The Real Problems With Psychiatry

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markeverett49 said:
A psychotherapist contends that the DSM, psychiatry’s “bible” that defines all mental illness, is not scientific but a product of unscrupulous bureaucracy.

Interesting read from “The Atlantic,” which is neither conservative nor Catholic.

theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/the-real-problems-with-psychiatry/275371/
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DSM-5 is a joke.

But DSM does not speak for the world’s psychiatrists; it is the product of the American Psychiatric Association, which lost its credibility quite a while ago.

The rest of the world is quite happy to use the ICD-10, which (while far from perfect) scores much higher on the “integrity” scale. DSM : ICD-10 as The Message : The Revised Standard Version. 😃
 
RPRPsych said:
The rest of the world is quite happy to use the ICD-10, which (while far from perfect) scores much higher on the “integrity” scale. DSM : ICD-10 as The Message : The Revised Standard Version. 😃
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I was unfamiliar with the ICD-10 and had to Google it and make a bookmark for later review. Thanks for the tip!
 
Interesting article. This comment popped out at me:

“The reason there haven’t been any sensible findings tying genetics or any kind of molecular biology to DSM categories is not only that our instruments are crude, but also that the DSM categories aren’t real. It’s like using a map of the moon to find your way around Russia.”
 
JimG said:
Interesting article. This comment popped out at me:

“The reason there haven’t been any sensible findings tying genetics or any kind of molecular biology to DSM categories is not only that our instruments are crude, but also that the DSM categories aren’t real. It’s like using a map of the moon to find your way around Russia.”
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Yeah, that caught my eye too. What a great line: “It’s like using a map of the moon to find your way around Russia.”
 
The real problem with Psychiatry is that it is 100% valueless.
 
CatholicGeek1 said:
This is a very uninformed comment.
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Indeed.

Psychiatry is a branch of medicine, with practitioners able to prescribe medication for such conditions as schizophrenia. Given that that condition can be managed quite well with medication, if psychiatry really were valueless, there would be no medical efficacy in any of its treatments of mental disorders, which is patently not the case.
 
Love4All said:
The real problem with Psychiatry is that it is 100% valueless.
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That single line sounds a bit like an over generalization and smacks of Scientology. Why not ask a parent who has had to try and help a child with a severe mental illness if they agree with you.Better yet, ask the Vets who are coming home from the war zones if psychiatrists are of no use when dealing with severe PTSD. 🤷
 
The author of the Atlantic article says that the problem is that “the DSM categories aren’t real.” In other words, it’s not like the Merck Manual. The disorders it discusses may or may not be physical diseases. There may be no etiology given for the disease. Apparently, in many cases of mental illness no underlying physical or biochemical factor can be isolated. The DSM entries are voted upon, for pity’s sake!

It is noteworthy that the same author wrote the book “Manufacturing Depression—The Secret History of a Modern Disease.”

Psychiatry is part of the medical field, yet if you ask psychiatrists “if these disorders exist in the same way that cancer and diabetes exist, they’ll say no.”

The author also says that taking the DSM categories too seriously has the effect of eliminating the moral aspect to certain behaviors." If you have a disease which causes you to behave badly, you aren’t culpable.
 
RPRPsych said:
Aw, come on, concede us at least around 0.000001% 😃
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I would! I cannot speak for the person who made the claim but I did not read “valueless” to mean worthless but rather, ‘based on no fixed / eternal / absolute value.’
 
markeverett49 said:
A psychotherapist contends that the DSM, psychiatry’s “bible” that defines all mental illness, is not scientific but a product of unscrupulous bureaucracy.

Interesting read from “The Atlantic,” which is neither conservative nor Catholic.

theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/the-real-problems-with-psychiatry/275371/
Click to expand...
You mean, William Glasser, M.D. and Coptic, M.D. are not the only ones saying that the DSM is poppycock propaganda???:dancing::extrahappy::
 
RPRPsych said:
DSM-5 is a joke.

But DSM does not speak for the world’s psychiatrists; it is the product of the American Psychiatric Association, which lost its credibility quite a while ago.

The rest of the world is quite happy to use the ICD-10, which (while far from perfect) scores much higher on the “integrity” scale. DSM : ICD-10 as The Message : The Revised Standard Version. 😃
Click to expand...
American, and Canadian, I believe, mental health professionals are required to code using the DSM. American Insurance companies don’t accept ICD-10 diagnostic coding.

I’m not making a statement on the pros and cons of this- just giving the reality.
 
ringil said:
American, and Canadian, I believe, mental health professionals are required to code using the DSM. American Insurance companies don’t accept ICD-10 diagnostic coding.

I’m not making a statement on the pros and cons of this- just giving the reality.
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Thanks. That’s good to know. Before I spent a summer as a hospital chaplain, I had no idea “coding” (in this sense) meant.
 
JimG said:
The author of the Atlantic article says that the problem is that “the DSM categories aren’t real.” In other words, it’s not like the Merck Manual. The disorders it discusses may or may not be physical diseases. There may be no etiology given for the disease. Apparently, in many cases of mental illness no underlying physical or biochemical factor can be isolated. The DSM entries are voted upon, for pity’s sake!

It is noteworthy that the same author wrote the book “Manufacturing Depression—The Secret History of a Modern Disease.”

Psychiatry is part of the medical field, yet if you ask psychiatrists “if these disorders exist in the same way that cancer and diabetes exist, they’ll say no.”

The author also says that taking the DSM categories too seriously has the effect of eliminating the moral aspect to certain behaviors." If you have a disease which causes you to behave badly, you aren’t culpable.
Click to expand...
You could not be more wrong.

Psychiatric disorders like Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, OCD etc… are due to chemical dysfunction in certain parts of the brain. Thanks to technology such as PET scanning, we have made incredible advances in understanding mental illness over the last decade. These advances have led to fantastic new medications that are now making it possible for people with severe, debilitating illnesses such as Schizophrenia (basically a death sentence a generation ago) to live some semblance of a normal life (I have some Schizophrenic patients who are stable on medication and have professional careers/families).

The degree of ignorance of people who make comments such as “psychiatry is valueless” is mind-boggling. I work in a Psychiatric ER in a major urban area; anyone who thinks that “Psychiatry is valueless” is welcome to come spend a day at work with me. I’ll put the over/under at ten minutes before they realize how incredibly naive they were.
 
markeverett49 said:
Thanks. That’s good to know. Before I spent a summer as a hospital chaplain, I had no idea “coding” (in this sense) meant.
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$$$$$$

ICD-9 coding and DSM coding coupled with CPT coding=you get paid…

If you are fee for service then there is no need to formally document this and submit this to anyone, just keep a record and get paid for services. Note, you document but not submit.

Insurance reimbursement requires the formula above.
 
psychiatrist said:
You could not be more wrong.

Psychiatric disorders like Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, OCD etc… are due to chemical dysfunction in certain parts of the brain. Thanks to technology such as PET scanning, we have made incredible advances in understanding mental illness over the last decade. These advances have led to fantastic new medications that are now making it possible for people with severe, debilitating illnesses such as Schizophrenia (basically a death sentence a generation ago) to live some semblance of a normal life (I have some Schizophrenic patients who are stable on medication and have professional careers/families).

The degree of ignorance of people who make comments such as “psychiatry is valueless” is mind-boggling. I work in a Psychiatric ER in a major urban area; anyone who thinks that “Psychiatry is valueless” is welcome to come spend a day at work with me. I’ll put the over/under at ten minutes before they realize how incredibly naive they were.
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Dr.

You are correct. There is value in Psychiatry. Some over step their bounds in an attempt to coerce acceptance of an agenda as if the formulation of thought from a Psychiatric Association is fact and to be accepted and swallowed because they say so.

I would be happy to spend days, weeks, and probably more than 10 minutes however absent that it would be safe to say that the poster that said Psychiatry is value less may have been speaking tongue in cheek. There is value in all of medicine. There is less value in some things than others.

You would without doubt agree that depression is over diagnosed and many physicians rarely follow the guidelines set forth by the DSM and prescribe what would probably be sadness as depression.

You would also without doubt agree that when it comes to the issue of addiction there is a discrepancy in the view the AMA takes and the American Psychiatric Association takes and yet still the industry that addresses these behaviors, creating a clouded picture for what is best.

You would aslo agree that Psychiatry has become less one on one face to face time spent, with many Psychiatrist prescribing and delegating the one on one time spent talk therapy to other than the Psychiatrist.
 
psychiatrist said:
You could not be more wrong.

Psychiatric disorders like Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, OCD etc… are due to chemical dysfunction in certain parts of the brain. Thanks to technology such as PET scanning, we have made incredible advances in understanding mental illness over the last decade. These advances have led to fantastic new medications that are now making it possible for people with severe, debilitating illnesses such as Schizophrenia (basically a death sentence a generation ago) to live some semblance of a normal life (I have some Schizophrenic patients who are stable on medication and have professional careers/families).

The degree of ignorance of people who make comments such as “psychiatry is valueless” is mind-boggling. I work in a Psychiatric ER in a major urban area; anyone who thinks that “Psychiatry is valueless” is welcome to come spend a day at work with me. I’ll put the over/under at ten minutes before they realize how incredibly naive they were.
Click to expand...
Excellent post!!
 
psychiatrist said:
You could not be more wrong.

Psychiatric disorders like Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorders, OCD etc… are due to chemical dysfunction in certain parts of the brain. Thanks to technology such as PET scanning, we have made incredible advances in understanding mental illness over the last decade. These advances have led to fantastic new medications that are now making it possible for people with severe, debilitating illnesses such as Schizophrenia (basically a death sentence a generation ago) to live some semblance of a normal life (I have some Schizophrenic patients who are stable on medication and have professional careers/families).

The degree of ignorance of people who make comments such as “psychiatry is valueless” is mind-boggling. I work in a Psychiatric ER in a major urban area; anyone who thinks that “Psychiatry is valueless” is welcome to come spend a day at work with me. I’ll put the over/under at ten minutes before they realize how incredibly naive they were.
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Everything in my post was either a quote or paraphrase from the Atlantic Monthly article which was the subject of the original post. Nowhere did I say that Psychiatry is valueless. Neither did the author of the article.

Here is another quote from the article: “I guarantee you that in the course of our conversation a doctor is telling a patient, “you have a chemical imbalance – that’s why you’re depressed. Take Prozac.” Despite the fact that every doctor who knows anything knows that there is no biochemical imbalance that causes depression, and most doctors understand that a diagnosis of depression doesn’t really tell you anything other than what you already knew, that doesn’t stop them from saying it."
Now I’m just a layman. I don’t know if the above is true or not. As you noted, treatment for severe psychoses can truly be a blessing. But when a psychologist treats a patient with some sort of disordered thinking with cognitive therapy—i.e., talking—is he treating a chemical imbalance?
 
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