Behavioral screening of 0-3 year olds, psychotropic drugging of children and youths, pre-drugging kids to “prevent” mental disorders and prescription drug-inducing suicides, form a dangerous…
By CCHR International The Mental Health Industry Watchdog March 15, 2017 Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, renowned for his debunked and dangerous theory that pre-drugging adolescents…
By Kelly Patricia O’Meara April 28, 2015 Australian psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, who caused an international furor over advocating drugging adolescents with antipsychotics to “prevent” them…
EFFORTS to update the psychiatrists’ bible – the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – have led to bickering, contention, organised revolt and, finally, a backdown.
The association announced it has abandoned plans to class so-called attenuated psychosis syndrome and internet addiction as psychiatric disorders.
And four disputed additional criteria for diagnosing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been dumped: “impatience”, “acting without thinking”, “uncomfortable doing things slowly and systematically” and “finds it difficult to resist temptations or opportunities”.
Imagine a tribunal where the public could challenge clinical decisions by neurosurgeons or cardiologists. It would be ridiculous. But mental health is different. Unlike other medical specialties, it resembles law or politics: fields where subtle variations in the interpretation of a word can alter the entire trajectory of a patient’s treatment.
That’s why the right to appeal clinical decisions by mental health professionals through a tribunal, announced recently by the NSW government, met with public approval. Mental health possesses a built-in capacity for abuse that is greater than in other areas of medicine. A patient’s psychiatric diagnosis has enormous cultural power in many other fields, from the marketing of antidepressant medications, to general practice, disability claims and legal proceedings.