Agree wholeheartedly! As someone who studied to become a psychiatrist but failed, I discovered everything you wrote prior to the two archetypes is accepted by all but the most zealous psychiatrists.
Your archetypes is controversial but I can think of at least one other high profile example of a medication rejector (John Nash). While there are plenty of well-meaning people seeking actual treatment for mental conditions, pharmaceutical companies are invested in selling more medications. Your line of thought will be classified as anti-psychiatry given it threatens their interests.
Here are a few other questionable practices of psychiatry. Some historic, some ongoing.
-Medications are often changed in minor or even useless ways to extend their patents.
-Lobotomies were once prescribed for conditions as minor as children being unruly or housewives being unhappy.
-Overprescription of “Mother’s Little Helper” (Valium).
-The two studies compromising “Being Sane in Insane Places” displayed how subjective the mental health diagnosis process is.
-The “repressed memories” mania where the number of people “remembering” childhood sexual abuse and satanic rituals skyrocketed. While abuse is underreported, most of these particular cases were revealed to be invented.
-Medicalizing poverty in order to justify welfare payments; psychiatric diagnoses of welfare applicants quadrupled between 1983 and 2003.
-The opioid crisis could, arguably, be considered a mental health crisis.
-We are seeing an overprescription of stimulants (Adderall) similar to that of the opioid crisis today.
While therapy and medication can certainly help people, given the amount of past and ongoing medical malpractice, one should be skeptical of the industry.
Something I do try to keep in mind is that "best-guess" fields are often wrong but adjust quickly to egregious violations, which is why I feel that the primary goal of APA verification is rigorous ethics rather than mandating correct "knowledge". This is the flaw of any social science - replicability is always an issue when relying on self-reporting. It's scientific, but not a science. The unreliability of a human narrator and the faultiness of recollection is a challenge that has to be worked through.
I definitely believe that psychologists can tell what is wrong with some patients better than the patient can express it. I think that "you are the only expert on your own mental health" is a wrong statement. That being said, when a patient opens their mind to a psychologist, the potential for manipulation is very high - it's severely unethical to "play god" with people's minds, even if it is for their perceived benefit, and should only be used in the most extreme cases. People have to help themselves in whatever way they can, in all honesty.
Agree wholeheartedly! As someone who studied to become a psychiatrist but failed, I discovered everything you wrote prior to the two archetypes is accepted by all but the most zealous psychiatrists.
Your archetypes is controversial but I can think of at least one other high profile example of a medication rejector (John Nash). While there are plenty of well-meaning people seeking actual treatment for mental conditions, pharmaceutical companies are invested in selling more medications. Your line of thought will be classified as anti-psychiatry given it threatens their interests.
Here are a few other questionable practices of psychiatry. Some historic, some ongoing.
-Medications are often changed in minor or even useless ways to extend their patents.
-Lobotomies were once prescribed for conditions as minor as children being unruly or housewives being unhappy.
-Overprescription of “Mother’s Little Helper” (Valium).
-The two studies compromising “Being Sane in Insane Places” displayed how subjective the mental health diagnosis process is.
-The “repressed memories” mania where the number of people “remembering” childhood sexual abuse and satanic rituals skyrocketed. While abuse is underreported, most of these particular cases were revealed to be invented.
-Medicalizing poverty in order to justify welfare payments; psychiatric diagnoses of welfare applicants quadrupled between 1983 and 2003.
-The opioid crisis could, arguably, be considered a mental health crisis.
-We are seeing an overprescription of stimulants (Adderall) similar to that of the opioid crisis today.
While therapy and medication can certainly help people, given the amount of past and ongoing medical malpractice, one should be skeptical of the industry.
Something I do try to keep in mind is that "best-guess" fields are often wrong but adjust quickly to egregious violations, which is why I feel that the primary goal of APA verification is rigorous ethics rather than mandating correct "knowledge". This is the flaw of any social science - replicability is always an issue when relying on self-reporting. It's scientific, but not a science. The unreliability of a human narrator and the faultiness of recollection is a challenge that has to be worked through.
I definitely believe that psychologists can tell what is wrong with some patients better than the patient can express it. I think that "you are the only expert on your own mental health" is a wrong statement. That being said, when a patient opens their mind to a psychologist, the potential for manipulation is very high - it's severely unethical to "play god" with people's minds, even if it is for their perceived benefit, and should only be used in the most extreme cases. People have to help themselves in whatever way they can, in all honesty.