Posted on 02/15/2008 7:31:05 AM PST by shrinkermd
There are many articles and books debunking psychiatric diagnoses. The following review is a fair effort in assessing the problems. I am including only the first few paragraphs that deal with the elimination of the homosexual diagnosis. The majority of the review focuses on depression
"...In the early 1970s, annual meetings of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) were home to angry showdowns between the gay rights lobby and organized psychiatry. Activists picketed convention sites, shouted down speakers, and waged ad hominem attacks on psychiatrists who sincerely believed that homosexuality was a sickness. The goal of their flamboyant campaign against the APA -- an impressive display of "guerrilla theater," as one psychiatrist put it -- was to force the association to take homosexuality out of its official handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, second edition, popularly known as the DSM-II.
In December 1973, they won. A decisive majority of the APA board of trustees voted to remove homosexuality from the professional nomenclature. "Doctors Rule Homosexuals Not Abnormal," read the headline in the next day's Washington Post. It was a major victory both for gay people and for the enlightened wing of the psychiatric establishment. But rather than calm the critics of psychiatry, the APA's acknowledgment that homosexuality was not a mental illness only inflamed them. They took this as further evidence that the profession was a sham, and asked in outrage how psychiatry could claim to be a legitimate, scientific branch of medicine if its members determined the very existence of an illness by vote.
(Excerpt) Read more at powells.com ...
I do not know if the book mentions that one of the Board of Trustees wrote papers documenting the dynamics of homosexuality; however, when his son announced he was a homosexual, the trustee changed his mind. One of the theories at the time of male homosexuality was that there was an overly close relationship with the mother and antagonistic or distant relationship with the father.
Also to be noted on this subject, that the members actually never voted on this issue. If they had, the diagnosis (IMHO) would have remained in DSM II. The reason being that what is ordinarily thought as abnormal sexual behavior must have both statistical rarity and the lack of real, implied or symbolic procreational interest.
As you know, a vote is the same way they decided ADD/ADHD and ODD were mental illnesses.
Psychiatry/psychology has successfully taken personal responsibility out of behavior. No matter what you do it is not your fault and it can be medicated.
I do not know the stats but I’d bet that over 90% if not more psychiatrists and psychologists are Dims or very liberal Republicans.
A former friend (Age 50 at the time) was told by his physciatrist that he didn’t mourn his father’s death properly. The friend never went back and yes, he was fine. Someone told him to visit the physciatrist just for the heck of it.
Depression is not the same thing as sadness. If you tell me that depression is diagnosed too readily, I won't disagree. If you tell that medicine like prozac is given out too readily, I won't disagree.
But being sad because your wife died is one thing. Being unable to get out of bed or to talk to people -- and not having any idea why you feel that way? That's not sadness. I'm concerned that the author of this book is saying that sorrow was renamed "depression" and treated like a medical condition. I would have to disagree. There is sorrow. And there is depression. A distinction can be made.
Became such a routine operation that it was sometimes done in assembly line fashion, with one physician performing as many as 75 a day. (Going in through the eye sockets made it much easier.) In some cases it was done to young boys and other children who "misbehaved" at home.
If you have time go back and review the review. The author does mention the difference between “mourning,” a psychological event, and “melancholia,” a biological event.
Forgot to mention that it was sometimes done to "cure" alcoholism. That way I can be the first to throw in the old joke "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
I think you are only person besides me that watched that! LOL
Including an inconvenient daughter of a certain patriarch of a prominent Massachusetts family.
All reparative enterprises, from medicine to car mechanics, prefer to have their nosologies organized according to etiology
tells me that it won't be a best-seller. ;)
You’re absolutely right and I have seen this in my own family. Psychiatric drugs have done more to help real problems than all the talking therapists have ever done.
As a diagnosed depressive, let me be the first to make it clear that sorrow, a normal human emotion, has nothing to do with the way depression works. Depression isn't about feelings; it's about numbness, if anything. It's about ego disintegration, hallucinations, anxiety, amnesia, loss of ability to perform everyday tasks, and paranoia, overlain by a soul-crushing and inescapable shroud of black despair that grows like cancer until it dominates every moment of one's existence, both sleeping and awake. There is no "snapping out of it". There is no "quit feeling sorry for yourself". There is only the Despair, growing stronger day after day until it blots out the world, the rest of humanity and ultimately one's self. Only the light of Jesus Christ can penetrate that darkness at its blackest — and, tragically, many depressives lose sight of even that, choosing to end their "meaningless" lives lest they become a burden to their loved ones. I know that our merciful Lord judges such people compassionately.
The facts: Depression is a real disease. According to the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), "Research indicates that depressive illnesses are disorders of the brain. Brain-imaging technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have shown that the brains of people who have depression look different than those of people without depression. The parts of the brain responsible for regulating mood, thinking, sleep, appetite and behavior appear to function abnormally. In addition, important neurotransmitters–chemicals that brain cells use to communicate–appear to be out of balance. But these images do not reveal why the depression has occurred.
"Some types of depression tend to run in families, suggesting a genetic link. However, depression can occur in people without family histories of depression as well. Genetics research indicates that risk for depression results from the influence of multiple genes acting together with environmental or other factors." [Source]
The good news: Since most depressive disorders have a neurochemical component, most can be successfully managed with a program of prescription medicines and psychiatric therapy.
I'm not asking depression skeptics for compassion on my behalf. Yes, I suffer, but most depressives suffer far worse the me. God gave me this cross to bear, and He will give me the strength to bear it. I'm simply asking that they show some compassion on those who must fight the daily battle against the Despair by accepting the fact that depressive disorders are real, physically-based medical conditions. What is to be gained by tormenting people?
Bingo.
You got that right.
Depression and sadness are two distinct conditions. Only the Tom Cruise psychiatrists can’t tell them apart. Anyone who wants their chronic depression treated should be able to do so.
Wow. I've never heard such a vivid description. Well, that clears it up for me, seriously. I used to think I had bouts of depression, but now I'm thinking that whatever I have, it's either angst, or sorrow, or something, but whatever it is, it's not depression.
Only a medical professional is qualified to judge that. Your family doctor is a good source of information.
I have read this thread to this point. One mistake is the question of cause.
Usually, in psychiatry there is no single cause but rather multiple causes that interact. Further, any given cause exists in a chain.
What physicians do is to try to intervene where they can regardless of the cause. For example, if you have examine a child with repeated inner ear infections and anemia as well, you can use antibiotics and iron. You could also intervene socially and give the parents nutritional education or a better job so that they could have more meat in their diet, etc.
Therefore, when you intervene with a medication and help the patient, it does not matter what the cause is if the treatment is effective. Pain medications are a good example.
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