Is modern psychology flawed?
Psychologists pin all mental illnesses on mental malfunctioning.
My argument is that mental illnesses are, most of the time, statistical anomalies.
The latter is that, if I crashed my car, it was a car fault.
If I have a mental illness, it is a mind fault. Is modern psychology flawed?
My argument is that mental illnesses are, most of the time, statistical anomalies.
The latter is that, if I crashed my car, it was a car fault.
If I have a mental illness, it is a mind fault. Is modern psychology flawed?
Comments (51)
No we don't.
What's deemed "illness" or "disorder" in psychology isn't well defined, nor is "abnormal." It's not pinned on one thing. Of course anything considered to be causing suffering or impeding well-being in some way usually deviates from a statistical mean -- but so what?
I don't see your point here.
At this point (where medication is forced) it's deemed a mental malfunction, and not a statistical anomaly - like I projected.
Evidence: antipsychotics target a neuroreceptor called Dopamine.
Evidence: I'm on antipsychotic medication by law.
Partial Evidence: It has done nothing. Try a different one would be psychology advice.
Conclusion: it's a flaw in psychology.
Not all statistical anomalies can be cured, or ought to be cured by medication.
These laws are flawed.
interesting life-experience. I am sure you have a story behind this.
In the SE Asian country where I live (or the countries where I tend to live), there is just a very small "psycho industry" that revolves around dealing with substance abuse, i.e. rehab facilities. They try to get the patient off the product that they abuse, and then, release them back into the wild, until they undoubtedly reappear again at the rehab facility, for a new round of hopeless work; assuming that their family keeps paying for that kind of help. Only wealthy families spend money on that kind of services. Everybody else will rather quickly end up repudiating the addicted individual because that is the cheaper solution.
Modern psychology includes hundreds of approaches, different opinions about treatment, diagnosis, causes and more. I would also say it seems like your posts are more concerned with psychiatry than modern psychology in general.Quoting QwexWhat do you mean by 'mental malfunctioning'.Quoting QwexMental illness could be both mental malfunctionng AND statistical anomolies.Quoting QwexThough compared to pre-Reagan, not very many. What country are we talking about?Quoting QwexYou are saying that in your particular case, the treatment you have received, in this case a medication, is not working for you. Unless we are expecting perfection, this does not mean that psychology, or pharmacological treatments for mental illness, is flawed. I mean, I am extremely critical of the current over-medication of people and the general use of the chemical imbalance model for treatment emotional pain and more. But, it seems like you are trying to draw very broad conclusions from a single case. Your own.
I don't think so. The mind seems to be an object that deals with abstractions. Yes abstraction may be the result of neuron firing but they do have an existence in the mental world and are both cause and effect of other abstractions and where there is a causal matrix we may contemplate and theorize on the whys and hows.
Psychiatry is flawed in the sense that it cannot entirely control the miscreants. But your complaint is that it has too much success. And part of its success is to convince even most philosophers that sanity and madness are terms that apply to individuals and not relationships.
I exaggerate of course, and many people are of good will at least, and many who are dealt with by psychiatry are indeed troubled individuals, whose relationship with society is highly dependent and toxic to all parties. In a simpler society, one can chase out of the village those who will not play their part, and let them fend for themselves in the wilderness; when there is no viable wilderness, society has to confine such people with pills or chains or kill them.
I understand.
The world is messy, there are messy people who do no good.
I'm glad you agreed it's flawed.
I wouldn't go as far to say psychiatry is evil but it is evil to some...
That's the waste product of such an activity(referring to forced medication mainly).
Some valuable minds that would be better unntouched, exist.
If the case is near to what I've put, what does that say about the effect of antipsychotics, is the idea that too much dopamine is bad, one big charade? Are they drying my eyes out? Is a lot of dopamine a normal thing?
I don't disagree with psychiatry, I want to perfect it.
In this case, I don't understand. Which is unusual.
You seem to contradict yourself. It might be a neuron firing - it's thus the firer and neuron which are possible reasons.
Some car crashes are due to flat tires.
I'm not saying the medication is flawed.
I'm saying the law that forces medication (in the UK at least) is flawed. It treats too many cases the same way, and could be improved. There's a wealth of knowledge we're missing - I hoped to change that.
I fit the accepted description of insane.
I probably need help by the human book - but my own philosophy is that these bodies are extremely durable. Perhaps I won't fit in, but I can take a lot of pain and benefit from it. I grew wise in it. It isn't my world, it's ours - we make the rules.
I like this system more than the UK's. Thanks for the information.
I'm not so familiar with the UK system. Was there a crime involved, is that how the compulsion came in? What criteria have to be met for a court to force medication? i assume they must do occasional blood tests.
No crime.
Arguments with family who are one phone call away from putting me in a mental hospital.
There was a small complication with a weapon and my Father, which was brought up for a long time. Like it was pinned to me.
You don't have to face court, just the doctrine.
They do do blood tests.
I was, then.
I'm 28 now.
Have I contradicted myself? Let's take your car example. None of its parts is anything that can be driven or used as transport but all together we get a vehicle. Now, I agree that without the parts there can be no car and if any of the parts fail, the car will break down. However, as a whole, with all the parts together, a car can acquire properties the parts can't: a sports car is a status symbol and being so it creates its own causal web based on that. Likewise, the goings on in the mind can be explained in terms of neurons firing but the result - ideas and thoughts - have a life of their own as part of a causal system where causes and effects are ideas and thoughts.
I just did a quick look at UK policy and it seems like a family member can demand that you be assessed by a doctor. And then you can be detained. I assume you know about your right to a solicitor to fight this and also you can request a independent advocate.
I assume you have a diagnosis, so if your family calls the doctors look in their computers and see a standing diagosis and that's how the process can be rigid.
You're not really asking for advice, but it seems to me if you can manage, in these situations to remain calm, be a real pain in the ass. Request your advocate and the lawyer. Keep pressuring the system calmly and through your representation.
I don't know if you live on your own and work, but if you manage these things, it should be very hard for them to demonstrate that you should have your freedom denied.
You can also demand a second opinion about your treatment from another doctor after certain periods. My guess is doctors would be wary of disagreeing with colleagues, but again, calm, rational, pressuring the system may in the long term pay off.
They have these tribunals to evaluate detentions. If you keep appearing in the tribunals and are calm and rational and have no incidents they can point to - and arguments with family should not be enough - they may get tired of you.
Tire the system out, and don't give them anything that makes them nervous.
I'm not in contact with them, no.
I will give them a try if I feel the need to discuss my treatment.
I have an appointment with the psychiatrist tomorrow; I will be discussing coming off the medication.
This thread was not a complaint, I was suggesting psychology/psychiatry could be improved.
Are you really a psychologist, Isaac? That's cool, what area do you work in?
That's something that does not get respected enough in society.
Akin to treating obesity without examing the patient's diet.
Nope. It's flawless.
I'm (semi-)retired now, but I used to do research in social psychology. My wife's a child psychologist though, which is where my annoyance came from at the bland misrepresentation of psychology. There is an idea that psychology just treats all mental problems as those of the individual and it's grossly unfair. Yes, they talk about solutions the individual can enact, but what else are they supposed to do? If someone comes to a psychologist with, say depression, they can hardly say "Oh, that's because you don't have any meaningful employment, let me just pop off and get you a really rewarding job, back in a minute".
But it sounds like the OP is just confusing psychology with psychiatry, so my initial response was probably unnecessary - quite frankly, I'd join the line of people complaining that psychiatrists over prescribe medication and hospital treatment.
But, that's how they treated a Vietnamese farmer who stepped on a land mine in Vietnam. The psychologists bought him a dairy cow and his depression was resolved...
It was Cambodia, not Vietnam, and the man already had land (the most expensive bit of that whole system in our country) without which the whole intervention would have failed. Nice story, but one trotted out to try and blame the practitioners rather than the institutions they work in. It's like when people show how effective just talking through your patient's symptoms is to getting good treatment - just before cutting funding to the bone so that GPs have barely five minutes to get them in and out if they've any hope of getting home at all that day.
Yes, if we changed many aspects of society things would be better for those who have mental health issues. My entire academic career has been about the link between society and individual mental functions. I advise institutions on better ways to manage that. My wife advises schools and parents about better ways to deal with children who have psychological difficulties.
We (psychologists in general) do plenty, and I can honestly say, in my whole career, I've not even met a psychologist who doesn't campaign in one way or another to get various aspects of society to change such that people's psychological issues are less severe (even if I disagreed quite strongly with some of their proposals).
We work out what might help, we suggest it to the institutions who interact with these people, they suggest it to government, and government says "no" becasue their electorate are too fucking greedy to pay for it. So don't blame the psychologists for not handing out cows.
On point... :ok:
Can you provide your thoughts about the specific type of change that would allow those with mental disorders or issues to lead a more fulfilling life?
https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Connections-Uncovering-Depression-Unexpected/dp/163286830X
Some of these solutions are within reach for individuals. IOW those not too poor or overburdened. This group can manage, often, to improve their connections that increase a sense of well being, as long as they do not buy into the chemical imbalance model (you got a broken brain, buddy) of depression and anxiety, for example. There are money related and paradigm related reasons why the psychiatric/pharmacological model is so entrenched despite all its philosopical and scientific weaknesses.
So many, in fact, that I have no idea what might be said by saying stuff about it.
I may as well treat my cut with the piece of bark that my grandfather swore would help.
1. Schools are little better than Stalinist boot camps and all of them should be abolished immediately. Children neither need nor benefit from a formal education. The stress levels children are put under in schools would qualify as child abuse if the effects on their bodies were caused by an physical agent.
2. The working day should be reduced to a maximum of five hours and probably a three day week as well. Employers who make you sit for long periods or who demand stressful workloads should be prosecuted in the same way they would be if they allowed toxic chemicals into the workplace. Way more people die from sedentary lifestyles and stressful working conditions than all of the well-known workplace toxins put together, and yet we still don't regulate it.
3. A house, garden, fuel and food should never be something the possession of which is linked to a job from which you could be fired. Allotments should be free and available to everyone. I don't object to people having to work to earn their keep, but working with the threat of losing your vital needs if you put a foot wrong is tantamount to criminal harm.
4. Everyone should have easy access to good food and outdoor exercise - excessive unhealthy foods should be regulated no less than tobacco, and sports facilities should be free. It's moronic that we spend billions on curing people once they've got sick and barely anything on preventing them from getting that way in the first place.
5. Local services should be encouraged with significant tax breaks or incentives, you should know the actual human person who provides at least a majority of your services.
6. Social media platforms should be banned and the current CEOs prosecuted (if not shot) as a warning.
Well, after decades of writing sensible, achievable, recommendations, that was really cathartic.
Failing the revolution that would be required to bring those things about, the less crazy version...
1. Formal school education should not start until at least 10. I meant what I said above, there is literally no evidence that children need or benefit from formal education. Any institutions that are required for child care should do nothing more than facilitate a diverse range of free play. Punishments like isolation rooms should definitely be banned immediately and those responsible prosecuted (if not shot), and I mean that one.
2. I think we could achieve a five hour working day (or a three day weekend), these have been seriously considered), as have non-sitting work environments. The link between lack of exercise and mental health problems is strong. Mental health needs can be accommodated in the work environment - quiet rooms for autistic employees, for example, are already in place in a number of tech firms.
3. Maybe just an effective and stress-free welfare system so that losing a job is not as stressful, it's one of the 'big three' triggers of mental health problems.
4. I don't think my original (4) is actually that difficult.
5. As with my original (5), definitely could be done.
6. Prosecuted and shot, maybe? Heads on a pole?
To the extent that unhappiness would be some kind of mental disorder, I think that you can tremendously increase your happiness by moving outside of the West. Well, it certainly worked like a charm for me. I live in SE Asia now, and I cannot imagine ever moving back. Pick any other society, move there, and you will quickly start feeling better.
You will probably still need to make a living but that is actually easier than it looks like, if you make the preparations needed to achieve that.
Seriously, the simplest solution is to abandon ship. It's not worth it anyway. Furthermore, why lead a shitty life if you could also lead a happy one?
Most people don’t have the financial means to leave the country, let alone their own state (in the US). Then there’s the problem of gaining citizenship. That’s downright impossible for someone diagnosed with a mental illness.
They have the wrong idea on what it would cost because they have never done it.
People who have never visited other countries, other continents, or other cultures are very, very limited, with the worst limitation being their ignorance on exactly these limitations.
I have a German friend here, whose name is Friedrich, and who spends 7 months in Germany as a security guard, making less than $1000/month, saving up, and then spends the other 5 months here in SE Asia. It works fine for him, even though he probably makes less than someone on the Seattle $15/hour minimum wage flipping burgers at McDonalds.
Americans are poor because they have been manipulated into running up all kinds of debt (credit card, student loans, car loans, mortgages, and so on) for stuff they don't need. The rest they spend on biologically worthless processed food. Someone in Vietnam can happily survive on $200/month but not if he started eating all his food out of cans and boxes in order to get spectacularly obese on worthless calories.
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
Why would you need citizenship in any Asian country? Just pay a few hundreds of dollars for your yearly visa fee and be done with it. I don't have and don't even want citizenship from a foreign country. What for?
Quoting Noah Te Stroete
For a starters, no immigration officer anywhere in the world has never asked me or anybody else at the border for any such diagnose. It is against a gazillion number of different laws and statutes to circulate that kind of information anyway. However, if you start behaving weirdly, and especially violently, they may refuse access to the territory to you or even deport you later on. Hence, the real question is rather: Can you function normally?
If you regularly have schizophrenic episodes in which you lose your mind, then you could possibly be a danger to society, not just in Asia, but also in your own home country. In that case, it is up to your doctor to advise you to move to an (open) institution or so, where they can keep an eye on your episodes. If you are not a danger to others, then you can freely move around in your own country but also abroad.
I will address this point first. I don’t agree that I have “schizophrenic episodes”, though others disagree.
I am allowed to move freely in my country, and I have no desire to live elsewhere. I’m sticking to my home.
I do have a mortgage with my wife, my wife has a car loan and student loan debt, and we have a few thousand in personal loans. This is just my society’s norm. I’m not complaining. We live nicely, and we will pay them off. Well, maybe my wife will die with her student loan debt, but as of now and for the foreseeable future, she is only paying an income-based repayment. Sucks, sure, but she has job security with good benefits relative to most workplaces.
We eat what we can afford, which isn’t exactly good food. I’m obese, and I have been for most of my adult life mostly due to the antipsychotics I have to take that sap my motivation and drive. Even when I exercised vigorously I didn’t lose weight until one time when I was 26 years old I went off of all meds and lost 60 pounds. Then my psychiatrist threatened to commit me unless I started taking my medications again. Oh well. It doesn’t really bother me much until I get bullied about my weight and lifestyle which happens when I go out in public. I’m obese but otherwise healthy. I had a full blood work up a few months back, and everything came back normal. I don’t have diabetes but have sleep apnea, which also contributes to my energy level.
I am otherwise ignorant on how much it costs to live in SE Asia. I very much doubt I would fit in there. I don’t even fit in in my home country.
and there can be testing by doctors involved, see article.
https://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/mental-illness-barrier.html
Canada will give you a medical exam and a questionaire in which you must list all illnesses and current medications.
For residency visas to Japan you must describe medications and psychiatric histories.
As some examples. Countries definitely to ask. It is not illegal, they make these laws, being countries.
As a general rule of thumb, the more expensive the food, the more it has been processed, and therefore, the unhealthier it is. That is why poor people in SE Asia are so healthy. They simply do not have enough money to eat the bad stuff. Three or four days of the week, I eat their kitchen. Fantastic flavours and super healthy.
Even in the USA, if you buy 50-pound bags of rice, potatoes, carrots, and onions, you have most of the food that you need, and it is healthy. Buy some Mediterranean herbs, olive oil, garlic and butter to cook it with the occasional chunk of fish, meat, and/or bell pepper and you have the healthiest meals in the world. The remainder of the week I eat Mediterranean instead of Asian. It's not the ingredients that are so different but the spicing.
Bread and corn are problematic staples because they tend to be overly processed. That is why I avoid them. Still, once in a while I still eat chestnut sourdough bread with French camembert (cheese). That's a bit more expensive (and processed!) but I only do it once a month or every two months.
Still, I do not remember them asking that kind of questions in the USA. the last time I flew to the USA, more than a decade ago, they just stamped my passport with a 3-month leave to stay. No questions asked. This otherwise simple procedure may have changed, of course.
In the last countries I flew into, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Malaysia, they just stamped my passport with the standard duration for visitors (1, 2 or 3 months). I did extend twice in the Philippines at the travel agent, and they didn't ask anything. Just handing over my passport was enough. Same for Vietnam (a visa is needed prior to arrival at the airport). No questions asked there either.
In the free part of the world, visa requirements are relatively simple.
North America, Australia and New Zealand are well known to be exceptions to the standard immigration procedure elsewhere for ordinary visitors. But then again, I am not interested in visiting these places either. These places are not holiday destinations where people go to relax or expect to get lots of value for money. Why would I fly there if I could instead have a good time in, for example, Bali, Indonesia? My condo building looks like a holiday resort, with swimming pool, gym, sauna, and so on, and I pay less for my two-bedroom condo than what people pay for just a room in a shared flat in Seattle.
Funny that you mention that. I'm quite adamant about moving back to my hometown in Poland. I spent a good time over there, and exhausted my options in the US, and since my mental health is deteriorating, I think I might make it a permanent stay or early retirement. :halo:
On second thought, I think, quite honestly, I would have to work there too, ehh. xD
How did you do that?
Quoting Wallows
Poland seems to have a thriving economy. I wouldn't worry too much about that part.
Just living around here for 10 years, and putting what little energy I had to ultimately futile efforts, such as the military (USAF) and then college. None of them worked out, so I worked for a couple of years, and the last couple of years (2-3) have been on disability.
Life?
Quoting alcontali
Yes, thinking about teaching English a little, or working in some forestry.
Freedom? I don't entirely understand the significance of this concept for those disabled. Not much I entertain my "freedom", apart from the Friday meal at McDonald's or sumthin simple like that.
I wonder how many months per year you need to live in the USA so that you can still keep receiving your disability benefits? In fact, the paying government office may not even audit the situation particularly thoroughly. So, maybe if you keep an address in the USA and forward your phone calls, you could possibly spend most of your time in Poland already while still keeping your benefits.
I know people who do that in Europe with their social security retirement benefits. In theory, they have to stay put in the country that pays them, but in practice they still mostly live in the Philippines.
I have been considering that. I'll have to see how and what to the matter.
Dude! There are benefits to being an American!
https://www.disabilitybenefitscenter.org/faq/disability-benefits-living-overseas
Can I Receive Disability Benefits if I am Living Overseas?
Any U.S. citizen that’s otherwise eligible for Social Security Disability (SSD) can receive benefits, even if living overseas. There are however, certain countries the Social Security Administration (SSA) cannot mail benefit checks to, and payments cannot be processed and sent to someone other than you.