Too Corrupt, Too Insane, and Too Ridiculous to Be Reformed? Even Establishment Psychiatrists Now Distancing Themselves from Their Own Profession
What does it tell us about the state of psychiatry when some of the biggest names in the psychiatric establishment are distancing themselves from psychiatry’s diagnostic system and its treatments? In 2013, National Institute Mental Health (NIMH) director Thomas Insel, citing the lack of scientific validity of psychiatry’s official diagnostic manual, the DSM, stated that […]
Psychiatry Admits Its Been Wrong in Big Ways, But Can It Change? A Chat with Robert Whitaker
Since interviewing Robert Whitaker for AlterNet in 2010, after the publication of Anatomy of an Epidemic, the psychiatry establishment has pivoted from first ignoring him, to then debating him and attempting to discredit him, to currently agreeing with many of his conclusions. I was curious about his take on the recent U-turns by major figures in the psychiatry establishment with respect to (1) antipsychotic drug treatment, (2) the validity of the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness, and (3) the validity of the DSM, psychiatry’s diagnostic bible. And I was curious about Whitaker’s sense of psychiatry’s future direction.
Leadership Training or Bullshit Training at Harvard? The Price of Pseudo-Certainty in Business, Government, and Medicine
The Harvard Business School (HBS) information session on how to be a good class participant instructs, “Speak with conviction. Even if you believe something only fifty-five percent, say it as if you believe it a hundred percent,” reports Susan Cain in her best-selling book Quiet (2013). At HBS, Cain noticed, “If a student talks often and […]
The Normalization of Greed, Hustle, and Money-Centrism
New York Times “Room for Debate Question”: “Why We Like to Watch Rich People: Why do American television and movie audiences like to watch the antics and questionable behavior of the 1 percent?” The lives of the outlandishly rich are so unreal and so bizarre for most of us that watching their self-indulgence, careless spending, […]
10 Ways Mental Health Professionals Increase Misery in Suffering People
Decreasing suffering often means “comforting the afflicted, and afflicting the comfortable.” However, AlterNet’s recently republished Psychotherapy Networker article, “The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People,” authored by psychotherapist Cloe Madanes, instead appears to have afflicted many of the afflicted. Perhaps Madanes was attempting to afflict those comfortable enough to afford her and her professional partner […]
William Kurelek’s The Maze
William Kurelek (1927-1977) is one of Canada’s most celebrated artists, and his paintings hang in prestigious museums all over the world. Nick Young and Zack Young’s William Kurelek’s The Maze is a beautiful film about this talented artist, profound thinker, and saintly, sweet soul, who as a young man became disconnected from himself and others, […]
U.S. Renegade History, Psychiatric Survivors, and the Price of Acceptance
The historic divide between the “respectable” vs. the “renegades” is the subject of historian Thaddeus Russell’s A Renegade History of the United States, which argues that when renegade groups gain civil rights and social acceptability, they lose their renegade culture. Many psychiatric survivors, mad priders, and those with lived experience of alternate consciousness question the value of normie culture and see value in their own—this an outlook which puts them in the tradition of Russell’s historic renegades. Has their lack of civil rights and social acceptability enabled them to become America’s last renegades?
Amazing Victory for Mental Health Activists and Investigative Reporter: NIMH Director Accepts Once Seen Radical Ideas
It is an amazing victory for mental health treatment reform activists and one investigative reporter. On August 28, 2013, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) director, Thomas Insel, announced that psychiatry’s standard treatment for people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychoses needs to change. After examining two long-term studies on schizophrenia and psychoses, Insel has […]
How Societies with Little Coercion Have Little Mental Illness
Throughout history, societies have existed with far less coercion than ours, and while these societies have had far less consumer goods and what modernity calls “efficiency,” they also have had far less mental illness. This reality has been buried, not surprisingly, by uncritical champions of modernity and mainstream psychiatry. Coercion—the use of physical, legal, chemical, […]
Why the Dramatic Rise of Mental Illness? Diseasing Normal Behaviors, Drug Adverse Effects, and a Peculiar Rebellion
In “The Epidemic of Mental Illness: Why?” (New York Review of Books, 2011), Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, discusses over-diagnosis of psychiatric disorders, pathologizing of normal behaviors, Big Pharma corruption of psychiatry, and the adverse effects of psychiatric medications. While diagnostic expansionism and Big Pharma certainly deserve a large […]
