Richard Bentall

[JuliusCaesar]

am just wondering if anyone has read his books? he seems to be causing a lot of controversy. Doctoring the Mind

Madness Explained

Models of Madness

I'm inclined to agree with his stance on psychiatric diagnoses.

[Gibs]

I have read "madness explained" and found it really interesting - certainly quite radical but rigorously researched and compelling in the way it methodically demonstrates the lack of validity and reliability of psychiatric diagnoses. One of the most interesting aspects of Bentall's writing I think is the way he places the development of the current psychiatric hegemony in an historical context and (ironically) shows how the medical metaphor for explaining "mental illness" in terms of brain chemistry is itself an almost entirely social construct . More importantly it makes a convincing argument for placing the emphasis back on the "psycho-social" piece of the biopsychosocial model.

Bentall has been around for a long time and is pretty well regarded - he's a favourite of the skeptics and I think he's a professor in Bangor University in Wales.

Here's an example of an earlier article he wrote and here's another one, both of them critiquing the medical-model / pharmaceutical assumptions that underlie a lot of the culture that has characterised mainstream psychiatry over the past few decades.

I think he's great - I saw him present a few years back at a conference in the UK and he came across as an excellent and credible critic of the prevailing dominant (i.e. psychiatric/pharmaceutical) ethos within mental health. A couple of psychiatrists I have spoken to have privately admitted that he is read quite widely among the psychiatric profession. Hope springs eternal

[Valmont]

Thanks, I'll grab one of these first chance I get.

[JuliusCaesar]

That's great, thanks. I've always felt very uncomfortable with the 'disease'/'illness' model; I usually use the word disorder. And by disorder I mean usually an extreme of the normal which interferes with functioning.
PS there was an interesting discussion on Depression on Biology&Medical a while ago which I didn't have time to get into unfortunately, but which would have benefitted IMHO from some non-psychiatric input.

[hotspur]

Do you really think that discussion of depression in that thread was in any way interesting? I can't help reading it without thinking of what Wittgenstein said "If all you have is a hammer every problem looks like a nail".

Many of the average doctors and psychiatrists inculcated into the medical model from the very beginning and aren't exposed to broader theories and contexts in which to frame the issues just aren't at the races intellectually. But they don't need to be because they are the alpha males in the health professional domain.

It must be very difficult for them because of how fundamentally challenging other perspectives are to their professional competence. Even those who realise that the neurotransmitter explanation of depression is a metaphor are loathe to admit it publicly because of the dogma of the profession. What role would that leave them if they couldn't write out a prescription?

Btw as to the issue of the efficacy of antidepressants beyond placebo look at the research of Irivng Kirsch and what happens when you do a meta-analysis of all the trial studies including the ones which the pharmaceutical companies didn't publish due to the results but which may be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the Food and Drug Administration. It was called:
Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.

[Gibs]

Originally Posted by hotspur

Btw as to the issue of the efficacy of antidepressants beyond placebo look at the research of Irivng Kirsch and what happens when you do a meta-analysis of all the trial studies including the ones which the pharmaceutical companies didn't publish due to the results but which may be obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the Food and Drug Administration. It was called:
Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.

Here is an article that summarises the evidence for and against the serotonin hypothesis in relation to depression. Its a few years old, but it includes some of the info from the Irving Hirsch research.

(By the way, I took your bait Julius and threw my 2 cents into that discussion on depression you mentioned. Looking forward to seeing what kind of response it gets )

[JuliusCaesar]

Originally Posted by Gibs

(By the way, I took your bait Julius and threw my 2 cents into that discussion on depression you mentioned. Looking forward to seeing what kind of response it gets )

Thanks Gib - a great response too!

I was surprised to see so much from psychiatrists on 'biological' and 'endogenous' depression. In my training, back in the 80s, a prof told us - "if the psychiatrists call it endogenous, it's because they haven't asked enough questions." Now that they all have to have training in the briefer therapies, I would have thought that might change.....but since I was asked to give a 2 hr presentation to consultant psychiatrists, I figured that this is the amount of training the supervisors were getting!