Dealing With Problems of Daily Living

BACKGROUND The primary purpose of the bio-psychiatric-pharma faction is to expand turf and sell more drugs. This is a multi-faceted endeavor, one component of which is disease mongering. This consists of using marketing techniques to persuade large numbers of people that they have an illness which needs to be treated with drugs. With regards to postpartum depression, it is an obvious fact that some mothers do indeed experience a measure of depression in the period after giving birth. The term postpartum depression has in the past been generally understood to mean that the problem had something to do with hormones. Today brain chemicals are blamed. ...

The DSM-5 drafting committee considered including Internet addiction in the upcoming revision, but eventually backed off, at least for now. Apparently they decided to put it in the category “requiring further study.” So it’ll be in DSM-6. Meanwhile, people are being given the “diagnosis” anyway – and of course, the “treatment.” AN ILLUSTRATIVE CASE I’m grateful to Tallaght Trialogue for sending me a link to a recent article in the UK’s MailOnline. It was written by Rebecca Seales and Eleanor Harding. You can see it here. ...

BACKGROUND The “diagnosis” of separation anxiety disorder has been around since DSM-III. In DSM-IV it is defined as “…excessive anxiety concerning separation from the home or from those to whom the person is attached.” (DSM-IV-TR p 121). The APA’s prevalence estimate is 4%. This “diagnosis” is listed under the heading: “Other Disorders of Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence.” One of the criteria is that the problem must begin before age 18, and in practice the “diagnosis” was generally confined to children under the age of 10 or so. ...

BACKGROUND On March 19 of this year an article by Martin Harrow and Thomas Jobe was published in the Schizophrenia Bulletin: Does Long-Term Treatment of Schizophrenia with Antipsychotic Medications Facilitate Recovery? You can see it here. The term “antipsychotics” embraces drugs such as Haldol, Risperdal, Thorazine, etc… I prefer the term major tranquilizers, because it is more accurate. Drs. Harrow and Job have conducted a long-term (15-20 year) study of people diagnosed with the condition known as schizophrenia. They found that individuals who had been given “anti-psychotics” continuously for these long periods showed “…considerable psychopathology and few sustained periods of recovery.” ...

Today, courtesy of Talla Trialogue on Twitter, I have read an article by Shari Roan called Blood Test for Depression Proves It’s Not All In Your Head. You can see it here. The article appears to be an interview with Lonna Williams, the CEO of Ridge Diagnostics. This company is reportedly introducing a blood test for depression. The test is called MDDScore and is expected to cost $745. The article tells us that: “You get a numerical score that suggests how likely it is that you have depression. Studies show that MDD Score is about as accurate at making a diagnosis as the most rigorous evaluations.” ...

Recently, courtesy of Lucy Johnstone on twitter, I came across a chapter from Steven Coles’ book Madness Contested. The book was published in the UK in February 2013, but won’t be available in the US until September of this year. The chapter is called “A proven alternative to the medical model in mental health care?" and describes the Leeds Survivor Led Crisis Service, which for twelve years has provided a genuine alternative to mainstream mental health services. ...

Things are changing in the mental health business. People of various persuasions are attacking the medicalization of human problems on the grounds of spuriousness and destructiveness. Others are drawing attention to the ineffectiveness of the drugs, the dangerous side-effects, and the corrupting links between psychiatrists and big pharma. But perhaps the change that ultimately is going to have the greatest effect is the fact that more and more service users are shucking off the archaic legacy of silence and shame, and are telling their stories. They are telling us that the “treatment” in many cases hurt them rather than helped, but more importantly, that they are now finding their way not through psychiatry, but through something much more powerful and effective: people helping people! ...

There’s a nice article at Involuntary Transformation on this topic. The author, Nathan, poses a very interesting question: since drugs cause damage to children and there are many better alternatives, why do so many parents choose the drug option? Nathan goes on to suggest that the reason lies in the effort that the pharmaceutical industry invests in marketing, and he calls for “…complete and total transparency in all Mental Health Services.” ...

The routine drugging of children for the ordinary problems of childhood is destructive for two reasons: firstly because of the toxic effects of the pharmaceutical products, and secondly because it conveys to the child the message that drugs are an acceptable way to deal with life’s problems. This latter kind of damage is graphically illustrated in a tragic NY Times article by Ted Gup. You can see it here. Ted is a fellow of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. ...

Today I received a short comment from Ruth Elliot on my post Psychiatric “Diagnoses” for Children. Ruth linked to an article by Claudia Gold, MD. Claudia is a Freudian psychoanalyst. My ideological orientation is behavioral, and if you were to ask people in this business: what is the opposite of a behaviorist? you would probably get the answer: a Freudian psychoanalyst. And vice versa. They are two very different ways of conceptualizing human activity. ...