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InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
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Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? * 1
    #15581582 - 12/28/11 03:49 AM (12 years, 3 months ago)

Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills?
December 27, 2011 - AlterNet
By Rob Waters

Anyone who’s ever tried to get reimbursed by a health insurance company after seeing a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, or taking a child or teenager to one, has no doubt noticed the incomprehensible numbers that appear on the clinician’s statement, perhaps preceding some slightly less imponderable phrase.

Maybe you are a 296.22 (major depressive disorder, single episode, mild) or a 300.00 (anxiety disorder NOS–not otherwise specified). Hopefully, you are not a 301.83 (borderline personality disorder). Your kid might be a 313.81 (oppositional defiant disorder) or, more likely, a 314.01 (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type).

Since 1952, a tome called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, better known as the DSM, has been reducing to a few digits the psychological malady said to afflict a patient. This bible of mental health treatment, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), provides a list and description of every mental health condition known to—or invented by—psychiatry, from histrionic personality disorder (301.50) to transvestic fetishism (302.3).

Over the decades, the manual, adapted from a guide for mental diseases developed by Army and Navy psychiatrists, has ballooned. The number of listed disorders tripled to nearly 300. A few have been discredited and dumped along the way. Most famous were battles over the inclusion of homosexuality. Successive iterations of the manual listed homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance,” then modified that to describe a more limited “sexual orientation disturbance” among people who were “in conflict with” their attraction to people of the same sex. That was later replaced by a disorder called “ego-dystonic homosexuality,” applied to those whose homosexual arousal was a source of distress. That item was dropped in the DSM-III-R, published in 1987.

The great book’s coming edition, the DSM-5, is slated for publication in May 2013. As the task force producing it has posted drafts on its website, an undercurrent of dissatisfaction has exploded into a full-scale revolt by members of U.S. and British psychological and counseling organizations. The chief complaint is that the newest version will lower the criteria needed to diagnose some conditions, creating “subthreshold” disorders, and generally making it easier for healthcare professionals to label a person with a psychiatric disorder and medicate him or her.

The latest rebellion against the DSM-5 began with a salvo from across the Atlantic. In June, a special committee of the British Psychological Society complained in a letter to the APA that “clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalisation of their natural and normal responses to their experiences.” The committee criticized the proposed creation of an “attenuated psychosis syndrome”—a sort of poor-man’s psychosis with less severe symptoms—“as an opportunity to stigmatize eccentric people.” They also objected to a proposed reduction in the number of symptoms needed to diagnose adolescents with attention deficit disorder (ADD) because it might increase diagnoses and the use of meds.

Then David Elkins, professor emeritus at Pepperdine University and president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association, formed a committee to discuss similar objections and draft a petition enumerating them. In October, he posted thepetition online. “I figured we’d get a couple hundred signatures,’’ Elkins said.

The response stunned him and his colleagues. The petition attracted more than 6,000 signatures in three weeks; as of mid-December it had topped 9,300 signatories and garnered the endorsement of 35 organizations. On Nov. 8, American Counseling Association president Don Locke jumped in with a letter to the APA objecting to the “incomplete or insufficient empirical evidence” underlying the proposed revisions and expressing “uncertainty about the quality and credibility” of the DSM-5.

“This has become a grassroots movement among mental health professionals, who are saying we already have a national problem with overmedication of children and the elderly, and we don’t want to exacerbate that,” says Elkins.

For many critics, Exhibit A is childhood ADD. As the disorder describing fidgety, easily distracted kids morphed from “hyperkinetic reaction of childhood” to the current “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” the number of children given the diagnosis exploded, fueling, by one account, a700 percent increase in the use of Ritalin and other stimulants in the 1990s. Diagnosis requires checking six of nine boxes from a list of symptoms that include “often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly” and “often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat.” Sound familiar, parents?

Two other newly proposed disorders singled out as problematic in the petition are “mild neurocognitive disorder” in the elderly and “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder” in children and adolescents. Both lack a solid basis in research and may fuel the use of powerful antipsychotic medications, which cause weight gain, diabetes and a host of other metabolic problems, the petition says.

“We are gravely concerned that if this is published as is in 2013, it will create false epidemics where hundreds of thousands of children and the elderly who really are normal will be diagnosed with a mental disorder and given powerful psychiatric medications that have dangerous side effects,” Elkins says. “That is not tolerable.”

David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who chairs the task force overseeing the manual’s preparation, says he expects the final number of disorders included in the DSM-5 to be about the same as in the current book. He says he welcomes the criticism and that nothing is final. The task force has been testing proposed new diagnoses in 2,300 patients at seven adult treatment centers and four adolescent centers that are acting as field-test sites, he says.

“There’s a myth that all the decisions have been made, when in fact, all the decisions haven’t been made,” he says. “Just because [things have] been proposed doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll end up in the DSM-5. If they don’t achieve a level of reliability, clinician acceptability, and utility, it’s unlikely they’ll go forward.”

The most surprising critic of the DSM is a one-time pillar of the psychiatric establishment. Allen Frances, professor emeritus at Duke University, chaired the task force that created the DSM-4. Now he’s railing against both the process and proposed content of the new DSM in blogs on the website for Psychology Today that blast the new revision as “untested” and “unscientific.”

Psychiatric diagnoses are loose enough already, Frances  told me, and that laxity has led to “epidemics of over-diagnosis in child psychiatry” causing huge numbers of children to be unnecessarily labeled with attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder and treated with medications.

“DSM has to be a safe, reliable and credible guide to current clinical practice,” he says. “It can’t be an untested program for future research.’’

The user revolt against the DSM-5 has emerged as a major challenge to the document, Frances says, and its future is looking unclear. He and Elkins are proposing that an independent committee of experts review the proposed draft and make recommendations.

The fight over the DSM-5 pits some of the greatest minds and biggest egos in the world of psychiatry, but it’s more than a battle among 301.81s (narcissistic personality disorder). For people seeking help for life’s problems who don’t want to be labeled mentally ill or have their treatment limited to medication, and for clinicians who want to help people without reducing them to a category, the stakes are high.

Rob Waters writes about health, mental health and science from his home in Berkeley, California. His articles have appeared in Bloomberg Businessweek, Mother Jones, Health, Reader’s Digest and other publications.

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Invisiblevirus1824
Mr Mushroom
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Registered: 09/25/05
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Loc: Europe
Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: veggie]
    #15581694 - 12/28/11 05:45 AM (12 years, 3 months ago)

Documentary regarding this very subject and the DSM.

Psychiatry: an industry of death


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A weekend wasted is never a wasted weekend

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InvisibleLSDylan
bass music enjoyer
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Registered: 05/26/10
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Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: virus1824]
    #15581907 - 12/28/11 08:07 AM (12 years, 3 months ago)

This is important for me because I am just starting my journey on my way to becoming a psychiatrist.

Edited by LSDylan (12/28/11 08:08 AM)

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Invisiblecateyes
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Registered: 12/16/03
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Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: LSDylan]
    #15582200 - 12/28/11 09:51 AM (12 years, 3 months ago)

.


Edited by cateyes (04/19/12 11:06 AM)

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Invisiblevirus1824
Mr Mushroom
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Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: cateyes]
    #15582402 - 12/28/11 10:52 AM (12 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

cateyes said:
Quote:

LSDylan said:
This is important for me because I am just starting my journey on my way to becoming a psychiatrist.




i see you spend alot of time in the psychedelic forum... very cool.. i say that because i feel psilocybin played an important role in my complete recovery from schizoaffective disorder... a disorder my wife was told i'd never recover from... right now i'm in the middle of going over 23 notebooks, 1300 word documents and about 300 bookmarks i've kept over the last 8 years in preparation for putting a book out there and one of the things i intend to address is the DSM... i've been given clear instructions from someone who knows how to write a solid book. this medical field is so fucked up in so many ways it's well beyond the pale.... and the pharmaceutical industry is all behind this... many of the ranking members of the DSM panel have worked for pharmaceutical companies in the past and many evaluate medications for off label use... and they were all paid for this service. yeah, my book is gonna slam these mother fuckers, including my own psychiatrist who put me in the hospital twice with the prescriptions he put me on. i kid you not!  i don't know how to tell you this LSDylan, there may be no psychiatric field so to speak by the time you're ready to make your money in it... this upcoming DSM issue is blowing up in their faces... did you know the upcoming DSM will include "shyness" as a mental illness? they've pathologized every single human emotion... you know what i think LSDylan? i think you should be required to take the medications they had me on for just 6 months before your ever allowed to write a prescription... that's what i fucking think!  you'll never write a prescription, i fucking guarantee it... because you'll have a better idea just exactly what these fucking poisons do. the entire dopamine theory of schizophrenia is just that. a theory! based on a close to 30 year old obser4vation of a meth addicts psychosis and lab results on rats and in petri dishes... read the PDR on any anti-psychotic and you'll see under how this how this drug works/acts section that all of them will say "it is believed that dopamine plays a role in the psychosis of schizophrenia" believed mother fuckers! BELIEVED? they cover theis asses openly becasue no of us have ever read the fine print up until now... i'm fucking sorry i'm coming off like this, i just hope you don't turn out to become a dick like my psychiatrist... and don't expect to get any support if you believe there is another answer, because all the money that is needed to do your research work required to graduate will come in the form of grants from the pharmaceutical industry itself... this is exactly how they groom attitudes... and be careful LSDylan, because if you don't tow the line, you'll be ostracized. because there are hundreds who got nowhere in the big picture... many psychiatrists lost their license to practice for using "UNORTHODOX" methods... and you know what happened in every single case? their license to practice was reinstated after the MD's took their case to courts in front on juries. that's fucking right man... i'm so angry right now, but i'm glad this this thread is up there because people like you need to know the reality of this situation...

here's a three hour documentary on just how each psychiatric medication moves through the the discovery, application, testing and approval process, how they are approved by the FDA, and how they're mass marketed... god the fucking games they play tricking MD's to write prescriptions for off label use. and to think one day you may play a minor yet significant role in all of this one day... this video shows the real corruption involved here and let me tell you man, if you decide to watch this it will blow your mind. it's in two parts, and i consider it your fucking duty to watch it, if your going to be prescribing this shit to the human race...


The Marketing of Madness: The Truth About Psychotropic Drugs

Kensho :psychsplit:




The marketing of maddness is the followup documentary from the link i posted. Very worthwhile by the way.


--------------------
A weekend wasted is never a wasted weekend

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Invisiblecateyes
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Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: virus1824]
    #15582638 - 12/28/11 11:55 AM (12 years, 3 months ago)

.

Edited by cateyes (04/19/12 11:07 AM)

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OfflineAUX
Entheogenist

Registered: 03/12/11
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Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: cateyes] * 2
    #15583848 - 12/28/11 04:49 PM (12 years, 3 months ago)

I think they misspelled the title. It should read "Psychiatrists Are Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills".

I'm a victim of the psychiatric craze. In elementary, I never enjoyed school because I was bullied, and I never took classes seriously because I hated school. I was sucked into video game worlds and I completely neglected my homework because that was the only way I felt happy. My parents wouldn't listen and were convinced that there was something wrong with me so they took me to a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with ADHD and put me on Ritalin.

The Ritalin obviously didn't make things better. I was hyper-focused on the bullying and became extremely depressed. They kept on changing the prescription. They were constantly changing to new meds that were like Ritalin but "non-abusable". Apparently, I must've been abusing the drugs because they weren't working (sarcasm)! By 7th grade, I was paranoid to the point where I thought everyone hated me and was out to get me. I had extreme social anxiety. I tried to kill myself a few times, but the few friends I had managed to stop me.

Then, one of my friends' parents found out I was on ADHD medication and convinced me to stop taking it. Things got somewhat better. Although I still had social anxiety and was still moderately depressed, it was an improvement from when I was on the drugs. By my junior year in high school, I had begun to socialize in the real world and make some friends. Of course, I still didn't care about school (never have, never will) so my parents were convinced that something was wrong with me and that they had to intervene or I would never amount to anything. They got me a new psychiatrist who was known for working with teenagers (a man with whom I still have a score to settle). After a year of shitty psychiatric help, I got suspended from school for possession of marijuana. He told my parents that he couldn't help me anymore (He was clearly a huge help in the first place) and recommended emotional rehabilitation programs...

...So they sent me to (unbeknownst to them) a negligent, abusive boarding school for delinquent teenagers. While I was there, I learned that most of my peers had parents just like mine——parents who believed there was something wrong with their kids from a young age and had put them on powerful psychiatric medications, whether they were anti-psychotics or ADD/ADHD meds. Since I was going to turn 18 very soon, I didn't take the boarding school seriously and bullshitted until my birthday. I didn't let them get into my head, but during those 5 months, I witnessed a lot of strong, independent thinkers be reduced to mere pawns on a chess table.

They are the real victims of the psychiatric craze. I lucked out. The day I turned 18, I left that place and started my own life. Two and a half years later, I am making a living doing what I love. However, many of my friends are now addicted to heavy drugs, insane, or dead. The younger ones are mostly still in programs, being treated for problems they didn't even have until they started to be treated for them.

The psychiatric craze is the result of bad parenting. I believe that these boarding school programs go hand in hand with psychiatric medicine. Psychiatrists make commission off of prescribing medications. They also get commission for sending kids to boarding schools and rehabilitation programs. They are just like the cops that target drug users because they get paid more for drug related arrests. They ruin young lives without a second thought. Unfortunately, many parents are at such a loss about what to do with their kids that they completely overlook the corruption in an effort to fix a problem that is really a problem with them and not a problem with their children.

Parents, I hope you take something from my story. If you have a young child and you think there might be something wrong with him/her, there is not! There is something wrong with you! Your kids look up to you, you are their example, and if you are a shitty example for your kids, you are going to have shitty kids. Take preemptive action——stop being a dick, eat healthy food, do some yoga, and spend some fucking time with your children. They will thank you in 20 years.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story.
:sun:Peace & Love:sun:

Edited by AUX (12/28/11 05:10 PM)

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Invisiblecateyes
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Registered: 12/16/03
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Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: AUX]
    #15584389 - 12/28/11 07:06 PM (12 years, 3 months ago)

.

Edited by cateyes (04/19/12 11:07 AM)

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OfflineJwlst
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Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: cateyes]
    #15584577 - 12/28/11 08:04 PM (12 years, 3 months ago)

AUX I enjoyed the read thanks for your story.

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OfflineAUX
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Registered: 03/12/11
Posts: 661
Last seen: 11 years, 3 months
Re: Are Psychiatrists Inventing Mental Illnesses to Feed Americans More Pills? [Re: Jwlst]
    #15586032 - 12/29/11 06:51 AM (12 years, 3 months ago)

I'm glad you guys enjoyed it. That's a little chunk of my soul right there. It can be hard for me to write about but lately, I've been coming to terms with it a lot more. Every time I see an article like this or somebody talking about something similar to what I've gone through, I want to be able to help. And I'm finally starting to forgive my parents, although it is very difficult because they haven't really changed since this all went down.

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