Real problem may be psychiatry itself

I WAS interested to read your editorial (Irish Examiner, July 8) in which the quality of mental health care was severely criticised.

Among the issues highlighted were outdated services, an over-reliance on medication and independent reviews of people admitted involuntarily to psychiatric services.

I fear that while changes in these areas may deliver some benefits for patients, it will not alter the reality that the problem may be psychiatry itself.

Many survivors of psychiatry view the practice as a pseudoscience based on force and a false diagnostic system.

For instance, there are no objective medical tests which can prove mental illnesses are caused by brain chemical imbalances. Psychiatric drugs such as the neuroleptics, far from treating disease, actually cause neurological illnesses such as tardive dyskinesia and tardive akathesia. So-called anti-depressants can also make people more agitated, depressed and even suicidal.

Some manufacturers of psychiatric drugs have also covered up unfavourable findings that have emerged in clinical drug trials.

It is surely a human rights abuse that people can be detained and drugged against their will when no crime or human rights infringement has been committed by that person — and all on the basis of a bogus medical diagnosis.

Given these violations, and the horror story that is the history of psychiatry, it is surely time to end the grand lie that psychiatry is a branch of medicine and healing when the truth is that it is a branch of the law and social control.

A system of mental and emotional healing based on compassion, empathy, social support and a holistic view of the person is urgently needed for those for suffer severe mental distress.

Sean Fleming

Bishop O’Donnell Rd

Rahoon

Galway