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S. Wessely - Death threats, abuse, smear campaigns - Standing up for Science: 29 March

Messages
15,786
OMG, this is awesome :love:

It's all worth a close read, but this was my favorite:
“Psychiatry continues to face a worldwide problem with recruitment. In the UK, the Royal College of Psychiatrists has maintained an active recruitment programme for several years, but rates of students interested in psychiatry as a career remain at 4-5%; insufficient to meet future needs.”

Arguably, the single most important factor in human endeavors is the ability to deal rationally and self-critically with our failings, personally and organizationally. Psychiatry is failing because it is everywhere being exposed as the facile and destructive hoax that it is. But psychiatry has always been averse to anything remotely akin to critical self-scrutiny. So they blame their decline on others. And here we see this process plumbing the very depths of inanity: recruitment is down because of the mean things that people are saying to psychiatry students in the medical schools!
 
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15,786
If these guys found out about the PACE they would be absolutely furious.
Or the obscene way that Wessely & Co smear patients, while whining about the criticism of poor standards in psychiatry.

Or the way that they have recommended cutting off pretty much every form of support for the ME patients that they classify as having a psychological disorder.
 
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Laelia

Senior Member
Messages
243
Location
UK
OMG, this is awesome :love:

Yes it is very good indeed.

If these guys found out about the PACE they would be absolutely furious.

Or the obsecene way that Wessely & Co smear patients, while whining about the criticism of poor standards in psychiatry.

Or the way that they have recommended cutting off pretty much every form of support for the ME patients that they classify as having a psychological disorder.

Perhaps someone could write to them to explain these issues? I think they would find this information quite insightful.
 
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2,125
Perhaps someone could write to them to explain these issues?

AND What about all the current MUS cr*p?

this is very apt, (except it's now CBT and GET, maybe this is to create the more acceptable face of psychiatry?):

"And, seen in this regard, it is clear that such comments are warranted. For decades, psychiatry has arbitrarily and self-servingly claimed as its legitimate domain all significant problems of thinking, feeling and/or behaving. Within this domain, they have invented and promoted a truly bewildering array of fictitious illnesses, for each of which they falsely claim to have highly effective treatments in the form of neurotoxic drugs and high-voltage electric shocks to the brain. Psychiatry has also conspired with pharma to produce a large body of fraudulent research and ghost-written books and papers to promote the sale of psychiatric drugs. And on the wider scale, psychiatry’s “diagnoses” are inherently disempowering and stigmatizing, and serve to foster a culture of drug-induced dependency.

Psychiatry remains utterly deaf to these kinds of criticisms. In fact, the more acutely and tellingly psychiatry is criticized, the more adamantly it defends its concepts and practices. But it seldom addresses the actual criticisms, relying instead on spin and on the endless regurgitation of the same tired old assertions: we’re real doctors; we treat real illnesses; our treatments are effective; and – as in the present context – we deserve more respect."
 

A.B.

Senior Member
Messages
3,780
Wessely might just end up making things worse for him by playing the victim. The awareness that PACE was intentionally highly misleading is growing, and it doesn't take much to see that Wessely has played a large part in creating a disastrous situation for patients. Playing the victim, rather than apologizing to patients, will make him look bad.
 

Laelia

Senior Member
Messages
243
Location
UK
I spent some more time studying this article and also had a quick glance at some of the other articles on the website. The author of the Psychiatry Bashing article is a retired psychologist. He is clearly aware of the failings of the psychiatric profession but I get the impression he might be less knowledgeable when it comes to the failings of his own profession. He appears to favour psychological explanations for psychiatric illness over biological ones. I couldn't find anything that he had written about ME/CFS so it's not clear where he stands on this. It's possible that he may not be aware of or has dissmissed the evidence for a biomedical basis to our illness, as so many in the psychology and psychiatry professions have done over the years. Therefore I suggest caution if anyone decides to make contact with him.
 

Countrygirl

Senior Member
Messages
5,429
Location
UK
I enjoyed this part too: :):thumbsup:

No, Dr. Wessely, that’s not what it means. It means that psychiatry is a destructive, hocus-pocus, facile sorting activity which assigns so-called diagnoses, and distributes neurotoxic drugs to people whose problems are not medical in nature. It is not intellectually challenging to even a moderate degree. In fact, its primary requirement is the “ability” to systematically blind one’s cognitive capacities to its total lack of intellectual and conceptual rigor.
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I don't know why I never saw that button. Maybe it is just me !!
I have been playing a computer game in which I make healing elixirs etc. I have been grumbling to myself for a long time that you have to make them one at a time. The other day I noticed a button my brain does not normally recognize. It sets the number of things you make. Doh. We have to focus in order to function, and it makes us less observant. Its an ME thing.
 

Laelia

Senior Member
Messages
243
Location
UK
That's my most enjoyable read so far today. I suppose if he now plans to trawl round every medical school that will keep him busy. It is of course soooo important to be seen to be be doing something to support those poor victims of abuse.

Note that this article was published in March 2016. So it's possible that he's already done all the trawling round!
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
I think psychiatry (the discipline and its proponants), and in particular psychogenic psychiatry, will keep fighting until its defunct or supplanted.

There are indeed good things in psychiatry, you just have to look hard to find them.

For example, if the NIMH finishes the alternative diagnostic system, which is not even close to being properly even started, then the APA might find it has to publish the new manual or find itself without a product. The DSM will at that time be no more useful than a recipe book on 101 ways to cook a dodo.

With a new diagnostic regime we might find that psychiatry will change. There will still be die-hards resisting change even then.

Psychiatry is largely out of step with science and modern scientific practices. There are some practical reasons for this (we still lack sufficient good technology to investigate the brain) but by lowering scientific standards many psychiatric researchers risk lowering the credibility of psychiatry even further. Since the medical and scientific credibility of psychiatry is already in crisis then anyone who is not pushing for more scientific rigor and accountability is harming psychiatry. Its even worse if they are at the top of the psychiatric authority pile and do this.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Doh.!! Thanks for letting me about the new posts button. I have never seen that button and usually dipped into the individual sections and do not see some posts esp as I only look in the General news section.Cheers

I don't know why I never saw that button. Maybe it is just me !!

It would be interesting to know how many people are not aware of the New Posts button, because that's really the most important go-to place on the forum, in terms of keeping up with the latest news and discussion.

I know I only discovered it after being many months on the forum, and I had my own D'oh moment!
 

SamanthaJ

Senior Member
Messages
219
It would be interesting to know how many people are not aware of the New Posts button, because that's really the most important go-to place on the forum, in terms of keeping up with the latest news and discussion.

I know I only discovered it after being many months on the forum, and I had my own D'oh moment!
Discovered it about two days ago, after someone referred to it on another thread.
 

Snowdrop

Rebel without a biscuit
Messages
2,933
Lovely article. Will tweet it later.

My current concern about psychiatry is that it's high priests are currently attempting to force a relationship with neurology. Neurology as we know has tools like scans, EEG's, etc. The idea being to cast a wide net of symptoms as psychiatric in nature and show that even physical manifestations are just 'mind/body' interplay and in need of the very special specialty of psychiatry.

SW needs this to work. His whole career is wrapped up in bringing psychiatry into the high esteem he believes it deserves.:vomit:
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
My current concern about psychiatry is that it's high priests are currently attempting to force a relationship with neurology. Neurology as we know has tools like scans, EEG's, etc. The idea being to cast a wide net of symptoms as psychiatric in nature and show that even physical manifestations are just 'mind/body' interplay and in need of the very special specialty of psychiatry.
I think also it is very parasitic, cuckoo-like behaviour. Their own nest eggs in deep trouble so doing everything they can to jump into bed (nest?) with other's who doing much better than they are.
 
Messages
2,391
Location
UK
Well I have a dim view of neurologists too...but they are masters of medicine compared to psychiatrists...all relative I suppose
You misunderstood me. I was suggesting that the psychiatrists causing all this mess (not all psychiatrists, there are many good ones) are being parasitic, feeding off of the neurologists in order to try and associate themselves with something more respectable, and so try to hitch a ride on the better reputations of others.
 
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15,786
You misunderstood me. I was suggesting that the psychiatrists causing all this mess (not all psychiatrists, there are many good ones) are being parasitic, feeding off of the neurologists in order to try and associate themselves with something more respectable, and so try to hitch a ride on the better reputations of others.
Neurologists can be quite bad too. There are several psychosomatic ones involved with the current NIH post-infectious ME study, for example. And most of us have had very bad personal experiences with neurologists, if we've been unlucky enough to see one.

I do agree that neurologists tend to have a better reputation that psychiatrists, but I don't think the better reputation is usually warranted.