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Psychiatry Quotes

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Psychiatry Quotes

“To a narrative therapist, there are few interactions between couples that are not influenced by patriarchy. If there is an abuse of power in a relationship, a narrative therapist would view the responsibility for the abuse of power as lying in the hands of the person abusing the power. A narrative approach would invite the abuser to Recognize the abuse as abuse. Position himself against it. Accept total responsibility for stopping it.”

“Psychotropic drugs have also been organized according to structure (e.g., tricyclic), mechanism (e.g., monoamine, oxidase inhibitor [MAOI]), history (first generation, traditional), uniqueness (e.g., atypical), or indication (e.g., antidepressant). A further problem is that many drugs used to treat medical and neurological conditions are routinely used to treat psychiatric disorders.”

“Nonetheless, it remains the case that the psychological literature on organised abuse has not provided a coherent explanation for the emergence of sexually abusive groups in a range of contexts, or for the difficulties that victims experience in disclosing their abuse and accessing care and support. The psychological model of organised abuse emphasises individual rather than social factors and so it tends to characterise organised abuse as a drama of psychological energies. Similar deficiencies can be found in attempts to theorise organised abuse that draw from psychiatric understandings of ‘paedophilia’ (eg Wyre 1996). This is a perspective that has proved particularly influential in public inquiries into allegations of organised abuse (for examples from Australia, see NCA Joint Committee Report 1995, Wood Report 1997, for examples from Britain, see Corby et at. 2001). These public inquiries have integrated the psychiatric notion of ‘paedophilia’ with existing stereotypes of organised crime to generate a model of ‘organised paedophilia’ or the ‘paedophile ring’, in which otherwise solitary sexual offenders with deviant sexual interests conspire to sexually abuse children for pleasure and/or profit. This psychiatric model may accurately describe some abusive men and groups but it has proven problematic as a catch-all explanation for organised abuse. Attempts to establish the existence of ‘paedophile rings’ often founders on semantic debates over whether alleged perpetrators meet the diagnostic criteria of a ‘paedophile’, sometimes leading to the confused and misleading conclusion that no ‘paedophile ring’ existed even where there is strong evidence that multiple perpetrators have colluded in the sexual abuse of multiple children.”

“Someone asked me recently, what it is like to live with OCD. I paused for a while and said, imagine watching your sibling getting run over by a truck in front of your eyes, not once, not twice, but repeatedly like in a looped video, or your child getting beaten up at school, or your partner getting abused by strangers on the street - and the only way you can stop that event from happening is to keep on repeating the task that you were carrying out when the vision first appeared in your mind, until some other less emotionally agonizing thought breaks the loop of that particular vision and replaces it - and though you know, it's just a thought and not the destiny of the people you love, you feel it excruciatingly necessary to keep repeating the task until the thought passes, so that nothing bad happens to your loved ones - and that's what it is like inside the head of a person with OCD, every moment of their life.”

“Perception is not observation, Perception is prediction. The brain doesn't care about observing, It only puts forward a self-serving illusion.”

“Identity confusion is defined by the SCID-D as a subjective feeling of uncertainty, puzzlement, or conflict about one's own identity. Patients who report histories of childhood trauma characteristically describe themes of ongoing inner struggle regarding their identity; of inner battles for survival; or other images of anger, conflict, and violence. P13”

“Many of the verbal expressions that cause people to be detained on "mental health" grounds are — should be — protected speech. People who say things considered incomprehensible or illogical by the police or "mental health" workers are given ostensibly medical diagnoses and imprisoned for a limited time. That is, people who speak in a way those in authority disapprove of are punished, even if the speaker breaks no law. This blatant and often exercised limit on free speech is a "for your own good" exception to the First Amendment. There should be no such exception. But it is so woven into the fabric of American society and jurisprudence that virtually nobody objects. You can refuse a lifesaving treatment for cancer, but you cannot refuse to be jailed for saying something like, "I am Jesus" to the police when they are doing a "welfare check," a euphemism if there ever was one.”

“Somehow the disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians. The flamboyance of the multiple, her intelligence and ability to conceptualize the disorder, coupled with suicidal impulses of various orders of seriousness, all seem to mask for many therapists the underlying pain, dependency, and need that are very much part of the process. In many ways, a professional dealing with a multiple in crisis is in the same position as a parent dealing with a two-year-old or with an adolescent's acting-out behavior. (236)”

“Hvor mange mennesker fikk mon gå frie og franke omkring, hvis det f.eks. i hver eneste gate derinne i byen var installert en Hieronimus med maktfullkommenhet til å sperre dem inne, som efter et Hieronimus skjønn var sinnssyke? Og, hvis det så fantes en av staten utnevnt overhieronimus, hvis bestilling det var å skulle se alle de små Hieronimusser på fingrene, mon så ikke disse småpaver en akker dag tur efter tur ville bli puttet i en vogn med en vokter og to portører og transportert til galehuset? Tenk hvor mange sinnssykeanstalter det så måtte bygges. Mange flere enn man kunne få Hieronimusser til å forestå. En mengde filialstater befolket av sinnssyke, spredt omkring i den egentlig stat, som sikkert også i virkeligheten ville være befolket av mer eller mindre sinnssyke, som måtte gå løs, fordi man ikke hadde plass i anstaltene. Og hvor skulle man så gjøre av de riktig gale, de som var farlige for den offentlige sikkerhet og for nestens liv og lemmer? Delm fikk man fort vekke kappe hodet av og grave ned, eller brenne opp i hui og hast.”

“Dissociative disorders (DDs) were first recognized as official psychiatric disorders in 1980 with the publication of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM III) in 1980. Prior to this, the related symptoms were listed under ‘hysterical neuroses’ in the second edition of the DSM.[1,2] Interestingly, all of the current DDs that have been described were discovered prior to 1900 but decades passed with little study or research of this spectrum of psychiatric pathology.”

“A wide variety of dissociative disorders including DID occur in the psychiatric population and may be misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed for a variety of reasons. Some psychiatrists believe these disorders are extremely rare and some believe that they do not exist. More research is needed, but these disorders may be more common than previously thought.”

“Implicit [in the psychiatric literature] is a set of normative assumptions regarding the father's prerogatives and the mother's obligations within the family, The father, like the children, is presumed to be entitled to the mother's love, nurturance, and care. In fact, his dependent needs actually supersede those of the children, for if a mother falls to provide the accustomed intentions, it is taken for granted that some other female must be found to take her place. The oldest daughter is a frequent choice... The father's wish, indeed his right, to continue to receive female nurturance, whatever the circumstances, is accepted without question.”

“I think more people would stay active in church, if they didn't get so offended by the actions of members. Sometimes, you have to view places of worship as free mental health clinics, in order to deal with the piety or hypocrisy. Parishioners are a wounded souls in various stages of healing, who are being treated by angels, with credentials from the University of Hard Knocks. Some take their therapy seriously and try to practice what they learned. Yet, others down the sacrament like a healing dose of Prozac, with no other effort required. When you keep this in mind, you won't feel so annoyed by the personalities you encounter.”

“Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given year. That means millions of Americans are totally batshit. but having perused the various tests available that they use to determine whether you're manic depressive. OCD, schizo-affective, schizophrenic, or whatever, I'm surprised the number is that low. So I have gone through a bunch of the available tests, and I've taken questions from each of them, and assembled my own psychological evaluation screening which I thought I'd share with you. So, here are some of the things that they ask to determine if you're mentally disordered 1. In the last week, have you been feeling irritable? 2. In the last week, have you gained a little weight? 3. In the last week, have you felt like not talking to people? 4. Do you no longer get as much pleasure doing certain things as you used to? 5. In the last week, have you felt fatigued? 6. Do you think about sex a lot? If you don't say yes to any of these questions either you're lying, or you don't speak English, or you're illiterate, in which case, I have the distinct impression that I may have lost you a few chapters ago.”

“...the vast majority of these [dissociative identity disorder] patients have subtle presentations characterized by a mixture of dissociative and PTSD symptoms embedded with other symptoms, such as posttraumatic depression, substance abuse, somatoform symptoms, eating disorders, and self-destructive and impulsive behaviors.2,10 A history of multiple treatment providers, hospitalizations, and good medication trials, many of which result in only partial or no benefit, is often an indicator of dissociative identity disorder or another form of complex PTSD.”

“You tried so hard to give your kid food that was healthy, she thought. The soy cheese pizza. The organic peas and broccoli and baby carrots. The smoothies. The hormone-free milk. The leafy greens. You kept processed food to a minimum, threw Halloween candy out after a week. Never let him eat the icies they sold in the park, because they had red and yellow dye in them. And then you gave him this?”

“Psychiatry is a state religion, philosophically bankrupt, built on the outdated premises of dualism. Psychiatrists themselves are corrupt and confused. They set an example of suicide for their followers, sell to the highest bidder in our courts, suppress dissent and individuality in corporations and on campuses, and wield the weapon of stigmatization with utter disregard for individual rights and freedoms.”

“An aha experienced decades ago by one of us is relevant to this point. Halfway through a grueling clinical internship, CP [Christopher Peterson] complained to his supervisor, “No one [meaning the patients] ever says thank you for anything I try to do.” The response from the experienced psychiatrist stopped CP mid-whine: “If they [the patients] could say thank you, how many of them do you think would be in a psychiatric hospital?”

“The forward to the landmark 1980 DSM III was appropriately modest and acknowledged that this diagnostic system was imprecise. So imprecise that it never should be used for forensic or insurance purposes. As we will see that modesty was tragically short lived.”

“The implication that the change in nomenclature from “Multiple Personality Disorder” to “Dissociative Identity Disorder” means the condition has been repudiated and “dropped” from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association is false and misleading. Many if not most diagnostic entities have been renamed or have had their names modified as psychiatry changes in its conceptualizations and classifications of mental illnesses. When the DSM decided to go with “Dissociative Identity Disorder” it put “(formerly multiple personality disorder)” right after the new name to signify that it was the same condition. It’s right there on page 526 of DSM-IV-R. There have been four different names for this condition in the DSMs over the course of my career. I was part of the group that developed and wrote successive descriptions and diagnostic criteria for this condition for DSM-III-R, DSM–IV, and DSM-IV-TR. While some patients have been hurt by the impact of material that proves to be inaccurate, there is no evidence that scientifically demonstrates the prevalence of such events. Most material alleged to be false has been disputed by someone, but has not been proven false. Finally, however intriguing the idea of encouraging forgetting troubling material may seem, there is no evidence that it is either effective or safe as a general approach to treatment. There is considerable belief that when such material is put out of mind, it creates symptoms indirectly, from “behind the scenes.” Ironically, such efforts purport to cure some dissociative phenomena by encouraging others, such as Dissociative Amnesia.”

“DSM-5 is not 'the bible of psychiatry' but a practical manual for everyday work. Psychiatric diagnosis is primarily a way of communicating. That function is essential but pragmatic—categories of illness can be useful without necessarily being 'true.' The DSM system is a rough-and-ready classification that brings some degree of order to chaos. It describes categories of disorder that are poorly understood and that will be replaced with time. Moreover, current diagnoses are syndromes that mask the presence of true diseases. They are symptomatic variants of broader processes or arbitrary cut-off points on a continuum.”

“The categories used in psychiatric diagnosis are based on observation of signs and symptoms, rather than on pathological processes. One can make use of a few signs, such as facial expressions associated with depression or the flight of ideas associated with mania. But what clinicians mainly use for diagnosis are symptoms, the subject experiences reported by patients. Psychiatrists have little knowledge of the processes that lie behind these phenomena. Thus psychiatric diagnoses, with very few exceptions, are syndromes, not diseases.”

“Critics of the DSM and ICD have argued that disorders are arbitrary labels used to describe typical human experiences that are deemed abnormal. An example of this concept is that different countries have varied expectations and views of what is considered to be normal. A person who claims to talk to spirits might be considered schizophrenic in one culture while being deemed a holy person in another.”

“There is a clear difference between the objectivity and subjectivity of the physical diagnostic criteria, such as that used for Parkinson’s, and the symptomatic diagnostic criteria used for mental disorders in the DSM. Brain diseases, like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Frontotemporal lobe degeneration, Prion disease, Lewy Body dementia, and many others mentioned in the DSM-V, are diagnosed through objective physical tests, such as MRI scans, detection of misfolded proteins or identification of certain genes. These tests, and therefore the diagnoses of these disorders are objective; the MRI scan either does or does not show a physical indicator of biological dysfunction, misfolded proteins and particular genes are either biologically present or not. In this way, the diagnoses of such brain dysfunctions are objective, they either exist as a matter of fact or they do not. The need for these tests might be brought about because a service user is experiencing symptoms such as ‘postural rigidity’ or ‘tremors’, but these symptoms are not enough alone for a diagnosis of physical brain dysfunction, objective tests must be carried out. In contrast, the diagnosis of mental disorders rests on clusters of symptoms alone. If we are assessing whether someone is displaying ‘childlike silliness’ or ‘excessive emotionality’, we have no objective tests to aid us, our assessment is made solely on our subjective interpretation of the service user.”

“I finally saw the whole conspiracy standing as plain as an elephant in the street; also the conspiracy was admitted to me in great detail by one of the princes of the conspiracy." "Bad, Smith, very bad." "If one of the inmates should come to you right now, Doctor, and tell you it was raining outside, you'd say 'Bad, very bad', and make damning marks on his record." " That's probably true. It's an automatic response with me.”

“Once the individual has learned to dissociate in the context of trauma, he or she may subsequently transfer this response to other situations and it may be repeated thereafter arbitrarily in a wide variety of circumstances. The dissociation therefore “destabilizes adaptation and becomes pathological.”[6] It is important for the psychiatrist to accurately diagnose DDs and also to place the symptoms in perspective with regard to trauma history.”

“All my ideas had been wrong. Schizophrenia wasn't a split personality. It was a brain disease, a chemical imbalance. People with schizophrenia did hallucinate. They heard voices commanding them to do things. They heard voices talking about them. Sometimes they had delusions, like that they were the Prophet Elijah, or Moses. People with schizophrenia were very sick. Mostly the disease started in people who were very young, just starting their lives. Sometimes drugs helped get their hallucinations under control. Sometimes drugs didn't help at all. Very often people with schizophrenia didn't get better. Some of them spent their whole lives in institutions.”