VOODOO PSYCHIATRY -- THE AMERICAN DISEASE -- ANOTHER VIEW!

VOODOO PSYCHIATRY – THE AMERICAN DISEASE – ANOTHER VIEW!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 28, 2011

REFERENCE:

Many have written confirming Dr. Angell’s view, but this is a moving exception.  I share it with you with that in mind.

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A READER WRITES:

Jim,

I read your piece carefully.  Although I can agree to some extent with this narrative, I do have a different viewpoint on psychiatric medications. 

My mother was severely schizophrenic until I was 12.  She was finally Baker Acted (or taken into care).

My life was so bad that I have very few memories of my childhood until I was 13.  What I remember was rage - knives being waved at me, pots thrown through windows, furniture thrown around the room, and more. 

These memories have only started surfacing since I undertook therapy in 2007.  Before that time my life, as a child was totally nonexistent - my brother has confirmed my memories so they are accurate.  He was six years older than I was, and able to get on his bike and ride away, leaving me home alone. 

I take several psychiatric medications to treat severe anxiety and depression that have been with me all of my life. I am happy now, despite my illness.  I can laugh about the disease, but not about mental conditions. 

They are all too real and the drugs really do work. It took my psychiatrist (who also does therapy and is not just a "pill" doctor like most psychiatrists today) many long months to balance me out with the combination that works for me and keeps me on an even keel. 

That I functioned at all during those years prior to 2007 is a testament to my willpower to succeed at whatever I undertook.  There was not a day that on the way home after I left work until that time (and all throughout my life) that I did not want to kill myself. I no longer feel that way. 

I enjoy my life. I enjoy it more than ever I thought I could.  The birds, the ocean, the butterflies, friends, and music - everything about life is good now.  I appreciate every second.  I just wanted to share this viewpoint to balance out the thought that psychiatric drugs are quackery (no, you did not say that), but I felt it might have been implied.

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DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Thank you for your candor and this moving account.  It is testimony to what a caring, patient and dedicated psychiatrist can do for one scarred by life during his most vulnerable innocence. 

You are correct.  I have had no intentions of suggesting that psychiatrists are quacks.  They are trained and licensed physicians after a long and demanding preparatory career. 

The problem is not with individual psychiatrists many of whom might compare with your experience, but with the collaborative system between the American Psychiatric Association and the pharmaceutical industry, which is well documented in this piece. 

Moreover, I do register concern when the DSM, the psychiatric manual of treatment, more resembles a cookbook than a weighted scientific instrument for diagnosis and treatment.

You have had an outstanding and productive professional life, and clearly psychiatry has played an important role in that success.  My hope is that many others share your experience, as we are all fragile, all vulnerable to conditions that you have described, but not all with the courage or the good fortune that you have shared here.  Thank you.  May the beauty of nature continue to bless you with its warmth.

Be always well,

Jim

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