Psychiatry, anti-psychiatry and mental disease: Does psychiatry suck?
I found this link in Providentia
A Shocking Discovery (Part One)
It speaks about the discovery of the electroshock by the psychiatrists in the 1930s. As it seems, this is a series of articles discussing this issue. I felt compeled to offer my personal viewpoint concerning a few facts about psychiatry.
The above link may appear a little shocking to some people (pun intended). It describes psychiatrists killing dogs with electroshock in order to find a miracle electroshock cure and later testing this method on a human being with absolutely no proof or evidence that this would work. These practices don’t look scientific, nor do they look supportive to the patients. Obviously something stinks here.
Something stinks here bro
Yet, to those who have studied the history of psychiatry, this story doesn’t seem so strange.
We’ve all heard of lobotomy. It ain’t pretty and it ain’t good. And it failed to treat anything.
For those who don’t know, a lobotomy consists of plucking a thing into the forehead (frontal lobe) and cutting synapses and destroying brain regions (which probably they knew shit about what these regions were supposed to do) thus turning the patient into a rehabilitated living zombie.
Now, we have psychiatrists giving away drugs like they’re candies, without even knowing possible side-effects. Prozac was accused of causing teens to commit suicide and ritalin has been accused of causing heart problems and stunt growth.
The latest psychiatric achievement
Reading all this, one wonders why the psychiatrists would put themselves in so much trouble. To cure mental illness of course! But what the hell is really mental illness?
Could melancholy be considered a mental disease? Am I sick because I feel like shit all the time?
Can believing in strange things be considered a mental disease? Then why aren’t all the christians who believe in the raising of the dead, demons and people who walk on water considered schizophrenic?
Is a hypermobile child mentally sick? Why is it so strange for a child to be hypermobile? And why we give ritalin to him? And let’s say that being hypermobile is bad and we should administer ritalin to calm him down. But, why we would want to do that? To be more attentive at the class at school? Where he is going to learn what? About guys who walk on water? (see christians above).
The thing with mental illness is that it is not a disease. It’s a social label. Thomas Szasz once wrote that:
If you talk to God, you are praying;
If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
Which actually means, if god talks to you, you’re screwed.
You’re screwed darlin’
Thomas Szasz was one of the leading figures of the antipsychiatric movement.
Antipsychiatry considers psychiatry simply as a means of repression of whatever is considered "socially deviant". Psychiatry has in its roots biology, thus eliminating social problems as a cause of psychological problems (for example depression induced by unenmployment) and has authority over patients considered mentally ill, like, for example, the right to involuntary hospitalization.
Psychiatry also, belongs to system which includes universities, workplaces and drug companies that is a large part of the economy and benefits over people that are unable to work (these are the "mentally sick").
So it is very profitable. On the other hand, real treatment for these people means plain cost without any real benefit.
Anti-psychiatrists on the other hand advocates the use of humane treatments, which do not include chemical compounds or coercion.
Psychiatry is BIG business
From the beginning of this article the discussion has been focused mostly on social subjects which proves for sure on point: psychiatry has a lot of social implications. Whether mental illness is a social construct or not is a large debate, but surely psychiatry does not claim what psychiatrists claim it to be: plain medicine.
No guys, I’m sorry. Psychiatry has been proven again and again hopeless in trying to incorporate the biomedical model to mental disease. That is, the labeling of different diseases with certain symptoms and cures. The failure to find any biological treatments back in the first years of psychiatry gave rise to clinical psychology. The repeated use of force and "cures" with all side-effects gave rise to movements that rose to speak against it.
Of course, this doesn’t seem that psychological treatments work. Neither does this mean that biological treatments don’t. I’ve heard people telling me that a prozac a day changed their lives. There have been cases of psychologists sexually abusing their patients. And there are people who find it easier to take drugs than to change their environment (and many times they’re right).
But this doesn’t change the fact that psychiatry has commited crimes against humanity. Nor does it change the fact that mental illness, drugs and social stigma are issues that the average person, brainwashed by the media, has never heard of. Instead, he has a very clear view of what Holywood believes of mental health patients.
A typical holywood patient
Of course, there is always the other side. And when I’m talking of the other side, I don’t mean fanatical psychiatry fondamendalists. Take a look at this video posted on TED
Sherwin Nuland: My history of electroshock therapy
Link: www.youtube.com
This man describes how ECT (electroshock therapy) saved him from serious depression. Depression so serious, that no other cure could be proven helpful. Of course, later in the video he admits to the various problems he had in his life, which obviously made the problem even graver. However, as we said just before, not all people can change their lives, so maybe Sherwin Nuland was right. This therapy maybe indeed saved his life.
Of course, we wan’t stop there and we’ll show the anti-shock view, too. Dr. John Breeding, Ph.D has an excellent video on YouTube testifying against ECT.
We have covered many issues on this post and none of this issues can be covered in one single article. From here we could go on to many other things. For example, what are the implications of biologism in social sciences? Is it wrong or right? What are the implications of chemical in our body and considering it completely normal? Now we don’t have only psychiatric drugs, but we also have nootropics that we take willingly in an effort to become smarter.
Furthermore, we did not discuss completely the history of the various movements mentioned above.
But all these can be discussed in future articles. For now, just treat this article as food for thought and reflection on what psychiatry constitutes and what its opponents propose. Maybe you’ll come up with your own criticism and ideas.
Further Reading:
It’s Not Supposed To Work This Way
FDA Gives Thumbs Up To Kiddie Bipolar: Is KOL Syndrome Next?
New social networking for the ill dubbed “Myspace for the afflicted”
The APA and Drug Money: We’re on it senator!
The Pseudoscience of Anti-Psychiatry in PLOS Medicine
September 21st, 2008 at 9:53 am
OK, let’s cut this to the quick.
The problem with psychiatry is that it issues a *subjective* diaganosis, with no method of discerning a false positive. Then goes on to prescribe “cures” that may or may not be worse than the problem, while at the same time stigmatizing the “diagnosed” individual.
Of course in the 70’s psychiatry was dying… then the APA got in bed with the drug companies and cute things like Thorazine and Prozac… and voila… when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Take this example. Someone doesn’t want to touch a public bathroom door handle. OCD or is the individual just correct that public bathroom door handles are filthy?
Another example…
Shrink 1: “Does it take so much time it interferes with your life”?
Poor Patient 1: “Well yes I have to work and can’t keep up with all the washing of my hands I feel is needed based on the facts”.
Shrink 1: “You have OCD, we have some SSRI and response therapy for that”
(I.E. we can train you to be a good worker bee and get your ass back to work.)
Shrink 2: “Does it take so much time it interferes with your life”?
Poor Patient 2: “Well, no I don’t have to work. I just want my stuff clean and it takes a lot of time. It’s driving me nuts that people don’t respect my things.”.
Shrink 2: “You should discuss these issues with those around you.”
In short the criteria, “Interferes with you functionality” depends on who you are and what you life is like, as opposed to being about finding a broken part in the patient.
There oughta be a law against this sort of diagnosis method and stigma attachement.
September 21st, 2008 at 11:04 am
I think you’ve hit on some interesting points there! That’s a good comment!