Psychiatry - your opinions?

[Trystan]

I believe that we do not know enough about the human mind as of yet to treat mental illness 100% successfully. Take for example schizophrenia. Sometimes it has been successfully treated with medicine like vitamins, and at other times this treatment has proved to be useless. This, to me, seems to suggest that there are different kinds of tghis disease. I think that psychiatry is very much in its infancy and that this will chance within the next . . . well, I won't make predictions, but sometime in the future I believe it will change. Modern psychiatry however, is a discipline that bundles symoptoms together and calls the end result a "mental illness". This is can be seen with "personality disorders" in particular. And the people who represent this business (and it is a business - a profitable one and all) pontificate as professionals and experts.

Here is an insightful video on the matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McPnMQ31W_k&feature=related

Another question for you lot: do you think that capitalism is (or at least sometimes is) responsible for mental illness? I think this was argued in "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" but I am not sure.

[ChristianV777]

It depends what you mean by "responsible".
Have you read Michel Foucoult's "Madness and Civilization" or Erich Fromm's "The Sane Society"? They touch on certain links between the wider society and "mental illness".
Right. There isn't just one Schizophrenia. Most psychologists are coming to agree that it is the Schizophrenia(s), and that it's not the same in every person.
Schizophrenia existed before Capitalism, psychology is pretty sure of that. It wasn't "created" by Capitalism, no. But, the attitudes towards Schizophrenia have changed with time, especially with the Industrial Revolution, where your importance became entwined with your ability to work and produce profit.
Was Capitalism bad for people with Schizophrenia? Certainly. The stress of modern life and the alienation of our atomized societies is very negative. Schizophrenia is something that is triggered by stress. Schizophrenia, really, is a total inability to deal with and regulate stress in the manner of the majority of people. Is that genetic, learned, chemical imbalance, all of the above? Psychology really can't answer that. I'd say it's a mix and match and depends on the INDIVIDUAL (something Psychology, overall, has a hard time recognizing).
There have been studies done by Psychologists of people with Schizophrenia being treated in a city hospital versus being treated on an isolated farm. Exact same treatment, just in totally different settings. The ones on the isolated farm recovered far better.
Check on studies done of Schizophrenia in "Third World" countries who live in rural areas. FAR higher recovery rate, EVEN WITHOUT drugs, than in "First World" nations.
They don't get scared and lock away a family member when they develop Schizophrenic symptoms. They treat them the same as they always did, and the family member continues to do rural work same as before.
And, in tribal cultures, there are no reports of Schizophrenia. Why is this? Could be two reasons. One, the tribal cultures might respect the views of the Schizophrenia and not consider them sick, but consider them to be communing with advanced planes of reality, or also, the low-stress of tribal life compared to modern industrial societies could mean that the people aren't developing Schizophrenia (I'm not sure about the second explanation). Perhaps it is that they are not developing Schizophrenia in the way that modern Psychology defines the term.
I'm not saying that tribal life is utopia by any means, but there's a connection between everyone in the tribe not seen in modern "Western" societies and they do less work, or at least more meaningful work, and everything isn't based on how much money you can make. So, Communism would be very helpful for those dealing with "mental illnesses".
The attitudes by people towards the "mentally ill" is a major problem. And, a lot of those attitudes are based in Capitalist society, with its "work ethic", its idea that those who don't produce are wastes of valuable time and resources, and our societies' conformist culture.
Schizophrenics are people who don't conform to modern society, in many ways. One of those ways is that people with Schizophrenia, by and large, don't find much importance in consumerism. Modern Capitalist society judges people based on how much they produce and consume.

I have a degree in abnormal psychology (I actually specialized in Schizophrenia), and have always approached the field from a Marxist perspective.

I agree with your negative assessment of Psychiatry. I can't find anything I disagree with in your comments. There are many major problems in the field.

[Hyacinth]

Psychology is to psychiatry what biology is to medicine. That being said, biology is a much better developed science than psychology: we understand the human body far better than we understand the human mind or, for that matter, even the human brain.

The developments that we have seen in both psychology and psychiatry have been rather rapid: for instance, homosexuality was not long ago considered a mental illness, we have since moved beyond that. Likewise various other non-neurotypical traits might cease to be labelled ‘illnesses’, Asperger’s being one example.

You might want to check you Foucault’s Madness and Civilization, it deals with the subject of how society constructs mental illness. In large part what we label a mental illness is mostly whatever deviates from the norm. Over the last few years we’ve seen an increasing number of people being diagnosed with mental illnesses and being prescribed medication for it: shyness is now ‘social anxiety disorder’, depression is now quite extensively medicated, ADD is overdiagnosed, etc. This isn’t to say that no such thing as ‘social anxiety disorder’ exists, or that depression shouldn’t be treated with medication, rather only that in our culture many people who don’t require medication are given it, and many people are overmedicated. All of this is due to pressures from pharmaceutical companies who seek to make a profit.

[trivas7]

The developments that we have seen in both psychology and psychiatry have been rather rapid: for instance, homosexuality was not long ago considered a mental illness, we have since moved beyond that. Likewise various other non-neurotypical traits might cease to be labelled ‘illnesses’, Asperger’s being one example.

Attitudes towards homosexuality have always been a cultural issue, psychologists only entered the pictures for those who were looking for a "cure". Asperger's AFAIK is a neurological, not a psychiatric, diagnosis.

We now know how to treat schizophrenia very sucessfully BTW.

[ChristianV777]

I'd like to hear about that.
Hopefully, you aren't referring to anti-psychotics, with such a low recovery rate, and in most incidences with greater side-effects than the positives.

With homosexuality, Hyacinth seems to be referring to the fact that it was listed in the DSM-III as a psychological disorder, but was removed with the publication of the DSM-IV by the APA. This was very recently, just in the 1970s.
This was actually a very big deal because it was very hard to fight for gay rights while medical professionals were stating that it was a mental abnormality.

As far as Asperger's, it took organization and protesting by Asperger's Rights groups to get Asperger's respected as a "difference" rather than something to be treated by Psychology.
"Different not disordered" was, I believe, their slogan.
Check out some of the "autistic pride" movements.

[Dean]

I believe that we do not know enough about the human mind as of yet to treat mental illness 100% successfully. Take for example schizophrenia. Sometimes it has been successfully treated with medicine like vitamins, and at other times this treatment has proved to be useless. This, to me, seems to suggest that there are different kinds of tghis disease. I think that psychiatry is very much in its infancy and that this will chance within the next . . . well, I won't make predictions, but sometime in the future I believe it will change. Modern psychiatry however, is a discipline that bundles symoptoms together and calls the end result a "mental illness". This is can be seen with "personality disorders" in particular. And the people who represent this business (and it is a business - a profitable one and all) pontificate as professionals and experts.

Here is an insightful video on the matter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McPnMQ31W_k&feature=related

Another question for you lot: do you think that capitalism is (or at least sometimes is) responsible for mental illness? I think this was argued in "Capitalism and Schizophrenia" but I am not sure.

Capitalism has a lot to do with mental illness. In fact, I would argue that capitalism is a mental illness characterized by wide-spread competitiveness, exclusory attitudes, irrational moral conclusions and economically self-destructive acts.

Our psychiatric industry mirrors this. It is rife with the problems you describe. I would say that Schizophrenia and Autism are very relative to the social conditions existing today: it is very telling that children in Silicon Valley have some of the highest rates of Autistim in the U.S..

On a related note, freedon, and thefore the economic issues surrounding captialism, are inexorably linekd to psychology. The fact that people can and are brainwashed frequently, and deeply by our social order, ought to tip people off that all the major issues of socialism must have a basis in a sound psychological standpoint. I find it very interesting how the "materialists" in this forum regularly ignore the most important material basis for social organization, the human mind.

[ChristianV777]

Excellent post, Dean!
I have not come across this idea about autism (which I also share) with anyone else, except my internet comrade.
Did you come across this idea anywhere or just through free thinking also?
I also think that the fact that far more males are diagnosed with autism, which is characterized by lack of ability to experience and express a full-range of emotions, is very telling, since our societies teach that females should be emotional, and males should not be.

Oh, actually, I do believe I came across an opinion by a female who did have Asperger's that because society nurtures females differently than males (through showing of emotions and learning about social functions) that she feels she was better able to deal with Asperger's than many male children, who would not be nurtured in the same way.

[Dean]

Excellent post, Dean!
I have not come across this idea about autism (which I also share) with anyone else, except my internet comrade.
Did you come across this idea anywhere or just through free thinking also?
I also think that the fact that far more males are diagnosed with autism, which is characterized by lack of ability to experience and express a full-range of emotions, is very telling, since our societies teach that females should be emotional, and males should not be.

Oh, actually, I do believe I came across an opinion by a female who did have Asperger's that because society nurtures females differently than males (through showing of emotions and learning about social functions) that she feels she was better able to deal with Asperger's than many male children, who would not be nurtured in the same way.

Interesting about your friend with aspergers. I think our social values definitely influence, and often derail our emotional and psychological development when it comes to inter-personal relationships.

Ironic you should mention that you think similarly about Autism, because Fromm's "Escape From Freedom" inflenced me a lot in regards to this. Fromm's writings in general helped me to recreate my political outlook into a more fluid, objective and analytical mode. This helped form a basis for my outlook on the issues surrounding social alienation and Autism / Schizophrenia, and reading articles about Autism in other sources have generally refined and reinforced this standpoint.

[trivas7]

The fact that people can and are brainwashed frequently, and deeply by our social order, ought to tip people off that all the major issues of socialism must have a basis in a sound psychological standpoint. I find it very interesting how the "materialists" in this forum regularly ignore the most important material basis for social organization, the human mind.
Interesting Dean, but this stands historical materialism on its head. For the Marxist social being determines social consciousness. IOW, minds are the product -- not the producers -- of social existence.

[Dean]

Interesting Dean, but this stands historical materialism on its head. For the Marxist social being determines social consciousness. IOW, minds are the product -- not the producers -- of social existence.

No... the Marxist algorithism is as follows: conditions of existence compel the human to respond, and that response is in turn formed into a moral standards. In the very first dynamic, you have the human mind as a producer of social activity. Even without that, it would be crazy, and antithetical to Marx's worldview, to say that the human mind is somehow outside of any part of the creation of social reality. Because the human mind is a material fact, rather than a mystical, subjective force (something Marx specifically pointed out), it must therefore be understood as an aspect of all social relationships, and therefore part of any theory or judgment on such issues.

This is a common mistake about Marx's theory. It is true that Marx opposed the idolization of the human mind as the sole creator of social reality. He was intent on describing how our social conditions helped modify it. However, he also made a point to incorporate the mind as an aspect in all of these dynamics, as it is a material force. "Ideas don't make reality" does not mean "reality and ideas are mutually exclusive," at least it shouldn't

I am particularly interested in the mental aspect of social existence because it is so ignored for these reasons.

[trivas7]

No... the Marxist algorithism is as follows: conditions of existence compel the human to respond, and that response is in turn formed into a moral standards.

I disagree, although I take your point on the importance of the mental aspect of social existence. Conditions of existence don't compel someone to form moral standards. Those already exist in the minds of the ruling class. Morality as ideology grows out of social formations, i.e. slavery was a moral good for Aristotle, because his society needed slaves for its economic development. I understand that for Marx mind was an aspect of the dynamics of an economy, but for him morals were the result of social existence, not its creator.

[Dean]

I disagree, although I take your point on the importance of the mental aspect of social existence. Conditions of existence don't compel someone to form moral standards. Those already exist in the minds of the ruling class. Morality as ideology grows out of social formations, i.e. slavery was a moral good for Aristotle, because his society needed slaves for its economic development. I understand that for Marx mind was an aspect of the dynamics of an economy, but for him morals were the result of social existence, not its creator.

Correct. Morality is defined by your response to social conditions. In that sense, they are a result of the synthesis between the individual's standpoint and social existence as defined by society, and the necessities put forth. The point I am making is that morality is defined by consistent, repeated actions as per this dynamic. However, because morality is a mental activity, it cannot be solely defined by its character as designated externally, by society. Morals are the result, albeit not solely, of social existence.

[trivas7]

Correct. Morality is defined by your response to social conditions. In that sense, they are a result of the synthesis between the individual's standpoint and social existence as defined by society, and the necessities put forth. The point I am making is that morality is defined by consistent, repeated actions as per this dynamic. However, because morality is a mental activity, it cannot be solely defined by its character as designated externally, by society. Morals are the result, albeit not solely, of social existence.
Well, I would call what you describe as morality here character in this context. Character is the result of repeated, consistent action that is one's personal response to the social conditions one finds oneself in. This can or cannot reflect the dominant social ethos. Perhaps I nitpick.

[Trystan]

Hey, thanks for all the replies to this. They're all very insightful. I have not read a thing by Foucault or Fromm. The opinions I expressed I acquired from various articles/videos I've read/seen, plus personal experience with the psychiatry. I will definitely be checking those two authors out though.

Btw, does anyone have an opinion on R.D. Laing? I bought "The Divided Self" last week and have not really got into it yet. What confuses me is the way he uses the term "existentialism" in a different way that Sartre, Heidegger, etc. did (if my memory serves me right, that is).