I well remember, when we in med school together in Cork back in the day, how committed you were to psychiatry from very early on in med school.
In a country where there have been only a handful of psychiatrists – if that – that I felt were truly trustworthy and worthy of respect, you helped me keep (some) faith in that profession.
While the contents might not be new to some people, links between trauma and the psychiatric diagnoses are regularly minimised and ignored by the prevailing medical approach.
Therefore research such as this, published in a medically respected medical journal, is very important.
Good to see this report.
I would further add that, while Big Pharma has contributed to the current global mental health chaos, the vested interests of mainstream psychiatry in maintaining the current status quo are frequently underestimated.
I won’t be holding my breath for mainstream psychiatry to change. Contrary to popular perception, mainstream psychiatry is far from objective in all this.
It is not enough to challenge the financial input of big pharma. Mainstream psychiatry must be challenged, head-on, officially, legally, independently.
Otherwise, mainstream psychiatry will keep doing what it has been doing (successfully) for over 70 years, largely ignoring or seeking to discredit detractors, playing the long game, which has worked a treat for psychiatry, because there has not yet been a concerted, sufficiently well formulated, sustained, legal, government-involved, independent assessment of psychiatry – its methods, ideology, deceptions, lies, exaggerations, gross misinformations, and ignorance – ignorance, that is, in relation to what the core issues in mental health actually are, not least – trauma and its consequences.
Hi Matt,
I agree. The public have such a misguided view of the medical position in mental health, mistakingly assuming that, because they are doctors, they are THE primary source of knowledge, understanding and “science”.
What a catastrophic error of judgement that has been, and what a price has been paid, by so many.
The core issue is not, as Dr. Robin Murray stated, allegiance to “the Kraepelinian model”.
Far more core issues include (a) the massive desire of the medical profession for “schizophrenia” to be seen as – and found to be – primarily biological;
(b) an alarming degree within medical researchers of bias against and ignorance of the complexities of human emotionality and psychology that play such a major part in creating and maintaining the experiences and behaviours that become collectively referred to as “schizophrenia”.
With this level of bias and ignorance, these people – i.e. “typical”medical researchers – who have little or no training in understanding human beings – are not fit to be the lead directors of the profoundly important work of providing meaningful understandings of these experiences and their causes, understandings that are so urgently needed by so many, and by society as a whole.
Governments urgently need to re-examine the un-evidence based assumption that, in relation to emotional and mental health, doctors know best. Most doctors are, in reality, quite clueless of the emotional and psychological subtleties of the experiences and behaviours that become collectively called “schizophrenia”. Yet governments given them power and dominance in global mental health.
Little wonder that global mental health is in such a state of chaos – the blind, biased and largely ignorant leading the distressed.
Great article Phil. I agree, Frank. Psychiaty’s no 1 priority is not the welfare of the public – it is their own position and status. They mask this in an apparent primary concern for the public. Ultimately, I do not see psychiatry “volunteering” to be independently examined. In my country at least, turkeys dont generally vote for Christmas.
Those ultimately charged with the welfare of the people – governments – need to wake up or be woken up to the truth, and impose a thorough examination of mental health, of psychiatry, their substances, and perhaps most important, their hollow and deceitful beliefs and belief system, from which all else emerges.
I enjoyed your article, thank you. It’s the old story – “We know what’s good for you”. A subtle but profoundly powerful form of hegemony. One of the greatest global scandals of our time.
Hi “madmother”,
Thank you for your comment, I am very glad that “Selfhood” was useful for you.
During the past 12 months I have become very interested in creating mental health courses.
I published courses on “Depression, its true nature” within the last two months.
If you would like information about these or future courses (of which there will be many), feel free to email me at [email protected]
Thanks again,
Best wishes,
Terry.
Thank you Erin.
I have been a member of the medical profession of over 30 years. I know well how the profession operates. Like many organisations and professions, within the medical profession precedent is extremely important. There is no precedent in medicine for real identified conditions with definite identified biological characteristic abnormalities to be treated primarily by psychiatrists. It just doesn’t happen.
Thanks for this Peter, I have been aware of this truth for years. Good to see further evidence of links between adverse life events and bipolar.
Best wishes,
Terry.
Hi Matt,
Thank you for your comment.
“House of cards” is totally accurate.
I liked your article, thanks for including the link, I will return to it.
As you say in your article, it is one of the greatest scams of our time.
My hunch is that the current situation is likely to continue until the sleeping giant that is public opinion wakes out of its slumber.
And the more we chip away at the lies and deceptions by methodically dismantling the houses of cards,
the more that sleeping giant gets restless and may soon wake up.
Hi Jean, thank you for your comment.
At its most fundamental level, this is turf wars – maintaining power over and control of the global mental health world, a highly lucrative market. Convincing the public that anxiety etc are “diseases” wins the war without even firing a shot. Clever strategy. Having convinced the public that these are indeed “diseases”, who else but doctors could possibly be the experts, since doctors are known to be the experts in diseases. Because doctors are perhaps THE most trusted profession, people trust what doctors say. I guess also it can be comforting to “hand over” one’s troubles to a doctor to “fix”. As you say, the pain and distress is very real, it is the medical interpretation that is distorted, deluded, and devoid of science.
Thank you very much for your comment.
I have no problem re changing the term “mental health” if there is a better, more accurate term. I think the term is reasonable if one is referring to the original meaning of the term, which I am – “of the mind” or “pertaining to the mind”. The core term contains no value judgement or pejorative innuendo.
The various ways in which the term “mental” has been used – mostly derogatory – bypass the fundamental meaning of the term. But I take your point.
Thank you very much for your detailed post. I completely agree with you regarding the delusional nature of psychiatric diagnoses. The experiences and behaviour, including often excruciating pain and distress, are very real – but the medical interpretation is generally distorted and delusional.
I agree. Psychiatry has long since moved away from psyche or soul, in its attempt to be seen as real doctors treating real illnesses with real treatments. They are none of these, of course, but they have managed to persuade the public, governments, other mental health practitioners, health insurance companies etc that they are. The delusion rolls on.
Hi Fiachra,
I’m glad you came through all that.
I’m not suggesting that medication has no role or never helps (that’s a separate issue), but to paraphrase Abraham Maslow, having a mental health service that predominantly sees most things as a nail needing their (often only) hammer might not be the best we can do.
Thank you for your comment Fiachra.
Yes, when one goes into the detail of what it is that people are suffering, and then compare that to what the prevailing mental health system claims to be treating, there is a major mismatch. In my opinion, based on over 30 years within the medical profession, observing closely, it seems to me that maintenance of the belief system is often the primary and dominant desire of those working within the system. Many who do, I believe, think they are providing the best care that can be provided. But there are too many closed and immovable minds.
Good point.
Which proves the point that when actual biological illness is established – a very rare situation these days – care of that person passes quickly on to the appropriate medical specialty – which is NEVER psychiatry.
Thanks for your comment.
I completely agree. There is a catastrophic mismatch between what doctors actually know regarding emotional and psychological pain and distress, and what the public assume they know. This mismatch facilitates the current alarming situation whereby a group assumed by society to have the necessary expertise – GPs and psychiatrists – but who do not possess anything like the necessary expertise are at the pinnacle of global mental health care.
Thank you for your comment.
Unlike psychiatric diagnoses, thyroid dysfunction is never diagnosed without laboratory investigations. Any doctor who would diagnose and treat a thyroid disorder (they never do) without laboratory investigations that confirm the diagnosis would be very likely find themselves in serious trouble with their professional regulatory body – eg the medical council – and possibly legally also. Yet no such requirements exist for so called psychiatrist disorders.
Hi Mary, Jim, thank you so much for taking the time to write and publish this. My friendship with you both and with Mindfreedom Ireland has been one of the nicest things to happen for me since I disengaged from mainstream medicine circa 2000.
It is interesting that you used the worth “truth” in your title. There are few if any values more worth aspiring to than truth, in my opinion. A commitment to truth often challenges us with stark questions regarding who we are and what we are doing. Which may help to explain why, in my opinion, so many mental health doctors seem to prioritize self-interest and maintenance of their (and psychiatry’s) societal position and status above truth. Of course they don’t SAY that, but reading between the lines their priorities become very obvious.
It was largely because of my emerging commitment to truth in the 1990s that I would not continue to work within the confines of the medical/psychiatric system. If truth really was a core principle of mental health care globally, we would have a very different mental health care system to the one that pertains (dominates) currently.
It is said that the truth sets one free, and that certainly has been my experience. I regularly see many of my erstwhile medical colleagues frantically attempting to justify the unjustifiable, regularly deluding and misinforming the public, their eye and body movements often portraying the lack of truth in their assertions. Perhaps many have also managed to delude themselves, otherwise I imagine it might be quite difficult for many of them to sleep peacefully at night.
The spiritual, psychological and emotional benefits I have experienced secondary to this commitment to truth have totally eclipsed the “price” I have paid for speaking truth to power (and the public) for the past 15 years. Long may this continue, as there is no going back now.
Hi Steve,
Yes, it definitely still happens.
I agree with your “4 year old” comment. Perhaps (a) 4 year olds have open minds, and (b) no massive investment in the medical/biological model to cloud their objectivity.
Terry
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Actually, many psychiatrists and GPs (family physicians) have for decades been asserting that brain chemical imbalances eg serotonin occur in and probably cause depression. I include many specific examples in my new book. I know – from many people who have told me of their experiences in consultations – that this remains common practice in the privacy of the consulting room. The knock-on effect of these repeated medical and pharmaceutical assertions is that this falsehood has taken quite a hold out there in the public domain. Only 9 days ago, another example of unintentional public misinformation on chemical imbalances in depression surfaced in the Chicago Tribune. The comments were made by a lead person involved in a suicide prevention project. http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/news/ct-lns-suicide-prevention-walk-st-0824-20150823-story.html
Great article. Perhaps also adverse events happening in adolescence and adulthood. Events, and how they impact and are experienced by the individual. If this was the basis of emotional and mental health care, I believe we would have a far more effective system of response. Dismantling current dominant misguided approaches would need to occur also.
Great posting. Psychiatrists have promoted the chemical imbalance falsehood for 5 decades, as have many drug companies, family physicians/GPs, some psychologists, some therapists, some aspects of the nutrition industry, and many public figures. I address this and many related issues in detail in my latest book, Foreword by Robert Whitaker, to be published 02 September 2015, “Depression Delusion Volume One: The Myth of the Brain Chemical Imbalance”. “Depression Delusion” refers to the bizarre fact that the brain chemical imbalance falsehood meets all of psychiatry’s DSM5 criteria for a delusion. Feel free to contact me at [email protected] for further information.
Well spoken Jim. It is very regrettable that the authorities and those with power in mental health in mental health in Ireland did not fulfil the promise of the early and mid 2000’s. Im not sure they ever will, because I sincerely believe that those running the services, including the lead medical service providers, do not accurately understand their brief. The voice of the people at the receiving end of mental health services simply MUST be heard. The lyrics of Labe Siffree’s song “Something Inside So Strong’ come to mind in this regard. Keep up your excellent work Jim, Mary and all at Cork Mindfreedom. Best wishes, Terry
Hi Nancy, thank you for sharing your horror story. I have no doubt that both the adverse effects and the withdrawal effects of virtually all psychiatric drugs is grossly underestimated by the medical profession. In my experience, working with people in my recovery-oriented mental health service, when doctors do decide to reduce psychiatric meds, they often reduce too quickly, because they underestimate (or have a blind spot?) regarding the need for withdrawal of these drugs very slowing. The blind spot is, in my opinion, due to the reality that, if a drug is acknowledged to cause withdrawal problems, then that strongly suggests that that substance has in fact caused a physical dependancy, and doctors generally are not terribly enthusiastic about acknowledging that their substances cause physical dependance. I hope your story and your experience helps a lot of people. I hope that the doctors who read this take off the blinkers created by their training and their familiarity with the values and priorities of their chosen profession, so that they can take the contents of Nancy’s blog fully on board.
Great interview Pat, thank you.
I well remember, when we in med school together in Cork back in the day, how committed you were to psychiatry from very early on in med school.
In a country where there have been only a handful of psychiatrists – if that – that I felt were truly trustworthy and worthy of respect, you helped me keep (some) faith in that profession.
Report comment
Thank you for writing about this research.
While the contents might not be new to some people, links between trauma and the psychiatric diagnoses are regularly minimised and ignored by the prevailing medical approach.
Therefore research such as this, published in a medically respected medical journal, is very important.
Report comment
Good to see this report.
I would further add that, while Big Pharma has contributed to the current global mental health chaos, the vested interests of mainstream psychiatry in maintaining the current status quo are frequently underestimated.
I won’t be holding my breath for mainstream psychiatry to change. Contrary to popular perception, mainstream psychiatry is far from objective in all this.
It is not enough to challenge the financial input of big pharma. Mainstream psychiatry must be challenged, head-on, officially, legally, independently.
Otherwise, mainstream psychiatry will keep doing what it has been doing (successfully) for over 70 years, largely ignoring or seeking to discredit detractors, playing the long game, which has worked a treat for psychiatry, because there has not yet been a concerted, sufficiently well formulated, sustained, legal, government-involved, independent assessment of psychiatry – its methods, ideology, deceptions, lies, exaggerations, gross misinformations, and ignorance – ignorance, that is, in relation to what the core issues in mental health actually are, not least – trauma and its consequences.
Report comment
I totally agree Matt, the internet is quite the leveller.
Report comment
Hi Matt,
I agree. The public have such a misguided view of the medical position in mental health, mistakingly assuming that, because they are doctors, they are THE primary source of knowledge, understanding and “science”.
What a catastrophic error of judgement that has been, and what a price has been paid, by so many.
Report comment
The core issue is not, as Dr. Robin Murray stated, allegiance to “the Kraepelinian model”.
Far more core issues include (a) the massive desire of the medical profession for “schizophrenia” to be seen as – and found to be – primarily biological;
(b) an alarming degree within medical researchers of bias against and ignorance of the complexities of human emotionality and psychology that play such a major part in creating and maintaining the experiences and behaviours that become collectively referred to as “schizophrenia”.
With this level of bias and ignorance, these people – i.e. “typical”medical researchers – who have little or no training in understanding human beings – are not fit to be the lead directors of the profoundly important work of providing meaningful understandings of these experiences and their causes, understandings that are so urgently needed by so many, and by society as a whole.
Governments urgently need to re-examine the un-evidence based assumption that, in relation to emotional and mental health, doctors know best. Most doctors are, in reality, quite clueless of the emotional and psychological subtleties of the experiences and behaviours that become collectively called “schizophrenia”. Yet governments given them power and dominance in global mental health.
Little wonder that global mental health is in such a state of chaos – the blind, biased and largely ignorant leading the distressed.
Report comment
Great article Phil. I agree, Frank. Psychiaty’s no 1 priority is not the welfare of the public – it is their own position and status. They mask this in an apparent primary concern for the public. Ultimately, I do not see psychiatry “volunteering” to be independently examined. In my country at least, turkeys dont generally vote for Christmas.
Those ultimately charged with the welfare of the people – governments – need to wake up or be woken up to the truth, and impose a thorough examination of mental health, of psychiatry, their substances, and perhaps most important, their hollow and deceitful beliefs and belief system, from which all else emerges.
Report comment
I enjoyed your article, thank you. It’s the old story – “We know what’s good for you”. A subtle but profoundly powerful form of hegemony. One of the greatest global scandals of our time.
Report comment
Hi “madmother”,
Thank you for your comment, I am very glad that “Selfhood” was useful for you.
During the past 12 months I have become very interested in creating mental health courses.
I published courses on “Depression, its true nature” within the last two months.
If you would like information about these or future courses (of which there will be many), feel free to email me at [email protected]
Thanks again,
Best wishes,
Terry.
Report comment
Thank you Erin.
I have been a member of the medical profession of over 30 years. I know well how the profession operates. Like many organisations and professions, within the medical profession precedent is extremely important. There is no precedent in medicine for real identified conditions with definite identified biological characteristic abnormalities to be treated primarily by psychiatrists. It just doesn’t happen.
Report comment
Thanks for this Peter, I have been aware of this truth for years. Good to see further evidence of links between adverse life events and bipolar.
Best wishes,
Terry.
Report comment
Hi Matt,
Thank you for your comment.
“House of cards” is totally accurate.
I liked your article, thanks for including the link, I will return to it.
As you say in your article, it is one of the greatest scams of our time.
My hunch is that the current situation is likely to continue until the sleeping giant that is public opinion wakes out of its slumber.
And the more we chip away at the lies and deceptions by methodically dismantling the houses of cards,
the more that sleeping giant gets restless and may soon wake up.
Report comment
Hi Jean, thank you for your comment.
At its most fundamental level, this is turf wars – maintaining power over and control of the global mental health world, a highly lucrative market. Convincing the public that anxiety etc are “diseases” wins the war without even firing a shot. Clever strategy. Having convinced the public that these are indeed “diseases”, who else but doctors could possibly be the experts, since doctors are known to be the experts in diseases. Because doctors are perhaps THE most trusted profession, people trust what doctors say. I guess also it can be comforting to “hand over” one’s troubles to a doctor to “fix”. As you say, the pain and distress is very real, it is the medical interpretation that is distorted, deluded, and devoid of science.
Report comment
I have no allegiance to any brotherhood, the medical brotherhood included.
Report comment
Thank you very much for your comment.
I have no problem re changing the term “mental health” if there is a better, more accurate term. I think the term is reasonable if one is referring to the original meaning of the term, which I am – “of the mind” or “pertaining to the mind”. The core term contains no value judgement or pejorative innuendo.
The various ways in which the term “mental” has been used – mostly derogatory – bypass the fundamental meaning of the term. But I take your point.
Report comment
Thank you very much for your detailed post. I completely agree with you regarding the delusional nature of psychiatric diagnoses. The experiences and behaviour, including often excruciating pain and distress, are very real – but the medical interpretation is generally distorted and delusional.
Report comment
I agree. Psychiatry has long since moved away from psyche or soul, in its attempt to be seen as real doctors treating real illnesses with real treatments. They are none of these, of course, but they have managed to persuade the public, governments, other mental health practitioners, health insurance companies etc that they are. The delusion rolls on.
Report comment
Hi Fiachra,
I’m glad you came through all that.
I’m not suggesting that medication has no role or never helps (that’s a separate issue), but to paraphrase Abraham Maslow, having a mental health service that predominantly sees most things as a nail needing their (often only) hammer might not be the best we can do.
Report comment
Thanks Philip, nice to hear from you.
Report comment
Thank you for your comment Fiachra.
Yes, when one goes into the detail of what it is that people are suffering, and then compare that to what the prevailing mental health system claims to be treating, there is a major mismatch. In my opinion, based on over 30 years within the medical profession, observing closely, it seems to me that maintenance of the belief system is often the primary and dominant desire of those working within the system. Many who do, I believe, think they are providing the best care that can be provided. But there are too many closed and immovable minds.
Report comment
Good point.
Which proves the point that when actual biological illness is established – a very rare situation these days – care of that person passes quickly on to the appropriate medical specialty – which is NEVER psychiatry.
Report comment
Thanks for your comment.
I completely agree. There is a catastrophic mismatch between what doctors actually know regarding emotional and psychological pain and distress, and what the public assume they know. This mismatch facilitates the current alarming situation whereby a group assumed by society to have the necessary expertise – GPs and psychiatrists – but who do not possess anything like the necessary expertise are at the pinnacle of global mental health care.
Report comment
Thank you for your comment.
Unlike psychiatric diagnoses, thyroid dysfunction is never diagnosed without laboratory investigations. Any doctor who would diagnose and treat a thyroid disorder (they never do) without laboratory investigations that confirm the diagnosis would be very likely find themselves in serious trouble with their professional regulatory body – eg the medical council – and possibly legally also. Yet no such requirements exist for so called psychiatrist disorders.
Report comment
Hi Mary, Jim, thank you so much for taking the time to write and publish this. My friendship with you both and with Mindfreedom Ireland has been one of the nicest things to happen for me since I disengaged from mainstream medicine circa 2000.
It is interesting that you used the worth “truth” in your title. There are few if any values more worth aspiring to than truth, in my opinion. A commitment to truth often challenges us with stark questions regarding who we are and what we are doing. Which may help to explain why, in my opinion, so many mental health doctors seem to prioritize self-interest and maintenance of their (and psychiatry’s) societal position and status above truth. Of course they don’t SAY that, but reading between the lines their priorities become very obvious.
It was largely because of my emerging commitment to truth in the 1990s that I would not continue to work within the confines of the medical/psychiatric system. If truth really was a core principle of mental health care globally, we would have a very different mental health care system to the one that pertains (dominates) currently.
It is said that the truth sets one free, and that certainly has been my experience. I regularly see many of my erstwhile medical colleagues frantically attempting to justify the unjustifiable, regularly deluding and misinforming the public, their eye and body movements often portraying the lack of truth in their assertions. Perhaps many have also managed to delude themselves, otherwise I imagine it might be quite difficult for many of them to sleep peacefully at night.
The spiritual, psychological and emotional benefits I have experienced secondary to this commitment to truth have totally eclipsed the “price” I have paid for speaking truth to power (and the public) for the past 15 years. Long may this continue, as there is no going back now.
Report comment
Hi Steve,
Yes, it definitely still happens.
I agree with your “4 year old” comment. Perhaps (a) 4 year olds have open minds, and (b) no massive investment in the medical/biological model to cloud their objectivity.
Terry
Report comment
Hi Someone Else, I’m very glad that the deconstruction of this falsehood brings you some comfort. Terry
Report comment
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Actually, many psychiatrists and GPs (family physicians) have for decades been asserting that brain chemical imbalances eg serotonin occur in and probably cause depression. I include many specific examples in my new book. I know – from many people who have told me of their experiences in consultations – that this remains common practice in the privacy of the consulting room. The knock-on effect of these repeated medical and pharmaceutical assertions is that this falsehood has taken quite a hold out there in the public domain. Only 9 days ago, another example of unintentional public misinformation on chemical imbalances in depression surfaced in the Chicago Tribune. The comments were made by a lead person involved in a suicide prevention project. http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/news/ct-lns-suicide-prevention-walk-st-0824-20150823-story.html
Report comment
Yes, and of course traumas at such an early age often go unnoticed and unremembered
Report comment
Great article. Perhaps also adverse events happening in adolescence and adulthood. Events, and how they impact and are experienced by the individual. If this was the basis of emotional and mental health care, I believe we would have a far more effective system of response. Dismantling current dominant misguided approaches would need to occur also.
Report comment
Great posting. Psychiatrists have promoted the chemical imbalance falsehood for 5 decades, as have many drug companies, family physicians/GPs, some psychologists, some therapists, some aspects of the nutrition industry, and many public figures. I address this and many related issues in detail in my latest book, Foreword by Robert Whitaker, to be published 02 September 2015, “Depression Delusion Volume One: The Myth of the Brain Chemical Imbalance”. “Depression Delusion” refers to the bizarre fact that the brain chemical imbalance falsehood meets all of psychiatry’s DSM5 criteria for a delusion. Feel free to contact me at [email protected] for further information.
Report comment
Well spoken Jim. It is very regrettable that the authorities and those with power in mental health in mental health in Ireland did not fulfil the promise of the early and mid 2000’s. Im not sure they ever will, because I sincerely believe that those running the services, including the lead medical service providers, do not accurately understand their brief. The voice of the people at the receiving end of mental health services simply MUST be heard. The lyrics of Labe Siffree’s song “Something Inside So Strong’ come to mind in this regard. Keep up your excellent work Jim, Mary and all at Cork Mindfreedom. Best wishes, Terry
Report comment
Hi Nancy, thank you for sharing your horror story. I have no doubt that both the adverse effects and the withdrawal effects of virtually all psychiatric drugs is grossly underestimated by the medical profession. In my experience, working with people in my recovery-oriented mental health service, when doctors do decide to reduce psychiatric meds, they often reduce too quickly, because they underestimate (or have a blind spot?) regarding the need for withdrawal of these drugs very slowing. The blind spot is, in my opinion, due to the reality that, if a drug is acknowledged to cause withdrawal problems, then that strongly suggests that that substance has in fact caused a physical dependancy, and doctors generally are not terribly enthusiastic about acknowledging that their substances cause physical dependance. I hope your story and your experience helps a lot of people. I hope that the doctors who read this take off the blinkers created by their training and their familiarity with the values and priorities of their chosen profession, so that they can take the contents of Nancy’s blog fully on board.
Report comment