Dr Bob Johnson is a consultant psychiatrist based on the Isle of Wight. He has written two books questioning psychiatry’s current focus on medication, and runs the website www.TruthTrustConsent.com.Here, he argues that psychiatry in its current form is not working
But of course, if you embark on such a radicaldeparture from psychiatric orthodoxy, there’sa price to be paid – in my case, it cost me mypsychiatric career. So taste what follows carefully,before you swallow. Being out on a limb can behair-raising – evidence for it must therefore be soobvious, it can stand on its own. And naturally,there are many sensible psychiatrists who willagree with what I write here, who practise excellentpsychiatry, but who keep their heads down, incase the Establishment chops them, as it did me.To examine where psychiatry currently goes wrong,we need to scrutinise three fundamentals of anymedical practice, viz: 1, what causes the disease;2, what’s the best diagnostic framework; and 3,which treatments work best. Get one of these wrong,and you invite medical disasters. Get them allwrong, and the outcome is a foregone conclusion.But before we get to the pyrotechnics, let’s brieflyreview the recent past. In 1952 the first of “theDSMs” was published – this was the first editionof the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of MentalDisorders. The current version is the 4th Edition,DSM-IV, 1994, with DSM-V about to hatch.However, the first edition is far superior – since in1952, it acknowledged that mental disorders couldarise from a whole host of factors, especiallyfamily and social stresses. By 1994, the DSM-IVhad emasculated this sensible view of humannature. What's left – apart from PTSD (PostTraumatic Stress Disorder) – is, in my consideredprofessional opinion, prime medical garbage.Back to the three fundamentals. Firstly, causativefactors – who can seriously doubt that stress playsa central role in mental breakdown? Well, theDSM-IV for one. Even ‘death of a loved one’ isexplicitly excluded from any connection withmental disease [DSM-IV p xxi]. How unreal canyou get? A vague ‘bio-genetics’ is wafted aboutin lieu, for which there has never been a scrapof objective evidence – nor is there likely to be.Psychiatry likes its mental disease hardwired –thereby permitting any number of bizarre physicalinterventions, all immune to scientific evidence.Secondly, diagnosis. This is the medical blue printthe clinician imposes on the hodge-podge ofsymptoms triggered by disease. If you still thinkthat malaria, for example, is caused by bad-air(which is how it got its name) then your diagnosticstructures and treatments, being less real, aregoing to be less efficacious.continued over“Psychiatry today is a dismal medical failure”. This is the conclusion I reached when writing mybook on the scientifically proven impact of psychiatric drugs. I eventually titled the book “Unsafeat any dose”, because that is what the published evidence proves beyond a peradventure....if you embark on such a radical departure from psychiatric orthodoxy,there’s a price to be paid – in my case, it cost me my psychiatric career.
The more realistic the diagnostic pattern, the more effective any treatment will be. Conversely, get thediagnosis wrong, and your treatment is likely toharm. Take a garage diagnosis – if your car won’tstart, you could diagnose either a flat battery or anempty fuel tank. Get this wrong, and over-filling thetank is both ineffective and dangerous. In my view,this mirrors today’s psychiatry.Thirdly, and finally, the question of treatment opensa whole new disaster area. But what is reallypuzzling is that the profession as a whole turnsa consistent blind eye to irrefutable evidence.So desperate is the current psychiatric professionto cling to its hardware model, that manifest andrepeatable evidence that its drugs inflict damageis ignored. Quite remarkable. The best source forthis is Mad in America by Robert Whitaker. Takechlorpromazine (Largactil) – when this drug wasintroduced in the late 1950s, a nine-hospital trialwas arranged to see if it worked. Almost 400patients were divided into two groups – half withthe drug, half with placebo. After 6 weeks thedrugged half were calmer, with fewer hallucinationsand less paranoia. 12 months later, the non-druggedgroup were twice as healthy. No prizes for guessingwhich result the psychiatric profession has ferventlyembraced ever since. Such a crucial issue, as youmight expect, has been researched over and over.Every time the outcome is the same. And eachtime, this discomforting result is suppressed.Be aware that every psychiatric drug now prescribedentails serious side-effects. Benzodiazepines(Diazepam, Valium etc, as also Ritalin) areaddictive and corrosive to brain tissue, as are theso-called anti-psychotics which actually prolongdisease. Anti-depressants exacerbate suicide andother violence – you name it, it’s unviable. All aredesigned to impact the mind – and therefore to dullit. But the established psychiatric profession cannotget out of the habit of shooting the messenger,because it doesn’t want to hear the message.Where should we go now? When I trained in 1963,I was given a superb grounding in the TherapeuticCommunity approach. This emphasised that themind is the organ of socialising – even wardcleaning staff were included in ward meetings,since they had multiple social contacts with thesufferers. That was my beginning in psychiatry,and it remains my approach today – all mentaldisorders arise, unsurprisingly, from mental factors– it’s software, not hardware. Sadly TherapeuticCommunities are now few and far between,and hanging on by their proverbial fingernails.Yet there is abundant evidence that this approachcures mental disease (also in Mad in America).If it could once again become mainstream,psychiatric nihilism would evaporate, bringingbenefits to all.18PSYCHIATRY - A NIHILISTIC DISCIPLINE
‘death of a loved one’ is explicitly excluded from any connection with mental disease. How unreal can you get?
0 comments:
Post a Comment