I just read an article in the American Chronicle that gives a scathing criticism of psychology and psychiatry and describes this profession as a “significantly inventive profession”. The articles author Lourdes Salvador goes on to essentially bash the entire psychiatric profession and explains that people with mental illness are labeled incorrectly as abnormal and basically drugged up for being different.
She argues that people are labeled mentally ill by psychologist and psychiatrist simply because their patients do not behave and or conform to standard societal conventions. In other words, if you act a little different you’ll be labeled as crazy. Salvador attributes this to the fact that doctors and all people alike have to categorize everything, especially people that “look different, think originally or have unfamiliar/opposing beliefs”. She claims that it is fear of “different” people that leads the psycho evaluators to create such labels. Salvador even goes as far as saying that “the majority of so-called mental illnesses in the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual are merely figments of clinicians’ vivid imagination”. Wow Ms. Salvador tell us what you really think.
Her major argument however lies in the connection she draws between these “false” diagnosis and the drugs that are created to treat these perceived abnormalities. She believes that it is all a sham created to generate money for big pharma. She gives some great examples of how people are duped into believing that they have this or that mental illness and how it is all a load of manure. But, I must point out that if mental illness is not real then why would she say that the profession does nothing to alleviate the suffering that mental illness patients endure? If you admit that there is suffering then I would imagine that there is a problem causing the suffering or am I wrong?
Although I agreed with a lot of what she wrote I must say that I do believe mental illness actually exist. Seriously given the opportunity I think many sufferers of mental illness would rather behave “normal” but they simply cannot. Who would choose to live like that? Why would anyone regulate themselves to unnecessary suffering? The trouble with Salvador’s frontal assault on the psycho evaluators is that it leaves out that many people, including myself, have been helped by traditional methods. And although I think there is way too much focus on sedation and chemical intervention it does help some people. Why else would the expression “that person is off their meds” exist?
Using medications on a short term basis can be of help but never rely on them as means of curing yourself. The sad truth is that as consumers we are targeted to buy more and more stuff. Even if that stuff is not good for us we are expected to consume as mush as possible. So smarten up and do yourself a favor. Get active, believe in yourself and accept your anxiety. You’ll get a lot further in your journey to recovery if you follow this route, trust me I know. But at the same time don’t create an unhealthy or cynical perception of all attempts to treat your condition by traditional means. Always keep your options open.
In the end I think Salvador went too far to the left in saying that psychological health care professionals are all charlatans. This simply is not the case. Although this profession is somewhat subjective it nonetheless makes a real effort to help people. In addition not all treatment involves drugs as a I pointed out and this proves to some degree that putting the label of mentally ill on a person is not always about making money. Your family doctor makes money off of you and is he/she a crook because of it? I admit that psychoanalysis is more of a semi-science and art combined but that doesn’t mean that it should not exist. This is because the alternative is to have millions of people suffering with no hope of recovery and that is simply unacceptable.
I’ll start off saying that everything here is my opinion, as anything I say always will be.
As with many things in this world, perception is key. The blanket term “normal” is a very determined way to classify people, aiming to put them against a standard that functions most effectively for that society. Certain traits are more apparent in certain societies’, and the lack of those traits most easily lead to labeling. Labeling that many professionals use in their craft. The problem with psychology is that its findings are often intangible, so it seemingly only leaves the option of attempting to mold the individual to standards they usually find societally/culturally/sub-culturally desirable in some way. Some may not like the self, most people I know don’t, and will do anything within their power to have a more desirable self.
Labeling in turn is the easiest way to classify someone, make them self-conscious, and more often than not incapacitate them from understanding themselves. One big part of human growth, that many societies’ gloss over is self-analysis and appreciation.
The market can’t market to every individual and in order to achieve proper consumerism and a large GDP, it creates a seemingly infinite number of molds, which people try to understand, and more often than not conform too.
I agree with much of what you say, but I think for the most part it boils down to communication and our lack of understanding of it.
We communicate our needs, as much as possible, and have been taught to prize certain forms of communication like violence, celebrity, religion, market trends, sex, and music to name but a few. The individual opinions of the self, the uncertain individual truths are never voiced because of fear of not being part of the norm. We are afraid to be labeled, and would prefer in some cases to be sedated than to feel and try to understand.
It’s really scary to not know something, especially yourself; we rely on security as human beings and it manifests in many ways. And people haven’t offered each other an honest venue to speak about how they feel, and instead prize childish labeling as a better way of communication. People are so afraid of confrontation that they would prefer to brood, hate, attempt to forget, live falsely to themselves, or escape in some form.
The world is the way it is because people don’t express their personal views and find community to be the safest thing for the them. But with choosing a community/side, comes hatred for its opposing side, or its unknown factors, and if the individual feels that they have any of those factors within themselves, they will begin self-depreciating, being really anxious about things, or covering it up with lies. Settling with the fact that everyone does it.
There is far more to how or why people feel the way they do. But understanding it, and attempting to grow in a way that you want comes once again from analysis, of both self and situation.
Most people treat the world as an extension of the self, as its the most immediate, and mostly, sole experience available to them, and in time settle that the world was created for the express purpose to do something to them. But life existed far before them, they can just change the world through their actions, as the world’s actions may change them, which is far more common.
With the internet comes more freedom of expression, and more environments and communities that appreciate the individual as wholly as they present themselves, but unfortunately people are still not as completely accepting as they may want to be for so many reasons.
When a medium of communication, created by humans, offers a venue of complete communication, and acceptance without judgment (which is one of the hardest things for people to do) I believe we can finally judge the truth behind mental illnesses
I think when it comes to such things as anxiety it is hard to say something like “denying my anxiety is denying who I am”. Anxiety is seemingly the root of many “mental illnesses” and is a very physical sensation that rises up in the gut and causes the heart to race. I wouldn’t feel any part of my identity would be denied were my anxiety gone, I would feel much more capable of being myself in fact.
Just accept your anxiety. Wow! Tell ya what Paul, next time I try to go off my meds and my anxiety/ptsd sky rockets, I’ll call you so you can be around to clean up the mess.