don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick joke

[JackRiddler]

Do it for yourself, bks. I'm not interested in pursuing the point. So I won't be responding further.

I think that's unfortunate given what you've started here. I've been thinking about things to write here all day. On the other hand, I've also been thinking that it may end up being a lot longer and complicated than a thread discussion and my own time should accommodate. Nevertheless, you did put out a number of explicit challenges.

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[compared2what?]

Although as long as the tip sheet for Peter "I-Have-Nothing-To-Do-with-Co$-and-No-Longer-Recommend-Sex-for-Children" Breggin (that I forgot about) is out there, here's a judgment call for you to make about his transparency and trustworthiness, or their lack:

Here's page 11 of Talking Back to Prozac:



See that thing he goes out of his way to say about their non-affiliation with crank groups and cults? (Just ignore the thing about the cow, although I do realize that it's eye-catching.)

And remember that he feels so strongly about not being at all affiliated with the Church that the word "libel" has been mentioned in connection with those who suggested otherwise?

And remember also that this book is representative of his accuracy and perspicacity as a researcher and writer?

Good. This is what you have to make a judgment call about:

PROZAC SURVIVORS SUPPORT GROUP FORMED

SEATTLE, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) of Seattle announced today the formation of a new group to assist persons who have suffered adverse effects from the new so-called anti-depressant drug, Prozac. The Prozac Survivors Support Group was also formed to assist families who have members who have either attempted or committed suicide while on this drug.

In the last several months, Prozac and the pharmaceutical company which manufactures the drug, Eli Lilly, have come under increasing attack from those who have suffered ill effects from its use. Eli Lilly is currently facing over

So here's the question.

Do you think he somehow missed the press release? Because there was one. It's not like the connection was hidden or disguised.

Anyway. It's your call.

I don't know anything about Healy, btw. On the other hand, I've never looked into his background. Nor do I know his work. So I got no opinion on him, and nothing on which to base one.

[compared2what?]

Do it for yourself, bks. I'm not interested in pursuing the point. So I won't be responding further.

I think that's unfortunate given what you've started here. I've been thinking about things to write here all day. On the other hand, I've also been thinking that it may end up being a lot longer and complicated than a thread discussion and my own time should accommodate. Nevertheless, you did put out a number of explicit challenges.

.

What I started? Did you just have the unmitigated gall to refer to an argument that I didn't want to be in, have virtually never raised without cause, and would have been free to continue to choose to avoid if you hadn't dragged it down here as something that I fucking started?

Hm.

[JackRiddler]

Do it for yourself, bks. I'm not interested in pursuing the point. So I won't be responding further.

I think that's unfortunate given what you've started here. I've been thinking about things to write here all day. On the other hand, I've also been thinking that it may end up being a lot longer and complicated than a thread discussion and my own time should accommodate. Nevertheless, you did put out a number of explicit challenges.

.

What I started? Did you just have the unmitigated gall to refer to an argument that I didn't want to be in, have virtually never raised without cause, and would have been free to continue to choose to avoid if you hadn't dragged it down here as something that I fucking started?

Hm.

Perhaps I've misunderstood, and you meant that you won't be pursuing the Breggin matter, as opposed to the thread as a whole. We both came to this thread. You've injected your views with vigor. In the meantime you've made a number of challenges to me and to all generally (challenges of an intellectual kind) that I'm working on taking up.

Here's an example, from one post of several of yours that I want to respond to:

And forgive me, honey, but you don't really seem to have the faintest idea what you're talking about. Although maybe you're just too modest to show it. But whatever the case, may I ask you something? Good.

Not the nicest way of going about it, but I'm a big boy.

You do say you want to ask me something, and then you pose a set of questions I do not take to be rhetorical -- should I? -- but as invitations for me to respond:

What, exactly, prompts you to say that commonly prescribed psychotropic medications are likely and/or known possibly to be useless or even harmful?

As opposed, let's say, to overprescribed and often of limited therapeutic utility that's further compromised in many cases by a wide range of empirically non-harmful but practically unbearable side effects?

Or, let's say, so inherently inimical to a respect for the integrity of the individual that should be sacrosanct to all human beings and doubly so to doctors that they should only be used with extreme caution, care and attention as a treatment of last resort for all cases in which life, limb and safety are not at risk?

It goes on from there.

Not simple questions, so I've been working on answers. That's all. I see no need for animosity (and I don't feel any either) but maybe there are misunderstandings going on here. Or I've been a pig in some way I missed. Which I don't believe was so.

.

[norton ash]

Y'all need a shrink.

[compared2what?]

Y'all need a shrink.

You're funny.

[norton ash]

Y'all need a shrink.

You're funny.

Oh, fuck. What did she mean by that???

Now I have to go count the tiles and clean the grout and think things over. Back in a few hours.

[JackRiddler]

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Back on Page 3, this post from c2w? prompted a paroxysm of praise from me, which I meant truthfully and unironically (it seems important now to stress). Your text put in very simple but compelling terms one of the big pictures at work. (As always, there are more than one.)

GPs are not even remotely qualified by education or experience to treat "general" medical problems anymore. And practically haven't been since the 19th fucking century. Shoring up their inadequacies with a network of specialists doesn't really work because:

(a) There aren't enough good specialists to handle the traffic anywhere, even in major thriving metropolitan areas that are crawling with specialists (eg -- take a look at the fees earned by child psychiatrists mentioned in the OP);

(b) There are hundreds and hundreds of very common progressive illnesses, quite a few of which are serious or even fatal, that either never get diagnosed (I mean "until post-mortem examination") or that almost never get diagnosed until it's too late for preventative treatment because for years and years and years they're externally undetectable apart from what I believe are usually referred to as "vague symptoms" -- ie, low-level chronic or episodic GI distress, fatigue, joint and muscle pain, increased susceptibility to minor transient infections, etcetera -- which could be nothing and could be lots of things. Such as the hundreds and hundreds of very common progressive illnesses I was just now mentioning.

These aren't, like, arcane or bizarre conditions. Nor are they undiagnosable. You just can't diagnose any one of them unless you're specifically looking for it. IOW, unless you test for it specifically and interpret the test results with an eye to its possible presence or absence. If that happens, it's a matter of sheer random fucking chance most of the time. Because the expense of running every single test for every single illness that might be largely asymptomatic apart from some muscle pain (or, FTM, wholly asymptomatic sometimes) is prohibitive under the present system of costs and reimbursements. There probably aren't enough lab techs for it either, although I don't really know about that one way or the other. It just would make sense if there weren't.

The model used by, say, the Mayo Clinic (and a few places like it) is a lot less prone to misdiagnosis (or missed diagnosis) because it has every patient is evaluated by a team of specialists who consult and communicate with one another about him or her. But that model is mad fucking expensive at the Mayo Clinic and elsewhere. So almost nobody can afford it. Besides which, it's not used widely enough to accommodate more than a tiny percentage of the patients who might benefit from it anyway.

And that does have HUGE implications for psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. Because vaguely sick people who don't know they're vaguely sick nevertheless are vaguely sick. In that they don't feel well, but don't really have a readily identifiable (to themselves) complaint. So they do what all people do with all feelings, physical and emotional -- ie, they either seek a rational explanation for their feelings, then offer it up to others and to doctors; or they develop some system of coping mechanisms to compensate for their vaguely sensed deficits.

That often ends up looking, as far as the eye can see, like a psychiatric disorder. Most obviously Major Depression or Bipolar II. But you know. People are very complicated, as is human behavior. So it can look like lots of things. Which might very well also be -- and in some cases all but certainly are -- valid psychiatric disorders that it would be not just reasonable but also totally correct and helpful for a physician to diagnose and treat as such on the basis of the symptoms presented.

___________________


The health care system is just a fucking antique, top to bottom. Starting in med school. It's not designed for the practice of medicine in any way that has more than a glancing relationship to the present state of medical knowledge or science.

And that's what you pretty much have to call "a systemic problem." It's not the fault of psychiatrists or any other subdivision of medical practitioners. They're not in a position to observe or identify it. Or even really qualified to do so. Their training and orientation disposes them to an intense focus on the localized particulars that are meaningful within their area of expertise. That's basically what all doctors do. Because it's what they're taught to do.

And it's not really all that difficult to see how it might strike them and most of the world as a good and responsible and helpful thing to do. By all ordinary social standards and per the general understanding of such things, it is. Actually. The only thing that might prompt anyone to suspect that it isn't is that it doesn't fucking work. That's not any truer or less true for psychiatrists than it is for doctors working in any branch of medicine. Though I'm sure that each has its own set of specific drawbacks that are unique to the specialty or area of practice in question. Psychiatry's just the only one I know enough about for an informed consideration of its drawbacks to be partly within the scope of my capabilities.

__________________


Anyway. You can go on thinking about it exclusively in reference to the two or three factors that are quite naturally going to appear to be enormous and enormously significant when they're the only two or three factors you're familiar with. If you feel like it. But you're just fucking yourself over by doing it, imo. It creates a smokescreen that obscures a whole fucking fleet of other, much more seriously threatening issues. I mean threatening to your health and welfare. And that of the community.

Though I can see how it might be the more personally gratifying choice in the short term, for sure.

Now opportunistically I stress the bolded part because it makes a point I find essential and that I think in contradiction with some other things you’ve said, but believe me, that wasn’t what I was thinking back when I first praised this text.

I do think it lays out the case why 15-minute assembly line psychiatric sessions are extremely unlikely to diagnose “vaguely sick” people, but still they will come away with a script for a medicine that is therefore extremely unlikely to do anything for them. Given millions of people being diagnosed, it is certain this is the case for large numbers of them. I do not share your view, expressed elsewhere, that ineffective medicine is not harmful. Not even considering the “side” effects (a curious euphemism for “effects” insofar as they manifest), giving false hope, leaving people untreated but making them believe they’re getting treatment, is harmful.


More shortly.

[82_28]

[compared2what?]

Perhaps I've misunderstood, and you meant that you won't be pursuing the Breggin matter, as opposed to the thread as a whole. We both came to this thread. You've injected your views with vigor. In the meantime you've made a number of challenges to me and to all generally (challenges of an intellectual kind) that I'm working on taking up.

Forgive me. That struck me -- and understandably, I think -- as a reference to the one challenge I did issue. And, as such, a reminder/depiction of me as a person who was flinging down the gauntlet, and causing a ruckus with my oppositional and defiant and feisty attitude. Which I would (and do) regard as fucking unfair. I've been subjected to that very same tactic by trolls too often to really find it fun anymore. Also, it really does end up making me look bad, oddly. I mean, given that the bad conduct wasn't mine.

Here's an example, from one post of several of yours that I want to respond to:

And forgive me, honey, but you don't really seem to have the faintest idea what you're talking about. Although maybe you're just too modest to show it. But whatever the case, may I ask you something? Good.

Not the nicest way of going about it, but I'm a big boy.

I'm sorry. I really am. I was feeling just a little bit sore about getting blatantly fucked around with by someone who was barely even trying to pretend that he had another purpose, I guess. I hope that I mostly kept it out of my post to you, though.

You do say you want to ask me something, and then you pose a set of questions I do not take to be rhetorical -- should I? -- but as invitations for me to respond:

What, exactly, prompts you to say that commonly prescribed psychotropic medications are likely and/or known possibly to be useless or even harmful?

As opposed, let's say, to overprescribed and often of limited therapeutic utility that's further compromised in many cases by a wide range of empirically non-harmful but practically unbearable side effects?

Or, let's say, so inherently inimical to a respect for the integrity of the individual that should be sacrosanct to all human beings and doubly so to doctors that they should only be used with extreme caution, care and attention as a treatment of last resort for all cases in which life, limb and safety are not at risk?

It goes on from there.

Not simple questions, so I've been working on answers. That's all. I see no need for animosity (and I don't feel any either) but maybe there are misunderstandings going on here. Or I've been a pig in some way I missed. Which I don't believe was so.

.

No, those were real questions. And they go to the crux of what happens to be my real issue with the anti-meds, anti-psych stuff, as a matter of fact: It disappears the patient. Also, it's usually reactionary. Not that those are really mutually exclusive features, needless to say.

But whatever. That's been profoundly offending and alarming me for much, much longer than I've even known what Scientology was, apart from some Sci-Fi cultish type of outfit that had something to do with Dianetics. To be honest with you. So I've learned to live with it. I do have strong feelings about it, however. I mean, I really have been thinking about it for quite a while by now.

Anyway. I apologize again for being cranky with you. You should post if you have something to say. I'll definitely read it with interest and attention.

[compared2what?]

.


I do think it lays out the case why 15-minute assembly line psychiatric sessions are extremely unlikely to diagnose “vaguely sick” people, but still they will come away with a script for a medicine that is therefore extremely unlikely to do anything for them. Given millions of people being diagnosed, it is certain this is the case for large numbers of them. I do not share your view, expressed elsewhere, that ineffective medicine is not harmful. Not even considering the “side” effects (a curious euphemism for “effects” insofar as they manifest), giving false hope, leaving people untreated but making them believe they’re getting treatment, is harmful.


More shortly.

I have a very major problem with the 15-minute assembly-line psychiatric sessions for exactly those reasons. As I've said. Maybe more than once. But definitely, for example, here:

If, by some chance, you were using the word "harm" as a synonym for "no help," or maybe "unpleasant and possibly quality-of-life-impairing side-effects that go away when people stop taking the drug":

Oh, man. I am totally with you in agreeing very, very fully and strongly that those are serious and urgent concerns. I could not, in fact, agree with you more. It seems practically inevitable that there would be many more instances of both if talk therapy became a thing of the past and the only access anyone had to psychiatric treatment at all was fifteen minutes with a psychopharm every couple of months. On top of which, patients who were at high-risk for suicide -- we are talking about psychiatric patients, after all; and the suicide rate for Bipolar alone is 20 percent, across the board, irrespective of whether its being treated at all or not -- would be much more likely to slip through the cracks.

That's why I felt so very moved to point out that focusing on the unelaborated presumptive dangers of psychotropic medications in general and/or the evil of psychiatrists in general, while all well and good in its way, was not really an adequate or comprehensive response to the issues raised by the OP.

The reason I prefer not to use the word "harm" is that as I think I've said over and over again, discussion of these issues has been rendered all but impossible by the generally pervasive tone of outrage and overstatement and emotional button-pushing that has led people to believe that antidepressants lead to suicide but bipolar disorder doesn't.

Because that's wrong. Very wrong. As in inaccurate. Although it's also not very thoughtful.

Anyway. I agree with you on points.

[compared2what?]

Except for on one point, I guess.

I don't regard the prospect of 15-minute assembly-line psychiatric sessions as a bad thing primarily because they'll lead to people taking prescription medications that they don't need to take.

And I do regard that prospect as a fucking nightmare because it will lead to people who have serious medical conditions that cause them a lot of pain and suffering not getting treatment that might save their lives.

Like I said. That whole line of thought just completely disappears the patient. And yet, it's the new normal.

[nathan28]

By which I mean, it wasn't "ritual." It was and is, in fact, supportable. I just don't feel like doing the enormous amount of collating and writing it would take to support it.

In any event. That ritual?

Doesn't fucking happen. Seriously. Cites or it didn't happen. And if you can't find any, please have the grace to acknowledge it, won't you?

Because, loathe though I am to complain, I am sick and damn tired of being pilloried for a crime I've never committed while others dance freely around waving their ritually empty and insincere rhetorical sorrow over my failure to confess to the bad acts with which the Politburo has charged me.

c2w, you are, to quote, a national treasure, if we ignore the racism of that phrase. In any event, your analysis is spot-on.

If I can give the four sentence summary in my understanding for the tl;dr crowd:

There is in fact validity to many of the complaints of the anti-psychiatry groups but as a whole that movement has like so many others become the sword and shield of a very untrustworthy network of individuals and groups, including the Co$. When challenged they retreat behind the "but isn't my argument a valid argument"? line, and when on the offensive they conveniently discard any pretenses about argument and resort to what I'd like to call the Wall of Bullshit technique. In case you didn't notice, the Co$-Bo Gritz-Ted Gunderson-Lyndon LaRouche milieu also completely (as in 100%, done, over, finished) derailed the JFK stuff. They may have done the same with the Iran-Contra drug trafficking, and it looks like they also Mission Accomplished! it on Boystown, too. Do you really, really, really want to hang out with these people, metaphorically speaking?

Let me put it another way: if you are holding up copies of R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz whenever someone attacks, and then throwing copies of Dianetics and tubs full of Panacenix: The Miracle Cancer Curing Algae Enema at them when on the offensive, you're not a brave crusader for the neglected, you're just FF$.

Let me try one last time: Face it, you're getting played. Cut your losses and cut your ties. Think like you're an alcoholic sobering up, you have to rebuild practically from the molecular level.

[JackRiddler]

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nathan & c2w, if I started the Riddlington Post, I think both of you will believe me when I say, because it's so obviously true from our time together on this board, you would be the first two lucky writers I'd invite to be blogger-journalist-analysts on my team. (If AOL then bought me for $311 million, furthermore, I'd insist that you each get a share, so there. Just to insulate against the consequences of choosing the wroong metaphor.)

But I just don't see it. If you're bipolar, or for that matter someone with a vague but real sickness that could manifest in bad and dangerous ways, and if you're getting an ineffective medicine (with or without "side" effects) in lieu of a treatment that could help you, then clearly that is "losing sight of the patient" and clearly it is harm. The medicine doesn't have to kill you directly (and sometimes it does) to kill you indirectly by denying you a real treatment.

Now.

We all have our histories and experiences and observations, and you're not going to so easily get me to forget mine. First of all I've always been pretty fucked up precisely in the way that gets diagnosed as bipolar (II, nowadays) and prepared to accept a biological basis for it. Doesn't mean the available treatments are good for me.

I picked up a critique of psychiatry by reading about its history and practices. By learning about how practices like lobotomy and electroshock were abused in times past (regardless of what may be the case today with "new" ECT). Doesn't matter whether Frances Farmer's story was made up (never heard it before, didn't see the movie), because plenty of people got lobotomized and experimented upon and it was done very much by the racist and sexist standards we know. I picked up a healthy skepticism at the idea that "things are different now," because sometimes and for many things that's true, but often that's just what they always say. I saw that the syndromes when severe are real and horrible for those who suffer them, but the institutions were there more to control a difficult group than to treat the suffering. I read Fromm, and yeah Szasz too: so what, it didn't burn my brain. I picked up plenty from feminist professors in college. (Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time, big influence.) I met people who had been fucked up by involuntary commitment for absurd reasons. I don't want their suffering dismissed as anecdotal! I picked up the DSM myself, kept it for many years, read it, saw that it allows for a lot of flexible authoritarian voodoo. I learned about the Rosenhan experiment. I saw the general insanity around drugs, the criminalization of drugs that cause pleasure, the medical use of those that make for calmer patients. I learned how thorazine is used, and why. I learned about all the failed wonder drugs of the past.

Sorry, all this preceded my awareness of Scientology. Dianetics was some really stupid-seeming self-help book in TV adverts, also pimped by wannabe master-race nerds with lit tables at the Times Square subway station. Okay, so they're out there, they exert influence, they worm their way in, they try to take over. You're not going to let me talk about psychiatry now because of them? Come on, it's as though I expressed skepticism about the 9/11 Commission Report and your response is that I'm letting Alex Jones do my thinking for me. Please!

More shortly...

[eyeno]

At this point using scientology is like having no argument at all.

If only that were so, eyeno. You may or may not recall that it was just four months ago that we had to institute a new posting guideline prohibiting scientology sources. Why? Because discussions here were being overrun by articles which were easily traced back to their CoS roots. The main problem was that almost no one seemed to be interested in examining the genesis of their material closely enough to figure this out, because the polemic found in the CoS sources nicely matched the preferred point of view of the some of the psych-critical posters. For example, the following CCHR information was blithely posted here on a discussion of this topic:

What had began with a psychiatric plan to eliminate undesireable humanity had now spread throughout the civilized world and was responsible for the murder of eleven million people. Never brought to justice, psychiatrists as you will see, continued to advance eugenics around the world, and today we see the results, in racism, human misery, and unending social conflict.

...along with links to scientology-run websites. So on this forum, generally it is best if you pre-qualify your source material before posting so that Jeff, or the mods, or a pretty meticulous researcher with extensive background on the cult such as compared2what?, or even a fairly rabid anti-CoS reseacher like Plutonia doesn't have to sniff it out for you.

barracuda in the broad and general sense I agree with what you are saying. I understand the need to keep the scientology grifters out of this place. When I said "at this point" I meant at this exact place in this particular argument as it has played out in these last couple of threads. It has been said and said.

In my perspective watching scientology and mainstream psych go at it is like watching Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer go at it. They both suck as they point their fingers at one another.

When justdrew said "sick joke" I believe it applies literally. Psych care was developing into something useful and meaningful as it came out of the dark ages. Now it has gone back into the dark ages.

"sick joke" because most people trust mainstream medicine to a fault. Most people have no clue that most normal people can fail a psych evaluation these days and end up getting drugged when they don't need it.

Yes scientology sux but since its membership is smaller than the number of people exposed to the mainstream psych fraud I doubt it hurts as many people as the mainstream psych industry does.

Packaging every day normal symptoms into disorders and setting the bar so low almost anybody can fit the disorder is as fucked up as scientology, maybe worse, because it touches a lot more people with the tainted brush.

They both suck. They are both dangerous. Using one to refute the other (even though I understand it) becomes a stale argument after a while. (for me)

I do not want to get involved in this thread and write reams on the subject but this is how I feel about it.