Psychiatry’s New Rules Threaten to Turn Grieving Into a Sickness

LivelineDipso

It's really all about money and perscriptions. The more fake 'disorders' shrinks can invent, the more business they can generate.

A controversial change to official psychiatric guidelines for depression has raised fears that grief over the death of loved ones will be classified as clinical depression, turning a basic part of what it means to be human into a recognized sickness.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/dsm-5-bereavement/

Sauve

Come back to us after you've gone through some real grief OP.

cherryghost

Don't knock it til you try it.

LivelineDipso

Sauve wrote: »

Come back to us after you've gone through some real grief OP.

I have been there.

You have no choice but to suffer the loss. That's the part of being human that is as natural as joy. The greif process restores chemical imbalance in the brain brought on by the emotional trauma of the shock.

Otherwise evolution would not have developed it.

It's not a disorder. It's how our neurology functions.

mattjack

LivelineDipso wrote: »

I have been there.

You have no choice but to suffer the loss. That's the part of being human that is as natural as joy. The greif process restores chemical imbalance in the brain brought on by the emotional trauma of the shock.

Otherwise evolution would not have developed it.

It's not a disorder. It's how our neurology functions.

Those DSM authors are real chancers for making up all that stuff.

cherryghost

Sorry, I should have read the entire article.

Upon reflection it does sound quite irrational, but the way people deal with grieving has its influence on this. Some people cannot cope and that could lead to depression anyway, and sometimes taking their own life.

My name is URL

It's actually a bit scary that normal everyday emotions can be classed as disorders. I know it's been explained away by saying that it's only if the person displays signs of grief for over a certain fixed amount of time, but is that not what makes us human? We don't all deal with every single thing in the same way. I know people that have lost loved ones years and years ago and are still grieving to a certain degree, and other people that seem to get over loss relatively easily.

Everyone needs to be fecking pigeon-holed these days... it's pathetic really.

Ella

That's a load of arse tbh. Grief is an emotion/reaction not a sickness.

Chuck Stone

LivelineDipso wrote: »

The greif process restores chemical imbalance in the brain brought on by the emotional trauma of the shock.

It's quite amazing how many swallow this unfounded hypothesis as if it were a scientific fact.

There is no proof whatsoever that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes depression.

None.

Zip.

Zilch.

My name is URL wrote: »

It's actually a bit scary that normal everyday emotions can be classed as disorders.

If all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.

Déformation professionnelle is a French phrase, meaning a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession rather than from a broader perspective. It is often translated as "professional deformation" or "job conditioning". The implication is that professional training, and its related socialization, often result in a distortion of the way one views the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnelle

Madam_X

Well if their grief consumes them to the point where they sink into depression and can't cope/function, then medical or even psychiatric intervention is required. That's not a statement that basic grief is a disorder.

Unfortunately this will be gleefully jumped on by the anti psychiatry/anti anti depressants brigade and the bug pharma conspiracy theorists.

charlemont

They have just turned everything in an illness these days, Same people will offer the cure too..

I have sympathy and compassion for anyone who grieves, Obviously some people will never be right after a death but I would think they are suffering from actual Depression as opposed to Grieving.

AnonoBoy

So what you're saying is that Scientologists are right?

Chuck Stone

Madam_X wrote: »

Unfortunately this will be gleefully jumped on by the anti psychiatry/anti anti depressants brigade.

Or in less stigmatising language 'the pro scientific rigour and sceptics brigade'.

KyussBishop

Just last night the sister of Erin Gallagher committed suicide, presumably in grief over her sisters suicide a bit over a month ago; grief isn't a "sickness" such that it carries the usual stigma mental health issues carry, but it clearly can become debilitating, and end up causing serious harm, thus can warrant treatment/intervention.

periodictable

LivelineDipso wrote: »

It's really all about money and perscriptions. The more fake 'disorders' shrinks can invent, the more business they can generate.



http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/dsm-5-bereavement/

what was that about the lunatics running the asylum?

LivelineDipso

cherryghost wrote: »

Sorry, I should have read the entire article.

Upon reflection it does sound quite irrational, but the way people deal with grieving has its influence on this. Some people cannot cope and that could lead to depression anyway, and sometimes taking their own life.

The DMS declares basically all human behaviour are diseases to be medicaited.

LivelineDipso

Chuck Stone wrote: »

It's quite amazing how many swallow this unfounded hypothesis as if it were a scientific fact.

There is no proof whatsoever that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes depression.

None.

Zip.

Zilch.

I agree. But Greiving is not Depression, it is a kind of purposeful neuro-chemical trauma.

It's a totally different thing.

hatrickpatrick

F*ck 'em.
How the hell do you define "Neurotypical"? The definition of "normal" is so thin and rigid now that I would say 99% of people out there suffer from some sort of "disorder", going by psychiatry's rules. It's very depressing and frightening if you ask me.

Probably the most extreme example is in the States where they drug little boys for being little boys, and diagnose them with ADHD instead of just accepting a centuries old fact which is that little boys don't like sitting still for any length of time. IT's ridiculous.

Scruffles

am guessing the difference that will see someone diagnosed with a condition instead of classed as normaly grieving will be that it has such a significant impact on their daily functioning for longer than normal?

if people think a reaction to a trigger is a reason to not medicalise,then why has there not been more criticism towards reactional based conditions such as personality disorders,DID or PTSD?
the only criticism have personaly heard towards these is from the tin foil hat brigade folks who like to say stuff isnt real,without having any insight into them.
am personaly against the idea of medicalising something if it is part of a normal process which everyone will come out of assuming its not developed into clinical depression, it can harm a person more by applying a label to them as to many;especialy youngsters that woud be enabling their illness and helplessness rather than helping them to help themselves.

grief is also a big spectrum isnt it? everyone deals with it very differently.
some of us woud not experience grief at all,many do not show it-however the only labels we get is stereotyping,there is no rush to label us with pyschopathy yet thankfuly.
there is no template to judge grief by,itd be pretty damn stupid to tell us how to deal with grief,and say we arent normal because we deal with it differently.

mattjack

LivelineDipso wrote: »

The DMS declares basically all human behaviour are diseases to be medicaited.

Is a lot of traumatic human behaviour not just a symptom of something else.
I thought the DSM was more a guidebook for psychiatrists , rather than something definite .There was always an argument going that GP's and other health professionals used it , then diagnosed .

wendell borton

I'm with tony on this one!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvjYuIBy-oQ

Chuck Stone

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's very depressing and frightening if you ask me.

You'll probably need tablets for that.

I heard the blue ones are very good.

KyussBishop

It can be debilitating though? Just like depression, it can cauterize aspects of you as a person, in ways that last a significant portion of your life, and in some cases leads to suicide.
Everyone may deal with it differently, but it will affect some bad enough, that they may need significant (professional) help dealing with it.

It's wrong to throw meds at the problem, and the DSM/ICD both contain some pretty ridiculous things so labeling is not often helpful, but noting that it is a distinct mental/emotional problem (separate to depression, even if intertwined a fair bit) doesn't seem wrong.

LivelineDipso

mattjack wrote: »

Is a lot of traumatic human behaviour not just a symptom of something else.
I thought the DSM was more a guidebook for psychiatrists , rather than something definite .There was always an argument going that GP's and other health professionals used it , then diagnosed .

In Europe it is used as a general guide. In the USA it is like a sacred text. The scary thing is that the panel behind it are mostly top level shrinks and big pharma reps who invent these 'disorders' during closed sessions.

The fact that the panel meets in secret and sign a non-discloure form should set off alarm bells. Basically greedy oppertunists inventing new revenue streams.

Wibbs

Ella wrote: »

That's a load of arse tbh. Grief is an emotion/reaction not a sickness.

+1000. Only when it become intractable over time should it be considered a disorder. I've personally witnessed someone being prescribed anti depressants for "homesickness"(which they didn't have). I know someone who was asked would they consider anti depressants after a bereavement of close family that had happened within the previous month. Another mates sister was asked if she considered the drug route after a breakup, again a recent one and she was soon on the mend. All by GP's not psychiatrists. This was a few years ago and in this country, not California. The stats for anti d prescription rates over in the US are a bit mad Ted. In this article it notes worldwide(basically the developed world) "The use of SSRIs worldwide has shot up from below 3 billion doses in 1995 to over 10 billion in 2004". Christ knows what that figure is today, but I doubt it's lower. Adding another "disorder" to the list is sure to increase that.

So? Well personally speaking I strongly feel this stuff is already over prescribed, much as antibiotics were in the past and just like antibiotics they can be very powerful parts of treatment. However handing them out willy nilly can't be good, just as it was with anti B's. I'll lay bets now that within a decade we'll start to think WTF were we doing? Indeed some(PDF file) are beginning to ask such questions. TL;DR that pdf? Basically in the early 90's about 10-15% of depression cases were considered to be treatment resistant and chronic, by the mid 2000's that figure was 40%. Which corresponded with a large increase of uptake of such drugs in the population. While such drugs can have a good short term effect, up to 80% of people on them suffer a relapse after initial gains. It's possible that it may in some people turn a "minor", acute depressive episode into a chronic case. That's in people who already have a depressive type illness, adding things like grief into the list of "treatable illnesses" is well dodgy. Especially when in cases of minor depression placebo is as effective and obviously with less side effects.

As I said I'd look on them like antibiotics. Guzzle the fcukers like smarties if you have a dodgy bacterial infection, but stay the hell away if you got a case of the sniffles. Ditto with SSRI type drugs.

Life has emotional ups and life has emotional downs. That's... well... life. If the downs start to interfere with your ability to function in your day to day life, then yay, but no way for acute natural responses to life's travails. Like grief. It's one of the most natural emotional responses to an emotional insult there is, medicalising it when not necessary is beyond daft and not a little scary.

KyussBishop

Treatment doesn't have to be meds though (which I personally think should be a last resort, mostly for the worst cases, as there is a huge track record of pharma/doctor abuse for profits); it can be genuinely beneficial to have these things in the DSM type manuals (even if they have a lot of crap), for the sake of guiding treatments (such as with psychs) that don't involve meds.

The skepticism of meds is all well and I agree with it, but the skepticism of the idea of having this as a true mental illness (if it goes on long and bad enough), doesn't seem to make sense when it is clear how debilitating an effect it can have on people.

LivelineDipso

Wibbs wrote: »

Life has emotional ups and life has emotional downs. That's... well... life. If the downs start to interfere with your ability to function in your day to day life, then yay, but no way for acute natural responses to life's travails. Like grief. It's one of the most natural emotional responses to an emotional insult there is, medicalising it when not necessary is beyond daft and not a little scary.

A lot of the great art of the past was a result of people working through their ups and downs.

Psychiatric medication is one of the reasons why we have boy bands and Tracy Emin today and not John Coletrane and Van Gogh.

Sadness can be transformed into precious beauty.

jimmycrackcorm

Once there used to bad kids who were bad little f@ckers. Now they get diagnosed with ADHD and get drugged up.

Chuck Stone

KyussBishop wrote: »

It can be debilitating though?

Undoubtedly. It's how it is perceived and treated that many have difficulty with.

stevenmu

From reading the article, they are not in any way considering grieving to be a mental illness, or a sickness to be treated.

What they are doing is changing how grief is taken into account when making a diagnosis. At present, you more or less can not be diagnosed with depression if you have suffered a loss in the past two months, any symptoms you may exhibit will just be considered a part of the grieving process. The DSM 5 is changing that exclusion so that you can be diagnosed with depression, even if you have suffered a loss in the preceeding two months.

The controversy is then over whether it is possible to tell the difference between grieving and depression. Some clinicians feel that it is possible, that somebody may be grieving and suffering depression, as opposed to just grieving, and that the difference can be clinically determined.

Other clinicians seem to feel that it would be impossible to distinguish any symptoms of depression from normal grieving within 2 months of loss, and that therefore a diagnosis of depression should not be made.

Both sides seem to agree that grieving is not a mental illness and is a separate matter to depression.

suicide_circus

Pharaceuticals can be wonderful.