News Psychologists Refute Psychiatry Bio-model In Uk!!!

[Springer80]

Intelligent, I tell ya!

Pah, it's over-rated :p

I missed the party!

Never mind, your ready for next time! I am SO pleased about this article thought...I really do think this could be the start of the 'paradigm-shift' we need. Everyone bangs on about funding etc for hospitals, treatment centres, when actually social stigma if worked on sufficiently would no doubt reduce the amount of cases becoming serious problems.

Anyway, I too must save my intelligence for tomorrow, it's late and family arrival @ 10am.

 

[Springer80]

[DLMURL]http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/mental-health?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487[/DLMURL]

 

[anthony]

The flipside to this, is that mental health was also something people didn't mention or talk about, because exactly where this group of psychologists are now trying to push it, being backwards to no scientific data (or pushing towards finding scientific data), is where mental health was. It was dirty, we disputed it because there was no evidence, et cetera. Science was forced to find biological similarities to bring mental health into the medical field, which is what we have today. Less dirty... more talked about, and treated.

This push also has a motive IMHO, being psychologists want to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder with therapy versus pharmaceutical intervention.

Psychologists are pushing themselves backwards IMHO, not forwards. They aren't doctors. Three years studying therapies and basic psychology in a degree does not make a doctor or expert, compared to the 12 years a psychiatrist endures as a medical doctor.

Is the pharmaceutical industry rife with corruption and people are being over-medicated? Absolutely, without a doubt. Is mental health being done justice by taking away scientific forward momentum of medical analysis to explain mental health? Yes it is.

This group of psychologist need to be careful, IMHO, what they wish for. A majority of people on this forum rely on pharmaceuticals based on the science found towards the biological model of PTSD... how would those with PTSD feel if PTSD became invalidated as it once was, and we simply stopped talking about it because it was dirty? Most people here rely on medicine at times to help them manage PTSD, especially those with severe cases.

Science always has two sides... the proven and unproven. If they don't focus on proving and finding the biological aspects of mental health, then you're going to see mental health go backwards, not forwards. Again... medicine isn't the first answer IMHO, however; science will be greatly diluted towards further help without medicine.

 

[nursenurse]

I agree with Anthony whole heartedly. I was going to add my 2 cents, but really, I cannot say it any better.

 

[JustBe]

I do agree with Springer80 that a reduction in social stigma would be quite helpful and perhaps prevent further damage and isolation.

 

[heidi]

I do not understand that article.

I'm confused on many different levels. "British psychologists are to say that current psychiatric diagnoses such as bipolar disorder are useless" But they received their training based on those models.

"the Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP), which represents more than 10,000 practitioners and is part of the distinguished British Psychological Society, will tomorrow publish a statement calling for the abandonment of psychiatric diagnosis and the development of alternatives which do not use the language of "illness" or "disorder".

What? I assume this is a fringe opinion and the article is overstating how widespread it is?

 

[nursenurse]

Oh dear God, of course, and this is the problem with society is that problems of the psyche are left in the closet. We are all so afraid, you can't see mental illness, you can't cut it out like a gall bladder. Imagine the strides we could make if the social stigma, the fear, the embarrassment and the shame of mental illness could be dissolved. I feel a soap box growing under my feet, I am sure I cannot say anymore than what has been said already, I'd be trying to convert the converted :)

 

[Lucycat]

I heard a debate about this very topic on the radio this morning. I have to admit I came in partway through so missed the beginning.

What I did catch was that if, for example, someone is diagnosed with schizophrenia - because they tick all the boxes in the DSM -they are put onto a metaphorical conveyor belt of treatment. The psychologist argued that there many people living healthy and happy lives despite 'hearing voices', and for them they do not need treatment or help and as such the diagnosis of schizophrenia serves no purpose. But the psychiatrist would be obliged to make that diagnosis.

For others, treatment/ therapy should be targeted at particular symptoms or causes of distress. The psychologist argued that you do not need a label of a mental illness to do that.

Of course the psychiatrist did not agree, and his point was that you need the diagnosis to be able to make assumptions about the possible course of the illness/ difficulty. If you can predict a possible outcome then you can offer targeted treatment options.

I could understand both points of view and can not decide which side of the fence I am on. I suspect there will be further discussions which I will follow closely.

One point I think I should add is that, of course here in the UK the NHS does not require a diagnosis in the same way that other countries need a label in order to access treatment through insurance etc. For example a child who presents with (presumed) classic autism can have all the support services - Speech and Language Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Paediatrician, Educational Psychologist, Educational Support Worker etc - just because the child clearly needs that help. If the parents choose not to access an Autism Assessment Team for a formal diagnosis that is absolutely their choice and makes no difference to what is available to their child.

I guess what I am saying here is that we are less hung up on labels than some other countries.

 

[nursenurse]

The answer is in the middle. There is no one size fits all in the world of mental illness,or indeed in much of medicine, however, one cannot discount the number of people positively impacted by using medications and conventional psychiatric therapy. I think one should be cautious about going too far in the opposite direction of the continuum. What science has done so far should not be discounted, but maybe perhaps tempered, again, it would depend on the individual, and not on a population as a whole.

 

[anthony]

The answer is in the middle.

Absolutely! One short, sharp, statement, summates the issue quite adequately, well said NN.

This UK psychology wing is just being ridiculously stupid with such statements. Their credibility is going down the toilet quick smart.

The DSM and ICD are absolutely being abused. Shit... I've agreed with this all along. This approach isn't going to stop the problem of psychological / psychiatric services now being a business model instead of a health model. Psychologists are still going to tell people they need to come back and see them forever in a day, because it pays the bills. Psychologists to me have become the new chiropractors. Once you get in their door, they simply never want you to leave... telling you you need to continue seeing them to discuss your feelings. Total garbage obviously!

They're really going to dirty an industry that was filthy... which psychiatrists have worked hard over the last decade to bring it forward with scientific evidence where possible, and in other areas they're still working to find the science, to find the reasons, to understand what goes on.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand, if something mental happens, then something biological also occurs. Our entire makeup is biological. Mental health is the stranger to the equation, not the other way round which this group are professing, pretty much.

There is a huge issue though today with diagnostic application, and I quite honestly believe these time frames need to be clearly extended in diagnoses outward to 6 months or more, as a minimum that a person suffers something. If you endure something abnormal for six months, then chances are you need heightened intervention beyond just some chit chat therapy that psychologists are wanting. The current time frames are making mental health slap happy, fitting everyone and anyone into a diagnosis.

The middle is the answer IMHO.

 

[Abstract]

Personally I think its positive. There is no way that this will stop psychiatry, the use of diagnoses or the use of medication. That is never going to happen. Ever. This will probably only make a few waves and hopefully shake things up a little.

Maybe it will balance the influence on people and slightly change the whole everything-is-genetics you-are-mad lets-fix-you-with-a-pill-and-send-you-home mindset that seems to be popular/the norm. It seems that there really is very little understanding or acceptance of the effects of environment. Or understanding of how prevalent mental health issues are on the whole. How is society ever going to change if that stays the case?! There is no real drive to change all the awfulness as "we can fix it with a pill and we dont want to look at the real cause". Thats not going to drive any change.

And it seems the majority of those going for help will be offered nothing other than medication. I believe that is what we should most hope will change. In UK many many people who are seriously unwell with mental health issues will only be offered medication. I am all for medication used correctly. With the correct rehabilitating treatments and not just handed out for decades with none.

And no therapy does not just help those with PTSD. It potentially helps bereavement, relationship issues, phobias, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, life decisions etc. Endless amounts of things that potentially make peoples lives better and without which peoples lives stay sub standard or way worse. And I know therapists personally and none of them are driven or even influenced by money. I am sure many are but that goes for any profession and suspect there is much less of this going on in the helping professions than in most others.

And even though the UK is not like the states and other places where everything revolves around insurance companies it sometimes does seem to be heading in that direction. The whole if-it-does-not-fit-an-insurance-code-it-does-not-exist mindset.

I may be influenced by having had a lot of therapy in my life and not thinking trauma was part of my story. I have seen people who have had sub clinical conditions whos lives were devastated and who were not living and rather barely existing and yet not offered help. Because they did not tick enough boxes. My heart ached for them.

I don't know how this works with PTSD. I am not sure if something changes in the brain when there are over a certain amounts of intrusive events/flashbacks a week or period of time but have seen research that shows that those with (proper) sub clinical PTSD's lives can be very impaired.

Thats the problem with putting people into boxes. People are not boxes. They are endlessly complex hence all even reacting differently to medication. Even in physical medical science we don't all line up single file and do what is expected. How much more complicated the mental world then?

So while I don't agree with all that is said I do totally support it being said (strongly disagree with some of it, if it is accurately reported)if that makes sense and other parts I wholeheartedly agree with. I think its important to look past the headline grabbers and look at what is really likely to be the motivation here. Newspapers twist things.

If I was a psychologist and spent day after day after year after year and heard the things that happen to people then I would also want the world to sit up and listen.

When it comes to my own treatment I am not anti label as I seem to have such avoidance issues that if I did not have a label I would have no hope. I also doubt I would ever have received the correct treatment. All those years so much of my therapy missed the point. But then I probably mostly did not fully meet PTSD criteria in frequency of symptoms at that point anyway. ;-) That has been the case for other conditions in the past too 9(the avoidance I mean). I am fine with being boxed. As much as a detest those boxes as I want to "fine". I need to be boxed before I can get to the point where I resent that box fully. At the moment it is the only roadmap I have as much as I try to ignore it. And I have been on medication for over 7 years and am not intending to come off at present.

And my mind likes to package things and put them neatly into boxes. To analyse them. But somewhere inside me I know that isnt the whole story. I have seen that with others.

To qualify what I said and make sure my motivation is not misunderstood I have never been turned down for treatment for being sub clinical for anything. And I have had access to treatment. I am one of the lucky ones. :p

 

[Springer80]

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