Saturday, February 18, 2012

Fwd: PSYCHIATRY CANNOT BE IMPROVED, NOR REFORMED



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Benjamin Merhav <ben.merhav@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 19, 2012 at 8:29 AM
Subject: PSYCHIATRY CANNOT BE IMPROVED, NOR REFORMED
To: palashbiswaskl@gmail.com


http://18thoutlawpsychiatry.blogspot.com/
PSYCHIATRY CANNOT BE IMPROVED, NOR REFORMED, AS IT IS A DANGEROUS
FASCIST QUACKERY. IT MUST BE OUTLAWED FORTHWITH !


The current worldwide protests - including protests by many shrinks - against the horrors of the 5th DSM manual/bible of psychiatry could be misleading people who are not well informed. The press report below, for example,
which correctly criticises some of the proposed "mental illnesses" is a case in point. Reading it you might think that if that proposed manual would be cancelled all would be well in psychiatry. Yet nothing could be further from the truth, especially in Australia. Here in Australia electric shocks (ECT) are still legal, even when the patient-victims are young children. Here in Australia lobotomies (brain surgeries) are still legal too. Here in Australia - unlike nowhere else in the world ! - there are government financed "early (psychiatric) intervention and treatment" centres, where psychiatric drugs are administered to young people who are not ill even according to psychiatry. Here in Australia any state shrink can issue a compulsory treatment order (CTO) arbitrarily, at will, and get away with it simply by stating that the patient-victim "is very sick and needs treatment".

There are many other similar current press reports ; such as this one : http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/17/good-grief-psychiatrys-struggle-to-define-mental-illness-goes-awry/ or this one : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2102618/Lancet-urges-doctors-treat-grief-empathy-pills.html . They do put psychiatry on the defensive, but hardly threaten its global monopoly on mental health.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/normal-grief-shouldnt-be-labelled-depression-say-psychiatrists/story-e6frg8y6-1226274235399

"Normal grief shouldn't be labelled depression, say psychiatrists


AUSTRALIAN psychiatrists are joining an international outcry over the medicalisation of what they say are normal emotions -- including a move that would allow bereaved people to be labelled as depressed as little as two weeks after the death of a loved one.

A number of prominent psychiatrists say they are disturbed by US proposals to drop the exclusion in diagnostic criteria that largely rules out a depression diagnosis until a patient has been bereaved for at least two months.

And some are critical of their professional organisation, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, for failing to condemn the plans.

The row is over plans to revise psychiatry's bible, the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

If approved by the US-based experts in charge of the revision, the removal of the exclusion for bereavement could mean people meet the criteria for depression if their symptoms are present for just two weeks, irrespective of the grief-related cause.

Carolyn Quadrio, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of NSW, said the proposals lacked common sense, and the proper response to someone grief-stricken was to "sit and listen and comfort".

"As soon as you put a diagnostic label on someone, the next thing you know they have a prescription and they're out the door," she said.

Louise Newman, a former president of the Australian college and a professor of developmental psychiatry at Monash University, said the plans fuelled concerns about the proliferation of new "disorders".

"Grieving and depressive symptoms are part of a normal human response to loss," Professor Newman said.

"We need to exercise caution about a proliferation of diagnostic categories . . . we need to be very clear why we are doing it, that there is an evidence base, and useful practical applications -- as opposed to describing normal areas of human experience as mental disorders."

The concerns were fuelled by the publication yesterday of three linked opinion pieces in the British medical journal The Lancet, including one by Harvard psychiatrist Arthur Kleinman, who said he experienced at least six months of grief after his wife of 46 years died last May, and the current two-month delay before depression could be considered was "shocking".

RANZCP president Maria Tomasic said it was appropriate for experts to discuss the proposed changes."




--
Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/

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