A DIFFERING VIEW: Diagnosis of mental illness lacks scientific rigor
The Rocky Mountain News July 10 editorial, “The gaming addiction,” naively assumes that the so-called disorders included in the American Psychiatric Association’s billing bible, the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition), are scientifically proven as real “mental illnesses.” They are not.
The so-called disorders listed in this book are merely approved for the manual by APA members at their meetings. There is no proof given or expected by this group that these “disorders” are indeed diseases. The only product that comes from the DSM is more fraudulent labels by which people can be tagged and therefore billed for “treatment,” i.e., mind-altering drugs.
That psychiatrist Jerald Block talks about the Columbine killers and their fascination with an online game in his article for the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry does not prove anything either.
How transparent is that — psychiatrists blaming video games to divert attention from the fact that both Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris had been undergoing therapy prior to the Columbine shootings ... and that Harris was actually on the psychiatric drug Luvox.
Nor do psychiatrists want us to take a close look at the fact that patients under psychiatric treatment and drugging have been involved in other horrible acts of violence, including other school shootings.
The Food and Drug Administration, the British Medical Association and many other agencies worldwide have now begun recognizing that the drugs being used as “treatment” can cause violence.
No surprise that psychiatry is pushing for more new labels of “mental illnesses” so they can be included in the new edition of the billing bible, DSM-V, which will be thick with new ways to find “patients” and bill them for “treatment.”
Shawn May is a resident of Centennial.
Very well said. Psychiatrists and psychologists are bogus as is their "field". But they are allowed to do a lot of harm.
Posted by on July 18, 2007 07:39 AMIn my humble opinion psychiatrists is a do-nothing profession but with the ability to do great harm. If you think about it, these so-called doctors learn their profession from books written by authors who learned their profression from more books with no actual work involved to learn the illnesses they're treating with expensive drugs.
Posted by John Shriver on July 18, 2007 07:57 AMWhile I doubt that there is a scientific way to prove or disprove the existence of many mental illnesses, I also agree that the psychiatric/psychological community is taking undue advantage of this to "push the envelope" in a way that benefits its pocketbook.
This is another of many situations in which we need more government intervention and regulation. Capitalism has produced many benefits for us, but one of them is not voluntarily policing itself in a way that will reduce its profits.
Posted by Truth on July 18, 2007 07:59 AMBUSH BURRIES CLINTON WITH REAL DISPOSABLE INCOME...AND BUSH AIN'T DONE YET!
Posted by hank on July 18, 2007 11:10 AMHank, could you do us all a favor and proivde your previous pseudonyms that got you banned from this blog. It is always nice to know who one is debating.
Posted by J on July 18, 2007 12:10 PM"This is another of many situations in which we need more government intervention and regulation."
I'm very dubious of further government control over any aspect of our health, even mental health. The FDA has proven over the years that it really isn't about protecting our health but rather the financial health of big pharma.
Remember the current lobbying of Merck fo State legislatures nationwide to get their STD drug mandated for young girls "to prevent ovarian cancer?" They want laws enacted to coerce parents to give up rights in treatment decisions regarding their children.
There seems to be more and more anecdotal evidence that many of our violent school incidents involve kids who have been taking psychotropic drugs prescribed by psychiatrists.
I, too am sceptical of the profession. Some of their cures or treatments seem to be worse than the conditions they are deemed to treat.
Posted by RU Serious on July 18, 2007 01:43 PMShawn: Do much Scientology?
Posted by Lord Xenu on July 18, 2007 01:54 PMHealth insurance does require a diagnostic code for billing. Many mental health practitioners use the most vague codes to protect patient privacy from prying clerks eyes, and with electronic medical records, even mental health records have been known to end up in the wrong place. So, yes, the DSM III is a billing book, but the lists of symptoms for a disorder can cause the "disorder" take on more medical legitimacy than it deserves. We are still clueless about most mental illnesses, but sometimes drugs are helpful and sometimes hurtful. There IS a definite effort to expand the use of psychiatric drugs, for better or for worse. They are cheaper than talk therapy, but work no better, unless you have schizpphrenia or bipolar disorder (which is now being way overdiagnosed in children and teens).
But, the real question is, is there such a thing as a gaming addiction, and does it cause violence or other bad effects? Electronic media are "addictive" in the sense that many adults can't even go on vacation without staying connected. Games are addictive in the sense that they are great fun for many, and for some, provide more feelings of success than the real world.
The American Medical Association, in it's politically-motivated support for the diagnosis of gaming addiction, is ignoring a study published in their own journal that clearly states that excessive gaming in teens is a SYMPTOM, not a CAUSE of social and emotion problems. (JAMA, Vol.291,No.15, 2004).
Bottom line: look for the underlying cause of excessive gaming, don't just label it an addiction and drug the kid or send him away (as a family did in an original RMN article July 9, "Alarm bells for teens hooked on gaming) !
Posted by Louise Benson, MD on July 18, 2007 03:50 PMDr. Benson, is it possible to catch some kinds of mental illness with brain scans. ?
I remember seeing scans of the Dion quints that showed marked differences in false color imaging of the areas associated with schizophrenia.
Do other conditions show up this way?
Posted by Sharon B. on July 18, 2007 04:47 PM