Robert Spitzer, MD, the architect of DSM-III (1980), died of heart disease on Christmas Day, 2015, at age 83. Most major media outlets published obituaries in which Dr. Spitzer was praised on the grounds that he had brought scientific rigor to psychiatry by naming and defining the various psychiatric illnesses. Here are a few illustrative… Continue Reading
The Spurious Chemical Imbalance Theory is Still Alive and Well
On April 5, 2015, Scott Alexander, MD, a trainee psychiatrist, posted an article titled Chemical Imbalance on his website Slate Star Codex. (The writer tells us that Scott Alexander is a blog handle and not his real name, but for convenience, I will refer to him as Dr. Alexander.) Dr. Alexander begins by noting that… Continue Reading
Polarization or Compromise
On February 2, Robert Whitaker published an article on Mad in America. The title is Disability and Mood Disorders in the Age of Prozac. The article echoes and updates one of the themes of his 2010 book “Anatomy of an Epidemic”: that the steady increase in the numbers of people receiving disability benefits for depression… Continue Reading
Antipsychiatry Stigma
The current issue of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica is devoted to the topic of psychiatry’s poor image, and what steps might be taken to improve it. Central to the discussion is a study Images of psychiatry and psychiatrists, by H. Stuart et al, – and seven commentaries on this study by various authors. The Stuart et al… Continue Reading
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