The Real Problems With Psychiatry

[Shlomo]

You are right on! You have experience with these things, as do I.

Love4All, I believe your brief testimony would be worth more than kilos of psychiatric literature.
Would you?

 

[Z1Z2]

I have to put my 2 cents in here, as someone who was involuntarily committed to an asylum soon after my conversion, I can tell you they did not encourage my beliefs in there. They did not listen when I asked for a Priest, they mocked how I wanted to be a nun , and later told me not to read the Bible daily and got angry at me for doing a religious puzzle of the inside of a Church… so had they been a bit nicer in encouraging me about God things may not have been so bad, but they did not seem to do that for me, and I have heard similar stories from others about the discouragement of spiritual matters from the psychiatry system. Oh and they also would not let me go to the Chapel.
It is very sad.

I am sorry for what happened to you, but it is not that way everywhere that deals with psychiatric patients. At the psychiatric facility at which my husband works, there are regular visits from religious clergy (since residents can’t leave). I don’t know about Protestant services, but a priest visits weekly to offer Mass. Bibles and religious items are welcome in the residents’ rooms. BTW, this is a public facility paid by tax dollars.

 

[Portrait]

).

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.

Dear Doctor,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

Let me begin on a positive note, dear friend, and say that I freely acknowledge that psych-therapy does have a role to play towards healing the mind of those suffering with an acute emotional disturbance of some sort. No man can doubt the connection between mental states and certain physical and moral disorders and it is a fact that psycho-therapy has wrought many cures, or at least a substantial improvement in mental well-being. Under the capable and sympathetic direction of his therapist the patient can be induced, if that is the correct word, to completely change his mental outlook and effectively deal with the pattern of negative thinking that has blighted his life.

Much of today’s psychotherapy is undeniably socially destructive, dear friend, inasmuch as many modern psychologists tacitly assume that social or personality characteristics are to blame when, for example, a patient’s marriage ends in tragic divorce. The problem, I think, begins with modern psychotherapy’s neurotic preoccupation with the individual patient. This is reflected in the absence during most therapy of representation for children, spouse, parents et al. However, inordinate identification with and excessive trust in patients has blighted psychotherapy from the very start, as you know. A famous example is Freud’s absurd belief that his patients’ description of having been sexually interfered with in childhood were in fact always true. The whole problem with ‘client-centred’ therapy is that the therapy is too patient centred and seldom, if ever, challenges the patient’s interpretation of the facts. Therefore since theoretical dogma demands total trust and ‘unconditional positive regard’, very little impediment exists as regards uncritical acceptance of the patient’s account of things.

What is also of concern, especially for Catholics, is that modern psychology does have an unfortunate penchant to side with anti-family values, which is hardly surprising given the high proportion of psychotherapists who are themselves divorced or alienated from their families and traditional religions. It would, dear friend, be perfectly reasonable to conclude that such therapists have a normal human desire for social confirmation of their own life-pattern and thus are probably more inclined to encourage such a pattern in their patients. As you are aware, many self-theorists like Carl Rogers, give very little value to marriage and, indeed, encourage divorce on theoretical grounds.

Again the anti-family effects of modern popular psychology are compounded by an overwhelming theoretical bias against parents. Now I understand that this bias has existed from the beginning with Freud’s postulate of the Oedipus complex - the supposedly intense hatred between father and son. However, more recently the theoretical preoccupation has shifted to the mother, who has been subjected to a veritable conceptual barrage for being dominating, manipulative seductive and emotionally dependent. In the case of both parents it is surely high time that all this nonsense be by its real name - a new variety of the old prejudice ‘scapegoating’. My plea is that modern psychological theory will be honest enough to concede that a patient’s mental health issues are not always the fault of parents, any more than they are of the stars, but within themselves. The ghost of the Oedipus complex and of the bad mother can still be found in transactional analysis, where the father and mother are merged into the ‘unisex’ ego state termed ‘Parent’. In the hippy jargon, I’m OK - You’re OK, for example, there is no doubt that the Parent, notwithstanding some good characterstics, is seen as the major cause of all our woes. The child is described as vulnerable, but otherwise as innocent, happy and good. This myth of the intrinsically good and happy child, with negative influences all coming from without, is a form of sentimentality almost touching upon naivete. This silly theory has also, since the 1960’s, impacted the world of educational theory and even child rearing methods. Punishment for wrongdoing, especially corporal punishment, is viewed with suspicion and parents are encouraged to adopt positive reinforcement and avoid chastisement or harshness. Thus children’s remarkable capacity, owing to Original Sin, to become totally demanding tyrants who want their own way at all costs is ignored and their selfishness is indulged to a sickening extent.

These are, dear friend, just a sampling of some of the problems I and many others have with modern popular psychology, but I do appreciate that not all those who work within the field of mental health would endorse them, but an increasing number certainly do and that is worrisome. Of course, the conventional wisdom for some years has been that the family ahs failed, hence the growing number of people seeking psychotherapy. However, what is failing is not the family but modernism with its analytic emphasis on the independent, mobile individual, caught up in narcissistic goals. The answer to the meaningless lives of the young today is to work at reducing the number of children being reared in dysfunctional homes, devoid of any discipline worthy of the name. However, I am firmly of the opinion that this will unlikely happen unless there is a radical change in widely accepted beliefs regarding the value and importance of the family and social bonds in general.

God bless and keep up your good work.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

 

[7_Sorrows]

I have to put my 2 cents in here, as someone who was involuntarily committed to an asylum soon after my conversion, I can tell you they did not encourage my beliefs in there. They did not listen when I asked for a Priest, they mocked how I wanted to be a nun , and later told me not to read the Bible daily and got angry at me for doing a religious puzzle of the inside of a Church… so had they been a bit nicer in encouraging me about God things may not have been so bad, but they did not seem to do that for me, and I have heard similar stories from others about the discouragement of spiritual matters from the psychiatry system. Oh and they also would not let me go to the Chapel.
It is very sad.

thank you for your post. I wanted to share my experience with a psychiatrist I am currently seeing. I feel he has discouraged me also from believing in anything spiritual.
whenever I talk about going to Mass or Adoration or talk about the daily readings I do he just sits there and says he is not religious. that the old testament and the food laws were only to keep people from getting sick by not eating pork, etc.
he only wants me to read the books he wants me to read. I have only been Catholic since 2008 and did not go to church for 25 years. my spiritual life and Catholic faith are important to me. I find him kind of cocky. my daily readings are important to me.
it seems sad that psychiatry is so secular. I have considered not returning to see him anymore because I feel frustrated and don’t think it is helping me, but is hindering me to feel better because of his judgment.

 

[7_Sorrows]

Dear Doctor,

Cordial greetings and a very good day.

Let me begin on a positive note, dear friend, and say that I freely acknowledge that psych-therapy does have a role to play towards healing the mind of those suffering with an acute emotional disturbance of some sort. No man can doubt the connection between mental states and certain physical and moral disorders and it is a fact that psycho-therapy has wrought many cures, or at least a substantial improvement in mental well-being. Under the capable and sympathetic direction of his therapist the patient can be induced, if that is the correct word, to completely change his mental outlook and effectively deal with the pattern of negative thinking that has blighted his life.

Much of today’s psychotherapy is undeniably socially destructive, dear friend, inasmuch as many modern psychologists tacitly assume that social or personality characteristics are to blame when, for example, a patient’s marriage ends in tragic divorce. The problem, I think, begins with modern psychotherapy’s neurotic preoccupation with the individual patient. This is reflected in the absence during most therapy of representation for children, spouse, parents et al. However, inordinate identification with and excessive trust in patients has blighted psychotherapy from the very start, as you know. A famous example is Freud’s absurd belief that his patients’ description of having been sexually interfered with in childhood were in fact always true. The whole problem with ‘client-centred’ therapy is that the therapy is too patient centred and seldom, if ever, challenges the patient’s interpretation of the facts. Therefore since theoretical dogma demands total trust and ‘unconditional positive regard’, very little impediment exists as regards uncritical acceptance of the patient’s account of things.

What is also of concern, especially for Catholics, is that modern psychology does have an unfortunate penchant to side with anti-family values, which is hardly surprising given the high proportion of psychotherapists who are themselves divorced or alienated from their families and traditional religions. It would, dear friend, be perfectly reasonable to conclude that such therapists have a normal human desire for social confirmation of their own life-pattern and thus are probably more inclined to encourage such a pattern in their patients. As you are aware, many self-theorists like Carl Rogers, give very little value to marriage and, indeed, encourage divorce on theoretical grounds.

Again the anti-family effects of modern popular psychology are compounded by an overwhelming theoretical bias against parents. Now I understand that this bias has existed from the beginning with Freud’s postulate of the Oedipus complex - the supposedly intense hatred between father and son. However, more recently the theoretical preoccupation has shifted to the mother, who has been subjected to a veritable conceptual barrage for being dominating, manipulative seductive and emotionally dependent. In the case of both parents it is surely high time that all this nonsense be by its real name - a new variety of the old prejudice ‘scapegoating’. My plea is that modern psychological theory will be honest enough to concede that a patient’s mental health issues are not always the fault of parents, any more than they are of the stars, but within themselves. The ghost of the Oedipus complex and of the bad mother can still be found in transactional analysis, where the father and mother are merged into the ‘unisex’ ego state termed ‘Parent’. In the hippy jargon, I’m OK - You’re OK, for example, there is no doubt that the Parent, notwithstanding some good characterstics, is seen as the major cause of all our woes. The child is described as vulnerable, but otherwise as innocent, happy and good. This myth of the intrinsically good and happy child, with negative influences all coming from without, is a form of sentimentality almost touching upon naivete. This silly theory has also, since the 1960’s, impacted the world of educational theory and even child rearing methods. Punishment for wrongdoing, especially corporal punishment, is viewed with suspicion and parents are encouraged to adopt positive reinforcement and avoid chastisement or harshness. Thus children’s remarkable capacity, owing to Original Sin, to become totally demanding tyrants who want their own way at all costs is ignored and their selfishness is indulged to a sickening extent.

These are, dear friend, just a sampling of some of the problems I and many others have with modern popular psychology, but I do appreciate that not all those who work within the field of mental health would endorse them, but an increasing number certainly do and that is worrisome. Of course, the conventional wisdom for some years has been that the family ahs failed, hence the growing number of people seeking psychotherapy. However, what is failing is not the family but modernism with its analytic emphasis on the independent, mobile individual, caught up in narcissistic goals. The answer to the meaningless lives of the young today is to work at reducing the number of children being reared in dysfunctional homes, devoid of any discipline worthy of the name. However, I am firmly of the opinion that this will unlikely happen unless there is a radical change in widely accepted beliefs regarding the value and importance of the family and social bonds in general.

God bless and keep up your good work.

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

Pax

the psychiatrist I was seeing had been married 3 times and converted to Catholicism when he married one of his wives and upon divorcing, left the Catholic church.

I respect cultures that have strong family structures and units.

 

[Christine85]

thank you for your post. I wanted to share my experience with a psychiatrist I am currently seeing. I feel he has discouraged me also from believing in anything spiritual.
whenever I talk about going to Mass or Adoration or talk about the daily readings I do he just sits there and says he is not religious. that the old testament and the food laws were only to keep people from getting sick by not eating pork, etc.
he only wants me to read the books he wants me to read. I have only been Catholic since 2008 and did not go to church for 25 years. my spiritual life and Catholic faith are important to me. I find him kind of cocky. my daily readings are important to me.
it seems sad that psychiatry is so secular. I have considered not returning to see him anymore because I feel frustrated and don’t think it is helping me, but is hindering me to feel better because of his judgment.

Stop seeing him!!! Take your business elsewhere you deserve the right to do what makes you happy rather than feel pressured by him as though you are doing something wrong when he has no right to say that. Get rid of him

 

[Robert_Sock]

Stop seeing him!!! Take your business elsewhere you deserve the right to do what makes you happy rather than feel pressured by him as though you are doing something wrong when he has no right to say that. Get rid of him

Yes, get rid of him and find somebody who is religious. I have a Jewish psychotherapist who is religious and has great respect for Catholicism.

 

[paula20]

my psychiatric nurse also discouraged me from going to mass and to instead put my faith in the medications. I love going to mass and just spending time with Jesus , it helps me more than any tablet.

 

[Robert_Sock]

my psychiatric nurse also discouraged me from going to mass and to instead put my faith in the medications. I love going to mass and just spending time with Jesus , it helps me more than any tablet.

It’s a lot of trial and error trying to finding good medical professionals. It took me about 5 tries before I found a good psychotherapist.

 

[FrancisBenedict]

my psychiatric nurse also discouraged me from going to mass and to instead put my faith in the medications. I love going to mass and just spending time with Jesus , it helps me more than any tablet.

Paula, keep going to Mass.

At Mass we receiving healing on every level.

There are many people in this world who don’t believe in our amazing God.Let’s say a prayer for those of them we know.+

God bless you +

 

[guanophore]

my psychiatric nurse also discouraged me from going to mass and to instead put my faith in the medications. I love going to mass and just spending time with Jesus , it helps me more than any tablet.

There is no reason the two would be mutually exclusive!

You can also frequently request the sacrament of healing through the annointing with oil since you have a chronic condition. Does your parish offer this regularly?

 

[7_Sorrows]

Yes, get rid of him and find somebody who is religious. I have a Jewish psychotherapist who is religious and has great respect for Catholicism.

thanks for the advice. I appreciate the honesty. I lived a very secular life at one time and about 10 years ago decided to try getting back into a Christian life, so the temptation is always there. I don’t need the encouragement from a psychiatrist to live a sinful life again!

 

[billcu1]

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.

All the ICD is is code numbers for insurance claims. It’s not diagnostic. I agree with the DSM being a crock though. They took homosexuality out in 2 or 3.

 

[Someone_Else]

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/

What’s worse is the medical evidence is coming in proving that the ADHD drugs and antidepressants cause symptoms of bipolar. And the bipolar meds given long run cause atrophy of the brain, exactly as seen in long run medicated schizophrenics. In other words, the psychiatric drugs cause the diseases listed in the DSM. The psychiatrists sat around writing a “bible” of the mental illnesses caused by their drugs for the last 50 years.

And what’s truly heartbreaking is that although it is misdiagnosis, according to the DSM, to claim antidepressant or ADHD drug induced mania is bipolar, over a million American children have already been so misdiagnosed and been put on these dangerous antipsychotics which cause obesity, diabetes, and atrophy of the brain.

I highly recommend reading Robert Whitaker’s book “Anatomy of an Epidemic.” He spoke at a conference in front of the pope last month. And even the United Nations has stated “forced psychiatric treatment is torture.” And every child is forced to take their meds. Drugging up children is not the answer.

 

[7_Sorrows]

i stopped seeing the psychiatrist that I was seeing who I felt was confusing me more than helping me. I am angry at myself that I did not walk out of his office sooner. instead I would return to be insulted with sarcastic comments time and time again. I also gradually took myself off the anti-depressant medicine I was on and I am beginning to feel my life open up again. I changed my availability at work so I can begin attending weekly Mass on Saturdays evenings again.

the sad thing is, that when a person is depressed and their self esteem is down, a psychiatrist or psychologist has all the power on their side. the depressed person feels powerless and his or her judgment is altered. that is my opinion anyway. I think there probably are some good counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists that genuinely care about the person who walks into their office and there are others who are burned out or who lump everyone together.

our mental health system in this country definitely needs attention and it has for years.

 

[Someone_Else]

I’m sorry for what happened to you. I ran into egregious paychiatric abuse myself, although I wasn’t able to comprehend the magnitude of it until weaned of the toxic meds, reading all my medical records, and researching medicine myself. Because no doctor would explain the prior malpractice due to a medical “Wall of Silence” problem. We need a return of ethics within the US medical community, although the true evil seems to be the psycho / pharmaceutical industries.

 

[Matilda_Bennett]

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