Are Independent Thinkers Mentally Ill?

[Agent of Chaos]

I was looking around and found this article:

http://nestmann.sovereignsociety.com/2010/09/16/are-independent-thinkers-mentally-ill/

Are Independent Thinkers Mentally Ill?

Mark Nestmann (September 16, 2010)

Do you question authority? Fail to accept conventional wisdom? Lose your temper when you hear a politician make a promise that you know he or she can’t keep?
If so, you may be mentally ill, according to the most recent revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In this revision, psychiatrists hope to add dozens of new mental disorders. Unfortunately, many of these so-called illnesses target people who merely think or behave differently from the majority population.
A case in point is “oppositional defiant disorder (ODD).” DSM defines ODD as “an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior toward authority figures.” Symptoms include losing one’s temper, annoying people and being “touchy.” Other “disorders” include antisocial behavior, arrogance, cynicism and narcissism. Sounds like many of my readers!
While diagnosis of ODD “victims” focuses on children, there’s no reason why ODD can’t exist in adults. Indeed, ODD can evolve into “conduct disorder” (CD), which DSM defines as “wherein the rights of others or social norms are violated.”
Uh-oh. So violating “social norms” is now a mental illness as well.
Let’s connect the dots, shall we? There’s a long and sordid history of governments using psychiatry for political repression. In the Soviet Union, thousands of political prisoners were detained in mental hospitals. There they were isolated from friends and family, and many cases, forcibly medicated. Nazi Germany went even further: it murdered over 180,000 psychiatric patients.
Laws in most states allow child protective services agencies to forcibly medicate your children. Indeed, if you fail to administer drugs ordered by a physician or have your children submit to vaccinations, you can be imprisoned.
As The Washington Post observed:
“If seven-year-old Mozart tried composing his concertos today, he might be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and medicated into barren normality.”
The conversion of personality differences into psychiatric disorders, and the forced medication of children, is a dangerous trend. It is but a short step to extend these laws to adults who have a pattern of “negativistic, defiant, disobedient and hostile behavior toward authority figures.”
I’d prefer a different approach: institutionalizing the psychiatrists that came up with all these new disorders. Perhaps we could call their condition “overmedication psychosis.” And those of us with ODD, CD, or who simply don’t like the government telling us how to live our lives could breathe a bit easier.
Copyright © 2010 by Mark Nestmann

 

[Ska]

I'm pretty sure this article is only showing one side of these disorders

Wikipedia:

Temper tantrums, stealing, bullying, and vandalism are some of key symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder. ODD children may present as negative, defiant, unable to take "no" for an answer, deliberately annoying others, easily annoyed themselves, or blaming others for all that goes wrong.[1] The child's behavior often disrupts the child's normal daily activities, including activities within the family and at school.["

Wikipedia:

Symptoms include verbal and physical aggression, cruel behavior toward people and pets, destructive behavior, lying, truancy, vandalism, and stealing.[1]
Conduct disorder is a major public health problem because youth with conduct disorder not only inflict serious physical and psychological harm on others, but they are at greatly increased risk for incarceration, injury, depression, substance abuse, and death by homicide and suicide. After the age of 18, a conduct disorder may develop into antisocial personality disorder, which is related to psychopathy

As you can see just from the symptoms, these disorders include violating others rights and causing them harm. Your average, intelligent "independent thinker" does not fall under these categories.

I am actually familiar with these terms because I have tried looking up something to describe what my nephew has. He is literally uncontrollable, and shows a lot of symptoms listed for ODD. I think he's been diagnosed with something else, but I'm not sure. My nephew is also not very bright. Again, it seems to me this article just selectively took quotes to come to the conclusion it wanted to come to.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

shit....this is why i hate society...its so fucking wrong...haha ODD...a fucking joke..makes me fucking sick..i might make a video about this..what is this world coming to..im so fucking sick of this world....shit im depressed now..im so sick of following the traditional society filled with bullshit..everyone tells me what to do and how to live...i hope that my brain explodes overnight, giving me the power to resist the social pressures put on me by society...im so sick of it......and theres nothing i can do to change anything....fuck ..

 

[DesertSmeagle]

I'm pretty sure this article is only showing one side of these disorders

Wikipedia:
Wikipedia:
As you can see just from the symptoms, these disorders include violating others rights and causing them harm. Your average, intelligent "independent thinker" does not fall under these categories.

I am actually familiar with these terms because I have tried looking up something to describe what my nephew has. He is literally uncontrollable, and shows a lot of symptoms listed for ODD. I think he's been diagnosed with something else, but I'm not sure. My nephew is also not very bright. Again, it seems to me this article just selectively took quotes to come to the conclusion it wanted to come to.

hmm all those symptoms sound like antisocial personality disorder...or some kind of personality disorder.

 

[Agent of Chaos]

I'm pretty sure this article is only showing one side of these disorders

Wikipedia:
Wikipedia:
As you can see just from the symptoms, these disorders include violating others rights and causing them harm. Your average, intelligent "independent thinker" does not fall under these categories.

I am actually familiar with these terms because I have tried looking up something to describe what my nephew has. He is literally uncontrollable, and shows a lot of symptoms listed for ODD. I think he's been diagnosed with something else, but I'm not sure. My nephew is also not very bright. Again, it seems to me this article just selectively took quotes to come to the conclusion it wanted to come to.

I just wanted to share this article, I didn't say I agreed with it.

 

[Tyria]

Don't believe everything you read in the DSM.

*edit - this is not directed at the op or anyone in particular.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

I didn't say I agreed or I disagreed with the author, I just felt like sharing it.

thanks for sharing it...now what are your views on it? haha

 

[Dormouse]

Good timing, I'm writing an essay on this for a class currently. As of yet I have nothing to say, but consider this spot saved for as soon as I organize my thoughts. Also thanks for the link, it is helpful.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

good subject to write a paper on..i have to write one about social norms..Might refer to this. It makes you think, if everyone was a schizophrenic or was a sociopath with antisocial personality disorder, that would be the norm, and the "normal" person would have the disorder...alot of mental disorders are relative mindsets to popular society which arent accepted..

 

[Agent of Chaos]

thanks for sharing it...now what are your views on it? haha

Do you question authority? Always!
Fail to accept conventional wisdom? Conventional wisdom is not necessarily true.
Lose your temper when you hear a politician make a promise that you know he or she can’t keep? No, that I expect that from politicians.
Now overwhelming stupidity, that drives me up the wall.

Does that make me mentally ill or not?
I don't believe I am but maybe then again I could be wrong and all of this so-called reality is nothing but a doctor prescribed drug induced dream, all while I'm wearing one of those neat shirts with with overlong sleeves that strap in the back(I don't think so but it is a possiblity).

 

[snafupants]

many of the dsm-iv diagnoses, and psychopathology more generally, inquire about the developmental appropriateness of said disorder. therefore, it would be wrongheaded to apply the same criteria to adults as children and adolescents. to muck the easy call further, the supposed disorders are as diffuse as the cultures they represent. the dsm is very much a westernized canon of good behavior.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

Do you question authority? Always!
Fail to accept conventional wisdom? Conventional wisdom is not necessarily true.
Lose your temper when you hear a politician make a promise that you know he or she can’t keep? No, that I expect that from politicians.
Now overwhelming stupidity, that drives me up the wall.

Does that make me mentally ill or not?
I don't believe I am but maybe then again I could be wrong and all of this so-called reality is nothing but a doctor prescribed drug induced dream, all while I'm wearing one of those neat shirts with with overlong sleeves that strap in the back(I don't think so but it is a possiblity).

Hahaa I made a thread about questioning reality. I'd link it but I'm on an iPod touch and don't have the patience to figure it out. But ut basically says what if life is a haullucination like I'm shuter island or te matrix.

 

[Cognisant]

Y'know we tend to think the same thoughts every day, we all do, around lunchtime most people think "What will I have for lunch?" or "Where's my lunchbox?".

In a world of 7+ billion people, is it possible to have an original thought?

Not if you're "sane" imo.

 

[Ska]

I just wanted to share this article, I didn't say I agreed with it.

I didn't direct my criticism at you, did I?

 

[Melllvar]

LOL, oppositional defiance, I was diagnosed with that one too when I was a kid.

I don't feel like writing out a long rant today. Maybe tomorrow. Suffice to say the article is 100% correct, and psychiatry is probably the most crooked and evil thing ever created by mankind.

Oh wait, my opinion isn't valid though, because I'm "oppositional defiant," so of course I'm going to disagree just for the sake of it. (please note my sarcasm)

 

[DesertSmeagle]

I think that the ODD thing is good.. and i think that those of you who oppose being normal are ignorant minded..Just look at yourselves..weird people....i cant even make a sarcastic post for this its so rediculous.

 

[Ska]

LOL, oppositional defiance, I was diagnosed with that one too when I was a kid.

I don't feel like writing out a long rant today. Maybe tomorrow. Suffice to say the article is 100% correct, and psychiatry is probably the most crooked and evil thing ever created by mankind.

Oh wait, my opinion isn't valid though, because I'm "oppositional defiant," so of course I'm going to disagree just for the sake of it. (please note my sarcasm)

I wouldn't say that just because some people get wrongly grouped into a disorder that the disorder is completely unwarranted. There's plenty of kids our there who do need help with this kind of thing (unless my nephew's behavior is some extraordinarily rare case).

 

[Joohanh]

Wow, I anyone find this

"In this revision, psychiatrists hope to add dozens of new mental disorders."

disturbing? Why the hell do we need more definitions of mental disorders? To cover all personality types as well?

According to this, I'm crazy as fuck. And proud of it.

 

[Melllvar]

I wouldn't say that just because some people get wrongly grouped into a disorder that the disorder is completely unwarranted. There's plenty of kids our there who do need help with this kind of thing (unless my nephew's behavior is some extraordinarily rare case).

-"misdiagnosed" dozens of different times by dozens of different psychiatrists/psychologists?
-diagnoses constantly contradicting each other and spanning things such as oppositional defiance, adhd, borderline, psychotic, and many other things I can't remember or never even knew about? (I was very young and most of the discussions were completely behind my back)
-when I'm miserable and mention suicide I have shrinks telling me that they have to institutionalize me because they're Christian and if I kill myself they could go to hell for having not stopped me?

What part of this doesn't sound like a sham to you?

Now don't get me wrong, I was a little brat. Words like "uncontrollable" were constantly being used. Among other things I used to just randomly say weird shit that didn't make sense to anyone but me and would also run away from school for no discernable reason. I got into a lot of fights too, which is weird cause that's sooo not what my personality is like now (believe me I'm a complete push over).

Let me just say that I'm not mentally ill, at least I'm sure that I'm not to within a reasonable doubt, but my childhood was the result of being treated like the worst human being on Earth by incompetent, stupid and maniacal parents, teachers, psychologists/psychiatrists, and various other authority figures.

I don't know about your nephew or his situation, so I may be totally off base here, but I figure the chances are just as good that people in his life have made him like that and using a mental illness as an excuse is a way to cover up their own negligence.

After all, my parents never told the shrinks about the less wonderful ways I was treated at home, since that would reflect badly on them. Simply going to see a psychiatrists pretty much means they've given up personal responsibility for the situation and want a chemical solution. And of course any shrinks that would dare suggest maybe I'm not so fucked up but am the result of poor parenting would never see another paycheck from my family again. Plus they like to use arguments like "you just don't want to admit he has a problem, you're a bad parent if you don't put him on this medication/institutionalize him/lobotomize him/etc." as a way to push their agenda.

Incidentally, did you know they now prescribe anti-schizophrenics to children as young as four? Despite the fact that studies have shown professional clinical psychiatrists absolutely cannot reliably diagnose schizophrenia (specifically they will misdiagnose completely normal people as well as "actual schizophrenics")? Or that the US recovery rate is actually about 10 times lower than third world countries without a modern mental healthcare system?

Please, put up an argument in favor of the legitimacy of psychiatry. I could use a good laugh.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

The legitimacy of psychiatry? Seriously? There are people who actually need them. I'm not sure if ur biased or not but ya bad parenting usually results in some kind of disorder. Neglect a child and make him feel like shit means some kin of disorder usually. I know some things are rediculous like the over diagnosis of ADHD and the creation of mental disorders based on personal diversity but psychiatry is incredibly legit. Before any form of mental mdication they used to lock up schozophrenics in asylums an poke There brains with sticks.

Usually if you say that ur gonna kill yourself people try to get u not to. It really has nothing to to with Christianity. And ya anti psychotics are hard drugs to give to kids. But do u even know what schizophrenia is? What if that kid has his childhood ruined by haullucinations or false beliefs?
Therapy and medication work for schizos.

You seem mad. You were neglected as a child so ur parets sent u to a mental doctor. Why didn't you tell them about the bad parenting? Medication works it's not a scam for people that need it.
I'm not sure what ur arguing. R u saying that it's bad parenting and they cover up the behavior of a child with a disorder? Well u probably have a disorder if they put u on suicide watch. You probably have severe depression and a personality disorder. Those are real legit things and can be a result of bad parenting. It's not your fault u have a disorder it's your parents. But psychiatry is completely legit. It's just been fuckin up lately

 

[Trebuchet]

My objection to many psychiatric diagnoses is that they are "subclinical." I'm not an expert by any means, but a "subclinical" disorder that doesn't stop a person from functioning successfully is not a disorder. Destructive behavior is a problem, iconoclastic behavior is a gem.

Context matters too. So many parents delay the start of kindergarden until their children turn 6 that the 5-year-olds look hyper and uncontrolled in comparison. Kids have been tested and diagnosed with ADHD for no more reason than they are not as old as their classmates.

I must admit to bias. I've had a few bad experiences with psychologists, though oddly not as a patient. One was a dean of students in college who badly betrayed me and my friend, using his psychology degree as a weapon. Another was running a leadership workshop and turned the whole room into an ad hoc group grief counseling session on the theory that everyone needs grief counseling, and it was extraordinarily unpleasant. So I don't trust psychologists.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

My objection to many psychiatric diagnoses is that they are "subclinical." I'm not an expert by any means, but a "subclinical" disorder that doesn't stop a person from functioning successfully is not a disorder. Destructive behavior is a problem, iconoclastic behavior is a gem.

Context matters too. So many parents delay the start of kindergarden until their children turn 6 that the 5-year-olds look hyper and uncontrolled in comparison. Kids have been tested and diagnosed with ADHD for no more reason than they are not as old as their classmates.

I must admit to bias. I've had a few bad experiences with psychologists, though oddly not as a patient. One was a dean of students in college who badly betrayed me and my friend, using his psychology degree as a weapon. Another was running a leadership workshop and turned the whole room into an ad hoc group grief counseling session on the theory that everyone needs grief counseling, and it was extraordinarily unpleasant. So I don't trust psychologists.

Damn that sucks haha. Im goin to school for psychology, but ill never be a counseling psychologist. I dont wana have to diagnose bullshit ADHD in 60 billion children a day..Its the education systems fault they are so hyper..What do they expect? Keeping young energy filled children sittin inside at a desk to do boring work..Do they expect them to want to just sit there? Its tormenting to them. Back when i was in little kid school 8 years ago, we actually did stuff and went outside and shit. Now adays, gym class and recess are complete bullshit. Its all fitness crap and yoga. haha. I have a 10 yr old brother thats how i know this..im glad im not 10 in this point in time.

 

[Moocow]

Schizophrenic people can have completely gibberish conversations with each other yet through warped perception believe they are both making sensible statements.

Or am I talking about "normal" folks?

 

[Trebuchet]

Its the education systems fault they are so hyper..What do they expect? Keeping young energy filled children sittin inside at a desk to do boring work..Do they expect them to want to just sit there? Its tormenting to them. Back when i was in little kid school 8 years ago, we actually did stuff and went outside and shit. Now adays, gym class and recess are complete bullshit. Its all fitness crap and yoga. haha. I have a 10 yr old brother thats how i know this..im glad im not 10 in this point in time.

Well, yes, they expect them to sit there. I volunteered a lot last year in my daughter's kindergarden class, and they sat still for 3.5 hours a day, with a single 20 minute break to have a snack and maybe play for 10 minutes. There was no gym. One of the brighter, more energetic boys was 5 and tended to be wiggly, and the teacher kept muttering about ADHD. He was merely young and bored, though, and neither disruptive nor rude. Fortunately, his parent are pretty smart and didn't take it too seriously.

 

[Melllvar]

The legitimacy of psychiatry? Seriously? There are people who actually need them.

Or so the myth goes. I've met at least one person who claims they were helped by anti-schizophrenics, and another few who claim someone else they knew was helped by electroshock (which is hard to believe, as most people electroshocked never willingly submit to a second treatment). I find it far more likely though that a) the first person actually recovered IN SPITE of the medications they were given, and b) other people's idea of a "successful" cure is more in their perception than in objective reality. That's how things like metrazol therapy, insulin coma therapy, lobotomy, etc. came to be viewed as "successful." Brain damaging a person into submission or teaching them to behave differently for fear of torture is viewed as a successful remedy by the majority of people, especially the psychiatrists who developed and perform these procedures (as well as medications).

I'm not sure if ur biased or not but ya bad parenting usually results in some kind of disorder. Neglect a child and make him feel like shit means some kin of disorder usually. I know some things are rediculous like the over diagnosis of ADHD and the creation of mental disorders based on personal diversity but psychiatry is incredibly legit. Before any form of mental mdication they used to lock up schozophrenics in asylums an poke There brains with sticks.

Actually, from what I've heard, success rates with schizophrenia were highest in the Quaker communities in the early 1800's, where they simply put them in homes with caretakers and generally tried to make life pleasant for them as opposed to the later "remedies" which superceded their programs. True, the health care establishment has treated them even worse in the past, doing things like the therapies I already mentioned or even lobotomizing them with a screwdriver through the eyeballs. And of course there was the spinning, the wet sheets, etc. In fact though, modern anti-schizophrenics work similarly to lobotomy, essentially by degrading the frontal lobe (incidentally, the USSR used the same drugs to punish dissidents). At any rate, having claimed twice now that recovery rates for the "truly crazy" (whatever that means) are an order of magnitude lower with modern treatments vs simply allowing the disease to run its course, how can modern psychiatry possibly be considered an improvement?

Usually if you say that ur gonna kill yourself people try to get u not to. It really has nothing to to with Christianity. And ya anti psychotics are hard drugs to give to kids. But do u even know what schizophrenia is? What if that kid has his childhood ruined by haullucinations or false beliefs?
Therapy and medication work for schizos.

I casually mention thoughts of suicide when I'm 13 and therefore I need to be insitutionalized and pumped full of drugs? That's not exactly the same as simply "trying to get me not to." Yes, schizophrenics are hard drugs, in fact the newer batches don't even have to show that they're any safer than the older drugs which were considered equivalent to a "chemical lobotomy," since legally they just have to show that they aren't any more dangerous. So now we're giving 4 year olds brain damaging drugs based on flawed diagnoses that are known not to be any safer than what we were doing when actual, physical lobotomy started to go out of fashion. What if they have their lives ruined by that?

You seem mad. You were neglected as a child so ur parets sent u to a mental doctor. Why didn't you tell them about the bad parenting?

Oh, trust me, I'm livid. I don't mean to be so abrasive to the good people on this forum, but it's hard for me to even think of this subject without becoming extremely bitter. I still lose sleep at night over this shit. Often.

And as for the parenting, it wasn't until years later that I started to be able to piece everything together about what had happened to me. When I was a kid I didn't even understand why they all hated me so much, or why there were saying these things about me. They used to just yell at me about all the things that were wrong with me without even explaining what terms like "borderline" meant. Keep in mind this mainly happened to me between the ages of 6-14 (strangely enough, I never seemed to have any problems before I started school, and had few problems outside of school, which really makes you wonder about how the whole system is set up...).

Medication works it's not a scam for people that need it. I'm not sure what ur arguing. R u saying that it's bad parenting and they cover up the behavior of a child with a disorder? Well u probably have a disorder if they put u on suicide watch. You probably have severe depression and a personality disorder. Those are real legit things and can be a result of bad parenting. It's not your fault u have a disorder it's your parents. But psychiatry is completely legit. It's just been fuckin up lately

Psychiatry and clinical psychology have more layers of bullshit and deceit than an onion. It's not just that they use it to cover up bad parenting. It's that its an institution that seeks to perpetuate itself for the gain of it's members by exploiting the people it claims to be helping. Also that it's a commonly used tool to suppress social deviance (by deviance I don't necessarily mean a bad thing, just deviating from the norms). And that it's a tool of the drug companies to force their medications on an unwilling populace. There's probably more too, like I say the layers of bullshit go so deep I'd really have to put time and effort into coming up with a comprehensive, exhaustive list of it all.

 

[Melllvar]

Schizophrenic people can have completely gibberish conversations with each other yet through warped perception believe they are both making sensible statements.

Or am I talking about "normal" folks?

I'd say normal people can do that too.

If we both have a conversation in which we think we're making sense, even though what we're talking about has no logical or empirical basis, isn't that the same thing?

I see religious people, or just less rational, more feely emotional people, do this and it seems to me like they're just babbling nonsense but from their own warped perceptions are placing meaning onto each others statements... how's it any different?

 

[Fukyo]

An excerpt from an unrelated article:

To understand why this happens you must understand that psychiatry is much closer to an art than a science and that there are some huge gray areas where social mores and personal prejudices enter in. Decisions about whether or not a behavior is "pathological" are quite literally made by a vote of a bunch of mostly old white heterosexual men. Some behaviors aren’t that tough to come to consensus on: most suicidal behavior, much psychosis, some addictions, are so clearly destructive that it seems hard to believe they should not be considered as aberrations. Other areas, like consensual sexuality, for example, are much tougher.
To make things worse, most psychiatric viewpoints are based purely on theory with almost no fact to back it up other than "clinical observation."

This is something that highlights my view on psychiatry. There are both legitimate disorders and conditions that need attention and treatment, as well as those not-so legitimate seeming, and of course there are the misdiagnosed people as well.

What concerns me is how much and with what validity are certain behaviors pathologized. Homosexuality used to be a pathological condition, according to the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. Today such an attitude would be considered a violation of human rights. Interestingly enough, there exists a disorder included in DSM-IV called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, which raises a lot of warning flags about it's validity for me.

If you look at most definitions for various disorders they often contain clauses such as "causing marked difficulty in life", but they still seem so vague, vague enough that they can be applied to people too liberally.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

Ya there is alot of bullshit. But alot of the times deviant people have some kind of chemical inbalance..I dont know where your getting that they are trying to cover up that your parents sucked. They probably know that, they arent covering it up. Im sorry that you had to go through all that shit as a kid, and it sux they put u on suicide watch. They probably did it because they get 1000 kids like that everyday, and they cant take any chances...But if you do have like a personality disorder just accept it..The first step in getting better, is admiting that there is something fucked up in your mind. I recognized that a few years ago. I have depression and severe anxiety, now im lookin for the doctor to give me some hardcore drugs to make me feel better.

And modern electroshock therapy is painless and an effective treatment of depression. Its not like in the movie one flew over the cuckoo nest...the therapy sends a small pulse of electricity through your brain and i dont know how it works, but it probably stimulates your neurotransmitters to make more serotonin.

ya there is tons of bullshit, like hyper sexual behavior and ADHD..My little 10 yr old brother has like 6 friends who supposedly have adhd..they clearly dont, theyre just children kept in a cage all day..But there are more legit disorders that need taking care of... I think they should stop diagnosing all this bull fuckin shit and find a fuckin cure for my anxiety. I think ive been desensitised to fear because ive been living with social phobia for so long. All day my amygdala is firing fear signals at school, whenever i talk to someone and think i dont say the right thing, i get a panic attack and dwell on it for hours. They should cure that shit before they diagnose something like lethargic motion disorder(extreme laziness) or hyperdeep thinking disorder ( the disorder in which one thinks too deeply and it effects his or her daily life)..just a matter of time b4 that shits real.

 

[Ska]

You know, they also thought mental disorders were a product of an in-balance of humors in the body for a long time. Many people, for a long time, were wrongly treated daily in the process of figuring out that these things reside in the mind and not the body.

My point is this is still an ongoing, imperfect process. We don't have all the answers. However, does that mean we should simply give up and not help anyone? No. The fact of the matter is that we have to start somewhere, and have to make an attempt to help people in need.

I'd like to hear some ideas on what we can do to benefit the field/what would be needed to correct the current problems from the people who think the field is a complete sham.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

I think that before we try to find new problems, we should try and solve older ones like depression and axiety, which are the 2 most diagnosed mental problems in America. Maybe make it easier to see a shrink, and put more research into different types of treatement, rather than pills.

 

[ememisya]

......and theres nothing i can do to change anything....fuck ..

Nevar!

There is always something you can do to change things. Quickly or not depends on the kind of plan, never feel hopeless Even if there is no hope you can die trying and have something you can do, to the end of your breath.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

Nevar!

There is always something you can do to change things. Quickly or not depends on the kind of plan, never feel hopeless Even if there is no hope you can die trying and have something you can do, to the end of your breath.

Damn. I wish i was as optimistic as you. Ive lost all hope for change in this horrible world.

 

[Melllvar]

Ya there is alot of bullshit. But alot of the times deviant people have some kind of chemical inbalance..I dont know where your getting that they are trying to cover up that your parents sucked. They probably know that, they arent covering it up. Im sorry that you had to go through all that shit as a kid, and it sux they put u on suicide watch. They probably did it because they get 1000 kids like that everyday, and they cant take any chances...But if you do have like a personality disorder just accept it..The first step in getting better, is admiting that there is something fucked up in your mind. I recognized that a few years ago. I have depression and severe anxiety, now im lookin for the doctor to give me some hardcore drugs to make me feel better.

And modern electroshock therapy is painless and an effective treatment of depression. Its not like in the movie one flew over the cuckoo nest...the therapy sends a small pulse of electricity through your brain and i dont know how it works, but it probably stimulates your neurotransmitters to make more serotonin.

Don't have much time to post right now, but I thought I should clarify since I seem to have given the wrong impression: I actually wasn't institutionalized for my suicidal thoughts when I was 13, although the doctor's tried very hard to do it, my parents actually drew the line there. I did still get force medicated for years though, was taken around to visit many mental institutions while my parents considered putting me in them (although in the end they never did), and one of my best friends in high school was institutionalized for about two weeks because of a five minute conversation in which he claims he never even directly mentioned suicide (they just claimed he was a danger to himself and others, based on nothing but the shrinks own opinion... and having known him well I can guarantee he wasn't, he was just doing badly in school and his parents naively thought a shrink could help... next thing they know he's locked up and the doctors won't let him out or even tell his parents where they're keeping him).

Anyway, I didn't want to turn this into a thread about my past personal problems, I just thought I should clarify since I'd clearly given the wrong idea. I'll respond to Ska's post when I have more time (not that I have solutions for how psychiatry could do better, but if I'm going to criticize I suppose I really should try to be constructive).

Edit: Also, I'm not sure about the newer electroshock, which they still do to about 100,000-200,000 people a year supposedly, so they may have toned down the currents and voltages used (not that that makes me feel any better), but the old fashioned stuff specifically worked by destroying the frontal lobe (the area generally associated with higher, "sentient" cognitive functions). Electroshock, insulin coma therapy, lobotomy, and anti-schizophrenics all work by dulling the frontal lobe, essentially eliminating higher cognitive processes to make the patient more controllable. This is another thing that pisses me off... no offense Desert, but people try to support these things without even understanding what they're doing to people. I remember a doctor telling me my problems were related to an imbalance of either serotonin, norepenephrine (sp?), dopamine or a few other things... but they didn't know, they're just throwing out a few chemical names as buzzwords. They didn't test for a chemical imbalance, in fact they never do, they just claim "chemical imbalance" because it sounds like a reasonable etiology to people who don't know any better.

Of course, if some doctor's reading and I'm over simplifying this on a chemical or physiological level, feel free to point out where I'm wrong. But my understanding is that of the "therapies" I mentioned it's all about degradation of the frontal lobe.

 

[DesertSmeagle]

They dont lobotomize people anymore haha. Noone destroys anyones frontal lobes anymore, its clearly inhumane and was deemed illegal at one point in time.. There is no "kill the brain to keep you under control" anymore. People that would need a lobotomy in the past now just take antipsychotics, which are far more effective. I have a grandma schizo and shes on lithium or haldol, both antipsychotics, and shes a relatively "normal" little old lady.

And ya, they just assumed that you had a chemical inbalanc based on your behavior. Its not that they arent testing you for chem inalances its that they cant haha. The technology unfortunately doesnt exist. Serotonin controls how well messages between your brain are sent. Its also a homrone, and when your brain doesnt make enough, you get depression. Or at least thats what they think. Im sure there are flaws to this...But there is no real degredation to the frontal lobes at all. Your completely human and aware after modern treatment. Like this woman. But i w on cymbalta, and it actually helped my depression, but did nothing for anxiety.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIkmMI3RIbUya
ya shes kinds strange, but im sure shes done everything treatment wise. And shes not a zombie.
But if there are examples of people getting their frontal lobes fucked up in the modern world please tell me.

 

[Melllvar]

You know, they also thought mental disorders were a product of an in-balance of humors in the body for a long time. Many people, for a long time, were wrongly treated daily in the process of figuring out that these things reside in the mind and not the body.

My point is this is still an ongoing, imperfect process. We don't have all the answers. However, does that mean we should simply give up and not help anyone? No. The fact of the matter is that we have to start somewhere, and have to make an attempt to help people in need.

I'd like to hear some ideas on what we can do to benefit the field/what would be needed to correct the current problems from the people who think the field is a complete sham.

Not being involved in the social sciences (in fact I rather despise them... not being sciences really, they should actually be called "social philosophies," IMO) I don't really have a fool proof solution for how all these things should be reformed or managed. I'm not even sure where to draw the line between sanity and crazy, and I doubt anyone else really does either (see my reply to Moocow, or I can link to other studies that show how even the more hardcore mental illnesses {e.g. schizophrenia} are not nearly as clear cut as most people think).

At some point, however, I feel a profession like psychiatry ends up doing more harm than good. It almost certainly did this in the past (I've already mentioned the particular therapies enough times, so no need to go into them again), and from what I've seen it still does today. Do you ruin the lives of many to help a few? Before posting this I looked up the hippocratic oath, thinking that I'd find something about "first, do no harm." Turns out that's actually not in the oath, and most medical schools don't require it anyway, but I did come by some other interesting parts of the modern oath:

"I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.


I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.


I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery."


As I see it, all psychiatry stretching back for 250 years has made a laughing stock of this. They might as well be calling it the Hypocritic Oath. There are at least five studies, four by the WHO and another by some Illinois researchers (IIRC), showing that schizophrenia patients are nearly ten times more likely to recover if left untreated compared to using modern medications. You have clinical psychotherapy people citing known falsehoods like these medications affect people with the disorder differently than those without the disorder (that's right, that's complete bullshit too), or that people have chemical imbalances when that is at best a hypothesis, it's not something they've linked to the "disorders" in experiment, and even if they had they aren't testing for those imbalances, just assuming they must be there based on a symptom-based diagnosis (I don't really care whether the technology to test for it is there or not, it's the fact that they are claiming an etiology that they're just guessing about). And then there's the fact that while ADHD is supposed to occur in about 3-7% of the population, which already seems absurdly high to me, the rates of diagnosis increased at a rate of 3% a year for almost ten years (CDC).


Anyway, I'm getting off track again, and if I just start listing all the random facts showing how crooked the industry is I'll literally be here all night and most of tomorrow. As for actual solutions, the crookedness of the drug companies is something that needs to change, and that goes outside of just psychiatry. They're constantly being given slaps on the wrist for blatantly scewing studies or mis-advertising drugs as safer than they are. The profession could certainly use some actual, hardcore scientists to debunk all the crap-work being done by the people who weren't good enough to cut is as real scientists (and I mean this, one of my best friends was going for neuroscience before he realized that meant he had to pass organic chem., which would have required actual work, so instead he became a family counselor with a newfound belief that there are mystical elements to the human mind that can't be explained by science... how comical). Similarly, they use bell-curve statistics to simply things that are clearly not accurately represented by normal distributions just because "otherwise it would be too complicated" (that's an actual quote from a psychometrician). Can you imagine if a physical scientist did that? That same counselor friend I mentioned personally holds the belief that clinical psychiatry sucks because there's a huge disconnect between research and clinical practice... in essence, he claims the actual research being put out is more reliable than I would claim it is, but that clinicians get there jobs and essentially just use their own viewpoints instead of going with what the hard research actually shows... but that's his opinion, not mine. Anyway, the fact that there are many studies blatantly showing the current methods are less effective than doing nothing (in many cases at least) and yet the current methods continue to be used, and are even become more common and accepted, would seem to support his view.

That's all I've got right now. Did we solve psychiatry yet?

 

[Melllvar]

They dont lobotomize people anymore haha. Noone destroys anyones frontal lobes anymore, its clearly inhumane and was deemed illegal at one point in time.. There is no "kill the brain to keep you under control" anymore. People that would need a lobotomy in the past now just take antipsychotics, which are far more effective. I have a grandma schizo and shes on lithium or haldol, both antipsychotics, and shes a relatively "normal" little old lady.

And ya, they just assumed that you had a chemical inbalanc based on your behavior. Its not that they arent testing you for chem inalances its that they cant haha. The technology unfortunately doesnt exist. Serotonin controls how well messages between your brain are sent. Its also a homrone, and when your brain doesnt make enough, you get depression. Or at least thats what they think. Im sure there are flaws to this...But there is no real degredation to the frontal lobes at all. Your completely human and aware after modern treatment. Like this woman. But i w on cymbalta, and it actually helped my depression, but did nothing for anxiety.
...
But if there are examples of people getting their frontal lobes fucked up in the modern world please tell me.

Well, I think you're wrong about most of that. A huge amount of the info I've used in this discussion came from a book called Mad In America, which essentially covers the history of psychiatry from the mid 1700's up to 2003. Among other things it follows the links between lobotomy, to thorazine, to the other neuroleptics, up to the newer drugs that have replaced the old neuroleptics. They essentially work the same way, and aside from the scewed studies by the drug companies, they have not been shown to be any safer than the older generations, which were used to essentially perform a chemical lobotomy. If you don't have time to read a 300+ page book, here's a link to a timeline of the development of anti-psychotics that connects the dots between lobotomy and the drugs currently in use (they have plenty of other nice, damning revelations besides that on there too).

As for the chemical imbalance thing, it isn't whether they can test for it or not that bothers me (although I'm sure they could, it just might be very expensive and invasive), it's the fact that they claim a patient has one when they don't have a clue. It's like going to the doctor and saying that it hurts to breath, so they treat you for a broken rib, when you may have a lung infection or cancer or some such. Although it's even worse than that analogy really, since most of these diseases haven't even been linked to a specific chemical imbalance, it's really nothing more than a guess. It's not even a theory, it's an untested hypothesis.

 

[Ska]

You make some very good points Mellvar and brought some interesting things to light. I was going to tell you that psychiatry at least has to have some value, but the more I'm looking into this the more disgusted I get.

This made for a very interesting read that opened my eyes some more. Some particularly troubling things from it:

Spoiler

The meaning of psychiatric symptoms is not always clear. Paranoid delusions, anxiety episodes, and depression, for example, may all have personal and social meaning, but these meanings are frequently hard to interpret. For better and for worse, this is not necessarily a problem for psychiatrists since the form and constellation of symptoms are more important for diagnosis and treatment than are their substance and meaning. For instance, major depression, according to the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, can be diagnosed when the patient expresses a certain number and intensity of symptoms - low mood, poor sleep, weight loss, etc. (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, pp. 339-345). It is not necessary to understand the personal meaning of the symptoms or even the possible causes in order to initiate the most common psychiatric treatment for it, pharmacological therapy. This simplified approach, which of course increases inter-rater diagnostic reliability, has an efficient, almost admirable straightforwardness about it. But it also serves to empty symptoms of their possible moral, political, economic, or social meanings and implies that they possess only psychiatric or biological significance. In effect, it decontextualises the individual (Susko, 1994).

Spoiler

From a critical perspective, psychiatry has a dual function within capitalism. Capitalist society has brought into existence a class of experts trained to deal with the negative consequences of the very conditions that, historically, capitalism itself has helped bring about: disruption of local community life and emotional bonds, deracination, depersonalisation of work, the anomie of urban life. Psychiatry and psychotherapy represent modes of treatment that have evolved not only to provide relief of symptoms, but also to bring comfort, encouragement, and personal attention to lonely and demoralised individuals in a society where close personal relationships and community are often absent. However, the form of care is not the same for all social classes. Like all goods and services, care is distributed unevenly in a capitalist society depending upon ability to pay. The upper strata, at least until recently, have received therapy that is oriented toward insight and understanding, while those in the lower socio-economic strata get treatment that more closely resembles administrative management: hospitalisation, briefer more directive psychotherapy, and tranquillising medications (Garfield, 1994; Hollingshead and Redlich, 1958).

Spoiler

There is a final way that psychiatry and capitalism are related. Marx pointed out that criminals produced not only crime but also criminal law, criminology professors, and textbooks of criminology (Bottomore and Ruel, 1963, p. 167). In similar fashion, so do mental patients produce not only mental illness but also psychiatrists, psychiatric diagnoses, psychiatric wards, mental hospitals, and the rest of the therapeutic industry. The mental health profession obviously does not produce mental illness in individuals. But it does create, through its classification system, the names and categories of individual mental suffering that feed numerous training and continuing medical education programs in psychiatry, that nourish the companies and organisations that publish and distribute the ever-increasing number of books, journals, video and audio cassettes that address the nature, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness. And, not least, its categories fuel the psychopharmacology industry and vice-versa. In these ways, a traditionally non-productive group of people - the "mentally ill," many of whom are unable to work in the usual ways - get drawn back into the productive cycle of capitalism.

Spoiler

There are two basic strategies for commodifying health care. In the first, an entity called a health maintenance organization (HMO), often but not always sponsored by one of the large insurance companies such as Aetna or Prudential, contracts with employers to provide health care for the company's employees at prepaid rates. In order to keep costs down, the HMO then manages all aspects of care: selection of psychiatrists and other physicians who agree to accept a discounted fee; prior authorisation of all treatment by either the patient's primary physician or the plan's administrative physician as well as close on-going monitoring of the treatment itself; and standard protocols of treatment that favour less-expensive therapies: medication instead of psychotherapy, short-term therapy instead of long-term therapy.
The second commodifying method is called capitation. An HMO offers to pay a group of psychiatrists (or other clinicians) a fixed fee per person (per head = capitation) to assume responsibility for a cohort of patients for a certain period of time. In this model responsibility for managing care, for holding down costs, is shifted to the treating psychiatrist, who makes money if patient needs are low and loses money if patient needs are high.

What is not debatable in this commodification of health care is who gets the money. In a capitalist system, one would expect large corporations to profit the most. This is exactly what has happened. Private, for-profit companies such as Prudential, Cigna, Travellers, Metropolitan Life, and Aetna currently control 65 percent of the managed care market in the United States (Eckholm, 1994; Kerr, 1992, 1993; Pear, 1993). Medicare and Medicaid patients are being forced or enticed into for-profit managed care organisations in many states (Eckholm, 1995; Freudenheim, 1995b; Pear, 1995a). The chief executive officers of the seven largest health maintenance organisations received an average reimbursement in the form of cash and stock awards of 7 million dollars in 1994 (Freudenheim, 1995a) and several of the HMOs have so much cash on hand (in 1994 the nine largest publicly traded HMO's had $9.5 billion) that they literally have trouble knowing how and where to invest it (Anders, 1994). Some have turned to putting their money in tobacco companies, which, in spite of bad press, still remain a good investment (Boyd, Himmelstein, and Woolhandler, 1995).



Momentous as these changes are for psychiatrists and other health care professionals, they represent little more than an old pattern. A particular activity, but this time one previously controlled by a profession, is rapidly being subordinated to corporate control like so many activities before it. Large corporations are commodifying psychiatric and medical care, thus reducing the price of health care to consumers (though not without cost) and insuring a healthy profit for themselves. None of this is surprising to those familiar with the dynamics of capitalism.

I have officially changed my view on this matter - you and this article have won me over. However, I don't think the problem is necessarily one that lies within the filed of psychology, but alas, capitalism (what else is new?).

But what can be done about this? It seems nothing. Like that article mentions, to thrive in a capitalistic system you have to to play by their rules, which means the companies that adhere to capitalistic values and conventions will always control the profit, and thus the market.

There needs to be a clear line divided between business and medicine. As soon as you make profit the single motivator, everything else will suffer - especially treatment - the main goal of medicine. Something needs to change.

 

[Anthile]

Not necessarily, but it helps.

 

[Nerd.]

I'd be inclined to both agree and disagree with this article. I have spent a few years working with teens with emotional and behavioral disorders. I intend to work with them as a therapist, while specializing in abuse and trauma. Disorders such as Borderline, ODD, Anti-Social Disorder, and ADHD do, very much, exist. One encounter with such individuals and you know it. A child with severe ADHD needs to be medicated. For his own safety, because of the extremely impulsive behavior that accompanies it. I had one kid who was off his medication for a month and he hung himself. Not because he was depressed, but because he was mad at his mom, and he was doing it to "get her". He didn't even stop to realize that he would be dead. These kinds of things happened every time they tried to mess with his dosage. A kid with ODD will often have similar problems. He has no idea why he doing something, only that he has the urge to be defiant as an end in itself. Have you met a Borderline girl? That insane chick who will haul off and beat you with the base of a lamp because you forgot to tell her you liked her new shoelaces and five minutes later has no idea why she did it? Or just laughs about it and claims you deserved it? It's not Bi-Polar Disorder. That's Borderline. Medication. Me-di-ca-tion. Medication!

However. These disorders are grossly over-diagnosed. Every time someone seems a little different, its assumed that there is something wrong. I was at a conference and I heard people discussing whether there was a way to create a category of social disabilities into which most of the more intelligent people fall. Mental disabilities of the Gifted. I was disgusted. Just because a child isn't well-behaved in all situations, it doesn't mean he needs medication. It could mean so many things, and shoving pills down his throat will not help. I was diagnosed as Anti-Social as a teen. For a girl, that's a big deal. I wasn't Anti-Social. I was simply facing adversity. My coping skills were not well received. Pills would have made things worse. One kid I work with takes 12 medications a day. Twelve. They keep wondering what they can add because he seems so distracted all the time. It doesn't occur to anyone to look at the chemicals which are already being pumped into his little brain. The system is illogical. It annoys me.

Disorders do exist. I would argue that only a fraction of those diagnosed with such disorders actually have them. Those who genuinely have them need medication and therapy in order to ensure that they can live a full and happy life. Those with better cognitive reasoning may even be able to end medication with the help of therapy and maintenance.

Spoiler

A bit of a non sequitur, I realize, but this is what popped into my head when I saw the thread title

 

[Ska]

I'd be inclined to both agree and disagree with this article. I have spent a few years working with teens with emotional and behavioral disorders. I intend to work with them as a therapist, while specializing in abuse and trauma. Disorders such as Borderline, ODD, Anti-Social Disorder, and ADHD do, very much, exist. One encounter with such individuals and you know it. A child with severe ADHD needs to be medicated. For his own safety, because of the extremely impulsive behavior that accompanies it. I had one kid who was off his medication for a month and he hung himself. Not because he was depressed, but because he was mad at his mom, and he was doing it to "get her". He didn't even stop to realize that he would be dead. These kinds of things happened every time they tried to mess with his dosage. A kid with ODD will often have similar problems. He has no idea why he doing something, only that he has the urge to be defiant as an end in itself. Have you met a Borderline girl? That insane chick who will haul off and beat you with the base of a lamp because you forgot to tell her you liked her new shoelaces and five minutes later has no idea why she did it? Or just laughs about it and claims you deserved it? It's not Bi-Polar Disorder. That's Borderline. Medication. Me-di-ca-tion. Medication!

However. These disorders are grossly over-diagnosed. Every time someone seems a little different, its assumed that there is something wrong. I was at a conference and I heard people discussing whether there was a way to create a category of social disabilities into which most of the more intelligent people fall. Mental disabilities of the Gifted. I was disgusted. Just because a child isn't well-behaved in all situations, it doesn't mean he needs medication. It could mean so many things, and shoving pills down his throat will not help. I was diagnosed as Anti-Social as a teen. For a girl, that's a big deal. I wasn't Anti-Social. I was simply facing adversity. My coping skills were not well received. Pills would have made things worse. One kid I work with takes 12 medications a day. Twelve. They keep wondering what they can add because he seems so distracted all the time. It doesn't occur to anyone to look at the chemicals which are already being pumped into his little brain. The system is illogical. It annoys me.

Disorders do exist. I would argue that only a fraction of those diagnosed with such disorders actually have them. Those who genuinely have them need medication and therapy in order to ensure that they can live a full and happy life. Those with better cognitive reasoning may even be able to end medication with the help of therapy and maintenance.

Spoiler

A bit of a non sequitur, I realize, but this is what popped into my head when I saw the thread title

Where do you draw the line between who needs medication and who doesn't, though? It seems pretty arbitrary. You mentioned that ADHD kid who hung himself - didn't you say that was a result of altering his dosage? If it's so dangerous to alter the dosage, perhaps he shouldn't have been taking the drug to begin with?

And you said the system is set up illogically. I don't think it's set up illogically, it's just set up to increase profit rather than provide the best treatment.