...An American Journal of Medicine
study (February 2015) about the effects of doctor communications on a small sample of pain patients reported that a lack of understanding and acceptance can create anger and distress. Invalidated patients reported feeling dismissed and disbelieved, resulting in hopelessness and anger. In an
interview with the study's lead author Maddy Greville-Harris, she stated, "Our earlier work too, suggests that receiving non-understanding feedback can have very powerful effects."
A generation ago, the idea that invalidating, incongruent,
catch-22 and
double bindcommunications from authorities - be they military commanders, doctors or parents - could be "crazy making" was mainstream discourse among my fellow psychologists. However, Big Pharma drug sales benefit from a strictly biochemical view of mental illness, and a major agenda of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is to abolish "parent/authority blaming" with regard to mental illness; drug companies have funded NAMI, which has successfully made it politically incorrect to discuss communication by authorities as one potential cause of disturbing behaviors...
