Psychiatry

From BoyWiki

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine concerned with the study and treatment of mental illness, emotional disturbance, and abnormal behavior. Psychiatrists are medical doctors, who also are qualified in the field of psychology, which is the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context.

The term "psychiatry" was first coined by the German physician Johann Christian Reil in 1808 and literally means the 'medical treatment of the soul' (psych- "soul" from Ancient Greek psykhē "soul"; -iatry "medical treatment" from Gk. iātrikos "medical" from iāsthai "to heal").

Problems with definitions

What is an "illness"?

What is a physical illness? When a person is physically ill, he goes to a doctor. The doctor runs standardized medical tests to determine what the problem is. It may be an infection (which can usually be treated with antibiotics) or it may be an injury (which perhaps can be treated with surgery, or just left alone to cure itself) or it may be a "malfunction" of an organ, which, again, may or may not benefit from surgery or drug therapy.

All of the above involve standardized tests, which have been proven to work. They are based on tests which have been confirmed by many clinicians to be reliable tests. There is very little "guesswork" involved (usually). Either the doctor already knows how to treat the problem, or he just enters the symptoms into a computer program (if the illness is unusual), and the computer program suggests what the diagnosis probably is, and what treatment should be. It is all very scientific.

What is a mental illness?

A "mental illness" is a problem not with the body but with the mind. Just what is "the mind"? Nobody really knows. Philosophers have been arguing about what "the mind" is for thousands of years.

How about according to the current state of knowledge? Can you perform an autopsy on "a mind" after a person's death? No. Can you use x-rays on "a mind"? No. Can "a mind" be measured in a laboratory, for example, to compare two person's "minds" and discover which person's "mind" is larger, smaller, lighter, heavier, etc? No.

Science does know that a "mind" is something that results from having a brain. When a person dies, he no longer has "a mind". But weighing a person just before death and just after death discovers that there is no difference in weight! "A mind" doesn't weigh anything at all.

Doctors have figured out some things about the brain. If the brain is physically damaged, there are certain symptoms -- again, symptoms that are well-established, that have been carefully studied and confirmed by other medical doctors in carefully done clinical experiments. If one part of the brain is damaged, a person goes blind. If another part is damaged, the person becomes deaf. There is no question about these symptoms. They are facts.

But if "a mind" is ill, how can "the illness" be diagnosed? It cannot be diagnosed in the usual way that doctors diagnose illnesses. In fact, if one goes to ten different medical doctors with a certain physical complaint, then almost always the diagnosis from the ten different medical doctors will be absolutely identical. This is not surprising, because the medical doctors are basing their diagnosis on scientific experiments that have been confirmed and are not in any way in doubt.

On the other hand, if one goes to ten different psychiatrists with a "mental complaint" you are likely to get ten different diagnosis! This should seem very strange to a rational person. If the psychiatrists actually know what they are doing, and their "diagnosis" are based on confirmed medical science, then they all should come up with the same diagnosis almost all of the time!

But they don't! So what, then, is a "mental illness"? A "mental illness" is what a small group of psychiatrists have voted to be "a mental illness. In fact, the number of so-called "mental illnesses" listed in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual written by the American Psychiatric Association [which, by the way, contains no statistics] have grown tremendously since the DSM-I was first published in 1952, described 11 categories of mental disorders, while the current DSM -- DSM-5 -- now has 15 chapters and thousands and thousands of diagnosis for "mental disorders". In fact, just about everyone in the world has some kind of "mental disorder," according to the psychiatrists!

A regular medical doctor diagnoses things about the body that are "abnormal". This can be fairly easily done, because enough is known about "the normal" human body for him to do so. There are few if any differences between a "normal" body in one culture, and a "normal" body in another.

But when it comes to the mind we find that there is not much agreement about what is a "normal" mind and what is an "abnormal" mind. In fact, what can be "normal behavior" typical of a "normal mind" in one society can be abnormal behavior typical of an "abnormal mind" in another!

Criticisms of Psychiatry

There are too many to go into here, but the main criticisms are that different psychiatrists give different diagnosis to the same patient, which shows that there is something very seriously wrong with the diagnostic process.

Psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies

Psychiatrists, being medical doctors, can prescribe hundreds of different drugs which are claimed to "be effective" in "treating" "mental illnesses". Where in the past, a psychiatrist would have to spend an hour (really, just 50 minutes) with a "patient" to justify billing the patient, today a psychiatrist can write dozens of prescription in an hour, and charge the usual one-hour minimum fee for writing each prescription. This provides a tremendous incentive to the psychiatrist to prescribe more medication. Also, this means that psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical companies have a potential "conflict of interest" (if their interests should be "at arms length" from each other).

Efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs for treating "mental illnesses"

The efficacy (effectiveness) of the various drugs prescribed by psychiatrists have been questioned.

  • The studies of the pharmaceutical companies done on their drugs before being approved usually have not been open to peer review by other scientists.
  • It is more common than not that a psychiatrist will prescribe a series of medications to a single patient, looking for "one that seems to work". This is a "hit-and-miss" method of treatment, one which is almost never used in standard medical treatment for physical illnesses.
  • Oftentimes there are very serious side-effects to these drugs. Many suicides among young people (including children) have been attributed to "side-effects" of the drugs prescribed to them. Warnings have been placed on many drugs about these potentially lethal side-effects.
  • Comparison studies have indicated that it may be the placebo effect which brings about any "cures".
  • Because we are talking about the "state of a person's mind," when the patient reports positive benefits from the drug treatment, there is absolutely no way to objectively determine whether the "benefits" are real, or only imagined by the patient.

This above list is not complete, but it covers many of the main criticisms.

Psychiatry and BoyLovers

It is the psychiatrists who have medicalized the question of human sexual behavior. What previously had been ethical questions regarding "right" and "wrong" human sexual behavior, dealt with by religious teachings, have now become medical problems dealt with by "doctors".

Psychiatrists often are involved in the trials of BoyLovers (by serving as "expert witnesses"), and in the decisions regarding "Civil Commitment" as "sexual predators" to confinement in mental hospitals after the prison sentence of the BoyLover has been been served. Until the BoyLover is no longer "a threat to society" he can be held prisoner in a mental hospital.

For many BoyLovers, this has meant a life sentence in a mental hospital.

See also

External links

Psychiatry at Wikipedia


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