A Behavioral Approach to Mental Disorders

There’s a very interesting article by Paris Williams on Mad in America, The “Mental Illness” Paradigm: An “Illness” That is out of Control. You can see it here. The author gives us a compelling critique of the “mental illness” model, and also presents us with an alternative paradigm. The alternative is: "… to see those conditions we generally refer to as 'mental illnesses' as instead the natural manifestations of an individual’s struggles with the fundamental dilemmas inherent in simply being alive." ...

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, there were a great many calls for “more mental health services” or “better access to mental health services.” Many of us on this side of the fence groaned, because we knew that any official or private response to this call would be on the lines of more of the same. The same spurious concepts; the same pseudo-illnesses; the same destructive drugging; the same destructive electric shock “treatment”; the same involuntary confinement; and the same stigmatization and loss of empowerment. ...

There’s a new post on Mick Bramham’s website called “A time to grieve, a time to console, and a time to profit?” You can see it here. You might have thought that, given the adverse publicity that pharma has been receiving in recent years, they would be easing up on their expansionist agenda. But you would be wrong. The APA has declared open season on bereavement, and although DSM-5 won’t be released for a few more weeks, Eli Lilly is already grooming their SNRI Cymbalta as a “treatment” for this pseudo illness. ...

There’s an article in Science Daily (April 29, 2013) titled “Antidepressants Linked with Increased Risks After Surgery,” which I found courtesy of Monica on Twitter. You can see it here. The article is a report of a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. You can see an abstract of the study here. The study was conducted by Andrew Auerbach MD et al, and involved examining the records of 530,416 patients who had undergone major surgery between January 2006 and December 2008 at 375 US hospitals. ...

I don’t have precise figures, but I would guess that psychiatrists constitute less than 5% of the professional staff in the mental health system The other 95% are psychologists, counselors, social workers, case managers, behavior analysts, case aides, art therapists, occupational therapists, job coaches, etc., etc… All of these other professions have specialized training, both theoretical and practical, and it is reasonable to suppose that they bring to their jobs a wide range of conceptual orientations, and an equally wide range of practical skills. ...

There has been a great deal of discussion on this topic in recent years. Families of suicide victims tend to blame the pills; the pharma companies blame the depression for which the pills were prescribed. Personally, I’ve read and heard a good many reports from people who have taken the pills and shortly afterwards experienced fairly strong suicidal urges pretty much out of the blue. The frequency and similarity of these accounts is – at the very least – cause for concern. ...

I recently came across Thinking About Mental Health: Myths, treatment risks & alternatives. You can find it here. It’s written by Mick Bramham, from Dorset, England. Here are some quotes: From the post Depression: Serotonin Imbalance? "The whole idea of antidepressants supposedly correcting chemical imbalances has more to do with drug company marketing than evidence-based science." "Unfortunately, drug companies are known to exaggerate the benefits of their products and to play down the risks;" ...

We’ve all known for a long time that neuroleptic drugs damage brain cells. But now it seems clear that they also increase the risk of osteoporosis and consequently bone fractures. There’s an article about this in the International Journal of Endocrinology, dated March 2013. It’s titled Osteoporosis Associated with Antipsychotic Treatment in Schizophrenia, and was written by Haishan Wu et al, from the Central South University in Changsha, China. I came upon the article through Robert Whitaker’s site Mad in America. ...

Thank you to Tallaght Trialogue for drawing my attention to Blue Horizon Stem Cells (you can see their website here) and a recent article they’ve written titled Mood Disorder (here). The article contains a very brief discussion of the term mood disorder, including a mention of “major depressive disorder” and “bipolar disorder.” It then goes on to say: "To find out more about how you may benefit from stem cell therapy, please complete our Contact Us form and one of our physicians will reach out to you for a private consultation." ...

I recently wrote a post on postpartum depression which has generated a certain amount of negative comment. For this reason, I thought it might be helpful to clarify some points. DEFINITION AND EXPLANATIONS The DSM makes no mention of postpartum depression as such. The closest it comes is major depressive disorder with postpartum onset. In other words, the APA conceptualizes postpartum depression as ordinary major depression (which can incidentally range in severity from mild to severe) which happens to occur in the postpartum period. This is in marked contrast to the popular notion that postpartum depression is somehow a function of the postpartum woman’s hormones, and is fundamentally different from other forms of depression. ...