DSM a fraud? Interesting documentary....

Post Reply New Topic

I am just saying the documentary has some points. That psychiatrist or any field of diagnosis mental disorders shouldn't just look at the surface. And then prescribe drugs.
They should go further and deeper than that. They should be absolutely sure and should experiment on maybe finding ways to actually diagnosis these disorders with more accuracy than what they are currently.
Children shouldn't be diagnosed until all factors of the home environment and school environment are asses, etc.

I think this is the real issue. The reactionary statement "The DSM is fraudulent" does not serve to illuminate the issues. The wording is explicitly chosen to evoke an emotional response, which usually means it is promoting an agenda of its own.

Last edited by wavefreak58 on 25 Oct 2010, 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

I see. So, my wife has tried to kill herself on several occasions, but it's okay, she doesn't really need those SSRIs that keep her from feeling that badly, because depression isn't real and serotonin reuptake has nothing to do with it. I'll be sure to let her know that it's just because she has a crappy job - oh, wait, her worst breakdowns were in college, and she hasn't even had a job in years...

Oh, and J's PTSD is totally imaginary - he just wakes up screaming and wants to kill anyone in a burnoose he sees because he's just having "ups and downs". Nothing gets screwed up in your thinking when you're shoved from stateside life into brutal combat in 45 hours. It's all just "cooked up" by those Army psychiatrists for all that money they get - except that they just get base pay for their pay grade, and don't get any money for prescriptions at all.

He also doesn't have ADD or dyslexia, I suppose - he just can't sit still or read easily because he's, what, lazy?

Look, champ, I live with these people. Don't try to tell me their disorders are all imaginary, "cooked up" by a bunch of "frauds".

Erm, didn't OddDuckNash99 (y'know, the one working in neuroscience) already explain what these chemical imbalances were and how they can be used to TREAT (not cure) depression?

They don't "create" disorders. The disorders already existed but they now have the means to properly diagnose and treat it effectively. What anti-psychiatry people persistently fail to understand is that mental health problems cannot always be treated with a green tea and nice rest on the couch. Some people's problems are neurological (in other words, physical). Some people really do have chemical imbalances and many people rely on the medication. Others benefit from cognitive behavioural therapy; others need counselling; many find group therapy useful, etc etc. Psychiatry has to tailor itself to the individual. Furthermore, I was NEVER prescribed unnecessary drugs. The only psychiatric medication I took was a low dose of beta blockers when I was suffering really badly from panic disorder. It was only there to help me cope because I was still on a waiting list to get therapy (which didn't cure me, but it helped me get through the worst of it).

I assume that none of the anti-psychiatry people here have much knowledge on neuroscience to begin with. Odd how people will chastise you for making BS claims about a science like physics or immunology, but when it comes to neuroscience, they think they can say whatever the f**k they want and still be credible. It doesn't work that way, guys.

If we're going to look at videos, however, I'll share my own favourite vids on this subject:


Psychiatry is Good s**t by NervousNeuron (who was a student in the vid but now she's a neuroscientist) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyy9rIbNZJw

Common Fallacies of Psychiatry Deniers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq2l-_y8Whw

Fair enough, this is not providing scientific evidence, but it's still more valid than the documentary you provided.

By the way, I looked up Dr. Claudia Keyworth (the first interview in the documentary) and I think we're dealing with snakeoil salesmen. I mean, honestly, she's described as being a "a health and wellness practitioner". WTF? Is that even a real thing? And what the f**k is "bioenergetic medicine?" That sounds like something from X-Men! Not to mention that when a supposed doctor includes the words "hope" and "promise" on what is supposed to be a serious blog about a serious form of therapy makes me really doubt these claims Just because you can point a camera at something and use editing software, it doesn't mean that the documentary is good. If you've ever heard of Fox News or The Daily Mail, you would know that not many people have journalistic integrity.

http://www.drclaudiaheals.com/DrClaudiaHeals/Home.html
http://ibmcollege.org/faculty

As I said previously, when words such as "fraudulent" are used in a title, there is often an agenda just as self serving as that which is condemned. It would appear Dr Keyworth would be promoting an alternative healing process. It is common practice to take a reasonable premise (collusion between pharmaceutical companies and the field of psychiatry) and conflate it into a gigantic, all encompassing conspiracy. While I don't doubt that the profit motives of drug companies clouds objectivity, it is a much more convoluted web of motivations that drives the mental health field. The best defense is to become well informed and to take charge of your mental health. Don't abrogate your responsibility to the professionals. They are consultants, not gods.

Unless you're applying it to dementia, mental retardation, eurinesis (or however it's spelled), dung-eating, Rett's Syndrome (it's metabolic, I tell you!), and Childhood Disintegrative Disorder, (all of which don't have medication for), the rest of the diseases seem more like personality types, to me. (If you've been obsessed with the MBTI or Enneagram for four or five years, you will start to think this way.) For this reason, I am against medication, as it might change actual personalities to fit the zombie-like standards we set! These things are real, but they seem so much like different personality types in hiding for years...does that sound odd to you?

So you are suggesting that measurable differences in things such as executive functioning, theory of mind and language processing are personality based? Each of these are typical deficits in an autistic. Are you suggesting that the are not real deficits?

I'm on psychiatric meds. They do work, and the only problem that I have with them is that they made me gain weight and I'm still trying to lose it.

Just because something is overdiagnosed doesn't mean it's made up. Anti-psychiatry people really piss me off.

This is probably true of some cases, it is a concern of mine that by medicating many people who have mood and anxiety conditions because of their environment, the effects that certain environments have on people may be missed or ignored. Still it would be cruel to deprive people of treatments that work for that reason; the social environments might never be changed, we can't wait and let people kill themselves in the mean time.


Depends how easily over or under-stimulated we're talking about.


I have AD/HD and yes, if there were no schools, I would still have been suicidal and in genuine fear of becoming homeless before I was diagnosed, because I couldn't function adequately in several other areas of my life without help - including drug therapy - for it, and when I had left full time education the problems had just changed, they didn't go away. If more people were diagnosed and treated for AD/HD (the easiest and safest mental health problem to be treated for) there would be far fewer people needing treatment for drug addiction and other mental health conditions, because many of them are heavily contributed to by the ENORMOUS stress that can be caused by living with AD/HD.

society has changed a lot...

with these changes in society there are new psychological problems,
not all of them are new but I believe many are at least agitated to the point where they manifest ten fold as compared to say 200 years ago. The increase in population is a part of this, and this isn't something the pharmaceutical companies or psychologists came up with- people were going to multiply and in doing so the less space there is the more interactions that have to take place between people. So from this occurring it is logical to think that people who might have had a few problems but when left in their own environments could get by perfectly fine IN THE PAST, are now having alot more trouble in the present because there is no environment where they will disappear into the background due to the constant change that is going on around the world.

That's one take on it though...

I worry sometimes that it's all just profit driven...why some drugs that in initial studies show great success but are then for some reason or another closed off from being presented to the public..perhaps because they have little to no addictive properties. However anything that helps or appears to help an individual is addicting, so in that sense whether it triggers addictive chemicals or not could be irrelevant and in this age of "change" (The presidents winning word...) anything that changes brain activity could be addictive.

There is scientific evidence to support psychological conditions...what about brain scans and the different activity they show? Or as someone else said, now that we are starting to understand how the brain works more (something we didn't know in the past) we are more able to understand individual chemicals in the brain, their function and how to synthetically treat deficiencies.

Hmm, that's a pretty short list. Everything else is just a personality type? Narcolepsy and other sleep disorders, multiple personality disorders, PTSD, Tourette's, major depression, and other mental disorders in the DSM are just personalities?

The makers of this video are a front for scientology.

Dude...don't diss my favourite book. Jeez.

Yep. If you Google the video, you'll see that it's created by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, which is indeed an organisation owned by the Church of Scientology.

Good to know.

Still, as a valid question, is the profession "making up" lots of disorders in order to market new chems to people who may not really need them? Are the drugs being pushed as dangerous as the documentary shows?

I've ALWAYS been suspicious of the medical profession and pharmaceutical companies because I believe (from all I've seen) that there is a push to put people on meds that have dubious benefits at best and often horrible risk factors you must accept for that benefit.

Personally, while I don't think there is an active conspiracy, I am always skeptical of the mental health field. It is a very new science and subject to rapid change. It has a great deal of conjecture and trial and error. Thankfully it is becoming more rigorous and advances in brain imaging and genetics are really adding solid data to the mix. Maybe in a few more decades it will be much more reliable.