Getting It From Both Sides: Foundational and Antifoundational Critiques of Psychiatry

This is another article that seeks to respond to those who question the legitimacy and efficacy of methods psychiatry employs in diagnosing and treating what are described as metal disorders.

The arguments of the critics have some merit. The defense of psychiatry made by the authors relies a lot on the reality of suffering by clients and on the assertion psychiatry does what is might with the knowledge it has available.

My problem with the antipsychiatry critics is their failure to propose methods and modalities to replace the ones they bemoan.

I appreciate the article's conclusion:

Although the foundational and antifoundational traditions differ in their language and claims, both call into question the legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment. To this extent, the rubric of antipsychiatry is probably warranted for both. We have argued that both critical traditions are founded on several misapprehensions regarding the nature of disease, the role of values in determining the presence of pathology, and on supposed differences between psychiatry and the other specialties within general medicine.

In order to defend itself—and, equally important, to reform itself—psychiatry must understand the nature of the arguments arrayed against it. Not all such criticisms are antipsychiatry and the profession must remain open to reassessment of its diagnostic methods and categories. Furthermore, as many critics would insist, psychiatric practice must take care to protect the civil liberties and ensure the informed consent of those it treats. However, neither psychiatrists nor the general public should be misled or intimidated by psychiatry’s more vituperative critics, whether of the foundational or antifoundational stripe. Neither group adequately recognizes the immense suffering and incapacity associated with psychiatric illness, and despite their humanitarian pretenses, neither group provides a demonstrably effective and humane alternative to psychiatric treatment.

I think until we can get tests that can see "inside" the head/brain and "prove" there's something wrong and a way to fix those somethings, there's going to be antipsychiatry and antimed people because it's an easier position to argue from; kind of like those saying there is no God because we've been to outer space and didn't "see" him/her.

My father didn't like psychiatrists and this puzzled me until I learned that my mother, who had a brain tumor, was originally (back in 1948 before CT and MRI scans) told her grand mal seizures were "all in your head" and sent to a psychiatrist! Needless to say, the psychiatrist was not very helpful in curing her seizures. When they finally operated in 1952, because they had to, it was obvious something was "physically" wrong, it was way too late, not that they had the wherewithal to do anything at all about brain tumors back then.

Yes Perna, I agree, In a nutshell we are still a distance away from truely understanding the malodies of the Human Brain. And the field of psychiatry and antipsychiatry are debating on mostly speculations in many areas of the various psychological struggles of the brains of humans.

The truth is, we just have not gotten to the point where we can truely see and understand all the functions of the human brain yet. We are gaining ground, especailly recently, but we are just simply not able to truely analyze all the pathology of the brain yet.

I have talked about a challenge that I took on about 9 or 10 years ago with a dog that was presented to me in a stooper like state with no real explaination of why according to her overall bodily functions, otherwise, no disease present. My dog could do nothing more than wimper and wag her tail.

Through constant and diligent efforts to stimulate my dog over several months I achieved a result of a dog that presented almost all of normal functions again. But I do say almost because she still had occassional seisures. The cause of the seisures could not be determined and was only treated by anti seisure medication that did not completely irradicate all the seisure activities that took place.

The dog got old and had a seisure that resulted in a fractured limb where she tried to eat away the pain. The limb could not be restored and I had to put her to sleep. My reasoning was that considering her age and the fact that I could not completely restore her to having all her abilities 100% of the time, along with the fact the limb would have to be removed, it was the humain thing to do. Had my dog been younger I may have opted to see if I could help her continue to gain function even with the missing limb as dogs can function with three limbs. But she was simply too old.

I had offered her remains to the neuologist for study as he was so surprized to see how much I had acheived to restore brain function. But to my surprize he told me that there was no real way to determine all the pathology of her brain as the cells are bearly visible and it would be impossible to determine where the malfuction was taking place.

So the truth is that scientifically we are still not truly at the level of understanding the brain and all the various functions and capacities within it. We have gained in many areas, but there are still many areas that we simply do not understand yet.

And until we do know, the debate about mental health and how to address it will continue.

Open Eyes

i concur with perna. until medical research can find definitive proof and origin of MI, psychiatry and it's opinions are derived from subjective data. i suppose they do with what they can but getting to the origin may offer a clearer approach for treatment and pharmacology.
as for inhumane approaches/treatments the one i find most offensive is ECT. some here may disagree. over drugging a schizophrenic or other MI person to make him/her manageable is another.