and there you have it...

[echo_11]

Click to view

A friend posted this. I wanted to share it. I'm not sure the problem is the American Psychological Association, or even the pharmaceutical industry. I think what enables them to continue making up disorders and sell drugs that cure nothing is people's need to have a disorder or dysfunction to call their own. I don't know why people in this society

Comments

[ilzarion]

Sadly Yes, it is much like the dark ages.
Until we can map out all emotions within the brain and measure every level of every neuron, or the problems in the protien AI code of your brain, we can not debug it.
But aside the point of the video, which may be a refutation of these illnesses, It is still much like the dark ages.
Black plague was microbes, we know that now. Refuting symptoms is ignorance of the highest level. Trying things because we can't find the answer is no better or worse than the things they attempted for the black plague.
It is always better to do something, than to give up and claim it is an act of some invisible being.
Feverish? put them in an Ice bath. (We still do this, so the invisible and unkowable plague did result in 1 effective treatment.)
No different than "Try drug A and see if they get better"
We will no doubt be called barbarians when the sum of human knowledge of the brain is as well understood as our lymphatic system.
Good psychiatrists know this.
Really good ones know how close the answer will bring us to complete human behavior control and think that we may not want to know how to completely rewrite someone's social AI that thier brains pathways have formed.
A very scary thought indeed.

[echo_11]

I agree that is it better to try to do something to address problems, even if we don't have a clear understanding of the nature of the problem. What I do not agree with is modern psychology's tendency to label normal human emotional reactions as disorders that need to be chemically treated. Our society has become completely intolerant of any negative emotion, no mater how rational and natural, even healthy it may be. This in turn leads to things being wrongfully labeled as dysfunctions, and people being overmedicated and completely incapable of dealing with life.

The psychology/pharmaceutical industry will have you believe that if you are not happy all the time, there is something seriously wrong with you.

[sterlingspider]

"modern psychology's tendency to label normal human emotional reactions as disorders that need to be chemically treated."

Small but important distinction...

Psychiatrists are the only ones in the psychological field who can legally medicate. They can do this because they are MEDICAL "experts", not because they are "psychological" experts. The training necessary to become a psychological "expert" in the medical field leaves A LOT to be desired on the psychological side of things.

Having just gotten home from work I honestly don't have the energy to give this the full attention it deserves, but I believe the over-medication of our country has a lot more to do with the co-opting of psychological treatment by the medical profession then any other specific failing of the psychological sciences.

Remember also that psychology as an applied science is only about 100 years old. Contemplate where any other scientific discipline managed to get in its first 100 years... as things go psychology is actually doing pretty damn good.

[echo_11]

I think ultimately the problem is with the people, with our society and the victim mentality that most people have. nobody wants to be sad, anxious, angry. The pharmaceutical industry is doing what they do best, cashing in on it. And the experts, who have been out of school and practicing for many years, get drug information primarily from the drug companies (this doesn't only apply to the psychological branch of medicine).
I don't really know where I was going with that, I had a point. This day has been way too long for me to attempt to articulate what I am trying to say :)

Sorry if this is rambling a bit...

[sterlingspider]

I would agree with you for the most part. It is however important to acknowledge however that there are people who have serious problems who DO legitimately benefit from medication, but I agree, not nearly so many as those who think they should.

The main issue I have with that video is that there is no discussion of reported symptoms. They make such a big deal about the lack of tests. There is no objective test for whether someone is having hallucinations but they unquestionably exist and do react to pharmaceutical treatment. Certainly there's no "ahh see, here it is on this genome sequence" answer, yet now they find that there are measurable differences in brain mass and construction for many people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Increasingly brain imaging studies ARE finding significant differences in the brains of those with psychological disorders.

And while there may not be a "test" for, say, depression were you drop a solution onto a slide and the color changes, many people with depression do have suppressed reactions to mood elevating substances compared to the population. Compare that to how something like, for example, gall bladder failure or certain forms of diabetes are tested and you'll find little difference. Give a diabetic insulin and they process sugar properly, give a person with seratonin resistance an SSRI and they react to seratonin properly... there's not much clinical difference there.

There is no objective test for whether someone is experiencing pain (or what level that pain might be) either. For years people have been discounting the existence of fibromyalgia as a legitimate diagnosis (many discount it as the popular neurotic disorder du jour), yet now there are brain imaging studies which apropriately differentiate between people with a fybromyalgia Dx and those without, and furthermore the neural differences are in the area where pain signals are processed.

It is far more complicated an issue then that video would have one believe.

Re: Sorry if this is rambling a bit...

[echo_11]

of course the issue is far more complicated than a 4 and a half minute video on YouTube would be able to present. The point I wanted to make with it is that the guidelines for diagnosing these disorders are still very subjective and open to interpretation. I won't deny that there are a lot of cases in which medicating for a mental disorder can be beneficial, even necessary, but as you said, those cases are likely far less than the people currently medicated. Also, there is a trend of "diagnosing" normal reactions to life events as disorders (e.g. grieving the loss of a loved one does not mean you are depressed and need medication, it just means that you are human and experiencing normal human emotions). Well you get the point.

Re: Sorry if this is rambling a bit...

[sterlingspider]

Also, there is a trend of "diagnosing" normal reactions to life events as disorders (e.g. grieving the loss of a loved one does not mean you are depressed and need medication, it just means that you are human and experiencing normal human emotions). Well you get the point.

And that's EXACTLY why I have such a problem with the medicalization of psychological treatment. Fully a fifth of the DSM diagnostic system is dedicated to differentiating between "is this actually fucking up your life" and "are you able to cope with this" and it seems like everyone ignores that anymore.

There are hard and fast rules in most of the diagnosis which require you to address questions like "is there an external qualifier which can negate this diagnosis?". Major life events such as deaths, weddings, moves, children, and job upsets are typically RULE OUTS for most diagnosis unless there is a clear pattern of the behavior beforehand.

There is also the part where the entirety of the world seems to have forgotten the term "coping mechanism".

Re: Sorry if this is rambling a bit...

[echo_11]

That's my problem too, people simply do not wish to be burdened with inconvenient emotions, so they google some disorder, learn the symptoms and go to a doctor asking for specific medication. It's too easy and most psychiatrists are very Rx-happy to begin with. It doesn't help that direct-to-consumer drug advertisement convinces people that they need to be medicated. So we end up with a society of people incapable of coping with life.