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Psychiatry: The trouble with being mad in North America…

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updated framed cover … is that, at times, you’re saner than many pundits.

Further to Terms to retire from psychological science (Perry: Many terms commonly used in psychology, psychiatry and related fields “should be avoided, or at most used sparingly and with explicit caveats”):

A new book by Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove, Psychiatry Under the Influence,

investigates how the influence of pharmaceutical money and guild interests has corrupted the behavior of the American Psychiatric Association and academic psychiatry during the past 35 years. The book documents how the psychiatric establishment regularly misled the American public about what was known about the biology of mental disorders, the validity of psychiatric diagnoses, and the safety and efficacy of its drugs. It also looks at how these two corrupting influences encouraged the expansion of diagnostic boundaries and the creation of biased clinical practice guidelines. This corruption has led to significant social injury, and in particular, a societal lack of informed consent regarding the use of psychiatric drugs, and the pathologizing of normal behaviors in children and adults. The authors argue that reforming psychiatry will require the neutralization of these two corrupting influences—pharmaceutical money and guild interests—and the establishment of multidisciplinary authority over the field of mental health.

Good luck with that while metaphysical naturalism rules. To the extent that the self is doubted and our brains are thought to be shaped for fitness, not for truth, there is no basis for reform, just for handwringing, exposés, and earnest but unredeemable promises for reform.

See also: Jeff Brown: Separating science from apparent myth
A review of James Davies, Cracked Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm than Good (Icon Books, 327p) Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm than Good

and

A former American Psychiatric Association president complains, why doesn’t psychiatry get respect as a science?

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

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