Posted on 05/18/2013 12:33:46 PM PDT by neverdem
The "bible" of psychiatric diagnosis shapes—and deforms—both treatment and policy...
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The DSM-III (1980) was an effort to jettison outdated theories and terms such as "neurosis" and replace them with an objective list of disorders with agreed-upon symptoms. The DSM-IIIR (1987) was 567 pages and included nearly 300 disorders. The DSM-IV (1994, slightly revised in 2000) was 900 pages and contained nearly 400 disorders. The new DSM-5, with its modernized Arabic number, is 947 pages. It contains, along with serious mental illnesses, "binge-eating disorder" (whose symptoms include "eating when not feeling physically hungry"), "caffeine intoxication," "parent-child relational problem" and my favorite, "antidepressant discontinuation syndrome." Now psychiatrists can treat the symptoms of going off antidepressants, which is good because the expanded criteria for many disorders allows doctors to prescribe antidepressants more often for more problems...
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And he was there when those scientific aspirations met reality and all hell broke loose. Mr. Greenberg gives us a front-row seat at the APA's annual meeting in 2011, when results of the field trials were reported. Field trials are intended to test the reliability of diagnostic criteria—meaning that two psychiatrists observing the same person's symptoms should have a pretty good chance of agreeing on a diagnosis. But the results were dismal. Agreement on identifying even Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder—what Mr. Greenberg calls the "Dodge Dart and Ford Falcon of the DSM, simple and reliable and ubiquitous" disorders—was low. Moreover, the field testing on patients failed miserably: 5,000 clinicians signed up to participate, 195 finished training for it, and only 70 enrolled any patients in trials. The APA tried to put a good spin on these numbers —"nearly 150 patients have joined the study"—ignoring, Mr. Greenberg notes, that their goal was 10,000. Only two months before the data had to be in,...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
They started down the slippery slope of letting politics into their “science”when they were coerced into reclassifiying homosexuality. Coprophagia and bestiality will not be too far along now from being dropped as a mental illness as well.
BFLR
Thomas Szasz was right.
CC
Psychiatry was born progressive and crazy.
Issues of brain chemistry are legitimate but beyond that its all guesswork.
Until they return homosexuality to their list of mental disorders, the book is worthless and the profession is a lie.
Placemark.
This travesty goes beyond politics.
Millions of Americans are caught in the psychiatric diagnoses to drugs system.
Very few patients have been told to change their diets to include healthy fats (from clean healthy animals, and coconut’, olive, and a couple other oils) for their brains, plenty of clean veggies, fruits, animals, raw dairy. And exclude seed oils, corn, artificial flavors, colors, MSG, fake sugars, etc. That alone would improve many conditions. Same with fresh air and moderate exercise.
We need psychiatry but we need to follow Hippocrates and only treat if treatment doesn’t harm the patient more than letting him be.
Psychology, literally translated from Greek, means the study of the soul. In its very definition, it is an impossible, subjective venture, and can never remotely be in the same room as the mathematics based sciences.
Being a study devoid of concrete foundations, it is subject to the winds that blow. And right now, things are blowing Politically Correct. That will change in time.
The bottom line is that the biochemistry of human thought is a function of lipid metabolism. The brain is ninety percent phospholipids. How those lipids churn in the cranium to create the higher senses is unknown. Psychiatry is the least scientific of all medical specialties and the most politically correct.Its subjective authoritative pronouncements will one day be as ludicrous as the earnest earth centered theories of the ancients are viewed today. Psychophamacology is empiricism.
The left has irrevocably corrupted science. Global warming (caused only by American corporations), Marxist economics, all gun violence is attributable to the NRA, only racism causes disparate racial representation in the professions, women can do anything men can do, (so long as the standards are different), affirmative action isn’t racist, stone age cultures are superior to all other cultures, Islamic terrorism is an oxymoron, etc., etc. Marx wrote that only Marxist thought is pure, and reality can only be understood by Marxist reasoning. It’s where we are now.
Didn’t you get the memo?
We are all crazy.
j/k
As long as a person can run his/her own life, there is no reason to go to a professional counselor, or psychologist, or psychiatrist.
If a person cannot run his/her own life, counseling from one of the professionals will usually help.
Note, I didn't stick “medicine” in there. The only mental health professional who can prescribe medicine, is a psychiatrist. They normally don't counsel with the patient themselves. If there is counseling, the psychiatrist may have a professional counselor on his staff. That patient would likely get medicine plus counseling.
If your problem or problems prevent you from running your life, such as you can't go to work, you stay in bed all day, you can't think, you can't concentrate to get anything done, etc., search out a professional counselor or a psychologist - don't go to a psychiatrist if you don't want pills.
I evaluated private patients, patients referred to me by government entities, patients a psychiatrist put in a mental health hospital and needed an evaluation of that patient while they were in that hospital. Usually, the ones in the mental health hospital needed to be there.
I evaluated an ex-military man and gave a diagnosis of PTSD and I knew it was severe. A psychiatrist sent him to my office and immediately after the man left, I found out he had been discharged from the hospital - I thought he had come from the hospital and was going back there. I immediately tried to find the psychiatrist and found a psychologist friend in the same building had taken over that man's care due to the psychiatrist leaving town.
I told him it was a serious mistake to let the man leave the hospital because he was going to attack someone and that would probably be his mother. Sure enough, the next day, the man barricaded himself in the house and was holding off the police and his mother had gotten out of the house before he got to her.
I say that to show there are mentally ill people. This man could not run his life.
I evaluated a woman in a mental hospital and she needed to be there as she was a danger to herself and her children at that time. She was convinced the Mafia was after her and she had taken her small children into the woods to hide and wouldn't come out. I gave her a proper diagnosis based on her behavior and mental condition at that time.
This lady could not run her life.
Diagnosing a mental condition takes knowledge and the ability to know what psychological tests are indicating, and what an extended interview with the patient is indicating. A diagnosis doesn't happen when a patient sits down in your office. It takes extensive evaluation in all those areas to make a proper diagnosis.
I know most of you people will dump on mental health workers but one reason you do that is because you haven't been there to know the process.
But watch. Soon everyone is going to be named bi-polar (happy sometimes and sad sometimes.)
At a big practice of psychiatrists (MD’s!) in Houston, they use a software program and key in your answers to a series of clinical questions into their little apple tablet. No talking. Only answer the question and in the end they assign you a mental illness and drugs.
A good friend was really devastated when dad died and thought it had been too long and she couldn't settle down inside, so she sought some “counseling” at the above mentioned pill mill. Antidepressants. She shared this with me because she was surprised the lady doc. did not talk with her at all about the loss of her father which is why she went.
I asked her to please forgo the drugs and seek out a real counselor. I know one from a Christian service organization I have interacted with so referred her. She just had a lot of unfinished business with her dad - guilts and resentments. All she needed was a loving confessor; someone who could tell her “officially” that it is normal to deal with everything like that when your parent dies. Let it go. Forgive yourself and forgive your dad. Exactly what Jesus told us to do for mental health!
I was well into my 50’s before I began to realize that Psychiatry and ‘psycho-analysis’ was a made-up science based on purely secular fear and hysteria. To me, those who espouse it and swear by its conclusions are nothing more than medieval clerics arguing over how many angels will fit on the head of a pin.
Well, this thread will be full of meaningless and snide comments ..I doubt very few who have worked for years with people with mental illness will even bother replying.
Psychiatry is very difficult because it is so complex, unlike a broken foot or pneumonia. We sure have come a long way from locking everyone up in “insane aslylums” because there were no modern treatments.
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