “mental health” labels. Personal experiences are always welcome. Personal attacks and invalidation are not.

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  • I’m not sure I agree. There are power differentials that exist in almost any relationship. It is the negotiated terms of the relationship that allow or disallow connectedness. If the person in the higher power position chooses to be respectful and genuine and chooses not to use that power over the other person, I think connectedness is still possible. But if one person actually views himself as superior and is willing to disregard or condescend or otherwise use his/her “power over,” then I agree there can be no connectedness between them. To connect, there needs to be sufficient safety for both parties.

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  • They have not researched “deaths of despair” because they don’t recognize despair as a legitimate complaint. There should BE no despair, as far as their model is concerned. Despair is indicative of “illness,” even if it’s caused by being hung upside down in a dungeon and tortured by people who have promised you will never escape. The tortured person should apparently have a better attitude, or else the reason they’re so upset is because their brain chemistry is messed up. If they were “normal,” it would not bother them much to be tortured. They’d just accept it as another one of those crazy things that happen in life!

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  • I am sure they don’t cure infections, but they have been noted to have strong effects on pain, nausea, emotional conditions, fatigue, etc. These effects are apparently measurable and observable in the brain.

    https://www.mdlinx.com/article/7-potent-powers-of-the-placebo-effect/2cO3HNrMslvxpW4qQ1hZpg

    More convincingly, how the brain is used has been shown to alter the function of the brain itself. Taxi drivers develop an increase in areas of the brain associated with geography; meditating monks have an increase in areas of the brain associated with calmness and relaxation, as well as alterations in brain wave activity.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/dalai-lama-neuroscience-compassion/397706/

    One can say, “Well, they’re using that part of the brain more, so it’s more developed.” But WHO or WHAT is using that part of the brain more? And HOW is that decided? These are things we simply do not understand.

    The mind is and remains a mystery. It appears to have effects on the body, but how these effects are created is not remotely understood by any in the world of science. What “the mind” even IS is not understood by scientists. I don’t claim to have any understanding of it myself, I’m just pointing out that claims that understanding the brain means understanding the mind are similar to claims that understanding electrical circuitry is the same as understanding computer programming. They are very different things.

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  • I would say that the brain is an organ, while the mind appears to be an agent of controlling the body. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that the mind does somehow arise from the brain, but that is certainly not proven, nor is there even evidence to say it is so, other than materialists saying, “It must be, because what else could it be?” But regardless of that, there is tons of evidence that the mind, whatever that is, is able to control the body, including the brain, in many, many different ways. The placebo effect is a great example. How can believing that something will work help the body to heal or change? Obviously, there is some form of agency that uses beliefs and goals to move the body to do things. Perhaps the concept of a “programmer” is the best analogy. Lots of people refer to the “hardware” (the brain) and the “software” (whatever programs the brain is running), yet no one seems to remember that someone has to WRITE the programs for a computer to run! So who is the “programmer” of the human brain? That’s what I’d call the mind. And again, it is a mystery – no one really has a clue what it is or how it works, but it is clear that it DOES exist and it DOES work, and pretending that we’re just a brain is as dumb as pretending a computer is just a bunch of electronic components and wires. Try to run a computer without software and see what happens! Try to program a computer without a programmer and see how far you get.

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  • I agree 100% on THAT point! I think I’m emphasizing more what people’s attitudes have become, and you are emphasizing more how that attitude has been used to mislead the public. There is nothing “rational” about believing some subset of humanity, with sufficient intelligence and training, can somehow determine what is “true” for the rest of us. It’s just as superstitious as believing in evil spirits. Maybe a little more so!

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  • Right you are! The very essence of science is skepticism, the willingness to invalidate any and all conclusions in the face of new data, and in fact, the drive to do all we can to try and invalidate a particular theory that SEEMS to be true, and only accepting it as truth when all other explanations are proven to fail. And even then to be prepared for new data to force modification. The concept of “scientific truth” is badly misused, as “scientific truth” by definition is always subject to change. Even Newton’s Laws of Motion, long held up as the ultimate in “proven fact,” ended up being approximations. Who knows what we’ll discover in the future, if we stop pretending that some “smart people” already know everything and that we can stop looking and just let them tell us what is true!

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  • True, but a slightly different issue from what I’m talking about. The idea of science being “value neutral” is extremely problematic, as Robert Pirsig so eloquently elucidates in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” But what I’m talking about is a form of almost religious worship of Scientists as the All Knowing, so smart and informed that us mere parishioners are too ignorant and easily misled to be able to understand their deep knowledge. Doing what the Scientists say makes us Smart and Clever free from the curses of Superstition and Blind Faith! The fact that this is another form of Blind Faith does not occur to the faithful. Science is Truth, and to question this is Sacrilege! Oops, I mean Unscientific! Psychiatry is able to use this kind of blind faith to maintain its hegemony despite the fact that their own scientific researchers (not to mention basic logic) have proven that their diagnoses are nonsense and that their “treatments” tend to make people worse rather than better, and in fact to shorten their lives. To question Psychiatry is to question Science, and who are we to question the wisdom of the Great Scientific Gurus!

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  • A lot of people are “pro-scientist” rather than “pro-science.” They thing science is something that other smart people in lab coats do, and they then report their findings honestly and all we need to do is follow their recommendations. The idea that scientists could be dishonest or corrupt or just plain incompetent and narrow-minded is too much for them to process. It’s more like a religion than a logical conclusion. Real science is scary to those people, because it requires them to personally sift and evaluate the evidence, instead of deferring to “the authorities.” So they get very upset at people who question their “pro-scientist” dogma!

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  • Getting a Masters Degree in Education disabused me of any delusion that having an advanced degree means you’ve met some much higher standard of knowledge. My grad courses were WAY easier than most of my undergrad education, and a student could easily get through the entire curriculum while having not the slightest skill or motivation toward caring about kids’ learning. I’m absolutely certain the same would apply to a psychology degree. The only truly useful part was my internship, and that was because I was lucky enough to land a good mentor teacher to work with.

    An advanced degree means pretty much nothing about someone’s skill level or integrity.

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  • As for me, I feel no hostility toward him at all, just a certain sadness and disappointment that such a fantastic opportunity to direct his energies toward that profession which is most strenuously opposed to his philosophy, even when he was victimized by that profession. But it is very hard to admit when you’ve been victimized, especially for those who revere doctors as being automatically more trustworthy than the general population.

    I wish him well, and hope he sees soon what seems clear to us who are further down the road.

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  • It does seem ironic that he is telling people to face their emotions and not try to “fog” them, while taking antidepressants for years and then getting dependent on Benzos by following his doctors’ advice. Wouldn’t you think he’d see the irony here and come out and acknowledge that he’d been led down the garden path? I feel compassion for him, but he’s missing a great opportunity to promote his ideas by challenging the cultural assumption that “feelings” can be a “disorder” that needs to be “treated” rather than understood and faced as Peterson insists is necessary to get away from our overly “orderly” society.

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  • I think the clinical approach is called either “corruption” or “stupidity.” We could give it a fancier name if you’d like.

    Adderall can certainly counteract the effects of “antipsychotics,” especially the traditional ones like Haldol that act solely on dopamine. It appears that is why smoking is so very common for users of neruoleptics. (What, it’s not because they are all lazy, irresponsible addicts? But, but…) But what sense is there to raising dopamine levels with one drug while lowering them with another? Meth would absolutely work similarly. Stimulants are pretty much all the same, except perhaps for cocaine.

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  • My understanding is that the shrinkage is primarily in the basal ganglia, where a lot of dopamine is processed on its way to the frontal lobes. (If I recall correctly, this was the part of the brain that lobotomies attacked, leading some to call neuroleptic “treatment” a “chemical lobotomy.”) This makes sense, because dopamine is the target of the “antipsychotics” aka neuroleptic drugs. I also seem to recall something about reduction in white matter, the stuff that surrounds the neurons. Tardive dyskinesia is clearly and unarguably caused by damage to the dopamine system, only seen in people taking dopamine inhibitor drugs like the neuroleptics, and it would stand to reason that damage to the dopamine system would associate with TD, though I have not researched that question.

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  • Indeed it does! But apparently, they don’t even respect their own “experts” when they come up with the “wrong answer!” These are not people who are going to suddenly say, “Gosh, we seem to have gotten it wrong – maybe we should listen to our clients in the future.” They are dogmatically committed to their worldview and to taking down anyone who dares to challenge that view. I want to extend my love to such people and hope for their transformation, but we can’t allow such people to decide what is “helpful” for the people they truly don’t give a crap about!

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  • Not to mention denying the evidence from their own researchers: that “ADHD” is 30% more likely to be “diagnosed” if a child is a year younger, that there are no long-term outcomes that are improved by stimulants for “ADHD”, that “antidepressants” increase the likelihood of aggression and/or suicide rather than decreasing them, that taking “antipsychotics” for more than a brief time dramatically DECREASES the likelihood of recovery, that countries with less “antipsychotic” use have better outcomes, that the likelihood of “psychosis” is strongly affected by social conditions, in particular, migration, urban living, and childhood sexual abuse, that genetics contributes little to nothing to the probability of any psych “diagnosis,” that “antipsychotics kill people decades earlier than the general population… I could go on.

    I agree, the most fundamental evidentiary problem is ignoring the actual experiences and feedback from those they are supposed to be helping. You’d think that would be the MOST important data, and it is considered the least. But even without that vital consideration, the profession’s ability to ignore cartloads of inconvenient evidence disqualifies them for even the vaguest consideration of being “scientific!”

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  • I agree completely. School in its entirety was a total violation of any sense of safety or self-determination I had. I was in internal revolt for 13 years, but externally acted like things were OK, except for one or two incidents of acting out over the years. It is very damaging, and is only one of many ways in which we have to deny our intuitive sense of what is right in order to survive.

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  • Thanks for pointing out the subtleties of your comment! Your writing borders on the poetic!

    I don’t think it is inevitable that we are required to disrespect our own instincts and rhythms. It seems to relate largely to having too many people for the space we have, and having too few people with too much power to direct others’ behavior for their convenience. And we all accept it at this point, or most of us. I think a lot of ‘mental illness’ comes from internalizing these expectations.

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  • It can hardly be considered coffee’s fault that our circadian rhythms are not respected. I’d view coffee as mostly an effect – an attempt by individuals whose circadian rhythms are PERFORCE disrupted by a society that does not respect them to do something to maintain their alertness in spite of the constant assault on their natural rhythms of sleep and lots of other things. This disrespect begins in the cradle (remember forced feeding schedules and intentional waking of babies who “slept too long” for their arbitrary schedules?) and continues through school (how many days were we all forced to “go to sleep on time” and get up at a ridiculous hour to spend a day of largely wasted time in a building we hated with people we were forced to associate with doing things that someone else decided were important?) and of course is brutally enforced in the workplace for most of us who have had to do a “job” to maintain survival for ourselves and our families.

    Let’s not blame coffee for doing a job that our society has created for it! Remember the Rat Park experiment – rats DON’T prefer cocaine to food when their social and emotional needs are met!

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  • It is a typical, dense, heavy-handed, insensitive, context-absent psychiatric intervention. If someone doesn’t eat enough, let’s give them a drug to make them hungry! If they eat too much, let’s give them a drug to make them LESS hungry! If they take stimulants (which increase dopamine) and become aggressive, forget DECREASING the stimulants, let’s give them antipsychotics to decrease the dopamine we’re increasing with the stimulants!

    It’s like watching someone try to do sculpture with a pickaxe. They have no tool to do the job, but insist on doing it anyway, and regardless of the damage done, never seem to conclude that perhaps they ought to find a small chisel and hammer, but continue to hack away with the pickaxe and require everyone else to admire their “work.”

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  • But cigarettes can also uncover a latent coughing disorder. Which, of course, we can treat with an anti-coughing medication. And later on, you may develop lung cancer. We have found that lung cancer patients seem to have a penchant for cigarettes earlier in their lives. We believe a chemical imbalance in those pre-disposed to lung cancer also leads them to crave cigarettes. Of course, the cigarettes are just a meaningless correlation – the couldn’t POSSIBLY be a causal factor!

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  • This seems to be so difficult for some people to understand. To say “there are no ‘mental illnesses’ is not the same as saying that this kind of suffering doesn’t happen. It means that the categories they define don’t mean anything at all! You can group together people with brittle fingernails or people who clean out their ears with their pinkies or people whose hair falls out early or people who have larger breasts on the average, and any one of these can be defined by a list of “criteria” and people can be diagnosed with “Excessive Ear Cleaning Disorder” or whatever you please. But if the grouping of people has nothing in common other than the ostensible “symptoms,” what is the point of it? And to then attribute these “disorders” to “neurodevelopment” without a shred of evidence adds insult to injury! Plus, if some subset of these people really DID have a neurological problem, the psych “diagnoses” immediately become a barrier to discovering this, because they’d be grouped together with a large cohort of people who did NOT have the same problem, and no one would look at these people with an interest in finding the cause.

    There is no scientific validity to any “mental disorder.” They are based on arbitrary judgments and assumptions that have no coherent meaning. This is not to say people don’t suffer these described syndromes at times. It’s saying that calling these collections “mental disorders” is worse than pointless – it actually prevents any recognition of any ACTUAL physiological problems that DO exist, while invalidating the importance of life experience as the most important contributing factor to most mental/emotional distress.

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  • I don’t disagree at all. The point is not that acting out of anger is always OK, but that feeling anger is not a “disease” and behavioral choices are not ma “disorder.” They are choices. And choices have consequences. And if we want different consequences, we need to make different choices, and we can use our feelings in different ways rather than trying to snuff them out or feel guilty for having them.

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  • Clearly, that is central. The need to define “normal” and to attack or demonize anything that deflects from that “normal” seems to be critical to this effort. This way, everyone is focused on whether they are “happy enough” or “good enough” or “smart enough” or “pretty enough” and so on, instead of wondering where this anxiety and frustration is coming from!

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  • “Neoliberalism is contemporarily used to refer to market-oriented reform policies such as “eliminating price controls, deregulating capital markets, lowering trade barriers” and reducing, especially through privatization and austerity, state influence in the economy.”

    https://www.google.com/search?q=neoliberalism+defined&rlz=1C1RLNS_enUS769US769&oq=Neolib&aqs=chrome.3.0i433j69i57j0i67j0j0i433j0j69i60l2.4527j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

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  • “A more recent analysis estimates 128,000 Americans die each year as a result of taking medications as prescribed – or nearly five times the number of people killed by overdosing on prescription painkillers and heroin. Sep 27, 2016”

    https://health.usnews.com/health-news/patient-advice/articles/2016-09-27/the-danger-in-taking-prescribed-medications#:~:text=A%20more%20recent%20analysis%20estimates,on%20prescription%20painkillers%20and%20heroin.

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  • https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

    Note that the now use the term “medical errors,” but over 120,000 deaths included in the original study (back in 2001 or so – more than half!) resulted from properly prescribed and properly administered drugs. So it doesn’t require an “error” for doctors to kill you. Standard medical practice does the job more than half the time.

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  • The ultimate subgroup is a single person. If you break it down far enough, you end up with individualized “treatment,” which is what should be happening anyway, if any “treatment” at all is considered appropriate.

    Of course, there is “heterogeneity” in a group you put together based entirely on how they FEEL at a given moment in time. The idea that people who feel depressed are all the same is the most basic deception psychiatry is based on.

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  • I’m just going from stats here. Most mass shootings are perpetrated by young men who are misogynistic and have a history of drug abuse, or are on psych drugs. I am certain older men would factor in there as well, as being MALE is the most common characteristic by far of all shooters. My point is, if we’re going to create a profile, we ought to base it on actual correlations, and “mental illness” doesn’t even come close to making the cut!

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  • Actually, that is a good point! If they are advertising being “evidence based medicine,” isn’t that a tacit admission that their prior “medicine” was NOT evidence based?

    Of course, it is impossible to have a real evidence base for “disorders” that are not objectively distinguishable from non-“disordered” conditions, which the DSM itself admits in its introduction is the case for any and all of the DSM “diagnoses.” Kind of like collecting “evidence” to “treat” laziness or cowardice or spontaneity or joy. It is an illogical proposition from the word go.

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  • Well said. If we were going to “profile” the dangerous person who needs to have an eye kept on them, it would be a younger male domestic abuse perpetrator with a substance abuse problem (or on certain psych drugs) and an obsession with weapons. “Mental illness,” whatever that means, would not even make it onto the board as a risk factor. Most gun owners are safe, most people labeled “mentally ill” are safe. We should be looking at the actual risk factors if we are going to try and prevent such situations from arising.

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  • I see it as a constant struggle. There are people who believe they “know best” and should be the authorities, and others who resist are “wrong” and need to change their viewpoints or attitudes to comply with what “we know is true.” This kind of arrogance in a “helper” is incredibly dangerous, because the “helper” has no naturally occurring reason to stop or question his/her activities, since s/he is automatically doing good by virtue of being the authority!

    The other group, which I think is a lot smaller, is those whose intent is to increase the self-determination of the people they help. People in this group would be horrified by the idea of telling someone what to believe or think about their own situation, and instead are focused on helping this person gain sufficient perspective to evaluate their own lives and tell their own stories, unencumbered by any “expected” way of thinking or acting.

    Of course, there are many who don’t really belong to either group and can be swayed one way or the other. Unfortunately, at this time in history at least, Group One has control of the mass media and the main messages we receive are authoritarian ones, and those working for empowerment are considered foolish or dangerous.

    That’s my take, anyway!

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  • I don’t think we are talking about the same thing if you are saying that “repressed” memories can’t be spontaneously recalled. If “repression” per se exists, it would involve an immediate action of putting this memory out of consciousness for purposes of self-protection. There is nothing in the concept of “repression” that would say such a memory could not later be spontaneously recalled or triggered, in fact, this is exactly what PTSD researchers find happens when a person gets triggered. They may have had some vague awareness that “something bad happened during the war” or “my uncle used to creep me out when he came in my room,” but then something reminds the person of what actually occurred, and the memory comes back up in more detail.

    I am certain that there are people who have chosen to distort this admittedly theoretical mechanism to explain how such events happen in order to justify “pulling out” memories that the client is “repressing,” then I say they are behaving reprehensibly. As I think I’ve made clear, there is no excuse for such a shabby form of “therapy.” It sounds like we agree on most points, and are perhaps having different meanings for the term “repression” that are causing us to think we’re disagreeing.

    Thanks for working through this with me.

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  • I agree with you – not knowing is quite dangerous!

    When I say “unethical,” I’m referring to acting on the therapist’s idea of what they “should do” rather than on the observable effects on the client. It would follow that there are a lot of unethical therapists practicing. A truly ethical therapist is humble, knowing first off that it’s better to do nothing than to do harm, and knowing secondly that anything they DO attempt needs to be filtered through the knowledge that inadvertent harm is easily done and not always readily observable. A competent therapist is one who is constantly getting feedback from the client, verbally and nonverbally, and altering one’s approach to meet the needs of the client rather than the therapist’s need to be perceived as “competent” or “insightful” or “skilled” or to prove that the therapist’s school of thought is “correct.”

    In my experience, there is nothing that harms a client more than telling the client what to think about his/her own narrative. Telling them that their memories are “false” or telling them that they “have memories that they don’t recall” are equally destructive, and it should be obvious to anyone looking at the client’s reaction that such actions create confusion and uncertainty, and those are two things we should NOT be creating as therapists!

    My biggest objection to the DSM is not the drugs, it is the action of the doctor/therapist telling the client what to think or believe about their “condition” or needs. Even if such an evaluation were based on facts, it is still not going to be helpful to tell the client “here’s what’s wrong with you.” When such an evaluation is based on raw speculation or invention, as the DSM “diagnoses” almost entirely are, it probably crosses over from unethical treatment to criminal fraud in my view.

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  • Wow, that’s a pretty bent assumption there! I know many people who believe that people could recall prior abuse that they have not recalled previously who would find the idea of “recovered memory therapy” horrific and abusive. Perhaps we travel in different circles. There is absolutely no connection between the ability to recall memories previously not available to the conscious mind and the vindication of therapy that implants “memories” that never occurred, or assumes the presence of “memories” from a vague and subjective list of “signs and symptoms” that has no scientific validation.

    And I would add that the possibility of this discussion is certainly NOT foreclosed upon just because of the observations that some abusers have used the concept to discredit their accusers. Both can be valid at the same time. There is no contradiction that I can see.

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  • So we are playing semantic games now? You know no more than I do about why someone doesn’t recall something that happens, or what mechanism is involved in them being “spontaneously recalled.” I hear no science about this, just a redefinition on your part.

    So we can agree that a traumatic memory could be “forgotten” and then “spontaneously recalled” based on some environmental stimulus? In that case, there isn’t much we are arguing about. We’re both saying that something could be forgotten and then recalled later, and the fact that it wasn’t recalled doesn’t mean that the spontaneous recollection is false. Seems like splitting some pretty fine hairs to me.

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  • You can say the same thing over and over, but it doesn’t make it true. First off, there is nothing “fantastical” about the idea that people would choose on some level not to consciously recall something that was troubling them. If they can “spontaneously recall” something they didn’t before, why could that thing they “spontaneously recall” be a traumatic event??? Your argument makes no sense at all!

    My point regarding memories is that YOU are not in a position to tell ME what I recall is true or false. OF COURSE, people have inaccurate recollection that are contaminated by later experience or poor questioning or whatever. My point is that NO ONE can say if the recollection is true or false absent confirmation from objective data. As this is almost never possible, we are left with the subjective problem with memory in general.

    For instance, the person who recalls what they believe was abuse may be confused or recall incorrectly. Absolutely. But why does this same reasoning not apply to the person who denies that it happens? Could the alleged abuser or other family members not have their recalls contaminated by later experience, or by their on conflict of interest in wanting to minimize the damage they have done or to avoid legal consequences? Do we require a “mechanism” to explain how people who are guilty of abuse claim to be innocent, and often BELIEVE themselves to be innocent in contradiction to actual facts?

    It is very interesting how the recollections of those claiming abuse are so closely scrutinized, and frankly thoughtlessly invalidated on occasion, while the recollections of those denying the abuse are so readily accepted as true? Why do THOSE “false memories” not concern the “false memory” crowd?

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  • Again, these two things have nothing in common. One is a spontaneous process that occurs within a person, the other is an effort to induce or implant memories in people who have none. The latter is NOT caused by the concept of repression, it is caused by unethical therapists who are either greedy or unable to deal with their own issues and act them out on their clients. If they did not have “repression” to use as a blunt instrument, they’d come up with another one. And many do. How many professionals believe they can “detect bipolar disorder” (or whatever other “disorder du jour”) and tell people they “have it” without any objective way to say it is true, and without the slightest consideration of the viewpoint of their “client?” This is not caused by the concept of “bipolar disorder.” It is caused by unethical practitioners, and is far, far more common than the “false memory” phenomenon.

    It is important not to blame a concept or idea for how people choose to use it. No one should be telling anyone what they should believe about their own experience. THAT is the problem!

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  • The majority of experts also believe that psychiatric drugs address biological anomalies in human brains, despite the complete lack of evidence that “mental illness” of any sort is associated with biological anomalies, nor that psychiatric “diagnoses” are meaningful entities that identify homogeneous groups, nor that people so “treated” do better in the long run (and significant evidence that on the average, they do NOT do better). The majority of experts are comfortable with a 30+% Caesarian section rate. The majority of experts believe that “treating” youth with “antidepressants” is good treatment, despite overwhelming evidence that there is no benefit to such “treatment” for children and that the recipients of such “treatment” are MORE likely to kill themselves or feel like doing so. The majority of experts once believed that Thalidomide was safe, that Benzodiazepines were not addictive, that Benzedrine was not addictive, that Tardive Dyskinesia was NOT caused by antipsychotic drugs, that there were no withdrawal effects from antidepressants, and that Viiox was a safe and effective pain reliever. They believed that sexual abuse was explained by “Oedipus complexes” or frustrated sexual drives in three year olds. Experts believe a lot of things that are not true. The “resort to authority” argument doesn’t hold a lot of water in the area of “mental health.”

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  • I don’t agree. It is scientifically improper to assume repression can’t exist, just as it is scientifically improper to assume that it does. I agree that it is easier to prove that repression does occur than proving it doesn’t, but there is plenty of suggestive evidence that it does occur, even if it is not conclusive. The evidence that people do, in fact, recall memories that they previously did not and that these memories reflect actual events that happened is pretty powerful in the community of people who treat “PTSD” and other trauma phenomenon. It is not scientifically valid in any sense to invalidate such evidence simply because occasions occur where such memories are implanted by poor or unethical therapists or professionals. Stories of repressed memories have been recorded for over 100 years and cannot be simply discounted because someone says “prove it.” The proper scientific position on repressed memories should be, “We really don’t know for sure.” To invalidate memories of a person who recalls them can be just as damaging as trying to induce memories that don’t exist. In the end, the only real judge of the reality of a memory, absent confirmatory evidence, is the person doing the remembering.

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  • Of course, these are not criteria that are generally accepted in the “mental health” system, which we know has pretty low standards to start with. I would say the important missing information is that the allegations were made after influence by a professional or other adult who has encouraged the person to believe they have memories which they don’t recall. I think denials by perpetrators are completely meaningless and should not even be a consideration, and denial by family members would also extremely questionable and need to be viewed in context. Not sure why the perpetrator would have to have any kind of dependency on substances, or “bipolar disorder” (which is, of course, totally unverifiable), or a history of molestation or abuse. Many, many perpetrators do so when stone cold sober, and many, many perpetrators have no record whatsoever, especially in family situations. As to “bipolar disorder,” it is a ridiculous criterion. Are they really suggesting that being diagnosed with “bipolar disorder” is a requirement for molestation? That “bipolar disorder” predisposes people to molesting children? I find such a suggestion utterly ludicrous in my experience (and I worked for 20 years with foster youth, seen plenty of abuse victims and perpetrators). And what’s that weird point about “bestiality appears in prehistoric art?” Are they trying to normalize bestiality? Or what?

    These seem like extremely questionable criteria for any “diagnosis,” and the stakes involved here are enormous. Surely, the authors could do better than this!

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  • Or they are dealing with a person who is overwhelmed, whose life has turned upside down and who has insufficient support or is being actively undermined. It is very common for overt domestic abuse to begin during pregnancy or shortly after the birth of a child. Additionally, the mother usually has to deal with loss of sleep, physical stress of nursing, change of body image, loss of connection through employment, loss of income, isolation, triggering of childhood memories of abuse/neglect, shock or disappointment about the realities of having a baby not matching social expectations… I could go on. There are a lot of good reasons to be depressed after a child is born that have nothing to do with the body. That said, I totally support nutritional interventions, as a lot is changing on a physiological level as well.

    In short, the idea that “postpartum depression” is a medical problem is laughable for anyone who has actually become a new parent of an infant.

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  • I don’t agree. There are people who are still receiving “treatment” involuntarily, including those forced by law and those who are in a bad position where detoxing from these drugs is dangerous or sometimes even not feasible due to alterations to the brain caused by the drugs. Additionally, I’d say that anyone who has recognized the contradictions and dangers the system has put them through and is trying to get out is also a “survivor” by any measure. They have survived, even if they are still being abused.

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  • I think you summed it up very well. I have absolutely no problem with folks being careful about the details of such memories being potentially altered by mixing up with later experiences. We all know this can happen. But I take absolute exception to the idea that a vague, hazy recollection can be clarified and retrieved more completely by writing or talking to someone about what is recalled, nor that a memory can be brought to consciousness by external events that has not been held in conscious memory for very long periods of time. The phenomenon of PTSD suggests that memories being triggered by external factors similar to the unrecalled events can and does occur and has been very well documented. I have no problem saying that we don’t fully understand how memories work and how accurate such spontaneous recollections of previously unconscious memories might be. I have a BIG problem with one person telling another person such memories are false simply because they were forgotten (for whatever reason) and then later recalled. AND I have a big problem with someone telling someone they DO have a memory that they have NOT recalled as well!!! It is for the person having the recollection to judge how accurate or believable it is, absent any external proof regarding such recollections. The problem with the FMS concept is that it can very easily be used to invalidate the recollections of others that are NOT induced by bad therapists or malfeasant professionals. If a therapist is seen to have intentionally implanted or insisted on the presence of “memories” the client has never recalled, then I think “FMS” has some validity. But to say it is somehow “proven” that memory repression can’t happen is going WAY beyond where the science of memory can possibly take us today.

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  • Richard McNally can say whatever he wants to say. “Recovered Memory Therapy” is a sham, and we all know that. But it does not follow AT ALL that “repression” does not exist. And there are certainly many in the “false memory crowd” who suggest that ANY memory that was not recalled all along is almost certainly false. One such post was approved (with provisos) just a moment ago and is in this thread for you to read.

    I still see absolutely nothing in your post to even distinguish the difference between a “spontaneous recall” of a previously unrecalled memory and a memory temporarily “repressed” under stressful circumstances that is later “spontaneously recalled,” let alone evidence that the former exists and the latter does not. It is not logical or scientific to deny that something happens in order to address unethical practitioners who choose to take advantage of their clients’ vulnerability by suggesting that they have “memories” which the clients have never originated having recalled. The latter should be handled by the criminal courts and by stripping such practitioners of their licenses. Their unethical behavior has NOTHING TO DO with whether or not a person can “repress” a memory in a moment of stress and then “spontaneously recall” such a memory at a later time.

    I will also counter your statement of “providing cover” by saying that the overreach of the concept of “false memory syndrome,” which properly applies ONLY to “memories” evoked or created by poor questioning or unethical acts by a therapist to implant memories the client has never said they recalled, has provided cover for people who have committed acts of abuse against children and yet can claim that their child’s recollection is a “false memory” in order to avoid the consequences of their criminal behavior. Surely, this should be as great a concern as therapists implanting “false memories” with poor technique or unethical attitudes toward profiting from creating upset in their own clients.

    https://www.rasasc.org.uk/farewell-to-false-memory-syndrome/

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I am allowing this post to stand, ONLY because there is already a reply posted that indicates that the case in question is not about a person who is posting here. I have already asked that people be VERY careful not to intentionally or accidentally invalidate the recollections of any person who is sharing their personal narrative. This kind of post is extremely dismissive and invalidating, and if it were in response to someone’s own story, could be extremely hurtful. PLEASE do not post anything that could call another person’s recollections into question! This is NOT a place where people should have to “prove” their personal stories are correct, and those who demand such “proof” will be moderated without exception, and may ultimately be blocked from posting if this kind of thoughtless behavior continues.

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  • I think you are splitting hairs here. The big question is not whether someone can introduce false memories with poor questioning techniques or intentional manipulation – we all know this happens, and there are systematic trainings on how to question kids to avoid such events happening.

    The big question is whether memories can exist of which a person is not consciously aware, but which can come to awareness at a later time. If you call this “spontaneous recollection,” that’s your right, I suppose, but I fail to see any distinction between a memory a person files away to the “unconscious” file that can later be retrieved and the basic assumptions behind “repression.” Repressed memories, to me, would be memories that a person on some level becomes unaware of as a self-protection mechanism against being overwhelmed by pain or fear, or perhaps simply because they are unpleasant to recall. If those memories later become retrievable under less stressful circumstances, I think we have the full mechanism of “repression” in view, no matter what term you choose to refer to it. As long as someone isn’t “pulling” the memory out, I think “recovered memories” are a very valid phenomenon. Whether these memories contain all the information recorded with 100% accuracy remains debatable, but in the instance noted, a person is “triggered” to recall a memory of something that in all likelihood really happened. A lot of folks in the “false memory” school of thinking would question or deny that this memory could be a memory of a real thing that happened, and that I find to be a very destructive and unscientific viewpoint.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I generally don’t remove moderated comments until the end of the month. At that time, it often occurs that a long string of “removed for moderation” comments appear at the same time. It is not the result of a change of policy, it’s just an administrative issue, based on the most efficient approach to saving copies of moderated posts before deleting them.

    Hope that explains things!

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  • “Precision psychiatry” can start as soon as psychiatry is able to precisely distinguish between an “ill” person and a “well” person. And I won’t hold my breath that this ability will develop in my lifetime, or ever. Because there is no way anyone can establish with precision that someone’s emotional condition is specifically caused by a “mental illness” that is based on committee consensus and voting.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    A reminder that generalized comments about COVID-19 are going to be moderated at this point as “off topic.” The topic of the blog is whether or not those labeled “mentally ill” should be prioritized for the COVID vaccination. The wider discussion has led to deteriorating civility and increasing personalization of comments without contributing anything to the main topic, and also without much evidence that an actual exchange of information was going on. I apologize to those who are posting appropriate comments, but for the good of the community, this particular aspect of the discussion is closed.

    Feel free to make comments on the basic premises of the article.

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  • I am glad to hear that you were able to heal, and I’ve known many who have been able to, probably a majority. But I have run into a number who seem to be set up now so that stopping the “antipsychotics” leads to massive “relapses,” and despite slow tapering and support, it seems they have now become dependent on these drugs for stability. Bob goes over the mechanism in his book, and it makes perfect sense. So I agree that keeping hope alive is critical to recovering from the “help” usually doled out by the psychiatric industry, but it does seem to become harder the longer one is on these (on the average), and there does seem to be some lasting damage that some folks are not able to shake, in my experience.

    The spirit, however, can always be healed!

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  • I have no problem with “madness” as a self-description of a certain act or behavior – “I went mad!” Or “I had this mad idea…” I do see what you mean about it potentially becoming a counter-identity for someone being attacked or dismissed by psychiatry. I’m not sure I find that a bad thing – certainly better than kowtowing to the “authorities” and letting oneself be dismissed as “mentally ill.” But I can also see how it could still be viewed as accepting one’s “otherness.” In the end, I tend to agree that we’re all a bit “mad” in one way or another, and the distinction seems to fade away if it is viewed that way. Though it does provide a nice double-entendre, because we’re all freakin’ pissed at the system!

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  • An excellent question. I do believe that self-healing has to happen before one can truly be of help to others in their struggle. What I hope we will work towards is communities of people caring about each other, as opposed to the “winner takes all” philosophy that seems to have the world it its grip right now. But this will mean challenging those who are benefiting so extremely from the status quo, and that will take love to a higher level of seeking justice for those we don’t personally know. It’s a big hill to climb!

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR:

    OK, Richard, you get the last word here. We are now going to stop any further discussion of the generalities of COVID. Further discussion on this thread will be focused on the particular question of COVID vaccine prioritization for the so-called “mentally ill.” Any divergent comments regarding the possible causes and general approaches to COVID not specific to the article will be moderated as “off topic.”

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  • Does it seem completely outside the realm of possibility that the virus DID accidentally escape from the lab and that the people who run the lab didn’t want anyone to know about it? I am pretty surprised at your complete confidence in the authorities to always tell the truth, given your experiences in the world of “mental health” where the authorities lie through their teeth as a matter of course. It seems contradictory to say that you can’t say with certainty that COVID 19 was not a lab experiment gone wrong, and yet say a moment before there is “NONE, WHATSOEVER” evidence that this might have happened. I think there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that such a release is quite a strong possibility, even if is is not a proven fact.

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  • Does your question mean that YOU think it is a GOOD idea to create extra-infectious deadly viruses in labs, trusting that ALL the human beings in charge will ALWAYS act with complete and utter security to make sure there is NEVER an accidental release? If anyone really believes this is a good idea, I think I have some farmland near Chernobyl that they might be interested in.

    It means the idea that somehow a coronavirus that is particularly virulent is coincidentally released just a few miles away from a lab doing research on making coronaviruses more virulent but that it is from bats at the local grocery stretches credulity well beyond comfortable bounds. Besides which, there is now some evidence emerging from China (via the US State Department) that some of the Wuhan Lab workers were ill with a flu-like illness just a few weeks before the huge outbreak was identified. I am by no means buying anything suggesting this is some kind of planned “plandemic” for some kind of nefarious but as yet vague plot of the Shadow Government to somehow obtain worldwide control by forcing everyone to wear masks or some such nonsense. However, history tells us that “High security” labs and the like are far from perfect, and escapes and leaks are not a rare phenomenon. Additionally, the Chinese have been quite protective of any information regarding this lab and how the pandemic got started. So while I can’t be certain of this, all the evidence leans toward the likelihood that this virus did, in fact, accidentally escape from the lab in some way. As the saying goes, “Never attribute to malice that which is easily explained by incompetence.”

    Even if the virus did not escape from the lab, the possibility of such escapes is certainly more than negligible, and the idea of creating viruses that COULD cause a worldwide pandemic as a means of PREVENTING a worldwide pandemic seems quite foolish, to say the least. This research was discontinued by the Obama administration for a very good reason. It needs to be stopped, permanently.

    I would appreciate it if you are a little more careful in your between-the-lines implications in your “questions” in the future.

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  • I agree absolutely, modeling and education is what helps other people see the possibilities. As I said above, my only concern is that we need to go beyond the individual’s experience and work on system problems. I spent a lot of years advocating for foster kids, and despite repeated successes with individuals, saw the exact same situations arising again and again, because they were only responding to my or my CASA volunteer bugging them and pressing them to do the right thing, and never really learned why it was the “right thing” in the first place.

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  • Oh, believe me, I agree with you completely, but it just can’t stop at the individual level, and we can’t allow those running the show to reframe all of this as “individual problems.” You know as well as I that the personal melds into the family which melds into the institutions we participate in which melds into the survival of the species as a whole. Each affects the other, back and forth, and I think that needs to be recognized for us to be successful.

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  • You are probably right. I know of a few cases personally where the person had zero history of suicidal or homicidal impulses before the drugs. But I know from both research and direct personal conversations that the suppression of inhibitions is one of the cardinal effects of cranking up serotonin artificially. It is too consistent a report to be chance, according to my “inner p-value test!”

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  • Although I think it is important to recall that this is not all about our individual abilities to empathize, listen, etc. There is also a very widespread lack of community connections that impact the most skilled communicators among us. There is more going on than a lack of individual skills here. It is, as they say, a “system problem.”

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  • I am sorry if you thought I was referring to you when I said “beyond stupid.” I was referring to the authors of the DSM who make that claim, that if I’m not “over it” when my spouse dies within two weeks, I have a “mental illness.” It is the most absurd of many absurd things in the DSM.

    It appears you are simply defining “illness” as “distress.” I don’t define it that way. I believe there is plenty of distress that is natural and normal and healthy and not a part of any disease process. I also believe that calling these things “disorders,” as the DSM clearly suggests we ought to, prevents research and interest in actual physiological problems that may be in play.

    But it sounds like we are substantially in agreement on most points, except for that definition.

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  • I don’t think we’re far apart here. You are choosing to define “illness” more broadly by far.

    Just for the record, I have never regarded SUFFERING as metaphorical in any sense, and I don’t believe I said anything like that. The problem with the term “mental illness” at this point is that it is used intentionally as a means of denying that suffering has any kind of meaning beyond messed up brain chemicals. The idea of the “mind” being “ill” in the same sense as the body is the metaphor we’re talking about here. Suffering is very real. Saying someone “is mentally ill” because they are suffering is metaphorical.

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  • Do you realize that the bulk of those “homeless mentally ill” who are talking with themselves are either taking “psych drugs” or have taken them without any real success? Do you know that some people have reported BECOMING psychotic after taking psychiatric drugs when they had none before? Have you noticed that the number of such people has dramatically INCREASED in the years since psychiatric drugs became the “treatment of choice” for such people? If these drugs are so great, why are there more and more “mentally ill” people living on the streets?

    Were you aware that studies show that long-term use of antipsychotic drugs DECREASES chances of recovery? Were you aware that providing shelter for homeless people, with no other intervention, IMPROVES their “mental health” symptoms? Did you know that people are more likely to attempt suicide AFTER they leave the hospital than before?

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  • I still don’t get why you don’t get what I’m saying here. There ARE physical illnesses that can be DIAGNOSED based on CAUSE. These are real illnesses/injuries of the BODY. They may cause what is currently called “mental illness symptoms,” but they are PHYSIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS that can be diagnosed as such. Would you say a person with low thyroid has a “mental illness” if they become depressed as a result? Is the child who is hyperactive because of disturbed sleep (sleep apnea or other sleep disruptions) “mentally ill?” Or do they have a physical problem that makes them act hyperactive?

    Compare this to someone who is depressed. Diagnosing them with “major depression” can be done without the slightest reference to cause. They could be depressed due to a head injury, due to domestic abuse victimization, due to having a dead-end job and no chance of promotion, due to feeling unable to pay one’s bills, due to the loss of a loved one or a pet, due to confronting the difficulties of aging, due to lack of sleep, due to wondering what the point of life is, due to anemia, due to Lyme Disease… you get the idea, I hope? The “mind” is not “ill” because a person feels depressed. They may be struggling with something difficult, but that does not make them ILL. Their body can be ill/injured in a way that affects their mind via their brain (which is a part of the body). But being depressed does NOT suggest any sort of “illness” that can possibly be defined! It’s kind of like saying I pick my nose because I have “nose-picking disorder.” It is completely tautological and means nothing at all. It CAN be used metaphorically (“I experienced psychic injury as a result of my abuse” or “I need to heal from my difficult childhood,”) but until someone can show me the location in the body of the “psychic injury,” it is a metaphor and not an “illness” in the medical sense.

    I think that is as clear as clear can be. I understand that “mental illness” is used generically to refer to any kind of emotional upset or reaction, but it’s obviously beyond stupid to say someone is “ill” because they feel sad that their dog died, or because they are anxious about asking a girl for a date, or because they find school boring. There is a clear and distinct difference between a physical illness that has emotional effects, and an emotional situation that has no physiological cause. If that’s not enough to explain it, I’ll have to just agree to disagree. It seems obvious to me that these are very different realities.

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  • Of course, there is no actual way to objectively determine who “has bipolar illness,” so this provides a handy excuse to let the drug off the hook and blame the patient. I think it’s fair to say that suicidal and/or violent behavior can be caused by exposure to SSRI drugs, regardless of “diagnosis.” It may be that people with a “bipolar” diagnosis are more likely on the average to react in this way, though I have seen no scientific study ever done to prove this (and it would be difficult to prove anyway, as again “bipolar” is such a vague and subjective “diagnosis” as to defy any clear definition of who “has” or “does not have” such an ostensible “condition.”)

    I am not in the least inclined to let doctors and drug manufacturers off the hook by blaming their victims as being “bipolar.” If they don’t know their craft well enough to judge who will and won’t become suicidal taking SSRIs, then they ought to admit that up front and warn everybody of this possible danger, rather than trying to hide it for decades and then complaining when the FDA forced them to put it on the label, claiming that “lives will be lost” if we tell people the truth. Well, guess what, making people suicidal and/or homicidal loses lives, too!

    The hiding and denial of the adverse effects of SSRIs is one of the many heinous acts that prove psychiatry to be essentially a corrupt industry that is more interested in covering up their failure than in learning how to do their jobs better.

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  • I am not saying that at all. I am saying that the legal definition is a SOCIAL definition, and that the legal system acknowledges the uncertainty and subjectivity of such judgments, and makes no claim to scientific verity (hence the need for a jury of 12 to make final decisions). The problem with psychiatrists in the legal system is that they claim to be able to KNOW who is and is not dangerous, who is and is not responsible, who is and is not aware of right and wrong, in some sort of expert or “scientific” way, such that other people’s judgment should be subordinated to them. It gives them WAY too much power, and is based on no actual knowledge that differentiates them from anyone else’s judgment, as has been shown again and again when the question of predicting danger or recidivism is concerned. Psychiatry has no right to claim expert knowledge of danger assessment or evaluation of a person’s state of mind at the time of committing a crime, because they as a profession have proven incompetent in such assessments. We are better off by far admitting that, and giving that latitude to the judges and juries who are appointed to make difficult, subjective judgments. Having psychiatrists in this role makes it way too easy for judges and juries to pass the buck and accept their judgments, rather than those parties having to personally wrestle with the difficult questions of capacity and safety.

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  • It is true, the SSRIs most definitely can take away someone’s inhibitions, such that something which seemed horrible (I can’t kill myself, how would my mother feel?) can now seem acceptable, (“Ah, she’ll be fine, not my problem anyway…”) I had a friend once who called it “Zolofting” – where she simply didn’t care about what anyone or society thought about anything. This might seem like a relief to someone who was always worrying, but if someone was always repressing a desire to go on a shooting spree for fear of the consequences, it might not be such a great idea…

    Still, there are plenty of reports of people who had no suicidal and/or homicidal impulses beforehand contemplating these actions after being “medicated” with SSRIs. And in any case, removal of inhibitions is NOT the same as “providing the energy” to do something. It is an alteration of one’s moral compass, a muting or deletion of the sense of right and wrong. And it is pretty damned dangerous! Though I’m sure you’d agree with me on that last point.

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  • My research into the subject supports Cabrogal’s assertions. The recidivism rate, at the least, for intrafamilial sexual abuse is dramatically lower than for extrafamilial abuse. This doesn’t of course mean for a moment that serial sexual abusers don’t abuse their own children, but I think if we’re talking statistics, this pretty dramatic differentiation should be noted.

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  • “Insanity” as a legal principle grew up as a completely separate concept from “mental illness” in the psychiatric world. Psychiatrists have made every possible effort to co-opt this judgment, and I find this extremely problematic. There is no objective way to determine who “has” and “does not have” a DSM diagnosis. While the concept of “diminished capacity” and “awareness of right and wrong” can be executed in the legal arena without any “help” from psychiatrists. Psychiatrists need to get out of the legal arena, because their claims of being able to determine “legal responsibility” are not grounded in science or even in legal tradition. They are grounded mostly in fantasy and in social biases that have no place in courts.

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  • I also want to note the subtle but damaging implication in the statement, “…you must accept the risk that the medications themselves will enable you to get up and commit suicide or harm others.” The word “enable” is the problematic term. It makes it sound as if the depressed person is lying in bed, thinking about suicide or murder, but only doesn’t kill people because s/he lacks the energy to do so. It buys into the mythological trope that the “antidepressants” are not themselves creating suicidal or homicidal impulses, but that depressed people are ticking time bombs just waiting for the burst of energy enabling them to act on their dastardly deeds.

    SSRI antidepressants, at the least, have been tested on non-suicidal people and a small but significant number of those become suicidal. THey were not “lacking energy,” they BECAME suicidal after taking the drugs. Similarly, these drugs were initially banned in Germany due to an increase in aggressive behavior in those taking the drugs. This information has been known for decades. Pretending that the “activation” of the SSRIs “enables” suicidal or homicidal people to act out their impulses is a false narrative created to absolve the SSRIs and their prescribers from responsibility for their known adverse effects.

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  • I don’t want to seem impertinent, but I feel I need to ask one question: is it still “psychiatry” if it is focused on moving people through art and writing to change how we relate to each other’s suffering? That doesn’t sound like a “reform.” It sounds like an utter repudiation of everything psychiatry currently represents. Sort of like transforming a cannon into a flower planter. It’s not really a cannon any longer, even if it’s the same shape.

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  • Just for the record, there are uses of the word “mad” (and I don’t just mean “angry”) that do not imply insanity. “Crazy” comes from the little cracks that appear in the patina of a glazed piece of pottery as it ages. So being “crazy” means having an interesting array of fine detail that transcends the original design.

    But I do understand what you’re saying. No one has to identify as “disabled” to attack the status quo.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I am getting the very strong impression that this conversation is on the verge of escalating into a more personal one. I am not really seeing an exchange of views as much as an exposition of different positions, any of which have their perspective and reasoning behind them from the viewpoint of the poster. What I’m NOT seeing as much of is 1) exchange of statistical or scientific data or studies supporting one’s position; 2) personal stories to support the viewpoint being taken; 3) attempts by one “side” to understand where the other “side” is coming from.

    The original point of the article was not to debate COVID or even the safety profile of the vaccines released to date. The article is about whether or not it makes sense to prioritize/encourage/enforce vaccines for people “diagnosed” with “mental illnesses.” There are many issues that this raises, including the question of what message it sends to make this kind of “prioritization,” whether force is being contemplated, whether or not the vaccine interacts with psychiatric drugs, etc. I think we’d do better to focus our energies on those questions. I think everyone has stated their positions fully and with passion, and further discussion along these lines seems likely to deteriorate as it has in the past.

    If folks have actual articles, research, statistics to share, please feel free, but we really aren’t learning much by simply restating our positions louder and with more emphasis, and stating or implying that those who disagree with us are irrational or dangerous. Let’s either start listening and focusing on known facts, or get back to the topic at hand.

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  • Perhaps I misread your comment. Good to know we’re on the same page.

    Though I don’t agree with your last statement. You are, I believe, referring to the “governmental” meaning of authoritarian. Being “Authoritarian” in my view does not require you to be the “authority” yourself. Every authoritarian leader requires followers who are unquestioning in their loyalty and allegiance to the leader. In fact, there are generally power hierarchies where the people at the top expect compliance from those beneath them, and those in the middle have to comply with those above, but get to order about those below, and it’s only those at the absolute bottom that don’t have anyone to dump on. To me, an authoritarian is anyone who believes in and subscribes to this kind of structure. As you can see, the key is unquestioning allegiance to those above you in the chain, and the absence of independent thought at anywhere in the hierarchy. Those who say that psychiatry must work “Because they are doctors, and they know what they’re talking about, and you aren’t, so I don’t care what you think” are as authoritarian as the psychiatrists that set up the system.

    “According to Adorno’s theory, the elements of the Authoritarian personality type are:

    Blind allegiance to conventional beliefs about right and wrong
    Respect for submission to acknowledged authority
    Belief in aggression toward those who do not subscribe to conventional thinking, or who are different
    A negative view of people in general – i.e. the belief that people would all lie, cheat or steal if given the opportunity
    A need for strong leadership which displays uncompromising power
    A belief in simple answers and polemics – i.e. The media controls us all or The source of all our problems is the loss of morals these days.
    Resistance to creative, dangerous ideas. A black and white worldview.
    A tendency to project one’s own feelings of inadequacy, rage and fear onto a scapegoated group
    A preoccupation with violence and sex”

    https://www.psychologistworld.com/influence-personality/authoritarian-personality

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  • Just to clarify: to assume that vaccines or any drugs are likely to present unknown dangers until proven otherwise is rational. To assume that all vaccines ARE unsafe or that the dangers out weigh the benefits REGARDLESS of actual evidence is irrational. I am not advocating for mindless acceptance of drug company or CDC assertions, as your post perhaps seems to imply. I’m arguing against automatically rejecting the possibility that something might be helpful based on past bad experiences with vaccines or drug companies or governments, or based on someone suggesting without evidence that there is some nefarious purpose behind such efforts and therefore not bothering to do one’s own research on the subject.

    In other words, I’m opposed to authoritarian approaches, regardless of who is the “authority.”

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  • Because not all of them have proven dangerous. It is irrational to assume that even all drugs are dangerous without evidence one way or the other. I do think it’s wise to be SAFE, namely to assume it is LIKELY there are unknown risks of ANY intervention until proven otherwise. But SSRIs are of course a horrible example. They are factually known to be dangerous, and those claiming otherwise are just ignoring the facts. But it would be foolish to assume that any new drug that came to the market would automatically be dangerous just because SSRIs are dangerous. That doesn’t mean I’d take something just because it wasn’t yet PROVEN to be dangerous. It means I would be extremely cautious about taking a stand before I knew the evidence. I generally never take ANY drugs, largely because EVIDENCE suggests that drug companies don’t do safety testing and hide bad information from the public. But if I do need to take a drug for any reason, I do a thorough research of what is known about it, and have no problem whatsoever telling the doctor or pharmacist that I’m not going to do what they say I should, even if they get snide or condescending with me. In fact, I avoid doctors as much as possible, and use nurse practitioners or physician assistants instead. And I currently have the good fortune to have a naturopath as my PCP! So I’m not apologist for the drug industry, which you should know very well by this point. However, being rational means allowing that despite their history, the drug industry may develop some useful things from time to time, and I need to be open to that possibility, particularly when a whole society is being affected by this particular “viral phenomenon.” It doesn’t mean I assume they are not lying to us or pretending to know things they don’t, as I think I made VERY clear in my prior comment. It just means I don’t rule out the possibility that the vaccine may be an overall benefit without gathering actual data as to the pros and cons. Which seems to be just what you advocate for in your other post.

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  • I want to be clear in my view that seeing all vaccinations as dangerous and ill-intended is foolish, but assuming that all vaccines are effective and benign and are intended to help is just as wrong. Each vaccine needs to be evaluated on its own merits. At this point, it does appear from what I’ve seen and read that the COVID vaccines are, in fact, generally effective in preventing infections. However, there has certainly not been enough time or research to determine what the long-term effects of these vaccines will be, and which people may have more severe reactions than the average. It also remains to be seen if those so vaccinated can still pass COVID to someone else (are they not able to be infected, or if they just become asymptomatic). It does appear that people with a history of allergic reactions may be at risk. There is also some suggestion, though this has not been studied, that older folks may be more likely to have adverse reactions.

    So it’s never a black and white thing. I’d welcome people submitting actual studies or epidemiological statistics on the pros and cons of this particular vaccine, but I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to either condemn anyone supporting vaccines as a fool or a dupe, nor is it sensible attacking anyone who expresses concerns about the lack of safety testing or long-term experience. We are doing a rather uncontrolled experiment here, and folks do have a right to do their own research, and are not obligated to automatically assume that “these vaccines are safe” just because the authorities say so. But I also think we do a large disservice to assume that the vaccines are dangerous or intended to harm without gathering data to actually support or refute that position. Again, just because someone says it’s true, doesn’t make it so. Let’s allow people to do their own research and come to their own conclusions, helped by whatever data and research can be shared with each other.

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  • How is “forgetting things and later remembering them” any different from “recovering memories?” My experience as a counselor who does not EVER try to tell any client what to think or believe about their own experience is that many clients have the vague notion that “something” happened to them but can not recall at all what that “something is.” Yet when a safe enough space is created, they feel OK about remembering the details, without any prompting from me. Did they “forget something and later remember it?” Did they choose not to be aware of the information that they knew had happened so they didn’t have to deal with the consequences? Should I automatically discount these recollections because they did not have them before?

    I used to have a vague recollection of my second grade teacher tossing a book across the room after yelling at us and shaking that book for some reason. I seemed to recall standing up in my seat, and then being out in the hall with another kid. That was it. I wasn’t really sure it had actually happened. It had a dreamlike quality about it. At my 30th high school reunion, I told this recollection to a classmate of mine. She remembered it really happening! She remembered me standing up in my seat and saying, “Miss Vaughn!” in an incredulous voice. She recalled her marching down the aisle, hitting me on the side of the head, and tossing me and Freddy Baughman out in the hallway. She even knew the name of the kid who was out there with me, which totally validated my recollection.

    After hearing this, I recalled more information about it – what Freddy said to me, going to the office, seeing the nurse who checked out my left ear (which would have been the one exposed to her right hand as she hit me). I still don’t recall being hit, but it all made sense and checked out with what she remembered, and she was completely certain about it happening. She had “forgotten” the incident as well until I mentioned it, but instantly recalled it in detail.

    So was my original haziness an indication that the incident was made up? Or that I had altered recalls? Do the additional tidbits I later recalled qualify as “recovered memories?” Or did I just “forget” and then “remember?” How on earth can anyone make that distinction? Who can possibly judge the accuracy and validity of these recalls besides ME, the person who was there? Of course, I will never know for certain exactly what happened, and it is possible that the details I recalled may be somewhat of an alteration of the actual events. But I have absolutely NO DOUBT that such an incident did occur, and that I had invalidated the reality of this recollection before getting validation and additional details from my friend Susan’s perspective.

    I find the act of inducing “recovered memories” based on some therapist’s idea of what “signs” they see in the client to be utterly reprehensible. If that happened to you or your family, you have all my sympathy. However, to extrapolate from “memories can be induced by unethical therapists” to “clients are not able to remember things they may in the past have chosen to forget,” is unforgivably unscientific.

    You are correct that “proving a negative” is particularly challenging for science. But just because science can’t “prove a negative” doesn’t mean the phenomenon does not exist. It just means we don’t know the answer. Practically speaking, I’ve found without exception that respecting the client’s recollections and perception of reality as their own, and respecting their right to create and modify their own narrative, is essential to any kind of effective therapy. Many people are suffering specifically because they have had their narrative invalidated or manipulated by others, including by unethical therapists. Each of us has to evaluate the quality of our recollections based on our own standards of judgment.

    Let’s not make the leap to invalidating someone’s recollections for our own comfort. Each of us is entitled to define our story, and it’s not you job or mine or any other person’s to tell people what is and is not true for them.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I am not going to get into the semantics of what a “repressed” vs. “unconscious” vs. “forgotten” memory means. It seems like splitting of hairs to me. But I can state unequivocally that someone whose comment invalidated someone’s individual recollections/narrative would not be allowed to be published, so you would of course not read it. I trust you can read between the lines on this point.

    NOT posting as moderator, I believe there is a pretty massive distinction between saying “repressed memory therapy” is nonsense and probably quite dangerous, and saying that no one can bring an unconscious memory (whatever you’d like to call it) to greater consciousness and awareness. The two factually have nothing to do with each other. One is a method of ostensibly “helping” someone recover assumed “memories” at the insistence of the “therapist,” the other is an observation of a process of how we recall (or don’t recall) things that are in our past. I think it is fair to say that scientific research has thoroughly invalidated the first, but that the second remains as much a mystery as the nature of the mind itself.

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  • COMMENTING AS MODERATOR:

    To be clear, this is NOT a response to andersone’s comment, I just put it here because I have to put it somewhere I think it will be read.

    I want to note here for everyone that this is a VERY sensitive subject, and folks need to be EXTREMELY careful what they say, in terms of how it might affect another person who is reading. There are many people posting on this site who have been abused physically, sexually, or otherwise, and it is absolutely their right to tell their own stories and have their own reactions and opinions to this essay. The main way “false memories” are implanted or altered is by a person in a power position telling the person they are working with what is/is not true and invalidating the clients’ own recollections and sense of “rightness.” Please, let us NOT do this to each other here!

    My read of the data is that 1) false memories CAN be implanted by poor technique by questioners, and 2) the question of whether “recovered memories” can happen is one that remains undetermined. As such, it is NOT going to be accepted by me as moderator for anyone to tell anyone else that their own memories are false or that recovered memories don’t exist. We need to respect that each person has the right to make their own evaluation on this question, which I believe is a question that actually goes well beyond what science can tell us today, and maybe will ever be able to tell us. Additionally, there are an unknown number of posters on this site who have already been TOLD by clinicians and family members, and in some cases even the courts, that their known, certain, clear recollections are “false memories!”

    So please, tell your own stories, share what research you have, but be very careful not to suggest or imply that others’ recollections and experiences are not valid!

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  • Agree 100%. The whole subject and industry is corrupt from top to bottom. But that’s another reason that these DSM “diagnoses” are so dangerous – they allow the industry to continue the fiction that these drugs are “treating” some sort of “medical condition,” rather than prescribing them to suppress feelings/thoughts/behavior about which they have no rational understanding, nor any intent to come up with one.

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  • I am sure that lots of people who have been forcibly psych “hospitalized” would give your approach a big thumbs up. I think you are missing the context of these comments that doing a better job of using less force and coercion and attending more to social conditions would be an IMPROVEMENT, but that it does not address fundamental issues of power and pretense of “scientific-ness” in the current model, that are both misleading and potentially dangerous.

    I once worked at a nursing home ombudsman’s office for the State of Oregon. I recall a home that was shut down and put into federal receivership still received over 80% “good” or “excellent” ratings. A lot of folks are willing to go along with whatever is offered and feel like if they’re treated with some level of respect, they’re AOK. They are generally unaware of the damage that may be done to others, and sometimes even to their own potential growth, because they’re doing what they’re “supposed to do” and they don’t know of any other way.

    There are any number of folks who post here who might in the past have given in-home treatment high marks, and only realized over time that the “treatment” wasn’t really helping or was making their lives worse. And like I said, it sounds WAY better (in most cases) than being locked up after being arrested by the police! I mean, who can’t see the relative advantages there! Yet the basic assumptions of the system, that people “have bipolar,” that they “need treatment,” that drugs “correct chemical imbalances” or some physiological/genetic problem, are all still there.

    So the question to me isn’t what your customer satisfaction ratings are, or whether “acceptance of treatment” is higher. The real question is what COULD happen to these folks if the current paradigm were scrapped and they were approached from a standpoint of people who have experienced difficult times and need support, rather than people who “have” a “disorder” and need to be “fixed?”

    I want to say that I do appreciate your efforts. But I would encourage you to listen a little more deeply to the feedback you are receiving, and don’t be so quick to dismiss it as people who “don’t understand” or “reject treatment.” I’d suggest you listen from a standpoint of saying, “These are people who report having been severely damaged by the system I essentially believe in and promote. How and when is this happening, and am I inadvertently contributing to this kind of event, even when I think I’m doing things right?”

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  • I would agree with the “multiple cause” theory, and that overt or specific trauma is not required to fit the “criteria” a “mental illness.” Of course, the fact that someone “fits the criteria” means essentially nothing at all if the “diagnosis” has a wide array of possible causes.

    The main problem I have with these “diagnoses” (and others will raise other problems, I’m sure) is that they lump together people who have nothing else in common besides feeling, thinking or acting in a certain way and ASSUME that 1) all these people have something wrong with them, 2) they all have the SAME thing wrong with them, and 3) some form of “treatment” should help ALL of them “get better” in someone’s eyes. Of course, these “diagnoses” have absolutely no scientific validity at all, as Thomas Insel, the head of the NIMH, himself admitted years back. He said it’s like someone diagnosing “chest pain.” It is meaningless to make such a subjective and broad “diagnosis,” because it includes people who have literally nothing in common with each other besides a surface manifestation of some sort. It is not possible to conduct any meaningful research on a group of people who have no common trait. What would you be studying?

    As to “innate vulnerability,” I’ll go to an analogy. If 50 people got hit by a car at a certain intersection, and 35 of them broke their legs, would we be studying that group for a diagnosis of “weak bone disorder” and find out what kind of “genetic vulnerability” they had to their leg breaking? Or would we study the intersection or crossing and find out why it is that so many people are getting hit by cars there?

    Just for a little icing on the cake, the most optimistic estimate of the “genetic” contribution to any single “mental disorder” is well below 10%. Whereas people diagnosed with “schizophrenia” correlate with childhood abuse/neglect at an 80% rate or higher. Correlations between abuse and “anxiety” or “depression” are even higher. So the very idea that these “disorders” have a “genetic etiology” is over 90% mythology.

    One question to leave you with is this: If there is a less than 10% genetic component and a more than 80% environmental component, and the genetic component is the one thing in the equation that can absolutely NOT be altered by any means, why are 90% of the dollars spent on studying genetics and physical interventions and a paltry sum being spent on studying environmental effects and how to ameliorate them? I think the answer says a lot about the ostensible “objectivity” of the current system leaders, don’t you?

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  • I agree. I’ve seen many articles on the high suicide rates among doctors, and there is not a single word about “chemical imbalances” or “genetics” or even DSM “diagnoses.” It is all about stress, burnout, loss of sleep, rough schedules, inability to maintain relationships, poor training… not a word about “mental illness” is raised. And the remedies are all about creating better working conditions, selecting for a wider range of personality traits, improving the training process, changing expectations. In short, changing the environment rather than blaming the person who has a hard time adapting to it. Why does this reasoning not apply to kids in school, or foster youth, or victims of domestic and sexual violence, or victims of racism, sexism, and other oppressive structures?

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  • While there is no doubt that some people would find this approach far less oppressive, it does not reduce the power imbalance and the frequency of coercion or abuse. I’d say that a person who agrees to “voluntarily” be treated at home under fear of being forcibly “hospitalized” is in no wise voluntary. Additionally, if the recipients of these voluntary “services” are only offered biological interventions, or are forced to accept biological interventions as a part of the package, or are misinformed about the limited benefits and potential long-term costs of these interventions (including the very real possibility of a significantly reduced lifespan), or are not offered the full range of alternative options (including sending y’all away at the door), we are still dealing with degrees of coercion, and the “voluntary” nature of these services is undermined.

    Just a question: does your service tell those who are recommended to take antipsychotic drugs that they are risking shortening their lives by a decade or two by accepting this “service?”

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  • How do you know she “had a mood disorder?” By how she acted? How do you know that how she acted was not simply a reaction to her abuse and oppression? What objective means do you have to distinguish who “has a mood disorder,” other than your own opinion or a subjective behavioral checklist?

    When I used to do hospital evaluations, I ran into many women who were diagnosed with “bipolar disorder” or “anxiety disorders” who were feeling suicidal or panicky. I asked every one of them about their current relationships and abuse history, and every one (except two who would not talk to me) shared horrible abuse that occurred when they were young.

    Maybe a “mood disorder” is no more or less than what happens to people when the stresses in their lives overwhelm their coping measures. In which case, do they have a “mood disorder,” or are they victims of a thoughtless and oppressive culture that continually puts people in a place where they can’t cope with the harm that they are repeatedly exposed to.

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  • I totally agree! I’ll talk with anyone who wants to change things, no matter what they think the “new solution” is. Even those who are “reformers” are potential recruits for a more radical analysis. Heck, I was a “reformer” once upon a time! And we can work to get agreement with “reformers” on certain goals that will help in either purpose, like getting Miranda rights read to people receiving an “evaluation.” We need to generate power, and ideological purity isn’t a requirement to get things done.

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  • Bright, bored, or troubled. Exactly.

    At this point, I often bring up the fact that there is NO evidence, despite 50 years of biased research LOOKING for such evidence, that “ADHD” drugs improve ANY long term outcome, including delinquency rates, academic test scores, high school completion, college enrollment, mental/emotional well being, social skills ratings, teen pregnancy rates, drug abuse rates, or even self-esteem ratings. A number of long-term studies suggest diminished functioning in one or more of the above areas. So we are exposing millions of kids to the risks of stimulants, including psychosis, mania, weight/appetite loss, reduced adult height, alterations in personality, and a small but not insignificant chance of heart damage or death, to name just some. And yet there is no evidence to suggest that these risks are associated with ANY long-term benefits at all, in any area.

    So WHO has the “mental illness” here?

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  • I think that is an important distinction. The conceptualization of emotional distress as existing in the BODY of the distressed person is the central evil that psychiatry is based on. The rest is all footnotes to blaming the patient/client for their own suffering. If it’s in their bodies, then it’s not something the powerful (or anyone) in society needs to worry or think about.

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  • The first “choice” should be to choose to decline any “help” that the person finds unhelpful. And that should include the “choice” to reject the framing of his/her problems as a “mental illness.” That choice is seldom if ever afforded by those in “the system.” Once that choice is denied, any further “choices” become fairly illusory.

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  • I am aware that “mindfulness” is part of DBT, and a significant number of commenters on MIA have stated that they were coerced into doing “mindfulness” during DBT, or else suffering some kind of consequence from the group leader. While this is completely contradictory to actual meditation practice, it is being done, and frankly gives a very bad name to what I’ve found to be an extremely powerful and helpful practice.

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  • I have seen brain studies on Buddhist monks who have meditated for decades. It indicates that the areas of the brain associated with calmness and focus are larger. Now that doesn’t mean that people being forced to “meditate” are going to see any benefits, and I’m guessing they probably are likely to be harmful in some cases. I do have serious doubts about actual brain damage occurring, but psychological damage seems likely whenever force or coercion is involved.

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  • There are dupes who believe this is for the benefit of the “patient,” but these people are duped. The forces behind anti-stigma campaigns are not concerned with the welfare of the “mentally ill.” They are trying to protect and expand their markets. It’s true that NAMI feels like they are helping out, but they are funded to a very large extent by Big Pharma.

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  • I don’t see awareness campaigns as “symbolic,” I see them as marketing schemes for the psych system. They are selling the idea that people have “mental illnesses” and that the system has solutions to these “mental illnesses” and that anyone who says otherwise is “shaming” the “mentally ill.” It has no other real function than to publicize and sell the concepts above, as far as I can see.

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  • The “mental health” version of “mindfulness” was also appropriated from Buddhism and Hinduism, and as such, misses a lot of the substance of what “mindfulness meditation” is really about and what it is intended to accomplish. It’s not about breathing deeply to make us feel less anxious, even if it happens to have that effect. But anything spiritual seems to be anathema to the mental health industry, and in particular to most of the psychiatrists I’ve encountered.

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  • My point has nothing to do with the “learning” aspect of school. I always knew from the start that school was not about “learning,” it was about COMPLIANCE and HIERARCHY. Knowing your place. Dumping the shit downhill on the person on the next lower step. Not challenging the basic assumptions. Trusting the “authorities” to have the answers and subduing any independent sense of reality.

    The advantages of online school for me would have been

    1) No need to be with rude and obnoxious and bullying teachers all day. Having a mute button or the ability to walk away from the screen if they were abusive. Not having to stay in at recess because I talked to someone at the end of lunch. Not having my teacher be able to throw a book across the room and hit me on the head when I objected.

    2) No need to be with obnoxious and bullying peers all day. No recess sitting wondering if anyone would want to play with me. No having to stand by and watch when other kids were being abused.

    3) No need to get up at the wee hours and take the bus. ‘Nuff said there.

    4) Ability to proceed at my own pace on things without having to wait for the class to catch up.

    5) Plus, I could have gone to the bathroom without getting their freakin’ approval!

    Naturally, it is quite possible to make distance learning just as obnoxiously authoritarian as in-classroom school. But it would have made me feel a lot less anxious just to know I could be where I was and not be subject to the whims of the teacher and can turn my camera off at my discretion, even if they got mad at me. I’d have given a lot for those privileges.

    Steve

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  • I agree. The title should read, “Antidepressants can cause manic behavior in many who take them.” Honestly, from talking to a number of people who have taken them, I kind of think that’s what they do. For people who are really withdrawn or super anxious, it probably feels good as long as it doesn’t go too far. But I’ve never taken them myself, so I really don’t know. In all likelihood, different people have totally different experiences. Which is really not a good thing if everyone who “has depression” is encouraged/forced to take them.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I am going to agree here that this has most definitely veered in too personal a direction. I think everyone has had a chance to make their points, and folks can go ahead and read and make up their own minds about it. Or better yet, visit the site and see what you think.

    At this point, I am not going to post any further comments along this line of discussion. It is apparent that there are personal feelings and disagreements here that are best resolved by individual conversations. I’m happy to connect people who feel the need to talk to each other via email, but for purposes of this discussion, we need to refer back to the content of the article, and any personal complaints or criticisms will no longer be published.

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  • Psych “diagnoses” are opinions, every one of them. It is ridiculous to apply such a term to a so-called “illness” that is not objectively observable or determinable. Like saying someone who doesn’t acknowledge that they’re “cowardly” is suffering from “anosognosia.” There is a proper application of the term to a known, observable neurological problem that can be tested for and verified. Saying someone has “anosognosia” because they disagree with your opinion is about as far away from scientific as you can get.

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  • I don’t expect him to. I don’t know of any politician, “liberal,” “conservative,” “independent,” or anything else, who has done diddly squat for the survivors/victims of the psychiatric industry. They mostly are partly owned by the pharmaceutical industry. But that’s kind of a weird question to ask in the context of my question. I just want to know if there is any initiative that I need to get my energy behind.

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  • Enforced “mindfulness” is a contradiction in terms. If you’re being forced, how can you remain “mindful?” People who choose to use it may find it helpful. And they may not. And the “mental health” authorities should do some themselves before they even think of trying to force people to do something meant to help people feel more self control in their lives!

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  • Right you are! What if he said, “Well, we don’t know what really causes depression, but microwave radiation from cell phone towers may play a role?” Everyone would be immediately (and appropriately) up at arms! Science doesn’t speculate, except in the formation of hypotheses. It makes zero sense to share hypotheses that are purely speculative as if they were somehow sharing some budding scientific discovery that is “just around the corner.”

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  • “The authors emphasize that many intervention techniques currently available to relieve CMDs miss the mark. Tension exists between some orientations to intervention harbored by mental health professionals, and issues of access and effectiveness continue to compromise the impact of existing supports.”

    This is impressive double-speak! To say that an intervention “misses the mark?” Doesn’t that mean that we are spending money and time and energy on things that DO NOT WORK? If an engineer “misses the mark,” his bridge falls down and he gets fired! And tension between “some orientations” and “effectiveness” seems another way of saying that practitioners continue to insist on using interventions that DO NOT WORK!

    Sounds like job protectionism for the incompetent to me!

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  • There were lots of “good people” who participated in atrocities in Nazi Germany, and lots of other places around the world. The Milgram experiment ought to have taught us all that years ago. “Good people” who don’t think for themselves are always vulnerable to being manipulated or “educated” into doing horrible things.

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  • His behavior is consistent with a person lacking in ethics and willing to bully and harm others in the interests of pursuing his own goals. His speeches from day one appeared to be calculated to play on peoples’ fears and prejudices and to bring out the worst in terms of hatred and division between Americans. It was also clear from the people he hired and who traveled in his circles that he had criminal connections and engaged in his own personal forms of corruption. Not to mention the constant lying about everything, and his tendency to turn violently against his “friends” as soon as they said or did something he found threatening or even disagreeable. I didn’t even consider his personal life, though of course, it is totally coherent with my observations that he is selfish and bullying and corrupt. (Paying off prostitutes to keep quiet? Cheating on his wife? Bragging about grabbing women’s private parts?)

    As to the insurrection, he started telling everyone back in March or April how the election was going to be “corrupt” because of “fraud” due to voting by mail. It was obvious that this was going to be his backup strategy in the likely case that he lost the election. It became more obvious in the summer how desperate he was, as COVID raged and his popularity ratings tanked. The hiring of a postal service head who intentionally slowed the mails showed just how lacking in any kind of ethics he was. The civil suits aimed to make sure that the mail-in votes (likely to be heavily Democratic due to his previous lies about the unreliability of mail-in votes) were counted last were a pretty obvious ploy to make it look like he was ahead at the start and have Biden catch up later in the evening, leaving him free to claim “victory” before all the votes were counted and to claim “fraud” and being “cheated” out of his supposed victory by those evil mail-in ballots. The eventual end game was for him to inflame his supporters to go to bat to keep him installed as “President for Life” regardless of the electoral count.

    So yes, it was utterly predictable that something of this sort was part of the plan. The “stand by” message to the right-wing militias should have made it obvious to anyone whose eyes were open.

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  • Actually, according to quantum mechanics, all matter has both a wave and a particle aspect. The wave aspect of large, solid objects is so small as to be negligible, but when you break it down to a molecular/atomic level, the chair you’re sitting on is a particle/wave phenomenon, and there is an infinitesimal possibility that it could suddenly become empty space and you’ll fall on the floor on your butt!

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  • I am actually working on a comedy routine and am ready to roll it out for the public as soon as “open mic night” is back in operation. I call it, “Intelligent design.” I agree with folks that design by a Creator is a reasonable position to take. But then I ask the question, “If we were designed, I have to ask – how intelligent is it?” Of course, psychiatry is going to have a place in the routine at some point.

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  • I would say that true science has helped accomplish a great deal in terms of technology and knowhow. You can’t program a cell phone or create an electrical grid or fly a plan without science. However, what PASSES for science these days is often corrupted, either by money or desire for status, or the need for society to have “answers” to questions that science can’t address. Psychiatry is NOT a science in any sense of the word. It masquerades as a science and pretends knowledge that it does not have.

    This doesn’t mean a true scientific approach can’t be taken toward human beings. It means that science has to be honest about what its findings are. For instance, 50 years of genetic research has failed to indicate any genetic basis for any “mental illness” identified. This ought to be considered proof that “mental illnesses” don’t have a genetic origin. But this result is not accepted. In fact, psychiatry fails from day one in being a science, in that its terms are not definable by any objective means. If you make up “diagnoses” without any reference to objective observation and measurement, any claim to being “scientific” are already out the window.

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  • And so what? If they actually had something worthwhile to offer, it might be worth some risk of offending people or risking some false positives to get them some information. But they offer hopelessness and dependence on life-threatening, soul-flattening drugs that may or may not even work to “reduce the symptoms” of a “disorder” (and may in fact bring about the very “disorder” they’re supposed to address) that there is a 50-50 chance they won’t even develop??? Are these people serious????

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  • Wow, is this only the 100th time or so that this finding has been made? Maybe we need to spend 20 more years testing to REALLY make sure that there isn’t the SLIGHTEST correlation…

    They are saying that psych research has a “replication problem.” Maybe that’s because they’re framing it wrong – they DO get replication again and again that their hypotheses and theories ARE WRONG. But since it doesn’t validate their preconceived prejudices, they consider it “failure to replicate” instead of the clear and repeated replication that their hypothesis holds no water.

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  • As I read this, I think you’re both right. The DSM is, by design, not based on understanding of “mental health” (whatever they claim it to be), nor is it intended to heal anyone. It was originally a billing manual. But the use of the DSM is determined by people who don’t really want to help. So it is evil because it enables abusive “mental health treatments,” but it enables those because it is designed by people who are actually committed to making sure no one gets better.

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  • It certainly does provide all the “cover” needed to do lots of disguised harm and have people believe you know what you’re doing. And the DSM III forward were designed specifically to allow psychiatrists to pretend they were doing “science.” There are no doubt many ways to screw our fellow humans over, but there can be no doubt that the DSM exists for the purpose of making the whole psychiatric worldview/deception viable.

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  • There is every indication that the very fact of being “diagnosed” leads to stigma, particularly to the degree that such “diagnoses” are associated with biological explanations for the “diagnosed” person’s suffering. It is built into the psychiatric system – the system itself stigmatizes those it serves as a matter of course. The only way to avoid this kind of “stigma” is to develop a different system.

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  • The “free market” is a scam. There is no “free market” today. Even Ayn Rand agreed that “free markets” require a way to avoid monopolization. Real “Free markets” exist only in a social context, where there are rules of competition that are either agreed upon or enforceable. They seem to work well in smaller communities where there are direct and immediate consequences for mistreating community members. But to think that today’s corporate grift and corruption even vaguely approximates a “free market” is a joke. Most of those objecting to “regulations” really just want the regulations that keep them from risk-free profits to be eliminated, and love the regulations that protect their market share. There is a sociopathic drive to “profit” regardless of the social effect, or even the legitimacy of the product, as psych drugs definitively prove. The Koch Brothers, supposedly super-advocates for the “free market,” advocated for increasing taxes on rooftop solar in Oklahoma the minute it started threatening their profits. This kind of thing happens all the time.

    I agree that complacency is a huge part of the problem. Unfortunately, a lot of complacency is disguised apathy by people who don’t see any way to “win” or even break even in the current economic structure. The “criminals on the planet” are running the show, whether through manipulating/corrupting government officials, controlling media messages, undercutting or buying out the competition, destroying small farms/businesses with the assistance of the government, and so forth. How much can even the most vigorous individual do against the evil of Novartis or Monsanto? To challenge this requires organized resistance, no matter how spiritually aware and capable the individuals are. Where does this organizational energy and MONEY come from?

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  • Well, I don’t disagree. I think Sanders said “AT LEAST” they should be able to afford to live, and the fact is, people making minimum wage and even well above minimum wage do NOT have enough income to feed and shelter themselves and their families. Clearly, that is a VERY low bar, and yet we fail to achieve it. So yes, something is drastically wrong with a system that values real work so poorly and yet rewards screwing around in the casino of Wall Street producing NOTHING of value so well. Better pay and fewer hours for everyone should be goal #1 to help create a better society. People shouldn’t have to work three jobs to make ends meet when others make $10,000/hour or more. But try to tell that to those benefiting from the status quo.

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  • I think you get my drift. People should be paid relative to their contributions. There is no “law” to determine this – it is a matter of personal and group ethics, a subject that sorely needs more study and commitment, obviously. So I agree, spiritual growth is at the center. We don’t need a society where some group enforces the rules on value of work, we need a society where those who are in management recognize and reward the contributions of those who contribute well, or better yet, a collective-type workplace where the group agrees on what people get paid for what work. But that takes emotional/spiritual work and courage, and that seems in short supply in our industrialized, corporatized society.

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  • I think the point here is not that we should just give people money. It is that the stress of economic poverty is a huge causal factor in “mental illness” as “diagnosed” by the DSM. Creating a plan to deal with poverty will improve “mental heath” more than an army of therapists ever could. To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, anyone working a full time job should be able to make enough money to pay for food, shelter and the basic necessities of life. So, people should get more money as compensation for the valuable work they are already doing. If this were the case, “mental health” would improve dramatically, as well as the economy expanding due to more people having disposable income. No “communism” necessary!

    Or course, the “mental health” industry will object to any such efforts, as they will lose clients and income. But we can come up with re-education programs to train them to become more productive contributors to society. And those rich criminal types (not all rich people, but a large subset who are getting paid lots for doing little) who are skimming money off the top while producing little to nothing will, of course, object strenuously, but what do we expect from non-productive criminals?

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  • In other news, death threats are noted to increase anxiety, and permanent incarceration in a dungeon without charge or hope of release has been linked to depressed mood. It is noted that not all respond to death threats with anxiety, and is postulated that this reaction is due to a chemical malfunction in the region of the amygdala which amplifies the fear response. Of course, those who don’t experience increased anxiety score high on tests of psychopathy, but hey, it seems like psychopaths are better equipped to deal with direct threats to their welfare, which is quite adaptive when confronting other psychopathic killers.

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  • The only point I’d disagree with is your use of the terms “contamination and degradation” in regards to psychiatry. Psychiatry was already contaminated and degraded plenty long before neoliberalism arrived. I’m sure they were absolutely thrilled to meet each other, as psychiatry as an institution was already committed to the goal of making money and maintaining the status quo, whatever the cost to its patent base, and they have proven a perfect support for Neoliberalism’s most damaging premises, without having to modify themselves in any way.

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  • If the car itself had a flaw which only occurred in one car in 100, but that one driver got killed, I’d care a lot about that, and the fact that you had no trouble with your car would not convince me that the car did not pose a danger to drivers. I hope that distinction is clear. The assertions here are not that someone had an accident with the car, but that there is an “intermittent” problem with the car itself that most people won’t see, but those who do see it can be seriously harmed. This is a very real problem seen frequently in psychiatry. Only one person in 20 becomes psychotic on stimulants at normal dosages, but those 1/20 can be severely impacted. Only perhaps one in 200 have a violent outburst due to being on SSRIs, but those small few include murderers. Should we not tell people that this is a risk, even if the risk is small? It is not reasonable to minimize or dismiss real risks just because they don’t happen that often. The stories being told tell me that such risks are very real and should be taken into account as a person considers this treatment, even if some people choose not to risk it as a result.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    As I said before, I expect people to respect that others’ experiences are valid. That goes both ways. It sounds as if some are experiencing your comments as invalidating the experiences of those who have had different experiences than you. It sounds like you have felt the same way about others’ comments. That’s what I am concerned about.

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  • Interesting. What are these perceived “barriers to implementation,” and from whom do they come? It seems to me that almost any patient would be foursquare behind being actually told the truth and being consulted before agreeing to a treatment plan. It seems to me that the only barriers to implementation have to come from the rigidity of authoritarian practitioners who want their patients to blindly follow their dictates and are afraid that telling the actual truth will lead to pesky difficulties like the patients actually discovering that these “professionals” don’t actually know what they’re talking about.

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  • Posted for KindredSpirit:

    MissDolittle, of course, TMS *can* help people because that’s how the placebo effect works. What hasn’t been demonstrated is that the help you believe you got from your treatment should somehow have more weight than the stories of harm from those who were not helped by this treatment. There will always be people who feel that TMS or ECT or psych drugs helped them. There will always been people for whom these treatments were neither helpful nor harmful. But we also have to sit with and reconcile the pain from those who’ve been deeply harmed by these treatments.

    You seem to think “screw you, I’ve got mine” is a reasonable response to someone else sounding the alarm about the damage these treatments have and continue to cause to people who weren’t as lucky as you.

    You haven’t done anything to prove the efficacy of TMS, only your lack of compassion.

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  • Commenting as moderator:

    I am not speaking to a particular poster in saying this, but I think it needs to be said.

    I think this discussion will be a lot more productive if each person allows that others may have had different experiences, and not try to “explain” how other peoples’ experiences have happened. I think we need to respect that different people experience the world differently, and the fact that something “works” for one person does not mean the other person’s experiences are not due to the “something” that person one feels like works for them. Or vice-versa.

    It seems to me that the science on TMS is not very well determined, and the “science” on “mental health” is almost completely absent. So we’re going to get into different opinions and experiences, and that’s OK. Especially when dealing with something as amorphous as “depression,” there is no reason to believe or expect that any two people will have the same experience just because they’re both feeling “depressed.”

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  • Of course, it is possible – genes play some role in everything we do. The point is, the psychiatric profession WANTS to blame the genes and distorts the research to try and force that conclusion. And despite that, genes still fail to explain anything about any psych disorder consistently, even a small percentage.

    I look at it this way: we all have genes, they are pretty much fixed from birth. They are not something that can be changed. There are LOTS of other variables that CAN be changed, through epigenetics, through individual efforts, through improved social structures, through community supports, etc. Why focus our attention on the one thing that can’t be changed? Why not focus on the things we HAVE control over, especially as genetic research so far is a huge bust, despite billions of dollars having been invested in it?

    The other thing about genetics is often overlooked – a particular set of genes may allow vulnerability to certain conditions, but might also make other conditions possible. A hugely disproportionate number of our poets, writers, playwrights, graphic artists, etc. have had psychotic experiences. Perhaps a certain set of genes opens us to alternative experiences of life and enables artists to flourish? And snuffing out those genetic variations snuffs out a lot of creativity and motivation to change and grow in society?

    The way psychiatry approaches genetics borders on eugenics. They want to “stamp out” the “bad genes” without any real interest in understanding the purposes of those genes. Species survival depends on genetic variations. Genetic differences are not “diseases” or “disorders.” We would do best to simply understand that we have the genes we have and learn to work with them.

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  • I fully acknowledge not knowing what these things mean, mostly because I don’t think they mean anything specific, but are simply descriptive syndromes that don’t really hang together in terms of cause.

    As for politeness, I find it perfectly viable to be both polite and firm. Of course, there are people who won’t respond to politeness, but that’s no reason to toss it out in every single case. There are plenty of people who will listen better if the person speaking doesn’t start off being presumptuous and offensive. I save that for those who don’t seem to be capable of hearing things presented more rationally. Which, admittedly, is a lot more common in this particular field of endeavor.

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  • I have a hard time thinking there can be a unitary cause for psychosis, since we know that it can be caused by things as disparate as several days of no sleep and excessive stimulants and childhood sexual molestation and living in an urban environment. But I’m interested to hear – what does Jung say is the cause? I have read some of Jung’s work but this one has not come to my attention. And any explanation that gets away from brain-blaming seems very worth considering to me.

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  • The point of putting quotation marks around “psychosis” is not to deny such experience exists, but to take away the implication that “psychosis” is a “thing” that can be viewed as a unity. It’s an experience that has many potential causes, which have been lumped together into one purported entity for purposes of making money and saving the trouble of having to seek out the actual causes.

    Tell you what – I won’t correct your language in the future, and you don’t correct mine. If you wonder why I’m using a particular convention, maybe you could ask instead of assuming and telling me my own reasons? It would seem a lot more polite to me.

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  • If I had a repair manual for a lawnmower and tried to apply it to an airplane engine, you’d be pretty disturbed if I said, “If somebody has something better…” you’d think that I was pretty stupid or unethical. Either the model works or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t work, you work on developing a new model. You don’t continue using the model that doesn’t work, and you especially don’t claim that the principles of this model apply to the situations where we know they do not apply.

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  • I agree 100%. There are the intentionally evil, a small cadre in charge, and a lot of dupes or petty tyrants who go along with the program. None of it is designed to assist those receiving the “aid.” There are many things that can be done which are not conceived or are actively suppressed by the “mental health authorities” because they disturb the larger agenda of making money and keeping people from gathering together to protest.

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  • Actually, I don’t think you get what I’m saying. I’m not suggesting that “lived experience” per se automatically gives one natural authority. It is based on one’s competence in accomplishing the tasks at hand. And you’re right, hierarchy does seem to be a natural outgrowth of human groups. I’m saying that the optimum situation is where the official “authorities” conform as best they can to natural authorities, and that such authorities that do exist in the hierarchy respect the fact that their position does not preclude someone else knowing more than they do about a subject, and that the ostensible “subordinates” don’t assume that the authorities automatically know what they’re doing.

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  • I would say that I DO respect professional expertise whenever it is demonstrated. The problem is, a doctorate is neither necessary nor sufficient proof of “professional expertise.” I’ve know PhDs and MDs who were so incompetent and/or malfeasant as to be extremely dangerous, and I’ve known volunteer crisis line counselors who were incredibly capable and successful in helping their charges consistently and effectively. I don’t really see a direct relationship between training and professional expertise, especially in the “helping professions,” and the pretense that such a relationship exists is part of why the current system fails so badly. I mean, why would someone trained as a medical doctor be expected to have ANY expertise in helping people with emotional/spiritual/behavioral problems they might identify? Let alone the expertise to “diagnose” such people according to the subjective and largely arbitrary rules of the DSM? It’s kind of like hiring a plumber to repair your car.

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  • I meant in a large public forum like the WSJ. I know there are plenty of people (like me) who don’t think getting an advanced degree confers some special status on you that entitles you to a special name. But purposely writing an article in a national journal saying that someone shouldn’t be called “doctor” specifically because they’re the First Lady smacks of sexism to me.

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  • As to whether it is “sexist” or not, I think the question to ask is, have you ever heard this kind of argument being used to tell a man not to call himself “Doctor?” And how would it fly if a high-ranking male cabinet member were called “kiddo?”

    It is, at best, intentionally demeaning. Of course, I don’t call my doctors “Doctor X” anyway, so she wouldn’t be getting that honorific from me, but I wouldn’t try to rub it in by writing an article or do a TV bit about it!

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  • I guess it depends who is stating the dangers. It may be that detractors overstate the risks, but it is clear to me that the psychiatric profession understates them, to the point of violating their own ethics of “informed consent.”

    Again, I’m glad that it worked well for you. But I have talked to many people whose lives were destroyed or severely damaged by ECT. My point is that it makes logical sense that since seizures can and do cause brain damage, ECT would pose a risk of brain damage. It is the responsibility of psychiatry to evaluate this risk, or else acknowledge that the risk exists. This does not appear to be happening with the people I’ve talked to or read about.

    Notwithstanding that scientific reality, there is plenty of evidence that brain damage can and does occur as a regular effect of ECT. The existence of such evidence should in itself be sufficient to insist on a serious warning that this is a significant danger.

    From one internet search:

    https://connect.springerpub.com/content/sgrehpp/19/1/24#:~:text=Despite%20many%20scientific%20and%20governmental,or%20degree%20of%20brain%20damage.

    http://www.ectresources.org/ECTscience/Templer_1992__AAA__Permanent_brain_damage___Overview___Controversy___Worse_with_pre-existing_brain_damage_.pdf (this is a very pro-ECT article which identifies long-term memory loss and brain damage in a significant number of cases)

    https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/03/12/1117206109

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  • So it is possible that “Autism,” whatever that is, is simply a combination of high intelligence and certain personality characteristics? Yet there are plenty of “autistic” people who have lower IQ, correct? So are those people “Austistic”? Or are they something else?

    Perhaps we can just go with describing people’s behavior instead of having to slot them into “categories” that limit our ability to see the differences between them?

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  • I appreciate your thoughtful reply.

    I truly have no problem with social sciences, as long as they learn to limit themselves to actual observations and understand the problems of variable control that are so prominent.

    Let’s take the “ADHD” diagnosis as a very simple example. We can look at a classroom and say, “Wow, there are some kids who do really well in this classroom, and others who do poorly.” That is an observation. We can say, “A certain subset of those who do poorly seem to have characteristics in common – they have difficulty sitting still, they seek out constant stimulation, they seem impatient with the process, interrupting the teacher and so on, and they don’t like to do exactly as they are told.” These are still legitimate observations.

    We stop doing science when we say, “Those kids who don’t do well in the classroom have something wrong with them.” We are now in the realm of judgment and behavioral control. I suppose we could continue with the assumption that behavioral control is our goal, and then scientifically study better ways to control behavior. But that decision, that behavioral control is the goal, is in no way scientific, even in the very loose social sciences sense.

    If we REALLY want to be scientific, we’d have to break down the classrooms into groups. We’d have to do backgrounds on the groups to see if the ones who hate it have anything in common, and if the ones who tolerate it have anything in common. We may find that the majority of the tolerant group ALSO hate being there, but simply have more skills to cope with feeling oppressed. But maybe that means THEY are the ones with the problem! “Over-accommodation Disorder” could be attached to them, and we could give them drugs or do behavioral training to make them LESS compliant and tolerant of oppressive environments!

    Of course, the question of whether the environment is “oppressive” or not is social and political and not at all scientific, either.

    And we could go on, but I think you get the idea. As soon as VALUE JUDGMENTS get involved, we are leaving the path of science. We can observe behavior and even draw conclusions based on these observations, but what we decide these conclusions mean about how we as humans should act is very much outside the realm of science, and always will be.

    It is also valuable to recall that science is a subcategory of philosophy. So something can be philosophical within the boundaries of science, but if it is a “mix” of science and higher level philosophy, then it’s really no longer science, strictly speaking.

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  • I think we’ve both made our points. I’m guessing we’d actually agree closely on what should be done to help people with perceptual or behavioral differences, and I certainly have never claimed in anything I said that biology does NOT impact behavior or perception – I actually said the opposite several times, as I recall.

    The only point I am making is that claiming neurological SAMENESS of people who don’t happen to stand out as “different” does not make scientific sense. We have close to zero idea why people act the way they do. All we know is that certain patterns to emerge, and that expecting people to simply change their perceptual or behavioral style because it’s inconvenient for others is rather oppressive. I am encouraging us to focus less on whose brain is more “different,” and more on how we can help people whose behavioral/perceptual/personality styles don’t fit our largely arbitrary social expectations can find their place in our social system. If someone has to have a “diagnosis” or a “spectrum” identity to be considered worthy of special consideration in this regard, we are leaving millions and millions of kids behind just because they happen to be better at adapting to irrational and oppressive conditions than others.

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  • I say “seizure” because that is exactly what ECT does. This question is not in the slightest dispute, even amongst the most fervent supporters. The very idea, as I recall, came because they found that people hospitalized for psychotic episodes were less psychotic after having a seizure. They used to induce seizures by drugs like Metroconazole (I think). The whole point of ECT is to induce a seizure.

    I am not “angry” at ECT – I am angry at psychiatry for pretending they don’t know what the limitations and dangers of ECT really are. I’m glad you found it helpful. But I can’t allow the claim that no one has proven that ECT does damage to the brain stand. It is a basic tenet of science that the person making a claim is responsible for proving the claim – the “null hypothesis” (that there IS no effect) is assumed true until proven otherwise. If you’re trying to prove something has a positive effect, the assumption is that it does not, until proven otherwise. If you’re trying to prove that something which reason would suggest is unsafe is safe, the assumption is that it is NOT safe until proven otherwise by the data. Otherwise, I can claim that “cars are run by angels” or that “sleeping in the rain without a coat at 35 degrees F is safe” and you’d have to prove that cars are NOT run by angels, or that sleeping outdoors in a 35 degree rainstorm without a coat is unhealthy. In the case of ECT, reason would suggest that a grand mal seizure is dangerous, so it’s the promotor of ECT who has to prove it is not.

    The smoking industry and drug manufacturers in general apply the reverse approach – they say, “No one can prove that cigarettes cause cancer. We don’t have to say it can until someone proves it does.” As you can see, this is not “science,” it’s a form of marketing, and the same kind of BS marketing has been done in favor of ECT.

    The following article may illustrate my points:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/35002188

    As you can see, ECT induces seizures, and there IS evidence of brain damage. But again, it is not the job of critics to prove it ISN’T safe, it is psychiatry’s job to prove that, despite the logical conclusion that seizures can and do induce brain damage, the process of ECT somehow is exempt from this general expectation.

    As you can see below, no one in the medical field outside of psychiatry pretends that seizures are not potentially dangerous to the brain. Why ECT should magically be different is theirs to prove, and they have not even attempted to do so. They just say it isn’t and dare others to prove them wrong, just as the cigarette manufacturers did for decades.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1783429/

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  • I agree 100%. But for some reason, this kind of argument flies over most people’s heads. Whereas pointing out that there is no evidence of long-term benefits almost always has some “bite.” Some people get upset about it and try to tell me I’m wrong, others are shocked, but a small few are induced to explore the question further. I’m afraid the idea that “ADHD” exists is too firmly planted in the minds of at least US society that pointing out its spurious nature seems to induce too much “cognitive dissonance” for most people to handle!

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  • And as I said, we are now getting into philosophy, not science. While stating that “all things have a cause” is pretty solid scientifically, the assumption that cause is always biological is a philosophical one, that is often presented as “scientific” (in fact, people are often accused of being “unscientific” when proposing other philosophical positions), but actually in no way proven by any scientific means, and in all likelihood unprovable by such means. We get into a discussion now of what is the MIND vs. what is the BRAIN. The position you present is a “materialist” position, that all causes must be material in nature, and therefore changes in the mind must be caused by something in the physical universe. Yet there are traditions of thousands of years duration that place the mind as transcending the body but being in charge of running it, and would see the brain as more of a “switchboard” used by the mind/spirit to run the body. Less esoteric ideas include the idea of “emergent properties,” in other words, the physiology of the body creates an effect that then is able to act on the physiology itself. It seems pretty clear to me that humans can do a lot to control their bodies, including their brains. Biofeedback and meditation are two examples. There is also the science of epigenetics to consider, which falls within the purview of materialism, but allows that environmental changes are able to change the way the body works and what genes are expressed or muted or turned off.

    So the idea that the brain is the causal factor of all phenomena of the mind is not something I would automatically accept. I have no interest in denying either the very real experience of being a “different” person in a world that ACTS as if there is some “normal” we should aspire to (I am such a person myself, as you might surmise.) I also don’t deny that biology may play a significant role in such differences. I see the problem more in society’s unwillingness to recognize or accommodate to the factual existence of such differences, whether they are obvious or subtle or disguised by the person pretending to be “normal.” I doubt you’d disagree with my last statement, given what you seem to be doing.

    So you ask some excellent questions. They are just more philosophical questions than scientific.

    As a closing example, let’s suppose for the sake of argument (and I suspect that there is some truth to this) that a certain percentage of the population is biologically predisposed to hate sitting still and is very intolerant of boredom and is constantly seeking stimulation. We put children with these characteristics into a standard classroom, and they act out and get into trouble and are extremely unsuccessful. Is the problem that the child is “too active” and “unable to focus” (even though they seem to focus just fine on things involving big movements and interesting experiences)? Or is the problem that the classroom is too dull and rigid and unable to accommodate the needs of these children?

    Not a scientific question. It’s a philosophical one, and a very good one, especially when one makes the scientific observation that children of this personality type do quite well in an open classroom setting where they can set more of their own agenda. We can study these kids in different environments and observe what happens scientifically. But deciding what it means transcends science.

    Again, I do really appreciate the work that you’re doing. I’m sure it would have been a big relief to me as a kid to know I wasn’t alone and I wasn’t so “weird” as I thought. I fully support those efforts. I just don’t want to concede that there is some “normal” neurological configuration that “normal” people have and that we need to only accommodate for those who diverge far enough from this purported “norm” to stand out. There are plenty of “normal” kids in any classroom who are in intense pain and hate every minute of their experience, yet are able to act “normal” as a performing seal might in order to keep their masters happy and less dangerous. I was one of those kids. I could pretend to “fit in” and do what was expected of me, but I was miserable for 12 1/2 years of school. Was I really neurologically “normal” because I could accommodate? Was I neurologically “abnormal” because it was painful to accommodate? Or were the adults simply unreasonable to expect children to comply with such an oppressive system?

    I vote for #3! But science can’t answer that question for us.

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  • The question isn’t whether “being autistic” is the cause, it’s whether brain alterations are the cause of “being autistic.” It sounds like there is some evidence in a number of spheres that differences in brain operations, aka how the brain is USED by the person running it, between different groups. But we walk down a VERY slippery slope when we assume without scientific evidence that these differences are necessarily structural or causative.

    The following link shows how imagination can cause changes in brain imaging that mirror real experiences. This demonstrates the power of the individual to alter his/her own brain operation, which to me tells us that there is no way to causatively link brain images to structure – they are simply different measurements that in most cases have little to nothing to do with each other.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181210144943.htm

    I don’t mean to try and refute that there are people who experience the world differently from the “average” person. I just don’t see at this point any means to objectively distinguish between them. I much prefer to look at it as a human problem – how do we as a society deal with the inevitable differences in needs and skills and preferences that will exist in even the most homogeneous group or community.

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  • At the risk of repeating myself, it is not the responsibility of critics to present evidence that inducing a grand mal seizure through electrocution damages one’s brain. It is the responsibility of those claiming therapeutic effects to prove that inducing a grand mal seizure through electrocution does NOT damage one’s brain. We all know that seizures are dangerous and can produce brain damage, which is why people with seizure disorders are immediately put on anti-seizure drugs. Why would we imagine that an intentionally-induced seizure would somehow NOT create brain damage?

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  • I get that. But your definition is philosophical, not scientific. There is no objective way to distinguish your two groups. It is a judgment call, which I think is why the term “spectrum” was introduced. I have no objection to philosophical definitions per se, I just object to them posing as scientific ones. You have proposed no specific neurological “structural differences” nor presented any evidence of such. The burden of proof falls to those claiming there is some way to distinguish these groups neurologically, and I have seen nothing that meets even a very loose standard of proof. What I hear is that certain people tend to behave in certain ways, and that some people believe these differences are neurological in nature, but no one can show what the difference is. The definition is entirely based on subjective assessments how people act, feel and think (as all psychiatric “diagnoses”) and so falls into the category of philosophy. I see no scientifically valid entity of “autism” that can be distinguished beyond someone’s opinion or assumptions.

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  • Thanks for that.

    As I suspected, these results are based on functional brain scans, rather than structural differences. Additionally, these patterns are based on averages among participants, rather than specific, consistent differences between the groups being measured. So there very well may be many individuals in the study group who do NOT have the characteristic pattern, and many individuals who DO have the characteristic pattern, who are in the control group. The differences do not distinguish between the groups.

    An illustrative quote:

    “No research has uncovered a ‘characteristic’ brain structure for autism, meaning that no single pattern of changes appears in every autistic person. Studies of brain structure often turn up dissimilar results — there is great variety across individuals in general. But some trends have begun to emerge for subsets of autistic people. These differences might one day provide some insight into how some autistic people’s brains function. They may also point to bespoke treatments for particular subtypes of autism.”

    So SOME people diagnosed with autism have certain characteristics in common in terms of FUNCTION. They state clearly that these findings can’t be considered causal, as they might be the result of rather than the cause of “autistic” behavior, and as they are not close to consistent for anything close to all people so labeled.

    The studies are suggestive that there may be some correlates among people labeled as “autistic,” but does not establish that these are either genetic or neurological in origin. Of course, we might expect that from a group of people who are “diagnosed” based on subjective behavioral checklists and clinical judgment. In short, I would conclude from these studies, and what else I know, that “autism” is a loose connection of people who have certain behavioral/emotional/intellectual characteristics in common, but that this group is extremely heterogeneous and that the causes of these shared behaviors have not been determined, nor has it been determined that such behaviors even HAVE a shared cause.

    This is the problem with “diagnosis by checklist.” I don’t mean in any way to suggest or imply that people who fit this description don’t have anything in common, nor that such people gathering together isn’t a great idea (it IS a great idea!), nor that there couldn’t be some biological similarities between a big part of such a group. I’m saying that there is no direct evidence that people so grouped have a neurological problem, have a shared neurological problem, or even have a biological problem at all.

    As to “neurodiversity,” my opinion is that the idea that there is some kind of “normal” neurological configuration that can be used as a basis for “neurodiversity” to be determined. I am of the opinion that we’d be far better to consider EVERYONE “neurodiverse” and needing individual, creative interventions that respect our individual rights and needs. Which it sounds like you are making every effort to provide, so WELL DONE!

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  • I do think it important to remember that something can be intentional without being fully conscious. A lot of times, the staff’s motivations go to maintaining order and avoiding emotional discomfort on their own parts. They are mostly completely unaware of these motivations, yet make decisions with these motivations in the back of their minds. The DSM contributes greatly to making this easier, because rather than admitting they feel uncomfortable because they don’t know what to do or because their own issues have been brought to the surface, they can blame the patient by saying, “Her borderline symptoms are escalating” or “He’s decompensating, we need a PRN injection stat!”

    So the staff may not be aware they are intentionally oppressing their patients, and yet be intentionally oppressing their patients nonetheless, with the full support of the oppressive system.

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  • What kind of evidence are you aware of for consistent and objective “neurological differences” in autistic-diagnosed people? I have not seen any such evidence, and have been working with this stuff since the mid-90s. I’m always happy to be educated, but if there is any such evidence, I am not currently aware of it.

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  • It depends on what you mean by “works.” If you mean, “Can I manipulate my mental and physiological states by experimenting with mind-altering drugs,” then yes, they “work.” If you are asking can such drugs improve ones’ biological well being, balance brain chemicals that are theoretically “out of balance” (with no evidence, of course), or “heal” some sort of purported “Mental illness,” the answer is a resounding NO.

    As Peter Breggin pointed out almost 20 years back, these drugs don’t fix anything. Every one of them acts by disrupting normal functioning of the brain (and other parts of the body). If someone likes the way this disruption makes him/her feel or think, that’s up to the user. But it’s past time to stop pretending that these drugs “work” in any sense of healing the body, or helping the body heal. They absolutely do not.

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  • Certainly. But a very important question that is generally avoided is this: genetics contributes to behavioral decisions. SO WHAT? Genetics is not something that can be modified, except through epigenetics, which is directed by, guess what, EXPERIENCE. So why do we spend millions and millions studying genetic vulnerability when we can’t do anything about it? Wouldn’t it be more productive to direct the bulk of those dollars toward finding what kind of environment helps people succeed emotionally and mentally and toward creating such environments?

    As an example, it’s likely that a certain percentage (but very far from all) of “ADHD” cases are no doubt strongly influenced by a genetic tendency to be more active than other kids. These kids don’t succeed in a regular classroom very easily. So is the answer to try and alter their brain chemistry (seeing as the genes are not changeable)? Or is the answer to create environments that allow such kids to be active and to learn in the way they learn best?

    Finally, before we ascribe specific behavioral tendencies to genetics, ought we not to have evidence of what genes affect what behavior? Yet decades of research provide almost no information about this. Why do we imagine that’s going to change somehow?

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  • First off, I don’t see doctors being particularly reluctant to prescribe benzos. Xanax is the second most commonly prescribed psychiatric drug, and Ativan comes in at #7, in 2016. (https://psychcentral.com/blog/top-25-psychiatric-medications-for-2016/)

    Second, restrictions on long-term use appear to be advisory at this point, and the recommendations for short-term use only are well established and long standing. There are exceptions to every rule, but it seems to me that it would be irresponsible not to give appropriate warnings regarding the difficulties of discontinuing Benzos. The guidelines seem appropriate to me, just as it is appropriate to warn adults and youth that stimulants are drugs of abuse, even though it appears that a certain percentage of users report being pleased with the results.

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  • You may be correct in your evaluation, but my point still stands: until someone comes up with an objective standard that is based on a real-world, replicable measurement that doesn’t depend on the opinion of “experts,” the boundaries of any “diagnosis” will continue to expand and no argument regarding “overdiagnosis” can ever be made, because there is no standard for diagnosing. The rest is all philosophy, and generally not even very good philosophy at that.

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  • It seems scientifically sketchy at best to suggest that something is “overdiagnosed” or “underdiagosed” or “not overdiagnosed” when there is no way to measure what the correct level of “diagnosis” could possibly be. It’s like arguing whether kids need more or less recess or more or less discipline in school. There is not a “right answer,” and it is silly to talk about it as if there were. More or harsher discipline has certain consequences, which some people like and some people don’t. It’s totally subjective. Same with basically all of these psych diagnoses, including autism. There is no way to “over- or underdiagnose” because there is not correct level of “diagnosis,” mostly because these are not definable medical conditions but socially-bound, subjective definitions based on beliefs and values rather than any kind of scientific observations.

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  • From a medical/scientific viewpoint, it is a meaningless grouping of people who have little to nothing biologically in common. People can identify that way for themselves, but to me it has all the scientific validity of “diagnosing” people as Catholics or French or greedy or sexually promiscuous. People can be all of those things for as many reasons as their are people. People can identify however they wish to, but it doesn’t make their identification a “diagnosis.”

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  • I don’t know that anyone here wants to prevent you from doing something you find helpful. However, it becomes different when doctors lie to people about the supposed causes of their problems and try to force “treatment” on them that is really just giving a drug and hoping it works. Not to mention the incredible levels of denial that occur when the clients themselves report that the drug is making them worse.

    I’m interested by your comment that “Anxiety has been proven to be real and heredity.” Anxiety is certainly real, but I’m pretty familiar with the research on this point, and I am not aware of anything that suggest that “anxiety” IN GENERAL is hereditary. I’m not denying the possibility that some people may struggle more with anxiety (including me) for reasons that may be significantly affected by heredity. But these same anxious people may have lots of other good qualities, like empathy, commitment to bigger goals, willingness to sacrifice, sensitivity in social situations, and so on. And of course, it is obvious that anxiety is HUGELY impacted by environmental factors. It is, in fact, a survival mechanism to help us avoid dangerous situations. So to decide that anxiety is hereditary is, as far as I know, not supported by evidence (please share if you have some!), but more importantly, anxiety is not a “disease state” that needs to be “treated,” even if some people find that there are drugs or other physiological interventions that can ease anxiety.

    Hope that makes sense!

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  • Of course, I agree. I just don’t see that much difference, except that stressed parents have to be there with their kids and try to enforce the teachers’ dictates. Virtual learning will work better for some kids, worse for others, be the same for others, but it does not begin to address the flaws within the system, which is my point. Rather than simply observing that some kids are less anxious when they aren’t forced into an unnatural setting under the control of a person they may or may not respect with kids selected at random that they can’t get away from having to do things that may or may not make any sense, maybe they should be asking why going to such a setting induces so much anxiety in so many children, and maybe stop doing those things that make the environment so utterly oppressive? But that would presume that there is a desire to empower rather than oppress the students, which is probably a highly erroneous assumption.

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  • So you are saying that “virtual learning” on a large scale amounts to child abuse?

    I’m a little surprised if that’s what you’re saying, since I’d expect you to see the school system as a primary means of keeping the unruly masses from rebelling. The whole enterprise is massively authoritarian from day one, and I believe a lot of what is not working in US society, at least, has to do with little kids being trained to invalidate their own perceptions and being forced to accommodate the “party line” on what is “right” and “wrong.” Not to mention the number of kids routed to the psychiatric system by schools.

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  • It’s kind of a joke to talk about ‘differential diagnosis’ when there is no objective way to differentiate between one group and another. I think it’s fine to talk about personality characteristics and how to deal with them, but the idea that these utterly subjective categorizations somehow represent “diagnoses” is laughable, and to talk about “differential diagnosis” as if that were somehow a meaningful phrase is ludicrous to me.

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  • “Jerk Radar” concepts are most definitely applicable to psychiatry. They try to charm you initially with promises of a better life, try to quickly engage you with them intensely to isolate you from other help, interfere with other relationships by explaining how they have your best interests at heart and that anyone disagreeing with them is undermining the relationship. Big egos abound, with willingness to lie or manipulate to maintain control, and willingness to blame others for anything that goes wrong. Low responsibility – goes without saying. History of abuse, encouraging others to use drugs, employing denigrating labels and comments… the concordance is quite thorough.

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  • This is very well spoken! I would add that what people have in common is more likely to be the stresses that CONTRIBUTED to their “symptoms” rather than the label. For instance, survivors of domestic abuse have a lot in common with each other, even though they might qualify for “PTSD,” “Major Depression,” “Bipolar Disorder,” “Borderline Personality Disorder,” “Anxiety Disorder” or many other possible labels. It would be more functional AND politically powerful to organize around experiences, rather than “reclaiming” a label that was never even relevant to most of the people who had it applied to them.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    There is no rule here that participants in comments are or are not “supposed to hate Trump.” I am concerned that this thread is about to go off topic into electoral politics or some other disrelated conversation that will end up being unproductive and hostile, as has happened recently.

    The point of the article is that the White House refused to pay for “mental health care” for separated migrant families. Arguments about whether this is a good or bad thing are welcome. I don’t want to see an argument about whether this means “Trump is bad” or not.

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  • Which of course means that the only “evidence based treatments” are going to be drugs, because they’re the only ones with enough research to provide an “evidence base,” however corrupt or flawed or sketchy that evidence base is. For instance, they still call stimulants “evidence based treatment” for “ADHD” even though decades of research show that they do NOTHING to improve long-term outcomes for children. What good is an “evidence base” that doesn’t take long-term effects into account?

    And that’s not even getting into how the grouping of the “DSM disorders” puts together heterogeneous groups who will respond differently to the same approach, so that only the heavy-handed “symptom suppression” approach will be viewed as “effective.”

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  • I don’t know that I have one to hand, actually. Whatever you call it, there is a power differential, and any person who is really good at it knows this is a huge part of the dynamic and knows how to step down from their power and return the power to the client, and appreciates that the “peer worker” is actually in a BETTER place to do this. But the DSM attitude/philosophy speaks directly against this, encouraging and even in some ways requiring the “clinician” to see the “Mentally ill” as below them. And by analogy, the “peer worker” is below them, too.

    Maybe we can call them “coaches” or “mentors” or something that doesn’t delineate their value as being a “peer” with people who are identified as being “beneath” the “professionals.” But the real problem isn’t the name, it’s the attitude of the professionals toward their clients, and by analogy to anyone who as been on the “client” side of the relationship. Condescension is both a consequence and a cause of the disempowerment of clients, and I see that condescension clearly indicated in attitudes toward “peer workers,” who are automatically seen as less wise, less emotionally stable, less effective, and less important than the so-called “professionals,” even when the opposite may well be the truth.

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  • I honestly have not seen anyone saying that a response to life’s tragic circumstances is not absolutely needed. Perhaps you can let me know what quotes or statements lead you to this conclusion? I think there IS a sense in a lot of people that a “professional” response to human distress is condemned to failure from the get-go due to differences in power and intention between the “helper” and the “helpee.” Perhaps that is what you are referring to?

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  • I think my response DOES answer your question, and quite clearly. Each person will need something different, and the first error of psychiatry is clumping people together based on how they feel or act rather than on what their experiences, life conditions and motivations are. The only way to help people in distress is to get to know each and every one of them personally and help them figure out their path. It is much more a spiritual than a physiological thing, though physiology certainly does play a role (exercise, sleep, nutrition, etc.) Psychiatry is destructive largely because it invalidates the humanity of its clients in the interests of money and power. Restoring connections and respect and caring leads to a wide range of solutions that depend on the person and his/her situation. There is no “prescription” for mental well being.

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  • Reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where people from one planet got everyone on another planet addicted to a substance only found on the first planet, and then said they all had a “disease” for which their drug was the only “treatment.” And of course it was VERY expensive, but what’s it worth to be protected from this horrible “disease!”

    It is beyond despicable to create a “disease” with one drug and then sell another to “cure” it!

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  • I actually had a very good therapist who worked with me to meet MY goals, never once told me what to think about my life even when I asked her to do so. But this was back in the 80s before the DSM took full hold. I think such people are harder to find these days, but I do think there are times when having an objective person who is willing to listen and ask pointed questions about your thinking and decisions WITHOUT telling you what to do is extremely valuable. The problem is, most therapists seem incapable of being there for the clients without meeting their own needs at the clients’ expense. The DSM structure makes it that much easier to avoid the real issues or to work out the therapists’ issues on the client. And I’m not sure there is a way to actually train therapists to do this. It seems to have a lot more to do with the therapist’s own grasp on his/her personal issues and needs, and corresponding ability to set those needs aside and truly LISTEN to the what the client is saying instead of trying to “fix” the client’s life.

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  • I think the problem is connecting psychiatry, which is NOT designed to help people except in the crudest sense of deadening “negative emotions,” and society responding to suffering and misery, which I agree society is responsible to do. In fact, as long as psychiatry is around, our society at large can pretend that psychiatry has the answer and that they don’t need to bother responding to your or anyone else’s emotional difficulties, as they will buy psychiatry’s story that it’s all about flawed brains and doesn’t require any social changes at all.

    As to what society can and should do, I think there is a major problem assuming that there is one answer for all those now considered “mentally ill” by the DSM system. There are many different responses possible, which can be adapted to many different situations. For instance, the main “cure” for ADHD appears to be to restructure schools so that they are more adaptable to the needs of kids. Things like “anxiety” and “depression” can have many causes, and the response should be different for different situations. Does society need to respond the same way to a person in a dead-end job or an unhappy marriage, as opposed to someone abused as a small child, or a person who is being discriminated against systematically because s/he is an immigrant or a black person or a woman?

    Grouping “the mentally ill” together as if “they” are some monolithic entity plays into the hands of the psychiatric community and the drug companies’ needs. It is a false grouping of heterogeneous people into pseudo groups, which obscures any real attempt to analyze and help with a person’s actual situation.

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  • Yeah, Freud was a huge improvement over anything else that preceded him, because he at least started from the idea that the what the client says is the most important thing to consider. That postulate alone would invalidate the entire edifice of the DSM and all that passed for “psychiatry” throughout history. It is just a shame that he backed down from his accurate observations. But as we all are, he was a product of his time, and his revelations were just not tolerable in the society he lived in, however accurate they may have been.

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  • Freud’s main contributions were that he believed that listening to people’s stories was a path to healing, and that early life trauma unconsciously affected decisions and emotions on an ongoing basis. He was the first to recognize that sexual abuse of children (especially girls) was rampant, and at first he believed these stories and attributed women’s “hysterical” symptoms to the abuse they had experienced. This outraged the Viennese society of the time (one has to wonder how many of his psychiatric colleagues were suddenly worried they’d get busted!) and he came under tremendous pressure to recant. Unfortunately, he did so, and devised all the weird “drive theories” like the Oedipus complex and penis envy and whatnot and the secret of childhood sexual abuse went back under wraps for another hundred years. Most of what he is remembered for is the crap he came up with to explain away his original observations. He may have saved his career by doing so, but his betrayal of his integrity condemned another four generations of children to unrecognized sexual abuse.

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  • There is no question that these drugs have an EFFECT, and sometimes the effect seems positive or worth the cost. This does NOT mean there is something “wrong” with the child, or that the child is being “treated” for some “disease” or “disorder,” or that other children experiencing similar problems will be “helped” by whatever you felt worked for your child. Individual stories are valid, but scientific claims need to be made on overall data, not individual stories.

    Best of luck with your continuing challenges!

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  • It sounds like we’re substantially on the same page. He has recently revealed some childhood trauma we did not know about, and he was operating with that inner secret (from himself, too), which no doubt made it difficult to make sense out of things. He also had an emotionally abusive partner he was escaping from, and I think the drugs provided escape for him, too. He was guided at first, but the person guiding him also had some serious issues and told him some very not helpful things. I think certain people just don’t do well with any kind of drug intervention. Nothing works for everyone, and we all have to find our own paths.

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  • I think we’re getting into the difference between individual actions, which vary widely, and the system that has been devised, which is very narrow and rigid. There are most definitely individuals who can do great things within the system, and those who fight the system itself to do better (I was one of those for a while). I had a great therapist who really helped me back in the 1980s, though in fairness the DSM-III was just taking hold and therapists were more conversant with Jung and Rogers and Hoffer and Maslow and Bowlby and the like. But the system has changed, and is now rigged to encourage labeling and drugs and a discounting of the importance of experience and personality development as well as to ignore social impacts on human experience.

    I’d use the comparison of individual vs. systemic racism. There are individuals who really do choose to hate people based on their skin color or national origin or class. But the majority of people are able to manage relationships with individuals of varying backgrounds without overt hatred. Unfortunately, ALL of us are steeped in a culture of racism, and carry around images and assumptions and reactions that are “programmed” in by the society we’re a part of, to the extent that much of it, we don’t even notice. Some people are able to rise above this training to one degree or another, but most are only partially or marginally aware that such things are even happening.

    That’s how I see the psychiatric system. There are individuals within the system who can rise above the system’s assumptions, but the training and the culture surrounding “mental health” is warped in the direction of believing that “the mentally ill” are a specifically identifiable population, whose value and capabilities in life are less than the “normal” person, which of course the majority practitioners believe themselves to be. So even if people within the system do challenge the system to do better, they tend to make temporary stirs in certain areas which quickly settle back down into the status quo, because the system is supported by a huge culture of discrimination and condescension and power dynamics, and most of the practitioners are comfortable enough with it to keep supporting its basic assumptions.

    This is why I got out of the business myself. I decided at a certain point that continuing to participate, even as a rebel behind enemy lines, was a tacit approval of the system as it was. I saw the damage being done and realized that one person can’t change the entire culture. So I became and advocate, and earned a lot more inner peace.

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  • I am most definitely saying that psychiatry as a pseudo-scientific philosophy/religion denies or minimizes the causal role of stress and trauma in any of their “diagnostic” categories. At the same time, they also systematically overlook REAL physiological problems, like sleep apnea or low iron for so-called “ADHD,” and deprive the client of actual medical care that they may need.

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  • Looking again, I just thought it was an important distinction to make. It is common to use the term “illness” in a metaphorical sense, like “that is SICK!” or “she has mental illness” without any actual attempt to look for physiological illnesses, and without the consideration that stress and trauma cause physiological symptoms that can easily be interpreted as “illness.” Of course, these ostensible “symptoms” are intentionally framed as “illness” by the psychiatric community.

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  • Throwing up suggests “ill.” Feeling depressed suggests “stressed” or “traumatized.” There are some people who are depressed because they are ill (low thyroid, chronic pain, iron deficiency, etc.) There are some people who throw up because they’re stressed or traumatized. To assume someone’s ill because they are depressed is dangerous and unscientific. Screening for illness makes sense. Assuming illness does not.

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  • ‘Kwanzaa’s second principle, Kujichagulia, Swahili for “self-determination,” which reflects a sense of “defining, creating, naming, and speaking for oneself.” ‘

    If this second principle were put into place, the DSM and the standard of “care” in the “mental health” system would be immediately put to rest. The DSM’s purpose is to “define, create, name, and speak” for the “patient” and prevent the patient’s voice or viewpoint from being taken seriously.

    The author may actually have been fortunate that her colleagues didn’t immediately call the authorities and allowed the author to exercise her own self-determinism in deciding how to proceed with the assistance of her psychiatrist. I was a bit disturbed to hear her talking about the “stigma” of “mental illness” and even moreso being “stigmatized” for being black. I think the proper word here is “discrimination”, not “stigma!”

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  • I think psychiatric practitioners who “treat” imprisoned “patients” are worse than the criminal justice system. At least alleged criminals have to be “Mirandized” and can have an attorney present during questioning, get a full trial and have to be convicted “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and have a specific and limited sentence. The “committed” have almost no rights, other than a “preponderance of evidence” trial in front of judges who are generally heavily biased against them. And they can be “held” indefinitely, or at least as long as their insurance holds out.

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  • The other huge problem with “EBM” is that “evidence” will only accumulate when studies are done, and most studies are funded by the pharmaceutical industry. So any non-drug interventions (like peer support) will never gather enough evidence to be called “EBM,” even if the results are far superior to “treatment as usual.”

    And of course, the article does not take on the more fundamental problem, namely, that helping people suffering from emotional distress is not really “medicine” in the first place. Studying “depression” will never lead to a proper “evidence base,” because the researchers are studying a heterogeneous group, where some will be helped by one intervention and others will be not helped or harmed. If people are treated as individuals, we’ll get a lot better result than by lumping together a whole bunch of people with a wide range of issues and trying to “treat” them as if they had a medical problem that no one apparently can actually identify.

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  • Yeah, if owning guns reduced crime, we in the USA would have the lowest crime rates in the world!

    But you are right, there is nothing to suggest that having a “mental illness diagnosis” makes one more predisposed to violent gun use. Heavy drug use (including LEGAL drugs like antidepressants and benzos) and domestic abuse are the highest associations with gun violence and have been for a long, long time. The “mentally ill” angle is just to create a scapegoat so those much larger REAL social problems can be ignored or minimized.

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  • I recall an experiment where someone designed a computer program to act like a non-directive therapist. It asked basic questions like, “Tell me about your childhood,” and gave generic acknowledgements like “I see” or “Uh huh…” If someone went off on a tangent, the computer would say something like, “Let’s get back to your mother.” The users reported feeling better from using the program. I think it showed how desperate people are just to have someone listen to them, even though the “listening” was totally artificial. Perhaps the machine had an advantage, in that it was unable to give unsolicited advice or demonstrate prejudice or evaluate for the user what the computer thought their “real problem” was.

    Anyway, I think we’re sinking down pretty low when we’re trying to have computers provide “therapy.” Though the computer program may have a big advantage over a psychiatrist with a prescription pad. At least it won’t make you worse.

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  • Very true! The problem is not that the information is not known and available, it is that there are so many people invested in the status quo who stand to lose money or status or both, that the facts are no longer relevant to their analysis. The only consideration is how to maintain power as long as possible before one is caught and held accountable. And this attitude extends very far beyond the boundaries of psychiatry.

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  • I recall seeing a film of a nice, German family, small house with a garden and a white picket fence. The father was a German officer, was dressed up for work. Walked out the front door, said goodbye to the wife and kids, and turned up the street. The camera shows Buchenwald rising in the background and the father heading off for his job at the death camp.

    Individual humans do not have to be evil for their behavior to be evil, or for the institution they work for to be evil. Many “good” people are able to justify bad actions in a wide range of manners, and evil institutions are very generous in providing plausible justification for the actions they want people to be able to justify. Remember the Milgram experiment!

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  • Biederman and company also cherry picked their non-placebo-controlled studies. Studies in Quebec, Australia (Raine Study) and in Finland showed that taking stimulants don’t improve any outcome measured in the “meta-analysis” discussed. Additionally, the OSU Medication Effectiveness Study showed no improvements in any outcome, except for a slight reduction in accidents for “medication” users. This issue has been studied for over 60 years now. If this stuff were so awesome, why aren’t there clear and unambiguous indications of positive results? How many “no result” findings have to happen before we conclude that it simply doesn’t have any long-term benefits?

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  • That is my observation also. “Peers” are rarely considered equal partners, but more someone who can “talk at the client’s level” and thereby explain why the system is “right.” I’ve seen plenty of “peers” who intentionally and consistently buck that trend (Stephen Gilbert/Boren, for instance), and they can sometimes get some stuff done, but they are never considered actual peers to the professionals. As long as that condition pertains, “peer support” remains mostly coopted and lacking in significant influence beyond the level of an individual person’s situation.

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  • The difference is that I get to define what I think. is “wrong” in the mental/spiritual realm. If a doctor tests and finds I have low thyroid, s/he can then tell me what is “wrong” and we can make a plan. But no one can tell me it’s “wrong” for me to have flashbacks or feel anxious. Sometimes feeling anxious is absolutely RIGHT – it is my body warning me that I’m in danger! Sometimes it is right but not very helpful, like if I’m going for a job interview and there is a “danger” that I won’t get the job. Sometimes it was right at an earlier time but is being applied to a situation today where the application doesn’t work. So I would be “wrong” for applying it to this situation. But the anxiety isn’t in itself “wrong.”

    Establishing order is what we do as humans. So “disorder” can certainly be perceived as “wrong.” But someone else telling me that my emotional state is “wrong” because it doesn’t meet their criteria for “normal” is judgmental and is frequently destructive.

    As a therapist, I have no problem asking a client, “What’s wrong?” from the perspective of the client. But I would NEVER tell a client, “Your reaction to being sexually molested is ‘disordered’ (AKA WRONG!)” It’s not my job to decide, and that’s why the DSM labels are problematic. It makes people feel “wrong” for feeling the way they do, instead of helping them see the challenges they face in a new light, which is what therapy should be doing.

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  • “…by convincing them that their troubles are just an inevitable result of what happened to them, and there is no possibility of them changing their reaction to something else and so getting more control over their lives.”

    I don’t think someone needs to believe there is something “wrong” with them to consider the possibility of changing their reactions/coping mechanisms. My emphasis has always been on how they WANT their lives to proceed as opposed to how they can be “fixed” in the sense of “returning to ‘normal’ (as defined by our social norms).

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  • Harrow showed that people with more favorable prognoses prior tom the study had worse outcomes on drugs than those with less favorable diagnoses had when off drugs. So “favorable prognostic factors” did not associate with better outcomes, whatever Harrow might have speculated about it. I also understand that he reconsidered his first analysis in the light of further data and critiques, and I’m wondering if you were reading his first assessment.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    If there are specific posts that aren’t there, please let me know. Your posts are pretty much always posted without moderation, so I’m not sure what could be missing. E-mail me directly if you find something specific I need to look for.

    Steve

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  • I agree, children are their weakest point. They can’t portray a two-year-old as a potential mass murderer needing to be “treated.” When you tell people about kids under one year old being on psych drugs, they are stunned. When you let people know that over half of foster youth over 12 are on psych drugs, people pay attention. A lot of the arguments for psych drugging and incarceration don’t sound nearly so convincing when kids are the victims.

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  • Hi, Sandra,

    I guess I have a little concern about the idea of “diversity of opinions” in this context. My problem with it is this: those in the psychiatric world have a MUCH greater power and privilege than those that they ostensibly “treat.” I believe that conveys a much higher responsibility on them to insist that their “opinions” are based firmly upon scientific facts and knowledge. I think one reason you don’t have an answer is because opinions or “voices” can be valued differently by different people, and it is of course very, very easy for those in power to simply ignore the voices of those they have power over. So if we REALLY want to have a conversation where “all voices are heard,” I think we have to start with amplifying the voices of those who receive the services in question, such that their EXPERIENCES (not their OPINIONS) are considered the most vital data being examined. At the same time, those who have the power to ignore such voices would have to be restricted from positing their opinions as fact – they would have to present scientific data to support their opinions, AND would have to have their positions jibe with the reports of their “patients” or else not be considered valid.

    It is, indeed, difficult to manage, but not because there is a diversity of opinion, but because there is a differential of power, and those who have the power to make their opinions sound like facts are unwilling to set that power aside long enough to hear what the real effects of their “treatments” are. Present company excluded, I think.

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  • I agree wholeheartedly – the tendency of the “professional” is often to force the person to be “reasonable,” and to re-a. ssume the roles they are rebelling against. Which is actually the very WORST thing you can do! A “mental health” crisis generally means that whatever role a person HAS been playing is not working. Maybe they need to reconsider how they’re living their life! Forcing them back into their old roles would drive them into apathy.

    Having a crisis is not an illness! And the solution is not to. force someone back to “normal,” whatever that is.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    In fairness to Oldhead, I have posted this last response (since Richard specifically referred to him in his post).

    I will be following Robert’s directive from here onward, and post things that relate to Terror Management Theory. Comments re: COVID are welcome as long as they are presented in that context. Any attempts to personalize negative responses will not be posted.

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  • Pretty much, yeah. They don’t have to agree with each other or with US law, though US law can supersede them depending on the issue. “State’s Rights” vs. centralized government control has been an issue since the first Continental Congress back in the 1700s. It continues to play out today, right in front of our eyes. The intensity of the conflict over “mask mandates” is a reflection of that ongoing conflict. “Let’s act together in everybody’s interests” vs. “Washington isn’t going to tell US what to do!” Our current “liberal-conservative” spectrum is closely related to that theme, IMHO. Unfortunately, I think it can blind us to bigger issues on different spectra.

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  • I agree, we know what we need to know about them. We know: 1) They mess with our brain chemistry, and indirectly, our brain structure, just like any “psychoactive drug,” including heroin, meth, alcohol, LSD, etc.; 2) there is no identifiable “illness” being treated, no means of distinguishing the “ill” from the “well,” so at best, these can be considered palliative drugs, similar to heroin for pain or aspirin for headaches; 3) all of these drugs have serious and in some cases deadly adverse effects, such that people taking the APs die 20-25 years earlier than the average person in society; 4) they all have withdrawal effects that generally lead to MORE of the “symptom” they are supposed to be suppressing; and 5) whatever unstudied long-term consequences exist, the evidence suggests that they are not good or helpful.

    What more needs to be known? A simple cost-benefit analysis says that we’re “treating” an unknown condition (if it even is a condition) with a drug that has largely unknown long-term consequences (other than early death and diabetes) and known short-term adverse effects which can be severe, and known withdrawal effects which can be worse than the “condition” being “treated.” The only benefit appears to be a temporary lessening of uncomfortable “symptoms” for an unknown proportion of the population using them. What argument is there for their continued widespread use? What happened to “first, do no harm?”

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  • Certainly, state legislatures have done a ton of things that have forced the national government or national/international corporations to take notice. For instance, California set fuel emission standards that were higher than any other state. Because they wanted to sell cars in California, auto makers targeted making cars to meet those standards, even if other states didn’t require it.

    Laws governing “involuntary commitment” are made by the states and differ from state to state. Setting a different standard in a particular state and proving that it worked better is one very legitimate approach to handling the problem. The city of Berkeley, CA banned “electroshock therapy” for a while back in the 80s, and even though a judge overturned it, it got plenty of news coverage. It’s a legit strategy.

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  • Thank you, Larry! That is very helpful.

    And I agree with you – it is one of those arguments like nature/nurture that can go on forever but not be resolved. Some of it gets down to values and priorities, and some comes down to perceptions vs. reality. The second part can be addressed through research, at least in part. The first is not resolvable except through quality communication, which I find few take the time to learn or execute.

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  • Commenting as moderator:

    I have a suggestion. It is clear that we could go on and on about how this is proven or not proven or this is the right approach or that approach is really dumb and anyone who agrees with it is a fascist traitor and on and on. But I think you’re right – science does not make political decisions, and political decisions themselves can’t be altered by science. So let’s stick to the stuff that CAN be determined with more certainty!

    If someone believes hydrochloroquine works, please, share the studies showing that is true! If someone believes it’s dangerous, please share the source of that information – what side effects have been shown in studies to occur, and what’s the cost-benefit analysis? If someone thinks masks are dangerous, where is the data? If you believe they’re helpful, let us know the scientific reasons why.

    The last time this discussion got started, it degenerated into a rhetorical shouting match that had to be discontinued. I don’t want that happening again. Let’s debate the issue like the intelligent, mature adults we all are, and put out the pros and cons without the hype and fear. After all, we’re not going to change the minds of most people by telling them they are wrong. Let’s put the data out there and let people decide for themselves! I’d be happy to be educated, especially about the value of Zinc and Vitamin C and D.

    So my suggestion here: instead of wasting time about whether Trump’s or Biden’s plans are good or bad or bad and worse, why don’t WE bring the science together and examine it? How about educating each other in a mutually respectful environment, and then we can all decide which plan(s) seems best to us? Does that sound do-able?

    I very much doubt bringing psychiatry to an end will realistically occur if people on the same side can’t work out a way of communicating respectfully about things we don’t agree about. Thoughts?

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  • Working as an advocate for foster youth, I saw this same pattern over and over. Stimulants for “ADHD” leading to deterioration/aggression, leading to more drugs, leading to more deterioration, eventually leading to kids on 4-5 drugs who can’t maintain in a foster home and end up in residential “treatment” centers. And yet mentioning that the “treatment plan” seems to be leading to more and more deterioration is met with hurt feelings and outrage, or with complete dismissal. Isn’t “treatment” supposed to make you better?

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  • Yeah, there was some study way back that claimed that “combined therapy was better than either medication or therapy alone.” It became some sort of mantra such that any challenge to it was met with derision, at least in the circles I was traveling in at the time, even though many future studies showed no such thing. It’s one of those myths like the “broken brain” myth that has little to no support, and yet persists like a bad case of poison oak.

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  • Are these people freakin’ serious? What about a voice pattern could POSSIBLY be considered a “biomarker” for anything? I suppose that they will discover that “depressed” people speak in a flatter and less variable tone. Or we could just ASK the person how s/he is feeling instead of using all this technology to analyze their voices? How does this kind of idiocy pass for science?

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  • And a lot of people given antidepressants don’t feel better or feel worse. See Kirsch’s works for the minuscule difference between AD’s and placebo when you look at all the trials together instead of cherry picking the ones they submit to the FDA. As for antipsychotics, yes, they do tend to reduce hallucinations and in some cases delusions in the short run, though certainly not for everyone. Unfortunately, long-term followup studies suggest that this is very much a temporary phenomenon, and that over the long term, people chronically using antipsychotics have MORE episodes of psychosis than those who use them intermittently or not at all. If you would read “Anatomy of an Epidemic,” you could see this research for yourself.

    I’m afraid a lot of what you’ve been led to believe about psych drugs is not actually true.

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  • I’d be interested in hearing your “evidence of brain pathology” for any “mental illness” you’d like to name. Of course, all such research is tainted from the beginning, since the definitions of “Schizophrenia” and “bipolar” and “Borderline Personality Disorder” are all extremely vague and subjective, leading inevitably to heterogeneous groupings who can’t possibly have significant shared biological traits. But even accepting such vague definitions, the research I am familiar with shows at best very small correlations with any biological “cause,” the most optimistic being around 15% correlation with a mess of a hundred or more genes, and using multiple “disorders” for the correlation. Whereas the correlation between traumatic events and any of the “mental disorders,” including “schizophrenia” and “bipolar,” is extremely high, usually over 80%.

    And if you’re talking instead about fMRIs and PET scans, this research has long been critiqued for not being able to distinguish cause from function. What I mean is, if a “depressed brain” has a certain pattern (which has NOT been consistently shown, by the way), there is no way to know if that pattern CAUSES depression or RESULTS FROM the person feeling depressed. In fact, there is evidence that thinking depressing thoughts shifts the brain’s function in the direction associated with “depressed brains,” and thinking of something else returns to a more “normal” pattern.

    The other problem is that these scans are AVERAGED. So even if there is a tendency, for instance, for people who are diagnosed with “ADHD” to have a certain pattern when confronted with difficult tasks, only SOME of those so diagnosed have this pattern – there is a wide range of individual results, some of which conform closely to the pattern and some of which vary widely. This is why PET scans can’t be used as a diagnostic tool – there is NO consistent finding across large numbers of “ADHD”-diagnosed people.

    So the science I know of says that biology probably plays some role in how we react, but that there is no consistent biological pattern with any of the “mental illnesses” as defined in the DSM. The science also says that traumatic experiences are MUCH more highly correlated with any “mental illness” than any biological findings to date.

    I’m happy to read any research you have that would speak to this question. But so far, I can’t agree that the science to date agrees with or even suggests the conclusions you propose.

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  • In other words, listening to a black young person’s experience and validating it can help them feel better? This title makes it seem like “discussing racial stress” is some kind of a special “therapeutic technique” for black youth with “mental health problems.”

    Systemic change will happen when we stop talking about common experiences and reactions to our social and economic system as if they are somehow “illnesses” that need to be “treated.” And when listening to someone is considered what kind-hearted and compassionate people do when meeting someone in distress, rather than some sort of “treatment” for “mental illness.”

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  • “Overtreated” suggests that there is a proper amount of “treatment.” It seems a devious term to be used in this context, as of course, having no objective way to “diagnose” “bipolar” or any of the other so-called “disorders,” it is impossible to even establish what is being “treated,” let alone what the “proper amount of treatment” would look like.

    Maybe the title should be, “Overheated, then overwhelmed with attempts to define and control my life.”

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  • I think you’re right on that indifference is the big problem that underlies the ability of some “mental health professionals” to continue to do harm and feel OK about it, and that the public has unfortunately largely bought into this idea to a large extent.

    I do want to take a moment to remind everyone that psychiatrists are human beings, like everyone else, and they come in all varieties. I don’t think we can say that all of them are “soulless” and “cynical.” Certainly, there is an attraction to the soulless and the cynical to a profession that handles pain by repression and blaming, and makes lots of money for its followers while creating permanent clients. However, my experience of rank-and-file psychiatrists is that most are more “hypnotized” and think they are doing good works. They have been trained, as it were, in a cynical system of thought, and behave in accordance with that system. And there are a handful who see the foolishness of their training and are trying to do something better, some ow whom post on MIA.

    But in the end, you are correct in saying that it will require organization and resistance from the potential clients/victims of such a soulless system to bring it to an end. Connectedness is the cure to soulless cynicism, in my book.

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  • It is true, we ought not to think less of people regardless of whatever struggles, physically or psychologically or whatever, they may experience.

    My point is that how a problem is framed has a lot to do with what people believe can be done to resolve it. The placebo response is a perfect example – if people are given hope that they will improve, they can often rally their internal resources and they actually DO get better without intervention. This is particularly true of so-called “mental/emotional disorders.” Telling someone they’ve “had a rough childhood but that other people have experienced the same and have overcome it, let me connect you with some of them” will give the person both validation and hope. Telling someone their “brain is genetically defective and they’ll have to take drugs for the rest of their lives to deal with the symptoms, but there is no cure” removes agency and blunts hope. Since the latter has not been shown to be true in the overwhelming majority of cases, why would we not start with a framing that provides hope and agency, rather than one that promotes hopelessness and passivity?

    There is a reason psychiatry frames things the way they do, and it has not much to do with helping people achieve better control of their lives.

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  • I would add that suggesting Open Dialog might work is no more of a fantasy than suggesting that taking antipsychotics for the rest of one’s life is a viable solution for most people. Or more of a fantasy than NOT telling clients the known potential adverse effects of the drugs being recommended because it might make them decide not to cooperate. Or the fantasy of choosing a list of undesirable behaviors that tend to occur together and calling it a “diagnosis” and then claiming that “it” is caused by a “biological brain disease.”

    The entire enterprise of psychiatry seems to be founded on fantasy. Not sure why trying Open Dialog would be any more fantastical than what is already accepted as “standard treatment.”

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  • “They were dysfunctional before I treated them.” I always find this a very lame line of “reasoning” and don’t understand why it seems to work to deflect so many people’s concerns. If I went in for a sore shin and came out of the doctor’s office with a broken leg, I don’t think they’d get away with saying, “Well, the leg was dysfunctional before I treated it.” Treatment, if we may even use such a term, is supposed to improve the condition. Even accepting that the person was “ill,” if they continue to act “ill” despite your “treatment,” how does that let you off the hook? If your “treatment” doesn’t work, why are you accepting money for “treating” them in the first place?

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  • Posting as moderator:

    Anyone who wants to post here is allowed to post, as long as they follow the Posting Guidelines. We have never moderated family members who chose to participate based on their being family members or on their not having a family member embroiled in the system. It is true that some of our community distrust family members’ intentions, based on their own experiences. But family member voices have always been welcome at MIA. I’m not sure where you are getting the idea that family members are “not allowed to post” if their loved ones are not caught up in the system. What would stop such a person from posting?

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  • Multiple studies have indicated that the process of telling someone they have a “Brain disorder,” or telling someone else that “mental illness” results from brain malfunction, increases “stigma,” in contrast to telling people that it is the result of struggling with difficult life experiences. So a large percentage of the “stigma” is the result of the very psychiatric system that later decries it.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    I want to be clear that voices of those who feel they are helped by psychiatric drugs have always been welcome here. It is admittedly sometimes a challenging environment, as they will hear stories and feelings which don’t comport with their experience, but attacking or downgrading people because they choose a pathway that includes psychiatric drugs is never accepted here. Now if someone starts arguing that people HERE need to accept their reality and validate the reality of DSM diagnoses or something of the sort, they’re going to be in for an argument. But civil exchange of views is the central theme of the comments section, and no one is allowed to be censored or attacked for having a contrary view.

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  • Akathesia is often not reported and not understood by people who work with children, even the psychiatrists. I had a young lady (14) who specifically reported being “unable to sit still” (the literal meaning of “akathesia”), and was on a special program where she could raise her hand to leave class because it was so hard for her to stay in one place. They had a goal of staying in class longer. After my CASA volunteer and I got them to reduce her Risperdal and Lithium dosages, her in-class percentages went up significantly. But the psychiatrist still denied that akathesia had been an issue. A survey of the residential staff showed that none of them had been trained on what to look for as adverse effects, nor were they told that watching for adverse effects was a part of their job. The level of denial is unbelievable.

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  • I’m saying that not all the individuals who play the role of police are acting in defense only of the rich and powerful. I suppose the same could be said of psychiatrists, though in my observation, there are a hell of a lot more police of integrity than there are psychiatrists. The school system is very similarly messed up to me. There are a goodly percentage of teachers who care, but they work in a system that disempowers the students and they can’t really fix it themselves.

    I’ll look at your links, but I was interested in YOUR answer – what do YOU think we do about bullies and aggressive people when there are no more police?

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  • I have to take issue with this to some degree. I have known many police/sheriffs who have done a fantastic job of “protecting and serving” the community they are in, including handling some situations involving “mental health clients” with particular aplomb. I’ve also seen unwarranted brutality, dismissiveness, and threatening behavior that would make anyone distrust the force. Both kinds of officers exist. And while accountability issues are critical, particularly with darker-skinned people, and systemic racism is very, very real, I am not sure we really want to live in a society where there is NO police function at all. We saw what happened in the CHOP zone when there was no law enforcement – people got shot and died. Every society has some form of law enforcement, formal or informal. There will always be people who threaten the community in some way. While the current system appears to have been coopted by the rich and powerful, and this has been true for a long, long time, I have to ask what means will we have to deal with people who want to harm and take advantage of others if the police are entirely “defunded?” And even if they are defunded, what’s to prevent psychiatry from coming in to take over their role by “diagnosing” people who don’t behave as society expects, for whatever reason?

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  • Ah, but the ones who are in denial are the ones deemed “mentally healthy!” If you’re too worried about it, you have an “anxiety disorder!” If you’re working hard to stop it, you’re “Manic!” If you give up and feel hopeless, you have “major depression!” The only acceptable response is to not be too worried about it and assume it will work itself out.

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  • The problem with this is that once you make it OK to use these in “extreme cases,” very quickly, it becomes OK to use in ANY case, because there is no objective standard to justify their use. And making people more tractable isn’t really a “medical” issue, anyway, it’s a social management issue.

    There are also lots of ways to intervene with dementia patients that don’t involve drugging them into submission, and these are rarely even considered before going to the drug solution. Yet information on these is buried deep! I just did a search on “alternative approaches for dementia” and got only drugs and “complimentary medicine” (herbs and homeopathy, etc). I had to go for “psychosocial approaches to Dementia” to get any hits worth looking at. This is because dementia has been redefined and captured by the psychiatric industry and all other approaches have been suppressed.

    My wife’s dad had Alzheimer’s and was put on Risperdal because he was grabbing the nurses arms too hard. He went from being quite interactive and gregarious within a very short time to being unable to sit up, head thrashing from side to side, trying to but unable to talk, obviously in utter misery. No one at the facility seemed to know or care that the drug had done this. Ginny got her mom to take him off the drug, and within three days, he had recovered most of his personality and communication ability. When he grabbed her arms to tightly, she said, “Dad, you’re grabbing too hard, it hurts!” And he stopped grabbing. That easy! And yet they felt it was OK to drug him into insensibility and near paralysis because he didn’t just do what they wanted without having to communicate with him respectfully.

    Yes, dementia is very difficult to deal with, and yes, antipsychotics make them easier for caretakers to manage, but the dangers of abuse of power by the facilities or other caretakers are extreme, not to mention the risk of early death that they convey. I would not allow my loved ones to be put on these drugs. They are for the convenience of the caretakers, and remove any incentive for them to actually figure out a loving way to handle the difficulties such people present.

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  • Posting as moderator:

    OK, that’s it! Everybody out of the pool! This thread has deteriorated and has become nothing but a back and forth between people completely fixed in their positions. It is time to end it. Again, I am not “banning posts on COVID” or “censoring,” I am stopping this deteriorating thread of subtle insults, straw-man arguments, defensiveness and disrespectful analogies. EVERYONE has had their say. I will not post any more comments on this theme on this thread.

    We can do a lot better than this, folks!

    Steve

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  • Richard, it is too difficult and time consuming for me to address the various assumptions and implications in your responses. You’ve made your point, people can read it, and I’ve made my point, people can read it. It is time to end this conversation, as it is not only going in circles, but going on extreme tangents at this point. We agree that COVID is real and that it needs to be taken seriously and that there are people with hidden agendas opposing taking it seriously or taking advantage of it for political gains, and that those forces need to be opposed. Let’s focus on what we agree upon and move on.

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  • Oh, believe me, you’re not the only one! I’m still waiting for that moment of crystallization when suddenly it becomes clear to enough people that something shady is going on. In the meanwhile, I keep trying to educate and support, educate and support. But it doesn’t feel very hopeful.

    Still, I never thought the Berlin Wall would come down, and it did. So the world can surprise us sometimes. I’m hoping it will be sooner rather than later! What will it take for the masses to rise up and say “NO!”

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR: So we are in agreement that black and white rules of moderation are not possible?

    I tend to agree with you that using terms such as “fascist” out of context would constitute ad hominem attacks. I will continue to try and be more sensitive to this kind of language, and will appreciate people reporting posts where I have missed such statements. Of course, it is quite legitimate to say, “My therapist was a bully, because s/he would tell me I was stupid every time I questioned her.” Or to say, “This person subscribes to fascist ideology, as indicated by his references to quotes from Mussolini and his use of nationalistic slogans and identification of external threats as excuses to curtail civil liberties,” or that sort of thing. The issue would come if the person is trying to discredit an author or another poster by the use of such terms to refer to them or their writings without any such context. My preference is for folks to simply refer to the offending comment, such as “Mr. X uses the term ‘redskin,’ which I and I think most people consider racist” rather than “Mr. X is a racist because he said the word ‘redskin.'”

    So there is always a degree of subjectivity. But I don’t think we want a community where someone can say, “Oldhead is a slimy bag of feces” without being called out on it. Nor do I think we want a site where someone can’t say, “I think vaccine policy is highly influenced by unethical government agents in cahoots with the drug industry” without being called names or shunned or having his/her opinion censored just because their position may be viewed by others or MIA staff as controversial. Which is why we have the posting guidelines. But again, they’re guidelines, not rigid laws, and the goal is to have a free-flowing conversation while avoiding as far as possible unnecessary personal hostility, bigotry, and hurt feelings. As long as we keep that goal in mind, I think we can all live with the uncertainty of it. And as you know, I am always willing to listen to and discuss if anyone feels they are being treated unfairly. I am not sure how we can do any better than this.

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  • Well, if we’re talking about whom we support politically, there are sides. I took your comments to be referring to the larger questions of knowledge/facts regarding COVID and other issues that are in conflict. I was objecting to the idea that there are “sides” when it comes to exploring the truth of a particular assertion. I don’t consider science to have “sides,” except for seeking the truth and using “science” to avoid or distort it. But using “science” to distort truth is not science at all.

    I do know the song you refer to. But as I recall, it was in reference to being on the side of those who are exercising power for their own benefits, vs. on the side of those who are attempting to come together to resist them. This seems pretty different from questions regarding what the actual threat from COVID is and how best to deal with it. As I have already stated clearly, politicians from both sides have tried to engage in “information management” or “messaging” to take advantage of this world-shaking issue and benefit themselves. I’m definitely NOT on their side. But I can’t embrace the idea that there is a “side of truth” and a “side of dishonesty” in this particular case. (Well, OK, there MAY be a side of dishonesty!) The sides I see are the side of using a disaster to manipulate people to support or oppose a political agenda, and those who are trying to figure out the best thing to do to ensure the safety of our population while remembering the limitations of our knowledge, and maximizing our ability to remain engaged and productive in our lives. That’s the only side I support fully.

    What I don’t support is the idea that there are those who believe and agree with everything you said above and those who don’t think COVID is real and don’t give a crap about anyone else but themselves (or those who are too foolish to avoid the deception of the Forces of Evil). I’ll provide a simple example: should one wear a mask while hiking in the woods, or at least when passing someone else on a hike? If I told you that the science suggests that outdoor mask-wearing outside of a close gathering of people is pretty much pointless, would you consider me part of the “other side?” Well, a recent tracking study in China tracked 7000 cases as to origin. Exactly ONE case out of 7000 was caught outdoors, and that one case involved a person talking to an infected person at close range for more than 15-20 minutes. So I don’t wear a mask outdoors, unless I am in a crowd. This is in violation of the CDC guidelines, which from a scientific point of view appear to be wrong. Does that make me one of those deceived by the forces of evil? Do I have to wear a mask while hiking to be considered on the “right side?”

    To reiterate: Politics has sides. Science does not have sides. Things are proven true, proven false, or are uncertain. Very, very few things fit into the first category. Generally, things are scientifically false or are uncertain. Uncertain situations require judgement, and judgement is based on data, not political agendas. Mixing science with politics creates bad science.

    I hope that clarifies my point. As to the Bush comment, it was just what came to mind when you said what you said. I’d certainly never compare you to Bush II, with whom I’d guess you have almost nothing in common. But I’m also not going to apologize for what thought came to mind when you said it, nor for sharing it. I hope it gives you pause to consider that you may be creating an impression that you don’t want to create.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR: I challenge you to find an objective way to decide whether someone’s comments are “shaming” or make generalizations based upon a label or are an attack on a person vs. on what that person said. Moderation is unavoidably subjective, no matter how objective I try to make it. If we are in grey areas, I tend to use consultations with others, but again, not purely objective. Sometimes I pass something through and it ends up offending others for reasons I could not have understood until explained to me, and I have to reconsider.

    Sorry, but there will always be grey areas in moderation. Nature of the beast.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR: When a certain number of “levels” are reached under a particular thread, the “reply” button disappears on new comments, and you have to go back to the last one that has a “reply” button and use it, and your post will end up at the end of the thread. It’s a feature of WordPress and not something we have control over.

    Hope that helps!

    Steve

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR: Oldhead, you cut off the part of the last sentence you quoted about insisting that others agree with their personally-derived “truths.” MIA is and should continue to be a place to explore the truth, but when the discussion itself becomes increasingly authoritarian as it progresses, there is a point at which it is no longer productive of truth, as both sides are merely stating and restating their own ‘truth’ in a louder and louder voice, and things get more personal and insulting and it gets plain ugly.

    Admittedly, it is hardly an objective standard, but in the thread I asked people to let go of, it was most definitely getting into that realm and very far afield from the original topic.

    Sorry, there are no black and white rules in moderation! But I’m not moderating for content, except to the degree that off-topic conversations on any subject, when they become unproductive and backbiting, will be discouraged.

    Your idea of a different place to have this discussion is a good one. Not sure exactly how to bring that about, though. I’ll give it some thought.

    Steve

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  • Hi, Richard,

    I appreciate your inclusion of a lot more factual material in this comment. However, I do find using language like “Which side are you on?” does contribute to divisiveness. It reminds me of GW Bush’s “You’re with us or you’re against us” rhetoric back in the Iraq Ward run-up. I do agree that these issues are serious and we need to make our decisions based on facts rather than rhetoric, and that there are political agendas behind much of the supposed “facts” that we have been provided with. But not having reliable fact sources does put us all in the position of having to educate ourselves about how to evaluate what information is true. I’m hoping MIA will run an article or blog on this point, because I think people need help sorting out what is or isn’t true, and many don’t even know they need that help. I believe that acknowledging the point that it is difficult to know whom to believe is very important if we want to help more people make better evaluations of what “information” to believe.

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  • Note how cleverly they say that “chemicals… MAY be unbalanced,” but then claim that the “medication” helps “restore the balance” of chemicals that they later admit they don’t know are actually “imbalanced” (which is why they say MAY). It is a clever workaround of “truth in advertising” laws, but I think it should never be allowed, because by claiming to restore the “balance,” they are essentially asserting a truth that is actually not known to be true.

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  • Posting as moderator: COVID is a valid point of discussion if it is relevant to the article at hand. In this case, there is a claim that COVID is somehow moderated by psychostimulants, so that would be the topic of the conversation. Clearly, comments relating to COVID would be germane to the discussion. However, if the thread gets hijacked into talking about related issues that go too far afield from the article’s topic, I might end up asking folks to end the discussion, particularly if the discussion is becoming repetitive and escalating into personal attacks, as happened in the thread I believe you are referring to.

    I have never said that talking about COVID is off limits, just that we need to stay on the topic at hand and be respectful to each other in the discussion. The difficulty seems to come in when instead of sharing their perspective, folks begin to assert “truths” that are not objectively established and telling others who disagree with them that they are fools or dupes for believing it. I think we can all agree there has been a lot of disinformation about COVID coming from various people with political or personal agendas. I would just call for restraint in staying on the topic of the article and allowing for the possibility that our viewpoint may not be “right” in an absolute sense of the word.

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  • I think the first thing to remember is that things like “anhedonia” and “fatigue” happen for a hundred different reasons. Labeling these phenomena as “illness” obviates the need to look further for the actual causes and potential cures for any REAL illnesses that might exist (such as anemia, low thyroid, heavy metal poisoning, etc.), and ALSO prevents the consideration that such phenomena may in fact be NORMAL reactions to adverse circumstances. Depression, anxiety, anger, hopelessness, excitement, all are part of the human experience, and to relegate them to “malfunctions” when they are in fact essential survival factors in life is in itself depressing and discouraging to people trying to make sense of their experience.

    So no, people aren’t lying about what happened to them – no one denies that suffering occurs. The problem is the simplistic reduction of suffering to a “malfunction” in a person, as if suffering were not a normal part of life, as if everyone should always be “happy” regardless of their circumstances (but not TOO happy – that might be MANIC!)

    It is not a choice between denying suffering exists and calling it an illness. We can all acknowledge suffering as an unavoidable and necessary part of life, as well as recognizing that people need support when they ARE suffering. We can also acknowledge that there MAY be physiological causes for SOME psychological suffering, but that absent an actual understanding of the cause or evidence of specific physiological pathology, we should assume that psychological suffering is the simple result of living in a confusing and at times challenging world, and that compassion, not medicine, is the best place to go to help.

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  • I am very sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience! Apparently, you are not alone. However, I would not necessarily agree that you have nothing to lose by trying “ECT.” There are many people who have described horrific “side effects” of ECT, especially loss of memories, including the good as well as the bad. I strongly suggest you read up carefully and read some stories from people who have tried it out. I’ve never actually met someone where it “worked” for more than a very short period of time, and I’ve met a good number where it did essentially nothing or where they deeply regretted the damage it did to their brains. I don’t want you to feel like a fool yet again!

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  • Richard and Nijinsky,

    I really see two very separate issues being argued here. One is that people can promote misleading information on the internet. It appears that both of you agree that is true and there is no real argument about it. The COVID discussion seemed more about what to DO if such information is put out by people who believe it is true. It seems the real point of disagreement is whether or not it is helpful to use pejorative language like “nonsense” and “dangerous” and “conspiracy theory.”

    Clearly, people can disagree about the wisdom of using particular language. I guess the question I would ask is how it helps the discussion to use this kind of language? Does it discourage people from considering such information? Does it drive the proponents deeper into defending their positions? Does it create a meaningful discussion or does it undermine opportunities to truly examine the data that is presented?

    I tend to agree with Nijinsky on this point. There really ARE conspiracies operating, and the term “conspiracy theory” has been used broadly to discredit any questioning of the status quo, no matter how rational or well supported. Antipsychiatry activists have been accused of being “conspiracy theorists” or “anti-science,” and it is a very effective way of silencing dissent. If we don’t want that kind of language used against us, I think we need to be more creative in our language rather than relying on general put-downs and characterizations that don’t involve any kind of analysis. I liked learning, for instance, the very low number of deaths claimed by the website in question. This was MUCH more influential in my assessment of this person’s claims than saying he is “promoting conspiracy theories” or “spouting nonsense.” To me, the more we stick to citing and responding to actual facts or claims, the more effective we can be in undermining inaccurate sources and theories. Calling names makes the name-caller less credible in my book, plus it legitimizes the kind of fact-free attacks that are often leveled at those who oppose psychiatry’s hegemony.

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  • One of the worst things about the DSM is that it immediately disempowers the labeled person. Instead of seeing your emotions, pains, fears, joys, etc. as a result of your ACTIONS, they take away your agency and tell you that you feel this way because you are broken in some way. And they give you no hope of anything YOU can do about it, except to try their drugs and hope you’re one of the lucky ones that they work for.

    Thanks for sharing your story!

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  • I don’t disagree with your assessment that psychologists and psychiatrists are involved with the COVID response, and not in a particularly helpful way, and discussion of this connection or similar material relating to our mission here is more than welcome. The issue becomes unclear when we are talking about whether or not COVID is a serious risk, whether or not masks help prevent infections, whether or not there is some international conspiracy to use COVID to accomplish some other political goals and so on. These are certainly legitimate areas of concern and valid for conversation, but threads have been completely hijacked and gone way off topic when I have allowed this kind of discussion to expand beyond the boundaries of the effects on behavior and emotions and the way that the psychological/psychiatric industries have tried to capitalize on COVID to convince us that a “wave of mental illness” is occurring instead of recognizing that being afraid of a pandemic virus is a normal thing, or comments of that nature. There is a moment when it stops being about the psych industries and it starts being about political issues that transcend psychiatry/psychology by a very large distance. For instance, arguing about whether or not COVID cases are overcounted or undercounted or whether or not “shutdowns” were needed or whether the Democrats are fear mongering to help their election chances or Republicans downplaying it to appeal to their base and so on have nothing to do with the psych industries. Those kind of posts are not going to be allowed without a direct connection to the material in the blog/article in question.

    Hope that clarifies things.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I have allowed a lot of off-topic remarks regarding COVID on threads that have nothing to do with COVID. I think it is time to stop this. We are not a site about COVID, and it is a very controversial subject that goes very far afield from rethinking or ending the practice of psychiatry. I am not going to allow any more COVID posts that are not directly relevant to the article at hand. There are plenty of other forums where such discussions are more appropriate to conduct.

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  • POSTING AS MODERATOR:

    I have allowed a lot of off-topic remarks regarding COVID on threads that have nothing to do with COVID. I think it is time to stop this. We are not a site about COVID, and it is a very controversial subject that goes very far afield from rethinking or ending the practice of psychiatry. I am not going to allow any more COVID posts that are not directly relevant to the article at hand. There are plenty of other forums where such discussions are more appropriate to conduct.

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  • “Stopping suffering” or “controlling symptoms” are extremely nihilistic concepts that deny the reality of being human. Instead of “stopping suffering,” any real help has to focus on making SENSE of suffering and helping people assume more control of their lives, including dealing with the ongoing effects of past and current abuse. If we focus more on stopping ABUSE (including the abuse of power) than stopping the feelings of those who have been abused, we’d be getting more onto the right track.

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  • There is not only “not a lot of evidence,” there is NONE. The only “help” that neuroleptics provide in those with dementia is for the staff who have to deal with it. It makes the residents more “manageable”, that’s all. And of course, it kills them off early, too, per the black box warning. But that doesn’t seem to bother most of the people involved in the adult care industry.

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