A Behavioral Approach to Mental Disorders

On April 30, 2019, the very eminent and learned psychiatrist Ronald Pies, MD, published a piece in Psychiatric Times titled Debunking the Two Chemical Imbalance Myths, Again. Here’s the opening paragraph: "Like the legendary Count Dracula, who could be killed only by driving a stake through his heart, some myths seem almost immortal. For more than eight years now, I have tried to drive a stake through the heart of two myths regarding the so-called 'chemical imbalance theory'1-3—but with only limited success, as a recent piece in The New Yorker brought home to me.4" ...

On August 19, 2018, an article titled The Reality of Mental Illness was published on Psychology Today. The authors were Ronald Pies, MD, and Mark Ruffalo, LCSW. Dr. Pies is a professor of psychiatry at Tufts and at SUNY. Professor Ruffalo has a private psychotherapy practice in Tampa, Florida. He is also an instructor of medical education (psychiatry) at the University of Central Florida, an adjunct professor of social work at University of South Florida, and a voluntary associate professor of psychiatry at Centerstone, “…a not-for-profit healthcare organization…[that]…provides mental health and substance abuse treatment, education and support to communities in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee and additionally offers individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities life skills development, employment and housing services.” ...

On May 16, 2018, the prestigious and venerable psychiatrist Allen Frances, MD, gave an interview to Christiane Amanpour on CNN. You can see the video here. It’s titled How Antidepressant Withdrawal “Can Trap People”. Here’s how the interview opened: CA: "So you know, I just wanted to start by saying that who knew that antidepressants were addictive. It's not what you associate with things like antidepressants. You think of pain-killers, obviously, and drugs and alcohol, and cigarettes." ...

In the May 2018 issue of Current Psychiatry, there’s an editorial by Henry Nasrallah, MD. Dr. Nasrallah is a highly renowned psychiatrist, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal. He is also chair of the St. Louis University Department of Psychiatry. Here’s the opening paragraph of the article. "As the end of the academic year approaches, I always think of one last message to send to the freshly minted psychiatrists who will complete their 4 years of post-MD training. This year, I thought of emphasizing the principles of psychiatric practice, which the graduates will deliver for the next 4 to 5 decades of their professional lives. Those essential principles are coded in the DNA of psychiatric practice, just as the construction of all organs in the human body is coded within the DNA of the 22,000 genes that comprise our 23 chromosomes." ...

In January, 2018, the clinical psychology division of the British Psychology Society published a very important paper. The document is titled The Power Threat Meaning Framework and is subtitled: "Towards the identification of patterns in emotional distress, unusual experiences and troubled or troubling behaviour, as an alternative to functional psychiatric diagnosis". The term functional psychiatric diagnosis does not imply that the "diagnoses" in question are useful or helpful, but is rather a reflection of the historical division of psychiatric "diagnoses" into those that are organic (i.e., stemming directly from brain damage or disease) and those that are functional (i.e. all the rest). This distinction was formally embedded in DSM-I (1952), but has been largely abandoned in psychiatry's promotion of the hoax that all their "diagnoses" stem from brain malfunctions. The authors of the report are: ...

Psychiatry is a hoax. The “mental illnesses” that it invents with increasing frequency are not illnesses in any ordinary sense of the term. Its “diagnoses” are destructive, disempowering, and stigmatizing; and its “treatments” (drugs and electric shocks) always do more damage than good, especially in the long term. In our struggle against this destructive travesty, it’s important to deliver our message in a variety of methods, including music. In July 2017, Richard Lewis published the music video “Benzo Blue” on Mad in America. The song “highlights the struggles of the millions of worldwide victims/survivors of prescribed benzodiazepine drugs such as Xanax, Ativan, Klonopin, and Valium.” ...

On September 4, 2017, the very eminent and prestigious psychiatrist Ronald Pies, MD, published an article on Psychiatric Times. The piece is titled: Hearing Voices and Psychiatry’s (Real) Medical Model. Dr. Pies is Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Psychiatric Times and a professor of psychiatry at SUNY and Tufts. He has written extensively on psychiatric and other matters, and has acquired a reputation for scholarship and erudition. His credibility, however, took a considerable knock in 2014 when, in a Medscape article he asserted that the chemical imbalance theory of depression was just a kind of urban legend that was never seriously promoted by psychiatry. This assertion, which was widely disputed, added a whole new dimension to the concept of the ivory tower. But it also provided an important insight into Dr. Pies’ primary position: that psychiatry is inherently benign, scientifically founded, and helpful, and that all suggestions to the contrary are logically flawed, factually mistaken, or both. The present “Hearing Voices…” piece is in this same vein. ...

"…they're human beings, for God's sake! In the name of everything holy, how can they do that to them?" (p 108) The Other Mrs. Smith, by Bonnie Burstow, 2017   In the March 2017 issue of the Journal of ECT, there was an editorial titled: Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) in the News: “Balance” Leads to Bias. The authors are Melissa Choy, BA; Kate Farber, BA; and Charles Kellner, MD. Dr. Kellner is Chief of Geriatric Psychiatry and Director of ECT Services at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, NY, and is clearly the senior author. I was unable to find much information concerning Ms. Choy or Ms. Farber. ...

Or, how to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. INTRODUCTION In November 2017, the British Journal of Psychiatry published a guest editorial titled Shrink rethink: rebranding psychiatry. The authors are Scottish psychiatrists Jim Crabb, MD and Neil Masson, MD, and Lee Barber, an advertising and marketing strategist. Both Drs. Crabb and Masson practice general adult psychiatry and also lecture in psychiatry at the University of Glasgow. They are both members of the Scottish Teaching and Recruitment Group (STARG), which “looks at ways of improving recruitment into psychiatry.” ...

On February 14, 2017, the very eminent psychiatrist Allen Frances, MD, published a letter in the New York Times. The main points of Dr. Frances’s letter are: that, contrary to some speculations and assertions, Donald Trump, President of the USA, does not meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder "because he does not suffer from the distress and impairment required to diagnose mental disorder." that "Bad behavior is rarely a sign of mental illness…"- Seven months later (September 2017), Dr. Frances gave an interview to Mary Elizabeth Williams. The interview was published on ALTERNET, and it restated and reinforced the points made in the letter to the New York Times. Here's a quote from the interview: "It's a great mistake to confuse bad behavior with mental illness." ...