"Psychiatry Turns A Hard Left
The American Psychiatric Association, in an attempt to expedite its descent into irrelevance, this week at its annual meeting chose to endorse same-sex marriage.
Before one applauds the moral fortitude and progressive instinct of this august body, we may want to ask not whether there should or should not be same-sex marriage, but what psychiatry could possibly contribute to this discussion. The answer is nothing.
You can't get away with pat answers, such as psychiatrists see the psychiatric ramifications of discrimination or being unable to marry. There are psychiatric ramifications of bankruptcy, and war, but no one felt compelled to write a policy statement on it (and thank God.)
And no, there isn't a difference between bankruptcy and gay marriage-- not to psychiatry. That's the exact point. These are social problems about which psychiatry is definitionally ignorant. The APA did not endorse polygamy. What's the difference? If homosexuality is not a psychiatric disorder, than there is no more reason to be more for or against it than there is for any other kind of marriage. The APA is no better suited to answering these questions than, say, the NFL.
Perhaps the APA should try to diagnose itself. What other explanation, beyond collective malignant narcissism, could there be for thinking that psychiatry has anything meaningful to say on this topic, or that it should say anything at all? What if the NFL came out against antidepressants in children? This is a perfectly valid analogy, because neither the NFL nor psychiatry have special knowledge that would allow them to be able to make such statements. What do psychiatrists know about same-sex marriage that the quarterback for the Eagles doesn’t? Don’t laugh—I’m serious. What’s the answer?
Has it occurred to the APA that not every psychiatrist agrees with gay marriage? Or that it does not—and has no right to—speak for psychiatry, or for psychiatrists? Does it think it is above its constituents, or that it knows something they do not? It is only allowed to legitimately express a policy above the objections of its members is if the policy was based on science. Perhaps the APA cares to release this intriguing scientific data? While it is at it, perhaps it can also release the data supporting the use of half of the medications currently favored by APA Guidelines, because my own investigations find very little in the way of evidence. But this seems pretty much business as usual for the APA. Rather than work on its own serious failings, it involves itself in social policy. Outstanding.
“Modern” (read: pharmacological) psychiatry is obsessed with reinventing itself as a biological and scientific discipline. Well, if it wants to be a science, it better start acting like one..."
Bump and I must ping the lists tonight!