A Behavioral Approach to Mental Disorders

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. Although he rightly debunks depression as an illness, he clings to the notion that other “mental illnesses” are bona fide. ...

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 Harris, seems almost surprised at this “discovery.” In fact, the change from talk to pills occurred decades ago – during the 70’s I would say, and was more or less complete by 1980. ...

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 me that I was in good health, and sent me on my way. On August 8th of that year I was admitted to the hospital in Greeley, Colorado with complete kidney failure. The nephrologist at the hospital gave me the diagnosis that had eluded the earlier doctors: Wegener’s Granulomatosis - a rare autoimmune disease that attacks lungs, kidneys, and airways. I have been on dialysis every since. ...

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 safeguard confidentiality. So here’s my reply. Firstly, the condition known as “bipolar disorder” is emphatically NOT a disease. Rather, it is a loose cluster of behaviors which psychiatrists – in concert with the pharmaceutical companies – have called an illness with the purpose of selling drugs. ...

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 the reasons for the increase in the disability rolls are as follows: People who seek psychiatric help are being told routinely that they have brain abnormalities and that they need to take drugs for the rest of their lives –“just like diabetics.” This promotes a disability mindset which often translates into a disability application. 2. Applicants for disability based on the so-called mental illnesses are screened by either a psychiatrist or a psychologist. Both of these professional groups are immersed and heavily invested in the conceptualization of ordinary living problems as illnesses, and tend to accept uncritically the applicants’ claims that they “just can’t do anything.” ...

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 include such household names as Valium, Librium, Ativan, Xanax, etc.. When introduced in the 1960’s, these drugs were widely touted as “safe” tranquilizers. Readers may remember Valium as “mother’s little helper,” so called because it was marketed to millions of harried housewives as they struggled to adapt to an increasingly complex and multi-faceted lifestyle. ...

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. “Bulimia” is Greek for “the hunger of an ox.” Neither anorexia nor bulimia is an illness in any correct sense of the word. But my concern today is not with either of these issues, but rather with common, everyday overeating. ...

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. This is raw, unmitigated anger. Babies are born rude and ill-mannered. They vomit and urinate on other people’s clothes. They defecate in inappropriate places. They spit and drool. They grab people’s hair and poke their fingers in people’s eyes. ...

Every society in every generation makes errors. Some of the errors are minor. Some are major. One of the great errors of the 20th century was this: we accepted the spurious notion that a wide range of life’s problems were in fact illnesses. This spurious notion was initiated with good intentions – to provide shelter and humanitarian care for a relatively small number of individuals whose plight was truly dreadful. But then the concept of mental illness took off, fuelled largely by the efforts of psychiatrists to legitimize their status as “real” doctors. ...

We’ve known for years that drug companies give gifts to physicians. The gifts have taken many forms – pens, vacations, meals, free samples, etc… Physicians always insisted that these gifts didn’t influence their prescribing practice – that they always prescribed strictly in the best interests of their clients. Two trends have been exposed in recent years which demonstrate just how depraved this hand-in-glove relationship has become. Firstly, the “thought leader” ruse. Here’s how it works. A drug rep, usually an attractive young, perfectly groomed female, approaches a physician, usually male, and tells the physician that he has been identified as a thought leader in his area, and that they would like to recruit him to give presentations to groups of physicians and other healthcare workers. The physician, of course, will be paid generously for his time. He says “sure,” and the dance begins. The drug rep arranges the “training” sessions. The drug company provides the script and the refreshments. The mark – I mean the physician – delivers the script, in which the merits of the drug company’s product are lauded to the detriment of competitors. At the end of the session, the physician receives a check and goes away contented. Over the next few months more such sessions will be organized and the physician begins to think of his “speech” checks as regular income. He will also receive “coaching” from the drug rep if his presentation seems to lack the kind of conviction that the drug company feels warranted. (After all, they are paying the piper). ...