"It doesn't mean that our systems are bad, it is just that the combination of systems and practice doesn't work."No comments.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Best quote from AMIA-2008
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Be honest with yourself. That's all.
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There are things everybody knows about psychiatry. We don't even realize where this knowledge comes from - it's everywhere and nowhere in particular. You don't have to be a professional anymore to know - and accept as a commonsensical reality - certain psychiatric "truths."
Mental disorders are due to chemical imbalance in the brain. This chemical imbalance somehow has to do with the genes, and so mental disorders can be inherited. Someone who is suffering from a psychiatric disorder needs to see a psychiatrist; if he doesn't want to, he must be tricked or forced into doing it, because it's for his own good. A psychiatrist can reliably differentiate between disorders, as well as between disease and normalcy. Once the diagnosis is established, the best currently available treatment is the medications. They are scientifically proven to work.
The above are just a brief sample of the ideas of modern psychiatry - "psychiatric myths" - that are more or less uncritically accepted by the community. Yet how many of those ideas actually make sense, if you look at them with a fresh, unbiased eye? Not a whole lot, it turns out. In fact, most of them range somewhere in between well-intentioned simplifications and deliberate lies.
The logical question then is "why?". Why are things in psychiatry happen in a way that is dramatically different from their public representation? Well, I am not too much concerned with it here. Whatever the reason, this is what is really happening, and it is in the interest of everybody to re-examine the myths of psychiatry.
Mental disorders are due to chemical imbalance in the brain. This chemical imbalance somehow has to do with the genes, and so mental disorders can be inherited. Someone who is suffering from a psychiatric disorder needs to see a psychiatrist; if he doesn't want to, he must be tricked or forced into doing it, because it's for his own good. A psychiatrist can reliably differentiate between disorders, as well as between disease and normalcy. Once the diagnosis is established, the best currently available treatment is the medications. They are scientifically proven to work.
The above are just a brief sample of the ideas of modern psychiatry - "psychiatric myths" - that are more or less uncritically accepted by the community. Yet how many of those ideas actually make sense, if you look at them with a fresh, unbiased eye? Not a whole lot, it turns out. In fact, most of them range somewhere in between well-intentioned simplifications and deliberate lies.
The logical question then is "why?". Why are things in psychiatry happen in a way that is dramatically different from their public representation? Well, I am not too much concerned with it here. Whatever the reason, this is what is really happening, and it is in the interest of everybody to re-examine the myths of psychiatry.
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