The only sad thing is that most of the people who need to hear this won’t comprehend it I don’t think people know what a hypothesis is, so I have to start from scratch with them. Thank you for doing this!
Absolutely fantastic talk everyone effected by mental illness needs to hear. Thank you for hosting this lecture! Really exciting to have a nonstop "I've been thinking it for years...he said it!" Mr. Whitaker is an excellent advocate and very smart.
My anger is justified: The DSM was presented as FACT, NOT THEORY, and referred to specifically by these priests as their "Bible," on their authority FOR DECADES. THEY SOLD IT PUBLICLY.
Saw and am watching someone I love very much have their life ruined by these drugs- the contempt I have for the mental health profession that is NOT treating people and children!!!!according to science and are actively doing people harm -this is shameful
My case, I can't stop these medications easily, due to withdrawal.:/ I am tapering slowly and each step is so hard for me, but fortunately I manage to get to back to good state physical and mental state.
Disease-like labeling has been the 1st key to what psychiatry is effectively doing to people - much like rationale of Tiergarten 4. / The hypothesis that down-and-out people have Chemical Imbalances was a positivist assertion of Gregory Bateson, husband to Margaret Mead. There is no evidence for Bateson's assertion - Jeffrey A. Schaler cut to the quick with, "show me the Chemical Balance Tests!"
There is a need for employment or volunteering where they will not be so harassed that they give up. Some are not even allowed to volunteer. A better environment needs to be created. The Psyche wards in Norway being compelled to provide a ward for those who do not want to take medication is needed in the United States. But Psychiatry has to be forced/compelled to do it through law. Otherwise they will never do it. They need to start being treated with coercion/forced to take some of their own medicine, and experience how it feels.
When asked about considering other causes for so-called mental illness, because as he does produce much proof that the medical model or biological diagnosis has failed, Whitaker, who states first that he is not religious, and without mentioning demon possession, says: just look through the Bible (Sacred Scriptures) and there are numerous stories of people whose emotions are wreaking havoc on them.
The only problem I have with Whitaker's argument is he relies heavily on statistics, the same thing that go is in this mess in the first place. The pharmaceutical companies have been using rating scales and big data for years to pull the wool over people's eyes and I think Whitaker's arguments are dangerously similar. I am more in agreement with the work of people like Nassir Ghaemi and David Healy, we need to look at history and longitudinal outcomes but we must also reckon with the anecdotal evidence. Pharmaceutical companies have been waging a war on heuristics for decades, they've convinced people that their perception cannot be trusted at all. The reality is if you take the time to listen, really listen to the lived experience of people with serious psychiatric diseases you will be convinced of two things, one they have capacity to recover including spontaneous recovery and two it is probably a disease. Just because dopamine blockers suck and half our other treatments suck does not mean it's not a disease, it just means we suck at treating it. And notice again here that Whitaker's argument regarding drugs is similar to the drug companies, that is drugs are a valid way of determining etiology. The drug companies argue the drug responses prove the diseases are real and Whitaker essentially makes the same argument but with a different interpretation, that is that the lack of response proves absence of disease. The better explanation is that the treatments simply suck, just like many drugs throughout history.
