Mental Illness and The Brain – What's Wrong with Psychiatry? Mental illness - is it biological or isn't? What do you think? I guess I'm a rebel at heart, someone who thinks outside of the box. I know in my own experience, having recovered 15 years from Borderline Personality Disorder, that along the way, on my journey, I had a psychiatrist tell me I wouldn't get better until they developed some pill – I didn't believe him. He wasn't correct. I fired him on the spot after that comment. That was 1987. That was before this notion now forwarded that everything mental illness is a "brain disorder". Professional in psychiatry are speaking out against the "status quo" of mental illness as a "brain disorder".
This point of view of mine, born out of my own experience with and recovery from BPD is definately not the popular thinking these days. However, it is important for me to continue to get this message out and to have people really think about this. Too many people are just believing that mental illness, generally, and Borderline Personality Disorder, specifically are "brain disorders". When one is not a psychiatrist it can feel like one does not have the right to say this. I'm over that now. This has to be challenged and I am very glad to see there are more professionals doing just that. This makes my forwarding my opinion and experience more credible in the face of what is an ever-proliferating blind acceptance, it seems to me, of BPD and mental illness being accepted as "brain disorders". There is a difference between realizing a role of biology in BPD and calling it a "brain disorder".
Please also reference my Blog Post from December 2009 Biopsychiatry – Pharma Funded Scam – NAMI?
This psychiatric forwarding of mental illness as a "brain disorder" is where the money is. It has behind it pharmaceutical companies who no doubt fund the studies that come back with the "brain disease" so-called proof. It just seems to me that the trail between the money-grab of the pharmaceutical companies and these studies isn't a very long one. Then, there are the psychiatrists on this gravey train for financial gain. All I can say is that if I needed therapy today I would not let any of these "biological – brain disease" believing psychiatrists anywhere near me. This was also the decision I made in 1987.
In the case of Borderline Personality Disorder, it is important to keep an open mind, in my opinion, only in so far as that there is likely a biological component that is mixed with the psychological one. Having said that, I do not believe it is a major factor. And, there is now plenty of literature, books etc., out there about the fact that the brain has more plasticity then was thought. This means that the biological aspect of BPD is not a hinderance to recovery. And, I'll stress here again, I recovered and was NEVER on any psychiatric medication.
Each person needs to make up his or her own mind about what he or she thinks about this. I just think it's important that I take a stand on this, as unpopular as that is in the Mental Health community at large and the BPD Community more specifically. I applaud Dr. McLaren for his video and the other professionals quoted below. As I see it, we are all very fortunate when professionals break rank with agenda-driven rhetoric that really can be seen as an abuse of the power and trust of the profession of psychiatry on the part of those who forward the mental illness = "brain disorder". If you have BPD and are on the meds or have taken the meds, you likely know first-hand they aren't the answer. I've yet to hear from anyone with BPD who felt they recovered or were cured by these meds. Having said, that, please, if you are on medication, please do not stop taking it without consulting your doctor. If your doctor believes this all-biological argument you might want to think about finding a doctor with an open mind.
Dr. Niall McLaren, an Australian practicing psychiatrist for 22 years, explains what is wrong with the psychiatric profession: That it cannot/will not take criticism, for fear the entire model of biological psychiatry will unravel. That there is no science to psychiatric diagnoses, no brain based diseases. And that psychiatry only pushes mental disorders as biological disease in order to convince people to take psychiatric drugs, causing a host of dangerous side effects.
Please also reference my Blog Post from December 2009 Biopsychiatry – Pharma Funded Scam – NAMI?
Psychiatrists, Physicians & Psychologists on the lack of medical/scientific test to verify mental disorders as a “disease” or medical condition
“…modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness…Patients [have] been diagnosed with ‘chemical imbalances’ despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and…there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.”
“There’s no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, ‘I have a biochemical imbalance,’ I say, ‘Show me your lab tests.’ There are no lab tests. So what’s the biochemical imbalance?”
“DSM-IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document… DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making bestseller—its major failings notwithstanding.”
“All psychiatrists have in common that when they are caught on camera or on microphone, they cower and admit that there are no such things as chemical imbalances/diseases, or examinations or tests for them. What they do in practice, lying in every instance, abrogating [revoking] the informed consent right of every patient and poisoning them in the name of ‘treatment’ is nothing short of criminal.”
“Psychiatry makes unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin…This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naïve and perhaps delusional.”
“In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.”
Royal College of Physicians of the UK
“I believe, until the public and psychiatry itself see that DSM labels are not only useless as medical ‘diagnoses’ but also have the potential to do great harm—particularly when they are used as means to deny individual freedoms, or as weapons by psychiatrists acting as hired guns for the legal system.”
“The way things get into the DSM is not based on blood test or brain scan or physical findings. It’s based on descriptions of behavior. And that’s what the whole psychiatry system is.”
“No biochemical, neurological, or genetic markers have been found for Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Depression, Schizophrenia, anxiety, compulsive alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, gambling or any other so-called mental illness, disease, or disorder.”
author of Commonsense Rebellion
“Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV [and ICD-10] are terms arrived at through peer consensus.”
Source of above quotes: http://3.ly/4kp
© A.J. Mahari, March 28, 2010 – Except for the above quotes and video copyright of the above individuals.
