Posted on 11/15/2012 11:59:32 AM PST by Academiadotorg
There may actually be some good news coming out of academia. “This really is a profession that has run amok,” Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic said of psychiatrists in a recent interview with Celeste McGovern which appeared in Citizen magazine. “People are beginning to question its legitimacy and they are beginning to mistrust its values, its diagnoses and its treatments.”
McGovern writes that, “Even medical students are avoiding it, he adds, as the average age of psychiatrists is now 57.” Citizen is published by Focus on the Family. McGovern is based in the United Kingdom.
“Every day in the United States, 850 adults and 250 children are added to the federal government’s disability benefit rolls because of mental illness,” McGovern reports. “That means about 400,000 people are incapacitated each year, to say nothing of hundreds of thousands more diagnosed with less-crippling psychiatric illnesses.”
“The alarming growth rate of this phenomenon is reflected in American spending on psychiatric drugs: Between 1985 and 2007, spending on antidepressants and anti-psychotics alone multiplied nearly 50 times, from $503 million to more than $24 billion annually.”
Part of this trend is catalogued in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental illness 5, compiled by the American Psychiatric Association. “Its current version, the DSM-IV, last updated in 1994, defines 297 disorders based on diagnostic checklists of symptoms,” McGovern relates. “A diagnosis of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), for example, is given if clinicians can tick off six of a list of symptoms, including ‘not listening,’ ‘fidgeting’ and ‘losing things.’”
“Today, at least 3 million American children are taking amphetamine drugs like Ritalin as a result of ADHD diagnoses.”
(Excerpt) Read more at academia.org ...
That's because you're all F'ing crazy!
One of the surest signs of decay of a society can be judged by simply counting the number of psychiatrists/psychologists in active practice. The numbers and decadence are directly proportional to each other.
A few years back, I was talking to a psychiatrist at a party. He was complaining that if a school sent a kid to him for evaluation, and they indicated they wanted the kid on Ritalin, his choices were to put the kid on Ritalin, or stop getting referrals from the school.
"Mental disability" diagnosis is now a big business.
Becoming?!
Anytime you go to a shrink, you’re guaranteed that there’s at least one crazy person in the room.
Also the most likely medical professional to become sexually involved with a patient.
Therapist. “The-rapist”
Shrinks are the biggest drug pushers in the business. The psych meds fail in most cases and it is hell weaning a patient off of them. FIRST.....do no harm. It applies to shrinks too. What a joke.
I know two “ shrinks “ ....both are batshit crazy
And there I thought it was the number of lawyers. :)
That said, neither lawyers nor accountants should ever be allowed to run anything. Neither public nor private institutions should ever fall under their control.
I'm not saying that they are useless; I'm not saying that lots of decent, smart, and comptent people don't make their livings in these professions. But as groups, their mind--sets are not conducive to production.
Every psych instructor I had in college was a foaming idiot!
Psychiatry is the religion established by the Judiciary Branch.
The $500 million to $24 billion number is misleading.
1. We now have a large number of people who have been using recreational drugs for decades, so that could account for an increased number of people who need anti-psychotics to deal with the long term effects of such usage.
2. There are a lot of drugs, when used properly, can provide real help for those who have the real ailment (not counting the teacher who just doesn’t like normal boys in the classroom.) These useful drugs just didn’t exist 20 years ago.
Worse indicator is the number of lawyers practicing.
Even worse indicator is number of government employees increasing every year.
Maybe they would be more legitimate if they didn’t bow to political pressure in their medical advice...aka homosexuality.
I’ve sort of forgotten why we call them “shrinks”. Does anyone recall?
Does it have something to do with “shrunken heads” and maybe the archetype of the witch doctor? Something like that?
Throughout history have 25% of women been exhibiting mental disability such that pharmacological intervention is warranted - or is it that such drugs are over prescribed?
Once depression was something you experienced and then got over - now it is apparently a condition that requires lifelong pharmacological and psychiatric intervention. LIFELONG.
Add to this the fact that placebo is just about as effective as most antidepressants and we see what this is about.
“Dr. Feel Good has a pill for that honey, all you need to do is have a monthly evaluation ($) and I will write you a prescription to make those blues go away!”
No kidding...I interviewed for a job at a local mental hospital several years ago - administrative assistant to the head psychologist...he scared me more than the patients wandering around the hall - creepy dosen’t begin to cover it... - I didn’t take the job... *shudders*
I would see a witch doctor before seeing
a psychologist
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