A Behavioral Approach to Mental Disorders

More Interesting Reading

July 1, 2011

On June 23, the New York Review of Books, one of the most prestigious literary magazines in the country, published a piece by Marcia Angell.  I’ve mentioned Dr. Angell before.  She had been editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine  and had come out strongly against the extent to which drug companies are controlling and [...]

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More Questionable Research

June 9, 2011

The National Institute of Health (NIH) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  It is the primary U.S. Government agency responsible for medical research. The NIH has 27 sub-departments, one of which is the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).  The NIMH has an annual budget of $1.5 billion, which [...]

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An Interesting Post On Depression

April 12, 2011

There’s some interesting reading at Mercola.com posted April 6, 2011. Dr. Mercola states that depression is not an illness! – and that this bogus illness was created by psychiatrists and drug companies in order to sell drugs! No surprises there for regular readers of this site.  Unfortunately Dr. Mercola doesn’t take the logic far enough.  [...]

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Psychiatrists Are Drug-pushers

March 16, 2011

There’s an interesting article on the New York Times website: Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy (March 5, 2011). The essence of the article is that psychiatrists no longer engage in talk therapy to any great extent, but instead prescribe behavior-altering drugs. What’s interesting about this is that the author, Gardiner [...]

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Diagnosis

March 6, 2011

I am writing this post as a response to a comment posted by medical blog in my previous post, More on So-called Bipolar Disorder. In the summer of 2001 I became very ill.  The symptoms were exhaustion and mild nosebleeds. I went to three different practitioners, but they all were dismissive of my concerns, assured [...]

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More on So-called Bipolar Disorder

February 24, 2011

A few days ago, I received the following email: Hi Phil, I would like to hear from you how we can survive the bipolar disorder, as I understand bipolar is a very serious disease. Regards, [Name] The question seems important enough to warrant a more public response, though I have omitted the writer’s name to [...]

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More On Disability

February 16, 2011

In his book Anatomy of an Epidemic, Robert Whitaker drew attention to the increasing numbers on the Social Security disability rolls due to so-called mental illness.  Robert raises the possibility that the drugs routinely used to “treat” depression may be contributing to the problem.  In a recent post, he discusses this matter further. I think [...]

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Business As Usual

February 12, 2011

Christopher Lane, author of Shyness has written an interesting post.  The gist of the matter is as follows. There’s a class of drugs known as benzodiazepines (benzos for short) that are promoted by Pharma and prescribed by psychiatrists to “treat” anxiety.  (As if anxiety were an illness!)  See my post on the So-called Anxiety Disorders. Benzos [...]

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Overeating Is Not An Illness

February 7, 2011

DSM lists two principal “illnesses” under the heading Eating Disorders:  anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Anorexia Nervosa means chronic and pernicious fasting even though food is readily available.  “Anorexia” is Greek for lack of appetite.  “Nervosa” is Greek for nervous. Bulimia means recurrent episodes of binge eating followed by self-induced vomiting or other methods of purging.  [...]

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The Drugging of Children

January 17, 2011

Babies are born selfish.  Not only has the newborn no consideration for others, he isn’t even aware of others.  For the newborn, the universe is him/herself. Babies are born bad-tempered. When their needs are not immediately met, they cry.  If they are still not met, they scream, turn red, and thrash their arms and legs.  [...]

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