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Psychiatrists Cast Doubt On Biomedical Model of Mental Illness
jones_supa writes "British Psychological Society's division of clinical psychology (DCP) will on Monday issue a statement declaring that, given the lack of evidence, it is time for a 'paradigm shift' in how the issues of mental health are understood. According to their claim, there is no scientific evidence that psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are valid or useful. The statement effectively casts doubt on psychiatry's predominantly biomedical model of mental distress – the idea that people are suffering from illnesses that are treatable by doctors using drugs. The DCP said its decision to speak out 'reflects fundamental concerns about the development, personal impact and core assumptions of the (diagnosis) systems', used by psychiatry. The provocative statement by the DCP has been timed to come out shortly before the release of DSM-5, the fifth edition of the American Psychiatry Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The manual has been attacked for expanding the range of mental health issues that are classified as disorders."
Would most people be better off undiagnosed? When it comes to mental "illness", often the only (or at least the best) treatments are behavioral therapy, in which the "illness" is trained away.
Let's just go back to drilling holes.
If mechanics understood cars as well as we understand brains, then dealing with car problems might work like this:
After having cut apart and ground up thousands of working and non-working cars, mechanics would know that a lack of gasoline, oil, or water was a common factor in many common car failures. Thus, whenever a broken car was brought into their shop, they'd pop open the hood and pour a bucket of gasoline, oil, or water over everything (depending on the symptoms) to try and fix the problem.
Jesus, and how long ago were predominately PSYCHOLOGICAL models being attacked?
If they want a replacement they will need to provide one. Until then, people are being treated, with varying degrees of success, with the current model. Even if the model isn't actually an accurate description of what is going on, it is still a fairly useful guide to approaching the problems. Sort of like classical physics versus relativity. A real breakthrough in understanding would be great - and maybe with all of the brain imaging and various other things going on, that will emerge. But so far it seems to mainly be individual studies that aren't producing a cohesive theory or useful guide to treatment. They will need to find their equivalents of Einstein and Dirac.
Another problem with the recent releases of the DSM is that what is considered a disorder sometimes seems to be a question of politics or political correctness.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Some people are just evil..
www.boznz.com Simple solutions to complex problems.
It is worth noting that the central distinction between psychiatrists and psychologists is that generally psychiatrists can prescribe medications (they are doctors). It's therefore not surprising that some psychologists would issue a statement like this. Honestly, this single statement by what appears to be a spokesperson discredits their entire ramblings: "it was unhelpful to see mental health issues as illnesses with biological causes". It's quite shocking to see professionals show such ignorance of their own field, just because they specialize in one aspect of it. While we are certainly still in the dark ages of neuroscience and psychiatry, there is a reason why we can control a ton of psychiatric illnesses with medications. We have many decades worth of research that specifically shows you what goes wrong in a person's brain with many psychiatric illnesses.
Psychologists != Psychiatrists. Derp slashdot, just derp.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If I was in the doctor's chair I'd call it an unfortunate case of "justified".
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Slashdotitis?
Join today: www.scientology.org
http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html
British Psychological Society's division of clinical psychology says "Psychiatry is bogus"
How much do you want to bet that this is a turf war?
--
BMO
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I completely agree with you. In fact, the rambling statement by these psychologists (which does not appear to be scientific) is readily disproven by the biggest and most successful example of medical treatment of a mental health disorder: schizophrenia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Medication ) and the 1950's discovery of an antipsychotic medication which greatly improved the hallucinations and psychotic breaks undergone by schizophrenic patients: chlorpromazine was found while looking for anti-histamines (for allergies).
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The wikipedia article on chlorpromazine points out: In 1955 it was approved in the United States for the treatment of emesis (vomiting). The effect of this drug in emptying psychiatric hospitals has been compared to that of penicillin and infectious diseases.[50] But the popularity of the drug fell from the late 1960s as newer drugs came on the scene. From chlorpromazine a number of other similar antipsychotics were developed. It also led to the discovery of antidepressants.[53]
Chlorpromazine largely replaced electroconvulsive therapy, psychosurgery, and insulin shock therapy.
In other words, chlorpromazine actually worked so well that the psychiatrists no longer had to resort to ECT, brain surgery, or screwing with the patient's sugar and insulin levels.
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You'd have to be a complete moron to claim that there is no evidence for medical and pharmacologic treatment of schizophrenia: the evidence is almost 60 years old. The only conclusion to draw from this is that the British Psychological Society is, in fact, composed of vast groups of complete morons who do not believe in science or the scientific method.
Those are some unfortunate examples, considering both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are at least partially heritable and there's other good evidence both have a big biological component.
Psychologists have a good point that considering all mental illnesses to be biologically caused and solely pharmaceutically treatable is not a good thing, but these ones seem to have gone overboard the other way.
Those pharmaceutical guys are evil. They also were behind the fake moon landing and kept an open tab for the 9/11 attackers to buy any boner pills and anti-depressives they wanted.
Studies havefound that if you have emotional problems, the probability that you will be well in 1 year if you go to see a psychoanalyst is 44%; psychotherapist is 53%; Psychiatrist is 61%; no one at all is 73%
This story will be like honey to them.
You'd have to be a complete moron to claim that there is no evidence for medical and pharmacologic treatment of schizophrenia: the evidence is almost 60 years old. The only conclusion to draw from this is that the British Psychological Society is, in fact, composed of vast groups of complete morons who do not believe in science or the scientific method.
You can only draw that conclusion if the BPS were claiming such a thing; are they?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm sorry, your rambling statement doesn't appear to be scientific.
"In other words, chlorpromazine actually worked so well that the psychiatrists no longer had to resort to ECT, brain surgery, or screwing with the patient's sugar and insulin levels."
You'd have to be a complete moron to claim that that is proof chlorpromazine works.
The problem with the mental health field is that it's almost impossible to rigorously define an actual illness the way we can with physical illness. This makes diagnosis and measuring the efficacy of treatment incredibly difficult. Hell even defining what it means for a schizophrenic to be "well" is hard.
It's undeniable that people suffer from mental illness and the psychologists in the article are just as guilty of terrible science as the psychiatrists they criticise, but there are huge problems in this entire field and we're going to see spats like this go on and on until someone can produce some coherent scientific evidence that tells us anything at all about mental health.
http://youtu.be/AazObF_pHSU
I was diagnosed as bi-polar about 6-7 years ago after suffering a serious manic episode with full scale hallucinations. While it was not the first time this had happened to me, it was "the final straw" that led to me being diagnosed.
Since then I've been on Resperidone to control the manic phases, and Effexor to limit the depressive phases. I've had no hallucinations, breakdowns, suicidal thoughts, or any other problems since being put on the medication, except when I've run out of medication, thinking "Maybe I don't need it any more."
But the return of symptoms after 2-3 weeks without medication has me convinced that the diagnosis is valid and the medication effective.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
For the same reason that there was a surge in "autistic" children, or "autism spectrum" disorder kids in the last decade: more people being diagnosed. Do you know that in the 1700s nobody was labeled with having Parkinson's disease? Or Lou Gehrig's disease? Of course, there were probably people who had those diseases, but those disease names or the recognition of those syndromes as specific diseases did not even exist at that time!
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So of course once something has been defined there's a greater likelihood of it being recognized as existing in a patient as more doctors are trained about the knowledge and existence of the disease.
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And that's not even going into the secondary gain that people get from having kids labelled as "autism spectrum" disorder kids: extra time on tests, extra help in school, some people like these diagnoses (like "Aspergers's") because it makes their kids or them "special" and eligible for aid or benefits. So sometimes there's also fraudulent labeling for secondary gain.
Mental health is a large subject, let's take a smaller slice for discussion: depression.
Depression meds work no better than placebo. Depression meds have lots of unpleasant side-effects, so being treated for depression is - on average - worse than going undiagnosed.
Depression is a symptom of many diseases - at least 18 of them commonplace. Many cases of depression are the result of 1) underactive thyroid (40% by one accounting), 2) Low levels of vitamin D, and 3) sleep apnea.
And yet, the symptom is treated as a disease in and of itself. Prescription meds which do more harm than good are commonly prescribed under the flimsiest of circumstances:
Patient: "doctor, I feel tired and run down"
Doctor: "It sounds like depression. Try this and see if it goes away".
After all is said and done, a casual reading of the research would suggest that the scientific method used in psychology research is crap. That's a strong statement, but not completely without merit.
Psychiatrists need to stop worrying about publishing the next trivial follow-on paper, and need to stop theorizing by making up stories. Get your evidence first, make theories to explain the evidence, and then throw out theories which have no testable predictions.
Go back to basics, and stop making money from giving people false hope through increased suffering.
(Grrr! A close friend got chewed up and spit out by the medical profession because of depression.)
Here is a scenario that happens daily in Alaska. I do not know if other states have this issue: 1. Kid goes to school and have a school breakfast. 2. That breakfast is full of sugar (pancakes w/ syrup). 3. Kid cannot sit still in class due to being full of sugar. 4. Teacher reports this to the school counselor who talks to a Psychiatrist. 5. Psychiatrist recommend drugs for the kid. 6. Government steps in telling the parent that the kid must have drugs or they will be kidnapped (stolen by "Family Services"). 7. (If parent chooses to fight back against this crime, the kid will be kidnapped) 8. Kid gets doped up on drugs, which causes side effects. 9. Kid gets other drugs to negate side effects, causing more side effects. 10. Kid is stuck on drugs for life. This literally happens all the time in Alaska. F U Psychiatrists.
There was an article on /. "Schizophrenia Experiences and Suggestions?",
I bookmarked the link as it's such a good read, the experiences of those with, had, or knew others with Schizophrenia.
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/04/05/21/0140239/schizophrenia-experiences-and-suggestions
Yes, find out more (Score:5, Insightful)
by spellraiser (764337) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:04PM (#9217287)
"Wow, who would have thought I'd see this on slashdot? It makes little sense to post this question here, but yet, it was posted. And I am reading it. Which is ... interesting, since my brother too was diagnosed with schizophrenia, a little over two years ago now. This thread shouts out to me to say something about it, but I find now that it is harder than it seems...." then continues a story of his twin brother.
I can't paste all the post yet few venture to another link, I can say you will have a different outlook on Schizophrenia.
One of the threads does address the DSM so on topic :}
by HBI (604924) on Friday May 21, 2004 @01:16PM (#9217475)
"Homosexuality was in the DSM as a treatable psychological disorder up till 1973."
---- /. from it's first days yet didn't register until just recently. :}
Yep I've read
Never felt knowledgeable enough to post, still don't just said the heck with it
OK, I'm more than willing to admit we don't have a clue about many neurological disease processes. Schizophrenia and Bipolar disorders may be dozens of different specific diseases that happen to present in a similar way. I get that.
But until we *know* what those diseases are, schizophrenia is useful in that it describes a set of symptoms that commonly occur together, that we can treat.
Theoretical models are never "right" or "wrong." These are meaningless terms. They are only more or less useful in that they provide some predictive and/or manipulative power. Period. End of story.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The psychiatrists are angry about this statement because it threatens their ability to bilk patients and healthcare systems out of money for pills that cost nothing to produce. The psychologists issued the statement because they're butthurt that the psychiatrists have been edging them out of their own turf and their ability to charge people $100 an hour for a service that guarantees no results at all. The pills carry no guarantee of success either, but at least they don't cost $100 per hour.
The statement has a political and financial motive, not an objective medical one. It's medical mafia turf wars, nothing more.
And can read genes.
"How to spot a murderer's brain"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/12/how-to-spot-a-murderers-brain
Yep, just scan everybody's brain, then jail those who fit the pattern, or are the carrier of one particular set of genes.
Crime prevention at it's best.
A psychologist can't get you locked up for life with no possibility of release based on a dodgy "assessment" that doesn't require an independent review.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
The entire field of Psychiatry was created by the pharmaceutical industry with the express purpose of selling more drugs.
Actually, psychiatry was created by people who wanted to explain everything as the consequence of feeling guilty about jacking off. The pharmaceuticals came along later.
And pace the whiners, drugs *do* help a lot of people. It's hit-and-miss, and not much more scientific than "let's try this and see if it works", but at least that's an approach based on evidence rather than theories about wanking off.
Also, we've made a *lot* of progress in finding effective drugs over the past decades. If you think our methods are sloppy now, turn back the clock 30, 40, or 50 years, and see how well we were treating mental problems then.
Hopefully someday we'll actually understand mental/brain disorders and know how (and whether) to treat them. But we're not there yet.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Psychologists have PhDs. Some of them treat patients, These are called Clinical Psychologists.
Psychiatrists have MDs. So do general practitioners, and in many cases psychiatric drugs are prescribed by non-specialists.
Stuff that isn't science that is sure it "knows" is prejudice. By pretending to be science such "stuff" gets to deprive you of you liberty in a court based on prejudice because you're a bit socially eccentric and someone else doesn't like that for "moral" reasons or whatever and wants to "straighten you out" whatever that means to them. Do you dress funny? Have sex? The wrong skin colour? These kinds of things...
Stuff that isn't science that pretends to be so usually results in evil of the worst, most uncivilised kind. It should always be called for what it is, ie unscientific. Psychology and psychiatry have a history of being right there in the middle of the absolute worst of it, in all our countries. If they want to be treated with any more respect than the utter garbage that is Scientology they need to prove each piece of research is actual science and, as a "discipline", publicly and loudly call out pseudo-science and bs-prejudice masquerading as something more. Starting with their own history ripping everything down that does not make the grade. They have earned themselves the right as a "discipline" to be treated with extreme suspicion.
Dick Feynman is popular around here and rightly so. His commencement address from 1974 on what he calls "Cargo Cult Science" one of the great speeches and worth 5 minutes of your time if you haven't happened to have encountered it yet.
http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html
"So I have just one wish for you--the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity."
What follows is not an argument from authority or even an argument at all, just some well phrased thoughts, you'll make up your own mind.
"Incidentally, psycho-analysis is not a science: it is at best a medical process, and perhaps even more like witch-doctoring. It has a theory as to what causes disease - lots of different "spirits" etc. The witch doctor has a theory that a disease like malaria is caused by a spirit which comes into the air ; it is not cured by shaking a snake over it, but quinine does help malaria. So, if you are sick, I would advise that you go to the witch doctor because he is the man in the tribe who knows the most about the disease; on the other hand his knowledge is not science. Psychoanalysis has not been checked carefully by experiment... " --Richard Feynamn, Six Easy Pieces
"It's a great game to look at the past, at an unscientific era, look at something there, and say have we got the same thing now, and where is it? So I would like to amuse myself with this game. First, we take witch doctors. The witch doctor says he knows how to cure. There are spirits inside which are trying to get out. ... Put a snakeskin on and take quinine from the bark of a tree. The quinine works. He doesn't know he's got the wrong theory of what happens. If I'm in the tribe and I'm sick, I go to the witch doctor. He knows more about it than anyone else. But I keep trying to tell him he doesn't know what he's doing and that someday when people investigate the thing freely and get free of all his complicated ideas they'll learn much better ways of doing it. Who are the witch doctors? Psychoanalysts and psychiatrists, of course."
Third lecture. David Goodstein reports that the entire Psychology department walked out in a huff at this point [7]. -- The Meaning of it All
When properly used in the right cases, Thorazine was great! Unfortunately, you have too many idiots over prescribing it and you have issues like Tardive dyskinesia and the "Thorazine shuffle". And the newer atypical anti-psychotics are dangerous as well(ie: Abilify). I swear they get kickbacks on prescribing these newer and very expensive medications.
I'm not knocking the meds, I think they are great when properly prescribed for the right people, but most of these quacks haven't a clue and the repercussions are making people afraid of using medication.
Um, he's absolutely correct. The British Psychological Society is the one making the statement. It's the first three words of the summary. The British Psychological Society is full of psychologists. Unlike the Royal Psychiatric Society, which has a lot of psychiatrists as members and is obviously a little peeved.
When your poor, you're are nutty: when you're rich; it's called "eccentric".
When you're poor, you're called an asshole. When you're rich; you're called forceful and driven.
Actually, in both cases if your behavior is causing you harm, you are not nutty or eccentric, you are mentally ill. The qualifier of the DSM has, and remains, that the behavior is causing harm. Hear voices that aren't there, but they just are normal conversations or Jesus/Batman telling you to do good deeds? Not a problem unless you want it to go away. Same voices telling you that people are after you and that you need to hurt other people? That's a mental illness. Same for behavioral problems, like narcissistic personality disorder. Someone poor might be called an asshole, someone rich might be called driven, but a good psychiatrist wouldn't care about that. If it is causing harm in relationships with other people or to the patient, it's a disorder and illness.
As for who gets to determine whether it's causing harm, that's still not an issue. The patient, 99% of the time. The doctor has input, and can overrule with 72-hour holds if they feel someone is a danger to themself or others but that is the only time that a doctor gets to determine whether it's a treatable illness or just a personality trait.
Are you off your meds?
"most "mental illness" appears to be an appropriate biological response to environmental and psychological stressors."
You obviously have never known a schizophrenic person. Please tell me how exactly are hallucinations, paranoid delusions and a complete inability to make rational decisions an appropriate biological response to environmental and psychological stressors?
Because there are roughly 3 times more people than there were 60 years ago?
The summary says psychiatrist when it is clearly the: British Psychological Society's.
Funny most people in here are whining about big pharma and psychiatry. There is another field which in most states cannot prescribe drugs.
Someone with some mod points throw them at this AC. The stats posted, uncited, by the OP are vague and, if true, self selected as the AC points out.
It's Scientology's elusive parasitic division. There's a scientape worm in these peoples' brains, causing inflammation and rendering them useless. It's the only logical reason I can think of for that kind of statement.
You can dance if you want to.
You what's interesting?
I had the exact same teachers as my sister. She ended up being diagnosed with Dyslexia, I didn't.
According to Wikipedia about 1/4 th of the world's population is infected with some sort of parasitic infection (ie: worms). IIRC, some estimates are as high as 1/3. Doctors are terrible at detecting these things (doctors are also terrible at detecting malnutrition, ie: a lack of a certain vitamin. They don't really ask diet related questions, for example, doing a simple analysis comparing your symptoms to the symptoms of any deficiencies you may have based on your diet. So many health problems can be fixed by this). If your read the symptoms of these parasites many of them seem to be similar to the symptoms of depression, ADHD, and other mental disorders ( "Delayed intellectual development" ).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_worm
(the entire article is worth reading).
Studies have shown that a good percentage of people who get medication for these infections benefit from it.
It stands to reason that if such a high percentage of people in general have these sorts of infections a much higher percentage of people with health or mental or other problems, especially symptoms known to have a high correlation with those infected, have these problems. Why is it that animals and dogs get regularly treated for these things but not humans. I suspect that if these things are regularly screened for and doctors did more to ensure people didn't have these infections and to regularly treat and screen them we would all generally be much better off.
My wife and I adopted four siblings who were later diagnosed with Bipolar, all before they were six years old. But only after the state transfeered them to our insurance. County Mental health counselors, school behaviorist, school psychologists and school nurses have continually given us misinformation, refused to make basic accommodations, and denied them a 504 plan because there was no evidence of the medication being helpful, despite a doctors report. This isn't because they are evil, but more so because they are un-exposed, lack knowledge, and never see the cycle (euphoric, dysphoric, depressed) from start to finish.
So I asked them, sarcastically, would it help if we took them off medication for two weeks of the data collections. They then threatened to call Child protective services if they found we weren't giving our children doctor suggested medication. They spent next four months every time there was a hiccup in my child's life calling us asking us if the kids got their medication. My response was it doesn't matter the school has not found there to be any medical benefit in providing it.
Medication has been the saving grace for our kids and they will tell you they don't like life without it, or even getting late.
According to Wikipedia, "Clinical psychology is an integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development. Central to its practice are psychological assessment and psychotherapy."
In other words, clinical psychologists focus on the "soft" stuff – talk therapy, Rorschach test, Myers-Briggs and all that crap. So it's not surprising that they would consider the efforts of real scientists to be an intrusion on their turf. We don't use talk therapy to treat depression any more; SSRIs are far more effective (not to mention much cheaper). The only type of talk therapy that has been shown to have any positive effects is cognitive behavioral therapy. All the rest is just crap, and most insurance companies won't pay for it any more because it's basically unproven pseudoscience.
It may be that diagnosis and treatment would be theoretically beneficial... IF THEY IDENTIFIED THE ACTUAL CAUSE! I don't know about anxiety, but a typical doctor dealing with depression will just throw SSRIs, SNRIs, TCAs, or even MAOIs at the problem. They don't think, they just prescribe. They make no attempt to understand the underlying pathology.
You brought up stress induced depression. The average doctor won't consider stress related disorders when dealing with depression, even if you ask him to. Tell a doctor you have depression and fatigue, and most of them wont even think about hypothyroidism. Tell a doctor you have depression and have trouble sleeping, and they'll tell you that it is a symptom of your depression*. They won't wonder about sleep apnea.
*(This is from the "depression is a disease not a symptom" philosophy. At the very least, there's a high chance of co-morbidity, or that the depression has been exacerbated by a sleep disorder.)
The medical profession really needs to wake up and understand that depression is not a disease. It is a symptom. There are many known causes, and probably many that are unknown. When dealing with a chronic condition, you can't just assume that it is idiopathic and treat the symptom, hoping that it will go away. That's unethical.
(You must make a true, good-faith effort to show that it really is ideopathic first. Just because you don't know what it is off the top of your head is no excuse to slack off.)
The problem seems to be made worse because doctors seem to like depression. Depression, as a diagnosis, is popular. It's almost as if doctors are hoping you'll be a depression patient.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Right. Has anyone every been talked out of being gay? How about talking or counselling to try to get a person to grow in height? Change your skin colour? Sorry but these people are not bringing the right tool for the job. The proof is already in the pudding with regards to medication and will be when the true treatment (probably genetic) of people with mental illnesses is known. Comparing it to "NP-Hard" and then letting us believe that it cannot be solved is also wrong as it is not provable that we cannot solve mental illness. Constant discovery is required.
Society use your Sciences
The folks without MDs and who can't prescribe drugs are asserting that those who are, can and do are wrong and they (the nonMDs) should lead.
They might be right but it would seem to be pretty much a non-story.
Psychologists understandably have *always* held such positions. Either because that's what *their* training says or because its their economic advantage to believe so (or fundamental bias ... If they didn't feel that way they'd have trained in the other camp.
Anonopathy? Dansnomatophobia?
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I feel for you psychologists - years of studying and/or practice and suddenly you're told that you're no longer needed
I've got my EMACS psychologist. What do I need with a real-life one?
Have gnu, will travel.
Indeed. Psychiatry and the DSM-IV (and soon-to-be DSM V) have issues, but people who insist that schizophrenia is not a disease are, not to put too fine a point on it, absolutely fucking insane. Is it a perfectly defined disease? No, because brains are such complex things that they often go wrong on a continuum (e.g., the high incidence of schizophrenia among artistic types may explain why they are artistic: people whose internal/external boundary is weak may be able to see the world differently, but they're also at risk of losing their grounding in reality). But that doesn't mean that psychosis doesn't exist, or that it isn't amenable to pharmacotherapy. That pharmacotherapy is necessarily blunt, because drugs can't choose to suppress receptors in one part of the brain and not the others, and it's necessarily broad-spectrum, because neurotransmitters affect a lot of things. But antipsychotics do work.
I'm not a psychiatrist, but I do work at a mental hospital part-time. You should visit one some time and get to see a real schizophrenic in florid psychosis.
"Verbing weirds language."
(Calvin and Hobbes--Bill Watson)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
We won't know the exact position of the British Psychological Association until Monday, but I can offer one example of how a psychiatric diagnosis can cause harm. Look up "SSRI withdrawal". SSRIs like Prozac slow down the reabsorption of serotonin, leaving more serotonin available in the brain. The body isn't static, and it reacts to the drug by overstimulating serotonin absorption. The body and the drug eventually reach a balance, and the overall amount of serotonin returns to the original levels. The problem occurs when SSRIs are stopped abruptly. The body's compensation mechanism continues for a while, and your serotonin levels drop dramatically. You get VERY depressed. You may feel like killing yourself. Some people do commit suicide at this point. Seen from the outside, it looks like you were very ill, and stopping the drug unmasked the illness. But the opposite is true. Stopping the drug CAUSED the illness. In fact, studies have shown that depressed people's serotonin levels are no different from those of normal people. Taking SSRIs doesn't change your levels because your body compensates and returns your serotonin to pre- treatment levels. The SSRIs don't do anything. Except that if you stop taking them you might die. Better off not taking them. And better off not being diagnosed in the first place. Diagnosis can kill.
So an association of shrinks wants more 'analysis' and less meds? Hey, book some sessions soon!
You've said a lot of interesting things... But I have no idea where you got this. Drug addiction can be viewed as a mental illness (if you squint just right), and the mentally ill may be more susceptible than most (unsubstantiated conjecture), but addiction can and does exist independent of any other condition. Most of the time, it is independent of any other mental condition.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Makes sense.
Either that, or on a psychedelic trip (etc).
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Maybe I'm "absolutely insane" but I don't see how what you wrote proves, or even demonstrates, that schizophrenia is a disease. The whole point is that disease/illness is a paradigm used to understand a collection of behaviors which people suffer from. This paradigm usually involves some kind of pathogen attacking bodily functions. Pharmacology can be used to destroy the pathogens and treat the disease. With mental "illness" this is untrue. Rather we believe that the brain is largely chemical, and that current "illnesses" result from non-harmonious interactions of these brain process. With chemicals we can correct the bad processes, or supplement processes that aren't firing.
But why call it a disease at all? We could equally look at mental illness more like, say injury. When my ankle is broken, some amount of drugs may ease pain, or possible reduce damage caused by swelling, but no drugs can heal it, because there is no pathogen to be killed. I am not suffering from "cantwalkitis", even if supply of opiates reduces much of my suffering and allows me to hobble along and ignore the pain. The best way to fix the problem is to repair it manually (not an option with the brain I know). Indeed, perhaps mental health problems are caused by psychological "injuries", sometimes the bodies own mental processes may exacerbate these "injuries".
I know one of the problem of those who criticize models is not supplying their own, which is why I tried my "mental injury" model above as a contrast, but I'm not a psychologist or neuroscientist. Perhaps my model is equally lacking? Someone with more knowledge and insight than me can propose a better one. However, even I can see the theoretical limitations of the mental illness paradigm of disease. As I've said "Where are the pathogens?", but there are equally compelling questions about contagion (almost all diseases are, no mental "diseases" are), or the difference between disease and condition (which exists for physical ailments but not mental ones). The disease model doesn't just allow for us to diagnose something bad and supply drugs to stop it. It also explains various other phenomena, cause, spread, contagion. The model was developed to deal with real world phenomena around diseases, ones that simply do not exist for mental "diseases".
I understand the appeal of the disease paradigm, which has had great explanatory power for dealing with pathogen induced illnesses. I also understand the desire to remove responsibility for actions that are beyond persons control, which is one reason we moved from the possession model of mental health to the disease model. I am also not claiming that people who suffer from mental "illnesses" aren't really suffering, from real phenomena beyond their control. The question is does the current model put our knowledge in a conceptual schema that aids us understanding and helping those who suffer. I feel the disease model has gotten us as far as is possible, given theoretical limitations
There are many billions of neurons in our brain. Alot of them are specialized towards maintaining balance, generate speech, interpretation of visual and auditory stimuli and so on ("the easy stuff"), but not most. Each neuron holds a part of a memory and/or function, and the wiring (axons and synapses) together with the limbic system, a shitload of other stimuli and some errors in communication generates thoughts and behaviour. Every brain is unique. Every person is unique. No two minds has ever occupied the same body in the same period of time. Every. Person. Is. Unique. This is not assembler, where mnemonics are limited in number and errors are few (if you're good at it). This is not C/C++. This is not Java. This will never be Visual Basic (I know, I'm old). Until we can run simulations on the data and network generated by every neuron, axon and synapse in an individual we will not have a quick fix (aka "fo' shizza" real scientific approach to mental illness, which some geeks or Big Pharma trolls here "believe" exists today) without drawbacks. The current (ideal) model of psychiatry (Medication if other methods doesn't work) is not practiced mostly because of Big Pharma but also because MDs are in need of a quick fix and may lack a holistic approach to mental illnesses (like many, many geeks, apparently). If you can't understand the value of what I've just explained (you don't have to agree with the last part), you REALLY NEED TO STFU!
Well... I have to say it's not news to me, but maybe I've just been lucky. My son was diagnosed as bipolar (which didn't exactly come as a surprise to me considering his mother is schizophrenic) last year. Combined with his behavioural issues as well, this was actually a bit of a relief. As far as treatment I have not encountered the "turf war" between psychologists and psychiatrists at all. In fact, my son has sessions with both a psychiatrist (monthly) and a psychologist (weekly) and the two of them talk once or twice a week about his case and work together to try to figure out an holistic solution to his issues.
The psychiatrist has also been really clear from the outset that the medications aren't to treat the problems, rather to make the problems and perceptions of the problems more manageable so that behavioural modification can be developed to combat the issues long term. She has been fantastic in helping us deal with his issues.
Maybe I've just been really fortunate with the group I have been working with here. While his medication is still a bit "hit or miss" there is no doubt in my mind that it has made it a lot easier for him to cope with his issues and put focus into working on his problems that would otherwise be focused elsewhere. While it's still incredibly difficult, it's definitely made things better.
While I agree with the article in that psychiatric drugs do not fix any problems, I think it's a little inflammatory in the way it approaches the statement. Then again, it's "newsworthy" when it's inflammatory I suppose.
You'd have to be a complete moron to claim that there is no evidence for medical and pharmacologic treatment of schizophrenia: the evidence is almost 60 years old. The only conclusion to draw from this is that the British Psychological Society is, in fact, composed of vast groups of complete morons who do not believe in science or the scientific method.
Why should one have to "believe in" science? I thought the deal with science is that it was a process of constantly questioning, developing, and attempting to disprove poor theories. I'm not sure I'm interested in your faith-based reasoning.
More directly to the point, science itself comes up short on determining what "mental health" is. Once we classify a set of symptoms and label it as an "illness", we can test whether a particular medication seems to improve the "illness" by whether it diminishes the symptoms, but that's just about the limit of science. So once you assume that hallucinations are "illness", then science can be used to determine whether a given medication diminishes hallucinations.
But it's not quite science that tells us that the medication "cures schizophrenia". It's like if you go hit by a car and your leg hurt afterwards. You could call that pain an "illness" and then science can determine that morphine is effective at treating the "illness". You can run thousands of studies that prove that morphine will remove the "illness" of leg pain, but it won't ever tell you whether that's an appropriate treatment until you redefine the illness to downplay the pain and focus instead on the broken leg.
Some people are still koo-koo for Co-co Puffs.
Just because you don't believe in something and can't figure out why it exists does not mean that it DOESN'T exist when evidence of it can be found right before your eyes.
I know some people who are honestly nutters. Sweet people. Good people. When they're on their meds and under treatment. If they miss some meds, OTOH, you don't want to be around them.
NO. I stay on them and I periodically go see a shrink. Do you mind?
I grew up with a dad who thought all problems children had could be solved by beating them out of them.
If he couldn't see it bleeding or bent at a funny angle...if it wasn't running a fever or projectile vomiting--beat the kid until it feels better.
Kid doesn't need glasses--he just needs his face smacked until he sees better. Didn't need to go to the dentist--just reach in with a pair of pliers and pull out the offending tooth.
Dad also didn't believe in such illnesses as schizophrenia...when my cousin got diagnosed, it was OBVIOUSLY because his mother let him get by with too much as a child and didn't keep him in line. He offered to cure him--HONESTLY DID--by getting a couple of guys together and beat the hell out of him until he quit he "hearing voices". My aunt didn't talk to our family for a long time. Dad was confused as to why. BTW, the cousin--is pretty well managed with meds. He holds a job and lives in a group home....And I've visited him and his roomies and they're a great bunch of sweet people.
The vast majority of diseases have nothing (directly) to do with pathogens. Your mental model of what a "disease" is is wrong.
Schizophrenia exists, whether you call it schizophrenia or psychosis or dissociation from reality; the underlying reality is always the important thing, not the word to describe it. The purpose of the DSM is not to be a perfect book of diagnosis; it is to create a technical language for describing various malfunctioning states of the brain. As such, there will always be ambiguous cases, but the problems are quite real.
But if someone is hearing voices that aren't there, something is very wrong.
Oddly enough, not necessarily. Some people just hear voices. They might well go a lifetime that way with no outward signs. They might assume that's how everyone experiances their "inner voice". For others, that voice carries an element of compulsion that makes it a real problem for them. Or it is a constant source of derision and discouragement that becomes a problem. It's the latter two cases that need treatment.
So by insisting that no mental illnesses have physical causes, you're buying into your father's uninformed worldview?
Considering how many couch-and-therapy shrinks are really looking for validation and enablement themselves, it doesn't really surprise me that they'd reject biochemical evidence -- after all that means there's something wrong with themselves and their patients, not something that was inflicted upon 'em.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Actually, I wasn't asserting anything of the sort
So your reply was completely off topic? Did you bother to read the message I replied to? Or did you just want to tell us your colourful anecdote about your father?
No. I think our threads got crossed.
who spent a few months in depression clinic after an abortion (by my ex ofcourse since i have a hard time being pregnant) while losing jobs and piled up debts and fines were crushing, i dare say a few words. ... i strongly feel suppression of symptoms with chemicals (to 'balance' an imbalance so to speak) leads not to a cure even if it's necessary for people to get into a state of mind where they can think clearly in a lot of cases, it's not the solution to the problem
...
... all of them are part of me, you said so after all ...
i had a few psychologists and a few shrinks pass by until i found the place where i could find some rest (in Eeklo, belgium, highly recommended from the few places i 'visited')
the guys both were more into listening than diagnosing. The psychiatrist even had this thing where it's not the best tactic to diagnose and share since the patient (in some cases) tends to adapt to the diagnosis and will possibly ab- and use it as an excuse to slip into what is considered un-acceptable or deviant behaviour.
whereas the others more like judged or tried to fix by prescribing
whereas the abovementioned psychologist got my respect by never suggesting but letting me associate everything together myself. It might not work for everyone but those two really deserve an honourable mention imo
is this off-topic, or is this half-topic ?
nut signing off
does this warrant a sub-sig?
every label you stuck on me, i can use now
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
The problem is that psychiatry doesn't seem to be very good at applying the scientific method. Admittedly, it's a hard problem, but that doesn't excuse the failure to recognize that pharmocological treatments available today are just a bandaid.
Meanwhile, the only tghing that seems to help at all with the negative symptoms is nicotine, but rather than getting patients on the patch or gum, they try to get patients to abstain.
Hiding symptoms is not the same as eradicating bacteria/viruses.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.