By Leah Harris Is it melancholy to think that a world that Robin Williams can’t live in must be broken? To tie this sad event to the overarching misery of our times? – Russell Brand, comedian/actor
In memory of Robin Williams…
Rethinking Depression
The general argument here can be made about all labeled psychiatric disorders. Most often, they are not brain disorders as popularly understood in psychiatry, but instead a combination of many things in our lives and environments intersecting with our bodies, too. … [click on title to read and view more]
The Anti-DSM otherwise known as The Outlaw Catalog of Cagey Optimism
Psychiatry and psychotherapy obsess on what's wrong with people and give short shrift to what's right. The manual of these professions is a 943-page textbook called the DSM-IV. It identifies scores of pathological states but no healthy ones.
Some time back, I began to complain about this fact, and asked readers to help me compile material for a proposed antidote, the Anti-DSM -- a compendium of healthy, exalted, positive states of being. As their entries came in, we at the Beauty and Truth Laboratory were inspired to dream up some of our own. Below is part one of our initial attempt at creating an Anti-DSM-IV, or as we also like to call it, The Outlaw Catalog of Cagey Optimism. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Grief is subversive
Grief, like all the other difficult and/or dark emotions often gets pathologized, and it is an important part of life, without which we would not be human. I would also like to suggest an idea for consideration. Much of what is labeled psychiatric disease is grief that has never been expressed or properly felt, or validated.
Reframe depression
there is no such thing as a monolithic state called depression: Rethink depression. People often want to believe that depression has some distinct pathology. It does not. Clinical depression is very much a garbage pail term ...
on being subject to the clinical gaze
An important thing to remember is that we’re always dealing with fear when we are confronted with disbelief about our lives free from psych meds. They are afraid of what we have accomplished and they are afraid of what we know. They are afraid that our message will harm people. Harm only comes if people are coerced. People need to do what they need to do wherever they are on their own self-directed path. That includes taking meds if that is what they are resonant with at any given time. That is the key thing to understand. Those of us who were harmed have largely been denied our experience and often forced to get treatment we knew we should not be getting. Folks who find psychiatry helpful have a hard time understanding that we’ve had a radically different experience. Many of us too have a hard time believing some folks have benefitted from what has so gravely harmed us. We must embrace our differences. .… [click on title for the rest of the post]
How are psychiatric diagnoses made?
Prof. Sami Timimi child psychiatrist and visiting professor University of Lincoln speaks. Also additional links to consider. Psych labels are descriptive of behavior but do not represent any sort of discreet biological reality. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
Health industry group: Replace psychiatrists with vending machines — Measure to reduce health care costs
A health care industry thinktank, US Health Insurance Consortium on Cost, advocates replacing psychiatrists and other doctors with vending machines to prescribe and dispense antidepressants.
"We believe this will cut the cost of psychiatric services significantly," Uli Arnowsky, spokesperson for USHICost, said. "Our studies show the diagnosis and prescription process can be automated, with no loss in quality of care. Specialist costs are just not necessary for this type of treatment, and psychiatrists are overworked anyway."
DSM‘s Somatoform Disorders: millions more might be diagnosed
On Dr. David Healy's website from yesterday there is an article about the very problematic Somatic Symptom Disorder category in the DSM 5. I've written about this before because it's of particular interest to many folks who've suffered iatrogenic damage from psychiatric drugs. Psychiatric drug withdrawal syndromes are sometimes devastating physically crippling illnesses that can last months and years. We have all faced being told our issues are psychiatric. We have routinely suffered from little or no care from our health care providers. We have had to take care of each other completely out of the system. Remaining in the care of doctors has often been dangerous. Somatic Symptom Disorder category further institutionalizes this dangerous trend. … [click on title to read the rest]
The Body Keeps the Score (part 1)
Even when trauma is long past, it replays itself in the body through pain, anxiety, depression, illness, digestive issues, and so on. We must help the client learn to tolerate the physiological trauma symptoms while remaining in their bodies - since nearly all PTSD is dissociative in some way. …
Freaking out therapists: on being subject to the clinical gaze
Nothing like freaking out an otherwise really nice therapist/spiritual teacher with my story. Oh my...it's a rather sobering fact that even relatively enlightened folk want to RUN RUN RUN from the likes of me quite often...it's like they imagine I'm far worse off than I am...a vortex of horror...their fear is HUGE and some sort of judgment comes up...it's mostly sobering because I don't need them anymore these days but I know far too many folks without the sorts of emotional and intellectual resources I have been able to develop who need people to help them and what is available most often are people who are terrified of some of the terrain we've encountered. And while I don't need them at this juncture, I could have benefited deeply from guidance as a young woman. It still hurts to see how my life story...my experience freaks people out. … [click on title for the rest of the post]