Resource "Study finds psychiatric diagnosis to be ‘scientifically meaningless’"

[Rounded Agony]

Man, the more I dig, the more gold I find - first, that SSRIs and maybe antidepressants altogether are basically useless, now this! I can't wait to have all this stuff in my back pocket for if I ever manage to see that community psych; I'm sure they'll love me.

Enjoy the full text of the study release article below, as well as a link to a more detailed writeup about it that I'd very much recommend, at the end of which you can find a link to the paper itself (sadly only a preview available without paying):

The study, led by researchers from the University of Liverpool, involved a detailed analysis of five key chapters of the latest edition of the widely used Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), on 'schizophrenia', 'bipolar disorder', 'depressive disorders', 'anxiety disorders' and 'trauma-related disorders'.

Diagnostic manuals such as the DSM were created to provide a common diagnostic language for mental health professionals and attempt to provide a definitive list of mental health problems, including their symptoms.

The main findings of the research were:

• Psychiatric diagnoses all use different decision-making rules
• There is a huge amount of overlap in symptoms between diagnoses
• Almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events
• Diagnoses tell us little about the individual patient and what treatment they need

The authors conclude that diagnostic labelling represents 'a disingenuous categorical system'.

Lead researcher Dr Kate Allsopp, University of Liverpool, said: "Although diagnostic labels create the illusion of an explanation they are scientifically meaningless and can create stigma and prejudice. I hope these findings will encourage mental health professionals to think beyond diagnoses and consider other explanations of mental distress, such as trauma and other adverse life experiences."

Professor Peter Kinderman, University of Liverpool, said: "This study provides yet more evidence that the biomedical diagnostic approach in psychiatry is not fit for purpose. Diagnoses frequently and uncritically reported as 'real illnesses' are in fact made on the basis of internally inconsistent, confused and contradictory patterns of largely arbitrary criteria. The diagnostic system wrongly assumes that all distress results from disorder, and relies heavily on subjective judgments about what is normal."​

Professor John Read, University of East London, said: "Perhaps it is time we stopped pretending that medical-sounding labels contribute anything to our understanding of the complex causes of human distress or of what kind of help we need when distressed."

The DSM: “Scientifically Meaningless” Diagnoses

A new study finds that DSM diagnoses are contradictory, subjective, and heterogenous to the point of being unusable.

www.madinamerica.com

 

[Pluto]

This is a fair point.

I remember when I was a teenager, I was trying to get a loan for a car. Nfather pretended he was going to help me see a finance guy, but I arrived to find myself locked in a room with some psychologist. I walked out diagnosed as 'schizoid' and 'lacking goodwill' amongst other things.

The psychologist used his authority to demean me, calling me the medical version of a nasty, antisocial, uncaring person just because I was in a distressed state after being tormented by my family. I'll let people who actually know me judge my level of goodwill. (Then again, Nfather was great at seducing people with his charm and artfully turning them on me via portraying me as the archetypal antisocial teen. It's how I ended up a pariah with no support whatsoever.)

Anyway, a huge number of problems that people face don't need to be medicalised. Often people are just in need of love, understanding, support, etc. Many have been abused and are left unstable, or they are in need of support to better integrate into society. So often people just need basic things explained, like why they should not blame themselves for being abused.

That said, there are some psychological concepts, like the 'dark triad' personality types who I was surrounded by in childhood, who are definitely in their own category. Perhaps their state could have been prevented if their childhoods were better, but people with zero empathy who would drive other people to suicide for fun do need to be labelled and treated differently.

 

[lachrymost]

I'm not firmly anti-psych in totality just yet, but I'm only getting more skeptical with time (and traumatizing experiences with psychiatrists and medications). Mad in America I keep coming back to. I'd like to know how your appointment goes if it ever happens; I'm sure it'll be interesting. I love hearing about people challenging the power dynamic like this.

 

[Alayna]

In addition, labelling distress as abnormal may in itself create further distress. For example, flashbacks in the context of trauma are distressing themselves, but the diagnosis has the potential to make the experience more distressing because the flashbacks are regarded as abnormal

Thought provoking.

Thanks for the reading, RA. The obscuration of root trauma is the standout for me (anybody have thoughts on 'The Body Keeps the Score'?), but there're a lot of other good points here.

If anyone's looking for the full text, dm me.

 

[Rounded Agony]

This is a fair point.

I remember when I was a teenager, I was trying to get a loan for a car. Nfather pretended he was going to help me see a finance guy, but I arrived to find myself locked in a room with some psychologist. I walked out diagnosed as 'schizoid' and 'lacking goodwill' amongst other things.

The psychologist used his authority to demean me, calling me the medical version of a nasty, antisocial, uncaring person just because I was in a distressed state after being tormented by my family. I'll let people who actually know me judge my level of goodwill. (Then again, Nfather was great at seducing people with his charm and artfully turning them on me via portraying me as the archetypal antisocial teen. It's how I ended up a pariah with no support whatsoever.)

Anyway, a huge number of problems that people face don't need to be medicalised. Often people are just in need of love, understanding, support, etc. Many have been abused and are left unstable, or they are in need of support to better integrate into society. So often people just need basic things explained, like why they should not blame themselves for being abused.

That said, there are some psychological concepts, like the 'dark triad' personality types who I was surrounded by in childhood, who are definitely in their own category. Perhaps their state could have been prevented if their childhoods were better, but people with zero empathy who would drive other people to suicide for fun do need to be labelled and treated differently.

Aw jeez. Sorry to hear, Pluto...as usual, you provide a refreshingly balanced (and for here, rare) take, even on your own life trauma history. I agree that in most cases, monsters are made and not born. And that there is some utility to these things, even though the inherent system behind them seems rather flawed. I mean...as the study states, two different individuals sharing zero symptoms could be diagnosed with around 58% of the conditions in DSM-5...I think the crux, which even some in the field seem to totally miss, is the designator "scientifically".

I'm not firmly anti-psych in totality just yet, but I'm only getting more skeptical with time (and traumatizing experiences with psychiatrists and medications). Mad in America I keep coming back to. I'd like to know how your appointment goes if it ever happens; I'm sure it'll be interesting. I love hearing about people challenging the power dynamic like this.

Will keep y'all posted for sure. As above, I think it's more the rampant over-diagnosis based on flawed methodology that's the issue - if the discipline can be overhauled and salvaged then it should, but if it needs to be burned and rebuilt from the ground up, so be it.

Thought provoking.

Thanks for the reading, RA. The obscuration of root trauma is the standout for me (anybody have thoughts on 'The Body Keeps the Score'?), but there're a lot of other good points here.

If anyone's looking for the full text, dm me.

Never heard of that one, but sounds interesting. I would be curious about the full text if you have access!

 

[noaccount]

It's nothing that Madpeople, ex-patients, users and survivors of psychiatry haven't been saying for decades.

 

[Rounded Agony]

It's nothing that Madpeople, ex-patients, users and survivors of psychiatry haven't been saying for decades.

We all know nothing from outside the system will ever make any waves. They'd just throw about a bunch of diagnoses in self-defense! "Change comes from within", as it is said.

 

[noaccount]

It really does not though, like the system exists for a reason - to call those "sick" who don't conform, to enforce the will of capitalism, the nuclear family, and other dominant institutions - more "evidence" isn't going to change it. It doesn't need to "be correct" or "be logically coherent" it just needs to "work" - to be a hammer, a locked door, a gun.

 

[Little T]

It takes one person to have a physical disease but it takes two to have a "mental illness"...
"Psychiatry is a Pseudo Science" - Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology"
"Psychiatrists and the pharma industry are to blame for the current 'epidemic' of mental disorders"
Don't get me wrong, some conditions are very real, yet again...
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

 

[wait.what]

Nobody denies that psychiatry is a pseudoscience, though. People who are bothered by that just don't go into psychiatry.

For the purposes of most SaSu members, the distinction is irrelevant anyway. The judges who sign our commitment papers don't care how real a science psychiatry is. What is significant to them is that psychiatry is the "best" tool currently on offer to keep us from attempting to die. Of course, since psychiatry has no real competition in the West as an orthopedic device of the mind, calling it the "best tool" available for correcting errant brains is a bit disingenuous. I also fail to see the state's compelling interest in forcing pills into people who would really prefer not to exist in the first place, but as we all know, that argument is a non-starter.

 

[noaccount]

Nobody denies that psychiatry is a pseudoscience, though. People who are bothered by that just don't go into psychiatry.

For the purposes of most SaSu members, the distinction is irrelevant anyway. The judges who sign our commitment papers don't care how real a science psychiatry is. What is significant to them is that psychiatry is the "best" tool currently on offer to keep us from attempting to die. Of course, since psychiatry has no real competition in the West as an orthopedic device of the mind, calling it the "best tool" available for correcting errant brains is a bit disingenuous. I also fail to see the state's compelling interest in forcing pills into people who would really prefer not to exist in the first place, but as we all know, that argument is a non-starter.

Yes I need to end it soon because even here there is no refuge from anti choice violence.
There are men and women here telling me they are justified in invading the bodies of children for thinking wrong, not even for trying to ctb.

When I named the torture and sexual abuse done to those who are institutionalized,
A woman first accused me of NEVER having lived through such an experience myself.
THEN she accused me of having lived through "the worst abuses," and not understanding that how she and her colleagues did it was "better."

She said:

We implement something called least invasive. If the patient takes the medication with encouragement, great no force. If they don't, the amount of force needed increases.

NEEDED! Saying the children MADE the adults do it to them!

But she ALSO put "force" in QUOTATION MARKS to indicate it wasn't really force. (Because the people who it happened to weren't really people with wills to violate.) After she herself elected to tell me that what she did was against people's will, she said it wasn't actually "involuntary" because that would be something "much different"??????????????


Anti-choicers are subjecting children to forced nudity, forced touching, and many forms of sexual assault - including being groped, roofied, and force catheterized.

We live in an environment of dishonestly, manipulation, and abuse - nothing can ever be named as it's really happening. We are supposed to be closed caskets, that anything can be done-to and then, buried and never seen or heard of again. Death is the only way out.

 

[wait.what]

There aren't many fates worse than living under the legal guardianship of an institution. That includes some kinds of child- and elder-care facilities, most inpatient psychiatric units, as well as incarceration of all forms.

You might have a chance in hell if you live in an institution, but the person(s) legally responsible for you are not employees there. Once the person who arranges for your food, clothing, and medical care is on the payroll of a place that gets its revenue by making sure you stay locked up, you are all kinds of screwed. The less power you have, the more screwed you are.

I came very, very close to punching my own ticket last spring because of a situation like that. Only time will tell if not going through with it turns out to have been a terrible mistake.

Edit: For the record, I have a lot more privilege than your average madman, and I tend to do better than most while "behind the walls." Sometimes civil rights cannot be bought or negotiated for, however, and in the last analysis I'm as vulnerable as any of us.

 

[noaccount]

I want to believe in solidarity but even here there is endless rape culture and Child Sexual Abuse apologia.

 

[CTB Dream]

This real tell belive please this name only spprox not complete tell you happne what real. Reality no psychology reality damage brain damage body straightforward damage keep damage damage injury maybe veg maybe die ,this not listen human word all Nonsense this happen all damage brain neuro people ignore please safe self not listen other human, this damage real harm show clear life wrong

 

[darkwater]

• Almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events

• Almost all diagnoses mask the role of trauma and adverse events

This 100%!
I will never forgive them for what they did to me with their medications "oh it's only brain chemicals we need to fix".

"oh why you are still having side effects five years after stopping the medication we don't know", I feel like a guinea pig.