I looked into my paper this morning and saw references to mental illness which even 50 years ago would not have been there. Nor would these unproven reflections on human behaviour appeared in novels or articles. I will here raise the likely position that we are being brainwashed by the medical profession in tandem with the drug companies. My investigations, through clients and reading, indicates that psychotropic drugs are dangerous and always have been. Claims of mental health in lieu of misunderstood behaviour, life stresses, have grown alongside the development of drugs and diagnosis which reflect each new drug invented or simply repackaged by the drug companies.
We have seen the multifarious affects of Russian propaganda in Russia and the world (strangely effective in the USA, no matter the warnings), establishing viewpoints and changing history, affecting attitudes, so why cannot the West be equally susceptible to propaganda-especially one arriving from an authoritative source (medical profession) which we fail to see?
Mental health is the absence of chronified moods in an individual; the chronification of certain moods can lead to pathological mental attitudes.
The treatment of chronifying mental pathologies by drug prescription is suspicious to me, although in international congresses of psychiatry, your contributions are generally only noticed when you wear the offical P (prescription) badge.
With respect to system affinity, I can no more observe a significant difference between the propaganda of the great players.
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The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.
George Orwell
While I understand your definition of the nature of such problems, if they are problems, siphoning them away from human experience and into the hands of a dubious authority that claims ideological preference through training (brainwashing?) and class is not an answer. In mental health there is only one authority and decision maker. I have been to the conferences you write of and will sum them up as 'White, Middle Class, and Comfortably Off.' Look back on my piece on Fanon. There is one view. Authoritative or tyrannical?
Drugs do not actually work but yes drug companies, doctors and the media tells the world they do as its profitable to use them. Other treatments, by comparison, cost too much.
Doctors and other members of the medical profession are ruthlessly trained in drug provision, and also in the descriptions of brain function, hydraulic, that correspond to the beneficent affects of drugs, but these same processes do not work when they speak about illegal drugs (read my work on this, especially regarding the 1960s and 1970s when there was a complete crossover.) Many reject the hydraulic claims, and like much of psychiatry there is little genuine evidence.
One of my papers on here considers the different approaches to the same drugs during the 1960s and 1970s, whereby if used for recreation they had a bad effect on users, if prescribed by a doctor apparently a completely different effect. If self prescribed they were addictive, if medically prescribed non addictive.
The perception of mental illness as a verifiable illness or disease is not a trope created by medical propaganda. Mental illnesses are legitimate health conditions with biological, psychological, and social components. They are recognized by reputable medical and psychiatric authorities worldwide, including organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
The historical stigma associated with mental health conditions may have contributed to misconceptions and negative stereotypes, but the scientific understanding of mental illnesses has evolved significantly. Advances in neuroscience, genetics, and psychology have provided evidence of the biological and physiological factors underlying various mental health disorders.
It is crucial to distinguish between the genuine scientific recognition of mental illnesses and any stigmatizing or misleading portrayals that might exist in popular culture or historical contexts. Efforts to destigmatize mental health issues and increase awareness have been ongoing to promote accurate understanding and compassionate treatment of individuals with mental illnesses. Medical professionals and organizations work to educate the public about the evidence-based nature of mental health conditions and to combat misinformation or misconceptions.
Aaron, let me reflect back to you:
They are recognized by reputable medical and psychiatric authorities worldwide, including organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the World Health Organization (WHO).
They are legitimated by the people who gain most from the legitimating. They indeed have decided their profession provides a scientific response. Yes, yes, they have decided. By themselves, all on their lonesome. I mean drugs. chemicals, are scientific arn't they? I mean chemical imbalance exists, doesn't it? Nope it was made up! ECT and lobotomy worked didn'r they? Nope, the legitimating authorities you specify merely claimed they did. They don't. All these legitimating bodies did not look deep enough. If a drug works on mice it must work on a human being, surely?
The legitimating process involves authoritarian based constructions by those used to being respected and obeyed. There is a book out advertising help to get people off psychiatric drugs, highly addictive substances that cause a whole crop mental and physical disorders, which indeed I deal with. Many of my clients have short term memory problems caused by the drugs and a whole regiment of other problems.
Psychiatry says that negative drug effects do not exist. If they say that surely it must be true? Isn't it a bit like Russians believing everything Putin tells them? The same uncomfortable processes and doing it through claims of scientific basis. All wrong! All very wrong!
Twenty years ago patients took the medical profession (millions) to court over the addictive effects of their drugs (we know more now and addictiveness is just one, in some ways compared to the rest, minor problems) but the courts listened to the doctors and were of course frightened of massive payouts. In the UK, and elsewhere, psychiatrists belong to the same class indeed family groups as the judges.
Think back to lobotomy and ECT. By not listening to patients/ clients psychiatry is destroying more lives than they did a hundred years ago. And that was enough!
Anita, lost on how you combine selective serotonin with lobotomy, but there are many who do not believe in the uptake theory and show evidence to back up their disbelief. Not sure I said this this bit about greedy rich doctors but others do, with evidence. I certainly believe there is a greater acceptance that the drugs are dangerous, and I suspect very dangerous. Why do I say that? Because I spent years talking to patients, giving purpose and understanding to what they said, not to the top down investigations of psychiatrists. Do you really believe drugs can be safely tested on rodents?
Many commentators suggest, and yes I am amongst them, that the drug theory of treatment arose out of political infighting and the need of psychiatrists to overcome the psychotherapists notions of treatment seen in the first DSMs. i do say there is no evidence for the efficiency of drugs but plenty for their harm. As I said, I talk to patients not psychiatrists and drug companies.
you have said a lot but rather then me go through everything read my Medical Fascism on here (will it make you apoplectic or will you accept something is wrong?) and you'll see all your questions answered, but not necessarily by me but others who have travelled on the same road. The DSM was written, backing drugs, by a small number of academic psychiatrists, some say just one, who did receive money from drug companies. Whether that made his or their ideas worthless is another matter.
Present psychiatry is essentially esoteric produced by a small number and in fact it is quite weird as are its claims with proof offered by the very people who gain. At no point has its investigations included sufferers. It is indeed top down. I am sorry this re-evaluation has hurt you but it was and is necessary.
One of my clients in Portugal tells me her short term memory has been badly affected by the drugs given to her by her therapist. Her working life has been destroyed in the usual irresponsible fashion of the people you support. Will they suffer? No, they never do. They never have!
Time for psychiatry to stand up, pay out when its wrong and harms people, stop getting away with crass unsupported ideas and often deliberately pulling the wool over the public. Evidence! Evidence! It simply isn't there. Just one last point, how many new illnesses have appeared in the DSM and corollate that with the number of new drugs?