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The Political Aspect of Psychiatry and CFS

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
I recently posted some thoughts on a thread in relation to an excellent article about mental illness and psychiatry and ideology.

I don't really have the energy to rephrase these thoughts entirely right now, but I think that they are still understandable with that context. I just had some epiphanies re: the reason CBT is pushed for CFS despite there being no evidence to support it.

(in response to this article https://xenogoth.wordpress.com/2018/02/22/the-meds-worked-for-me-but-nothing-else-did/)



"This is really important. Morton's tweet wasn't just ghoulish, it was responding to a total strawman. Mark understood that there was a complex relationship between neurochemistry/biology and social forces, and that the current psychiatric model was inadequate. To see this as a


denial of anybody's personal relationship with mental illness, or a denial that anybody has been helped by antidepressants, would be a wild misreading. But this pr campaign for antidepressants (that I assume mostly refers to SSRIs) has a number of undertones to it that are--well


--depressing. Not only is the exclusive focus on medication and CBT part of a neoliberal ontology that treats the patient as totally atomized individual who must be "normalized", a lot of the science behind it is wrong or unclear.


Once anyone starts to look harder at the science behind SSRIs (the first line treatment for depression these days), they would see that the science is not solid, which makes it seem clearer and clearer that the current psychiatric model is not rooted in science but more in


ideology and capital.


To say this is not to deny anybody's personal need to use any specific antidepressant. I had success with SSRIs in treating my OCD (which it turns out they have a higher success rate with than depression) but they had side effects that I didn't like.
There has been research that showed that excess serotonin is in fact likely to be associated with features of depression. That is the opposite of the pop science view that SSRIs would work by increasing serotonin. In fact, they may work, but it would be by a different mechanism



They may facilitate neurogenesis in the hippocampus directly

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unraveling-the-mystery-of-ssris-depression/ …

https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-016-1173-2 …



Not only is CBT an exercise in repression, as you note in your piece, but the NHS wants to use it for physical illnesses that have bodies of evidence that suggest organic causation. I say this even though it is a tangent from your original point, because it shows how psychiatry is used as a method of control. Not only is CBT used in a way that represses mentally ill patients, it is now extended to use on physically ill patients, despite an overwhelming body of evidence against it. This suggest that the ruling ontology of psychiatry is not empirically based at all, but rather based in fantasies of a neoliberal body that is infinitely flexible/adaptable. The entrepreneurial fantasy. If we think good thoughts we can all succeed
 

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
As @lnester7 points out, my long term disability policy has written in that, after 24 months, if you have a psychiatric condition (evidenced by treatment with psychiatric drugs as they wanted a list of all my prescriptions) you can be terminated.
 

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
yes i didn't mean to imply that it's as simple as my original post, there's also the more vulgar economic aspects, but those intertwine with the ideology. it's all pretty horrible. one reason i like peat is he talks about how the money affects research and affects how theories predominate that are incorrect
 

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
And those funding things have agendas. Things that don't meet someone's agenda don't get funded, things that do are funded.
yes, i 100 percent agree.

would reply in more detail about how i think all this relates, but i've really exhausted myself today so far

maybe after this pregnenolone kicks in
 
Messages
13
Thanks for this. Really interesting.

What intrigues me is that psychiatry is medicalising mental illness at the same time as it's psychologising medical conditions, especially (but not solely) the ones that are poorly understood. Not sure what that's about.
 

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
Thanks for this. Really interesting.

What intrigues me is that psychiatry is medicalising mental illness at the same time as it's psychologising medical conditions, especially (but not solely) the ones that are poorly understood. Not sure what that's about.
that's the really odd thing. but its not as contradictory as one would think. Psychiatry refuses to consider social reasons for mental illness and medicalizes it, but it medicalizes it poorly--e.g. most current psychiatry isn't based on great science--see the serotonin hypothesis, SSRI efficacy. and then it tries to treat illnesses that are physical by psychologizing? them... so it reverses the process of medicalization. I don't know exactly what's going on there, but it makes it clear that psychiatry is currently more a method of control than anything, it's a kind of postmodern voodoo


this isn't to deny that it can do good at all... but talking about the ruling ontology, not individual psychiatrists

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/thyroid-insanities.shtml
this talks about the wrongheaded voodoo aspect of the brain-as-computer theory that animates psychiatry currently
 
Messages
13
Being really cynical here, I suspect it's all about where the money is in a given situation. Drug companies love the medical approach to mental illness because it means big bucks for them. Governments and permanent health insurance companies love the psychologisation of medical problems because it saves them a lot of money.

Better go and rest now. The spell checker is having a hard time keeping up with my brain-fog typos. :)
 

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
Being really cynical here, I suspect it's all about where the money is in a given situation. Drug companies love the medical approach to mental illness because it means big bucks for them. Governments and permanent health insurance companies love the psychologisation of medical problems because it saves them a lot of money.

Better go and rest now. The spell checker is having a hard time keeping up with my brain-fog typos. :)
that's not overly cynical--marx would agree with you

but i think it goes farther than that... cna't elaborate much rn, getting seriously tired
 

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
its true that cash rules everything around me CREAM get the money

but also psychiatry existed before capitalism and still was coercive and would label women hysterics and put them away or w/e

so i think its not just money
money and power
 

andyguitar

Moderator
Messages
6,585
Location
South east England
In the UK there is no time limit for social security benefits for those who have a 'mental health' problem. May be one under some private health insurance policies though. Major victory here recently against a Gov department who decided to deny some social security payments to those who are housebound due to 'Psychological Problems' Someone took UK Gov to Court. Judge found in their favour. So UK Gov can blow their stupid ideas out their arse now. Extra money will now be paid to 1000s of very ill people.
 
Messages
13
but also psychiatry existed before capitalism and still was coercive and would label women hysterics and put them away or w/e

so i think its not just money
money and power

Yes, I'm sure you're right. It's got to be more complicated than just money. Perhaps psychiatry conveniently takes care of society's messy problems.

Maybe you could say some more about this another time when you've got the energy.
 

frozenborderline

Senior Member
Messages
4,405
Yes, I'm sure you're right. It's got to be more complicated than just money. Perhaps psychiatry conveniently takes care of society's messy problems.

Maybe you could say some more about this another time when you've got the energy.
i just had the idea for a joke meme about how Das Kapital is just C.R.E.A.M. by the wu tang clan

cn only communicate in one line jokes when i'm this sick lol
 
Messages
13
Major victory here recently against a Gov department who decided to deny some social security payments to those who are housebound due to 'Psychological Problems' Someone took UK Gov to Court. Judge found in their favour. So UK Gov can blow their stupid ideas out their arse now. Extra money will now be paid to 1000s of very ill people.

Wow, that sounds pretty amazing! I don't think I heard about it. Do you have a link to an article I can read?