The Real Problems With Psychiatry

[CopticChristian]

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?

I understand what you are saying. The notion of chemical imbalance is over used. It is fact that our brain works with neurotransmitters and learning involves what would be called re-wiring and that re-wiring is via chemicals. It could be said that any change is a change in neurochemistry and if it is a malady made right then it is not necessarily an imbalance as if to imply there is a balance, rather a change in neurochemstry that allows an ecology of thinking and homoeostasis in the environment that allows the individual to progress with less stress.

and

When you change your thinking by self-reflective thinking and come to some different conclusion that you accept different than you accepted before it is also neurochemistry and yes, talk therapy would be considered a change in neurochemistry as learning and changing thoughts are neurochemistry.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Can the chemical imbalance be due to ‘someone’ infecting a person with a mental illness? I believe that my anxiety and depression were implanted in me by an anonymous, third-party! It’s contentions like this that really detail the problems with psychiatry. I believe that cures do exist for these types of mental illnesses but not through mainstream psychiatry.

 

[CopticChristian]

Can the chemical imbalance be due to ‘someone’ infecting a person with a mental illness? I believe that my anxiety and depression were implanted in me by an anonymous, third-party! It’s contentions like this that really detail the problems with psychiatry. I believe that cures do exist for these types of mental illnesses but not through mainstream psychiatry.

Robert,

Ask yourself this…

Can I change your mind or do you change your mind?

 

[Robert_Sock]

Robert,

Ask yourself this…

Can I change your mind or do you change your mind?

Evil spiritual forces can change my mind and create all types of mental malice.

 

[CopticChristian]

Evil spiritual forces can change my mind and create all types of mental malice.

Ok,

Then your mind can be changed by you and spiritual forces.

Would you agree that based on this that knowing God always gives you the grace you need to meet every challenge that any spirit attempting to change your mind would fail with sufficient grace?

 

[Robert_Sock]

Ok,

Then your mind can be changed by you and spiritual forces.

Would you agree that based on this that knowing God always gives you the grace you need to meet every challenge that any spirit attempting to change your mind would fail with sufficient grace?

Yes, of course. I believe God allows Satan to torment me in order that God can instill a calm and peaceful mind with plenty of spiritual pleasures.

 

[CopticChristian]

Yes, of course. I believe God allows Satan to torment me in order that God can instill a calm and peaceful mind with plenty of spiritual pleasures.

So,

then you can change your mind and spirits that torment you can change your mind if you lose faith in God…correct?

 

[Robert_Sock]

So,

then you can change your mind and spirits that torment you can change your mind if you lose faith in God…correct?

This may sound like a contradiction from my statement on mental malaise, but my mind is actually calm and peaceful. It’s my body that contains the depression and anxiety, via the mental malaise. I see it as my cross in life. As soon as I exert myself, my body turns to anxiety and depression as a consequence. I still have memory filled with spiritual wellbeing. My believe in the goodness of God is super strong!

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

Evil spiritual forces can change my mind and create all types of mental malice.

Only if you let them.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Only if you let them.

In psychology there is such a thing as “the hot cognition.” These are the cognitions that Satan has access to. Once activated, they are very difficult to control. It’s like you need to act them out just to return to a ‘normal’ (comfortable) state of mind.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

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.

I don’t think it is valueless but it is a very vague science as this article points out. Sure you can treat symptoms and make people into living zombies, but you aren’t figuring out why they have these symptoms, or what caused them.

That’s all that mental health professionals do these days - drug people up. At one time, they actually cut pieces of brain out of them. I don’t know if they still use electroshock therapy or water therapy, but in any case all of these measures were/are to try to stop the symptoms, not to explain how or why or what made these people so dysfunctional in the first place, no to even cure them of their “disease”.

 

[Robert_Sock]

I don’t think it is valueless but it is a very vague science as this article points out. Sure you can treat symptoms and make people into living zombies, but you aren’t figuring out why they have these symptoms, or what caused them.

That’s all that mental health professionals do these days - drug people up. At one time, they actually cut pieces of brain out of them. I don’t know if they still use electroshock therapy or water therapy, but in any case all of these measures were/are to try to stop the symptoms, not to explain how or why or what made these people so dysfunctional in the first place, no to even cure them of their “disease”.

I think the truth will be a hard pill to swallow. I believe it’s all controlled by ‘spiritual forces.’

 

[JimG]

I think the truth will be a hard pill to swallow. I believe it’s all controlled by ‘spiritual forces.’

But there’s no need to attribute every form of psychological disorder to “spirtual forces,” whatever that may be. Many psychological disorders are rooted in inappropriate emotional responses. Whether they can be all be attributed to chemical imbalances I do not know. But neither do I think that they are all due to spiritual forces.

 

[CatholicGeek1]

But there’s no need to attribute every form of psychological disorder to “spirtual forces,” whatever that may be. Many psychological disorders are rooted in inappropriate emotional responses. Whether they can be all be attributed to chemical imbalances I do not know. But neither do I think that they are all due to spiritual forces.

They are not all due to spiritual forces, in fact I would bet the majority are not. They are also not all due to chemical imbalances. There are a multitude of causes, which is why there are a multitude of treatments that are used beyond just medication.

 

[Dakota_Roberts]

In psychology there is such a thing as “the hot cognition.” These are the cognitions that Satan has access to. Once activated, they are very difficult to control. It’s like you need to act them out just to return to a ‘normal’ (comfortable) state of mind.

That’s incompatible with Catholicism.

 

[Robert_Sock]

That’s incompatible with Catholicism.

I’m saying Satan can activate these ‘hot cognitions’ through temptation. Nothing about it is incompatible with Catholicism.

 

[Love4All]

This is a very uninformed comment.

Or that was.

 

[CHRISTINE77]

In psychology there is such a thing as “the hot cognition.” These are the cognitions that Satan has access to. Once activated, they are very difficult to control. It’s like you need to act them out just to return to a ‘normal’ (comfortable) state of mind.

In case anyone is wondering what hot cognition is:

Hot cognition is a motivated reasoning phenomenon in which a person’s responses (often driven by emotion) to stimuli are heightened. Cognitive and physiological arousal, in which a person is much more responsive to environmental factors might be associated with hot cognition regardless of the response’s impact on learning. A learner who displays hot cognition is more likely to be highly attentive and interactive with information. Sometimes the learner will respond based on emotional response, without analyzing the response (cognitive thought). **Hot cognition can make it difficult for a person to “calm down” and to process information in a rational manner. **Thus, decisions influenced by hot cognition may be more if not entirely directed by emotion. [1]The opposite of hot cognition is cold cognition, which is excessively critical and over-analyzing.[2]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_cognition

 

[Love4All]

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.

Psychiatry is based on the fallacy that “schizophrenia,” “bipolar,” “clinical depression,” etc., are medical diagnoses. They are not.

The human spirit is intimately connected with the human body, of course, so it is possible to affect the spirit by manipulating the chemistry of the brain. And that is Psychiatry’s “solution” to the human conditions labeled as “schizophrenia,” “depression,” “bi-polar,” etc.

If Psychiatry were able to actually eradicate the root cause of any of these conditions, then I would agree, it would have value. But that is not the case.

The conditions are spiritual, and a physician treats the body. Psychiatrists are physicians, not priests.

Jesus did not prescribe Thorazine, rather He cast out demons.

The solution to so-called “psychiatric illnesses” is not physical, but spiritual.

 

[Robert_Sock]

But there’s no need to attribute every form of psychological disorder to “spirtual forces,” whatever that may be. Many psychological disorders are rooted in inappropriate emotional responses. Whether they can be all be attributed to chemical imbalances I do not know. But neither do I think that they are all due to spiritual forces.

I would contend that chemical imbalances are also caused via ‘spiritual forces.’ I will not rule out ‘spiritual forces’ which are man made (or a part of another world that controls our own, but much further advanced).