RE: Lay Siege to the Therapeutic State: Unmake Psychiatry
Perfectly reasonable question. My response to that would be that schizophrenia is a word we use to describe a particular type of mind. Technically it is a mind that has difficulty distinguishing imaginary sounds (and more rarely sights) from real sounds. They hear voices. In fact, a schizophrenic did a Ted talk about this.
There is clearly neurodiversity. "Mental Illness" is also, however, very obviously a human construct. Illnesses like AIDS, tuberculosis, infections, colds, etc. have physical manifestations. They are viruses and bacteria that can be observed and studied. Proponents of the mental illness dogma simply point to vague "chemical imbalances" which do not stand up to serious scientific rigor but they use to justify the prescription of drugs that have acknowledged and horrendous side effects only one of which is often violent outbursts.
There are anti-depressants that list suicidal thoughts as one of the potential side effects. Our loose relationship with the understanding of consciousness prevents us from properly understanding the phenomena we call 'mental illness', and societal distaste for discomfort prevent us from broaching the subject in any substantive way.
Every concept is a human construct. It's a human mind putting together ideas and creating new ones. Cancer is a human construct and it describes a wide range of diseases that aren't fully understood.
Given that we only barely understand a few things about the mind, I'm not sure how well supported it is to claim that mental illness doesn't exist. Maybe it can be measured like, say, H1N1, it's just that our technology hasn't risen to that level yet.
I'm skeptical of the explosion in named mental illnesses. For example, I think ADHD is way over-diagnosed. Peter Breggin has a lot of interesting things to say about that.
But to say that mental illness does not exist at all seems just as wild and specious a conclusion as all of these ADHD diagnoses and the explosion in named mental illnesses.
So I remain skeptical.
Yes all things are human constructs. That does not mean that anything you want to be a disease is a disease. Show me evidence for your claims and I will consider them. There is plenty of logical and scientific proof for biological diseases like viruses and bacteria. I have yet to see any logical and scientific proof for mental illness aside from people who simply equate "socially aberrant" behavior to "illness."
That's exactly what I'm saying. Show me the evidence that mental illness doesn't exist. I'm seeing a very wide-ranging blanket absolutist claim here that would probably require thousands of pages to build any convincing case for.
It's difficult for me to take you seriously on this topic. Are you a trained psychiatrist or psychologist? Have you lived with someone with schizophrenia or some other serious mental dysfunction? How many times have you visited mental hospitals?
Like I said, I'm no fan of psychiatry. But if you want to make outrageous claims, you'd better have spectacular evidence if you want to be taken seriously.
It's considered an illness because it interferes with a person's ability to live a normal life, hold down a job, raise a family and enjoy life. Depression is a horrible thing to live with and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I am not a fan of Big Pharma and I believe mental illness has been exploited for profit. But don't go saying that depression isn't an illness. I can assure you that it is because I've lived with it for 40 years. When everything in your life is going great and you have everything to be thankful for yet you're still sad for no apparent reason, one cannot say "oh, nothing is wrong with me, it's all in my head," because that solves absolutely nothing.
Absolutely, sir. Thank you for this articulate response to my article. And you are right about their claims that mental illness. There is no way to directly analyze these chemicals. They a actually assumed that there are chemical imbalances because of the use of psychiatric drugs. This is what they refer to as ex juvantibus reasoning, which is not necessarily a fallacy, but it is still guesswork rather than hard evidence.
Furthermore, the drugs themselves have been show to cause compensatory effects in the brain, which means that the brain figures out how to work around the presence of the drug. And over the long term, these drugs can actually cause depression or schizophrenic symptoms.
Thanks for the response, @andrarchy
that Ted Talk reminds me of the movie Sybil.
Interesting. FYI consensus in the medical community now finds that "multiple personality disorder" does not exist. In fact, Sybil effectively invented the "disease" which largely did not exist before its release, and then spiked after it reached a broad audience. What the evidence now indicates is that many people have what is referred to as "identity disorders" which basically means that they can convince themselves that they are anything, even a person who has "multiple personalities." In other words, there is no proof that there are people who "have multiple personalities" there is only evidence that there are people who believe they have multiple personalities. Crazy right?
There is a spectrum of differences in mind-functioning. I have done a lot of work myself intentionally distinguishing and even at times, naming different aspects of my mind, who do have different voices even...I can see how easily a mind could become shattered in this way.