Medicine's big new battleground: does mental illness really exist?

[mwooldri]

42. I don't expext a talking therapy to "cure" a busted brain.

But in my case it does help. The process of talking it through, to "re-wire" the brain from inside without medication *can* and *does* help a lot of people. It helps me, even if it is the case of "checking in" with my counselor to ensure I am doing fine. After all, when we go to school we learn stuff... talking and practicing definitely helps to learn that stuff. Speaking and listening is the #1 conduit into and outside of the brain. Some of this is just distorted thinking and when we recognise it isn't the way it is supposed to be then we seek help. We are then taught the "right way" to think. With some behavioural disorders talk therapy is the best way to go. Not always... but it does work. This is the key thing - "Not always". Sometimes medication is absolutely required... for some people for the rest of their life. Where it is absolutely needed, medicine should and ought to be prescribed... whether it is long term or short term... doesn't matter.

Psychiatry - I agree with you - it isn't perfect. It's taken a good few years to find the right mix of medications that keep me stable. To stop me from swinging from a very elevated mood to an extremely depressed mood. Sometimes flipping between the two in the same hour. Then again it isn't all about the drugs. It is a whole body thing. Yes, I have a diagnosis with a label slapped on it. It doesn't change things... I need to eat well, I need to exercise, I need to do things outside of just work and just home. That applies to nearly every human being on this planet.

But to defend the article - it does bring up some good points. Basically the new diagnosis manual is introducing a large number of new "diagnosis". Since it's being compiled from an American perspective, I think this is just a way to get psychiatrists and associated fields more work since the insurance system here "needs" a diagnosis of something to be able to go ahead and pay for treatment.

A good number of these new diagnosis do not always need medication... and even then the medication can be short term. People don't go around saying that people who are addicted to smoking cigarettes have a "nicotine disorder". Or people who consumer too many alcoholic drinks too frequently - they're not called people with an "obsessive alcohol consumption disorder". Alcoholism and drug addiction can be addressed in a clinical setting. They also can be addressed in other ways - Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous have success in getting people off and keeping them off alcohol and Class I drugs. (yes AA and NA and programs like it have a God complex so it isn't for everyone.). I can truly say I had Internet addiction, and it wasn't the WWW that kept me hooked. It is under control and I didn't seek out medical treatment for it. I wouldn't classify it as a disorder though.

Yet "depression" really is too wide a term. There is the clinical ongoing depression that a number of people do have, and then there is situational depression. Drugs in situational depression may or may not be required. But I can say that people with situational depression and cannot manage the symptoms of it do need to seek help. I know... a close family member went into grief when their spouse died in an accident, and I don't think they ever got over it.

The article raises lots of good points, some of which have validity. There will always be debates in the field of psychiatric medicine - Homosexuality and Transgender-ism (?) were classified as a mental disorder at some point in time. The debate about removing Aspergers Syndrome and placing it in the autism diagnosis - that's still going on. I don't expect debates and controversies like this to go away any time soon.