Myth of Mental Illness

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. ...

I recently wrote a post called: Do Major Tranquilizers Make Things Worse? The post was based on a study by Drs. Harrow and Jobe in which they speculated that the high relapse rate of “schizophrenics” who stop taking their drugs may have more to do with drug withdrawal than the supposed drug efficacy. Monica, at BeyondMeds, pointed out that these drugs should not be called tranquilizers because some of their effects (e.g. akathisia, tardive dyskinesia, etc.) are anything but tranquil. And this, of course, is a good point. ...

It is easy to vilify psychiatrists. Their spurious conceptual framework, toxic “treatments’ and blatantly corrupt links to pharma make them easy targets. Their destructive activities, to which they resolutely cling, invite criticism which they steadfastly ignore. Any thoughts that perhaps they had seen the errors of their ways have been dashed by the soon-to-be published DSM-5, which promises to be business as usual, only more so. HOW DID THEY GET THIS WAY? ...

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.” ...

It is a central theme of this website that there are no mental illnesses/disorders, and that the psychiatric medicalization of ordinary human problems is arbitrary, spurious, and destructive. The widespread acceptance of ADHD as a mental illness/chemical imbalance has no scientific underpinning, but rather is based on marketing and promotion. The ADHD “diagnosis” is particularly destructive, in that it targets children, and serves as the justification for “treating” these children with dangerous drugs. ...

BACKGROUND There’s an article by Jack Carney, DSW, on this topic on Mad in America. Jack refers to the DSM-5 field trials published earlier this year in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Inter-rater reliability is measured by a statistic called a kappa score. A score of 1 means perfect inter-rater agreement; a score of 0 indicates zero agreement. In psychosocial research a kappa score of 0.7 or above is generally considered good. ...

Today, courtesy of Monica, I came across an article by Marilyn Wedge, PhD. It’s called Six Problems with Psychiatric Diagnosis for Children. You can read it here. Here are some quotes: "Psychiatric diagnoses contained in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders are not classified by causes like genuine medical diseases." "Perhaps worst of all, a child who has been labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis grows up believing that there is something wrong with her, that she is somehow “abnormal.” ...

BACKGROUND I recently wrote a post called DSM-5: Another Step in the Wrong Direction. In that article I argued that DSM-5 was simply another step in the APA’s ongoing agenda to medicalize all human problems and to legitimize the administration of drugs as the front line “solution” to these problems. I also expressed concern that the widely publicized movement to develop an alternative diagnostic system might not look all that different from what we have today. ...

The Newtown mass murders have generated widespread demand for improved “mental health” services, and even for mandatory mental health screenings for schoolchildren. The notion embedded in these demands is that the perpetrators are “mentally ill,” and that early identification will enable psychiatrists to treat (i.e. drug) them before they can do any damage. As I’ve said many times, the APA’s definition of a mental disorder is essentially: any human activity that entails significant problems. So, of course, provided we accept this definition, all the mass murderers are mentally ill. But all we’re saying here is that mass murder is problematic behavior. (Wow – such wisdom!) ...