Alternative perspective on psychiatry’s so-called mental disorders PHILIP HICKEY, PH.D.
I am a licensed psychologist, presently retired. I have worked in clinical and managerial positions in the mental health, corrections, and addictions fields in the United States and England. My wife and I have been married since 1970 and have four grown children.
The phrase “mental health” as used in the name of this website is simply a term of convenience. It specifically does not imply that the human problems embraced by this term are illnesses, or that their absence constitutes health. Indeed, the fundamental tenet of this site is that there are no mental illnesses, and that conceptualizing human problems in this way is spurious, destructive, disempowering, and stigmatizing.
The purpose of this website is to provide a forum where current practices and ideas in the mental health field can be critically examined and discussed. It is not possible in this kind of context to provide psychological help or advice to individuals who may read this site, and nothing written here should be construed in this manner. Readers seeking psychological help should consult a qualified practitioner in their own local area. They should explain their concerns to this person and develop a trusting working relationship. It is only in a one-to-one relationship of this kind that specific advice should be given or taken.
BACKGROUND
A couple of weeks ago (March 23), the New York Times did a feature on “Defining Mental Illness.” They invited Ronald Pies, MD (a psychiatry professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University and Tufts University) to submit a brief paper on this topic. Various people with opposing views were allowed to respond, and finally Dr. Pies presented a much longer summary and rebuttal. You can see the entire print version here.
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Somatic Symptom Disorder in DSM-5: You're Crazy to Worry about Your Health
In DSM-IV, there is a category called Somatoform Disorders, the common feature of which is a preoccupation with “… physical symptoms that suggest a general medical condition …and are not fully explained by a general medical condition…”
Four of the “diagnoses” in this category will be retired in DSM-5 and will be replaced by a new “diagnosis”: somatic symptom disorder. The four superseded “diagnoses” are:
1. somatization disorder 2. hypochondriasis 3. pain disorder 4. undifferentiated somatoform disorder.
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An Alternative to the Medical Model
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. ...
Pills, Pills, Pills
I’ve mentioned Alice Keys before on this blog. She’s a psychiatrist who laments the fact that psychiatry has become virtually synonymous with drug pushing, and has expressed her concerns from time to time on Robert Whitaker’s Mad in America website.
Alice has a new post up today, called Winners of the American Dream. You can see it here. She has decided to quit psychiatry. “Pills are the only thing left in psychiatry. So I stopped working.”
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People Helping People
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! ...
Marketing Psychotropic Drugs
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.”
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Drugging Children Gives Them the Wrong Message
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.
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In DSM-5, A-D-H-D Still Spells Misbehavior
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.
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Defining Mental Illness
There’s a take-no-prisoners article by Paula Caplan on Psychology Today. You can see Paula’s article here. (Thanks to @yobluemama2 on Twitter for the link.)
Here are some quotes:
"…the now well-established facts that psychiatric diagnosis is unscientific, does not reduce human suffering, and causes many kinds of serious harm."
"…the chances even that two therapists simultaneously meeting with the same person will assign that person the same label are poor, which of course means that diagnosis is not helpful in choosing treatment or improving outcome."
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Freudian Psychoanalysis is Better than Drugs
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.
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