This is probably my last post in this blog, unless something truly important comes up. First of all, I am no longer formally authorized to write about psychiatry, because I don't do it anymore; I withdrew from my residency program and thus relieved myself of any and all responsibility.
Secondly, and most importantly, I realized that psychiatry is not an evil in itself, but only a symptom of the malady that the whole Western society seems to be suffering from. To criticize psychiatry without regard to our society's economy, politics, history or ecology is like treating depression without regard to a person's lifestyle, income, diet or love. Such treatment, and such critique, generates a lot of visible 'action' but is in fact pointless and doesn't help.
Besides, there are people who've said everything long ago and with such clarity that I can never hope to achieve. When's the last time you read Orwell's 1984? This book doesn't even mention psychiatry, but it contains everything that there is to understand about it. If you've read and understood this book, I really have nothing else to say to you; and if you haven't understood it, then no amount of my blogging is going to help you anyway.
And remember: Freedom is when you can say that two by two equals four, even if your Party (or your Doctor) claims otherwise. That's all there is to it, really.
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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.