Madness Of Labelling Mental Illness

By Michelle Roberts
BBC News health reporter

Scientific advances such as scanners that see into the brain and powerful mind-altering drugs make it tempting to give a diagnosis to things society terms "mental illnesses". But we should resist from using psychiatric labels because there is no clear division between madness and sanity, experts argue. To label someone as schizophrenic, for example, falsely groups people with a wide range of problems together. Followers of psychiatric phenomenology -the study of lived experience in mental illness - say it is time to take a stepback. False assumptions. At the turn of the 20th Century, doctors relied as much on what a patient said they were experiencing as they did on piecemeal symptoms to work out what course of action, if any, to take. But now science has outstripped this, meaning doctors look to books containing check lists of symptoms to decide how to classify and treat a given individual's "disorder".

Professor Paul Mullen, professor of forensic psychiatry at Monash University, Australia, said:
"At some time towards the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century there was a real effort to make sense of the whole domain of madness." They tried to separate it out into what was meant to be temporary categories sothat they would allow more precise development of scientific investigations and treatments." What has happened in the last 100 years is these concepts became verified and they were turned into themes with operational definitions."
One size does not fit all. So you have a menu that tells you what schizophrenia is, for example. But this does not take account of subtleties and variation from patient to patient, he said. "It has none of the recognition that schizophrenia is not a disorder but a wide range of conditions having a variety of different contributions." He said going by the rule book was madness and often leads to confusion and problems, including misdiagnosis and incorrect treatment. Professor Mullen said a famous example of confusion was the case of John Hinckley, the man who shot the then US President Ronald Reagan in 1981. When he was tried in court, psychiatrists ran into problems when trying to categorise Mr Hinckley's motivation. It transpired that Mr Hinckley was obsessed with actress Jodie Foster. He believed he could win Miss Foster's attention, and ultimately her affection, by shooting Mr Reagan and hence becoming famous himself. Although Mr Hinckley was found not guilty of attempted murder by reason of insanity, psychiatrists were unable to categorise him as having "erotomania" - a delusional, romantic preoccupation with a stranger, often a public figure - because he did not meet one of the strict diagnostic requirements. He did not believe Ms Foster was deeply in love with him.

"Grey areas."
Professor Richard Bentall, professor in experimental clinical psychology at the University of Manchester, agrees. He said: "The idea that there is a clear division between 'mad' and 'sane' people, and that distinct psychiatric categories like 'schizophrenic' actually exist, is resulting in the mass-application of treatments which, while benefiting some, are very harmful to others." And because psychiatric patients are seen as having a biological brain illness which affects their rationality, they are not usually allowed a say in the matter." ( emphasis by Paranoid Patty) He said that identifying and addressing the problems the sufferer, rather than the psychiatrist, perceives creates an understanding of each person's condition which is far more scientific, humane and effective than a blanket diagnosis." It also allows us to identify people at risk of psychological breakdown earlier, and keep them out of the traditional cycle of diagnosis and treatment."

Exceptions
Even proponents of phenomenology say there is a line to be drawn with this approach.A dilemma arises when the individual has no insight into their psychiatric disturbance and does not think that what they are experiencing or their behaviouris a problem, but others ( "others" Paranoid Patty) do. A big issue is how to deal with people who are violent. For example, a person's behaviour may threaten their own safety or that of others. On the one hand the individual does not want or think he or she needs treatment. On the other hand their loved ones or society in general thinks or insists that they do need and have to have help. Professor Bill Fulford, professor of philosophy and mental health at the University of Warwick and a consultant psychiatrist in Oxford, said sometimes intervention against a person's wishes may be necessary. Experts will continue the debate surrounding psychiatric phenomenology at the Institute of Psychiatry, London on September 5 and 6, 2005.

Story from BBC NEWS: Link embedded in Title
Published: 2005/09/02 23:50:19 GMT
~end of BBC article~

Paranoid Patty's Commentary:
I would like all of you to notice how much time is spent "interpreting" the patients' reality FOR them and how little is spent talking to the patients themselves about it or asking the patients to express their opinions about their own life and experience. Hmmmm.... I said to myself. You don't suppose this imbalance of power and this control bit could BE the real problem do you? What do you say we spend some time looking at all the similarities expressed by patients over the last few hundred years and see if we become able to notice anything in that we might decide to take seriously? Just as an experiment let's say...you scientist types like experiments don't you?
Why you don't suppose this has nothing to do with "science" do you?

Awareness Exercise for Professionals in Training

By Patricia Lefave, Labeled, D.D. (P)

I am suggesting this exercise to psychology students who really want to understand what it is like to be defined as inherently defective.
You like experiments? Good. Let’s try this one as a change of pace.
Stop thinking of yourselves as observers of the specimens and start thinking of yourselves as BEING the specimens under observation. Join me as one of the ‘fascinating cases.” Did you feel just a small ping of something uncomfortable when I said that? If so, there may be some real hope for your therapy here to work.
First step:
Join an Internet support group in Canada, the United States, Britain or Australia which supports and promotes the bio-medical model of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, preferably one which includes some psychiatrists (at least one) psychologists, friends of ‘the mentally ill’ and their relatives and of course, the labeled people themselves of which YOU will represent one. Be sure to pick a support group that is psychiatric establishment, preferably recommended by NAMI or Fuller Torrey, M.D. in the states and is full of true believers in the bio medical model.
Join this group as a labeled person, explaining how you got your label in the first place. Tell them that you ‘claim’ you were being abused by someone, in or outside your family, for example, and that no one would believe you or help you. Tell them a group of other joined in the abuse. Don’t worry about being found out as a fake as this is such a common ‘story’ that you will blend right in. Then tell them that when the psychiatrist didn’t believe you, he told you that you had one of these bio chemically based ‘diseases’:
Schizophrenia, (paranoid or affective type), Bi-polar disorder, Borderline Personality disorder, or Delusional Disorder (Paranoid, like ME)
After you have done that, just talk and relate to everyone in the group just like you would always do anywhere else with anyone else, as your every day perfectly ‘normal’ self.

Now see what happens and how others in the group relate to you. Respond to every answer and suggestion to you, exactly the same way you normally do, being fully yourself, and don’t make up anything beyond the premise of the experience you stated you had and the diagnostic label you were given for that. In other words, behave in a perfectly normal manner at all times after that.
As you do this, keep a separate evaluation of your own experience and your feelings about it, in a daily journal as they come up.

After you have participated at least once a day, for at least six months, gather all of the information on your experience and share it with a group of others who do the same. Compare and contrast your experience as a labeled person. Discuss openly what you noticed about tit hat you may never have noticed before and what you have learned about yourself and others because of it.
Next, write an essay and how it sounds and feels to you now from the identified patient’s perspective on the same reality as opposed to your previous view as as a supposedly objective observer OF a labeled person.

I have a pretty good psychic prediction for you.
If you do this, being your fully open and honest selves, I believe you may find that once past the original premise of your experiment and the self labeling you gave yourself for it, you will find that you now feel a whole lot more empathy and connection with most of the labeled people than you do with the ones DOING the labeling.
It is actually true that reality is that which you experience, so experience this. When you do, that much loved and promoted abstraction, “There is no reality only perception,” may start to sound like one of the stupidest ideas you’ve ever heard.

For those of you who do learn empathy, you may just become the ones to understand how to turn this mechanistic monster of a mental illness system off and start to turn on to a new system which you help to build aimed at equality, mutuality and mental health for everyone.