De-Medicalizing Misery: Psychiatry, Psychology and the Human Condition

by Mark Rapley, Joanna Moncrieff (Editor), Jacqui Dillon

Psychiatry and psychology have constructed a mental health system that does no justice to the problems it claims to understand and creates multiple problems for its users. Yet the myth of biologically-based mental illness defines our present. The book rethinks madness and distress reclaiming them as human, not medical, experiences.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Medicine, Sociology, Mental Health, Science

319 pages, Hardcover

First published October 12, 2011

Reviews

[Γιώργος Γεωργόπουλος · Rating 5 out of 5]

Μια σημαντική συλλογή από άρθρα που μετατοπίζουν την οπτική πάνω σε θέματα ψυχικής υγείας. Βάζει πάλι στην εξίσωση την σημασία του πλαισίου που τόσο έχει αποσιωποιηθεί από τα Ψ επαγγέλματα. Όσο και να τρίζουν οι καρέκλες τους οι ψυχοθεραπευτές και ψυχίατροι αν θέλουν να είναι συνεπείς προς τις προθέσεις τους θα πρέπει να επιβιώσουν από ένα τέτοιο ανάγνωσμα και μετά να ξαναβγουν στην αγορά εργασίας. Πολλά μπορεί να αντιτείνει κάνεις προς αυτό το κριτικό λόγο για την ψυχιατρική και ψυχοθεραπεία, με μεγαλύτερο επιχείρημα την ουτοπική ή ίσως δυσανάλογη προσπάθεια που χρειάζεται να γίνει προς μια άλλη κατεύθυνση. Σίγουρα όμως αυτό που κομίζεται από αυτή τη νέα οπτική είναι η υποψία πως μια ολόκληρη γενιά και ίσως ακόμη μια δεν είναι η αποκλειστική υπεύθυνη για την διαχείριση της κακής ψυχολογίας της. Κι επίσης προβληματίζει για τα προβλήματα νοηματοδότησης της τρέλας και το μεταβλητό κοινωνικό της προφίλ ανά διαφορετικά πολιτισμικά πλαίσια.

[Anyu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uneven, like most collections. A few very good essays (Mary Boyle's Making the World Go Away is excellent; Joanna Moncrieff's The Myth of the Antidepressant very instructive) among some that I found tedious and badly-written although they made good points (James Bourne's essay on BPD), and finally some irritating passages (in Sami Timimi's Medicalizing Masculinity, I didn't appreciate the uncritical mention of the theory of boy children suffering in our "feminized education system, more geared to the learning style of girls". Or a line in Craig Newnes's Toxic Psychology that sounded weird in its wistfulness, about how the prevalence of female psychology majors means "the profession continues an erosion of the role of men".)

But there are a lot of interesting ideas throughout (I liked the discussion of how psychiatric diagnoses have taken over our vocabularies so that words like 'anxious' or 'depressed' are now used more readily than non-medically-derived synonyms; as well as the idea that the theory of the 'biochemical imbalance in the brain' is essentially a modernised version of the Hippocratic 'imbalance of bodily humours' theory)—and a lot of infuriating facts, that can be summed up to "nearly every well-known claim made by psychiatry regarding its own usefulness is wrong".

A few quotes:

The study that was most widely quoted as the study that ‘proved’ that ADHD should be treated with medication as a first line treatment has actually found that such a treatment (when compared to nonmedication based first line treatments) is associated with the worst outcomes and the greatest need of extra school support. This adds to the accumulating evidence on stimulants for ADHD, which, despite being the most researched drug treatment for a child psychiatric disorder, has failed to find long-term benefits accruing from their use. In the face of such findings it is impossible to continue to claim that using stimulants for treatment of ADHD is evidence-based with the benefits outweighing the risks. Unfortunately practice is already so strongly established in some countries that reversing this trend is proving very difficult to achieve.

Doctors frequently tell patients that their problems are due to a ‘chemical imbalance’. However, there is no rigorous corroboration of any chemical-imbalance theory, such as the serotonin theory of depression. In fact, there is a significant body of contrary evidence to the simple notion that depression is due to a deficiency of serotonin in the brain. The serotonin theory of depression is no more than a theory, and most of the evidence is against it.

Psychiatry appears to be the top ‘offender’ among medical specialities with regards use of, and sponsorship from, drug companies. Perhaps this is not surprising given the enormous potential markets that can be (and have been) developed if psychiatry is successful in medicalizing peoples’ emotional responses and behaviour, in a field so reliant on subjective interpretations of normalcy and deviance. Child psychiatry seems particularly vulnerable, with, most recently, an influential group of child psychiatrists at Harvard, extensively involved in research promoting the use of psycho-pharmaceuticals (particularly for ADHD and paediatric bipolar disorder), found to have received millions of dollars of income from pharmaceutical companies most of which they had not disclosed.

[Arpita]

bleh, less than lukewarm to this. also this class is like having a worm in your eye.