(2019) Psychiatric diagnosis 'scientifically meaningless'
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 131152.htm
There is a great force at play to defend psychiatry. Only with a disease, it is possible to prescribe medicine and psychiatry is the biggest money maker for pharmaceutical companies. Certain psychiatric disorders make much more money even than for example cancer treatment. Despite this, it appears that people in general start to lose faith in the validity of psychiatry.
The well known medical investigative journalist Robert Whitaker from www.madinamerica.com once wrote the following to me:
Psychiatry vs psychotherapyRobert Whitaker wrote:Dear Arjan,
Yours is a good question. I think at the moment American society as a whole is rather confused about psychiatry. There is a growing suspicion among the public that psychiatry really doesn’t know much about the “biology” of mental disorders, despite all of its claims to the contrary, and there is a growing suspicion that the drugs aren’t all that great. Moreover, there is a growing recognition that psychiatry is totally compromised by pharmaceutical money. At the same time–and I know this is odd–the public does generally view criticism of psychiatric drugs as coming from people with a bias. So it’s a confused picture.
You’ve put your finger on an important problem. The presence of Scientologists in this debate serves to deligitimize criticism that arises from an honest examination of the science. The public has this vague sense that the criticism arises from religious principles rather than from a look at what the science really has to say.
As for the rest of the medical profession, well, doctors basically belong to a big tribe, and part of the tribal rules are that those in one discipline don’t publicly criticize the doctors in another discipline. This keeps non-psychiatrist doctors from weighing in on the matter, and as far as criticism that arises from within psychiatry, psychiatry as a field has been very successful in letting its members know that they will be ex-communicated and their careers will suffer if they speak too critically. Psychiatrists are allowed to make minor concessions, such as saying that pharmaceutical money has become too influential, but they are not allowed to say that the drugs don’t really work.
So it’s complicated. Think of a society that has bought into a medical delusion, and that’s where we’re at in the U.S. The public knows that something isn’t right, but at the same time it maintains its general belief in the medical model story.
Best,
Bob Whitaker
What distinguishes a psychiatrist from a psychotherapist is a medical approach, i.e. psychopathology such as a brain disease model of psychological problems.
Psychopathology is based on causality which origin for plausibility is the Big Bang theory.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/psychiatry/If psychiatry is really (really?) a branch of medicine, we should see the specific causal hypotheses emerge about mechanisms that cause the symptoms of mental illness. Psychopathology is to be identified as the departure of a psychological system from its proper state.
Note the use of 'really' in the Stanford reference on philosophy of psychiatry, which implies that it is not considered to be certain that psychopathology is valid or even justified as a theoretical concept.
Examining psychiatry may be of interest for a real world perspective of determinism.
Can causality and determinism possibly explain mind and the origin of life?
With psychopathology, one is to establish a direct 1 on 1 causal relation for psychological problems. That the environment, such as for example a neurological disease, can result in mental health problems does not by itself count as evidence for psychopathology.
In the case of humans, they have a great capacity to overcome problems in the environment with their mind. An example is the philosophy stoicism. By using stoicism, people experience life differently and can even think pain away.
(2019) Is it possible to think pain away?
https://www.colorado.edu/asmagazine/201 ... -pain-away
People who practice stoic philosophy may withstand a flu while others may take it to bed and be sick for weeks. This would be an example in which the validity of psychopathology would be undermined, because it disproves a 1 on 1 causal relation for psychological problems (e.g. the great mental suffering for weeks in the case of a flu while some others withstand it using the philosophy stoicism).
How Stoicism helped me fight the flu by Monil Shah
https://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/stoic ... fight-flu/
Question:
Do you believe that psychopathology - causality to explain mind and psychological problems - can be valid? If so/not, why?