Reddit reviews Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good

Yep that's pretty much it. As we've seen even the perceived etiology of a mental illness can unexpectedly affect the stigma surrounding it. There was a drive to explain mental illnesses as being like physical illnesses in an attempt to reduce stigma. But the biochemical explanation seems to have made people think "oh, well if it's the brain, then the person can't control it... making them more dangerous and unpredictable".

So if we know there's a biological cause behind it, do we only mention the psychosocial causes because we know that fosters less stigma - is that ethical? That's a tricky question.

Language is very important and flies under the radar all the time. I would quite confidently guess that people are more likely to say they are taking time off work for "stress" when they've been told it's "depression".

It would be interesting to look into what language various cultures use when referring to this constellation of symptoms we know as depression. I suppose if Culture X knows it as a "spiritual disturbance", a member of Culture X may get culture shock with a scientific phrase like "clinical depression" and try to avoid everything that comes with that, including treatment.

In terms of over-diagnosis in western countries, it absolutely happens. Alarmingly so. I would give Cracked by James Davies a read (don't worry about the fact that it's a book, he gives credible citations throughout).

P.S. Check out page 91 in the preview of that book - some language relevance there in the difference between Sarafem and Prozac.

It's super fucked up indeed. Western psychiatry likes to be seen as scientific, but that's a massive lie. Psychiatry is still in the dark ages and I'm convinced we will look back to a lot of the current medicines as we look to bloodletting. People might well be better off getting acupuncture for depression as it at least doesn't do any harm.

This book recently helped open my eyes: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cracked-Psychiatry-Doing-More-Harm/dp/1848315562

I don't think it's as widely accepted in science as you claim it is.

Here is a meta analysis of all of the trials submitted to the FDA for licensing of 4 anti-depressant drugs: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050045

They found that when you put all the data together the difference between placebo and anti-depressant is negligible. Even in severely depressed patients the difference was clinically insignificant. In any case if you thought that these drugs were effective then this is not what you would expect after collating all of the data.

Not only that, but there is also evidence suggesting that antidepressants may actually make long term outcomes for patients worse than if they never took any treatment at all.

Here is a page that offers a host of studies into long term outcomes: http://robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Depression.html

If you are really interested in hearing criticisms of the current treatment of mental illness then I recommend you check out some of these books:

Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good

Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients

Anatomy of an Epidemic

The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth

The Myth of the Chemical Cure

Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How big pharma has corrupted healthcare