This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »
Does psychiatry have a financial interest in expanding the definition of mental illness?
Does both the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatry profession have strong financial interests in convincing the public that drug treatment is safe and the most effective treatment for mental illness,
The National Institute of Mental Illness reports that currently only 36 percent of those who suffer from mental illness actually seek and receive treatment but they would still like to expand the definitions. What and why should be a concern to everyone.
There is no question that among the medical profession, psychiatry is the most scientifically primitive. The latest revision to the America Psychiastric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) has drawn strong criticism. "Owing to criticism over the perceived proliferation of diagnoses in the current edition of the DSM, David Kupfer, M.D., who is the DSM-5 Task Force chair and is shepherding the DSM's revision, said in an interview: "One of the raps against psychiatry is that you and I are the only two people in the U.S. without a psychiatric diagnosis."
Dr. Daniel Carlet, an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University admits, "We are no more than the most rudimentary understanding of the pathophysiology of mental illness and we have resorted to tenuous and ever-shifting theories of how ..treatments work."
Read "The Emperor's New Drugs" by Dr. Irving Kirsch or "The Anatomy of an Epidemic" by Robert Whitaker.
Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.
Showing single comment thread. View the full conversation.
Craig Patterson 10+
A bit embarrassed to say, I heard and saw it on the history channel recently. I see you have other information and I don't dispute it. However during the Civil war the level of human carnage was unprecedented in scale in this country. The primitive technology in medicine combined with advancing technologies of killing all contribute to the need of 'mental health'. Man's inhumanity to fellow man has driven many forms of science including psychiatry from many perspectives. Your question about having a financial interest is obvious. What's frustrating to me is how disconnected societal psychosis seems to be from individual treatments while serious pushing drugs without knowing the consequences. The whole Industry if fraught with contradictions, in my opinion.
Theodore A. Hoppe 200+
One of the things that prompted me to start this conversation was a discussion I had about returning veteran with PTSD, as well as other issues, and how to help them.