Hope that’s useful ^.^

-Ade

None of those links above really explain the thing you say they explain, though. The quote you’re talking about is a question I asked in reference to a bunch of people spending a bunch of time speculating in a pejorative manner about a woman’s psychiatric label (and they were using personality disorders, not anxiety or depression), right after she just described the negative (and non-benevolent, non-neutral, non-scientific) usage of those terms, and the effects of those labels on her life. I asked why it is that they could possibly see those terms as value-neutral, benevolent, etc. Descriptions of anxiety, depression, and what looks like a rant against psych survivors and ex-patients (attributing many things to such people that are probably not their real motivations at all — especially that stuff about people being afraid of healing or just having had one bad psychiatrist) don’t make the idea of diagnosing Anonymous by Internet, with some of the most dangerous and least scientific forms of psychiatric labels, make any more sense to me, or seem even a tiny bit more ethical.

I’ll admit I’m biased: I’m fascinated with psychology and neurology, as it’s part of what’s let me understand myself and other people, truly, for the first time in my life. I didn’t actually learn my psychology from a psychologist; books and journals worked just as well for me.

What I see is just a huge disparity between what is, and what could be. The way I was treated at the hospital and by many of the people who have alternately put me down and claimed to be helping me, is such a huge distance from the application of psychological theory to helping actual people. It’s kind of funny, actually, as I’ve gotten more help from people who don’t have a great deal of formal training–a pastor, a social worker with a counseling certificate, a sympathetic student nurse–than from the people who are supposed to know the most. It seems to me that if only we could connect the psychological theory that helped me understand so much, to the people who still need to understand themselves and the world, then we could do a lot of good.

This is something I don’t get about your blog. You oppose the existance of psychology, psychiatry, counselling etc. yet you don’t deny that people like this woman need help. I agree that labelling is unimportant in itself (although sometimes the labels help people work out what kind of help someone needs). Speakng from my own experience, I owe my life to psychs. I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense. I don’t mean I owe them my quality of life. I mean that I cannot see any way I would still be alive without them. There was a time when I wanted to die. I needed help to learn how to want to live. I know that a lot of psyh syste in a lot of places are run in such a way that the only way you can get that kind of help is by submitting to mental abuse (often coupled with physical abuse and neglect.) But I belive there are ways of making the psych system work so it’s not like that, because I’ve experienced it. And I can’t imagine any other kind of help that would have saved my life. I had help from family and friends and it was not eough to stop me wanting to die. I talked to people who had “been there” and it was not enough to stop me wanting to die. Therapy and meds were the only things that worked. Psychs were the only people who told me that my disabilities were NOT figments of my imagination, or laziness, or attention-seeking.

There are good reasons why “a lot of autistic people see psychiatric classifications of people as a value-neutral system that is essentially benevolent, scientific, accurate, and probably useful in understanding the way that human beings operate.”
http://parnassus.co.uk/?p=101
http://parnassus.co.uk/?p=88
http://www.autismvox.com/autism-and-depression/

Mental disabilities are either setups for the main characters to show touching displays of pity towards, or gag fodder, in the world of pop culture-a lot of the “idiot” bit players in Dilbert have traits common to autistic people. Let’s not forget Strong Mad from Homestar Runner, who intermittently fulfills both stereotypical disability roles.

Excellent, David! :) Every so often, I make an encouraging comment to my roommate about how a different type of therapy might help her more. I’m trying to keep from pushing her too much.

Re: “fad diagnoses” – I agree with Riel (hope it’s okay to shorten your name like that)… I don’t know if there’s a good way to get rid of the problem. I personally think that a proper needs-based support system wouldn’t use actual diagnoses for any of it, rather using assessment results to indicate strengths and weaknesses (and interests!) in order to develop the individualized services required. Of course, that’s radical.

I am really not sure if there is a way. Various diagnoses cycle in and out of favor, for both children and adults, and it’s been that way for the past century (for example: almost no one has ever heard of “neurasthenia” any more, but it was a very popular thing to be diagnosed with in the early 20th century). “Bipolar” seems to be the big one for adults now, the thing that everyone’s getting diagnosed with. In a nutshell, I think the cycles of fad diagnoses are more an inevitable by-product of the way the system works than separate and unrelated phenomena in and of themselves. Nothing will change unless the system changes. Today’s popular diagnosis will just be replaced by another one in ten years, if the status quo remains.

…although the Asperger misdiagnosis/overdiagnosis thing bothers me because it’s led a certain number of people to conclude that it’s a “fake bullshit diagnosis” which people talk doctors into applying to themselves to have an excuse for being rude. Don’t get me wrong, I think the whole Asperger/autism distinction is arbitrary, but anyone who thinks it’s so easy to talk a doctor into diagnosing you with anything is really clueless about the nature of how power in the system works. Although from what I’ve seen, it is easier for parents to twist a few arms and hand over money in the right places to secure a specific diagnosis for a child, even an adult under “guardianship.”