Posted on 05/18/2013 12:33:46 PM PDT by neverdem
The "bible" of psychiatric diagnosis shapes—and deforms—both treatment and policy...
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The DSM-III (1980) was an effort to jettison outdated theories and terms such as "neurosis" and replace them with an objective list of disorders with agreed-upon symptoms. The DSM-IIIR (1987) was 567 pages and included nearly 300 disorders. The DSM-IV (1994, slightly revised in 2000) was 900 pages and contained nearly 400 disorders. The new DSM-5, with its modernized Arabic number, is 947 pages. It contains, along with serious mental illnesses, "binge-eating disorder" (whose symptoms include "eating when not feeling physically hungry"), "caffeine intoxication," "parent-child relational problem" and my favorite, "antidepressant discontinuation syndrome." Now psychiatrists can treat the symptoms of going off antidepressants, which is good because the expanded criteria for many disorders allows doctors to prescribe antidepressants more often for more problems...
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And he was there when those scientific aspirations met reality and all hell broke loose. Mr. Greenberg gives us a front-row seat at the APA's annual meeting in 2011, when results of the field trials were reported. Field trials are intended to test the reliability of diagnostic criteria—meaning that two psychiatrists observing the same person's symptoms should have a pretty good chance of agreeing on a diagnosis. But the results were dismal. Agreement on identifying even Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder—what Mr. Greenberg calls the "Dodge Dart and Ford Falcon of the DSM, simple and reliable and ubiquitous" disorders—was low. Moreover, the field testing on patients failed miserably: 5,000 clinicians signed up to participate, 195 finished training for it, and only 70 enrolled any patients in trials. The APA tried to put a good spin on these numbers —"nearly 150 patients have joined the study"—ignoring, Mr. Greenberg notes, that their goal was 10,000. Only two months before the data had to be in,...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
“And there it is. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].”
I didn’t say that. I said you haven’t seen the process an evaluator goes through before a diagnsis is made. A diagnosis doesn’t just get slapped on someone in a minute. If you were the patient, you would know what steps were taken. If it was your loved one being evaluated, you would see those steps.
If you were a car mechanic and you fixed the air conditioning on my car, I wouldn’t know how you did that, either, unless I stayed there and watched you do it.
Is it any surprise that people with mental issues are hostile to psychiatry?
Like I said “I QUIT going to a psychiatrist” when I realized that the whole profession is a lie.
I reply at least once but I won't do long arguments because those who are adamant it's witchcraft will not change their minds. In a nutshell, I helped people learn to solve their problems so they could run their life and not have to come back to me. No medicine involved.
Szasz is both right and wrong. Until his overview of behavioral matters reaches the domain of spiritual behavior he will only have an incomplete theory.
There’s a lot of shooting from the hip. However I would assert boldly that most of what is conducted as psychology and psychiatry today is bereft of a sense of the spiritual. That does not make psychology and psychiatry necessarily useless, but does hobble it and sometimes misleads it badly.
It is laboring under a load of half truths. It looks like it proved singularly unhelpful for you and I’m glad you did not pursue what proved singularly unhelpful. Unless you can offer better, however, don’t just go taking an indiscriminate wrecking ball to the whole notion.
Its as valid as global warming. Nuthin but a trash profession populated by charlatans and scam artists who destroy lives for money.
The human brain is,one can say,just another organ...like the liver,heart or kidney.When one's heart is diseased it might start beating irregularly.When one's liver is diseased its owner might turn yellow or become fatigued.When the "higher" portions of one's brain is diseased one might have strange thoughts or engage in unusual,or even dangerous,behavior.Having worked in the ER of a large hospital for many years I know that mental illness exists.Several of our most regular,"dependable",patients were chronic schizophrenics with whom I had extensive contact.
There are many like you who just want to help, and as has been said before on here, a good many who chose the field because they’re trying to self-diagnose.
“Nuthin but a trash profession populated by charlatans and scam artists who destroy lives for money.”
Hmm, sorry you think that about me.
((Shrug))
My post 16. You might has well get your kicks in, too.
You are wrong: it is a deeply flawed but sometimes still useful profession. It needs to learn about spiritual matters and to honor God again, however, to reach anything close to its potential.
Slippery slope indeed. Psychiatry is a religion with its own tenets, priests, inside knowledge, and NO God.
I have not looked at the DSM closely, but I suspect that every single topic can be recatagorized according to Biblical virtues, the Ten Commandments, etc. The Christian ‘cures’ will be quite different.
At best I would consider psychiatry to be an art form. Now if only I could find a way for courts to order people to buy my art.
No argument from me. Have known far too many people who have been helped by a psychologist. I think they get a bad rap because the ones we hear about are either the "bad" ones or the Liberal ones.
Do you think your patients just needed someone they could talk to freely?
I know that I had some very dark times after my mothers death. We had been estranged for quite awhile, tried, and almost succeeded to make peace ( but for me, I might add).
Anyway, the “but for me” haunted me for several years, not that I could not confide in my husband or others - but I would not. I came through it through pray and self examination.
My point is, I did think about seeing a psychiatrist because I knew that a neutral third party could hear what I had to say without the same judgement those close to you can, and will make even if they don’t think they are.
Anyway, I believe there is a place for psychiatry among those who believe they have nowhere else to turn.
KC
Yes, all kinds of people are in every profession. Some medical doctors lose their license due to their incompetence or misbehavior or criminal activity. Some dentists assault their women patients and get kicked out. Some bankers steal money. Some mechanics ruin your car. One bad psychiatrist doesn't taint all of us.
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