Civilization without Civility: Nailing Down the Psychiatric Pathogen

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

In his analysis of the psychiatric profession, Thomas Szasz drew a distinction between neurology and psychiatry. When a physical lesion is discovered, the case falls into the category of neurology which addresses the lesion and its effects. Where there is no visible damage to the nervous system, psychiatry takes over with a speculative hypothesis of chemical imbalance. Another way to look at the same distinction is to consider pathology. In the case of neural damage, a pathogen is apparent. In the case of a "chemical imbalance," no physical pathogen has been discovered.

As we were discussing the fact that psychiatry recognizes stress as a causal factor in a number of cases, one of our students observed that the problem seems to be how the patient responds to stress. This led another student to make an interesting observation that the patient is the pathogen. Psychiatry treats the response to stress, and other environmental factors, by inhibiting responses that are deemed inappropriate by society. Doping up a patient with mind altering drugs subdues her activity to an acceptable level. The pathogen is not removed from society, but controlled in such a way that it is more acceptable.

Szasz was himself treated as a pathogen by the mental health profession. Anyone who reveals the dark side of psychiatry poses a threat to the profession and must be marginalized. This understanding of the patient-as-pathogen has broader ramifications because it indicts more than mere charlatan practice. It demonstrates a lack of care and sympathy on the part of people who prefer to dope up a relative rather than help them deal with their experience.

Psychiatry tends to aggravate this lack of sympathy by instilling fear in friends and relatives of mental patients. A psychiatrist will plant the seed of fear of destructive tendencies where such tendencies do not already exist. When someone like Jason Russell loses self-control to strut screaming and naked through his neighborhood, he is feared as a potential threat to himself and others. The psychiatrist charged with his care may even exaggerate the patient's potential for harm when talking with his family members. Doing so increases their likelihood to agree to detrimental treatment and to assist the doctor in convincing the patient that such treatment is in his best interest.

The patient is treated as a pathogen, but there is another pathology at work. Fearing someone who loses control in public is considered a rational fear. It is socially acceptable despite its emotional basis. Fearing the toxicity of brain damaging pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, is considered irrational despite its grounding in scientific evidence. On the one hand, the patient is treated as a pathogen. On the other hand, the charlatan practitioner behaves as a pathogen.

Is there anyone in your life that you would like to control with mind altering drugs?

Comments

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Is there anyone in your life that you would like to control with mind altering drugs?

If I had a dime for every time someone asked me that one...

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

We certainly have challenges in how we deal with the mentally ill. I don't know if I agree 100% though.

While it's easier to "see" physical damage (and thereby treat it), we can certainly agree that there IS such a thing as mental "illness." There are people who do end up being a danger to themselves or others, and there isn't an easy physical marker to point to and say: "The damage is HERE." For many of these, psychiatric medication has meant the difference between living a relatively normal and productive life in society, and being relegated forever to state custody for their own protection. So for these patients, the practicioner is right to assign pharmaceutical treatment, even if it is "mind altering".

On the other hand, we have the conventional wisdom of the "overdiagnosis" of kids with ADD throughout the beginning of this century. Certainly there are some cases where practicioners instinctively reached for the pills without regard to what was actually best for the patient. And in the 80s, we had some (a minority of) practicioners using "repressed memory" therapy to "prove" the existance of a vast conspiracy of satanic ritual sacrifice and torture that never existed; such therapy has since been disproven and the "conspiracy" seen as the false moral panic that it was.

So our system obviously isn't perfect, but I hesistate to lay the blame at the feet of psychiatry. We only need look to Andrew Wakefield for similar issues in traditional medicine. And Wakefield was discredited, as have been those psychiatrists who bought into the moral panic, or overprescribed Ritalin. The system is, eventually, self-correcting. Of course, this doesn't help folks in the short term, which is why second opinions are always a good idea in case of any doubt.

The real challenges for dealing with mental health, imo, are the same challenges we face with health-care in general: vital treatments are unaffordable, so people go off of their meds when they would otherwise be well-regulated. An overburdened and underfunded system cannot handle the numbers of cases it comes across, so people who NEED to be under supervision (and are improving) get put out on the street too soon.

As far as who I'd like to control with mind-altering drugs? Hey we've already got flouride in the water supply for that! ;)

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

What seems like an illness may actually be a natural reaction to environmental factors. I would not assume that someone is mentally ill simply because other people think so. There was a time when homosexuality was seen as an illness. Some people still think that to be the case.

Speaking of fluoride, I had an interesting experience with a dentist in New England. She recognized that my teeth had profited from the advantage of fluoride in the water supply during my childhood.

[anticopium.livejournal.com]

A schizophrenic episode, in which one is harming themselves or others, is not just deemed as 'unacceptable' by society. It is HIGHLY distressing to the individual and is dangerous.

The fact that we have drugs to treat this, to bring them back to a normal level of functioning is simply amazing. They do have terrible side effects, but if you left a person in this condition without meds they would surely be worse off.

Your speculation is along the lines of what I hear all the time; people who are unable to physically see or experience something, so they disbelieve and dismiss it as an illness. It's setting back the recognition of these disabling conditions, and discouraging people from seeking something that may really help them get back on track.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

There are a number of people who prefer to live without the disabling effects of mind altering drugs. In those cases where the patient chooses to take drugs, I will be the first to stand up for their right to do so. It is the other cases where force or coercion is used on patients with which I have difficulty.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

It's also a fact that we simply ban substances that could cure addiction, like ibogaine as well other psychedelics proven to solve problems deemed otherwise insurmountable (schizophrenia, addiction, anxiety, substance abuse, etc.).

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

This is why I stick with mescaline.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Good stuff that! But I would not use it on a regular basis.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

I think there are activities which can be greatly enhanced by psych drugs. It's ridiculous for an adult to have to go through a tedious and time-consuming procedure in order to get mind altering drugs. There's no reason why I can't just buy a stimulant or a soporific without having to schedule visits, discussions, treatments and enduring endlessly inept diagnoses.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

In San Francisco, all you have to do is visit the Tenderloin. Pharmaceuticals of a wide variety are available for purchase from street vendors.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

We should definitely stop treating young women for eating disorders. Skinny chicks are hawt.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Would you subscribe to the chemical imbalance hypothesis of eating disorders?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

There was a NBC report about the growing incidence of male Anorexia nervosa. (http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/22/10477185-boys-dying-to-be-thin-the-new-face-of-anorexia)

"Susan Barry, 60, spends every day wishing she had known more about male anorexia when her son, TJ Warschefsky, was still alive. He died in 2007 at the age of 22 after an eight-year battle with the disease. His heart gave out in the middle of his nightly routine of 1,000 sit-ups. He weighed 78 pounds. He didn’t want to be skinny,” Barry said of TJ, who was a star athlete and straight-A student. He wanted a six pack, he wanted rock hard abs. That’s how it all started.”

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

That's easy. Just tell them to go vegan. That's a socially acceptable eating disorder.

[paft.livejournal.com]

I see nothing irrational about fearing someone you don't know who loses control in public and starts screaming nonsense.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

My point exactly. Since it is socially acceptable, it is not put in the balance when it comes to irrational fears. Fearing brain damage from a pharmaceutical drug, no the other hand...

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Which patient were you discussing vis a vis your second paragraph?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

That was a general reference. People who respond well to stress rarely wind up under psychiatric care. People who are more sensitive to stress are more likely to exhibit symptoms of a disorder under stress.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Off topic, but I'd be interested in your opinion in the controversy (http://c-realm.com/podcasts/crealm/295-a-sociological-craving-for-normality/) over NPR's treatment of Ketamine that appears in the last 10-15 minutes or so of the linked episode.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I found the commentary on the C-Realm podcast and I also listened to the NPR segment. A minor nit: KMO called Ketamine "vitamin K" rather than "special K."

KMO is a bit hard on the researcher from Parke-Davis-Pfizer. I do, however, appreciate his accusations of pseudo-science. It is an interesting hypothesis that the "negative" aspect of the drug may be what helps depression long after the drug has been metabolized.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

There is another problem to this whole thing--and that is how the psychiatric profession has been historically used by the ruling class as a way to control and demonize rebellious elements. It is one of their weapons and something that has been paid large sums of money to research institutions to study our psychology and become better and controlling us. Edward Bernays work has some insight on that and he confesses it without shame.

According to official Soviet psychiatry and the Moscow Serbsky Institute, “ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure.” Treatment for this special political schizophrenia included various forms of restraint, electric shocks, electromagnetic torture, radiation torture, lumbar punctures, various drugs — such as narcotics, tranquilizers, and insulin — and beatings. Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History, indicates that at least 365 sane people were treated for “politically defined madness,” although she surmises there were many more.

As is explored in Ulfried Geuter’s The Professionalization of Psychology in Nazi Germany (http://www.amazon.com/Professionalization-Psychology-Germany-Cambridge-Studies/dp/0521332974). Under Hitler’s Third Reich, the relationship between the ruling Nazis and psychologists was close and mutually beneficial. People like Nazi psychologist Robert Ritter, Ph. D. were instrumental in persecuting the minorities and enforcing genocidal policies.

“From Nazi Germany, South Africa, Russia and the former Yugoslavia, to Iraq today, psychiatry has been and/or remains a key player. In fact, the marriage between authoritarian government and psychiatry is as old as psychiatry itself,” writes Jan Eastgate, International President, Citizens Commission on Human Rights, “In the 1800s, Germany’s militaristic “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck, utilized psychiatry to influence and control whole populations in order to fulfill his dreams of conquest through war.”

In his book Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and Its Origins in the Mao Era, praised as “eloquent and convincing” in a New York Times Review of Books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2003/feb/27/chinas-psychiatric-terror/) piece, author Robert Munro exposes how psychiatrists and psychologists continue to be at the forefront of the brutal Communist Chinese system of ascribing mental illnesses to those who express even mildly negative political opinions towards the ruling Party. The book reveals how, “From the 1950s onward not only Chinese dissidents but people who submitted petitions to the authorities have been detained by the police, examined by psychiatrists, and found to be criminally insane—or, if found mentally “normal,” designated as criminals to be cast into the prison system.” An official Chinese police designation for those worthy of “psychiatric custody” cited by Munro lists people who write anti-government letters, make anti-government speeches or those who merely express opinions on important domestic and international affairs that could be considered anti-government.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Revelations surrounding the torture scandal highlight the role of psychologists in what the Physicians for Human Rights organization alleges amounted to “unlawful human experimentation” and torture on inmates at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other U.S. detention sites.

“PHR says health professionals participated at every stage in the development, implementation and legal justification of what it calls the CIA’s secret “torture programme,” reports the London Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/02/cia-usa).

Doctors and psychologists actively monitored CIA torture techniques and helped evaluate their effectiveness, a “violation of core ethical values” according to the American Medical Association and a flagrant abuse of the 1947 Nuremberg Code, which forbids experimentation on humans without their consent.

“Historian Alfred W. McCoy has shed light in this area in his recent book A Question of Torture and in numerous articles and interviews,” writes Stephen Soldz (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14329.htm). “He documents the decades-long CIA effort to utilized psychological expertise to develop forms of torture that could break down the personality of detainees, rendering them, it was hoped, incapable of withholding desired information. Many of these technique were utilized during the Vietnam conflict and in the various brutal U.S.-supported counterinsurgency campaigns in Latin American in the 1970s and 1980s.”

[usekh.livejournal.com]

Is there anyone in your life that you would like to control with mind altering drugs?

No, but there are any number of people I love and value that would not be here today without drugs to keep the chemical imbalances in their body stabilized.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

That is a wonderful belief. I hope it comforts you.

[ginnyjake.livejournal.com]

Is there anyone in your life that you would like to control with mind altering drugs?

Yes, me.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Perfect Usepic.

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

Wow, I thought it was Jane Russell delirious naked underneath that great starry dynamo. I was all excited to click the link. Disappointment for sure.

Well, I was thinking the Republican Convention could use some mind altering. LSD in their punchbowl would be a welcome hi-jinx for sure

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Some friends of mine and I tried that one in college, but we let people know that the punch was "special." Despite my negative feeling toward certain Republican leaders, I still would not feel right about subjecting them to involuntary drugging.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

I liked the Caesar stories more.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

There is an element of Caesar in psychiatry.