Psychiatry

Psychiatry is "the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders." If you deviate from society in any meaningful way and you do not live on your own, expect to meet a psychiatrist at some point in your life.

Meeting a psychiatrist

Not all psychiatrists are horrible people. However, if you ever hint that you have suicidal or homicidal ideation, in certain countries (USA and Australia most notable) they have legal authority to lock you up temporarily and need no real evidence to do so.

Psychiatry and incels

See also: Empathy gap, and Inceldom denialism

Incels, when trying to describe their psychic pain about social situations, will sometimes be labled as either schizophrenic or socially anxious. Psychiatrists sometimes prescribe SSRIs to incels as anaphrodisiacs. Psychiatrists will rarely acknowledge inceldom as its own problem which causes ills.

Depression treatments

Mixed effectiveness of conventional anti-depressants

There is a debate in psychiatry as to whether conventional anti-depressants (SSRIs, etc.) actually meet the threshold of clinical significance as opposed to mere statistical significance (having a statistically measurable effect beyond a fluke). Clinical significance means the medication has a noticeable and practically relevant effect on actually driving improvement of symptoms among patients.

Fournier et al. (2010) found that conventional anti-depressant therapy generally only has a clinically significant effect among cohorts with severe depression (defined as > 25 on the Hamilton Self Rating Depression Scale). They concluded: "The magnitude of benefit of antidepressant medication compared with placebo increases with severity of depression symptoms and may be minimal or nonexistent, on average, in patients with mild or moderate symptoms. For patients with very severe depression, the benefit of medications over placebo is substantial."

A 2018 meta-analysis of anti-depressants concludes that "[i]n terms of efficacy, all antidepressants were more effective than placebo, with ORs ranging between 2·13 (95% credible interval [CrI] 1·89–2·41) for amitriptyline and 1·37 (1·16–1·63) for reboxetine. For acceptability, only agomelatine (OR 0·84, 95% CrI 0·72–0·97) and fluoxetine (0·88, 0·80–0·96) were associated with fewer dropouts than placebo, whereas clomipramine was worse than placebo (1·30, 1·01–1·68)."

Sport and depression

A 2001 pilot study concluded that: "Aerobic exercise can produce substantial improvement in mood in patients with major depressive disorders in a short time."

Organizations against psychiatric abuse

• Psych Rights
• Protest the APA
• The Opal Project
• Mind Freedom
• Network Again Psychiatric Assault
• Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry

Influential critics of psychiatry

• Sandra Steingard MD, Medical Director, HowardCenter [1]
• Jim Gottstein JP, attorney, founder of psychrights.org [2]
• Mark Ragins MD, Medical Director at the MHA Village Integrated Service Agency [3]
• Dr. Robert Okin MD, founder of Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI, former Commissioner of Mental Health for the state of Vermont, head of community psychiatric centers, [4]
• Roger Breggin MD, Psychiatrist, award winning college professor and activist [5]
• Robert Berein MD, Psychiatrist [6]
• Sarah Knuttson, ex-lawyer, survivor-activist, founder of Wellness & Recovery Human Rights Campaign [7][8]
• Al Galves PHD [9]
• Kenneth Blatt, MD [10]
• Lee Coleman, MD. retired psychiatrist [11]
• Robert Whitaker (journalist, author), founder of Mad in America [12]

NAMI

Former member of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) Loren R. Mosher criticized the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). He said: "APA has entered into an unholy alliance with NAMI (I don't remember the members being asked if they supported such an association) such that the two organizations have adopted similar public belief systems about the nature of madness. While professing itself the 'champion of their clients' the APA is supporting non-clients, the parents, in their wishes to be in control, via legally enforced dependency, of their mad/bad offspring: NAMI with tacit APA approval, has set out a pro-neuroleptic drug and easy commitment-institutionalization agenda that violates the civil rights of their offspring."

See also

• CBT
• Gaslighting
• Neurotypical
• Mentalcel
• Dr. E. Fuller Torrey (psychiatrist)
• Inceldom and health
• PSSDcel