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

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70. Could you be any more inaccurate and inflammatory?

I started in the field 25 to 30 years ago. No, not all psychologists were finding satanic childhood abuse victims. Only a very small minority on the fringes of the field who got face time on Jerry Springer.

No, psychologists 30 years ago that were my mentors and teachers said no such thing in school or in supervision about autism. They did say that it was not a prevalent disorder. Why is it more so now? Over diagnosis? Better tools for diagnosis? Some other environmental/biochemical factor influencing gestation? No one knows yet.

Psychology is not fad-driven. It is a field that is only about 125 years old. It is growing, evolving, and correcting itself constantly. Just because pop culture and the media focus on sensational stories does not mean the entire field is that. Are all lawyers ambulance chasing psychopaths? Are all medical doctors in it for the fast car and big salaries? Are all nurses women who couldn't make it in to medical school? Of course not, that is just hyperbolic bullshit.

Freud was one of the founders of psychology, true. However, he was a brilliant psychiatrist who at the time experimented with new 'drugs' to treat mental illness. In this case it was cocaine. He found that in small doses it assisted patients in 'opening up' and expressing themselves more freely. It also proved to be quite helpful in the treatment of morphine addiction. He did try it himself because unlike most psychiatrists today, he felt it unethical to recommend a substance to a patient that he himself would not be willing to take. How many do you know that take Welbutrin or Prozac? After the negative effects became known, like any good scientist he renounced its use and moved on.

Get off the internet, read a book, and if you are going to pontificate on a subject, please make sure you know what you are actually talking about. Many a serious discussion, which this topic is, get derailed by bullshit like this.