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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.
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Craig Patterson 10+
Personally I believe war is totally obsolete and no way for humans to interact particularly in the face of climate change and that we all ride spaceship earth together, sink or swim.
However, beyond the carnage (which is always very difficult to overcome) the fact that today war is fought by soldiers (although many more civilians usually die) while back at the country club life is hardly affected at all. I believe it is this disconnect that in part drives the inability of returning vets to integrate after all they experienced. We've created the context of cultural PTSD, and few if any are addressing that. Whereas World War two was fought by the whole country, everyone participated. So that sense of meaning why they fought and died was universally understood and accepted. This hasn't been true since WW2 and since the military/Industrial complex has gained control.
There certainly are many lessons here from the disenfranchised Vietnam veterans in our personal history, if we care to look.