Psychiatry

In response to someone..

How could psychiatry possibly be [a] “hard” [science]?

“Psychiatry” definition: “the branch of medicine concerned with the study, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illness.”

“Mental” things aren’t “real things that exist”.

Mental illness is not a real thing. It is a social construct. Patterns of behaviours have simply been documented. That’s it. That’s not science any more than gender studies is.

This isn’t about truth. 

It is true that Pikachu is yellow. 

We can both acknowledge that Pikachu is yellow and also that Pikachu isn’t real.

My “star sign” is “Capricorn” and also that doesn’t matter.

Yeah, that’s truth, but it also doesn’t matter to me.

Why would having to get an MD mean anything in this economy? You trust institutions?

I mean... i guess live your best life homie, because with or without you, they’re going down.

Psychiatry is a science in that it has procedures, experimentation, chemicals etc. but its fundamental presupposition is as unscientific as anything.

Psychiatry is actually anti-human.

“Why liberalism failed”? 

“Psychiatry” is possibly the best one-word answer. That’s why. 

Diagnosing the individual instead of the collective. 

That is peak “liberalism”.

I could take psychiatry and its practical application seriously if civilisation was on the up.

As it stands, I cannot take anything about society seriously. No social thing should be taken seriously in clown world, and the practical application of psychiatry is very much a social thing – as opposed to, say, civil engineering, which actually interests me and which I consider real. 

and later..

Predeterminism and evolution tell me that whatever an organism does is generally adaptive, although it may be exploitative.

There are exceptions like cancer. Cancer is just a single cell that went wrong. 

You have to consider that what may be a “mental disorder” may be very much a behaviour that evolved to be socially productive.

Just as pain is bad and we don't want it, yet is good, the same is true with a mental disorder.

Pain is unproductive because it gets in the way of you and is annoying, but also productive because it's telling you that something is wrong. 

Only because of great medical advancement can we, in many cases, find a serious source of pain and fix it. Like with a dislocated collarbone. 

I'm pretty sure my old friend, when his collarbone was dislocated, got painkillers, but also they fixed the source of pain. 

If you keep hitting yourself or get hit and take painkillers, it would be better if you just stopped the source of pain.

Let's say that the brain is the social organ. So if you have “brain pain” that is because of social ills. Things that your body can't sense, but your mind can.

With the body, we give painkillers so that people can be “alright” despite their physical condition, and we treat the source of pain so that someone can truly function again. 

With the brain, however, people are essentially prescribed medicines which numb them like a painkiller to make them “alright” socially or to make them feel alright, and like a painkiller take them away from ‘evolved reality’ (which is the reality that evolution wants you to sense). 

When you break a leg, evolution wanted you to feel that pain so that you do not try to function as normal.

This is not an exact parallel, but when you are “mentally ill”, evolution wanted you to be that way so that you do not try to function as “normal”.

Why would you function as “normal” if you have been socially wounded?

To really fix the source of a “mental disorder”, you couldn't just flood the brain with a drug, and you couldn't just, and even if you could you shouldn't, go in someone's brain and rewire them to be happy or normal. 

You would have to actually look out into the social world to discover the social ill that is making them, in turn, “ill”.

I suppose that “social wounding” takes many forms. 

Anxiety and depression are on the rise in the UK. Mental health is a big thing now and it wasn't such a big media item 5+ years ago.

My cousin has an “anxiety disorder”. My other close male cousin has been on a drug for anxiety. I could go on. To me, this is a sign of something seriously wrong.

Bad conditions don't just come out of thin air.

People don't just get physical conditions for no good reason.

And they don't just get “mental conditions” for no good reason.

Social problems beget social problems, just as physical problems beget physical problems. 

Like, a car crash is a physical problem that results in physical problems.

And a bad social experience is a social problem that results in social problems.

The idea is that a mental disorder should be recognised primarily as a social problem, as opposed to a physical problem.

To understand causes of physical problems, you do medical research and you do medical research also to be able to fix bodies better.

In parallel, to understand causes of social problems (mental disorders, now identified as such), you do social research, and you do social research also to be able to fix society better.

In response to misunderstanding..

“You trust institutions?” means there are no state-run or state-sponsored organisations that I trust to perform their function or supposed role well. That means I don’t trust the police to handle crime. I don’t trust the public health service to save me. Etc. etc. 

It means that I don’t trust actual institutions that exist. 

It doesn’t mean I don’t trust institutions as a general point of political theory.

I could in theory trust police, trust schools, trust government, in another world. In this world, I don’t.

Important note: I believe that "another world" is possible. 

"If your friend or family member got seriously injured would you call an ambulance?"

yes but I wouldn't be surprised if the ambulance showed up in 5 hours

It has been in the news recently in Scotland -- a few incidents where people wait hours for an ambulance

sources: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cly0k1wve7zt?post=asset%3A50a761c1-6a6f-44a9-8a09-0e2bf6402bb4#post

It's not compassionate to diagnose people with mental “disorders” and “illnesses”. It's actually extraordinarily dismissive of their individual sovereignty – their individual truth and the supremeness of the individual. It's autistic. It's “rule by the autistic”.

Here is my way to put it: every person is humanity. Humanity, collectively, does not need to medicalise its own mental state as though it is wrong. Therefore, no individual should think of their inner experience as wrong like a glitch.

Everybody’s experiences are valid and meaningful. A mental disorder is not just like a glitch. It means something, even if that something is as self-sacrificing as suicide.

Is someone mentally disordered before they commit suicide, or is what society wants them to be incompatible with human life?

Today I overheard on the BBC evening news a segment on postpartum depression. They said that while it was found that singing classes alleviated the depression, they're not a substitute for therapy or medication.

The word “medication" kind of triggered me.

It would be anti-human to suppose that being depressed after giving birth is just a natural part of being human (which should be handled with something as unnatural as drugs), as opposed to a sign that something is wrong with the modern world.

Prevention is preferable to diagnosis, medicalisation and other such band-aids.

Postpartum depression is the subconscious realisation that you're about to raise a child in an evil society.

I have briefly read about an Australian tribe which birthed very easily compared to modern women – and this was linked to their diet. 

They would just give birth like it was nothing, while standing.

So much for the supposed unbelievable level of wealth and safety of the modern world in which so many things work very well for us. @Caelic 

What if it’s all an illusion?

All this technology and we’re not any happier or more physically capable as individual humans.

Technology and industry are great, but the “leaders” of the technological world need to take a hard look at their social organisations and assumptions about people.

I’m not sure to what degree they’re evil and to what degree they’re stupid.

But I do know that there is a lot of lying and a lot of trying to look good.

If you’re the leader of a country with a relatively “unbelievable level of wealth and safety”, yet:

1. Your women aren’t birthing as easily as Australian primitives

2. Your men aren’t jacked like African primitives

Then you’re wasting all their wealth and shouldn’t be anywhere near political power.

Enough GDP.

I want EOB (Ease of Birth) and Jacked-O-Meter (JOM) to be the lines that go up.