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Saturday, May 25. 2019

About Psychiatry


In The New Yorker, The Troubled History of Psychiatry - Challenges to the legitimacy of the profession have forced it to examine itself, including the fundamental question of what constitutes a mental disorder.


And on the annual American Psychiatric Association's meeting:



 “If you want to model the APA, you could do worse than a giant firehose that takes in pharmaceutical company money at one end, and shoots lectures about social justice out the other.”



A terrible meeting. I never attend.


My experience is that people like to mock or disparage Psychiatry. That is, until they or a family member need one. 




Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Psychology, and Dr. Bliss at 13:02 | Comments (22) | Trackbacks (0)

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Don't blame regular people for not having much faith in psychiatry.
The public image they're presented with, and have been for decades if not centuries, is that of the brain shrink who locks up and tortures people under the guise of treating them for insanity.

An image that's sadly all too close to reality for how psychiatry was performed well into the 20th century.

It's also blemished by the rather bad actions of many who seem to use their profession solely as a means to become pill pushers for patients with ill defined conditions, leading to serious amounts of overdiagnosis of such conditions as ADHD (which exploded from next to nothing to now having been "diagnosed" in up to a third of children, mostly boys, in many areas of the west in just a decade or so).

While the first is mostly history now, and the second hopefully limited to charlatans, it's a rather strong public image that the profession does (and probably is incapable of doing) little to change.
#1 JTW on 2019-05-25 13:13 (Reply)
The new charlatans are legitimising the indulgence of real mental disorder as merely a lifestyle choice and are complicit in the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.
#1.1 DeGaulle on 2019-05-26 06:42 (Reply)
Off topic:
Physics explains why time passes faster as you age

https://qz.com/1516804/physics-explains-why-time-passes-faster-as-you-age/
#2 feeblemind on 2019-05-25 13:33 (Reply)
Physics cannot explain itself, but its fans think it can explain things which are not at all part of its remit.
#2.1 DeGaulle on 2019-05-26 06:46 (Reply)
Dr. B: Any idea why and when APA became a preferred format for dissertations? At this point I wanna boycott and use something else...
#3 Bull on 2019-05-25 14:05 (Reply)
"My experience is that people like to mock or disparage Psychiatry."

Considering the method behind how a number of sexual deviantcies were upgraded to normality in the DSM-V, it's not surprising.
#4 sixtyville on 2019-05-25 14:46 (Reply)
IMHO this goes right to the root of their legitimacy. If a special interest group can get you to change your "science" for political correctness then how can you believe anything they say or claim is true.
#4.1 Anon on 2019-05-25 23:14 (Reply)
Given the facts that hobbies aren't psychiatric disorders, I wonder why you'd want to class them as such.

Maybe we should define opposition to the State as a psychiatric disorder as well. Oh wait, they did that already in the USSR.

The main reason things like homosexuality were termed psychiatric disorder in the first place was pressure from religious groups.

It's a lifestyle choice and personal preference, not a disease. By classifying it as such you discredit all actual mental disorders from being taken seriously.
#4.2 JTW on 2019-05-26 01:17 (Reply)
Is homosexuality a "lifestyle choice"??? Is it a mental/genetic aberration? Is it "normal"?


If you actually know any homosexuals you know that most where clearly born that way. That is people who when given a choice of hetrosexual or a homosexual relationship they eager choose a homosexual relationship. We aren't talking about a drunken or childhood one time oopsy we are talking about lifelong preference for same sex relationships.

Is it normal? Hardly with about 2% of humans showing that tendency it is clearly an aberration.


The problem is that a strident special interest group wants homosexuality to be considered normal AND protected. They want it taught in grade schools and celebrated in parades and cakeshops. And if you dare disagree they destroy you. SO for that reason I don't really "blame" the psychiatric profession for caving but you have to admit that by caving it shows they do not have integrity.
#4.2.1 Anon on 2019-05-26 10:48 (Reply)
"Hobbies"? What kind of nonsense is that?

I'm talking about the deliberate conspiracy by gay psychiatrists to get their deviancy re-labeled as normal. They're proud of it. See for yourself.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/204/81-words
#4.2.2 sixtyville on 2019-05-26 12:24 (Reply)
ADHD and other conditions can give students extra time to take many exams so the pressure by parents to make that diagnosis may have something to do with its increase in the student population.
#5 Andrew Stanton on 2019-05-25 14:53 (Reply)
Psychiatrists promote transgender child abuse. They force parents in court to affirm false gender identities in children or lose their kids.

They administer chemical castration drugs to children as young as eight. This sterilizes kids, halts the growth of their sexual organs, and causes life threatening illnesses later in life.

Don’t believe me? Search “GENECIS Clinic Dallas”.

Psychiatrists are witch doctors and child abusers. Not all psychiatrists, but as a group they are scum.
#6 Javelineer on 2019-05-25 15:41 (Reply)
The reason that Psychiatrists are not trusted is that they are so secretive. They don't produce meaningful data that is available to the patient for review. Further, they don't prescribe the two therapies which are known to be most effective in combating mental illness: Exercise and Social Engagement.
#7 Ron B Liebermann on 2019-05-25 16:34 (Reply)
I've always thought that psychiatrists know far less than they claim to. A friend of mine says they know far more than they're letting on.
#8 Randy on 2019-05-25 18:49 (Reply)
Thomas Szasz had it right almost 50 years ago when he wrote The Myth of Mental Illness
#9 snopercod on 2019-05-25 20:20 (Reply)
We have a large presence in the medical world, between my family members, significant other, and our large circle of friends in many medical specialties. In addition, there is a psychiatric care facility (for profit) very near where I spend a great deal of time.

There are good, superb, and marginal people in all the specialties in our circle, the hospital group and physicians practice groups are generally well run. None of them have anything good to say about the practicing psychiatrists they have encountered in our region. In the hospital and the physician practice groups every psychiatrist has been eased out, and their services are provided only under a subcontracting arrangement, much as has happened with anesthesiologists.

The physicians and hospitals cite inappropriate patient contacts, billing irregularities, and quarrelsome working relationships in the psychiatric practices, as well as questionable prescription activities.

I have heard a lot of shop talk in social as well as clinical settings, and the vehemence of the disdain these accomplished medical professionals feel toward their psychiatric colleagues is striking.
#10 Stigler on 2019-05-25 20:39 (Reply)
There's no point in answering all the commenters who are such experts.

Take a job as a lowly psych tech for two weeks in a state psychiatric institution and you will see things differently.
#11 Assistant Village Idiot on 2019-05-25 21:25 (Reply)
I don't want to give the wrong impression. I am very proud of my seven years as a lowly psych tech, and I had a lot of my arrogance beaten out of me.

It is amazing the sparse, anecdotal evidence people will use when discussing this entire field as if they know something. Get to know some schizophrenics or bipolar manics on and off medication, or suffer through some severe depression - and I don't mean "hey, everyone feels sad sometimes, but you've just gotta have gumption" nonsense - then get back to me with your glib pronouncements.
#11.1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2019-05-26 22:25 (Reply)
Dr: Not totally clear on which side you're on here.

In any event, in a time of need, how does one find, much less identify, a counselor who is not a fraud or a pill pusher?

Speaking as someone who has had all too much experience personally and with intimate others who have suffered from such knuckleheads.
#12 Hairless Joe on 2019-05-25 23:05 (Reply)
During a low point in my life years ago I attended one session with a psychiatrist. He kept interrupting me to answer the phone, and at the end he recommended taking L-triptophan which I could buy downstairs at his pharmacy.

Never again.
#13 RebeccaH on 2019-05-26 12:10 (Reply)
I’ve seen people disparage homeopathy until they had terminal disease. Doesn’t make homeopathy real.
#14 Erisguy on 2019-05-26 19:45 (Reply)
Homeopathy is real. I know a Osteopath who got rich pushing Homeopathic "medicine". Now that is real!!
#14.1 Anon on 2019-05-27 20:51 (Reply)

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