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

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby compared2what? » Fri Mar 11, 2011 1:50 am

Jack --

No rational or caring person would argue that there are and long have been psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions that abused their authority and their patients, causing a great deal of harm.

I would not hold that therefore psychiatry itself is intrinsically abusive, or that it does nothing but cause patients a great deal of harm. Nor would I hold that psychotropic medications do not work at all for anyone. Or that it's helpful (not harmful) to focus on psychiatric abuses to the point that you attribute everything, including the plight of the mentally ill, to the inherent evils of psychiatry. The threat that your potential (or, ftm, actual) misdiagnosis represents to you is a very minor, trivial, non-life-wrecking fucking thing compared to the threat that someone's real major mental illness represents to that person.

That person's plight is already invisible and little understood by practically everybody in the world. It very badly needs some shining light and attention brought to it. You're not doing that. As you just made completely clear, you are thinking about yourself. And only yourself. I'm all for that, in its way. The unexamined life and so on and so forth.

But there's a very vulnerable population that gets no attention at all because, among other things, one of the bulk suppliers of information and rhetoric to the anti-psych patient movement happens to be an entity that regards all sick people as the defective and subhuman authors of their own unhappiness.

It also wants to clear the planet of you, btw. So I'm sure it's very grateful to you for cooperating with its campaign to deprive you and everybody else of as much medical care of every kind as it possibly can.

So go to town. It's your funeral. And forgive me for not joining in.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
User avatar
compared2what?
 
Posts: 8383
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:31 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby vanlose kid » Fri Mar 11, 2011 1:52 am

JackRiddler wrote:.

... I learning about the Rosenhan experiment....


went and looked it up:

Rosenhan experimentFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search

St. Elizabeth's psychiatric hospital, Washington, D.C., one of the sites of the Rosenhan experiment.The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title "On being sane in insane places."[1] The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.[2]

Rosenhan's study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. Hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudopatient, and instead believed that all of the pseudopatients exhibited symptoms of ongoing mental illness. Several were confined for months. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release.

The second part involved asking staff at a psychiatric hospital to detect non-existent "fake" patients. No fake patients were sent, yet the staff falsely identified large numbers of ordinary patients as impostors.

The study concluded, "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals" and also illustrated the dangers of dehumanization and labeling in psychiatric institutions. It suggested that the use of community mental health facilities which concentrated on specific problems and behaviors rather than psychiatric labels might be a solution and recommended education to make psychiatric workers more aware of the social psychology of their facilities.

Contents [hide]
1 The pseudopatient experiment
2 The non-existent impostor experiment
3 Impact and controversy
4 Related experiments
5 See also
6 External links
7 References


[edit] The pseudopatient experimentRosenhan himself and eight mentally healthy associates, called "pseudopatients", attempted to gain admission to psychiatric hospitals by calling for an appointment and feigning auditory hallucinations. The hospital staffs were not informed of the experiment. The pseudopatients included a psychology graduate student in his twenties, three psychologists, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a painter and a housewife. None had a history of mental illness. Pseudopatients used pseudonyms, and those who worked in the mental health field were given false jobs in a different sector to avoid invoking any special treatment or scrutiny. Apart from giving false names and employment details, further biographical details were truthfully reported.

During their initial psychiatric assessment, they claimed to be hearing voices of the same sex as the patient which were often unclear, but which seemed to pronounce the words "empty", "hollow", "thud" and nothing else. These words were chosen as they vaguely suggest some sort of existential crisis and for the lack of any published literature referencing them as psychotic symptoms. No other psychiatric symptoms were claimed. If admitted, the pseudopatients were instructed to "act normally," reporting that they felt fine and no longer heard voices. Hospital records obtained after the experiment indicate that all pseudopatients were characterized as friendly and cooperative by staff. All were admitted, to 12 different psychiatric hospitals across the United States, including rundown and underfunded public hospitals in rural areas, urban university-run hospitals with excellent reputations, and one expensive private hospital. Though presented with identical symptoms, 11 were diagnosed with schizophrenia at public hospitals, and one with manic-depressive psychosis, a more optimistic diagnosis with better clinical outcomes, at the private hospital. Their stays ranged from 7 to 52 days, and the average was 19 days. All were discharged with a diagnosis of schizophrenia "in remission," which Rosenhan takes as evidence that mental illness is perceived as an irreversible condition creating a lifelong stigma rather than a curable illness.

Despite constantly and openly taking extensive notes on the behavior of the staff and other patients, none of the pseudopatients were identified as imposters by the hospital staff, although many of the other psychiatric patients seemed to be able to correctly identify them as impostors. In the first three hospitalizations, 35 of the total of 118 patients expressed a suspicion that the pseudopatients were sane, with some suggesting that the patients were researchers or journalists investigating the hospital.

Hospital notes indicated that staff interpreted much of the pseudopatients' behavior in terms of mental illness. For example, one nurse labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as "writing behavior" and considered it pathological. The patients' normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology.

The pseudopatients were required to get out of the hospital on their own by getting the hospital to release them, though a lawyer was retained to be on call for emergencies when it became clear that the pseudopatients would not ever be voluntarily released on short notice. Once admitted and diagnosed, the pseudopatients were not able to obtain their release until they agreed with the psychiatrists that they were mentally ill and began taking antipsychotic medications, which they flushed down the toilet. No staff member noticed that the pseudopatients were flushing their medication down the toilets and did not report patients doing this.

Rosenhan and the other pseudopatients reported an overwhelming sense of dehumanization, severe invasion of privacy, and boredom while hospitalized. Their possessions were searched randomly, and they were sometimes observed while using the toilet. They reported that though the staff seemed to be well-meaning, they generally objectified and dehumanized the patients, often discussing patients at length in their presence as though they were not there, and avoiding direct interaction with patients except as strictly necessary to perform official duties. Some attendants were prone to verbal and physical abuse of patients when other staff were not present. A group of bored patients waiting outside the cafeteria for lunch early were said by a doctor to his students to be experiencing "oral-acquisitive" psychiatric symptoms. Contact with doctors averaged 6.8 minutes per day.

"I told friends, I told my family, 'I can get out when I can get out. That's all. I'll be there for a couple of days and I'll get out.' Nobody knew I'd be there for two months … The only way out was to point out that they're [the psychiatrists] correct. They had said I was insane, 'I am insane; but I am getting better.' That was an affirmation of their view of me." — David Rosenhan in the BBC program "The Trap."[3]

[edit] The non-existent impostor experimentFor this experiment, Rosenhan used a well-known research and teaching hospital, whose staff had heard of the results of the initial study but claimed that similar errors could not be made at their institution. Rosenhan arranged with them that during a three month period, one or more pseudopatients would attempt to gain admission and the staff would rate every incoming patient as to the likelihood they were an impostor. Out of 193 patients, 41 were considered to be impostors and a further 42 were considered suspect. In reality, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients and all patients suspected as impostors by the hospital staff were ordinary patients. This led to a conclusion that "any diagnostic process that lends itself too readily to massive errors of this sort cannot be a very reliable one". Studies by others found similarly problematic diagnostic results.[citation needed]

[edit] Impact and controversyRosenhan published his findings in Science, criticizing the reliability of psychiatric diagnosis and the disempowering and demeaning nature of patient care experienced by the associates in the study. His article generated an explosion of controversy.

Many defended psychiatry, arguing that as psychiatric diagnosis relies largely on the patient's report of their experiences, faking their presence no more demonstrates problems with psychiatric diagnosis than lying about other medical symptoms. In this vein psychiatrist Robert Spitzer quoted Kety in a 1975 criticism of Rosenhan's study:

If I were to drink a quart of blood and, concealing what I had done, come to the emergency room of any hospital vomiting blood, the behavior of the staff would be quite predictable. If they labeled and treated me as having a bleeding peptic ulcer, I doubt that I could argue convincingly that medical science does not know how to diagnose that condition.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment


thanks.

*
"Teach them to think. Work against the government." – Wittgenstein.
User avatar
vanlose kid
 
Posts: 3182
Joined: Wed Oct 17, 2007 7:44 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby compared2what? » Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:00 am

eyeno wrote: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)


eyeno, I believe that if you were paying attention, you would have noticed that no one is in fact using one to refute the other in any crude, simplistic, quid pro quo sense and without offering any explanation or elaboration of the attached argument on its merits.

Psychiatry and Scientology are not even close to comparably dangerous. Or comparably powerful and influential. Scientology dwarfs psychiatry in all three regards. You do have to go out of your way to learn and understand that, because -- unlike psychiatry -- Scientology is influential and dangerous enough to scare the media into silence 99.9 percent of the time. Plus, they've also infiltrated the media on a fairly regular basis over the years, though that's not the kind of thing one generally gets to know in real time, unfortunately.

Anyway. Do yourself a favor and look into it some time. Because you are being misled, and not by anyone who has your best interests in mind.

And seriously. Do that for yourself. Not for me.

Thanks.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
User avatar
compared2what?
 
Posts: 8383
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:31 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby compared2what? » Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:05 am

The Rosenhan experiment does not do anything to rebut the mountains and mountains of data of every conceivable kind attesting to the reality and the frequency of real, painful and sometimes fatal psychiatric disorders. It says nothing about them whatsoever, in fact. It does say something about the slipshod and horrifying clinical practices of psych wards. though.

Quit thinking about yourselves, please. For one stone fucking second. There are people out there who need your help and attention and commiseration for what THEY are experiencing and not for what YOU are experiencing.

That's it. I've got nothing else to say.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
User avatar
compared2what?
 
Posts: 8383
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:31 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:26 am

.

Right. So.

c2w? wrote:What, exactly, prompts you to say that commonly prescribed psychotropic medications are likely and/or known possibly to be useless or even harmful?


Leaving aside all the drugs that have come and gone as wonder cures for this or that in decades long past -- barbituates, amphetamines, valium, even Heroic Heroin -- let's just deal with some of the still-titanic brandname cures of today.

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045

Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration

Irving Kirsch1*, Brett J. Deacon2, Tania B. Huedo-Medina3, Alan Scoboria4, Thomas J. Moore5, Blair T. Johnson3

1 Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull, United Kingdom, 2 University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming, United States of America, 3 Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut, United States of America, 4 Department of Psychology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, 5 Institute for Safe Medication Practices, Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Abstract

Background

Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits over placebo treatment, and when unpublished trial data are included, the benefit falls below accepted criteria for clinical significance. Yet, the efficacy of the antidepressants may also depend on the severity of initial depression scores. The purpose of this analysis is to establish the relation of baseline severity and antidepressant efficacy using a relevant dataset of published and unpublished clinical trials.

Methods and Findings

We obtained data on all clinical trials submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the licensing of the four new-generation antidepressants for which full datasets were available. We then used meta-analytic techniques to assess linear and quadratic effects of initial severity on improvement scores for drug and placebo groups and on drug–placebo difference scores. Drug–placebo differences increased as a function of initial severity, rising from virtually no difference at moderate levels of initial depression to a relatively small difference for patients with very severe depression, reaching conventional criteria for clinical significance only for patients at the upper end of the very severely depressed category. Meta-regression analyses indicated that the relation of baseline severity and improvement was curvilinear in drug groups and showed a strong, negative linear component in placebo groups.

Conclusions

Drug–placebo differences in antidepressant efficacy increase as a function of baseline severity, but are relatively small even for severely depressed patients. The relationship between initial severity and antidepressant efficacy is attributable to decreased responsiveness to placebo among very severely depressed patients, rather than to increased responsiveness to medication.


The drugs they proceed to expose as useless to tens of millions of people who are taking them (except possibly in a minority of severe cases) are in the SSRI class and better known by their brandnames as big stars of the last two decades: Prozac, Effexor, Serzone and the really addictive Paxil. That one I've seen fuck up someone personally by being highly addictive and causing ironically melancholy "side" effects. Sorry, my anecdotes count if they line up with the data. And sometimes in the absence of sufficient data -- EDIT: i.e., assuming absence of sufficient data for or aganst an idea -- if I see a valid argument for thinking an anecdotal gathering is representative or strongly indicative of something, I won't shy away from it, assuming the proper caveats are given and I remain open-minded to new data. Note also that the story isn't about me getting fucked up as a result of false faith in a useless medicine, or due to a careless diagnosis, but someone else, someone who counts too, and the person really did have a terrible time.

Among other things the authors of the above find that the studies wherein these heavily-pimped Pharm Stars don't beat the placebo tend not to be published, thus distorting the overall view of given treatments! What a shock. ON EDIT: Failure to publish when results are inconclusive, boring or nothing new (and therefore boost no careers and make it look like "money was wasted"), or when results are not in line with what a private funder hoped for, is one of the best-known ways (within and without the science community) that scientific findings are distorted and the scientific community allows itself to be used for corrupt ends due to the mechanisms of funding science research in capitalist, corporate-authoritarian, society in which all are trained to prioritize individual "success." That's not a critique or rejection of "science," as some seem to think when you talk about the corrosive effects of money on research in the real world, it's a critique of capitalist, corporate-authoritarian society that trains the smart and capable to prioritize their individual success above all, and leads to a corruption, a failure by institutions or practitioners to meet their own high standards of science.

c2w?, you may say this is the evil of Pharm, and that you've condemned Pharm in no uncertain terms, which you have. But don't tell me you can cleanly separate the psychiatric profession from Pharm, just because they're downstream writers of scrips. Most of them are the soldiers enforcing the regime, so to speak.

Also, given how this argument has gone, I already feel like I again need to please note: I'm answering the question, "what prompts you to say that commonly prescribed psychotropic medications are likely and/or known possibly to be useless or even harmful?"

I am NOT saying and would never say that there aren't good drugs for given severe conditions that help people who would otherwise suffer. I am not saying that anyone should feel shame for taking drugs they hope will improve their lives, or for finding that this is actually the case. (Never!)

I am saying that the placebo-equivalent SSRIs whose mythos is debunked in the Kirsch study (except that placebos are not known to make anyone sluggish or kill their sex drive or change the color of their piss) are a grave disservice to the tens of millions of non-severe cases who get them and who are, in fact, harmed by false hope and by being given the false impression that they are receiving treatment (and possibly even more so in cases when serious conditions are mis-diagnosed as some vague general Non-Disease Du Jour).

Next we have the famous St. John's Wort trial.
http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/stjohnswort/

I knew someone who worked on this project as a research assistant for years. Basically, NIH decided to do away with the myth of St. John's Wort as a treatment for depression. Which they did.

But in this unusually large trial, besides a placebo group and a St. John's Wort group, they included an additional "control group" that was given Zoloft. And surprise, surprise, the placebo was better than Zoloft. That was the real lede, but the press stories buried it and headlined the failure of St. John's Wort, as though that was even news. (St. John's Wort is more likely to be like c2w?'s example of a case where a treatment is ineffective but not harmful, given that it's being sold by quacks on the side, and not appearing to have the force of research science behind it like the Pharma products.)

Check out this weasel sentence from Scientific American, in a lower paragraph of an article titled, "Study Finds St. John's Wort Ineffective Against Depression":

But because Zoloft was also not significantly different than a placebo on the primary measure of the study, the results were far from straightforward.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... johns-wort

The whole story is packed and hidden in that "also." Far from straighforward, my ass! If you're going to headline the study as finding no effect favoring St. John's Wort over the placebo, then you've got to also say it found no effect for Zoloft, because that's equally true and probably more important.

This kind of avoidance in language is evidence of a social orthodoxy at work.

And the orthodoxy is supported by funding streams that are literally dozens, if not hundreds of times greater than anything available to Scientology, as well you know. (EDIT: Perhaps hundreds is a wild exaggeration, but shall we compare the economic size and social reach of GlaxoPfizerSmithBayerScheringLillyKline and their teams of experts who bear the label of psychiatrists to the economic size and social reach of Scientology and its explicit or disguised spokespersons? What's the ratio of commercials selling supposed anti-depression meds plugged by persons with qualifications as psychiatrists, to those selling Dianetics?)

Kiddie Prozac Docs Took Millions From Drug Makers
By Brandon Keim June 9, 2008
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/ ... -antidepr/

Three prominent advocates of antidepressant use by children received millions of dollars from antidepressant manufacturers, casting into question the integrity of their already-controversial research.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Harvard University psychiatrists Joseph Biederman and Timothy Wilens received $1.6 million each from drug companies between 2000 and 2007. Thomas Spencer, another Harvard psychiatrist, received $1 million.

The payments were uncovered by Congressional investigators searching for conflict-of-interest violations. Federal law requires researchers who receive National Institutes of Health funding to report annual outside earnings above $10,000 to their universities. Biederman, Wilens and Spencer all took NIH money, but never reported the full extent of their drug company income.

That the researchers’ results were influenced by the payments isn’t clear, but the situation is ugly. Biederman has a very high profile; as the Times describes, he

is one of the most influential researchers in child psychiatry and is widely admired for focusing the field’s attention on its most troubled young patients. Although many of his studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder … and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children.

SNIP


Do you really want to distract from Biederman by bringing up some completely unrelated abuse by Scientology? This guy doesn't care about children. He is an active danger to children he will never meet, and he doesn't care because he does it for the money and his society tells him he should do all for the money and even when some bad press results, he is very likely to get away with what he did and emerge still doing the same kind of work afterward, because if nothing else, this society's treatment of elite deviance shows that crime pays when it's big enough.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/08conflict.html?_r=4&ref=health&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=login

A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators.

J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Dr. Joseph Biederman belatedly reported at least $1.6 million in consulting fees.

By failing to report income, the psychiatrist, Dr. Joseph Biederman, and a colleague in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, may have violated federal and university research rules designed to police potential conflicts of interest, according to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Some of their research is financed by government grants.

Like Dr. Biederman, Dr. Wilens belatedly reported earning at least $1.6 million from 2000 to 2007, and another Harvard colleague, Dr. Thomas Spencer, reported earning at least $1 million after being pressed by Mr. Grassley’s investigators. But even these amended disclosures may understate the researchers’ outside income because some entries contradict payment information from drug makers, Mr. Grassley found.

In one example, Dr. Biederman reported no income from Johnson & Johnson for 2001 in a disclosure report filed with the university. When asked to check again, he said he received $3,500. But Johnson & Johnson told Mr. Grassley that it paid him $58,169 in 2001, Mr. Grassley found.

SNIP


Why is he lying about taking this money? As they say, it's the cover-up that exposes them.

Another one was exposed a few months later: Charles B. Nemeroff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/health/policy/04drug.html?_r=1&em

October 4, 2008

Top Psychiatrist Didn’t Report Drug Makers’ Pay

By GARDINER HARRIS

One of the nation’s most influential psychiatrists earned more than $2.8 million in consulting arrangements with drug makers from 2000 to 2007, failed to report at least $1.2 million of that income to his university and violated federal research rules, according to documents provided to Congressional investigators.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff of Emory University, is the most prominent figure to date in a series of disclosures that is shaking the world of academic medicine and seems likely to force broad changes in the relationships between doctors and drug makers.

In one telling example, Dr. Nemeroff signed a letter dated July 15, 2004, promising Emory administrators that he would earn less than $10,000 a year from GlaxoSmithKline to comply with federal rules. But on that day, he was at the Four Seasons Resort in Jackson Hole, Wyo., earning $3,000 of what would become $170,000 in income that year from that company — 17 times the figure he had agreed on.

The Congressional inquiry, led by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is systematically asking some of the nation’s leading researchers to provide their conflict-of-interest disclosures, and Mr. Grassley is comparing those documents with records of actual payments from drug companies. The records often conflict, sometimes starkly.

“After questioning about 20 doctors and research institutions, it looks like problems with transparency are everywhere,” Mr. Grassley said. “The current system for tracking financial relationships isn’t working.”

SNIP


So what are you going to tell me? Is Grassley working for Scientology? Obviously he might be, and if he is I know you guys will tell me. Does that change what the financial records tell us about Nemeroff and his relationship to GSK?

Okay, summing up so far:

We're seeing corruption from corporate Pharm. They hide studies that show their drugs being ineffective, or harmful. They pay off willing big-name psychiatrist experts to push their drugs to the public, and these experts abuse their status and authority specifically as "psychiatrists," which I maintain is a strong, confidence-inspiring label to most people when considering matters of their brain chemistry, more so than "star of Mission Impossible."

It also turns out the most prescribed -- and the most profitable, not coincidentally -- class of psychotropic drugs in the last 20 years is junk for the vast majority of those who have received it.


The latter happens to sync well with my own experience, and not only with my supposedly selfish self but with observations of others. Sorry for bringing that in again.

Ack! Stories from personal experience:

We ALL know people who've tried pills for depression. Probably most of us have, and I have too. (I didn't take an SSRI - contraindicated. They're not that irresponsible, but if I hadn't reported my hyper behaviors, I'd have been given one for sure, and maybe it WOULD have killed me.) This is a fundamental reality of our time in US society, and in the West. But the fact that so many more people in the US are taking depression pills than they were in the past, when they were not more unhappy in general, and than is the case in Europe, where people are not more unhappy in general, should be a very big indicator that we are talking about social beliefs and structures, and not only brain chemistry.

In those people of my acquaintance who took SSRIs (I can think of about a dozen whose experiences I followed), I saw initial signs of improved mood (sometimes) that coincides with a period of hope stemming from the decision to "do something," and then a long period where they know it's not doing anything for them (except, usually, suppressing sex drive) but they cling to it. Sooner or later they drop it and their lives are just like always, except they're older. EDIT: That's where I stopped, with my non-SSRI pill (which, by the way, I did not take because psychiatrists suckered me into it, but because I decided to try it and got it from a GP. So this really is not about me). Or else they embark upon a series of dosage and cocktail adjustments, sometimes going nuts for a while if it's a bad mix, usually finding some combo they claim is fabulous and saved their life for a couple of months before it's back to the same old same old.

Yes I call this harm.

It is not just individual harm. It is also harm to the essential task of revolutionizing everything in our soul-eating, labor-exploiting, pointlessly accumulating, world-burning alienated societies before we finish trashing the basis for life of future generations.

Because chemical imbalances in our brains are NOT what's causing most of our problems for most of us, and we all fucking know it.

As for the heavier shit: Zyprexa...

Lilly acting to suppress findings about the severe bad effects of Zyprexa:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/17/busin ... nted=print
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/busin ... nted=print

Follow-ups on Zyprexa -- they settled cases out of court.
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?q ... srchst=nyt

Here's a non-psychotropic pain drug, with more evidence of complete willingness to lie by Pfizer:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/10/08/e_mails_suggest_pfizer_tried_to_suppress_study_on_drug/

E-mails suggest Pfizer tried to suppress study on drug
Suits say company misled on Neurontin
Pfizer Inc. promoted the positive findings of a small Neurontin study. (MARK LENNIHAN/ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE)
By Liz Kowalczyk
Globe Staff / October 8, 2008

Top drug company marketing executives suppressed a large European study suggesting their blockbuster medication Neurontin was ineffective for chronic nerve pain, and they privately strategized about how to silence a British researcher who wanted to go public with the data, according to newly filed documents and e-mails that are part of a Boston court case.


Also non-psychotropic, the fybromyalgia controversy - pushing for a diagnosis to fit the new drug:
http://counterpunch.org/rosenberg02182009.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.h ... lta&st=nyt

No, I have not checked every author or advocate linked to above for possible Scientology associations. I'm sure you'll let me know. The question should be whether the real abuses of Scientology should serve as a distraction for the more widespread abuses of Pharm and psychiatry?

?probably more still to come?

...
Last edited by JackRiddler on Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:56 pm, edited 3 times in total.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 16007
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby eyeno » Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:27 am

compared2what? wrote:
eyeno wrote: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)


eyeno, I believe that if you were paying attention, you would have noticed that no one is in fact using one to refute the other in any crude, simplistic, quid pro quo sense and without offering any explanation or elaboration of the attached argument on its merits.

Psychiatry and Scientology are not even close to comparably dangerous. Or comparably powerful and influential. Scientology dwarfs psychiatry in all three regards. You do have to go out of your way to learn and understand that, because -- unlike psychiatry -- Scientology is influential and dangerous enough to scare the media into silence 99.9 percent of the time. Plus, they've also infiltrated the media on a fairly regular basis over the years, though that's not the kind of thing one generally gets to know in real time, unfortunately.

Anyway. Do yourself a favor and look into it some time. Because you are being misled, and not by anyone who has your best interests in mind.

And seriously. Do that for yourself. Not for me.

Thanks.



Well thanks for all the great advice but I have seen enough of this first hand over the last 20 years to know exactly of what I speak. I have my convictions for some very good reasons.

http://anxietyhelp.org/treatment/medica ... balta.html


36 year old guy on it seven months and was smart enough to have his liver checked. Liver enzymes gone ballistic through the roof in just seven months and his sex life is also destroyed. That didn't take long. Starting to hallucinate too because his body is shutting down. Had he not found this site they would stick him on yet another psych med to stop those too, until he slowly swirled into a sorry mass of hallucinatory agony until he eventually died or became permanently disabled probably.


" am a 36 year old male. I have been on 120mg Cymbalta for about 6 - 7 months now. I want to let everyone know that at first life was great on this drug then I noticed a huge weight gain just in my belly region also noticed different things like different songs playing in my head like the wheels on the bus and the Barney song lol. Then I took lab test and my liver enzymes were up. A few months later they were still up. Then about 2 weeks ago I had more labs done and my liver enzymes were through the roof. I have also lost the ability to ejaculate during sex no matter how long we "do it" that my friends cause severe depression in my case."



SNRI big no no but they pass it out like bubble gum. Pages and pages of desperate people that found each other and they are so desperate to get off cymbalta they don't know what in the world to do. I hate it for ya bud but welcome to hell...you found it didn't ya...its' name is cymbalta, etc...


Now I'm trying to quit this junk
and come to find out that I'm trying to pry open the gates
of hell. Why am I trying to quit? Well it was my side
effects, that I also thought to be a part of life and told
myself everything is normal."



A lot of good stories at the link above. One guy hears "pop goes the weasel" in his head over and over trying to get off cymbalta. People with more or less ordinary lives roped into the psych med culture and now they are in serious serious trouble. I do not need scientology to help me understand the abyss this has become. I can see it on my own. This is not about psych care anymore it is about drug customers.
Last edited by eyeno on Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:52 am, edited 4 times in total.
User avatar
eyeno
 
Posts: 1878
Joined: Wed Nov 24, 2010 5:22 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby justdrew » Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:36 am

compared2what? wrote:The Rosenhan experiment does not do anything to rebut the mountains and mountains of data of every conceivable kind attesting to the reality and the frequency of real, painful and sometimes fatal psychiatric disorders. It says nothing about them whatsoever, in fact. It does say something about the slipshod and horrifying clinical practices of psych wards. though.

Quit thinking about yourselves, please. For one stone fucking second. There are people out there who need your help and attention and commiseration for what THEY are experiencing and not for what YOU are experiencing.

That's it. I've got nothing else to say.


well, you changed my mind, I was over-reacting to the article in the OP. I will retract my "sick joke" poke and say instead, "all too often flawed state of affairs that nonetheless does help some people some times" - and those who need the help, whatever form it takes, should be the focus, not the problems. This field is not much or no worse off than most others (as I also said in the first post). The problem is replicated fractal-like throughout our society: acceptance and even maintenance of low-quality situations and a massive amount of difficulty getting traction to fix anything.

but there are issues with the drugs that need to be aired, particularly the occasional mandating of such, and people are being fired now for "drug testing" positive for taking prescribed prescription meds, etc.
By 1964 there were 1.5 million mobile phone users in the US
User avatar
justdrew
 
Posts: 11966
Joined: Tue May 24, 2005 7:57 pm
Location: unknown
Blog: View Blog (11)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby JackRiddler » Fri Mar 11, 2011 3:50 am

.

c2w?--

Quoting from your latest response to me (12:50 am)

compared2what? wrote:I would not hold that therefore psychiatry itself is intrinsically abusive, or that it does nothing but cause patients a great deal of harm.


Nor would I. Nor did I. Whatever makes you imply that I would think such a thing? If anything I said suggested it, please allow me to apologize and correct myself.

I hold that there are obviously many different approaches to psychiatry (and to psychotherapy, and to the attempt to understand the human mind in general). Many have been tried in practice. A number of different approaches may all go by the same name of psychiatry, but they're not all the same thing. Some of these no longer merit a presumption of innocence, but an automatic skepticism, based on documented past abuses. (Which is not to say that many psychopharmaceuticals don't provide life-saving results for many people, to take one example.)

compared2what? wrote:Nor would I hold that psychotropic medications do not work at all for anyone.


Please don't do that. Again, I haven't remotely suggested it. Read the long post, the one with the articles, that I made after you wrote the above (but before I read it). You'll see me continuing not to suggest anything of the kind, unless you insist on forcing views I do not hold into whatever gaps I left, or caveats I forgot.

Furthermore, sorry, but did you know that I think of you as a colleague and peer on this board? That's besides that I generally admire your writing and thinking. I was under the impression that you've had enough experience of me in return, with regard to many other discussions, that I should expect from you the same solidarity.

Or perhaps it would be better put as follows: I wish you would show me the same presumption of intellectual non-malpractice (until proven otherwise) that I extend to you. Thanks.

compared2what? wrote:Or that it's helpful (not harmful) to focus on psychiatric abuses to the point that you attribute everything, including the plight of the mentally ill, to the inherent evils of psychiatry.


Ditto. God, no. Did I do this?! Whip me if I did.

I believe I said that the plight of many of the mentally ill is exacerbated by many practices of psychiatry. But I did not say, and do not believe, that psychiatry invented (severe) mental illness. (I add "severe" because some psychiatric authorities have shown an opportunistic penchant to over-diagnose people on the margins of severe illness, and because said margins happen to contain a very large percentage of the human race; some unknown number in the thousands or more have suffered as a result, some grievously, others not as grievously.)

So, let's make it clear again:

Severe mental illness is a big problem for those it affects. It is not their fault. They should get help. Many of them should get help even when they think they don't want help! A great many psychiatric treatments are not only much better than nothing, they are life-saving. They can help the severly mentally ill live radically better lives. Other psychiatric treatments are questionable.

Okay fine?

But please, why are we on this merry go round?!?!

I keep feeling you may respect me as a person, or have until now, but only respect me as a thinker when we agree (which is 90 percent of the time, based on RI postings). When we disagree, you decide I must be a total dupe of some insidious ideology that's puppet-mastered its way into my cortex. You practically sheeple-ize me.

Here's an analogy for what I feel you're doing to me:

1) Monsanto's seed program exists for profit and doesn't address hunger, although that's what they claim they do.

2) I criticize Monsanto's seed program, and even point out ways that it exacerbates the problem of hunger.

3) Therefore I must be denying that hunger exists! Or else, I'm saying that Monsanto invented hunger by false diagnosis. Or else, I'm claiming that Monsanto is the leading cause of hunger. (Or else, as some really do believe: I'm preventing Monsanto from solving world hunger, because Step 1 is already untrue.)


The parenthetical variant notwithstanding, Step 3 does not follow from Steps 1 and 2. Step 3 is a terrible strawman version of Steps 1-2.

Now substitute "psychiatry" (or certain widespread psychiatric practices) for "Monsanto" and (real) "mental illness" for "hunger," and this is what I at least feel you are persistently doing to me in this thread.

In Step 4, by the way, you might go as far as to say that by failing to support "Monsanto," I'm helping African militias rob peasants of their harvest. (For militias, substitute "Scientology.")

compared2what? wrote:The threat that your potential (or, ftm, actual) misdiagnosis represents to you is a very minor, trivial, non-life-wrecking fucking thing compared to the threat that someone's real major mental illness represents to that person.


Please be careful. There may be things about me (or about people I've known) you may not know. There seems to be some questionable remote viewing on your part going on here.

I feel that you are, not with malice but in fact out of what appears to be a sincere care for the mentally ill (possibly rooted in your own experience), taking the case of someone who suffers horribly and (wrongly) blaming that suffering on my critique of current pharm-based psychiatry's treatment of the more normal range of people.

Here's another analogy: The ACLU advocating for electronic voting machines because these are better for many disabled people. I'm against touchscreens because these open possibilities for faking elections and screwing everyone. Would the ACLU argue that I'm therefore willfully stealing away the disabled person's right to vote? Why do I hate the disabled person? Or must we deny that there are solutions that both a) avoid touchscreen machines and b) meet the needs of the disabled voter?

compared2what? wrote:That person's plight is already invisible and little understood by practically everybody in the world. It very badly needs some shining light and attention brought to it. You're not doing that. As you just made completely clear, you are thinking about yourself. And only yourself. I'm all for that, in its way. The unexamined life and so on and so forth.


Again, I think this is an extremely unfair or at best careless reading of what I've written. It's not cricket.

You have a lot of capital with me, which is why I'm not too bothered yet. But at some point I think you've got to start indicating that you're reading me and responding to me, as I feel I am doing with you and your posts.

Really.

Because I could now, for the sake of argument, turn your logic around and say you're only thinking of yourself (or perhaps of someone important to you).

I could say the plight of the unjustly institutionalized is nothing to you.

I could blame you for the tardive dyskenisia suffered by a woman I once knew, who was wrongly institutionalized and fucked up with thorazine (and who stands for many other such cases confirmable through statistics).

That would be wrong, if I did that.

compared2what? wrote:But there's a very vulnerable population that gets no attention at all because, among other things, one of the bulk suppliers of information and rhetoric to the anti-psych patient movement happens to be an entity that regards all sick people as the defective and subhuman authors of their own unhappiness.


I dispute that this is the reason. This vulnerable population, with whom I suspect I have had enough contact myself to at least compare my direct knowledge of their plight to your own, gets no attention at all because we live in a vicious rat-race, a screw-the-weak society. As you know, money for helping the most disadvantaged has become increasingly scarce, and the reason is not Scientology but capitalism and the neoliberal/imperialist budgeting priorities of the last few decades.

Without a doubt, this is justified by an ideology that says all sick (and weak and poor and otherwise disadvantaged) people are the authors of their own unhappiness. But this ideology might as well be called Americanism, and you know it. While Scientology suscribes to a version of that ideology, other far more influential versions of it are blasted at us from birth by a number of institutions that are literally hundreds of times bigger than Scientology. Some of these ideologies are called Christian! And you know that they dwarf Scientology.

If you could completely uproot Scientology from history, go back in time and ruin Hubbard's career or otherwise erase this scam-church, then the vast majority of the mentally ill, also the vast majority of the street homeless and the other least privileged, most poor, most weak people in this society would still be just as screwed. They would still be just as devalued by the dominant institutions, and just as devalued in the belief-systems of most of the people. And you know this. Please acknowledge.

compared2what? wrote:It also wants to clear the planet of you, btw. So I'm sure it's very grateful to you for cooperating with its campaign to deprive you and everybody else of as much medical care of every kind as it possibly can.

So go to town. It's your funeral. And forgive me for not joining in.


Come on. Really? I mean, really?

By criticizing psychiatry I'm cooperating, perhaps unwittingly but specifically with Scientology's campaign to deprive everyone else of medical care of every kind? And thus wiping out my own life?

Tell me, in my postings here, could I have been more classically European social democratic in my views on what medical care of every kind should be provided universally by a single-payer system for all, that you should think otherwise? Allow me then to make it clear: Germany 1974, please!

For fuck's sake, I want everyone to have access to all the damn drugs they please, including the currently illegal ones, assuming they're fully informed beforehand about what the fuck they're taking. And I want those who are beyond the ability to choose to receive whatever treatment is found likeliest to help them (by the cumulative independent scholarship, and not only the pharma company's best results).

My problem is with all those who for their own gain or as spokespersons of organizations would give bad information, whether for or against those drugs (or other treatments).

I'm thinking I should be more alarmed about your rhetoric. But I've never seen you stoop to it before, certainly not with me, and in such sustained fashion. It's like, if I'm against drone bombings in the "AfPak theater" I'm actually cooperating with the Taliban accused of cutting off the nose of the girl in that horrible picture they had on the cover of TIME some months ago (remember?). That's the same logic you're laying on me here. I'm against the US empire, therefore I support Saddam and his campaign to kill me.

I reject the system by which PBM formulary software now dispenses, via ostensibly independent professional psychiatrists or GPs, scripts to the un- or barely diagnosed after 15-minute consultations (or less). Therefore I support Xenu's campaign to kill all children? (Or wait, is Xenu the bad one? Whatever.)

.

EDIT: Great. I just found another big chunk I'd done earlier. It was more about Milgram. I'll leave it until after you respond, to avoid distraction.

PS: I very much want to hear your response, but after that we should agree to how to wrap up this exchange so that everyone feels they had a fair say but it doesn't go on forever.

.
Last edited by JackRiddler on Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 16007
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby hava1 » Fri Mar 11, 2011 6:27 am

Great subject, didnt read the thread though for lack of time. This used to be my professional career, namely, exploring abuses in the mental health system with emphasis on patients who are PTSD and victims of violence, and the treatment of women in the mental health system.

I would just add an angle that many non lawyers miss when dealing with psychiatry's vices. SOme of it is actually the vice of the LAW and the legal system that had granted unique and exceptional power to psychiatry within the legal system to extent unprecented and un accounted for, IMHO>

What started as a humanistic exception to criminal liability, had actually evolved into a monster, now backfiring and HARMING mental health patients, in that many of them are subjected to haphazard willie nillie deprivation of their most basic human rights, namely, the legal capacity.

In fact, it has become dangerously easy to deprive a person of their basic right to be considered a human being under the law. In practice, a first year resident in a psychiatric institution can cause a person to lose their agency altogether, which is de facto annihilation.

Secondly, it has become an epidemic with the lazy court system (not to mention other legal systems and administrations) to delelgate, in its entirety, the judicial power over a dispute, to a mental health practitioner, any practitioner in fact, to determine crucial legal matters.

I dont see that as part of "psychiatry" as a medical branch, but nowadays one cannot define psychiatry without refering to the legal lethal powers this profession confers, and which make a great part of its practice.

In the criminal system, the jewel of the crown, psychiatrists take the role of the judge and the jury, and so forth. This is first of all a legal problem which needs to be rectified and might also release the psychtirsts from their role to actually help suffering people, and heal them. Second, its a very peculiar political decision, which I do not remember being debated, to make such broad and murky exceptions to the general rule of law.

I would suggest to try and imagine the profession of "psychiatry" without the burden of the law, its an entirely different concept, which we cannot imagine, because it almost never existed. Of course all those problems of "mental health practitioners" attesting to the "truth" or the veracity of witnesses/victims/accused, that has become a joke. COnsequently, I think, the entire profession went down the drain. (not that I hold psychiatry OR psychology in high rank to start with, but I do know that many people actually benefit from drugs, talk therapy and so forth).

2 cents
hava1
 
Posts: 1141
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 1:07 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby undead » Fri Mar 11, 2011 11:18 am

compared2what? wrote:The Rosenhan experiment does not do anything to rebut the mountains and mountains of data of every conceivable kind attesting to the reality and the frequency of real, painful and sometimes fatal psychiatric disorders. It says nothing about them whatsoever, in fact. It does say something about the slipshod and horrifying clinical practices of psych wards. though.

Quit thinking about yourselves, please. For one stone fucking second. There are people out there who need your help and attention and commiseration for what THEY are experiencing and not for what YOU are experiencing.

That's it. I've got nothing else to say.


Nobody here is preventing people with real mental health problems from getting help. You are the one who is thinking about yourself and your problems. Nobody here is trying to take your medication away. Attention and commiseration is precisely the motivation for criticism and radical reform of the mental health system. Boosting and supporting the current system does not help anyone. It's not in danger of going away. Not even close.

Psychiatric drugs pollute the water supply and it is a public health issue that affects the whole population. Issues of involuntary commitment, forced drugging of children, rampant misdiagnosis, and the toxicity of the drugs are legitimate subjects for discussion and this discussion does not subtract from the well being of people with serious mental disorders. What is so selfish about criticizing psychiatry? I mean, I certainly don't gain anything from it.

You frequently make it difficult to have a conversation about this with your verbose dissembling. To address one point about misdiagnosis - accurate psychiatric diagnosis is an oxymoron. The categories of mental disorders in the DSM IV are arbitrary and with no scientific basis. The majority of drugs prescribed are antidepressants and amphetamines, which serve no purpose other than to dumb people down. If your brain is so out of control that it needs to be stunted to function, then that's really a shame. I've met many people who will live in this condition for the rest of their life. Rejecting the possibility of an alternative for these people is hardly humane, because what they are getting now is the equivalent of leeches and bloodletting.

There is no documentation of misdiagnosis because it is practically impossible to do so. It's not surprising that psychiatrists aren't keen on recording their mistakes. There is no way to remove a psychiatric diagnosis from a person's record, and by definition people who are diagnosed are labeled for the rest of their life. Just because something is not recorded in institutional research doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In fact, given the totally fucked up state of most institutional research, it's usually a safe bet that something enshrined in conventional wisdom is bound to be inaccurate to say the least.

The motivation behind the design of psychiatric drugs is to create more problems. They create "side effects" that require more psychiatrics. They cause diabetes and obesity, increasing the market for diabetes drugs, blood pressure and cholesterol medications, and the list goes on. They are not even trying to help psychiatric patients. It's about profits. The drugs cause the very problems they claim to treat - that is indeed a sick joke.

In terms of psychiatry in general, meaning the treatment of mental health problems by a medical doctor, it doesn't have to be a sick joke. In a system that wasn't driven by profit it would be nice to talk to a doctor about the biological factors affecting your mood and thinking. That would require the doctors to have a clue about those biological factors, though, and right now they clearly have no clue whatsoever.

Image
┌∩┐(◕_◕)┌∩┐
User avatar
undead
 
Posts: 997
Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 1:23 am
Location: Doumbekistan
Blog: View Blog (1)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby compared2what? » Fri Mar 11, 2011 12:06 pm

ON EDIT

undead wrote:)(some ranting, anger and pontificating.)


undead, I'd prefer not to engage with you. Bye.
Last edited by compared2what? on Fri Mar 11, 2011 12:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
User avatar
compared2what?
 
Posts: 8383
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:31 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby compared2what? » Fri Mar 11, 2011 12:09 pm

Jack, my friend, I owe you an apology, which I will get to you this afternoon or evening. Okay?
“If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and 50 dollars in cash I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him.” -- Rand Paul
User avatar
compared2what?
 
Posts: 8383
Joined: Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:31 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby undead » Fri Mar 11, 2011 1:36 pm

So for anyone interested in having a discussion about alternatives to psychiatry, one angle that is often overlooked is the racial perspective. Psychiatry is an almost entirely white phenomenon. The special place it holds in the legal system (good points hava1) is one of the biggest indicators of the systemic racism of the society of the United States. Alternatives from other cultures such as acupuncture, massage, yoga, Ayurveda, and psychedelic medicines have been excluded from public funding and the mainstream medical system, although this is (very) slowly changing. The medical system will only change for the better when these alternatives from other cultures are allowed an equal place in the range of treatment options, because all we are going to get from the current status quo is more disease profiteering.
┌∩┐(◕_◕)┌∩┐
User avatar
undead
 
Posts: 997
Joined: Fri May 14, 2010 1:23 am
Location: Doumbekistan
Blog: View Blog (1)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby 82_28 » Fri Mar 11, 2011 1:46 pm

Say, some time back RI was having a similar discussion and someone brought up some kind of herb they used for depression and anxiety. I'm not talking about St. John's Wort or anything like that. It was something I'd never heard of before. Does anyone remember what that herb was? I can't even remember the member who brought it up either. I just remember them really speaking highly of it.
There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi
User avatar
82_28
 
Posts: 11194
Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:34 am
Location: North of Queen Anne
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: don't care what the scilons say, psychiatry now a sick j

Postby American Dream » Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:19 pm

undead wrote:
So for anyone interested in having a discussion about alternatives to psychiatry, one angle that is often overlooked is the racial perspective. Psychiatry is an almost entirely white phenomenon. The special place it holds in the legal system (good points hava1) is one of the biggest indicators of the systemic racism of the society of the United States. Alternatives from other cultures such as acupuncture, massage, yoga, Ayurveda, and psychedelic medicines have been excluded from public funding and the mainstream medical system, although this is (very) slowly changing. The medical system will only change for the better when these alternatives from other cultures are allowed an equal place in the range of treatment options, because all we are going to get from the current status quo is more disease profiteering.


You are raising some very, very important issues here. Much of the problem hinges on questions of class and economic issues in general.

As the article in the OP alludes to, investment bankers and others of that ilk can well afford the psychotherapy of their choosing, while it is the more economically disenfranchised who must take what they can get from the System, such as it is. It is absolutely true that complementary, integrative and alternative therapies are much less likely to be covered.

The implications of this are huge for people without sufficient funds to pay for everything out of their own pockets. This, from the context of a country where medical costs are not truly socialized...
Last edited by American Dream on Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
American Dream
 
Posts: 19946
Joined: Sat Sep 15, 2007 4:56 pm
Location: Planet Earth
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 176 guests