At the risk of stating the obvious, ADHD is not an illness. Rather, it is an unreliable and disempowering label for a loose collection of arbitrarily chosen and vaguely defined behaviors. ADHD has been avidly promoted as an illness by pharma-psychiatry for the purpose of selling stimulant drugs. In which endeavor, they have been phenomenally successful, but, as in other areas of psychiatry, the hoax is unraveling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...
I have recently come across an interesting paper: How to Understand and then Escape from Depression. It’s written by Saul Youssef, a professor of physics at Boston University. The central theme of the paper is that persistent or chronic depression is caused by “…an unconscious withdrawal of participation in a person’s own internal decision making processes.” Here are some quotes: "I have been depressed for most of my life, and, at various times, I have tried most of the recommended treatments for depression. I have tried Saint John’s Wort, exercise, Yoga, talk therapy, SSRIs, thyroid supplements and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. In my case, I would say that thyroid supplements, exercise and Yoga helped the most and all of them helped at least a little bit. Unfortunately, none of these treatments helped dramatically. Then, however, in late 2013 and early 2014, I finally figured it out. I came to understand what was happening in my own head and why it was causing my own depression and I was able to figure out a way to escape. I don’t mean that I am now successfully managing my depression. I mean it’s gone. I am writing up what I think is going on and what I did to escape because I don’t think that my case is unusual. I think that exactly the same thing will work for many people." ...
On April 7, John Read, PhD, a psychologist at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, published a short article on Mad in America. The title is: Largest Survey of Antidepressants Finds High Rates of Adverse Emotional and Interpersonal Effects. The article presents the results of a survey conducted in New Zealand and published online in February, 2014 in Psychiatry Research. The survey involved 1,827 individuals who were taking antidepressants. Dr. Read is widely published. ...
On November 17, Scientific American published on its MIND blog website Why We Need to Abandon the Disease-Model of Mental Health Care, by Peter Kinderman, PhD. Here are some quotes: "The idea that our more distressing emotions such as grief and anger can best be understood as symptoms of physical illnesses is pervasive and seductive. But in my view it is also a myth, and a harmful one. Our present approach to helping vulnerable people in acute emotional distress is severely hampered by old-fashioned, inhumane and fundamentally unscientific ideas about the nature and origins of mental health problems. We need wholesale and radical change, not only in how we understand mental health problems, but also in how we design and commission mental health services." ...
On July 22, Just Another Word Press.com site ran an article called Evolution not revolution: My thoughts on the DCP’s call for a paradigm shift. The website is owned and operated by MTAS Psychology, an agency providing psychological therapy and expert witness services in Manchester, UK. The article is unsigned. The primary focus of the article is the paradigm shift paper issued on May 13, 2013 by the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology. That paper, as readers may remember, drew attention to “conceptual and empirical limitations” inherent in psychiatry’s so-called diagnostic system, and called for a paradigm shift – “towards a conceptual system not based on a ‘disease’ model.” ...
On June 6, I wrote a post titled Psychiatry DID Promote the Chemical Imbalance Theory. The article was published on Mad in America, and generated a number of comments on that site, five of which were from TherapyFirst, who in his first comment identified himself as Joel Hassman, MD, a practicing psychiatrist. Dr. Hassman did not argue with the general notion that psychiatric practice today consists almost exclusively of the prescription of drugs. Indeed, in one of his own blog posts on June 16, 2013, he wrote in an open letter to newly qualified psychiatrists: ...
On May 16, the New York Times ran an article titled Thousands of Toddlers Are Medicated for A.D.H.D., Report Finds, Raising Worries, by Alan Schwarz. Here is the opening sentence: "More than 10,000 American toddlers 2 or 3 years old are being medicated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder outside established pediatric guidelines, according to data presented on Friday by an official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." The CDC official is Susanna Visser, MS, DrPh, Acting Associate Director of Science for the Division of Human Development and Disability, and she was speaking at the annual Rosalyn Carter Georgia Mental Health Forum. I have not been able to find the text of Ms. Visser's speech. (It will probably be published later.) Meanwhile, there is a good deal of information in Alan Schwarz's article. Here are some more quotes: "The report, which found that toddlers covered by Medicaid are particularly prone to be put on medication such as Ritalin and Adderall, is among the first efforts to gauge the diagnosis of A.D.H.D. in children below age 4. Doctors at the Georgia Mental Health Forum at the Carter Center in Atlanta, where the data was presented, as well as several outside experts strongly criticized the use of medication in so many children that young." ...
In January 2014, the journal Research on Social Work Practice ran a special issue called A Critical Appraisal of the DSM-5: Social Work Perspectives. There are fifteen articles on this general theme, and together they present a wide range of arguments against the DSM system. Social workers represent the numerically biggest group of mental health practitioners in the US, and it is particularly gratifying to see a major social work journal addressing this topic so forthrightly. ...
In 2006, Laurence Jerome, a Canadian psychiatrist, and two colleagues wrote a paper titled What We Know About ADHD and Driving Risk: A Literature Review, Meta-Analysis and Critique. It was published in the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in August, 2006. The primary result of the meta-analysis was: "Current data support the utility of stimulant medication in improving driving performance in younger ADHD drivers." The study is lengthy and well-referenced, but in keeping with standard psychiatric practice, it conceptualizes and presents ADHD as a "…common psychiatric disorder…" with symptoms of "…inattention, impulsiveness and hyperactivity…" In other words, they present ADHD as something that a person has rather than as something that a person does. The problem with this approach is that it creates the impression that meaningful or significant correlations/effects have been found, where in fact all that has happened is an elucidation of the terms used. For instance, the authors refer to a study by Fried et al. (2006) and state: ...
About six months ago, I wrote a post called Health Care Reform and Psychiatry. In that article, I gave a brief account of the APA’s Council on Communications, and I expressed the belief that the council seemed more concerned with PR (in the most tawdry sense of the term) than with any serious examination or reform of psychiatric practices. Lately, I was browsing the APA blog Healthy Minds, Healthy Lives, and it seemed that a good deal of what I was reading seemed to have a fairly heavy PR component. So I opened the Council on Communications tab and found that their lead page is pretty much as it was six months ago. ...