Psychiatry Does Not Exist or Should Not Exist

[BillNye123]

I have come to the conclusion that psychiatry either does not exist or should not exist.

It should not exist because it does more harm to the patient than good. Far too often a relatively normal individual with minor symptoms is diagnosed as crazy by an overzealous psychiatrist without objective diagnostic tools. The patient then takes meds that alter behavior and physiological function, as well as tarnishing his relationship with family and friends even. Psychiatry also should not exist because everyone has a right to their narrative of events; if a guy thinks his ex is stalking him or something along these lines, his narrative might be correct. A psychiatrist is in no position to discern whether something is a delusion or not. Far too often a psychiatrist labels anything as delusional.

Psychiatry does not exist because there are no physical tests to discern whether someone has a mental illness. The current hypothesis, dopomine, is just that - a hypothesis. No has has made any progress at all in determining what mental illness is, what causes it. Yet somehow diagnosis of mental health has exploded.

A good replacement is simply behavioural therapy. Reason with someone, teach them how to live.

Psychiatry should be dismantled.

[koti]

So I guess Schizophrenia and Dementia do not exist and are just imaginative illnesses according to you? There are also millions of suicidal children out there who are being treated by psychiatrists, don’t they exist as well?

[BillNye123]

5 minutes ago, koti said:

So I guess Schizophrenia and Dementia do not exist and are just imaginative illnesses according to you? There are also millions of suicidal children out there who are being treated by psychiatrists, don’t they exist as well?

Schizophrenia does not exist, no. There is no way of testing whether someone has schizophrenia or not. With any other physical illness there are symptoms, you test, and then you treat. But there is no testing with schizophrenia. It's simply symptoms => treatment. WIthout physical tests you don't know if someone is faking it or if someone is really going through what they claim to be going through (not delusional). And getting the label is the worst part of the ordeal; better just go to a therapist or social worker. Someone to calm you down and set you down the right path.

Suicidal children...that's different. But do the meds even work? They have plenty of adverse side effects. Once again, therapist, not psychiatrist

[koti]

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

Schizophrenia does not exist, no. There is no way of testing whether someone has schizophrenia or not.

Well thats just not true:

https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-tests

[Strange]

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

There is no way of testing whether someone has schizophrenia or not. With any other physical illness there are symptoms, you test, and then you treat

Mental disorders also have symptoms. 

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

WIthout physical tests you don't know if someone is faking it or if someone is really going through what they claim to be going through (not delusional).

Many (most?) symptoms of physical disease depend on the patient reporting what they feel, so not really much different. 

Im not sure why anyone would fake the symptoms of a disease, mental or otherwise. Maybe to escape criminal charges by claiming to be “insane”. But people rarely get away with that because it is not extremely hard to accurately fake the symptoms. 

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

Schizophrenia does not exist, no.

People with schizophrenia are often unable to cope with society.  Some can be a danger to themselves or others. So pretending it doesn’t exist is not helpful. 

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

Far too often a relatively normal individual with minor symptoms is diagnosed as crazy

No is ever diagnosed as “crazy”

[BillNye123]

There's no pretending it doesn't exist. It's a relic from the early 1900s, a social construct that doesn't exist. In the middle ages there was "glass disease." These things are social constructs. There's no objective tests proving otherwise.

[Strange]

39 minutes ago, BillNye123 said:

In the middle ages there was "glass disease."

Glass disease is a problem that can occur in ancient glass. 

40 minutes ago, BillNye123 said:

These things are social constructs

The way they appear to people, or the way they are explained, may be partly a social construct. For example, in some times and places people may say the symptoms are signs of angels, demons, aliens, etc. 

But the hallucinations, delusions, psychotic episodes, etc are real. It is silly to pretend they don’t exist. 

[swansont]

4 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

It should not exist because it does more harm to the patient than good. Far too often a relatively normal individual with minor symptoms is diagnosed as crazy by an overzealous psychiatrist without objective diagnostic tools.

Citation needed

[Phi for All]

8 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

I have come to the conclusion that psychiatry either does not exist or should not exist.

This is a poorly worded argument. Come on, you can do better than this. Of course it EXISTS, it's here, it's a real thing, despite what you might think about its efficacy. Your argument is trivially proven false.

Whether it should be taken seriously as a study is what you're really talking about. The fact is, MANY people have been helped by psychiatry. I can EASILY provide many citations supporting this argument. That some didn't get help doesn't mean it should be "dismantled". Would you dismantle Alcoholics Anonymous just because it doesn't work for some people?

[Sensei]

Quote

Psychiatry Does Not Exist or Should Not Exist

If you would replace "does not exist" by "it is not true science"...

i.e. "Psychiatry Is Not True Science, because [your reasoning here, about inability of scientific verification of person mental illness]"..

your statement would have more sense and many more people could agree with it.

If there is no reliability of source data, it's no different from reading from tea leaves, or numerology. Some people claim to find something/future in tea bags or leaves etc. Which is obviously false.

I agree, there is needed MRI and other highly advanced scientific tools to check somebody hyper or lack of brain activity in certain regions of the brain and comparison with "normal"/"average" working brain (with lack of "reference brain" there must be used "average brain activity"). Medicament used to increase activity of brain if it's too low, other medicament to decrease too high activity (e.g. "psychoactive drugs").

 

11 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

The current hypothesis, dopomine, is just that - a hypothesis.

Actually reactions of medicament on the brain, or reactions of hormones, or psychoactive drugs etc. etc. is quite well scientifically documented. There are routinely performed tests on animals, also apes, how they react on lack of, or abundance of certain drugs, and brain activities.

11 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

No has has made any progress at all in determining what mental illness is, what causes it.

You're now talking like people who are asking "when there will be cure for cancer?!".. i.e. it's lack of understanding, and putting everything to one single bag called "mental illness" or "cancer". Each person cancer is completely different from other person cancer. Each person has completely different mutation than other person (apart from obvious mistakes like transfusion or transplantation of organ from person with cancer to the new host etc.). There is nothing common in breast cancer of one women and other women, except placement of the cancer.

Don't put them to one bag. Every case is unique. In one case it could be long term lack of chemicals required for normal brain work (improper diet missing essential compounds). In other case it could be attack of known or unknown parasites, fungi, microbes, which interfere with nervous system. In yet another case it could be genetic mutation. etc. etc.

f.e. there are fungi which are attacking nervous system of animal like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiocordyceps_unilateralis

and ant is starting behaving abnormally..

Reaction of human nervous system on presence of parasites is not yet fully understood. Especially for unknown parasites.

Lack of high level technology equipment in psychiatric hospitals don't help. There used to be cases when somebody had tumor in the brain, and psychiatrists claimed they have some mental illness..

 

Edited July 4, 2019 by Sensei

[John Cuthber]

13 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

It should not exist because it does more harm to the patient than good.

https://xkcd.com/285/

[BillNye123]

There's a lot of responses but no one is countering anything important I said.

-Psychiatrists are not in a position to know what is true and what isn't; if someone thinks something "paranoid," well that's highly subjective, and it may be true.

-There is no evidence at all that most mental illnesses have any physical, medical basis. If they invent a test, that'd be fantastic. Until then, it's all speculation.

-Medication has negative side effects. A study from a few days ago implicates this stuff in giving patients dementia.

-A better, more cost-efficient and time-saving way of healing these people is talking to them and getting their lives on track. Not snuffing them out with a horrible label and meds.

[Bufofrog]

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

There's a lot of responses but no one is countering anything important I said

That is because you are not listening.

[Strange]

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

Psychiatrists are not in a position to know what is true and what isn't; if someone thinks something "paranoid," well that's highly subjective, and it may be true.

What do you mean by "true"? If someone displays paranoid (or delusional or other psychotic) behaviour then they are paranoid (or delusional or psychotic or whatever).

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

There is no evidence at all that most mental illnesses have any physical, medical basis

Just because we don't know what the physical basis of mental illness is (if there is one) doesn't make it any less real. 

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

Medication has negative side effects.

All medication has side effect. It also has positive effects. It is a matter of getting the balance right.

You can't say that all medicine should be abandoned because some people have suffered harm from side effects. 

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

A better, more cost-efficient and time-saving way of healing these people is talking to them and getting their lives on track

That is what a lot of psychiatry does. 

 

[BillNye123]

1 hour ago, Strange said:

What do you mean by "true"? If someone displays paranoid (or delusional or other psychotic) behaviour then they are paranoid (or delusional or psychotic or whatever).

Delusional is believing something that is false. But what is false? Let's say I think someone is stalking me. How does a psychiatrist know that this is true or false? It could be true. And if it's false, why do we consider that to be "crazy"? Why not say simply "you're wrong." I don't understand the paradigm of calling someone insane, the benefit it has on the individual, and why paranoia has anything to do with it. Some people are subject to more uncertainty than others. Did someone commit a crime? Is there a rumor spreading about someone in his or her community? Did some major event occur that could bring with it paranoia?

There is no such thing as insanity in the case of paranoia. Paranoia is sometimes needed, and if it's wrons it's wrong. Doesn't mean someone is crazy. Yet a psychiatrist simply says you're nuts, gives you medication, and ruins your relationship with family and friends - forever labelled as insane.

I am not the only one to think this. Psychiatry is wrong and immoral, and has little scientific grounding.

[zapatos]

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

Yet a psychiatrist simply says you're nuts, gives you medication, and ruins your relationship with family and friends - forever labelled as insane.

Just because psychiatry didn't  work for you is no reason to lie about psychiatrists. You are not being rational.

[Eise]

6 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

There is no such thing as insanity in the case of paranoia.

Obviously you never met somebody who really is paranoid. Not just vague ideas of being followed, but acting according these feelings, in such a way that such a person cannot copy with daily life anymore. Example: colleague comes panicking into the office, hiding immediately under his desk, saying that those helicopters outside are chasing him.

6 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

Why not say simply "you're wrong."

Because that does not help. The paranoid feelings overwhelm a person completely, so he cannot think rationally anymore. That's why also very intelligent people can become psychologically ill. Intelligence does not protect against psychological illness.

Edited July 5, 2019 by Eise

[Strange]

7 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

Delusional is believing something that is false. But what is false? Let's say I think someone is stalking me. How does a psychiatrist know that this is true or false? It could be true. And if it's false, why do we consider that to be "crazy"?

1. There are things that can be easily verified as false.

2. No one is diagnosed as "crazy".

3. A delusional belief, by itself, is only a symptom and does not necessarily indicate mental illness.

 

7 hours ago, BillNye123 said:

I am not the only one to think this. Psychiatry is wrong and immoral, and has little scientific grounding.

As your opinions have little or no basis in fact, I don't see what anyone would take your opinions seriously.

[Phi for All]

14 hours ago, Bufofrog said:

That is because you are not listening.

Do you mind if I try talking to BillNye123 obliquely through you? It's practically impossible to be reasonable when you aren't weighing available evidence before making conclusions, especially broad ones like this. If you don't listen to other arguments, you're just soapboxing your own ignorance. 

11 hours ago, zapatos said:

You are not being rational.

I understand the urge to lash out when something that helps others fails to help me. Twenty years ago, I might have become irrational and unreasonable about it, but I've learned a LOT about stepping back from emotional outbursts and just analyzing the evidence in front of me. The personal frame of reference is often myopic and self-centered, and we're often much better at seeing other people's problems than our own (which is one reason I think psychiatry works for so many).

[BillNye123]

There's a lot of people who don't like what I wrote, but I stand by it. I think therapy, as opposed to medication and the label, is a better approach. It's compassionate and understanding of the needs of people. The goal is to fix someone, not curtail their life.

[zapatos]

Just now, BillNye123 said:

The goal is to fix someone, not curtail their life.

For you to think that psychiatrists have a goal of curtailing the lives of patients rather than trying to help them shows how far out of touch you are.

[BillNye123]

18 minutes ago, zapatos said:

For you to think that psychiatrists have a goal of curtailing the lives of patients rather than trying to help them shows how far out of touch you are.

Yeah, well, psychiatric illness is by definition chronic. When really there is no illness, and nothing is chronic.

Edited July 6, 2019 by BillNye123

[iNow]

12 minutes ago, BillNye123 said:

psychiatric illness is by definition chronic.

Except, no. It’s not. 

I’m sympathetic to your idea that many psychiatrists are too quick to prescribe meds when often they’re not required. 

I’m also sympathetic to the idea that people exist along a broad spectrum of mental states and abilities and we sometimes are too quick to suggest an abnormality, one requiring treatment at all. 

But your posts really are full of problems, falsehoods, and poor reasoning. That’s why people disagree with you. Instead of digging your heels in the ground, try taking in what they’re saying so you can better yourself. Bonus if you can feel grateful for them taking the time to help you in your journey. 

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, BillNye123 said:

I think therapy, as opposed to medication and the label, is a better approach.

Given that medication is part of therapy...

[BillNye123]

On 7/4/2019 at 10:11 PM, zapatos said:

Just because psychiatry didn't  work for you is no reason to lie about psychiatrists. You are not being rational.

The only reason I wrote this is due to the recent study that these medications cause dementia. I do not see a psychiatrist. Psychiatry is harmful.

Edited July 6, 2019 by BillNye123