Psychiatry doesn’t deserve its status

Psychiatrists want to be viewed on a par with medical professionals but their practice of redefining life’s problems as so-called ‘mental disorders’ has resulted in them and their profession being held up to ridicule.

A new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is due for release this year. New ‘disorders’ that have been manufactured include staying on the internet too long, which in psych–speak comes out as ‘Internet Use Disorder’. Then there’s feeling self-conscious or awkward in social situations, which has been labelled as ‘Social Anxiety Disorder’; while the ‘terrible twos’, has been redefined by psychiatric ‘experts’ as ‘Temper Dysregulation Disorder’.

These scientific-sounding but meaningless headings are being used to fuel the profit-driven psychiatric industry. Even psychiatrists, some of them at the highest levels of psychiatric leadership, will admit when pressed, that it’s not science.

Real medical doctors have actual physical tests to prove or disprove illness, which sets them apart from psychiatrists. In a significant departure from medical diagnosis, psychiatric diagnoses are devoted to the categorisation of symptoms only, rather than the observation of actual physical disease. Without any scientific laboratory tests showing the presence or absence of mental problems, it is extremely difficult to see how psychiatry’s diagnostic system works.

There is no question that some people suffer from severe emotional problems. However, psychiatrists and drug companies have used this urgent and pressing problem to build themselves a lucrative niche, creating a multi-million euro industry that is feeding at the public trough.

The late Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, Dr Thomas Szasz summed it up like this, “To me, this [DSM] is a house of cards, and you can take off one or two cards at the top or you can knock over the whole thing. I prefer knocking over the whole thing.”

Brian Daniels

National spokesperson

Citizens Commission On Human Rights (United Kingdom)

East Grinstead

England