Sam,
As always, I appreciate your support. I also hope that some psychiatrists will read some of my posts and, hopefully, look at the issues with an open mind. I think that there must be some who see through the hoax.
Thanks for coming in. You’re right. They never seem to understand the fact that their secrets always come out in the long run. Witness the firestorm over the MISSD akathisia posters this week on the London Underground, and psychiatry’s response. (https://twitter.com/ProfTonyDavid/status/1512467035837640708)
Yes. It is, in my experience, rare to find someone who has received genuine help from modern psychiatry. The first requirement of “psychiatric treatment” is that one must accept that he/she has an illness. It’s all downhill from there.
You’re welcome. If you don’t believe that Things Go Better with Coca Cola, then don’t believe psychiatry’s advertising either. As you point out, it’s not reliable.
You are absolutely correct. A good number of anti-psychiatry writers have promoted the concept of tardive dysphoria – sadness that stems from long-term use of anti-depressants. Psychiatry’s response to this condition has generally been to switch to a different anti-depressant, but generally ignoring the true cause of the sadness. The broad outlines of this perspective are widely accepted, though the details and ramifications are widely ignored.
I should have made a mention of this issue in the post.
The sad reality here is that we’re winning all the battles hands down, but the psychiatrists are winning the credibility contest. Maybe we could get a leading PR group to work for us pro bono!
Thanks for this. Psychiatry is an arm of law enforcement, except that they don’t have to read you your rights, and the ordinary standards of evidence are routinely waived.
Thanks for this. I think your comment embodies a huge part of the answer – mutual respect, dignity, and understanding. Psychiatrists should understand this, but have become so embroiled in the quest for the Holy Grail – proof of neuropathological causes for their “illnesses” – that they have thrown out the baby with the bath water.
I agree. But I think the standard should be at least 99% accuracy. In other words, false positives and false negatives should be exceedingly rare, especially if they want to use their findings for “diagnostic” and “treatment alternatives” purposes.
Thanks for this. They would have the tenacity to build pyramids, but most of them would insist that pyramids could be built from straw, despite vast evidence to the contrary.
Great article. And with regards to your final question, my answer is a definite yes. It’s reached a point where those of us who describe ourselves as anti-psychiatry are widely regarded as conspiracy theorists, and enemies of progress.
Thanks for this comment. I did read about the illustrious Dr. Lieberman’s fall from grace. What struck me most forcibly was that in his apology, he did seem to be acknowledging vestiges of racism within himself.
Thanks for these very helpful insights. I particularly appreciate: “This naturally leads the clinician to explore those causes and regard them as the real problem, with anxiety essentially a side effect.”
Dr. Pierre has informed me that I have listed his job title incorrectly. I lifted his title from his biography on the UCLA website:
“Joe Pierre, MD is the Chief of Mental Health Community Care Systems at the VA West Los Angeles Healthcare Center and a Health Sciences Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.”
In the interests of readability, I abbreviated this to “Chief Psychiatrist, VA West Los Angeles Healthcare Center, and Clinical Professor, UCLA.”
Thanks for the historical perspective. The section on dropping the word “reaction” was particularly interesting. Spitzer just didn’t seem to get it.
But the move was definitely noticed in other circles. Here’s a quote from Ullmann and Krasner’s classic textbook: A Psychological Approach to Abnormal Behavior: Second Edition, 1975:
“There are some features of DSM-II that seem to point in a more conservative direction. A major one is the change from a concept of a reaction (behavior) that is psychotic or neurotic to calling the behavior psychosis or neurosis with the implication of a disease entity.” (p 27)
Yes, it is difficult to imagine that they don’t see through the deceptions. They can’t be that dense. With regards to traditional (i.e. non-psychiatric) medicine, they are in a difficult position. If they speak out against psychiatry, they will risk censure. If they go along with psychiatry, they are safe from censure. Unfortunately their customers are not safe, which is one reason that we need the anti-psychiatry movement.
Good point. Regular hospitals have been teaching patient outcomes and satisfaction for years. It shouldn’t be too much of a reach to expect the same from mental “hospitals”.
Thanks for coming in. It’s a thorny subject. I vacillated, literally for hours, as to the best way to word this. Your formulation is more accurate, of course, but it’s also a bit of a mouthful.
At the present time it’s all a bit premature, because psychiatry has no intention of voluntarily limiting its scope in the manner I described.
They are onto a “good thing” and will only cede turf when forced to do so – either by attrition in their own ranks or rejection from their “patients”.
I believe you are correct. If Dr. Aftab were to be forthright, he would be ostracized by his peers. But other psychiatrists (admittedly very few) have taken this step and survived.
I think Dr. Aftab may have the notion that he can be the one who brings the anti-psychiatry people back into the psychiatric fold. Though, of course, I can’t be sure of this because he has never made his position on this matter clear.
But I don’t believe that a psychiatric service can ever be truly client-centered. Too much of their energy has to be dissipated to supporting the spurious and destructive premise that every significant problem of thinking, feeling, or behaving is an illness best treated with psychotropic pills.
Although I was aware of the exploitation of children for slavery and sexual trafficking, I was surprised at the extent of this problem as documented in your links.
As my health continues to deteriorate, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to do the research and write up the results, but I will try to devote more time and space to these issues.
My essential point in all of this is that psychiatry’s “functional” diagnoses are not illnesses in any ordinary sense of the term because they entail no reliably identifiable causal pathologies, which in my experience is the ordinary everyday use of the term “illness”.
So when we encounter a problem in thinking, feeling, or executive functioning, that has clearly been caused by brain injury, it is important to acknowledge this. During my career (I’m now retired), I worked in a number of nursing homes. Most of the people there were elderly, but there were also young people who had incurred brain damage, either from trauma or from illnesses (infections, etc.), and whose mental processes (thinking, feeling, and behaving) were markedly impaired. It seemed obvious to me that the brain damage was the cause of the impairment in mental processes. Just as we can’t see without eyes, similarly, we can’t think coherently and effectively without properly working brains.
I made the point in the post that the brain pathologies in question “…could be called real mental illnesses, though I personally favor the term ‘brain illnesses’, in that the pathology is primarily based I that organ.”
Yes, they are “so convinced they’re the good guys”, but what they offer is a destructive hoax. I think that in their hearts most of them know this, but won’t speak out for fear of upsetting the apple cart. So they continue to promote the hoax and scoop in their victims. And on it goes. They have no shame.
Yes. “devious” is an accurate description of many of psychiatry’s tactics. And tragically, they’re good at it. They have successfully expanded their “diagnosis” list with every new edition of DSM. We have lots of work to do still.
Thanks for coming in. The hoax and the destructiveness are everywhere!, and as you point out, the “level of public blindness is still widespread”. The fact is that they can assign you any “diagnosis” that they want. There’s no real accountability in that area. And not much accountability with regards to “treatment”. That pill doesn’t seem to be working too well. Let’s try another!
Good catch. Many of the better-known facilities are purging this kind of nonsense from their sites. But Mayo doesn’t seem to have gotten the message yet.
I think you’re absolutely right. Psychiatry provides a perverse “service” to real medics, in that it enables the latter to shuffle off to psychiatry, which of course, is a “bona fide medical specialty”, those patients that, for whatever reason, they don’t want to deal with, but also don’t want to just kick out the door.
I think this is the primary reason that real doctors don’t expose the psychiatrists. They provide a “convenient” service.
Yes, there are lots of parallels between psychiatry and crooked politics. And no, I haven’t been invited to tea yet. But maybe sometime soon. How I crave such an honor!
Yes. The world-wide psychiatric-pharma machine is light years ahead of any regulatory activity that could hope to rein them in. They are loose cannons on the ship that we call humanity. My guess is that most of them are just hoping that they can make it to retirement before the whole thing unravels.
“If psychiatrists didn’t believe in some version of the ‘chemical imbalance theory’ they wouldn’t be damaging their client/patients by giving them harmful psychotropic drugs.”
You’re welcome. I continue to be appalled by psychiatry’s inherent destructiveness, and their absolute determination to resist any questioning of their self-serving status quo.
Thanks for this and for the interesting link. If anyone had imagined that there was any genuine motivation for reform within psychiatry, their response to the pandemic should be a salutary lesson. Psychiatry’s essential response is to encourage people to come in and get their worries and negative feelings checked out to see if they need “treatment”. And guess what? They do!
I agree that most professions try to present themselves in a favorable light. Electrical engineers, for instance, build marvelous power stations, but tend to understate the negative effects that their products have on the plant’s climate. Similar dynamics occur in most of us. We’re willing to go along with collateral damage for the sake of our comfort. But – and for me this is the critical distinction – change is occurring. People are beginning to realize the reality of climate change. Psychiatry, however, is stuck in its own mythology, and Dr. Pies is perhaps the “stuckest” of them all.
I think he might actually have been the original editor of Psychiatric Times.
“The periodical was first published in January 1985 as a 16-page bimonthly publication. It was founded by psychiatrist John L. Schwartz and originally edited by Ronald Pies.” (Wikipedia).
Thanks for the Max Planck quote. There are several reasons why I am willing to “go the distance” with the learned doctor. I’m currently working on a post to explain these. Perhaps after that I will let him so.
Thanks for your kind words, which mean a lot to me. This arena has become a real battlefield, which I suppose is inevitable when we start to read their pompous and spurious drivel. They demonstrate little or no critical self-scrutiny and have no claim to truth or scientific integrity.
They cover up their damage and destructiveness with “these are deadly diseases; we’re going everything we can”, and they dismiss the deaths, like your brother’s, with indifference.
Sure. The movement, as you know, is not a formal association. It’s rather a loose aggregate of more-or-less like-minded people who see psychiatry as something flawed and rotten. Members of the movement can label themselves as they see fit. I prefer “anti-psychiatry” because I am indeed anti psychiatry. I see no willingness in psychiatry to reverse any of the dreadful things that they do. But Truth about Psychiatry would be OK too. The main thing in my view is to keep calling them out and challenging their destructive and dehumanizing world view.
One can always find a few psychiatrists who practice ethically and responsibly. But the vast majority just push the pills and the shocks, though they must be aware of the damage being caused. When I first started writing about these matters, I didn’t push the “anti” label either. But as I delved more and more into what they do, I felt that that was the only label that did justice to the reality.
Certainly most media outlets walk the “party line”. Notice how they’re pushing psychiatry at present to “help people cope” with the COVID fallout. But occasionally one encounters more honesty, especially in outlets that don’t rely on pharma advertising.
“…but most can be made to feel that it’s okay.” How true. It is difficult to resist the pressure when one joins an organization like psychiatry. The great majority leave their scruples at the door.
The truly galling aspect of all this is that psychiatry’s cause-neutrality doctrine specifically states that it doesn’t matter how much grief or emotional pain you’re suffering, if you meet the Mickey Mouse criteria, you have an illness that only they are qualified to treat.
Psychiatry uses the very effective pharma machine to market their “illnesses”, and pharma uses psychiatry to create an impression of legitimacy and to clinch the sales at the point of contact. It’s a match made in Heaven – or perhaps somewhere else?
Great point. The “diagnosis” is almost as bad as the “treatments”, because in general, they can’t give you the “treatments” unless they’ve first given you a “diagnosis”.
Yes; the notion that virtually every problem of thinking, feeling and behaving is an illness is attractive to them because, as you point out, it fits their biased narrative.
Dr. Pies is, in my view, one of the 999. But his concepts need to be exposed and countered. He is an avid promoter of the notion that a problem can be considered an illness even though no biological pathology is involved. This is the fundamental rot in psychiatry that has empowered them to pontificate and take action in virtually every facet of human existence.
The spurious nature of their “diseases” is psychiatry’s fundamental flaw, as I’ve written repeatedly, but from a tactical perspective, their weak spot is the link between the drugs and the mass murders/suicides. The anecdotal evidence for this link grows daily, but definitive proof is not yet to hand.
I think that psychiatry’s weak spot is the correlation between psychiatric drugs and the mass murders/suicides. We need definitive proof that the link is causal, and then shout it to the heavens.
I agree. All psychotropic drugs exert their effects, not by correcting any brain malfunction, but rather by disrupting the normal neural mechanisms. Many psychiatrists will admit this if pressed.
Endogenous depression is depression for which a psychiatrist has not identified a psychosocial, cultural, economic precipitator, largely because he/she hasn’t looked for one!
I agree. They are not counselors, and in fact their training doesn’t lend itself to adopting this role. They’ve pushed themselves so far back into the medical corner that they have no way out.
Thanks for coming in on this. I’m so sorry for your loss, and I realize how galling it must be to read the self-congratulatory drivel that flows endlessly from psychiatry.
Thanks for this. At its worst, the psychosocial component consists of nothing more than nagging the client to take his/her pills “as ordered by the doctor”.
I’ve read the piece on the Doctissimo Forum, and it’s clear that the sleep therapy that is described there is not at all like that used by Bailey, Sargant, and others. The latter were putting people to sleep in order to perform unconsented procedures on their brains. In the French procedure, the sleep is the treatment. Sleep is apparently conceptualized as a refuge and is entered willingly by the client. I have some reservations concerning the procedure, e.g. “the patient taken in hand by the psychotherapist must have the impression of sleeping under his protection” gives an impression of grandiosity. The “paroxysms of anxiety” could be Xanax withdrawal, which can be extremely difficult even after only 15 days.
That would be nice, but it would be a tall order. I would settle for letting them slide into oblivion as better (i.e. non-medical) ways were adopted to help people in distress.
Thanks. It certainly is not scientific. Errors can and do occur in all medical specialties, but the damage that psychiatry does has almost become routine.
You’re right; we haven’t yet made much of a dent. My own approach is to keep hammering away at the more egregious practices and damage, e.g., the SSRI-induced murder/suicides. If we can get enough people convinced of this, it could snowball into something positive.
I think some people are just so heartbroken, downtrodden, and discriminated against that even psychiatric attention is a welcome, though short-lived, relief.
Yes indeed. But the psychiatric situation is even worse than your analogy. Psychiatrists have no idea why a person is depressed, for instance. All they know – and all they care to explore – is that one meets five of the nine items on the Mickey Mouse checklist. Then they can declare that one has a chemical imbalance.
I have seen real doctors doing diagnostic work (with real diseases), and I’ve seen psychiatrists doing “diagnostic” work (with spurious illnesses). Apart from the name, there is no similarity. You can see the real doctors going through options in their heads, poking and probing; asking pertinent questions; listening to the replies; etc. Psychiatrists on the other hand just rattle through the DSM checklists, and if they get the needed number of yeses, then bingo! That’s the diagnosis. DSM-IV even provided “Decision Trees for Differential Diagnoses” (p 689) for those psychiatrists who couldn’t manage the checklists without these additional aids.
This is a very interesting question, that actually has never been entirely resolved. My guess is that psychiatrists are quite happy to allow other professions this privilege because it brings the other professions into a medical framework, which they otherwise might find unacceptable.
I used to think that social workers were the group that might actually be able to break through this nonsense and start delivering genuine help to people who needed it. But they just haven’t really stepped up to the plate. Lately I’m leaning toward self-help and peer support groups in this regard.
Or “major depression”, or “general anxiety disorder”. Regardless of how you got there, if you meet the required number of “symptoms”, then you’ve got the “illness”, and of course, you need treatment. Kerchung.
Incidentally, the “unmasking of a latent bipolar disorder” is a direct consequence of the cause neutrality doctrine, which asserts that it doesn’t matter how you acquired the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors in question, if you meet the “criteria”, then you’ve got the “illness”.
In my view, ECT, whether done under anesthesia or not, is a barbaric practice that causes much more harm than good, especially in the long term. Bailey was extreme by any standard, but people who smile benignly and seem “ever so reasonable” can be just as destructive.
Yes. Like the Wall Street traders who knew that the 2008 crash was coming, but hoped they could make off with their winnings before the house of cards collapsed. Psychiatry’s house of cards is collapsing, but they have instituted no reforms. Rather, they have hired a PR firm and “doubled down” on their spurious “diagnoses” and toxic drugs.
Psychiatry is indeed rotten to the core. Its “diagnoses” are invalid and its “treatments” toxic. But they are tolerated by the establishment because, as one psychiatrist put it to me many years ago, they are the “arm of law enforcement.” But they masquerade as a medical specialty!
I’m not sure what point you’re making here, but perhaps my point wasn’t clear either. Here’s what I meant:
When it comes to behavior, there are always multiple paths to the same point.
“Madness” exists on a continuum, and I think it could be argued that there’s a little madness in everyone.
Drugs, legal and illegal, can make people mad – sometimes slightly mad; other times very mad.
Lots of other things can make people mad.
One of the things that can make a person mad is when he/she is raised to anticipate a bright and glorious future, even though the ability to achieve this is lacking.
Some individuals in these circumstances manage OK. On leaving “the nest”, they adapt readily to the reality, and find skills/occupations in keeping with their abilities. Some, however, become very paranoid. They continue to try to live up to the parental expectations, and interpret their succession of failures as evidence of a vast conspiracy. Sometimes they come within the orbit of the pill-pushers, and it’s usually pretty much downhill from there.
This is not an exhaustive list of all the ways we can become mad.
There’s a lot of evidence that a history of childhood abuse can significantly impact this process.
And, of course, sometimes madness does actually stem from brain illness/damage, and calls for neurological intervention.
I think there can sometimes be a fine line between madness and genius. Almost all the great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century would have been considered, and sometimes were considered, crazy by the scientists of earlier generations.
So, there are many paths to madness, but only one is required. The prescription of psychiatric drugs, especially at a young age, is a major gateway.
Absolutely. When one considers the history of philosophy, with its many dead ends, errors, and contradictions, the notion of founding a medical specialty on this is probably ill-advised.
I don’t know if it’s 50%. It might be a lot more. I would also include adverse reactions to other drugs. Also, being raised to have extremely unrealistic career expectations can sometimes generate paranoid thinking which can lead to a “diagnosis”.
Sure. But the term “mental illness” is in common use. We can discourage its use or put it inside quotation marks, but, in my view, it is only by thoroughly discrediting psychiatry that we can realistically hope to hasten its demise.
I’m afraid that “soon” is a relative term. Merriam-Webster’s current criterion for obsolescence is that the word hasn’t been used since 1755. Perhaps we might do better if we strove to have “psychiatrist” designated a term of disparagement akin to con-man or trickster.
Disgust is the absolutely appropriate reaction to the bilge that psychiatry pumps into the system every day, world-wide. It is not a medical profession in any true sense of the term. It has lost all credibility and survives on press releases and bald-faced lies. Let’s keep calling them out.
Yes, but “case closed” doesn’t mean that they’ll go away. They’ll simply re-package their nonsense and go on selling – as they’re doing now with the chemical imbalances. I think we also need to keep hammering away at the invalidity of their concepts and the blatant harm that they have done and continue to do.
You’re welcome. Actually, in a perverse way, psychiatry is a perfect system. It has insulated itself from criticism by accusing us of attacking the “patients” about whom they care so much.
Dictionaries try to present all the meanings of a word that are in common usage, including slang and other informal usages. Psychiatry, to our great dismay, has achieved a significant toe-hold in the language, and its terminology often shows up in dictionaries. I don’t think the lexicographers are trying to placate them; they’re just recognizing the reality. Hopefully most of these entries will soon be marked “obs” for obsolete.
Looking forward to hearing from you. My website is still open.
Excellent article. The great tragedy of all this, however, is that according to the psychiatric establishment, it doesn’t’ matter why we are upset or how valid our feelings and fears are. If you’ve got the fears and they meet psychiatry’s simplistic criteria, then you’re mentally ill! Period. It’s charlatanism, pure and simple.
Thanks for exposing it so graphically and clearly.
You’re welcome, and best wishes in your endeavors.
Leg-breaking is a nice analogy, particularly because psychiatry studiously avoids addressing the true causes of the problems they “treat”. It’s called cause-neutrality“: it doesn’t matter how you got this “illness”; now that you’ve got it, we’ll “treat” it for you.
1. The essential message of the DSM is that an ever-widening group of people are sick and need the “care” of psychiatrists.
2. I’m not sure, but I suspect that there is a lot of mutual referral going on. You send him/her to us for drugs. We’ll send him/her back to you for counseling.
3. Probably. It’s easy to agree with a position that increases one’s perceived prestige and earning power.
4. I hesitate to use the word “diagnose”, but those of us in the anti-psychiatry movement are the only real dissenters at present.
5. Tragically, I think that the training you speak of is more likely to encourage collaboration with psychiatry than challenge or dissent.
6. Psychiatric disease-mongering has been a phenomenally successful endeavor largely thanks to pharma-funded advertising and corruption of the regulatory agencies.
The “urban legend” drivel came from the eminent and scholarly Ronald Pies, MD. And yes, they will say anything to maintain their place in the hierarchy and their earning power.
I think it is almost always the case that psychiatric pills cause more harm than good. This is especially true in the long term, but devastating reactions can also occur in the short term.
Thanks for coming in. Two thoughts come to mind. Firstly, depressive feelings can be relieved by addressing the issues that maintain them. Secondly, have you checked out the long-term consequences of inhibiting serotonin reuptake? Again, thanks for your perspective.
Psychiatrists have integrated themselves so well into our culture that parents who refuse to take their child to a psychiatrist can find themselves in serious legal trouble.
Thanks. You’re correct in pointing out that psychiatric drugs can produce these “psychiatric illnesses”. But the primary psychiatric position is that these “illnesses” arise spontaneously in treatment-naïve individuals.
I don’t idealize real medicine. My general point is that real medicine discovers its illnesses in nature; psychiatry invents its “illnesses”, and its “treatment” of these “illnesses” differs little from street drug pushing. Real medicine is a valid, bona fide profession. Psychiatry is a hoax.
I’m not sure what this means: perhaps that we’re all a little different neurologically? I would agree with that. We’re all a little different in almost every respect.
I don’t, routinely or otherwise, “erase the experiences of those who *have* found meds helpful”, though I do challenge the notion that psychiatric drugs can be considered meds.
I have never claimed that “everyone agrees that other medical diagnoses are entirely homogenous with clear cut etiologies”.
My position is really very simple: that the loose collections of vaguely-defined problems of thinking, feeling, and behaving that psychiatry calls mental illnesses are not illnesses in any ordinary sense of the term, and that the drugs that psychiatry dispenses so liberally to “treat” these so-called illnesses almost always do more harm than good, especially in the long term.
Feel free to critique my work, but please confine your critiques to material that I have actually written. I make myself very clear.
Thanks for coming in. You’re absolutely right – sadness is the natural response to loss and adverse experiences. The distinction between “endogenous depression” and “exogenous depression” was always a hoax. Endogenous depression was, by definition, sadness for which psychiatrists couldn’t identify a precipitating event(s). It was a very pure kind of arrogance (unique, I think, to psychiatry) to conclude that therefore no precipitating source of the sadness exists. As you so correctly say, they didn’t find these sources because they didn’t look hard enough. And they didn’t look hard enough because it suited their purpose not to find them. As you say: money and power.
I think that’s a good answer. At present, psychiatry has a stifling effect on these kinds of creative ideas. Psychiatry says: Send them to us – we’ll take care of them. And society shrugs, and says OK. Take psychiatry out of the picture, and we’ll find that there are other non-medical ways to help people.
Helping people to cope with depression is not a hi-tech activity. People have been doing it successfully for thousands of years. As psychiatry fades, I expect we’ll see a return to these ways.
Psychiatry has lost the intellectual and moral arguments. All they have left is PR – spin. Calling us deniers is just another example of this. But spin can only take one so far.
Yes. But I still have hope. Perhaps a deluded hope, but hope nonetheless. The hope that psychiatry, with its fake illnesses and destructive “treatments”, will perish from the land.
“So has society lost its ability to recognize false logic, or are people too intimidated to reveal their inner suspicions when they pick up on any of the disingenuous contradictions permeating such thoroughly mediocre propaganda?”
That’s a great question. How can they continue to get away with this drivel? My hope (belief?) is that as more and more people join the ranks of anti-psychiatry, we’ll reach a sort of critical mass that will be hard for psychiatrists to ignore.
Of course, they’re already positioning themselves for this. Remember the great psychiatrist Ronald Pies, MD, asserting that psychiatry never really promoted the chemical imbalance theory! And currently Allen Frances is busy pushing the fairy tale that it was not psychiatry that was doing all the damage, but rather the mean ol’ GPs, and of course, pharma.
Sorry to learn of your tardive dyskinesia. Interestingly, virtually every member of the general public with whom I’ve discussed this has expressed the belief that the tardive dyskinesia and the akathisia are “symptoms of the illness”. When I explain that they’re adverse effects of the drugs, the response is invariably one of utter disbelief. But psychiatry has done nothing to dispel this misperception.
Sam,
As always, I appreciate your support. I also hope that some psychiatrists will read some of my posts and, hopefully, look at the issues with an open mind. I think that there must be some who see through the hoax.
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Rosalee,
Thanks for coming in. You’re right. They never seem to understand the fact that their secrets always come out in the long run. Witness the firestorm over the MISSD akathisia posters this week on the London Underground, and psychiatry’s response. (https://twitter.com/ProfTonyDavid/status/1512467035837640708)
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Peter,
Good point, and well put.
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Gilbert,
Yes. It is, in my experience, rare to find someone who has received genuine help from modern psychiatry. The first requirement of “psychiatric treatment” is that one must accept that he/she has an illness. It’s all downhill from there.
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Gina,
You’re welcome. If you don’t believe that Things Go Better with Coca Cola, then don’t believe psychiatry’s advertising either. As you point out, it’s not reliable.
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pacifica,
Yes, there are psychiatrists who are trying to do valuable work, and I’m sure they’re helping people. Thanks for mentioning these individuals.
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edward1,
A license to “treat” people whether they want “treatment” or not!
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Someone Else,
You’re welcome!
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Bradford,
Advertising copy is an apt description, and it applies to so much of what psychiatrists write.
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Terces,
And thanks for your support and encouragement.
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nickdrury,
That’s just so beautiful!
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Tiomak,
You are absolutely correct. A good number of anti-psychiatry writers have promoted the concept of tardive dysphoria – sadness that stems from long-term use of anti-depressants. Psychiatry’s response to this condition has generally been to switch to a different anti-depressant, but generally ignoring the true cause of the sadness. The broad outlines of this perspective are widely accepted, though the details and ramifications are widely ignored.
I should have made a mention of this issue in the post.
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Steve,
The sad reality here is that we’re winning all the battles hands down, but the psychiatrists are winning the credibility contest. Maybe we could get a leading PR group to work for us pro bono!
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Rachel,
Thanks for the clarification.
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Kate,
Thanks for this. Psychiatry is an arm of law enforcement, except that they don’t have to read you your rights, and the ordinary standards of evidence are routinely waived.
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bcharris,
Absolutely correct.
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rebel,
Thanks for this. I think your comment embodies a huge part of the answer – mutual respect, dignity, and understanding. Psychiatrists should understand this, but have become so embroiled in the quest for the Holy Grail – proof of neuropathological causes for their “illnesses” – that they have thrown out the baby with the bath water.
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rebel,
Perhaps the 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Keep Thine Emotions Tightly Wrapped.
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Steve,
Nice insight, and so valid.
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Kate,
Psychiatrists are a privileged group. I don’t think they grasp the reality of sadness and have little insight into its prevalence.
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Steve,
I agree. But I think the standard should be at least 99% accuracy. In other words, false positives and false negatives should be exceedingly rare, especially if they want to use their findings for “diagnostic” and “treatment alternatives” purposes.
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beokay,
Yes. But their immediate response is: The Work Goes On!
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Steve,
Yes. Psychiatry is a kind of weird combination of articles of faith and microscopic examination.
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Exit,
Thanks for this. They would have the tenacity to build pyramids, but most of them would insist that pyramids could be built from straw, despite vast evidence to the contrary.
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Lawrence,
Great article. And with regards to your final question, my answer is a definite yes. It’s reached a point where those of us who describe ourselves as anti-psychiatry are widely regarded as conspiracy theorists, and enemies of progress.
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Patrick,
Yes, and they have the full support of the King (government). It’s a hoax, folks.
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Steve,
Yes. And it’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe that psychiatrists don’t realize that the whole thing is a hoax. How can they not see that?
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Patrick
That’s a very valid analogy!
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Fiachra,
You’ve hit the nail on the head. Thanks.
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Bradford,
Thanks for this comment. I did read about the illustrious Dr. Lieberman’s fall from grace. What struck me most forcibly was that in his apology, he did seem to be acknowledging vestiges of racism within himself.
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Brett,
Thanks for these very helpful insights. I particularly appreciate: “This naturally leads the clinician to explore those causes and regard them as the real problem, with anxiety essentially a side effect.”
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Dr. Pierre has informed me that I have listed his job title incorrectly. I lifted his title from his biography on the UCLA website:
“Joe Pierre, MD is the Chief of Mental Health Community Care Systems at the VA West Los Angeles Healthcare Center and a Health Sciences Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.”
In the interests of readability, I abbreviated this to “Chief Psychiatrist, VA West Los Angeles Healthcare Center, and Clinical Professor, UCLA.”
I apologize for overstating his credentials/rank.
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Christopher,
Thanks for the historical perspective. The section on dropping the word “reaction” was particularly interesting. Spitzer just didn’t seem to get it.
But the move was definitely noticed in other circles. Here’s a quote from Ullmann and Krasner’s classic textbook: A Psychological Approach to Abnormal Behavior: Second Edition, 1975:
“There are some features of DSM-II that seem to point in a more conservative direction. A major one is the change from a concept of a reaction (behavior) that is psychotic or neurotic to calling the behavior psychosis or neurosis with the implication of a disease entity.” (p 27)
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beokay,
I agree. Consider the hypothetical conversation:
Parent: Why is my child so fidgety and distracted? Why does he run around so much? Why does he not pay attention?
Psychiatrist: Because he has an illness called attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Parent: How do you know he has this illness?
Psychiatrist: Because he is fidgety and distracted, runs around all the time, and doesn’t pay attention.
Nothing is explained by a “diagnosis of ADHD”.
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Altostrata,
Yes. Thanks for this clarification.
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Fiachra,
Good point. The tranquilizers are often addictive, and the antidepressants often make things worse than they were before.
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rebel,
Yes, it is difficult to imagine that they don’t see through the deceptions. They can’t be that dense. With regards to traditional (i.e. non-psychiatric) medicine, they are in a difficult position. If they speak out against psychiatry, they will risk censure. If they go along with psychiatry, they are safe from censure. Unfortunately their customers are not safe, which is one reason that we need the anti-psychiatry movement.
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beokay,
That’s an interesting thought.
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Gina,
Good point. Regular hospitals have been teaching patient outcomes and satisfaction for years. It shouldn’t be too much of a reach to expect the same from mental “hospitals”.
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Richard,
Thanks for coming in. It’s a thorny subject. I vacillated, literally for hours, as to the best way to word this. Your formulation is more accurate, of course, but it’s also a bit of a mouthful.
At the present time it’s all a bit premature, because psychiatry has no intention of voluntarily limiting its scope in the manner I described.
They are onto a “good thing” and will only cede turf when forced to do so – either by attrition in their own ranks or rejection from their “patients”.
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scatterbrain,
I believe you are correct. If Dr. Aftab were to be forthright, he would be ostracized by his peers. But other psychiatrists (admittedly very few) have taken this step and survived.
I think Dr. Aftab may have the notion that he can be the one who brings the anti-psychiatry people back into the psychiatric fold. Though, of course, I can’t be sure of this because he has never made his position on this matter clear.
But I don’t believe that a psychiatric service can ever be truly client-centered. Too much of their energy has to be dissipated to supporting the spurious and destructive premise that every significant problem of thinking, feeling, or behaving is an illness best treated with psychotropic pills.
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Fred,
Thanks for coming in, and for your support.
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Someone Else,
Thanks for your support and for the links.
Although I was aware of the exploitation of children for slavery and sexual trafficking, I was surprised at the extent of this problem as documented in your links.
As my health continues to deteriorate, it becomes increasingly difficult for me to do the research and write up the results, but I will try to devote more time and space to these issues.
Again, thanks for coming in.
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Brett,
Thanks for your ongoing support, and for the fussy eater analogy, which seems very apt. I hope the class project goes well.
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Louisa,
Thanks for coming in on this important issue.
My essential point in all of this is that psychiatry’s “functional” diagnoses are not illnesses in any ordinary sense of the term because they entail no reliably identifiable causal pathologies, which in my experience is the ordinary everyday use of the term “illness”.
So when we encounter a problem in thinking, feeling, or executive functioning, that has clearly been caused by brain injury, it is important to acknowledge this. During my career (I’m now retired), I worked in a number of nursing homes. Most of the people there were elderly, but there were also young people who had incurred brain damage, either from trauma or from illnesses (infections, etc.), and whose mental processes (thinking, feeling, and behaving) were markedly impaired. It seemed obvious to me that the brain damage was the cause of the impairment in mental processes. Just as we can’t see without eyes, similarly, we can’t think coherently and effectively without properly working brains.
I made the point in the post that the brain pathologies in question “…could be called real mental illnesses, though I personally favor the term ‘brain illnesses’, in that the pathology is primarily based I that organ.”
Again, thanks for coming in.
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KateL,
Yes, they are “so convinced they’re the good guys”, but what they offer is a destructive hoax. I think that in their hearts most of them know this, but won’t speak out for fear of upsetting the apple cart. So they continue to promote the hoax and scoop in their victims. And on it goes. They have no shame.
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Bradford,
Thanks. What’s so amazing is that so many people continue to accept the hoax, though its errors and contradictions are so transparent.
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Rosalee,
Thanks for coming in, and for your support.
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bcharris,
I hope so. But I think they are still fairly strong and unscrupulous.
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rebel,
Odd indeed!
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Someone Else,
Thanks for this comment and for the helpful links.
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Fiachra,
Right. But they continuously portray themselves as protecting the public from dangerous mad people, and then blame us for creating stigma.
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beokay,
Thanks for this information and the link.
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Fiachra,
Yes. Even their so-called antidepressants have suicide warnings on the labels! It’s hard to get one’s head around the irony of this.
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Sam,
Yes. “devious” is an accurate description of many of psychiatry’s tactics. And tragically, they’re good at it. They have successfully expanded their “diagnosis” list with every new edition of DSM. We have lots of work to do still.
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i.e. cox,
Thanks for this interesting perspective.
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John,
I don’t know about his fees, but he does tend to pontificate.
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Gina,
Reminds me of the old joke. What’s the difference between God and a psychiatrist? God doesn’t’ think he’s a psychiatrist!
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rebel,
Yes. They’ve been making the same errors for about 100 years and show little interest in making any course corrections.
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Bradford,
Thanks for coming in and for your support.
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maedhbh,
Thanks for coming in. The hoax and the destructiveness are everywhere!, and as you point out, the “level of public blindness is still widespread”. The fact is that they can assign you any “diagnosis” that they want. There’s no real accountability in that area. And not much accountability with regards to “treatment”. That pill doesn’t seem to be working too well. Let’s try another!
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Harper,
Thanks.
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ThereAreFourLights,
Thanks for your support.
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Kevin,
Thanks for your comment, and for your expressions of confidence in my ability, but realistically, I’m too old and broken to do a book.
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Frank,
I couldn’t agree more.
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Patrick,
Yes, and med checks have become standard practice in psychiatry.
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Marie,
Yes. Wasn’t that something?!
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yeah_I_survived,
Thanks for coming in and for your helpful comments.
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Stevie,
Thanks for the reference.
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Brett,
Good catch. Many of the better-known facilities are purging this kind of nonsense from their sites. But Mayo doesn’t seem to have gotten the message yet.
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Brett,
Thanks for your insightful comments and ongoing support.
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Rosalee,
And thank you for your helpful and insightful comments and ongoing support.
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sam,
I think you’re absolutely right. Psychiatry provides a perverse “service” to real medics, in that it enables the latter to shuffle off to psychiatry, which of course, is a “bona fide medical specialty”, those patients that, for whatever reason, they don’t want to deal with, but also don’t want to just kick out the door.
I think this is the primary reason that real doctors don’t expose the psychiatrists. They provide a “convenient” service.
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kindredspirit,
Thanks for this. Psychiatry is rotten to the core.
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oldhead,
It would be good material for a study.
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sam,
Yes, there are lots of parallels between psychiatry and crooked politics. And no, I haven’t been invited to tea yet. But maybe sometime soon. How I crave such an honor!
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Willoweed,
Yes. The world-wide psychiatric-pharma machine is light years ahead of any regulatory activity that could hope to rein them in. They are loose cannons on the ship that we call humanity. My guess is that most of them are just hoping that they can make it to retirement before the whole thing unravels.
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Frank,
“If psychiatrists didn’t believe in some version of the ‘chemical imbalance theory’ they wouldn’t be damaging their client/patients by giving them harmful psychotropic drugs.”
That is so true!
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Someone Else,
You’re welcome. I continue to be appalled by psychiatry’s inherent destructiveness, and their absolute determination to resist any questioning of their self-serving status quo.
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bcharris,
I agree. Feelings of sadness are actually adaptive mechanisms that alert us when we get stuck in situations that are not helpful to us.
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Irit,
Thanks. Incidentally, Robert Whitaker did a nice critique of Dr. Pies’ material in 2015. You can see it here.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2015/09/ronald-pies-doubles-down-and-why-we-should-care/
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oldhead,
Thanks. I’m not at all sure that I warrant such praise, but I am grateful.
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rebel,
And thank you for putting the matter so well, and so succinctly.
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Steve,
Right. And the computer would be kaput also.
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Miriam,
Yes. His walk-back didn’t even come close to a genuine apology.
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Sam,
Thanks for this and for the interesting link. If anyone had imagined that there was any genuine motivation for reform within psychiatry, their response to the pandemic should be a salutary lesson. Psychiatry’s essential response is to encourage people to come in and get their worries and negative feelings checked out to see if they need “treatment”. And guess what? They do!
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Steve,
Yes, indeed! Or perhaps it’s like “repairing” the motherboard of your computer with a backhoe and a couple of jackhammers!
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Richard,
Thanks.
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Mammon,
I agree that most professions try to present themselves in a favorable light. Electrical engineers, for instance, build marvelous power stations, but tend to understate the negative effects that their products have on the plant’s climate. Similar dynamics occur in most of us. We’re willing to go along with collateral damage for the sake of our comfort. But – and for me this is the critical distinction – change is occurring. People are beginning to realize the reality of climate change. Psychiatry, however, is stuck in its own mythology, and Dr. Pies is perhaps the “stuckest” of them all.
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Marie,
You’re right. And yet the learned Dr. Pies would say that you’re wrong: never promoted such nonsense!
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boans,
It is serious. Like the Six Million Dollar Man, except that that was fiction, and there was never any suggestion to the contrary.
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LindaVZ,
Yes. All psychiatric “illness” is considered “incurable”, on the grounds that their “treatments” are so ineffective. It’s a house of cards.
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Stevepittelli,
I think he might actually have been the original editor of Psychiatric Times.
“The periodical was first published in January 1985 as a 16-page bimonthly publication. It was founded by psychiatrist John L. Schwartz and originally edited by Ronald Pies.” (Wikipedia).
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rebel,
And thank you for the insights.
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Someone Else,
Nice research! Well done.
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Fiachra,
Never. And Never!
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kindredspirit,
Nice response. Thanks.
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beokay,
Thanks for the Max Planck quote. There are several reasons why I am willing to “go the distance” with the learned doctor. I’m currently working on a post to explain these. Perhaps after that I will let him so.
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snowyowl,
Welcome back.
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Fiachra,
I have heard this too. I hope that the anti-psychiatry movement has played a role in this, and that we can continue the push.
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Rosalee,
Thanks for your kind words, which mean a lot to me. This arena has become a real battlefield, which I suppose is inevitable when we start to read their pompous and spurious drivel. They demonstrate little or no critical self-scrutiny and have no claim to truth or scientific integrity.
They cover up their damage and destructiveness with “these are deadly diseases; we’re going everything we can”, and they dismiss the deaths, like your brother’s, with indifference.
Thanks again.
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James,
Excellent exposé. Electricity is a great boon, but not when it gets inside one’s brain!
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Someone Else,
Sure. The movement, as you know, is not a formal association. It’s rather a loose aggregate of more-or-less like-minded people who see psychiatry as something flawed and rotten. Members of the movement can label themselves as they see fit. I prefer “anti-psychiatry” because I am indeed anti psychiatry. I see no willingness in psychiatry to reverse any of the dreadful things that they do. But Truth about Psychiatry would be OK too. The main thing in my view is to keep calling them out and challenging their destructive and dehumanizing world view.
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S82,
One can always find a few psychiatrists who practice ethically and responsibly. But the vast majority just push the pills and the shocks, though they must be aware of the damage being caused. When I first started writing about these matters, I didn’t push the “anti” label either. But as I delved more and more into what they do, I felt that that was the only label that did justice to the reality.
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Sam,
Certainly most media outlets walk the “party line”. Notice how they’re pushing psychiatry at present to “help people cope” with the COVID fallout. But occasionally one encounters more honesty, especially in outlets that don’t rely on pharma advertising.
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Sam,
“…but most can be made to feel that it’s okay.” How true. It is difficult to resist the pressure when one joins an organization like psychiatry. The great majority leave their scruples at the door.
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Rebel,
And thank you for coming in.
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Dan,
Thanks. I hope the withdrawal goes OK.
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Richard,
Thanks for your support. And yes, I do now have a transplanted kidney, which is working well!
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Karin,
The truly galling aspect of all this is that psychiatry’s cause-neutrality doctrine specifically states that it doesn’t matter how much grief or emotional pain you’re suffering, if you meet the Mickey Mouse criteria, you have an illness that only they are qualified to treat.
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bcharris,
That’s extreme!
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beokay,
Thanks for coming in.
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MlanaCa,
You’re welcome.
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One great anti-psychiatry writer that I neglected to include is Ted Chabasinski. You can see links to his MIA posts here: https://www.madinamerica.com/author/tchabasinski/
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Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry,
Thanks for a very detailed and helpful list.
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Angela,
Thanks for these very helpful additions.
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Fiachra,
I agree. It’s a hard-hitting and well-researched classic, to which psychiatry has no answer.
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Rosalee,
Thanks for the book recommendation. I agree that we will continue to gain traction.
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James,
Thanks. Yes, we will win this battle.
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prescribedharm,
It is indeed nearly incomprehensible. And yet it happens every day, world-wide.
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Sam,
I agree. We should stop seeking any kind of accommodation with psychiatry. They simply need to go away.
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Sam,
Yes. It’s always easy to condemn the “bad guys” of the past, and to promote the notion that all that is behind us now.
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Fiachra,
Yes. The old dogma of “neuroleptics for life” was, literally, a killer.
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Someone Else,
And thank you for these additions.
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rebel,
I agree. Psychiatry has so many ways of marginalizing the voices of those who dare to reject, or even question, its efficacy.
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Madrina,
Thanks. I would be very interested in any other choices that you would like to add.
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beokay,
They certainly do. But, of course, as the eminent Dr. Pies points out, we have to check this with the psychiatrist! Good luck with that.
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Yulia,
Good question. I really don’t know. Perhaps I should try writing something for a mainstream outlet and see how it goes.
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ThereAreFourLights,
Yes. Same movie. Different cast.
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Frank,
Psychiatry uses the very effective pharma machine to market their “illnesses”, and pharma uses psychiatry to create an impression of legitimacy and to clinch the sales at the point of contact. It’s a match made in Heaven – or perhaps somewhere else?
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Rosalee,
Great point. The “diagnosis” is almost as bad as the “treatments”, because in general, they can’t give you the “treatments” unless they’ve first given you a “diagnosis”.
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rebel,
And we are winning.
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Rachel777,
Maybe. In any event, I think they’ve grossly underestimated the resilience, persistence, and determination of the anti-psychiatry movement.
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rebel,
Yes; the notion that virtually every problem of thinking, feeling and behaving is an illness is attractive to them because, as you point out, it fits their biased narrative.
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Steve,
Yes. Most of their output is drivel.
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Rosalee,
Thanks. I’ll certainly try.
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Sam,
Well said!
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Frank,
Nice!
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” (Sir Walter Scott, 1808)
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Someone Else,
Tragically, many psychologists are becoming more psychiatric than the psychiatrists themselves.
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Yulia,
You’re doing it. Keep it up.
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Willoweed,
Nice! Only loyal members of the cult understand.
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Yulia,
Yes! I think most of the readers are probably psychiatrists.
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Yulia,
Dr. Pies is, in my view, one of the 999. But his concepts need to be exposed and countered. He is an avid promoter of the notion that a problem can be considered an illness even though no biological pathology is involved. This is the fundamental rot in psychiatry that has empowered them to pontificate and take action in virtually every facet of human existence.
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Sam,
Yes, the learned doctor is skilled at fashioning his “doctrines to the varying hour”.
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Oldhead,
The spurious nature of their “diseases” is psychiatry’s fundamental flaw, as I’ve written repeatedly, but from a tactical perspective, their weak spot is the link between the drugs and the mass murders/suicides. The anecdotal evidence for this link grows daily, but definitive proof is not yet to hand.
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oldhead,
It’s a hoax, deliberately and consciously promoted by psychiatrists to promote their own ends to the detriment of their customers.
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Sam,
And don’t forget: “Gee, you’re wonderful, Dr. Murgatroyd.”
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Andrei,
I think that psychiatry’s weak spot is the correlation between psychiatric drugs and the mass murders/suicides. We need definitive proof that the link is causal, and then shout it to the heavens.
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oldhead,
Thanks.
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KindRegards,
I agree. It is very succinct. He’s hit all the main points.
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Willoweed,
Well put.
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Exit,
I agree. All psychotropic drugs exert their effects, not by correcting any brain malfunction, but rather by disrupting the normal neural mechanisms. Many psychiatrists will admit this if pressed.
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Steve,
Thanks for this.
Endogenous depression is depression for which a psychiatrist has not identified a psychosocial, cultural, economic precipitator, largely because he/she hasn’t looked for one!
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Sam,
I agree. But they have left themselves no way out.
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Someone Else,
Thanks for this information.
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Jeffrey,
I agree. They are not counselors, and in fact their training doesn’t lend itself to adopting this role. They’ve pushed themselves so far back into the medical corner that they have no way out.
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registeredforthissite,
It’s a great idea, but it’s not something that I could do. I just don’t have the energy any more.
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Sam,
Brilliant!
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Sam,
Yes it is. And they continue to push the deception that they are saving lives!
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Rosalee,
Thanks for coming in on this. I’m so sorry for your loss, and I realize how galling it must be to read the self-congratulatory drivel that flows endlessly from psychiatry.
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NotCrazyAfterAllTheseYears,
Thanks for this helpful insight.
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Frank,
Thanks.
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KateL,
Yes, they have every reason to be angry and to express this anger.
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John,
Not a stitch!
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Sam,
Nice phrase – “cocoon of tunnel vision”.
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boans,
And thanks for this insight into criminal con-artists.
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Oldhead,
I agree. Thanks for the clarification.
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Oldhead,
Thanks. When you start to examine their statements in detail, it is clear that it’s mostly self-exculpating drivel.
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Oldhead,
Thanks.
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Brett,
Thanks for this. At its worst, the psychosocial component consists of nothing more than nagging the client to take his/her pills “as ordered by the doctor”.
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Someone Else,
Thank you.
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KateL,
I agree entirely.
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Whatuser,
I have critiqued all the players that you list throughout my blog over the past 11½ years.
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Sylvain,
I’ve read the piece on the Doctissimo Forum, and it’s clear that the sleep therapy that is described there is not at all like that used by Bailey, Sargant, and others. The latter were putting people to sleep in order to perform unconsented procedures on their brains. In the French procedure, the sleep is the treatment. Sleep is apparently conceptualized as a refuge and is entered willingly by the client. I have some reservations concerning the procedure, e.g. “the patient taken in hand by the psychotherapist must have the impression of sleeping under his protection” gives an impression of grandiosity. The “paroxysms of anxiety” could be Xanax withdrawal, which can be extremely difficult even after only 15 days.
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Oldhead,
Psychiatrists and pharma manage to nip these things “in the bud”. That’s how the two previous bills died in committee.
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i.e. cox,
That would be nice, but it would be a tall order. I would settle for letting them slide into oblivion as better (i.e. non-medical) ways were adopted to help people in distress.
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Rosalee,
Thanks. It certainly is not scientific. Errors can and do occur in all medical specialties, but the damage that psychiatry does has almost become routine.
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streetphotobeing,
You’re right; we haven’t yet made much of a dent. My own approach is to keep hammering away at the more egregious practices and damage, e.g., the SSRI-induced murder/suicides. If we can get enough people convinced of this, it could snowball into something positive.
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Michaels,
Thanks for the additional information.
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Sam,
I think some people are just so heartbroken, downtrodden, and discriminated against that even psychiatric attention is a welcome, though short-lived, relief.
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Ann,
Horrifying indeed! And enraging. But be careful that you don’t catch intermittent explosive disorder!
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boans,
Yes indeed. But the psychiatric situation is even worse than your analogy. Psychiatrists have no idea why a person is depressed, for instance. All they know – and all they care to explore – is that one meets five of the nine items on the Mickey Mouse checklist. Then they can declare that one has a chemical imbalance.
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Steve,
I have seen real doctors doing diagnostic work (with real diseases), and I’ve seen psychiatrists doing “diagnostic” work (with spurious illnesses). Apart from the name, there is no similarity. You can see the real doctors going through options in their heads, poking and probing; asking pertinent questions; listening to the replies; etc. Psychiatrists on the other hand just rattle through the DSM checklists, and if they get the needed number of yeses, then bingo! That’s the diagnosis. DSM-IV even provided “Decision Trees for Differential Diagnoses” (p 689) for those psychiatrists who couldn’t manage the checklists without these additional aids.
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Someone Else,
This is a very interesting question, that actually has never been entirely resolved. My guess is that psychiatrists are quite happy to allow other professions this privilege because it brings the other professions into a medical framework, which they otherwise might find unacceptable.
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Someone Else,
I used to think that social workers were the group that might actually be able to break through this nonsense and start delivering genuine help to people who needed it. But they just haven’t really stepped up to the plate. Lately I’m leaning toward self-help and peer support groups in this regard.
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Steve,
Or “major depression”, or “general anxiety disorder”. Regardless of how you got there, if you meet the required number of “symptoms”, then you’ve got the “illness”, and of course, you need treatment. Kerchung.
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Brett,
No, they have no shame – not a smidgen.
Incidentally, the “unmasking of a latent bipolar disorder” is a direct consequence of the cause neutrality doctrine, which asserts that it doesn’t matter how you acquired the thoughts, feelings, or behaviors in question, if you meet the “criteria”, then you’ve got the “illness”.
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boans,
In my view, ECT, whether done under anesthesia or not, is a barbaric practice that causes much more harm than good, especially in the long term. Bailey was extreme by any standard, but people who smile benignly and seem “ever so reasonable” can be just as destructive.
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Sam,
Yes. Like the Wall Street traders who knew that the 2008 crash was coming, but hoped they could make off with their winnings before the house of cards collapsed. Psychiatry’s house of cards is collapsing, but they have instituted no reforms. Rather, they have hired a PR firm and “doubled down” on their spurious “diagnoses” and toxic drugs.
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Fiachra,
Unfortunately psychiatrists have no trouble rationalizing this. After all, what do juries know?
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Sam,
Occasionally one encounters honesty from psychiatrists, but it is very, very rare. In general they stick to the story and stick together.
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streetphotobeing,
Psychiatry is indeed rotten to the core. Its “diagnoses” are invalid and its “treatments” toxic. But they are tolerated by the establishment because, as one psychiatrist put it to me many years ago, they are the “arm of law enforcement.” But they masquerade as a medical specialty!
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Rosalee,
Thank you for your kind words of encouragement.
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i_e_cox,
Very good points.
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Fiachra,
I’m not sure what point you’re making here, but perhaps my point wasn’t clear either. Here’s what I meant:
When it comes to behavior, there are always multiple paths to the same point.
“Madness” exists on a continuum, and I think it could be argued that there’s a little madness in everyone.
Drugs, legal and illegal, can make people mad – sometimes slightly mad; other times very mad.
Lots of other things can make people mad.
One of the things that can make a person mad is when he/she is raised to anticipate a bright and glorious future, even though the ability to achieve this is lacking.
Some individuals in these circumstances manage OK. On leaving “the nest”, they adapt readily to the reality, and find skills/occupations in keeping with their abilities. Some, however, become very paranoid. They continue to try to live up to the parental expectations, and interpret their succession of failures as evidence of a vast conspiracy. Sometimes they come within the orbit of the pill-pushers, and it’s usually pretty much downhill from there.
This is not an exhaustive list of all the ways we can become mad.
There’s a lot of evidence that a history of childhood abuse can significantly impact this process.
And, of course, sometimes madness does actually stem from brain illness/damage, and calls for neurological intervention.
I think there can sometimes be a fine line between madness and genius. Almost all the great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century would have been considered, and sometimes were considered, crazy by the scientists of earlier generations.
So, there are many paths to madness, but only one is required. The prescription of psychiatric drugs, especially at a young age, is a major gateway.
Nice alcove, BTW.
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Someone Else,
And thank you for your clear thinking and ideals.
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Steve,
Absolutely. When one considers the history of philosophy, with its many dead ends, errors, and contradictions, the notion of founding a medical specialty on this is probably ill-advised.
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Fiachra,
You’re right. They have no solutions. The Emperor Has No Clothes!
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boans,
That’s a lot to have to deal with. Thanks for reminding me why I write these posts. Psychiatry’s victims live in a pre-civil rights world.
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Steve,
Yes, that whole bag of drivel was way over the top.
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Fiachra,
I don’t know if it’s 50%. It might be a lot more. I would also include adverse reactions to other drugs. Also, being raised to have extremely unrealistic career expectations can sometimes generate paranoid thinking which can lead to a “diagnosis”.
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Sam,
My understanding is that they must specify a “diagnosis” before getting someone committed or prescribing a drug.
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Sam,
Nice comparison.
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Steve,
How indeed.
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Oldhead,
Sure. But the term “mental illness” is in common use. We can discourage its use or put it inside quotation marks, but, in my view, it is only by thoroughly discrediting psychiatry that we can realistically hope to hasten its demise.
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Sam,
Yes – for now.
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Oldhead,
I’m afraid that “soon” is a relative term. Merriam-Webster’s current criterion for obsolescence is that the word hasn’t been used since 1755. Perhaps we might do better if we strove to have “psychiatrist” designated a term of disparagement akin to con-man or trickster.
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Rachel777,
LoL
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Frank,
Disgust is the absolutely appropriate reaction to the bilge that psychiatry pumps into the system every day, world-wide. It is not a medical profession in any true sense of the term. It has lost all credibility and survives on press releases and bald-faced lies. Let’s keep calling them out.
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boans,
Good point. The friction is the tangible product of the car’s energy being dissipated.
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Oldhead,
Yes, but “case closed” doesn’t mean that they’ll go away. They’ll simply re-package their nonsense and go on selling – as they’re doing now with the chemical imbalances. I think we also need to keep hammering away at the invalidity of their concepts and the blatant harm that they have done and continue to do.
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Noology,
Thanks. I hadn’t heard of Thomas Armstrong, but I’ll look him up.
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Sam,
Thanks. Psychiatry certainly is given to distorting reality.
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streetphotobeing,
Allen Frances is no friend of the anti-psychiatry movement. But I have to acknowledge that he did call out the akathisia problem long before it was on most people’s radar. In August 1983, he and Katherine Shear and Peter Weiden wrote an essay on akathisia-induced suicide. I wrote a post on it here.. https://www.behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2016/11/08/neuroleptic-drugs-akathisia-and-suicide-and-violence/
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Rachel777,
Nice. Gee you’re wonderful, Dr. Murgatroyd!
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markps2,,
You’re welcome. Actually, in a perverse way, psychiatry is a perfect system. It has insulated itself from criticism by accusing us of attacking the “patients” about whom they care so much.
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JeffreyC,
I’d forgotten about that post. Thanks for bringing it back.
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Oldhead,
Thanks for coming in.
Dictionaries try to present all the meanings of a word that are in common usage, including slang and other informal usages. Psychiatry, to our great dismay, has achieved a significant toe-hold in the language, and its terminology often shows up in dictionaries. I don’t think the lexicographers are trying to placate them; they’re just recognizing the reality. Hopefully most of these entries will soon be marked “obs” for obsolete.
Looking forward to hearing from you. My website is still open.
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Dr. Caplan,
Excellent article. The great tragedy of all this, however, is that according to the psychiatric establishment, it doesn’t’ matter why we are upset or how valid our feelings and fears are. If you’ve got the fears and they meet psychiatry’s simplistic criteria, then you’re mentally ill! Period. It’s charlatanism, pure and simple.
Thanks for exposing it so graphically and clearly.
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pkolpin,
You’re welcome, and best wishes in your endeavors.
Leg-breaking is a nice analogy, particularly because psychiatry studiously avoids addressing the true causes of the problems they “treat”. It’s called cause-neutrality“: it doesn’t matter how you got this “illness”; now that you’ve got it, we’ll “treat” it for you.
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Sam,
You’re welcome; and thank you for your support.
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Dr. Caplan,
And thank you for your support and encouragement.
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oldhead,
Your points above are nicely put!
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Frank,
Thanks for this clarification.
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Steve,
Thanks for your detailed reply above.
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Magdalene,
1. The essential message of the DSM is that an ever-widening group of people are sick and need the “care” of psychiatrists.
2. I’m not sure, but I suspect that there is a lot of mutual referral going on. You send him/her to us for drugs. We’ll send him/her back to you for counseling.
3. Probably. It’s easy to agree with a position that increases one’s perceived prestige and earning power.
4. I hesitate to use the word “diagnose”, but those of us in the anti-psychiatry movement are the only real dissenters at present.
5. Tragically, I think that the training you speak of is more likely to encourage collaboration with psychiatry than challenge or dissent.
6. Psychiatric disease-mongering has been a phenomenally successful endeavor largely thanks to pharma-funded advertising and corruption of the regulatory agencies.
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Fiachra,
None whatsoever. Thanks for pointing this out.
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Steve,
Wow! Wow!
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Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry,
Wow!
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Rachel777,
Beautiful!
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Richard,
Thanks. The world is indeed a very oppressive place.
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boans,
Thank you.
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oldhead,
Agreed wholeheartedly!
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Rosalee,
And thank you for coming in.
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anomie,
Good points. Thanks.
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Rachel777,
The surgery metaphor is frighteningly apt!
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Steve McCrea,
Absolutely best psychiatric science!
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Steve,
Yes! Definitely!
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KateL,
The “urban legend” drivel came from the eminent and scholarly Ronald Pies, MD. And yes, they will say anything to maintain their place in the hierarchy and their earning power.
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Rachel777,
I think it is almost always the case that psychiatric pills cause more harm than good. This is especially true in the long term, but devastating reactions can also occur in the short term.
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psmama,
Thanks for this.
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KateL,
Nicely put.
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IBTworks,
Thanks for coming in. Two thoughts come to mind. Firstly, depressive feelings can be relieved by addressing the issues that maintain them. Secondly, have you checked out the long-term consequences of inhibiting serotonin reuptake? Again, thanks for your perspective.
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KateL,
Thanks. But in fact, Dr. Kendler handed it to me on a plate with the “enduring commitment” quote.
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Rachel777,
Psychiatrists have integrated themselves so well into our culture that parents who refuse to take their child to a psychiatrist can find themselves in serious legal trouble.
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Sam Plover,
I agree. The only source of the stigma is the “diagnosis”.
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Miranda,
Nice!
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Someone Else,
Thanks for this. We need to continually chip away at their credibility by exposing the hoax and the blatant conflicts of interest.
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Andrei,
Yes. There probably are some psychiatrists who believe the hoax. But they should know better. Thanks for coming in.
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Bradford,
Thanks for your encouraging words. “A catalog of billing codes” – that’s perfect!
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Rosalee,
You’re welcome.
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Someone Else,
Thanks. You’re correct in pointing out that psychiatric drugs can produce these “psychiatric illnesses”. But the primary psychiatric position is that these “illnesses” arise spontaneously in treatment-naïve individuals.
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Oldhead,
Good points!
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Steve,
Thanks.
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Sam,
Thanks!
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Fiachra,
Very astute!
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Anomie,
You’re welcome.
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Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry,
Thanks.
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Bonnie,
Thanks for a very compelling, though disturbing, article. It’s always enlightening to read your material.
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Sandra,
I don’t idealize real medicine. My general point is that real medicine discovers its illnesses in nature; psychiatry invents its “illnesses”, and its “treatment” of these “illnesses” differs little from street drug pushing. Real medicine is a valid, bona fide profession. Psychiatry is a hoax.
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Rachel777,
And a very pointed satire. Thanks.
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Miranda,
I agree. The good doctor doth protest way too much!
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CatNight,
“Trauma defines us all…” That’s a very helpful concept. We need to address these things, not occlude our self-perception with pills. Thanks.
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Rosalee,
Thanks for coming in and for your encouragement.
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Steve,
I agree.
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Frank,
Beautiful!
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[email protected],
You’re right. Chemical imbalance is a marketing slogan.
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Steve,
Absolutely never!
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Brett,
So the hoax has, literally, gone round the world!
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PacificDawn,
I’m not sure what this means: perhaps that we’re all a little different neurologically? I would agree with that. We’re all a little different in almost every respect.
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Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry,
Thanks for your support.
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johnbitz,
I don’t, routinely or otherwise, “erase the experiences of those who *have* found meds helpful”, though I do challenge the notion that psychiatric drugs can be considered meds.
I have never claimed that “everyone agrees that other medical diagnoses are entirely homogenous with clear cut etiologies”.
My position is really very simple: that the loose collections of vaguely-defined problems of thinking, feeling, and behaving that psychiatry calls mental illnesses are not illnesses in any ordinary sense of the term, and that the drugs that psychiatry dispenses so liberally to “treat” these so-called illnesses almost always do more harm than good, especially in the long term.
Feel free to critique my work, but please confine your critiques to material that I have actually written. I make myself very clear.
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Phoebe,
Thanks for coming in. You’re absolutely right – sadness is the natural response to loss and adverse experiences. The distinction between “endogenous depression” and “exogenous depression” was always a hoax. Endogenous depression was, by definition, sadness for which psychiatrists couldn’t identify a precipitating event(s). It was a very pure kind of arrogance (unique, I think, to psychiatry) to conclude that therefore no precipitating source of the sadness exists. As you so correctly say, they didn’t find these sources because they didn’t look hard enough. And they didn’t look hard enough because it suited their purpose not to find them. As you say: money and power.
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Salimur,
You’ve identified a major issue. A chemical process is not necessarily pathological.
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Rachel777,
Yeah, right. Lol.
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bcharris,
Very true. Thanks for this important point.
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Lawrence,
Nice!
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Rosalee,
I think that’s a good answer. At present, psychiatry has a stifling effect on these kinds of creative ideas. Psychiatry says: Send them to us – we’ll take care of them. And society shrugs, and says OK. Take psychiatry out of the picture, and we’ll find that there are other non-medical ways to help people.
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KateL,
Helping people to cope with depression is not a hi-tech activity. People have been doing it successfully for thousands of years. As psychiatry fades, I expect we’ll see a return to these ways.
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KateL,
Thanks.
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Rachel777,
It would also be great if the real doctors would start to point out psychiatry’s flaws.
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Slaying the Dragon,
Thanks.
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Rosalee,
Putting dents in the façade of psychiatry. That’s a perfect description. Enough dents, and the thing breaks.
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Frank,
Thanks for the correction. And yes, the quackery, with its disastrous results, continues.
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Julie,
Psychiatry has lost the intellectual and moral arguments. All they have left is PR – spin. Calling us deniers is just another example of this. But spin can only take one so far.
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KindRegards,
Thank you for the encouraging words.
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Fiachra,
Thanks. It’s nice to be back.
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Stephen,
Her name is Paula Caplan. She wrote an article titled Diagnosisgate: Conflict of Interest at the Top of the Psychiatric Apparatus, published in Aporia in 2015. http://www.oa.uottawa.ca/journals/aporia/articles/2015_01/commentary.pdf
There’s a link to this in my post.
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Bramble,
Thanks for the info and the link.
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Eric,
Thanks.
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Frank,
Nice!
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Auntie,
Nice summary of psychiatric defense strategy!
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Rosalee,
Thanks.
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Oldhead,
I do indeed think there will come a time when people will look back on this era and shake their heads in disbelief and horror.
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Oldhead,
Yes. They make great use of the word “may”.
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Richard,
Thanks.
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teegee,
When they ridicule you, you know you are having an effect.
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Lawrence,
Maybe.
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Frank,
Yes. And he never came clean about the Risperdal scandal.
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Auntie Psychiatry,
Yes. It seems unlikely that he’ll abandon the ship he has sailed so long and for such profit.
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streetphotobeing,
Thanks for the link.
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Markps2,
Thanks.
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Rachell777,
You’re probably right.
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ConcernedCarer,
Thanks for coming in, and for your words of encouragement.
Best wishes.
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Rachel777,
Yes. But I still have hope. Perhaps a deluded hope, but hope nonetheless. The hope that psychiatry, with its fake illnesses and destructive “treatments”, will perish from the land.
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Lawrence,
Beautiful analogy!
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Oldhead,
“So has society lost its ability to recognize false logic, or are people too intimidated to reveal their inner suspicions when they pick up on any of the disingenuous contradictions permeating such thoroughly mediocre propaganda?”
That’s a great question. How can they continue to get away with this drivel? My hope (belief?) is that as more and more people join the ranks of anti-psychiatry, we’ll reach a sort of critical mass that will be hard for psychiatrists to ignore.
Of course, they’re already positioning themselves for this. Remember the great psychiatrist Ronald Pies, MD, asserting that psychiatry never really promoted the chemical imbalance theory! And currently Allen Frances is busy pushing the fairy tale that it was not psychiatry that was doing all the damage, but rather the mean ol’ GPs, and of course, pharma.
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Fiachra,
Yes. Some things don’t change.
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astrong,
Sorry to learn of your tardive dyskinesia. Interestingly, virtually every member of the general public with whom I’ve discussed this has expressed the belief that the tardive dyskinesia and the akathisia are “symptoms of the illness”. When I explain that they’re adverse effects of the drugs, the response is invariably one of utter disbelief. But psychiatry has done nothing to dispel this misperception.
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Danzig666,
Thanks for coming in. Certainly the dogmatism and the spurious nature of the “diagnoses” are dehumanizing, destructive, and disempowering.
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Slaying_the-Dragon_of_Psychiatry,
Thanks.
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