A Behavioral Approach to Mental Disorders

INTRODUCTION I have recently read an interesting paper titled: Liberating People From Psychiatric Diagnoses: Exploring Severe Mental, Behavioral, and Emotional Disturbances Through Biographic Documentaries. The author is Stephen Wong, PhD, Emeritus Associate Professor, Florida International University. The piece was published in Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Volume 23, Number 2, 2021. Here are some quotes from the paper, interspersed with my thoughts and comments. Here’s the abstract: "This article posits that the DSM-5 and its psychiatric diagnoses are a monumental artifact of social power rather than a useful system for naming, describing, classifying, or understanding mental disorders. Two biographic documentaries, 'Crumb' and 'Jupiter’s Wife', are examined as alternative information about people with severe mental, behavioral, and emotional disturbances, which ordinarily would be diagnosed as schizophrenia or a related psychotic disorder. In contrast to the disease processes implied by psychiatric diagnoses, these detailed documentaries revealed particular social (e.g., lack of positive role models, bullying), environmental (e.g., poverty, homelessness), and historical (e.g., child abuse, failure in school) factors that might have brought about the individual’s personal problems. Seeing people in the actual places where they live and hearing about their struggles first-hand can evoke sympathy and empathy in viewers, potentially freeing them from the technical abstractions and pathological attributions inherent in psychiatric diagnoses." ...

INTRODUCTION I have recently read: ‘The Explanation You Have Been Looking For’: Neurobiology as Promise and Hermeneutic Closure The piece was written by Joseph E. Davis, PhD, Research Professor of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia. It was published online by Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry on the 5th of August, 2021. ABSTRACT Here’s the paper’s abstract, quoted in full: "The biomedical aspiration of psychiatry has fundamentally reoriented clinical practice since the DSM-III in 1980 and reverberated in the public sphere. Over time, lay public understanding of the causes of mental suffering has increasingly endorsed biological conceptions. In this paper, I explore the sources from which a neurobiological model for mental suffering reaches ordinary people, and investigate its rhetorical appeal, personal appropriation, and consequences. Drawing on interviews and other data, I show that these sources—physicians, popular media, and advertising—share common ontological and moral assumptions. These assumptions, in turn, influence how people take up neurobiological explanation to account for their suffering, and how, paradoxically, they join it to their projects of self-determination. I conclude by considering how, from a phenomenological perspective, a neurobiological account fails to enhance self-knowledge or determination but leads to a hermeneutic dead end." ...

INTRODUCTION Since about the mid 1960’s, the great majority of psychiatrists have abandoned any form of psychosocial perspective, and have insisted that the various items listed in successive revisions of the DSM are “real illnesses”. The usual justification for this is based on the assertion that the “symptoms” of these items are caused by neurological malfunctions (e.g., chemical imbalances, neural circuitry aberrations, etc.). Although there is no evidence to support these claims, psychiatrists continue to promote them. I have written about these promotions (e.g., here, here, here, and here). Many other anti-psychiatry writers have also criticized these simplistic, unproven theories. ...

On March 14, 2021, I saw the following notice on the AntiDepAware website: "I have decided reluctantly to end my involvement with this website. Although the site will remain online in the meantime, there will be no further updates, and the email address is no longer valid. Many thanks to all those who have contacted me and given me encouragement. Brian" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...

Disease, illness, disorders, etc. INTRODUCTION One of the problems in the present debate about neurochemical imbalances is that almost every word in the English language has at least two meanings, and sometimes four or five. Some English speakers deplore this state of affairs and regard it as an endless source of confusion. Others consider it an indication of the richness of the language and its ability to express finely tuned nuances. Others use it as a tool of obfuscation. ...

 FREE DOWNLOAD: SEE BELOW   I have recently read a remarkable novel with a strong anti-psychiatry theme. It is titled: Half Love. The author, Tej Gilmon, is a psychiatric nurse from California who enjoys video gaming and watching the Giants whenever he can. "Imagine a society where it has become illegal to label people with the tag of a mental illness diagnosis as a result of a global medical scandal." ...

According to Wikipedia, Lake Alice Hospital was a rural psychiatric facility in Lake Alice, Manawatū,-Whanganui, New Zealand. It opened in August, 1950, and closed its doors finally in October 1999. Also from Wikipedia: "Former patients of the hospital's child and adolescent unit made allegations that abuse took place there during the 1970s, including the use of electroconvulsive therapy and paraldehyde injections as punishment.[4] The New Zealand government issued a written apology in 2001, and has paid out a total of NZ$10.7 million in compensation to 183 former patients." ...

INTRODUCTION On June 23, 2020, Awais Aftab, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Case Western, interviewed Ronald Pies, MD, also a psychiatrist, and a professor at Tufts and SUNY. During the interview, Dr. Aftab stated: "I have followed the controversy surrounding 'chemical imbalance' with some interest over the years, including the multiple articles you have written on this issue. Generally, I agree with you that the chemical imbalance was never accepted as the 'truth' by academic psychiatry or by our professional organizations. It was likely an advertisement strategy by pharmaceutical companies that took on a life of its own. However, I am not sure I am ready to exonerate our profession. At best, it seems like we were silent spectators, watching as this misleading idea spread like wildfire in the society (including among our patients and patient advocacy groups), doing little to nothing to correct these public misperceptions. At worst, it seems like at least some of us were participants. Ken Kendler writes in a 2019 JAMA Psychiatry commentary, 'I would commonly see patients who would say some version of "my psychiatrist said I have a chemical imbalance in my brain."'10 I have had a very similar experience myself. Either way, surely as a profession, we could have done a better job of educating our patients and the public?" ...

INTRODUCTION For the past several years, the eminent and scholarly Ronald Pies, MD, psychiatrist, of SUNY Upstate Medical and Tufts Universities, has labored the point that psychiatry has never endorsed the simplistic chemical imbalance theory of “mental illness”. As various anti-psychiatry bloggers, including myself, began to accumulate a great many instances of prominent psychiatrists doing just that, Dr. Pies began digging himself in on this particular topic. In Nuances, Narratives, and the “Chemical Imbalance” Debate (April 2014, Medscape), he wrote: ...

INTRODUCTION On September 9, 2020, Jonathan Stea, PhD, Tyler Black, MD, and Joseph Pierre, MD, published a piece on MedPage Today. The article is titled Why Anti-Psychiatry Now Fails and Harms. Dr. Stea is a clinical psychologist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Calgary. Dr. Black is the psychiatric medical director of British Columbia Children’s Hospital. He is also a clinical instructor in psychiatry at the University of British Columbia. ...