Injustice in Healthcare

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Psychiatric Labeling Action Network for Truth

by Dr. Paula Caplan, Clinical & Research Psychologist, Harvard University

Alarmed by the massive numbers of people who have been seriously harmed over the decades because of psychiatric diagnosis, which is not scientifically grounded, rarely helps, and often has negative consequences, and knowing that the next edition of DSM will likely be sent to press this coming May at the American Psychiatric Association convention, we have decided it is time to stop asking the DSM editors to listen and instead to take actions. The first two actions of our PLAN T Alliance (Psychiatric Labeling Action Network for Truth) are…

Boycott the DSM

and

Call for Congressional Hearings about Psychiatric Diagnosis

The following video and information was uploaded by prokopton on Dec 4, 2007

The idea of mental illness as a biological entity is easy to refute. In 1988, Seymour S. Kety, M.D., Professor Emeritus of Neuroscience in Psychiatry, and Steven Matthysse, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychobiology, both of Harvard Medical School, said “an impartial reading of the recent literature does not provide the hoped-for clarification of the catecholamine hypotheses, nor does compelling evidence emerge for other biological differences that may characterize the brains of patients with mental disease.” 

In 1992 a panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment concluded: “Many questions remain about the biology of mental disorders. In fact, research has yet to identify specific biological causes for any of these disorders. … Mental disorders are classified on the basis of symptoms because there are as yet no biological markers or laboratory tests for them.”

Columbia University psychiatry professor Jack M. Gorman, M.D., said “We really do not know what causes any psychiatric illness.” Another Columbia University psychiatry professor, Jerrold S. Maxmen, M.D., said “It is generally unrecognized that psychiatrists are the only medical specialists who treat disorders that, by definition, have no definitively known causes or cures. … A diagnosis should indicate the cause of a mental disorder, but as discussed later, since the etiologies of most mental disorders are unknown, current diagnostic systems can’t reflect them.” Psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D., said “there is no evidence that any of the common psychological or psychiatric disorders have a genetic or biological component.”

Candle Lighter Award

Honored to receive the Candle Lighter Award from fellow blogger at A Mind Divided.  With gratitude and kindness, we thank you so much for seeing the light in the posts in our Movement. 

As we understand it, the only requirement of this award is to pass it on, which is my pleasure to do… we pass the Candle Lighter Award to:

Discover and Recover

Der Nachtwulf

Naturalgal’s Weblog

 

Transformation rather than Resolutions

Resolutions often fail for a reason, and it’s only slightly related to intention or discipline. If we really want to manifest our resolutions, we also need a practical path of transformation. Things can happen in many ways, including unpredictable ones. Change takes effort. Most of the time we are run by our habits – deep-rooted mental and emotional patterns built up over our whole lifetime if not longer. But conditionality also says nothing is fixed, and everything is possible with effort and insight.

To me, New Year’s Day is not any different than any other day. I don’t believe a random point in the time measurement system we’ve created requires us to make a list of things we need to change or improve. In fact, accepting ourselves and those around us as beautiful human beings is a far better awareness of reality. If we really wish to penetrate the deep mysteries of existence, I suggest starting with generosity and kindness. Practicing generosity leads naturally to a broader practice of ethics, an essential precursor to a calm and peaceful mind. In result, we gain perception and insight…the only thing needed for true authentic change.

Kindness Boomerang

Therapists revolt against psychiatry’s bible

Mental health professionals say new diagnoses will lead to overmedication

by Rob Waters in Salon, posted December 27, 2011

Anyone who’s ever tried to get reimbursed by a health insurance company after seeing a psychiatrist or psychotherapist, or taking a child or teenager to one, has no doubt noticed the incomprehensible numbers that appear on the clinician’s statement, perhaps preceding some slightly less imponderable phrase.

Maybe you are a 296.22 (major depressive disorder, single episode, mild) or a 300.00 (anxiety disorder NOS–not otherwise specified). Hopefully, you are not a 301.83 (borderline personality disorder). Your kid might be a 313.81 (oppositional defiant disorder) or, more likely, a 314.01 (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive type).

Since 1952, a tome called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, better known as the DSM, has been reducing to a few digits the psychological malady said to afflict a patient. This bible of mental health treatment, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), provides a list and description of every mental health condition known to—or invented by—psychiatry, from histrionic personality disorder (301.50) to transvestic fetishism (302.3).

Over the decades, the manual, adapted from a guide for mental diseases developed by Army and Navy psychiatrists, has ballooned. The number of listed disorders tripled to nearly 300. A few have been discredited and dumped along the way. Most famous were battles over the inclusion of homosexuality. Successive iterations of the manual listed homosexuality as a “sociopathic personality disturbance,” then modified that to describe a more limited “sexual orientation disturbance” among people who were “in conflict with” their attraction to people of the same sex. That was later replaced by a disorder called “ego-dystonic homosexuality,” applied to those whose homosexual arousal was a source of distress. That item was dropped in the DSM-III-R, published in 1987.

The great book’s coming edition, the DSM-5, is slated for publication in May 2013. As the task force producing it has posted drafts on its website, an undercurrent of dissatisfaction has exploded into a full-scale revolt by members of U.S. and British psychological and counseling organizations. The chief complaint is that the newest version will lower the criteria needed to diagnose some conditions, creating “subthreshold” disorders, and generally making it easier for healthcare professionals to label a person with a psychiatric disorder and medicate him or her.

The latest rebellion against the DSM-5 began with a salvo from across the Atlantic. In June, a special committee of the British Psychological Society complained in a letter to the APA that “clients and the general public are negatively affected by the continued and continuous medicalisation of their natural and normal responses to their experiences.” The committee criticized the proposed creation of an “attenuated psychosis syndrome”—a sort of poor-man’s psychosis with less severe symptoms—“as an opportunity to stigmatize eccentric people.” They also objected to a proposed reduction in the number of symptoms needed to diagnose adolescents with attention deficit disorder (ADD) because it might increase diagnoses and the use of meds.

Then David Elkins, professor emeritus at Pepperdine University and president of the Society for Humanistic Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association, formed a committee to discuss similar objections and draft a petition enumerating them. In October, he posted the petition online. “I figured we’d get a couple hundred signatures,’’ Elkins said.

The response stunned him and his colleagues. The petition attracted more than 6,000 signatures in three weeks; as of mid-December it had topped 9,300 signatories and garnered the endorsement of 35 organizations. On Nov. 8, American Counseling Association president Don Locke jumped in with a letter to the APA objecting to the “incomplete or insufficient empirical evidence” underlying the proposed revisions and expressing “uncertainty about the quality and credibility” of the DSM-5.

“This has become a grassroots movement among mental health professionals, who are saying we already have a national problem with overmedication of children and the elderly, and we don’t want to exacerbate that,” says Elkins.

For many critics, Exhibit A is childhood ADD. As the disorder describing fidgety, easily distracted kids morphed from “hyperkinetic reaction of childhood” to the current “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” the number of children given the diagnosis exploded, fueling, by one account, a 700 percent increase in the use of Ritalin and other stimulants in the 1990s. Diagnosis requires checking six of nine boxes from a list of symptoms that include “often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly” and “often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat.” Sound familiar, parents?

Two other newly proposed disorders singled out as problematic in the petition are “mild neurocognitive disorder” in the elderly and “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder” in children and adolescents. Both lack a solid basis in research and may fuel the use of powerful antipsychotic medications, which cause weight gain, diabetes and a host of other metabolic problems, the petition says.

“We are gravely concerned that if this is published as is in 2013, it will create false epidemics where hundreds of thousands of children and the elderly who really are normal will be diagnosed with a mental disorder and given powerful psychiatric medications that have dangerous side effects,” Elkins says. “That is not tolerable.”

David Kupfer, the University of Pittsburgh psychiatrist who chairs the task force overseeing the manual’s preparation, says he expects the final number of disorders included in the DSM-5 to be about the same as in the current book. He says he welcomes the criticism and that nothing is final. The task force has been testing proposed new diagnoses in 2,300 patients at seven adult treatment centers and four adolescent centers that are acting as field-test sites, he says.

“There’s a myth that all the decisions have been made, when in fact, all the decisions haven’t been made,” he says. “Just because [things have] been proposed doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll end up in the DSM-5. If they don’t achieve a level of reliability, clinician acceptability, and utility, it’s unlikely they’ll go forward.”

The most surprising critic of the DSM is a one-time pillar of the psychiatric establishment. Allen Frances, professor emeritus at Duke University, chaired the task force that created the DSM-4. Now he’s railing against both the process and proposed content of the new DSM in blogs on the website for Psychology Today that blast the new revision as “untested” and “unscientific.”

Psychiatric diagnoses are loose enough already, Frances  told me, and that laxity has led to “epidemics of over-diagnosis in child psychiatry” causing huge numbers of children to be unnecessarily labeled with attention deficit disorder and bipolar disorder and treated with medications.

“DSM has to be a safe, reliable and credible guide to current clinical practice,” he says. “It can’t be an untested program for future research.’’

The user revolt against the DSM-5 has emerged as a major challenge to the document, Frances says, and its future is looking unclear. He and Elkins are proposing that an independent committee of experts review the proposed draft and make recommendations.

The fight over the DSM-5 pits some of the greatest minds and biggest egos in the world of psychiatry, but it’s more than a battle among 301.81s (narcissistic personality disorder). For people seeking help for life’s problems who don’t want to be labeled mentally ill or have their treatment limited to medication, and for clinicians who want to help people without reducing them to a category, the stakes are high.

Why I Advocate for Casual Sex

Published on December 19, 2011 by Stanley Siegel, LCSW in Intelligent Lust

After getting dozens of comments, it is clear my last column, In Defense of Casual Sex, has struck a very deep chord. With seventy thousand readers and counting, sides have been drawn, some stones have been cast and heartfelt thoughts have certainly been shared about casual sex. I am more than glad. This enormous response has significantly contributed to my effort to uncloak a subject often shrouded in secrecy and shame.

Despite the scientific achievement in quantifying much of human behavior, the more I practice psychotherapy, the more I appreciate that healing the mind and spirit is as much art as science. Each patient, each life, brings its unique set of desires, needs and questions. In guiding each person, I rely as much as on my instinct as on my academic training.

The advice I give in my columns and books is the wisdom I have gained from nearly forty years as a psychotherapist and teacher. Just as importantly, my personal journey sets the tone in my writing. It is hard to sum up all I have learned, having counseled so many patients, but I know enough to draw some conclusions quite comfortably.

If there is one way in which each person defies stereotyping, and the generalities that science imposes, it is where peoples’ sexual fantasies and desires reflect their own personal stories.

Sex, then, is the window into our psyches.

Moreover, I have grown to appreciate how sex benefits us far beyond its physical pleasure or biological function. When practiced intelligently and generously, sex has the capacity to help heal emotional wounds and rectify unmet childhood needs.

When I have challenged conventional wisdom, I have often found that what lies under many accepted “truths” about sex are in fact deeply entrenched myths that confuse rather than enlighten us. Not surprisingly, and I say this without judgment, many of the comments I got this week echoed those myths. I have chosen here to address them in a way that I hope continues this robust conversation.

Myth: Casual sex is devoid of emotion.

Sex is far from the primitive, base instinct we are led to believe it is. It’s our most complicated human need. Whether in a brief encounter or a long relationship, through sex we communicate our emotions, negotiate power, give and receive pleasure, confront our fears and fantasies and sometimes heal our inner lives.

It’s my basic assumption that sexual desire and the themes we eroticize as adults–romantic sex, bondage, domination, role playing–originate in unresolved childhood conflicts and unmet needs. Our minds take these painful feelings and convert them into something pleasurable in an attempt to master them. Sex acts serve as a transformer. Rather than becoming defeated by feelings of isolation, helpless, loneliness or rejection, we become aroused by them.

Every sex experience represents a moment of extreme intensity in which our entire inner life–our history and imagination–is expressed in action. It’s an altered state of consciousness in which the past and present, body, mind and spirit all merge to form a new reality unlike any other experience in our lives. It is impossible for any sexual experience to be absent of emotion or even to lack meaning. Even those of us who feel emotionally detached during sex aren’t really devoid of emotion. Looked at more deeply, such apparent detachment is in fact a reflection of emptiness once suffered.

Casual sex, practiced intelligently, can enrich our understanding of our deepest desires and emotions, where they come from and what they mean, and gradually, with experience, make sense of who we are and what we can become.

Myth: Casual sex is reckless.

For most of us, fulfilling our fantasies and desires will lead to greater authenticity and to a healthier life.

Embracing our sexuality is not a static process, as our desires slowly unfold over the course of our lifetimes. As we explore who we are through sex, new desires or preferences will surface when we no longer require the old ones. We sublimely discover many truths. There is nothing inherently reckless in this pursuit.

Sometimes, this can be achieved within the context of a marriage or long-term relationship in which there is sexual compatibility. But all too often partners enter a committed relationship without a true understanding of their sexuality or a deep appreciation for its importance, only to discover that their sexual tastes are vastly different. Shared social values and interests will not make up for the frustration caused by sexual desires that do not match.

Too often, these frustrations go unspoken because these partners do not know how to talk about sex. These relationships often grow increasingly inauthentic, detached from intimacy and consequently more vulnerable to trouble. Frustrations grow and soon get expressed indirectly in angry conflicts and overreactions, withdrawals and silences, or subversively with extra-marital affairs and other forms of dishonesty.

Reckless behavior can certainly happen in casual sex when a partner’s actions are self-centered or abusive or driven by substance abuse. But when this happens, it’s often because we have been taught to behave badly and accept it. Sons and daughters who have been taught to feel suspicious, guilty and shameful about sex, cloak it in such mystery and secrecy that they have no concept of how to navigate sex with generosity and grace.

When we honor and embrace our individual sexuality we can be free to experience its deeper nature and choose partners, for either a one-night stand or a long-term relationship, whom we respect and trust. Under such conditions, sex is not something one person does to another, nor is it a guessing-game. Instead, we become like veteran artists. Our tastes and inventiveness grow more nuanced with time as does our capacity to support our partner’s sexual truth. Through the variety of experiences found in casual sex, we can reclaim and renew parts of ourselves.
Myth: The best sex is in committed relationships.

When we are fortunate enough to have chosen a long-term partner with whom we are deeply compatible, we will have the opportunity to experience our true desires and gradually work through the mastery of the conflicts or unmet needs underneath them. As pieces of our erotic self and their meaning become clearer and our fantasies and actions grow more aligned, it can bring enormous pleasure, meaning and fullness to life.

But the same can be achieved through casual sex. Giving preference to self-awareness, exploration, and authenticity over sexual performance or reaching an orgasm, creates an emotional posture from which we can connect to the deepest, most vulnerable parts of ourselves. When we do not get caught up in how highly our partner regards us because we want a relationship to continue, we are less likely to censor ourselves and can experience a level of intimacy, perhaps not attainable in a relationship complicated by long-term concerns.

Engaging in a casual sexual experiences can also help us decide what we need at various points in our lives. What does become clear is that whether we believe that a being single or married will bring us fulfillment, sexual compatibility should be a high priority. Many of my patients have met their long-term partners after having a casual sexual experience with them.

Myth: Casual sex is sexist.

Since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, when I came of age, our knowledge about the science and psychology of sex has increased. Subsequent generations have climbed the ladder of sexual freedom to feel less shameful about sex. Social mores have been greatly transformed, as demonstrated by the backlash mounted by the religious right to turn back the clock to what they consider to be a more morally upright time. In fact, our nation is inching towards adopting a more sex-positive culture.

The stigma remains that women who engage in casual sex are still considered immoral, while men who do the same thing are looked at as virile. However, women have gained a deserved sense of sexual entitlement. Where once its purpose for women was considered procreation or pleasing their husbands, women are now taking charge of their own sexual enjoyment. The fact is, women have always been equally interested in sex, but for generations were taught to repress or deny their sexuality. But large number of women have begun to do what men have always been permitted–to enjoy sex within and outside of a relationship.

Some comments claimed casual sex is sexist, with one reader saying it encourages men to “act more like pigs” and take advantage of women. “They lie in wait on the Internet,” tricking women into believing they are interested in relationships, another reader wrote. While I cannot deny that this sometimes happens, the description of women as prey and men as predators is inaccurate and belittling to both sexes.

Other readers even accused men of engaging in casual sex because they have little capability for intimacy. Contrary to evolutionary psychology’s claim that biology is behind how men and women act, the truth both sexes are more alike than different. Attitudes toward marriage and commitment are socially constructed and have changed dramatically over time as social mores have shifted.

Men desire intimacy as much as do women. Women enjoy casual sex as much as do men.
Myth: Casual sex is dangerous because it spreads diseases.

Casual sex does not not spread diseases. Unsafe sex does. Medicine has taught us how to effectively avoid sexually transmitted diseases. All too often, the danger of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases is disseminated by those who promote homophobic, sex-phobic and sexist attitudes and policies.

Smarter sex is responsible sex. It involves self-knowledge, self-esteem and respect for our partners. We can use casual sex intelligently to learn to honor and accept who we are, heal the consequences of shame and and guilt and celebrate the importance of sex as a positive force in our lives.

Learn more about Stanley at http://stanley-siegel.com/. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and find inspiration for exploring your fantasies at the Intelligent Lust Tumblr.

 

 

Understanding and Transforming Suffering

Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay) speaks on the Four Noble Truths, on the interdependent nature of the mud and the lotus, transforming our compost into happiness.

A person, and, especially, a therapist, must practice, listen and understand her/his own suffering in order to help herself/himself and/or loved ones, friends, clients.

Mindfulness can help us listen to our suffering without fear. Listening compassionately to our suffering can help us understand it. And, in turn, we can listen to others with compassion. However, mindfulness of compassion, is needed when listening compassionately. Breathing deeply is essential during this process.

The purpose of listening is only ONE… to help the other to empty her/his heart.

video here …

Transformation at the Base: No Mud, No Lotus