Myth of Mental Illness

BACKGROUND Obviously there are many points of contention between mainstream biological psychiatrists on the one hand, and those of us who condemn this system as spurious and destructive. Much of what I’ve written on this website over the past four years has been an elucidation of these differences. Today I would like to focus on just one of these differences: disempowerment of clients in the psychiatric system, and empowerment within frameworks that are more psychosocial/behavioral in nature. ...

Last week, thanks to a tweet from Ginger Breggin, I came across an article by Jeffrey Lieberman entitled Psychiatry: Nothing to Be Defensive About. Dr. Lieberman is president of the APA, and has gone on record more than once as saying that all these dreadful criticisms of psychiatry are very unfair, and that psychiatrists are good guys who have the high moral ground. Well, he’s back, and his current article is about on a par with previous efforts. ...

Sandra Steingard, MD, is a practicing psychiatrist who from time to time posts articles on Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America website. Dr. Steingard apparently prescribes psychotropic drugs in her practice, but she is by no means a pill-for-every-problem practitioner, and her articles are always interesting and thought-provoking. Dr. Steingard posted A Paradox Revealed – Again on Mad in America on July 7, 2013. In this article she mentions the recent study by Lex Wunderink et al, which found that people being treated for first episode psychosis were doing a great deal better functionally after seven years if their neuroleptic drugs had been discontinued or reduced relatively early in the process, as compared to individuals who were retained on the drugs for two years. ...

On Twitter yesterday, Robert Stamatakis commented: "I have to ask, I don't understand. Do you work in the UK? Your descriptions of psychiatry are nothing I recognize. These descriptions of psychiatry are nothing like the practice I see on a daily basis." I am certainly a very outspoken critic of psychiatry, and in that regard Robert's question/challenge is a fair one, to which I will try to respond. My primary criticism of modern psychiatry – and indeed the criticism that underpins all the others – is that its fundamental concepts are spurious. ...

There’s a very important article on Mad in America. It’s called Does NIMH Follow the Rules of Science? A Startling Study, by Niall McLaren, MD, dated July 9, 2013. Dr. McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist who has relentlessly combed the literature for proof of the fundamental psychiatric claim – “…that a full understanding of the brain will give a full understanding of mental disorder, with no questions unanswered.” He found nothing in the way of proof! ...

BACKGROUND I’ve recently read Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, by Ethan Watters (Free Press, 2010). It’s a great book, the theme of which is that western countries, especially America, are exporting the medicalization of human problems to less developed regions of the world. The new “illnesses” are being avidly promoted as if they had the same kind of reality as pneumonia or cancer, and are being foisted on vulnerable populations, with little regard for their impact on the cultures, ideas, sensitivities, and health of the recipients. ...

There’s a Mail Online article about high numbers of antidepressant prescriptions in Blaenau Gwent. The article is dated June 29, and was drawn to my attention by Nanu Grewal from Australia. The article is about a town in Wales where reportedly one sixth of the population is taking antidepressants. That’s about 17%. So presumably all these people have brain disease. Or perhaps it’s because the unemployment rate is double the national average. That in itself is depressing, but to make matters even worse, a “diagnosis” of depression can reportedly help a person qualify for additional government benefits – a strong temptation for people living below the poverty line. ...

There’s a must-read article on Leonie’s Blog: The grieving mother is at it again! Leonie lost a son to suicide four years ago. The suicide occurred 17 days after he started citalopram, an SSRI, marketed as Celexa. Leonie heard a ‘science expert’ on the radio this week attributing depression to low serotonin levels in the brain. Leonie asks: "How can these idiots keep spouting the ‘chemical imbalance’ rubbish? It is drug company propaganda at its best and has no scientific basis, no factually based evidence whatsoever to conclude that depression is anything other than a reaction to life itself." ...

There’s a recent post, The role of the psychologist in social change, on Peter Kinderman’s blog that is well worth reading. Peter begins with Martin Luther King’s 1967 statement: “…there are some things in our society, some things in our world, to which we … must always be maladjusted if we are to be people of good will." It is a fact that many, probably most, of the problems that bring people into the mental health system are rooted in poverty, victimization, discrimination and other negative life circumstances. Peter reminds us that: ...

DSM-5 was published on May 18, 2013, amidst great criticism. The fundamental criticism was, and is, that the problems listed in the manual are not illnesses in any ordinary sense of the term. Other critics focused on the pathologizing of normality, the expansion of the diagnostic net by the lowering of thresholds, and the lack of reliability of the so-called diagnoses. The response from the psychiatric community has been mixed. Some, probably most, psychiatrists are keeping their heads down, getting on with the business of selling pills, and hoping that the gravy train won't derail. Others are busy at damage control ...