Posted in diagnosis, medical model, psychiatry on June 13, 2008 | No Comments »
The Candid Psychiatrist: Giving Contemporary Psychiatry the Spanking it Deserves. That’s the full title of the Candid Psychiatrist a blog by Dr. Paul Minot.
The author of the blog describes his “best post”: “The ‘Chemical Imbalance’: A Convenient Truth”
Here’s how the essay begins:
You have a chemical imbalance. Millions of people have been persuaded to take [...]
Posted in anxiety, blogging, diagnosis, psychology in the media on May 22, 2008 | No Comments »
An automatically generated link led me to a very nice old post at We Worry: A Blog for the Anxious about discriminating between anxiety disorders. Apparently weworry.com received some accolades last year (see the website), so you might want to check it out, particularly if you have questions about anxiety. For instance, If you click [...]
Posted in Big Pharma, consumer interest, diagnosis, medical model, psychotropic drugs on May 7, 2008 | No Comments »
No surprises here. The Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM) used to diagnose “mental illness” is linked to the psychopharm industry. From the New York Times, here:
More than half of the task force members who will oversee the next edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s most important diagnostic handbook have ties to the drug industry, reports a [...]
Posted in depression, diagnosis, psychiatry on May 5, 2008 | No Comments »
A piece at Business Day (Zimbabwe) makes some nice points about depression. The referrence The Loss of Sadness by two sociologists, Allan Horowitz and Jerome Wakefield. The article is written in the context of recent findings that SSRIs may be no better than placebo, that in some places access to talk therapy is limited, and [...]
Posted in diagnosis, human problems, medical model, psychiatry, psychology on the internet, psychotherapy, schizophrenia on April 24, 2008 | No Comments »
The all powerful receptor. Harold Maio quotes one participant’s part of the New York Times Freakonomics piece on the progress of psychology and psychiatry:
“It works by binding to certain receptors in the brain, and if you give it to “schizophrenics,” many of them stop their otherwise full-blown hallucinations.” Until the practice of referencing people as [...]
Posted in Big Pharma, brain and behavior, compliance professionals, diagnosis, medical model, psychiatry, psychology in the media, social psychology on April 22, 2008 | No Comments »
Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, was recently interviewed by the Chicago Tribune. I got this courtesy of Ken Pope. Here’s how the interview ended:
Q: The diagnosis “social anxiety disorder” opened up a huge new market
for drug companies marketing SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors). What happened?
A: Basically, as soon as SmithKline [...]
Posted in Big Pharma, bipolar disorder, compliance professionals, consumer interest, diagnosis, manic depression, parenting, psychiatry, psychology in the media on April 8, 2008 | No Comments »
Those darn kids.
More and more, children that are unmanageable, disagreeable, or just plain moody are getting diagnosed with bipolar disorder or ADHD. What do I hear from more and more clinicians on this issue? Let’s take a look at the parenting. Are the parents willing to take charge of their children? Are they setting limits? [...]
Posted in anxiety, brain and behavior, consumer interest, depression, diagnosis, psychology in the media, psychotropic drugs on March 4, 2008 | No Comments »
Yet more on the SSRI theory of depression. Here’s the full headline of a thought provoking press release from Florida State University: Media Perpetuates Unsubstantiated Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression. The piece focuses on a few often overlooked facts: (1) That depression is caused by a “chemical imbalance” remains unproven and (2) That SSRIs [...]
Posted in Big Pharma, bipolar disorder, blogging, consumer interest, diagnosis, manic depression, medical model on February 21, 2008 | 1 Comment »
A post from Wired on the over-medication of America. It dovetails nicely with another observation at Furious Seasons. The Furious Seasons post may be a flat-out rant, but it’s rant worth reading. Excerpts from both. First Wired:
Sometime in the 1990s, the concept of better living through chemistry turned a corner, thanks to drug companies’ efforts [...]
Posted in bipolar disorder, consumer interest, diagnosis, manic depression, medical model, professional issues, psychology in the media, public interest on January 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The popular and worthwhile blog Furious Seasons, written by a guy diagnosed with bipolar disorder, asks the following: Does bipolar disorder exist? Here’s an excerpt, a quote from psychiatrist Paul Minot, from a thought-provoking post well worth reading in its entirety:
Bipolar disorder isn’t actually a disease.
It’s a collection of signs and symptoms lumped together in [...]
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