[Grun tu Molani]

As an experiment.

[sploop!]

@ Grun tu Molani

We finished our experiment on you some weeks ago. Do you have any suggestions as to what we should do with you next?

[Alex2007]

Mental illness is the default diagnosis for every patient; every patient is presumed mentally ill unless a doctor proves otherwise.

NIH admitted that stomach ulcers are due to infectious disease (H. Pylori) in 1994. Before that, patients with H-Pylori infection were called mentally disordered by the medical establishment.

http://www.cdc.gov/ulcer/history.htm

Mentally-ill is what Lyme-disease patients get called whenever doctors fail to order a Lyme-disease test:



The American Psychiatric Association (APA) advises that a patient is “mentally disordered” any time physicians fail to identify an underlying general medical condition. This concept of mental-disorder is perverted and absurd, as it projects physicians' failures onto patients.

The APA's DSM-IV-TR (p. 485) reads:

The common feature of the Somatoform Disorders is the presence of physical symptoms that suggest a general medical condition... and are not fully explained by a general medical condition....

The APA employs the Passive Voice in their construction of this definition. As pointed out in The American Heritage® Book of English Usage,

You can... use the passive voice to conceal the performer of an action or the identity of a person responsible for a mistake....

... and concealing the performer of an action or the identity of a person responsible for a mistake is exactly what that DSM passage does. Who's job is it to explain? Is it the general medical condition's job? No. Is it the symptoms' job to explain? NO. The job of explaining is the doctors'.

Language less obfuscatory would be:

The common feature of the Somatoform Disorders is the presence of physical symptoms that suggest a general medical condition... and are not fully explained by treating physicians as a general medical condition....

So this perverted DSM-passage claims that doctors' failures signify mental disorder in patients. This perverted DSM-passage advocates that doctors project their own failures onto patients.

Regarding peptic ulcers, Peter Moran recounts: "It was only when someone looked... with the right kind of microscope and the right kind of staining that Helicobacter was found to be consistently present in ulcer patients." So, just because it took a while for someone to look with the right kind of microscope, and the right kind of staining, in the meantime millions of patients were misdiagnosed as mental cases, in accordance with the APA's absurd concept of mental disorder.

In an infectious-disease textbook, you would never find a passage of the form, "Test the patient for various mental disorders, and if all tests come back negative, diagnose him with this infectious disease." But that form of definition is what the APA uses to define Somatoform Disorder. Only in psychiatry, would a disease be diagnosed via process-of-elimination.

Psychiatry is a racket; even Tom Widiger, head of research for the DSM-IV admits it:

There are lots of studies which show that clinicians diagnose most of their patients with one particular disorder and really don’t systematically assess for other disorders. They have a bias in reference to the disorder that they are especially interested in treating and believe that most of their patients have.

more info here

[sploop!]

That's all well and good, but it doesn't really do much for the person who wakes up one morning feeling 'unwell' and wanting to feel 'well' again. How do you tell someone who is hearing voices telling him to:

KILL THEM ALL!

that actually, psychiatry is a racket?

[Alex2007]

It is a racket. Ask him whether he's tried metal-chelation and various broad-spectrum antibiotics, to treat any poisoning / infectious-disease that's probably responsible for his neurological symptoms. Ask him if he's tried albendazole in conjunct with a steroid and anticonvulsant. When he says, "my shrink never offered me that," ask him why not.

[sploop!]

Nice answer!

Just goes to show - fora like this one can make an impact on how people see things.

The difficulty, I guess, is getting enough research done to confirm that this is a realistic position to take. I suspect you may have a point (now I have had it explained to me in my own terms), but I don't know how strong your point is. My other worry is that the use of antibiotics as a first-response may not be wise and could create other difficulties for us further down the road.

But point taken.

[Alex2007]

"My other worry is that the use of antibiotics as a first-response may not be wise and could create other difficulties for us further down the road."

That is a good point, but the same could be said about any kind of health-care, as all of it drives the population upwards, which creates other difficulties for humanity down the road.

In any case, I don't think it's right that doctors make such a good living telling Lyme-disease patients that they're hypochondriacs.

[euglena]

DMV IV

[Monkeydust]

Is mental illness biological, environmental, or just a social stigma for people who are "different"?

I think we can eliminate the last one outright. There's definitely a social consensus defining some emotional states as "odd" or "weird", and to a point this is unjustified. It doesn't follow, though, that all mental illness is just some "lifestyle choice", or that the people who experience it are just stigmatized individuals oppressed by "the norm". The most obvious reason for this is that many (probably most) mentally ill people accept that something is wrong. Depressed people don't feel "right" about being depressed; people having panic attacks want to stop them; people with obsessions find them very often find them crippling, and would love not to have them. Mental illness is a genuine phenomenon.

So is it biological or purely psychological? I think it's a bit of both, and it depends on the illness we're talking about.

There's definitely a biological link. If you have a schizophrenic parent, you're 10 times as likely to develop it yourself, even if you were separated from them at birth (proving it's genetic, not environmental). I've heard there's also genetic links to OCD, depression, and anxiety.

It doesn't follow, though, that there is necessarily some physical problem that can only be corrected with medication. I don't accept the "chemical imblanace" hypothesis. Depression and anxiety, in particular, can be treated effectively without medication, and to this point we have to accept that there's more than just biology at work here.

[Wellsy]

I think this is a useful read
Does Mental Illness Exist?
I don't think I necessarily disagree with this strong sense that the individualized management of people's problems is without value, and I'm wary of an outright rejection of the healthcare system in spite of it's clear inadequacies.

My understanding isn't the denial of there being a biological basis to our mental issues, but that there is no clear demarcation of a mental illness based on a biological etymology in the way that other physical diseases are identifiable. To which then mental illness isn't then defined by biology, by symptology based on how functional someone is socially, like their relationships are fine, they're not fucking up their own lives and they're able to work. If none of these a problem, someone might be possible to diagnose as say autistic but because they have social supports and reasonable degree of cognitive functioning, that they don't need much support from a healthcare system. I've had a lecturer posit just that, that an example of some kid with autism in a small town community that looked out for 'em didn't have a disorder. They seemed to take a pragmatist approach in which the label/diagnosis was a useful one for accessing supports when they're needed and useless when they aren't.

But in a strictly social model, a person's functioning may not be a sign of problems with them but of society and it's current state. As such, the idea of mental illness becomes defined by how acceptable some behaviour is. Which I think as a point has some merit but shouldn't be taken so far as to delegitimize the utility of services for people who do need it. Especially based on the rapaciousness of pharmaceutical companies in the US or the lack of radical effort to overcome capitalism which destroys social relations and people, and doesn't offer direct social solutions but only inadequate individualized management.
As far as I can tell, demarcating what a mental illness is, faces the same issues of demarcating a science as expressed by Paul Feyerabend. That there is no clarity on the issue, but there are clearly people that have difficulties that need support and whether someone calls it a mental illness or wants mental illness to be viewed differently then that's fine. But mental illness will necessarily exist within our current social relations just as the divine right of kings was real in it's own time, it has a necessary function.

I suppose the thought experiment to pose whether mental illness exists would be, to what extent does one thing our current conception of mental illness and the difficulties presented by those deemed mentally ill would fade away in society changed in a certain way.
Because looking at the wheelchair example...

it's easy enough to see how society can be made more inclusive. But it's not apparent to me how some folks with schizophrenia are so easily accommodated. I suppose there might be the suggestion of how such tendencies aren't stigmatized as mental illness in the overly rationalistic west but are characteristics supported in mystic fashion. And so the conception of it being a disorder to be treated becomes obsolete. But that exists within a particular kind of society that has a place to which those characteristics are rewarded or sought.
What kind of society post-capitalism or something would make many 'disorder's obsolete' as problematic.
Our knee jerk reaction is that they need help, but why they need help is based on a functionalist sense of them being maladpative and problematic for our current social standards. But I don't think such judgements are made irrelevant, as long as society stands as it is, so does the problematic nature of some things. Positing that things are deemed socially problematic doesn't make schizophrenia any less difficult.
I'm thinking even in an ideal world, there would be difficulties that arise that seek support which may not be so medical but more directly social. And so in a sense things would no longer exist as they were, but would be conceptualized in a different form relevant to social conditions.

[Thomasmariel]

Mental illness can be thought as a defect of information relays. Experiencing the same information time after time will eventually produce concentrations of dysfunctional thinking

[The Sabbaticus]

Mental illness is when you let a couple of doctors mutilate your genitalia. And force others to pretend that you're a member of the opposite gender.

[Wellsy]

Interesting to consider not just the semantics but the ontology implied in the idea of mental illness. It seems the classic psychiatric critic Thomas Szaz uses a category point about how mental illnesses thought to be a disease of the mind wouldn’t be changed through psychotherapy and would be clearly be considered brain diseases rather than a syndrome of symptoms expressed in ones actions, thoughts and feelings.

The asserted implications of this appearence of scientific authority of a biological science which necessarily resuces human nature to descriptions of chemical processes and thus poses chemical interventions as a means of control or eliminating undesirable symptoms. Where its informed by a value system of what is acceptable and the authority of a psych can mean that someone considered too insane can be ignored and treated as an object and not a human with reason.

I fond the debate interesting but I haven’t really seen too much of an examination of the philosophical problems in conceptualizing human nature and thus appropriate interventions. The humanistic trend in mental health emphasizes humans are persons with reasons, motives and such which whilst seemingly irrational and difficult to understand for the external onlooker is driven by activity imbued with intent.
But then things like schizophrenia do seem to show a sign of a break down in the complex interrelations of human consciousness regressing to lower conceptual thinking and thought entirely subdued to affect to the point it bottoms out. What then is suggested is the need for an alternative and superior sense of mental illness and health that isn’t so determined by the industry that tries to confine humans to categorial boxes for bureaucratic purposes (does insurance cover this or not).

[Godstud]

Mental illness is when you are Dutch and just post stupid hateful things on the internet all day long.

[Patrickov]

Mental illness is when you are Dutch and just post stupid hateful things on the internet all day long.

Agree (replace "Dutch" with any other suitable adjectives).

Or feels emotional to at least 50% of whatever shown in front of one's eyes.