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#1
Head Case is the title of an article in The New Yorker by Louis Menand. He asks, "Can psychiatry be a science?" Menand states the unsurprising:
There is suspicion that the pharmaceutical industry is cooking the studies that prove that antidepressant drugs are safe and effective, and that the industry’s direct-to-consumer advertising is encouraging people to demand pills to cure conditions that are not diseases (like shyness) or to get through ordinary life problems (like being laid off). The Food and Drug Administration has been accused of setting the bar too low for the approval of brand-name drugs. Critics claim that health-care organizations are corrupted by industry largesse, and that conflict-of-interest rules are lax or nonexistent. Within the profession, the manual that prescribes the criteria for official diagnoses, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the D.S.M., has been under criticism for decades. And doctors prescribe antidepressants for patients who are not suffering from depression. People take antidepressants for eating disorders, panic attacks, premature ejaculation, and alcoholism. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critic...#ixzz2EnB9yBZqMr. Menard draws much of his discussion from two authors, Gary Greenberg* and Irving Kirsch, to: ... suggest that dissensus prevails even among the dissidents. Both authors are hostile to the current psychotherapeutic regime, but for reasons that are incompatible ...Greenberg: Greenberg basically regards the pathologizing of melancholy and despair, and the invention of pills designed to relieve people of those feelings, as a vast capitalist conspiracy to paste a big smiley face over a world that we have good reason to feel sick about. The aim of the conspiracy is to convince us that it’s all in our heads, or, specifically, in our brains—that our unhappiness is a chemical problem, not an existential one. Greenberg is critical of psychopharmacology, but he is even more critical of cognitive-behavioral therapy, or C.B.T., a form of talk therapy that helps patients build coping strategies, and does not rely on medication. He calls C.B.T. “a method of indoctrination into the pieties of American optimism, an ideology as much as a medical treatment.”Kirsch: Kirsch’s conclusion is that antidepressants are just fancy placebos. Obviously, this is not what the individual tests showed. If they had, then none of the drugs tested would have received approval. Drug trials normally test medications against placebos—sugar pills—which are given to a control group. What a successful test typically shows is a small but statistically significant superiority (that is, greater than could be due to chance) of the drug to the placebo. So how can Kirsch claim that the drugs have zero medicinal value?Menand covers a lot of ground in addressing the current state of psychiatry. The article is lengthy and informative. Mr. Menand concludes: Mental disorders sit at the intersection of three distinct fields. They are biological conditions, since they correspond to changes in the body. They are also psychological conditions, since they are experienced cognitively and emotionally—they are part of our conscious life. And they have moral significance, since they involve us in matters such as personal agency and responsibility, social norms and values, and character, and these all vary as cultures vary.When I sought professional help for the first time, I was desperate. I relied on the professionals and believed what they told me. I would get better. While I believe I am alive today because of the professionals and medications, I also believe I was sold a bill of goods. Only after accepting full responsibility for my well-being did I begin to function at a higher level. By then, I had stopped working and over time more and more isolated. Now, after reading articles like this one, I wonder if it is true -- I just needed to get over it. *A podcast of an interview with Gary Greenberg is here: http://www.garygreenbergonline.com/pages/interviews.php |
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beauflow, kindachaotic
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beauflow, kindachaotic, Maven, Open Eyes
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#2
Quote:
__________________ Now if thou would'st When all have given him o'er From death to life Thou might'st him yet recover -- Michael Drayton 1562 - 1631 |
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Open Eyes
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#3
"Now, after reading articles like this one, I wonder if it is true -- I just needed to get over it." quote Di Meloira
How would you have known that really though? And if I recall you were also diagnosed with PTSD, and they have found that with that disorder there are changes in the brain that can be identified and can present extra challenges in how the patient can control anxiety and anger and other challenges that plague them. What you experienced most likely is that you reached a point where you just simply could not control this condition and as you discribe, became "desperate", that is also what happened with me as well. And in all honesty, di meloira the increasing desire to isolate is something that all patients that struggle with PTSD gravitate to doing. And unless we find a therapist that really understands this condition and how to understand our anger and frustration, we are not going to truely get the help we need, infact the wrong therapist can do even more harm to us and cause us to suffer even more. The one thing I do know about PTSD is that it can cause the patient to experience a great deal of "self loathing" and "self disappointment" and unless the patient learns to understand this and keeps making efforts to work away from it, it can get serious. I had the pleasure of having a Neuropsychiatrist come out to my farm as a client. She talked about how they are now studying brain injuries and how these injuries affect emotions. She did say that we do know that with PTSD we can see that changes/injury has occured in the brain where the hypocampus shows cell damage and shrinkage and the amigdyla also shows changes as well. So this idea of maybe I just needed to get over it somehow, is not so simple. She also talked about memory problems with PTSD as well. I do experience that myself, but comes to me in more of how I can lose track of time, or may be deep in thought and be going to do something and suddenly forget what it was. However I can remember things about "interactions" that affect me where others may simply forget. I do agree that psychiatrists/therpists diagnose too quickly and in that can promote confusion or misunderstanding of the patient. What I do my best to try to remember is that while I see the mistakes that happened to me, I try my best to take note of them but stay in the now and continue to focus on learning and making gains. I also remind myself to be grateful for what is known about how I struggle and that I can learn about it and get therapy for it as well. I honestly don't know how others in the past dealt with this challenge before it was recognized and efforts were made to understand it and learn how to treat it. Open Eyes |
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beauflow
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beauflow, pachyderm
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#4
thanks for sharing the artickle
it's interesting |
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di meliora
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