Naive, troubled people, who fell pray to the pseudoscientific field called psychiatry. It's a lot more than pharmaceutical propaganda, it's psychiatric and psychological propaganda coupled with the fact that the vast majority of people can't make the difference between science and pseudoscience. What is a "manic episode?" How do we measure it exactly and what is the scientific basis of the "border" between a medical problem and a non medical problem? What is the verifiable, scientific evidence that unambiguously proves that it is indeed a medical problem (as opposed to behavioral variety, just as people vary in size, strength, intelligence and so on?) The very same questions can be asked for pretty much all the other concepts in the text, and pretty much anything in psychiatry. Do any of you know how all these behaviors got to be considered "mental illnesses/disorders" and on what basis? We can "treat" pretty much anything with drugs. We just have to label a certain thing as "bad, unacceptable, etc." and then feed people drugs util they no longer show that unwanted behavior/emotion/whatever. And when I say "anything" I really mean it: from shyness (this can be treated pretty well with alcohol) to OPPOSITION TO RAPE! Yeah! We could even event a new mental illness, as members of the APA regularly do: "rape-phobia" - and then feed people who have rape phobia drugs until they no longer show the symptoms - that is, accept being raped, without opposition. Actually, if we think carefully we might label the concept of rape as a phobia in itself. Because, after you are treated, you'll no longer oppose uninvited sexual contacts and as such we can no longer talk about it as being rape. Typical example of high-tech pseudoscience. Some people call this kind of stuff "high tech phrenology." I agree. If you look carefully at the bottom of the first page, you'll see "It compared brain scans and neuropsychological test results from bipolar disorder I patients who were using medications to control their symptoms, and healthy subjects matched to the bipolar subjects for age, sex, ethnicity, handedness and other factors. " So they "compared" the brains of people who used psychotropic medication (which obviously affects the brain) to the brains of other people who didn't. Well, that's one huge mistake. Then, there's the typical pseudoscientific way all these "experiments" are conducted: almost all of them are based on extremely big no-no's in real science: correlation = causation (their favorite fallacy), "after this, therefore because of this", bad sampling, lack of blind tests and experimentation, biased confirmation (they're constantly looking for patters to "confirm", but only if they already "know" that the subject is [supposedly] ill) What they're not able to do is this: to distinguish between supposedly mentally ill individuals (identified as such by psychiatrists, but who didn't take any kind of medicine that might affect the results) and control individuals, who are not mentally ill. Medicine is just that, medicine, just as science is just science. There's no such thing as western medicine or western science. Both are universal. An individual that has cancer, has cancer no matter where he lives. It's a verifiable fact, independent of human opinion and societal values. The very same holds to true for an individual infected with HIV or malaria or you-name-it, an individual with diabetes(this is just a popular word for a few medical conditions,) an individual with a broken leg. What differs across cultures is the acceptance of science. What's common to all cultures is the extremely diminished ability of most individuals who accept science, to distinguish real, rigorous science from pseudoscience (which often uses tools and terminology commonly used an science - a thing that leads to great confusion) Psychiatric "conditions" very greatly between cultures, because they're intrinsically related to concepts like "acceptable behavior" and "normality" - which differ greatly across cultures. Besides, there's absolutely no way to verify their existence in a scientific and purely objective manner. All these things make psychiatry pseudo-scientific. And the fact that most people can't distinguish between science and pseudoscience, makes it appear as "legitimate" to most people. That's not say that "brain problems" don't or can't exist. There are people with brain tumors. Then there are people with birth defects that affected their brains. People with Alzheimer's disease. But all of these medical conditions are real, verifiable and NONE are treated by psychiatrists.
Sorry for the way I post, it's the way I think. My conflictions are self built and taught. I can use them to open the gates of Heaven. Better I sit trial. A hearing, just for my nightmares as a child. The things not present like before in ancient times. Happiness, and good hate. I see sheep. My honest thoughts make me the son of god fallen. Or another man, glad to be present finally. ? How far can I go back? I can present the script of my continual mind. Am I faith, or are we beeps and dots evolved, someone is just brainwashing me. !! The 21st century is not faithful! my mind light on faith. Why does fire himself fall? His name is faith, and his lady wish. Why's he do bad? Can I be a sleaze? You know the sleaziness of belief. Haha I Believe. Imagine high and mighty faith to be noes in the air to get around, a snob on his majesty. No does what they believe. I am a loner. You have no idea. I can be the man, but hey it's not a jungle like ancient times. Be good. Their is muscle to moral with.
You sound like quite an authority on bipolarism. You must either have it or know someone who has it to have such inside knowledge about its faked symptoms. How manic episodes don't really exist and how the psychosis that accompanies it is just cleverly faked symptoms that bipolar patients make up. How the vast pharmaceutical/medical cartel has foisted this fake disorder on naive people like me who have intimately lived with someone who has bipolarism and watched it firsthand destroy lives and entire families for years. It's so assuring we have people like you about who can inform us that scientific studies proving higher monomine receptor cell densities in bipolar patients are pseudoscientific because the meds the patients were on magically created all those extra cells in their brains. Who can dismiss with a wave of their hand all the scientific evidence that susceptability to bipolarism is actually genetically passed down from parents to their kids. You should submit some articles to some prestigious psychiatric journals in your spare time. I'm sure the scientific world could learn much from your profound wisdom and experience on this matter.
Outlandish straw man, as he never said anything about it being "faked". He merely questioned whether it was truly a medical condition or just behavioral. It is well-documented that treating it as a medical condition leads to contradictory and often unsatisfactory results. Most disorder labels end up being a crutch to justify the behavior, thus exacerbating it. How do you think those meds increase/decrease chemical levels in the brain? They obviously would have to have some effect on the number of chemical producing cells in the brain. Why not try using yours? Susceptibility to behavior is passed on by association, especially in families. Psychiatry is a soft science, and barring intellectual dishonesty, admittedly less rigorous. You do know that the diagnostic criteria of the DSM is based on vote, not empirical criteria, right?
His credibility derives entirely from his own firsthand experience of the illness. No mention was even made of it being a majority-shared belief that it IS an illness. That is irrelevant to the facts of his case.
Of course there is. There are characteristic differences in the philosophical outlook implied in the particular medical outlook. For the modern West, it is typical to think of the body as the alpha and omega of human existence, and thus reduce everything accordingly (notably focusing on bodily symptoms that an external observer can measure). Go East, and traditionally, they think quite differently, and thus also approach diagnosis and treatment differently. (For example, a traditional Vedic doctor must first establish whether a particular ailment that the patient complains about is due to karma from past lives, or from the present life.) The way an ailment, along with its treatment, is conceptualized differs across cultures. We in the West might speak of cancer, in the East, they might speak of a fire illness or something like that, and there isn't necessarily a 1 to 1 translation between the two. You mean the acceptance of Western physicalist reductionism? Sure. But so does the conceptualization of "physical" conditions. A traditional Eastern doctor may focus first and foremost on the person's reported symptoms, not on what the doctor can measure about the person's body. This is characteristically different from the Western approach where the report of the patient is of rather low significance - they fill you up with drugs and if then the bloodwork seems to be okay, they say you're healthy, nevermind that you feel like shit. The latest installment of the DSM upped the ante once more: according to it, it is now a disorder when a person doesn't grieve at the loss of a loved person, but at the same time, it is a disorder to grieve over the loss of a loved person.
The problem about psychiatric conditions is that we operate out of a merely implied sense of what is "normal," but can never actually define what exactly "normal" is (other than the impractical "without abnormalities"). All too often, what goes on in families and communities is that someone who seems a "little bit off" gets treated like a scapegoat, and then a complex dynamic of projections ensues that worsens things to the point where one person becomes designated as the unwell one, and the others get to see themselves as "normal." Things can get even more worse as people play armchair psychologists for their family members and others.
Western psychiatry demands from people - especially those it deems ill - to have unquestioning faith in what the psychiatrists tell the "patient" and their family, friends, other people relevant in the person's life. It's a kind of dogmatism much like religious fundamentalism.
There is more than one side to that debate. http://www.helium.com/items/1220307-my-very-best-excuse Maybe you did not notice that and the poll at the top.
Gee an entirely different webpage. So what does that have to do with calling this an argument ad populum?
Yes, an entirely different web page accessed by selecting the tab at the top for the "Excuse" side of the debate. Are you seriously this obtuse? That one you linked was only one of many in favor of that side of the debate. I am sorry, was I not suppose to notice that? Get a clue.
Your seriously holding me responsible for a webpage I didn't even post in defense of calling MY webpage an argument ad populum? Wow..you must be desperate.
It is all the same debate. Seriously, read your web page, and quit being so thick. If you had found that page by anything other than a google search seeking to confirm your bias, the first page you would have been directed to is this side by side. http://www.helium.com/debates/68677-bipolar-disorder-illness-or-excuse/side_by_side Notice the "All 91 articles" tab? That means that your link was one of 91 articles on that debate. Do you need me to draw you a picture? Are you seriously this blind?
