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> My personal impression is that the rise of mental conditions is an increase in diagnosis, not occurrence. Robert Whitaker [1] has looked into the matter, and
by tcj_phx 10y ago
> My personal impression is that the rise of mental conditions is an increase in diagnosis, not occurrence.
Robert Whitaker [1] has looked into the matter, and proposes that standard treatments take an episodic disease and make it chronic.
[1] Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America - http://www.madinamerica.com/product/62043/ http://www.madinamerica.com/product/62043/
My step-brother hates what his psychiatrists did to him. He stopped taking their drugs, and is rather normal now.
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoI'm sorry for whatever happened to your brother. Psychology is sadly not an exact science yet. But when I stopped taking my drugs, I was basically nonfunctional for months. You can't generalize from one data point.
- tcj_phx 10y ago> But when I stopped taking my drugs, I was basically nonfunctional for months. The body adjusts to compensate for the activity of the drug in the body, so the original problem frequently gets worse if the drug is taken away suddenly. There are strategies for helping people get off psychotropic drugs, but I don't think they cover this in psychiatrists' training programs. > You can't generalize from one data point. I don't know anything about my step brother, other than that my mom mentioned that he'd gotten himself off the pills. It might've taken him a while.