The psychiatric industry does so much damage. The biggest example? Giving people labels that make them irresponsible and helpless. While labels may serve the interests of the psychiatrists, they don’t serve the interests of the people being labeled.
Example: “I have ADHD.” What does it mean to “have” ADHD?
Isn’t it far more honest, and accurate, to say: “I often don’t pay attention and it creates problems for myself and those around me. I have to get better at paying attention.”
Now I know what many will say. “ADHD is an illness, and people can’t help it. They need medication and treatment.”
OK. But in the vast majority of cases, people who take the medication don’t benefit from it enough to pay attention like they should.
People in that condition will then seek the help of a therapist, who talks to clients and patients, rather than prescribing drugs. That therapist is left cleaning up the mess left by psychological labeling. “I have ADHD. I’m taking medication, but I still don’t pay attention like I should. What can I do? I have ADHD. Can YOU cure me, if the medication won’t?”
The therapist then must convince the client/patient to think differently. “You don’t ‘HAVE’ ADHD. You have just acquired bad habits. The challenge we must work on together is to help you build new thinking and behavioral habits.” The client/patient is understandably confused and put off, in most cases. “I was told I have a medical illness. I was given medication for it. The medication doesn’t solve most of it. Now I’m being told I have bad habits?”
It’s a fair question. But the problem goes back to the psychiatrists, public school teachers/officials, drug companies and others with the most to gain by telling people they HAVE illnesses when in reality what they HAVE are … bad habits, deeply internalized ones causing them problems.
By the way, you can substitute all I wrote here about ADHD with the word depression. “I have depression”. OK, you have depression. But what does that mean? It may have something to do with your brain chemistry (something poorly understood), and medication does sometimes partly alter emotional states. Great.
But in the vast majority of cases, and according to decades of research, people need therapy in addition to (or instead of) medication. Therapy means changing deeply internalized and bad, counter-productive thoughts and behaviors. In other words: You don’t HAVE depression. You think in negative, overly distorted ways and it has a troubling impact on yourself and those around you.
Bad thinking habits and bad behavioral habits can, over time, cause a depressed or malevolent state of mind to develop and overtake a person. No, you didn’t do it on purpose. But you did cause it, through habitually distorted thinking and self-defeating behavior.
Being depressed does not mean you “have” depression. It’s not that simple.
The psychiatric industry does so much damage. It’s never held accountable. I don’t mean legally so much as morally.
Why don’t people question the ones who tell them what they want to hear, but harm them — and lie to them — in the process? People love to hear, “It’s not you. It’s your illness. You have ADHD. You have depression. You have done NOTHING WRONG.”
But telling them this, while comforting at first, doesn’t resolve the problem. Indeed, it makes it worse over the long-run.
Hmmm…These bad psychiatrists sound a lot like politicians, don’t they?
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