BACKGROUND As I suppose everyone knows by now, psychiatry has been on the receiving end of some very serious criticism in recent years. The criticism has come from many sources, including: survivors of psychiatric “treatment,” non-psychiatric mental health practitioners, journalists, the general public, and even from some psychiatrists themselves. The content of the criticisms has… Continue Reading
DSM-5: How to Salvage a Shipwreck
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… Continue Reading
Psychiatry Still Doesn’t Get It
BACKGROUND On 3-4 June, the Institute of Psychiatry in London hosted an international conference to mark the publication of DSM-5. On June 10, Sir Simon Wessely, a department head at the Institute, published a paper called DSM-5 at the IoP. The paper is a summary of the conference proceedings, and also, in many respects, a… Continue Reading
Psychiatry Is Not Based On Science
On May 27, David Brooks, a New York Times columnist, wrote a piece on psychiatry called Heroes of Uncertainty. It’s an interesting and somewhat contradictory article. Here are some quotes: “As the handbook’s [DSM-5] many critics have noted, psychiatrists use terms like ‘mental disorder’ and ‘normal behavior,’ but there is no agreement on what these… Continue Reading