How Psychiatry Stigmatizes Everyone
In this video blog, I discuss how psychiatry stigmatizes everyone, and that people who disbelieve in psychiatry are NOT stigmatizing people. People who criticize psychiatry are offering hope in the positive light that people's brains are not broken.
I also looked briefly at the validity of the DSM and the chemical imbalance theory of depression. I am skeptical of these theories, because there is a ton of countervailing evidence that has been swept under the rug. Furthermore, the DSM is a behavioral symptom checklist. It is not an objective measure of anything medically wrong with a person's brain.
Good points! Depression is kind of an activity (to depress), and your view of your situation or metacontext matter more than chemical imbalance in the brain. I do believe that many people suffer from low serotonin in the brain due to many aspect of modern lifestyle (addiction, lot of exposure to screen vs natural sunlight). The chemical imbalance theory is also being propagated a lot due to the huge 'drug industry'. Psychedelics showed very promising results in the 70ties, but all research where shutdown after the invention of brain chemical altering drugs such as SSRI. I am a doctor, but I am personally do not consider psychiatry as scientific. At least in Norway the psychoanalytical tradition is still very strong, whereas talk therapy (is there another world, sounds strange in english) has not ever proven to be efficient. Psychiatry or the medical profession is just grouping people into sick and healthy to justify giving medicine to the sick. As you mention in psychiatry this is just a behavioral symptoms checklist and also pretty subjective. I do not know how we can get rid of the profession of psychiatry how it is today. Maybe the rise in psychiatry is also a sign that something is fundamentally wrong in our society.
They don't really know that there is a chemical imbalance. They are just guessing based on what happens when they give certain people medication. But it's all so vague - they have no idea what the actual causes and mechanism of depression are in the brain and indeed whether they are pathological or part of a healthy system. And the remedies they throw at it are often much worse than the depression or other "illness" in the first place.
Yep, well said. Even the studies where they extracted cerebral spinal fluid from the brain to test the metabolites of serotonin came up inconclusive. Some of the people in the study that should have been depressed weren't and vice versa.
Check out Robert Whitaker's book Anatomy of an Epidemic for more information on this subject.
Thank you! I will. I've also wondered about drugs being given to so many children for ADHD.
Sterlinluxan, very well articulated argument there...
You have to remember that MOST countries are happy kicking people OUT who find RIGHT but CHEAP solutions because that's not where the money is. I read somewhere that doctors in US only need to complete 'suggestive' 25 hours of nutrition course in their entire medicine study...HOW then do we expet them to know as much information as you just alluded to. All these Doctors care about is, quick diagnosis, quick conclusions, quick prescriptions and quick bucks...
We need more and more people like you to spread the 'REAL' information.
You make some very good points! They actually make people believe that there crazy.
I really appreciate this video- I have only been on Steemit for 24 hours and I am glad I have stumbled upon this post. I have a passion for creating change in the mental health sector, and will also be contributing to this topic. I am a healer that uses ancient wisdom (the original medicine) of shamanism. I am beginning to understand the root origins of mental health diagnosis from a shamanic perspective, and I am finding a great deal of success in helping people who have been told by psychiatrists they would be never well, and have been medicated their whole lives to have breakthroughs and reclaim their wellness and lives back again. Thanks for courageously opening up on this topic. I definitely will be following.
"people's brains are not broken."
You do realize this happens a lot too, right? Especially with how bad the current Western culture is for healthy mental development (it's a Narcissism machine for women and suicide machine for me).
Mental illness absolutely makes sense. Not sure how you could claim otherwise. Never dated a Borderline, have you?
Do you have any qualifications to speak on this topic? Do you understand what the word normal means, and how you can determine when someone isn't?
It's called statistics, fyi.
Do you just deny the existence of things like schizophrenia?
"Without providing any actual citations, I'll claim the DSM is invalid by assuming my own argument"
Ah, great. Glad we got that cleared up.
The reason clinical depression assumes a chemical cause is because while you are diagnosing a patient, you are supposed to rule out legitimate causes of grief (which is diagnostically distinct). You have already ruled out other explanations by definition.
He makes sure to state several times that he doesn't mean to trivialize or delegitimize any of the internal battles peoples are going through. His whole point centers around framing the situation differently - in an inspiring and healthy way. Did you actually listen to the video? Or did you already have your mind made up after reading the headline?
I watched the whole video.
Not everything can be framed in an inspiring and healthy way. Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction is alarmingly close to real Borderline disorders, and it's hard not to call that mental illness.
I guess I missed the point of the video, if all it is is to discuss how to frame illness.
Ah yes. Framing. How trivial.
Thank you.
Thank you for this post!
Reminds me of a great series of small interviews abround Crazywise documentary by Phil Borges. Totally worth your time: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLARv6QCNk7V3KxJzb7kEVbl7Tql6Au8R7
I have had a very personal experience with these concepts with myself and family members, and in order to get better I had to completely destroy what society told me, what doctors and friends told me about mental health, to cut a very long story short. Moreover, mental health is not separate from physical, emotional, spiritual or transcendental, collective and beyond...
Great point of view! Nowadays we don't know who is the real crazy
This deserves some attention. Upvoted and resteemed...
Nice video! Please make more videos on other daily psychology applications :)