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The DSM-III (1980) was an effort to jettison outdated theories and terms such as "neurosis" and replace them with an objective list of disorders with agreed-upon symptoms.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 ...
I get the impression that psychologists and psychiatrists are in need of severe reality checks. Their creation of the “I’m a victim and it’s always someone else’s fault” syndrome (yes, I blame them) has created a nation of neurotic....neurotics!!
Why did I hate my Mother? lol Just teasing!
I used to have a neighbor who suffered from PTSD and spent some 3 weeks in a VA hospital every summer. After years of “treatment” he and several other patients quit going because of touchy feely treatments and the stress of dealing with the VA.
Instead they started taking a camping and fishing trip to northern Michigan every year and said it turned out to be better than any group therapy led by a therapist. They talk about their issues when they feel on it and rag on each other when its appropriate.
Granted and agreed wholeheartedly that global warming is populated by charlatans and scam artists who destroy lives for money and control.
Zero love for fellow man involved in the global warming agenda. Man is a parasite to be restricted. Psychiatry is a place for love for fellow man to be at work. I sure do hold with you that it's responsible for a LOT of mischeif. But so are conventional medicine and education.
The global warming agenda threatens energy and food production in America because it is progressively working to halt both, and using psychology to do it. People love to feel noble, and the "save the planet" mantra is vain fantasy that truth and knowledge will ultimately prove. It's math. The Yellowstone Caldera could blow two months from now -- it blows about once every 600,000 years, but who's been counting up until what, maybe 90 years ago? -- anyway, it will blow again someday and when it does, about one third of the continental US will be under dead ash. All the electric cars and plastic bag bans on earth will have had zilch effect. Dandelion dust on a prairie.
Psychology is really only as harmful as each individual allows it to be, and for sure has been ethically good and useful to many, I've seen it myself. It's pro-people, though progressive and leftist at present. The global warming game is anti-people.
State Senate OKs bill to let psychologists prescribe mental health medications (IL)
"If the plan were to pass the House and be signed by Gov. Pat Quinn, Illinois would join Louisiana and New Mexico as the only states to allow psychologists to prescribe medications for mental illness. The military also permits its psychologists to dispense psychotropic drugs, Harmon said."
I had a patient with probably serotonin syndrome, although I hadn't heard of that diagnosis yet, around 12 years ago. She was seriously tachycardic on multiple psych meds. Her shrink didn't want me to stop those meds. I did, IIRC. I believe she was on at least one SSRI.
When I nixed psychiatry, it was because I didn’t want to hear about forgiving myself, or about how human nature is, or about how I did my best, you know...all the platitudes.
My situation is, of course different from what a soldier may go through, but the bottom line is the same.
I didn’t have a campfire and friends, but I had a mirror I could look into and say “ you are such a b-—h. Now what’re you gonna do about it?
Truth hurts. But it sure does help! A psychiatrist would not dare tell the truth, IMO, its all about feeling good, even though the patient really should be feeling quite bad.
Is ‘Blissfully Ignorant’ in the DSM yet?
"Coerced" is what I once believed, now I'm not sure if that's accurate any more.
Those who would have needed to be coerced are likely no longer in positions to have a say.
Their replacements are the true believers an organization hires or moves up to best carry out its mission. The altered DSM is a symptom of a greater problem.
The progressives have been peeing in the educational punch bowl for a very long time.
The 60s radicals protesting a government sending them "to die in Vietnam" didn't go away, they stayed for grad school. Then, they became professors, teachers and administrators. Now, they're not just out in the open, they're in charge.
What else explains why things went down hill so fast, why junk science that was once laughed at and ridiculed is now called "settled science accepted by a majority of scientists" and why our once highly revered institutions, beliefs, values and traditions are mocked and ridiculed in a suddenly upside down, bad is good world?
What else explains how a 90% self-identified Christian nation that put Ïn God We Trust" on its currency and "one nation under God" in its Pledge of Allegiance, quickly morphed into a people who legalized human sacrifice to the god of convenience, choose to twice be lead and represented by a man from the party that tried three times to remove God from its party and is now a maybe 50% self-identified Christian nation hostile to Christianity and a Judeo-Christian belief system?
The virus they are infecting us with is very fast acting if properly incubated in a susceptible victim with a systemically weakened immune system. That's US.
Time to pray. Seriously. It's the only antidote to keep this thing from progressing until it's terminal.
A really good therapist/psychologist would, but you're right about the psychiatrists.
You go to a really good psychologist/therapist to find your truth. You go to a psychiatrist for a prescription.
All psychiatrists do in today's world is pass out the latest and greatest SSRIs for drug companies.
“Anyway, I believe there is a place for psychiatry among those who believe they have nowhere else to turn.”
That person is one who needs to see a mental health counselor. The person is stuck in place. A few counseling sessions would free that person to speak freely and get the problem(s) resolved.
That was not my approach. The only one who can make you a victim is you. The only one who can depress you is you. You have control of your mind - no one else does. I can't make you depressed - only you can make you depressed. I would tell that to my patients and ask them how long they wanted to depress themselves? Would they like to depress themselves one more day or one more week or one more month - they could decide. That gives power to the patient to take control and it is the truth they have that power.
If you believe you truly “created” an “inner demon” you do not yet have spiritual understanding. You face, rather, a veritable cafeteria of spirit that you have the ability to choose from, and God wants you to choose wisely. You can permit an evil spirit to reach in to your heart and soul, and this does not need to be a theatrical case of pea soup spewing possession in order to work a heap of hurt to you. Some of these evil spirits can promise bliss, and the spiritually ignorant and/or immoral in the psychology business can tell you to follow that “bliss.” If you are not yet giving God the glory, but still giving yourself the glory, for “casting out inner demons” then you probably just switched inner demons.
“She was seriously tachycardic...”
You had to stop those meds. If the patient is dead it doesn’t matter if there was a mental health problem or not. :o)
Illinois/Louisiana/New Mexico - I didn’t know this was happening. I suppose “medicine makers” are delighted. More people on pills. This isn’t good.
“Is ‘Blissfully Ignorant’ in the DSM yet?”
It doesn’t have to be. If you are “blissfully ignorant” you wouldn’t be in a counselor’s office. You would go on with your happy life.
This is true. It doesn’t care about spiritual things, only limited views of an emotional state.
Famous psychiatrist,Carl Jung, was a very spiritual man.
He profoundly influenced the early AA movement and is often quoted, when he said to an alcoholic that just couldn’t stop drinking after much treatment,
“ Perhaps yours is the type of case that will not recover unless you have a profound spiritual experience. “
I have a relative in Psychiatry who tells me the distance between Psychiatry and a decent counselor is very slim. You DON’T get what you pay for. As often as not, a well-recommended counselor is better than a shrink. And cheaper.
Exactly. I created my own inner demons and all psychiatrists ever did was try to convince me to accept them and live with them. I didn’t want to live with them so I killed them on my own.
A psychiatrist will try to help you accept yourself as you are. Some people need that. But what does it really solve?
When the problems are...unacceptable, and you refuse to face them, the only thing you can do beyond seeing a psychiatrist, is keep seeing the psychiatrist. You go to your regular Wednesday appointment...one o’clock....get your ego boost...but you never move on.
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