Comments on: Questioning ‘one in four’

By: wotzilla

wotzilla — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 14:27:44 +0000

The medicalization of everyday life is a phenomenon that interests me enormously. I see it as a wider cultural issue, not merely as an isolated by-product of modernized health care. What is particularly noteworthy, in my view, is the dizzying speed with which psycho-medicalization has progressed from mental-illness-as-social-stigma to the relative normalization of mental disorders, and from there, it seems, to their absolute normalization, whereby psychiatric diagnoses are seen not only as completely without stigma but necessary for the individual’s very self-understanding. It seems that in our fragmented, socially atomized world, a psychiatric diagnose is rapidly becoming the last stable thing which to clutch at for personal identity.

What is the acronym by which your clan is known? Is it AS, ADD or ADHD, or perhaps ODD? In the modern world, diagnostics has taken on the role of the totem in primitive societies. For many people, a psychiatric label functions as the hub around which they construct their sense of self. The enormous buzz surrounding ambiguous neuropsychiatric diagnoses, most notably Asperger’s Syndrome, perfectly illustrates not only the complete reversal of social attitudes towards mental disorders but the extent to which the concept of mental disorder has become obfuscated by the medicalization of personality. Mental disorders are seen as normal to the extent that they have entered the realm of identity politics.

By: drpullen

drpullen — Fri, 07 May 2010 05:21:20 +0000

The increase in the diagnosis of depression correlates with the tolerability and efficacy of drugs to treat depression. It is much more likely a primary care physician will diagnose depression if it is thought to be something they can treat. See my post on this http://drpullen.com/2010/04/20/depression-it-helps-when-the-treatment-is-not-worse-than-the-disease/

By: Philip Hickey

Philip Hickey — Thu, 06 May 2010 16:50:51 +0000

Vaughan:
I agree with most of the content in this post, especially:
‚ÄúPsychiatry has a tendency for ‚Äúdiagnosis creep‚Äù where unpleasant life problems are increasingly defined as medical disorders, partly due to pressure from drug companies‚Ä¶‚Äù
Your discussion of the relative nature of physical illnesses and the reliability of their diagnosis is compelling, but I would take issue with your implicit assumption that mental illness is a reality on a par with physical illness.
In my view a diagnosis is essentially an explanation. If I go to a physician and complain that I‚Äôm constantly exhausted and that my urine output seems reduced, he will test the creatinine level in my blood, and if it is above, say, 2.0, he will suggest a diagnosis of kidney failure. The diagnosis explains the symptoms, and provides suggestions for appropriate intervention. Of course, the diagnostic process in physical medicine is imperfect, but it is grounded on real science and is regularly updated in the light of new information. But the imperfections and incompleteness of regular medicine have no bearing on the so-called mental illnesses, which in my view are entirely spurious. What at one time were conceptualized as mental illnesses would now be better conceptualized as neurological problems or simply behavioral problems. Today the concept of mental illness has the same level of validity as the concept of witchcraft. They are both spurious explanations for phenomena for which better explanations have been available for decades.
But whereas the witchcraft explanation has been superseded by science in western societies, the equally spurious mental illness explanation has gained ground, driven as it is by powerful moneyed interests.
So, thanks again for a great post. Please keep writing.
Philip Hickey
http://behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/

By: Lilian Nattel

Lilian Nattel — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:31:04 +0000

If 50% of people have a “mental illness”
in their lifetime, then that makes
mental illness so broad as to be
meaningless. It’s like lumping in cancer
and a head cold in the same category.
You put it very well: stigma shouldn’t
attach to suffering whether it’s common
or rare. And to lump it all in together
doesn’t do anyone a good service. I
think that there is something really
wrong with the way that we are taught
(or not taught) to deal with life’s
problems and to help each other with it.
Life sucks sometimes. It’s in the nature
of physical existence and mortality to
suck. It hurts physically and
emotionally. But just as we teach our
children to distinguish between a broken
leg and a nasty scrape, we need to
distinguish between feeling bad over a
bad mark, feeling bad over the loss of
a loved one, and feeling bad because
everything seems to be a deep dark pit with no
end even though nothing particularly
bad has happened.

By: Jennifer R. Ewing

Jennifer R. Ewing — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 03:21:15 +0000

In the US, there’s been a definite push towards “medicalizing” many things which wouldn’t have been considered “disorders” twenty years ago. I submit that “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” is just a fancy way of giving doctors carte blanche to dispense Ritalin to perfectly healthy children who have the bad manners to defy their parents when they become teenagers. I agree that it’s wrong to stigmatize genuine mental illness. I would also agree it’s wrong to create a “mental disorder” where none exists, either because of uncaring parents or greedy drug companies.

By: rita

rita — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 20:51:11 +0000

Ooooh, that’s a great post! Off to read the Neuroskeptic articles now…….