So... not to undercut the message of anyone who is trying to reform the catastrophically broken mental health system, but - there is a massive elephant in the r

So... not to undercut the message of anyone who is trying to reform the catastrophically broken mental health system, but - there is a massive elephant in the room in this discussion, and that is trauma. It is nearly inconceivable to me that a leader in the field, a guy who wrote an earlier version of the DSM aka bible of modern psychiatry, manages to talk about the pros and cons of meds but never mentions the experiences that are known to drastically harm mental health. We don’t need a “moon shot” as Dr. Frances suggests. At least in terms of expensive research into completely novel technologies or drugs to determine the root cause or treat much of this suffering. We may need a moonshot in terms of getting over our stigma around talking about trauma and abuse, so that trauma-informed care becomes the rule and not the exception. The closest thing the DSM has to a trauma diagnosis is PTSD and complex PTSD. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk (author of The Body Keeps The Score, incredible resource on trauma) has proposed the diagnosis “Developmental Trauma Disorder” but this has not yet been widely adopted by mainstream psychiatry. As far as I’m concerned, adding this single diagnosis and training mental health professionals to screen for trauma will do a lot more to help people than writing doomsaying articles like this one. Source: grew up with developmental trauma from abusive family environment. Lost my little sister to suicide after her severe trauma was not screened for and was misdiagnosed as “bipolar”.