I looked at this blog post and it mentions a UN report which seems to be quite critical of modern psychiatry.
The doctor who made the report seems to be saying that drugging people is not a great approach, and really we should recognise that poor mental health is a result of social and psychological pressures:
Public policies continue to neglect the importance of the preconditions of poor mental health, such as violence, disempowerment, social exclusion and isolation and the breakdown of communities, systemic socioeconomic disadvantage and harmful conditions at work and in schools… Reductive biomedical approaches to treatment that do not adequately address contexts and relationships can no longer be considered compliant with the right to health.
Thoughts on this? Is the medical model of psychiatry just created by money-hungry pharma companies? Of course some people think they cannot function without their meds, and I sympathise with that view. But perhaps this belief is reinforced by strong withdrawal effects of these drugs, which are well-known. So somebody who has been on the drug for a while tries coming off, they have strong withdrawal symptoms, and they think “I can’t cope without this drug, I must go back on it”. Perhaps this is where tapering can help, because it helps people come off drugs (if they choose to do so) while reducing withdrawal effects.
Edit: The report was from 2017 but I still find it interesting. More info about it can be seen here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc3521-report-special-rapporteur-right-everyone-enjoyment-highest
I think there’s more to mental health problems than just socioeconomic impacts. I’m a fan of a well rounded approach that uses therapy as well as medicine to treat problems properly.
Depression is a wonderful example, society can easily trigger depression in people, but there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that there is a genetic predisposition to having depression. That to me is why I seem to see the best improvements in my friends that find a good antidepressant but also have regular therapy sessions. At least that’s my perspective on the matter.
I have seen stats about genetic dispositions, yes. Wikipedia says 40% of a person’s risk of having major depression comes from genes.
Still. One thing is that you don’t know what your genes are. Your genes might have less of a risk than you think. But also, maybe an increased risk can be dealt with through lifestyle choices. I’m not saying people shouldn’t take meds if they want to take them, and I think personal choice is extremely important. But the meds do have annoying and somewhat harmful side effects… so I suppose that has to be weighed up in a decision to take the meds or not.
Genetic predispositions also aren’t necessarily written in stone. At this point, we have a lot of research showing genes can be turned on/off by diet and environmental or nurture-based factors.
Pretending it’s OK for kids to be traumatized if we can just drug them or have them speak to a therapist once they’re older (or increasingly now, starting from childhood) has never made sense to me. It’s not like either of those things cures people. The treatment bar being set at life being just okay enough to hold down a job is shortchanging everyone, societally, even those making short-term profits.
We should be looking for ways to eradicate serious mental health issues that affect people’s ability to function, not just make them easier to hide.
Yes this makes sense to me. I definitely think we should look for better ways to deal with mental health problems. And yes you’re probably right that we should have a better standard than simply “you can now slave at a job, therefore you’re healthy”.
I think one good solution for mental health problems (maybe not always, but it can work) is talking to somebody who is willing to listen. This can be hard to find. But there are mental health charities out there who do great work in talking to people who are having problems. There are support phone lines and things like that.