Talk:Psychiatry

Criticism of psychiatry

(→‎Criticism on psychiatric diagnostics: Added content: in the German Wikipedia, the change of the title already happened. It is more specific and explains to the reader, that psychiatry as an organisation is not criticised, but psychiatric diagnostics (by some people). Even if that is even unscientific and on a medical field easy to refute, that psychiatric diagnostics would be „not precise“.)

Hey, I reverted this, but this is a matter of consensus not my choice.

• Psychiatry as an organization very much *is* criticized, by self-described survivors, psychiatrists themselves, and psychology

Talpedia (talk) 23:56, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

As a medical student, I can confirm that this criticism is unscientific and medically disproven. No other medical field on Wikipedia actually features a „controversy and criticism“ section. Why should psychiatry feature irrelevant and unscientific criticism, which is completely unproven and actually might fear people to take therapy. I am seeing a lot of danger because of this and the link to the unscientific article „controversies around psychiatry“ is highly dangerous. Cell.83 (talk) 13:10, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Being a medical student doesn't count for much around here, it might allow you to identify the best quality sources and arguments. I don't see any reason for the crticism to be irrelevant or unscientific, but you could present an argument (other than "i am a medical student"). I get the impression that wikipedia is mostly motivated by weight, relevance and verifiability rather than danger, but I think these arguments do have some merit. Addressing your point specfically, psychiatry and psychology are very much different things, these criticisms could help people avoid bad and damaging psychotherapy of psychopharmacy. In my view there is a strong argument to provide the reader with the most accurate summary of criticisms allowing them to come to their own conclusions, rather than engaging in paternalistic decisions about what information is safe for readers and not. You can identify specific claims that are wrong, and show why from verifiable sources, and suggest improvement, but I'm not sure such a high level analysis will get much done. Talpedia (talk) 19:02, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

There is a huge difference between data/ information that has been researched, improved and developed by doctors for years and made up non sense of average people. But featuring both impressions on one article might occur the impression that both „theses“ would have the same scientific value. Cell.83 (talk) 16:17, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree that research with a review process is the best way to come to viewpoints that people can agree with. For this reason wikipedia tends to be based on academic sources; the main source here is a clinical and academic psychiatrist publishing in peer-reviewed journals. In the sense that this criticism comes from academic sources it is not "made up non sense of average people".

I've heard the argument you are making referred to as a "false balance" argument. It certainly can be true at times and where there is complete academic certainty. If misused it can allow a field to be damagingly wrong or a long period of time. Psychiatry is not such a field or a number of claims (though it is for *some* specific claims) - in the sense that practictioners will themselves express uncertainty, there is criticism within the field, and from areas of psychology.

This isn't really on topic, but I do think the motivations, and power of medical doctors combined with being in an "informationally privileged position" can give individuals a better ability to understand aspects of a system than practioners. Ideally such concerns would be verified through research, and this does at times happens Talpedia (talk) 05:49, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Why was my change undone?

I only edited out a subjective view and added a sentence, that the neutrality of the Rosenhan experiment is often questioned nowadays. That is also written in the original article and is quite important for the understanding of the reader. Cell.83 (talk) 10:37, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

From the comment in the revert it looks someone wanted a citation for the last claim (I note that you included a citation above, you might like to use the visual editor to add the citation). I'm probably going to restore the first sentence that this edit removes, but you could probably force me to find a citation for it, and this might cause me to make the text more accurate and improve citations. Talpedia (talk) 11:11, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Alternatiely, you could use the

<ref>{{cite| blah blah blha}} </ref>

in markup mode (perhaps by copying and pasting). I'd really encourage that you use the visual editor though. I used to use the markup editor (and I've written a lot of markup in my life), and my edits were rubbish. Talpedia (talk) 13:43, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

Ok, thanks a lot for your quick answer. However, I didn’t manage to put in the citation. I would be a pleasure, if you could maybe explain to me, how to put in a citation for a claim (I posted the source, which I wanna quote, earlier) :) Cell.83 (talk) 13:48, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

For the visual editor, see Help:Introduction to referencing with VisualEditor/1. For the text editor, see Help:Introduction to referencing with Wiki Markup/1. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/his/him] 14:05, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Alienism

Hi. The disambiguation page Alienism states that alienism is an obsolete term for psychiatry, which is supported by sources such as this one. The Psychiatry article, however, doesn't mention this term, and neither does History of psychiatry. It would be helpful if they did. I don't feel confident adding it in myself, though, as I don't know exactly how and where to add it, but I hope that someone reading this is willing to do so. Lennart97 (talk) 15:08, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Psychiatry as a religion

I think in this article psychiatry is coming off far too much like a religion. The way it is presented almost makes it sound as medicine has taken advantage of modern dismissiveness towards religion to institute its own religion clothed as science. It also makes it sound as though medicine has been introducing a new, self-serving morality (don't be selfish, don't be suspicious, don't be a contrarian, etc.) and using thought-policing and its exclusive control over the drug supply to grow increasingly more powerful and wealthy.

I would like to echo some of the earlier comments on this article, namely:

(1) people should not be provided accurate information merely because it may prevent them from being exploited when it comes to medicine,

(2) information alone can be dangerous, because people may accept information uncritically which is a bad thing unless the information is coming from government-sanctioned sources,

(3) what information people receive should be decided upon by government-sanctioned individuals, who should have the right to decide what harm is and is not likely to occur in the future.

To illustrate the point, the article talks about mental diseases that across Wikipedia are described as typically having no objective criteria. Meanwhile, psychiatric therapies are known to have very real, objective negative consequences. This would seem to insinuate that the only actual reliable/objective finding of most psychiatric experiments is how much damage the therapeutic is causing, and whether it is quick and painful or slow and painful. In turn, this suggests that doctors practicing involuntary psychiatry are simply modern-day torture-masters who have grown increasingly adept at using expensive procedures to subdue and exploit vulnerable individuals for their personal and collective gain.

However, I'm sure that most psychiatrists would agree that the fact that most of psychiatry's modern and historic treatments resemble torture is purely coincidental (the fact that the UN has labelled them as such obviously notwithstanding). To suggest that surgically removing or using medications that shrink a person's brain matter, restraining a person's movement, isolating them from friends and family and restricting their access to nature, exercise, sunlight, healthy produce and sex is as bad for a person's health who has been involuntarily diagnosed with a mental disease as it would be for someone who hasn't is pure fancy.

I do like the fact that this article doesn't make mention of the sexual assault that has been documented to run rampant throughout psychiatric medicine, particularly by the psychiatrists themselves, as that may dissuade people from relying on them. Similarly, it's also probably best that there continues to be no reference of the recent and publicly published studies of patients that had metal electroshock wires inserted into their brains, some of whom were sexually stimulated in this fashion, while being studied, as many of these subjects are involuntary (under the doctrine of third-party consent as opposed to consent in the older sense).

However, besides that, it seems like the article could do with a lot of work. I'm not quite sure how to start fixing it but maybe it could be opened it by emphasizing that involuntary medicine is real and that a medical education gives a psychiatrist the power to see into people's minds with sufficient accuracy to diagnose the person with a permanent illness. I've personally benefited greatly from the powers of psychiatry but perhaps some more of the psychiatric fraternity could chime in as I'm sure they will give us their even-handed, professional opinion. 91.129.101.175 (talk) 15:42, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Recent edits: Involuntary treatment

We seem to be having quite a few reverts going on. So to avoid too much edit warring I thought I'd open this section. I do think it's relevant that involuntary treatment goes on in psychiatry, but a lot of psychiatric interventions are voluntary, so we should probably address involuntary treatment in a separate paragraph. Maybe something like:

"In some situations situations psychiatric treatment may be involuntary, sometimes on the basis of lack of capacity. Examples of disorders that are treated involuntary include psychotic disorders such as Schizophrenia or Bipolar disorder; Eating disorders such as Anorexia nervosa; or certain forms of suicidal ideation. Involuntary treatment is governed by Mental health law and in some countries requires a courts approval"

with appropriate cites added.

Talpedia (talk) 18:09, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

It appears the reversions that Markworthen, Megaman en m and then MrOllie have made follow the same argument as Cell.83 for excluding what is presumably going to be the most interesting thing to the general reader about psychiatry after its definition has been provided, namely the likelihood and frequency of people being subjected to psychiatric treatment without consent. I support this argument and suggest that any information whatsoever about involuntary psychiatry should be removed on the article because it is unnecessary and dangerous for people to have information about psychiatry and, as a rule of thumb, psychiatrists should always receive special treatment.

Before the changes are re-implemented, at the very least the three users should be given the opportunity to explain their reasoning if they have a better one. 176.46.113.248 (talk) 21:24, 27 November 2021 (UTC)