Category Archives: psychiatry

Psychiatrists for the propagation of mental illness

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I read R. D. Laing’s book, The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise in the late ‘60s. I was amused by Laing’s contention that psychosis is merely a psychedelic voyage of discovery, a view that was undoubtedly fortified by his imbibing of LSD. As such, he mused that madness is an invention of psychiatry – an insight with which I still enjoy irritating any psychiatrist I am unfortunate enough to encounter – and, insofar as it exists at all, is largely a creation of psychiatrists.

Little did he know that his book was prophetic: the current trend of psychiatry is to label just about any  human emotion that isn’t sunnily positive a Mental Disorder. The notable exception is same-sex attraction, a human experience which, in spite of its generally leading to inner conflict, unhappiness, instability and physical illness has been deemed Perfectly Normal by the politically correct wusses in the American Psychiatric Association.

From here:

Once again the armies of psychiatry are on the move, marching like imperial legions into unconquered territories of the human spirit. Psychiatrists do excellent work as individuals but when they join international bureaucracies they can cause trouble and look foolish.

The evidence is the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as DSM-5. It’s now in final draft, scheduled for release during the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting next May.

Authors of the various DSM editions appear anxious to demonstrate that just about every trace of emotional discomfort deserves professional attention. Sadness is being reclassified as sickness. The medicalization of everyday life is progressing with astonishing speed.

People not directly involved may view this with a light heart, as fresh intellectual confusion created by pretentious, over-confident experts. It’s more serious for patients. A medical label that’s invented by an ambitious theorist and carelessly applied by an untrained doctor can erode self-confidence. A diagnosis takes on a life of its own.

Habitually, the DSM volumes lead to over-diagnosing and over-prescribing. Grief, for instance, receives special DSM attention. Humanity traditionally regards sorrow as a part of life but in the DSM it indicates depression. In DSM-5, reactions to grief lasting longer than two weeks may be diagnosed as depression, perhaps requiring antidepressants.

Mad Pride

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Having had my fill of anti-theism, the emergence of anti-psychiatry comes as a welcome diversion. Any attempt to debunk psychiatry is commendable, partly because psychiatrists are usually in greater danger of permanent mental instability than their patients and partly because psychiatrists have not come to any consensus on what it is they are treating: some think the mind is entirely treatable by manipulating the brain through chemicals or electroshock, others favour therapy through the kind of exchange people used to have with a bartender – or a priest in prior ages. Almost none admit to the existence of the human spirit, so almost all are at sea.

Batty though most psychiatrists are, those who gathered recently in Toronto for a conference called PsychOUT, are battier still and, ironically,  remind me somewhat of the grand-loon of psychiatry, R. D. Laing, whose theories included: psychotic behaviour is a valid expression of distress; psychiatry is not a science (well, true); schizophrenia should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience; and psychiatrists themselves are responsible for the madness of many of their patients – hard to argue against that last point.

From the National Post:

David Carmichael, a mentally-ill youth fitness advocate and aspiring federal politician who drugged and suffocated his 11-year-old son in a hotel room, is not your typical academic conference presenter.

Then again, PsychOUT, a controversial strategy session this weekend at the University of Toronto for “organizing resistance against psychiatry,” is not a typical conference.

A rare global event for the anti-psychiatry movement, with speakers from as far as Ghana, it is billed as a celebration of Mad Pride with an eye to the future overthrow of psychiatry, which has replaced religion as the primary oppressor of the human mind.

As organizer Bonnie Burstow puts it, modern psychiatry is beyond saving, and destroying it “is unachievable in the short run. But the long run is a very different thing.”

As a first step, the conference will promote new Ontario legislation aimed at defunding electroshock therapy, seen by anti-psychiatrists as a particularly brutal assault on people unfairly labelled as crazy.