A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder [Journal of medical ethics]

Originally posted by christina-66
Thanks for posting this topic. The guy who wrote this paper is an extreme example of how the psychiatric profession actually operates. It is a pseudo science based on observation and subjective opinion - does not concern itself with any trauma the individual before them may have been through which may have caused them to become depressed/manic/psychotic in the first place.

But worse - much worse - it prescribes drugs on the basis of trial and error to supposedly correct the brain's chemical imbalance - without first checking the brain's actual chemical balance (how do you do that anyway? - 'who cares' says psychiatry 'we have our theories and we're sticking with them'.) Those same drugs can be lethal while being prescribed for non-fatal conditions. (e.g. Number one killer of the schizophrenic is heart failure) And now we have the CTO (compulsory treatment orders) which forces the sufferer to consume these meds under threat of loss of liberty for indeterminate periods of time.

People do have issues. psychosis, depression, mania are all very real (and sometimes frightening) conditions. People suffering need care and support to bring them through it - but not the punitive treatment currently on offer by psychiatry.

Then of course there is the medicalisation of criminal behaviour that psychiatry is so fond of doing. The psychopath is NOT mentally ill - they have a personality disorder which is untreatable and yet, here in the UK at least, killers and child abusers can be on the same ward as people with post natal depression and child abuse victims.

This is so wrong I question whether it should even be dignified with a response. Could you please show evidence of any of these assertions, starting with "It is a pseudo science based on observation and subjective opinion - does not concern itself with any trauma the individual before them may have been through which may have caused them to become depressed/manic/psychotic in the first place."?

You know that research has already been carried out which has identified Cognitive Therapy as being more effective than psychotropic medications in depressed people right? Cognitive Therapy is presently the most commonly used form of psychological intervention.

Open. A. Book. And read it. Please.

reply to post by Tetrarch42

This is so wrong I question whether it should even be dignified with a response. Could you please show evidence of any of these assertions, starting with "It is a pseudo science based on observation and subjective opinion - does not concern itself with any trauma the individual before them may have been through which may have caused them to become depressed/manic/psychotic in the first place."?

You know that research has already been carried out which has identified Cognitive Therapy as being more effective than psychotropic medications in depressed people right? Cognitive Therapy is presently the most commonly used form of psychological intervention.

Open. A. Book. And read it. Please.

Well lucky for me you did dignify it with a response. Psychiatry deals with drug treatments NOT cognitive therapies - that's the psychologists remit. Cognitive therapy is indeed a psychological intervention it is NOT a psychiatric intervention. They are two separate disciplines.

'observation and subjective opinion'? Why would you find that to be a controversial statement? Of course its subjective opinion and observation. There is no medical test to determine ANY psychiatric diagnosis. There are, instead, tick lists of symptoms. These symptoms being determined by consensus by a group of psychiatrists not objective testing and will be different in accordance with diverse cultures around the globe. For goodness sake ADD is the perfect example - they have grouped the behaviours that annoy parents and teachers and called it an illness - it is not. It is behavioural issues.

Psychiatry disorders are not like real diseases which, no matter where you are on the globe, will always be recognised by different doctors. A diabetic in New York is still a diabetic in Kenya..

There is no evidence for the chemical imbalance theory. Smile - go on it won't kill you - but the very act of raising the corners of your mouth has just altered your brain chemistry. Something that transient can be measured? No - it can't.


Do you think psychiatry carefully considers brain chemistry prior to prescribing those drugs? It does not. It is a game of trial and error. Let's take lithium for example. It occurs naturally in the body at a level of 0.0000000001/1L. Psychiatry reckons a therapeutic dosage is in the region of 0.7-1.5/1L. Now would you like to work out the percentage increase in that delicate chemical balance?

Side effects of lithium include physical tremors, stutters and if the levels reach toxic levels they become coma and death. Now a person on lithium can reach toxic levels simply by failing to drink enough water - or undertaking exercise that causes perspiring. But hey - worth it to curb those mood swings huh?

And for the record - I have no issue with cognitive therapies - they're not lethal treatments for non-fatal conditions. I have issues with the very widespread use of drugs.

Clearly we need to act on this at once. Let us demand that big pharma provide psych. med.s that remove this disgusting mental aberration. Moreover we should empower our police to search for people who smile too much or appear to be overly optimistic. If retraining in a FEMA camp doesn't fix this aberration, I'm certain we can find chemical remediation.

Originally posted by christina-66

 

Psychiatry disorders are not like real diseases which, no matter where you are on the globe, will always be recognised by different doctors.

I follow EurekAlert quite regularly and a few days ago I had bookmarked following related news piece (emphasis on the excerpt is mine):

The traditional approach to psychiatric diagnosis is based on grouping patients on the basis of symptom clusters. This approach to diagnosis has a number of problems, as symptoms are not necessarily specific to a single diagnosis. Symptoms may vary among patients with a particular diagnosis, and there are no clear diagnostic biomarkers or tests for psychiatry as there are for other areas of medicine.

With this in mind, Steve Chang, along with colleagues from Duke University, introduces a new classification scheme for psychiatric symptoms based on the state of a dysfunctional neural circuit. This is a thought-provoking proposal altering the way science thinks about psychiatric disorders, all of which have been found to have some form of neural circuit dysfunction.

www.eurekalert.org...

reply to post by ChaoticOrder
Hmm, Ive been trying to think of someone I know who is happy.

Umm, there is just this 1 person, and they are in a mental health facility, as are classed as having a delusional view of life.

This is honestly just too preposterously ridiculous.Why don't the people who sit+think up this risible nonsense,not just get a real job?! They would serve society better as ditchdiggers and cashiers,than they are doing at present!!