Talk:Psychiatry/Archive 9

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

In the history section I would like to place the former diagnosis of drapetomania , “masturbational insanity” http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/pdf_extract/108/452/1 , epilepsy and homosexuality. The dates of the "discovery" as a disease and the removal from psychiatry.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 12:36, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

I forgot another psychiatric diagnosis called "hysteria" AKA "conversion reaction" or "somatization disorder".--Mark v1.0 (talk) 13:27, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Citizens Commission on Human Rights is a Scientology front group and their website is NOT a WP:RS at all. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 18:05, 16 October 2014 (UTC) I am curious as to where the CCHR reference was used in the article? You need to be specific Harizoth. --Mark v1.0 (talk) 13:31, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

I think some of this section falls under WP:UNDUE, especially the "Mental illness myth". How important for instance is Thomas Szasz? Is he a fringe figure? The section seems to give too much credence to his position.

and gay rights activists criticised the APA's listing of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

This simply does not belong in the section at all, as it is not about claiming mental illness is a myth.

A widely-publicised study by Rosenhan in Science was viewed as an attack on the efficacy of psychiatric diagnosis.[130]

This seems to be over stating it a bit. This should be covered but

Similarly there's a quote by Stuart A. Kirk. Who is he? Is he a WP:RS? --Harizotoh9 (talk) 04:31, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

I think you may start removing controversial points from all political wikiarticles at first. They have a lot of controversial points to remove. Psychiatrick (talk) 07:22, 28 September 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality may be difficult to archive on a topic this controversial. The entire controversy section probably needs to be rewritten or reorganized. There must be some way to condense all this stuff into a smaller number of topics.

• Criticism of "Mental illness" was indeed not started by Thomas Szasz. Criticism primarily began from Neurology's administrative organizations just after the mid 1800's, which fought psychiatry in the court system. Thomas Szazs's legacy was exposing long hidden forced medical experimentation to wide public view. He sacrificed his career to do this, so his reputation is a bit confusing. He was a dissident psychiatrist and 'human rights activist' who brought back old criticisms at a particularity vulnerable time.

The gist is that laws were passed in the 1800's though europe and the US to make psychiatric commitment "mandatory", and physicians working in Psychiatry started to leave. As they did, it created the conditions for psychology to take a foot hold. By the late 1800's, physicians (like neurologists) whose professions used to work within psychiatry became angry about Psychiatry's ideological beliefs and increasing isolation from medicine, which lead to fierce criticism of "mental illness" theories and psychiatry's administration. The argument was over depriving the sick of access to medical care. The "myth of Mental illness" had more play for Szasz a century later, who was just in time for psychoanalysis to finally collapse.

• The Gay Liberation Front's history webpage dictates that anti-psychiatry was clearly involved by-name in their movement, but does not mention Thomas Szasz. However, they did indeed politically oppose "mental illness" as 'fiction', and that is important history. They believed Psychiatry was religiously motivated. It probably belongs, although perhaps it could be moved to the "psychiatric survivors" section.

• I've never read Rosenhan's paper and don't know much about it.

• Stuart A. Kirk has his own wikipage. He should probably be entered similar to Thomas Szas.

It is not surprising how many of these interesting events took place in the USA. The US has always been a world leader in science and advocacy. It's an interesting note how localized organized criticism of psychiatry and also funding of psychiatric research is to the US. Here is often the place to look for most scientific and political substance on these issues. Flyingducks (talk) 14:05, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

"How important for instance is Thomas Szasz?" Szasz IMO is very important. Szasz wrote many books on the subject . [google=szasz+book] .He did not call himself "anti-psychiatry" and wrote the book The_Myth_of_Mental_Illness. A "fringe figure?" is ridiculous question.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 13:45, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sigmund Freud in art.

I was thinking of starting the article. Anyone know where we can find a good image? There are a few at the commonscat link at the right. Any thoughts on sources? Google books is blocked here in China, so I am having trouble in that regard. Also, is it notable? There is Sigmund's famous couch, the presence in cartoons, an interesting history, the similarity to the chaise longue, pop culture, term "the couch", etc. I thought of making it a section in Couch, but it is not really a couch. Thoughts? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 07:53, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

[1]? Sorry to be such a couch potato. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC) ... of course, one can't always fit a couch in the studio.

Wow, thank you. That discusses the chair quite a bit. So, do you think the subject "Psychiatrist's couch" is notable? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 23:31, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

This page is currently at least 20% negative regarding the profession of psychiatry. The page's "Controversy" section consumes over 20% of the page, and is replete with non-stop negativity regarding the profession. This seems to me to be contrary to both the current WP:Due policy and the current WP:Undue policy which requires that sources should always represent, and be "weighted towards" the majority view, and should not unduly represent minority views. According to current WP:Due/ Undue policy, each of the criticisms ought to be logically and specifically "balanced" against the majority-view on each of these points, so that the article might not mistakenly mislead the public into misunderstanding the "majority view" on any of these points. Otherwise the controversial points should be removed all-together. I propose that this article be generally reverted back to a time prior to its current violation of WP:Due and WP:Undue. Scott P. (talk) 18:14, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Could you clarify by indicating what version of the page you would like to revert to? FiachraByrne (talk) 21:44, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

I would propose a upgrading/ reverting the article to This edition, as that edition was from the last month I could find before the sizeable "Controversy" section was inserted. Also, since the addition of that "controversy" section, I've noticed some general degradation of wording and phrasing throughout the rest of the article. It is my estimation that in order for the article to comply with WP:Due/ Undue, and to accurately reflect the proportion of true criticism from the academic community, perhaps one small paragraph on controversies would be warranted, but not the 20% sized section that it now has. Scott P. (talk) 16:20, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

That version is from three years ago. It's a big change. You should probably ping the major contributors over that period (probably many are not active now) and possibly also bring the suggestion to WP:MED and elsewhere, maybe also WP:RFC. Psychiatry has been the most controversial of the medical disciplines but I don't think controversy sections generally work very well or correspond to neutral point of view. Regardless, before such a big change you should get as much input as possible. Wikipedia rarely does a good job of these kind of top-level articles (they are admittedly difficult articles to write). FiachraByrne (talk) 17:27, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

True, it is three years old, but the field of psychiatry has changed relatively little in the interim. I will naturally re-edit the older article edition to incorporate any significant changes that may have been made within the field since the older Wikipedia article edition, such as for example, the new DSM release. Compliance with WP:Due/ Undue takes precedence over individual editorial preferences, don't you agree? I would assume that you agree with me that 20% of the medical and academic community do not find psychiatry to be a highly flawed profession? If any of the interim editors might wish to provide a persuasive case here on the talk page in a timely manner that the current article is in compliance with WP:Due/ Undue then that would be a different matter. If not, then I plan on upgrading the article by returning it to compliance with WP:Due/ Undue.
Thanks,
Scott P. (talk) 18:15, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The changes you propose are not solely addressed to the question of whether existing content is WP:UNDUE. You are proposing reverting all edits to this article that have taken place over the past 3 years. This may or may not be warranted but if content is undue it does not require this measure to fix it. One could simply edit the existing content. Nonetheless, it is possible that the article of 3 years ago is superior to the current iteration. I would suggest, however, that you attempt to recruit a wider range of opinions and establish a stronger consensus before applying such broad changes to the article. FiachraByrne (talk) 11:09, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Started RFC below. Will also post at WP:MEDRS.FiachraByrne (talk) 11:31, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

That should read WP:MED. Posted here. FiachraByrne (talk) 14:22, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I have removed the following chunk of ref tags that were disrupting the flow of the article as can be seen when comparing diffs. These had been integrated as part of the subsection on "outpatient treatment." They should be integrated as refs in such a way to appear under the proper section (whether references, notes, further reading, etc) without disturbing or disrupting the rest of the article:

|Note that the question of comparative efficacy (psychotherapy vs. psychopharmacology) is a subject of extensive research and debate in the scientific literature.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Pinquart | first1 = M. | last2 = Duberstein | first2 = PR. | last3 = Lyness | first3 = JM. | title = Treatments for later-life depressive conditions: a meta-analytic comparison of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. | journal = Am J Psychiatry | volume = 163 | issue = 9 | pages = 1493–501 |date=Sep 2006 | doi = 10.1176/appi.ajp.163.9.1493 | pmid = 16946172}}</ref><ref name="pmid21840164">{{cite journal | authors = Crits-Christoph P, Newman MG, Rickels K, Gallop R, Gibbons MB, Hamilton JL, Ring-Kurtz S, Pastva AM | title = Combined medication and cognitive therapy for generalized anxiety disorder | journal = J Anxiety Disord | volume = 25 | issue = 8 | pages = 1087–94 | year = 2011 | pmid = 21840164 | pmc = 3196054 | doi = 10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.07.007 | url = }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Imel | first1 = ZE. | last2 = Malterer | first2 = MB. | last3 = McKay | first3 = KM. | last4 = Wampold | first4 = BE. | title = A meta-analysis of psychotherapy and medication in unipolar depression and dysthymia. | journal = J Affect Disord | volume = 110 | issue = 3 | pages = 197–206 |date=Oct 2008 | doi = 10.1016/j.jad.2008.03.018 | pmid = 18456340}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Cuijpers | first1 = P. | last2 = Dekker | first2 = J. | last3 = Hollon | first3 = SD. | last4 = Andersson | first4 = G. | title = Adding psychotherapy to pharmacotherapy in the treatment of depressive disorders in adults: a meta-analysis. | journal = J Clin Psychiatry | volume = 70 | issue = 9 | pages = 1219–29 |date=Sep 2009 | doi = 10.4088/JCP.09r05021 | pmid = 19818243}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Cuijpers | first1 = P. | last2 = van Straten | first2 = A. | last3 = Schuurmans | first3 = J. | last4 = van Oppen | first4 = P. | last5 = Hollon | first5 = SD. | last6 = Andersson | first6 = G. | title = Psychotherapy for chronic major depression and dysthymia: a meta-analysis. | journal = Clin Psychol Rev | volume = 30 | issue = 1 | pages = 51–62 |date=Feb 2010 | doi = 10.1016/j.cpr.2009.09.003 | pmid = 19781837}}

Laval (talk) 16:57, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Which biomarkers are being used clinical? Also we should be using high quality secondary sources not primary research. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:38, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

That text is quite simplistic and POV in tone too, so yeah I'd have removed it too. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:25, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I edited the last paragraph of the lead (diff) and wanted to further explain reasons for the edits, and invite comments or suggestions.

• sought to improve clarity of expression - I don't think this is controversial. I simply wanted to improve grammar and syntax.

• provide specific examples of other modalities - I tried to think of examples that have strong research support for their efficacy, but it's certainly not an exhaustive list. If you think there are better examples, please edit. :)

• provide examples of the interdisciplinary nature of research & treatment - Similar to the last point, there are (fortunately in my estimation, and a credit to psychiatry as a profession) a large number of different professions who collaborate with psychiatrists in the clinical (treatment) and research realms. Of course, feel free to prune the list, or replace with more representative examples.

> Question: I am so used to using "e.g.," that it is second nature, but should we avoid it in articles? I am sure there is an answer to this question somewhere in the Style Guide, but I had trouble finding it after searching for a bit.

Thanks! - Mark D Worthen PsyD 05:17, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

I feel that the article should cite a source showing how frequently, and to what extent, Psychiatrists make use of Objective Medical techniques (such as Neuroimaging or Neurophysiological techniques) to inform the diagnosis process. I am afraid that common sense (the expense of such techniques being one common sensical factor) indicates to me that these techniques are woefully underused.

ASavantDude (talk) 23:48, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

I said "IP editor" here, but that was a mistake and I can't fix it (I don't think). Just clarifying. —PermStrump(talk) 23:56, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

I made some edits, mainly to correct grammatical errors or improve clarity of expression in the Subspecialities section. But I noticed that while the section mentions ABPN certification, the subspecialty lists do not differentiate between those where ABPN certification is required and those where it is not (based on the ABPN website).   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 16:28, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the necessary changes. (Diff for all the edits I made today for this subsection.) There are some subspecialities that ABPN certifies that I suspect are considered neurology subspecialities, e.g., Epilepsy, rather than psychiatry subspecialties, although I'm not positive about that.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 16:28, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Similar to how psychology page is improved by linking with the Psychology Portal, Psychiatry need to be connected to it's respective portal. I will be attempting such a move — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gadha1998 (talk • contribs) 08:26, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I found that the restriction is specially target to the view which opposes psychiatry. I don't think Wikipedia should be a soapbox, but only mentioning the fobidding about opposing psychiatry is not comprehensive enough for such a article, since the talk page requires that talk page is not fourm. Just removing discussion about opposing psychiatry is somewhat unfair, even if Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia. Please consider this and please give a response. I think even that state cannot be changed, a FAQ of explaination is still good for us. Thank you! 2409:8930:FFC0:2774:9F74:93EB:7077:ABDE (talk) 23:02, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

The article at present mostly relates to the practice of psychiatry in the United States, except for the history section which has perforce to cover Western Europe: but the sidebar relating to the education of psychiatrists lists several qualifications which turn out to be for Barefoot Doctors in Kenya, though the main article says nothing about how they practice. I see no value in having it there at all. NRPanikker (talk) 18:48, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Umm...that's what you removed already, right? Seems sensible...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:02, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Someone has restored the idea that a psychiatrist could be a "Clinical officer," which seems to be a kind of barefoot doctor in East Africa, and someone else has removed it, along with the need for a qualification in psychiatry. I have restored the latter part as it is required in most countries, even if it might be possible to practice psychiatry in the USA without training or qualification in the specialty. As regards clinical officers, there are many other kinds of mental health professionals who do not have full training in medicine and surgery, but they are not usually called psychiatrists. Regarding the basic medical qualification, these vary greatly around the world and it would be simpler to state that a psychiatrist should have a medical qualification rather than specifying MD and DO, which make the sidebar too US-centric, as non-American osteopaths do not practice as psychiatrists. NRPanikker (talk) 01:37, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Someone needs to work on their perceptions and/or racist tendencies ("Barefoot doctors??"), and no - clinical officers are not "other kinds of mental health professionals." Their primary qualification is clinical medicine and surgery with the option of a second qualification in psychiatry. Clinical Officers Council. Ronns (talk) 18:44, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

A added a carefully referenced sentence to the Inpatient treatment section (diff), which had been removed on 9 Oct 2019 (diff), perhaps by mistake. Please discuss here before removing this sentence a second time. Thanks!   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 02:12, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

I've reworked the criticism and controversy section:

• I felt there was rather too high a risk of guilt through association. Criticism of psychiatry = anti-psychiatry = Scasz + Scientologists = Discredited. I added a little "buffering", to distinguish critique from anti-psychiatry, and distinguish this from scientology.
• I've added a summary of the general critiques (rather than the anti-psychiatry critiques) with an academic reference from within the psychiatric field.
• I'm not sure the second paragraph works very well now. I think this acts as a sort of "history of criticism", but this might like to be made clearer.

This section seems controversial:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychiatry/Archive_7#Reintroduction_of_controversy_section
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychiatry/Archive_7#Should_we_reintroduce_%22Controversy%22_section?
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychiatry/Archive_7#Removal_of_Anti_Psychiatry_material
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychiatry/Archive_9#Controversy_section%3A
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychiatry/Archive_8#Significant_controversies
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Psychiatry/Archive_3#Pharmaceutical_Industry_criticism_paragraph

It feels like there might be a bit of POV-funnelling going on here (everything critical belongs in anti-psychiatry - e.g. so that we can suppress criticism on this page) and controversy was being characterised as undue influence. So we'll see what happens :)

(edit: grammar)

--Talpedia (talk)

Good points.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 17:31, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

This text was added and reverted from the lead on the grounds of being large change that requires some discussion.

"This medical specialty differs from other medical specialties as it is the only one to diagnosis disorders based upon common symptoms as opposed to cellular pathology (e.g., neuroscience).^[4]"

My 2 cents:

• It is kind of true, psychiatry will diagnose based on behaviour, and you will occassionally here use terms like "diagnosed psychiatrically" (as opposed to via neurological symptoms)
• It's not sure it's quite true that it is the *only* speciality. If you can accurately diagnose something with symptoms the diagnose will often be used.
• I'm not sure that's a good source for the claim, I would try to dig up a review that talks about psychological, versus psychiatric, versus neurological diagnosis. Something philosophy of sciecey maybe.
• I don't know if it belong in the lead. Maybe it does.

--Talpedia (talk) 19:55, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I reverted the edit that had added the sentence you quoted (diff). The statement is not accurate—many medical disciplines diagnose conditions based on a variety of factors that may or may not include cellular pathology. Psychology Today articles vary in quality; they need to be carefully considered before using one as the only reliable source for a statement. Psychiatric diagnosis does rely on signs and symptoms alone more often than other disciplines, but this distinction should be discussed accurately in the body of the article first before adding mention of it in the lede.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 01:28, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree that excessive weight on the scientologists is unnecessary (I wrote the initial paragraph on "mainstream" anti-psychaitry) - much of the material is covered in other articles. I am unsure how noteworthy scientologists are - they are a well-known group with prominent members. I do think that the fact that they founded an organization with Ssasz is significant, so a couple of sentences linking to other material seems relevant.

--Talpedia (talk) 22:24, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

What is wrong with the original paragraph? (It was deleted with this edit.)

The Church of Scientology strongly opposes psychiatry. Through a self-described "humanitarian effort" the Church of Scientology created a museum in Los Angeles, CA (USA) which purports to show the evolution of the "evils" of psychiatry and psychology over time. A Scientology-related organization, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), is entirely devoted to criticism of psychiatry. Others have questioned the veracity of information the Church of Scientology provides to the public within the Industry of Death Museum exhibits. (citation numbers omitted)

The fact they created an "Industry of Death Museum", along with their repeated, unscientific castigation of psychiatry, is notable and should be mentioned in the article.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 01:42, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I agree that it is definitely notable and I think a link is relevant. The linked article discusses this material in depth tho. I agree that too much emphasis on scientologists on a section that talks about criticism might detract from other criticism. I don't know if we could add some sections, move parts of this to the history section, or add the perspectives from other religious groups to reduce the effect. --Talpedia (talk) 10:04, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I think the argument was that too much material a section marked criticism renders legitimate critques guilty by association. I see the argument, a while ago this section was mostly about scientology. I guess I sort of agree with this argument, because I restored a summary linking to other material rather than the complete paragraph --Talpedia (talk) 10:04, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

• I am opposed to the mention of Scientology in this article. There are more than enough legitimate criticisms of psychiatry that we shouldn't give space to the people who think its bad for your theatons. --66.244.121.212 (talk) 05:34, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I'm certainly no fan of scientology, but their opposition is notable. // I made a slight edit to the sentence, seeking to achieve some balance, and I removed two references that were poorly written and not clearly from reliable sources (diff).   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 21:00, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

"The Church of Scientology is critical of psychiatry, whereas others have questioned the veracity of information the Church of Scientology provides to the public.[130]"

Is this use of whereas standard in the US? I would use "though" here. I've only seen this "non-comparative" of whereas in constitutions and legal documents :).

--Talpedia (talk) 16:24, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

I always enjoy talking with fellow word geeks. :0) In this case, I think I used the word correctly.

whereas conjunction ... 3 a : when in fact : while on the contrary : the case being in truth that — used to introduce a statement in opposition or contrast to a preceding or sometimes following statement; b : although; c : at the same time that : while.^[1]

All the best  - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I'm a man—traditional male pronouns are fine.) 18:40, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

I would actually like to put in the reference at the end of „criticism and controversy“ for the sentence „...the neutrality is questioned...“

Abbott, Alison (29 October 2019). "On the troubling trail of psychiatry's pseudopatients stunt". Nature. 574 (7780): 622–623. Bibcode:2019Natur.574..622A. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-03268-y. “But some people in the department called him a bullshitter,” Kenneth Gergen says. And through her deeply researched study, Cahalan seems inclined to agree with them. ^

And

"Review: 'The Great Pretender,' by Susannah Cahalan". Star Tribune.

^ Cell.83 (talk) 12:46, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Hey, you might like to use the visual editor. You can post doi's into the cite feature and it will automatically add a citation. If you want to include some text describing the annotation you can use an extended footnote `{{efn` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Talpedia (talk • contribs) 18:51, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Why is there a link featured in the article of „criticism and controversy“ to controversies about psychiatry? The page „controversies about psychiatry“ offers a lot of unscientific and wrong information. A potential reader could be convinced, that „psychiatry“ is not scientific and not a medical field... that is dangerous and this site should not be featured Cell.83 (talk) 11:56, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure we care about what is dangerous, rather about what is verifiable. I don't doubt that the page can be improved. I think a potentially reader would be correct if they came to the conclusion that psychiatry is not scientific or a medical field, and therefore protected from the more damaging effects of psychiatry. Psychiatry *is* quite different from other medical fields for a number of reasons. I think the reason to link to this page is that it is relevant. Talpedia (talk) 19:06, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

If we have a section on the controversy of psychiatry we should link to the related page. The page can be improved over time - hiding content that is not finished yet does not give it the chance to improve. I guess I would be convinced by some analogous reasoning elsewhere. Talpedia (talk) 21:03, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

??? I am a medical student and you actually believe that psychiatry is more „damaging than beneficial“? If an admin is actually thinking that... psychiatry is a medical field. It has been improved a lot throughout the years. It’s a scientific, medical field. Simple statistics will show you the benefit of psychiatry. Did you ever visit a psychiatry? I did, as a student in medical school. Your opinion is heavily unscientific and just dumb. Please educate yourself on the topic Cell.83 (talk) 12:36, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I do not beleive the psychiatry as a whole is more damaging than beneficial, I guess I believe that it isn't scientific. I believe that for a certain individuals it can be actively damaging, that you can be unlucky with the people who you interact with as a patient, and that potentially for some diagnoses it is universally damaging. I think the psychiatric field as it stands may be less effective than alternatives. I'm not an admin. I think it's quite likely that I know more about psychiatry than you do, I don't think I'm at all unscientific, but we can trade insults all you want if you like.

Addressing the specific point. I think the article should still be linked to, but improved over time, rather than hidden from wikipedia where it will never be improved. Talpedia (talk) 19:00, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Rest assured that I know more about the psychiatric field than 99% of people. Talpedia (talk) 23:10, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

... If you have not/ or are not studying medicine right now, your opinion is invalid and doesn’t matter. Why would psychiatrist, who are doctors and studied medicine and did a 6 years further training to become a specialist, only to damage people in the end? There are 1000 of studies, doctorates and books about the medical field of psychiatry. I doubt that you ever read on of these, ever visited a modern psychiatry or studied medicine. In other words, your opinion doesn’t have any medical value and if you claim „that you know more than 99% of people of Talpedia“, sorry but that is impossible. You are having an opinion, which is against every scientific and medical research, similar to anti vaccers... Cell.83 (talk) 10:34, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

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)

(→‎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)

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)

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 any better ones. 176.46.113.248 (talk) 21:24, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

If you follow the argument on Controversies about psychiatry you'll actually find that Markworthen was in favor of keeping and improving the article, if memory serves correctly. I think it's more that they didn't like some of your earlier edits and feel like they have other stuff that they would prefer to do than review your edits right now. Mr Ollie could also point at WP:3RR. I suspect there might also be a little bit of waiting for you to do something to block you as well! (WP:GAV) In fact, I'm suspicious that their opinion of what I'm doing right now would be "why are you bothering trying to help someone who just wants to have an argument and create more work for everyone" to which my argument would probably be "curiosity", "social interaction", "empathy" (or more specifically, I feel like I've played your side this interaction, so I want to see what the other side is like) and "benefit of the doubt".

There might be a suspicion that you aren't willing to do the work to produce something suitably cited for Wikipedia. Opinions can be easy, but balanced cited content takes a little more work. People often have a "ratio of arguing to interesting work" and disengage if there is too much arguing... they won't actively block you, just not help. My experience is that it only takes a small amount of work to show people that you are willing to do the necessary work.

Walking into WP:FORUM territory or a while, I'm quite sure the biases you identify exist and are common (though they are perhaps less common amongst people who edit encyclopedia's - if you want people who value the accurate promulgation of truth over other values like safety, or social standing, I might suggest an anonymous collection of encyclopedia editors is a good place to find it). However, they are not the *only* determinants of people's opinions, and frequently in a specific situation other concerns can trump bias - and indeed through forcing the reconciliation of different values replace bias. This isn't to say "play nice" just more "play" and "don't assume that you will always lose".

I think paragraph enough is a good starting point to be added (I wrote it after all) but needs to be "cited up" with appropriate sources (and preferably the best ones, with additional nuanced added). I'm not keen to do this work right now, and don't really want to wade into right now. If you are keen to do something now, you could find the relevant sources following WP:MEDRS paying attention to WP:Verifiability and WP:Due we could then ask for feedback here. Talpedia (talk) 21:45, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I've seen a lot of unsourced agenda-driven edits lately on articles such as these, so I am wary of these types of edits by default. I'm just asking to see some high-quality sources, especially with edits such as these. Care must also be taken to maintain a neutral tone and to avoid editorializing. Phrasing such as (I quote): "Psychiatric treatment is either voluntary or involuntary..." implies that consent is irrelevant and misrepresents the reality. The paragraph that Talpedia gave at the start is much better, although it might be undue to dedicate a whole paragraph to it in the lead in such a long article.--Megaman en m (talk) 22:41, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

What everyone is actually wondering, Talpedia, is why you used an anonymous address to make yesterday's spate of repugnant edits to this article, and indeed the thought crosses one's own mind. It is highly disconcerting that you and now Megaman en m seem to be advocating improving this article's neutrality by shifting its perspective in the direction of the general civilian populace.

To quote Megaman en m, it is misrepresenting reality to propose such a thing as psychiatric treatment being either voluntary or involuntary (while I don't have a source for it, to my own knowledge psychiatry is all either voluntary or about-to-be). Also, exactly like a recently-archived comment (18 December 2020 under "Criticism") said, why would a person procure a position of privilege for themselves and then use this position to exploit other people? It simply beggars belief.

So while it's perfectly fine if the right decisions have now been arrived at through overly-cautiousness or laziness (as long as they don't get changed once more attention is paid), the tone of these edits seems to be lambasting the reader for his or her cowardice in letting psychiatry continue to develop the way that it has been - and this kind of open criticism of psychiatry simply does not belong on Wikipedia or anywhere. 176.46.113.248 (talk) 09:27, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I directly support Megaman en m's logic that the question of consent is so important to psychiatry that on balance it is best given little mention. By way of allegory, one perhaps wouldn't necessarily include casualty numbers of Uyhgurs when describing Chino-Uyhgur relations because while such information may be at times accurate, objective, salient and what the typical reader would consider of great interest, the CCP has been adamant that it considers Uyghur lives important. With regards to psychiatry, I think Markworthen summed it up perfectly in the comment to the initial rollback: consent is an unnecessary consideration. 176.46.113.248 (talk) 11:30, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

That's nice 176.46.113.248. *Anyway*, I feel like making an edit now I've started. Let's get some sources together and decide what to add.

@Megaman en m: Here is a reasonable source talking about legislation.^[1] From this:

• In all jurisdictions, a patient may be detained if they have a mental disorder (or illness) that significantly impairs judgement.^[1]

• See table 2 of ^[1] all five jurisdictions allow for involuntary treatment while detained without judicial oversight for a period of time.

I agree the paragraph might be a little long, there is a trade off between clarity and length as ever. How about:

In many countries, for some psychiatric diagnoses patients can be detained without consent and treated involuntarily. Such detention is governed by Mental health law and there are judicial appeal processes.^[1]

Addressing WP:DUE for this sentence: i) a whole lot of psychiatry is completely consensual - for example you are depressed so get an antidepresseant, ii) some of it is in the middle, where a psychiatrist might use status to influence your decisions, or the threat of coercion or disclosing information. Eating disorders or anger issues are an example. iii) there is a function within psychiatry - rather than the courts (see ^[1]) - of detaining people who are behaving in certain ways that society doesn't like (i.e. a mental health diagnoses). This is more like a function of the state (like the police, courts or prison) than a medical function and this is acknowledged insofar as there is Mental health law, there are mental health court hearings and there are lawyers would specialize in interacting with these tribunals. ^[2].

This function is mostly unique to psychiatry and does not exist within other branches of medicine in the same way, and is different enough that it is quite noteworthy.Talpedia (talk) 23:58, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

I only have one problem with that suggested paragraph, which is that the source only looks at five countries (all of which are English-speaking!). From just that, you can't say "many countries...". I guess I'd just remove the "many countries" bit entirely; I'd either do that or I'd find a source with more representation. Other than that, I have no objections so far.--Megaman en m (talk) 00:08, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm sort of doubtful about any source that addresses the legislation for the entire world! Shall I go for "some countries" instead. I remember finding a similar source the looked at most of the EU, but we are still 170 countries short! Shall I go for "In some countries" instead or I could list the 5? Talpedia (talk) 00:17, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I guess "some countries" is an improvement, if a vague one. Listing all five individually would be overkill for inclusion in the lead. Also, I didn't check, but I presume this information is/will be mentioned in the body as well?--Megaman en m (talk) 00:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I hadn't really thought that far ahead. Involuntary commitment covers this topic in more depth and is linked to from that sentence, but I could build a summary paragraph from that and include it in the body. Talpedia (talk) 00:34, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Alright, I'd write the body's paragraph first and then summarize that in the lead.--Megaman en m (talk) 00:57, 29 November 2021 (UTC):

Cool. Going to go bed now, but will probably write this next time I have a wikipedia session. Talpedia (talk) 01:09, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I've removed the below which followed a paragraph on involuntary treatment. It may be the case that this information belongs elsewhere in the article. FiachraByrne (talk) 15:25, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Mental health issues such as mood disorders and schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders were the most common principle diagnoses for Medicaid non-elderly super-utilizers in the United States in 2012.^[1]

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)

@91.129.101.175 Seeing as no-one else has weighed in on this yet, I'll take a stab. Because the goal of involuntary treatment is to establish within a person health that is ongoing but is not actually of the person's own volition (and so can have no relation to the person's virtue per sé), it may be important to take special care to pre-empt any inferences that the unsophisticated reader is wont to draw between this and Satanism ("attempting to summon the Devil"):

It almost goes without saying that even if, by coincidence, modern psychiatric illnesses correlate with historical negative Jewish stereotypes - sociopathy with being selfish, anxiety disorder with being neurotic, schizophrenia with putting one's faith in myths, etc. - the Bible is not factual and so is to be disregarded: the allusions to it are meaningless. Mental illnesses may not have any objective criteria and there may not be any empirical proof that the mind outright exists *per sé* but psychiatry is nevertheless a real and legitimate science.

While the objective of treatment is to make a patient less neurotic and less fraught with delusions, without suffering from side effects of the therapeutics - with the hope that the person may be assistive in turn of how such a state of ongoing health may be achieved by others - involuntarily producing in a societal outcast such a charismatic, obsequious, physically-supreme "symbol" is a far cry from ritual sacrifice as psychiatrists are good people - who are simply following what the science dictates.

Simply put, psychiatry works. Yes, Buddhism may have recorded the world's happiest people. However, it is not practical to simply let Buddhist philosophy guide how society treats aberrant behavior or for how people with unsettled minds may gain control. For one thing, Buddhism precludes the ingestion of mind-altering substances (never mind their forcible administration), and such a level of tolerance for idiosyncratic behavior would likely leave the law alone to be responsible for deciding who may or may not grace our streets.

Whatever religion it is one considers (including a worship for ICCPR Articles 18 & 19, "everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, "no one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to ... adopt a ... belief of his choice" and so on), the church must be kept separate from the state and academia's scientific evidence has consistently shown that psychiatry - psychoactive chemicals, electroshock and psychosurgery along with therapy sessions and/or the restriction of freedoms - is effective.

Perhaps we could add a note somewhere like this:

The goal of psychiatric medicine, and involuntary medicine in particular, is to address the symptoms of mental illness such as to provide a subject with persistent and stable health. However, while force may be involved (and at such times death may even occur), this should not be considered a blood ritual, to which it is distinct. 46.131.38.206 (talk) 08:47, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

@176.46.113.248: is proposing addition of this footnote to the article:

The goal of psychiatric medicine, and involuntary medicine in particular, is to address the symptoms of mental illness such as to provide a subject with persistent and stable health. However, while force may be involved (and at such times death may even occur), this should not be considered a blood ritual, to which it is distinct.

This has been reverted by two editors now in what is an edit war, but one that clearly shows there is opposition to the addition, and I also do not see the relevance of this footnote. 176 you argue that consensus has been established from a talk page discussion - in the most recent archive there is only a single entry of "blood ritual" here. Just to be clear, even though no-one challenged the proposed addition at the time this does not establish consensus as it has not been in the article before as far as I can see. You have tried adding it now, which is a reasonable WP:BOLD move, but it appears consensus is against it. If you want to continue to propose it, now is the time for discussion not further reversion. |→ Spaully ^~talk~  09:17, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

You actually sound a little like @Talpedia, who I think is on watch for a 3RR violation. It's always so wild when things like that happen, haha!

Okay great, my bad, I thought when more than one user agrees on something and then at that point everyone else is happy letting the discussion close, that's consensus. Actually, that is consensus, but don't worry you're and you're family's heads about that right now:

I can see you may not like the wording of the solution that Wikipedians arrived at to address the points that were initially raised in that recent Talk topic you linked to (the one that has the exact wording of the edit in question or, as you naughtily phrased it, "the only one [you] can find", haha!)

In fact, given it was just archived days ago and you suddenly do have strong opinions on it and aren't lying, what do you say to you/Talpedia following Wikipedia's actual protocols and returning it here? Just if you think it's not settled and we're now talking about following Wikipedia's protocols and not having one's valuable accounts banned, I mean (obviously).

I'd love to then hear your responses to the points that discussion raised!

(P.S. Neither WP:BOLD or whether or not something that has actively subjected to discussion "wasn't in the article before" applies but you're doing really well! Keep going, just start being a bit more accurate. Even if you're new, please don't do any more page edits till you've made up your mind about whether it's a settled discussion or not though... Oops!) 176.46.113.248 (talk) 10:58, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

An edit was proposed by an IP user in the talk page, no-one replied, so you added it to the article. This was then reverted (by two different editors), indicating that other editors do not agree with you. At that stage, the onus is on you to discuss your proposed addition on the talk page. You can read an outline of this standard process at WP:BRD. Continuing to add it to the page is edit warring and as you say can lead to editing bans as it is considered disruptive.

There is nothing stopping you from reinstating an archived discussion, but having read through it I would suggest that using a more concise style focussing on specific changes, and being less patronising, is more likely to get a good response. |→ Spaully ^~talk~  12:07, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Just wanted to add my 2 cents that this footnote is bizarre and appears to be related to a WP:POLEMIC-style opinion about psychiatry, which is not supported by either sources or scholarly consensus. It thus has no place on Wikipedia. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:31, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Hey, Spaully, would you mind rephrasing the existing discussion under this topic section now so we can archive the second one as well? Use nice language though if you want a response this time; the earlier comments came off as a bit Assume Good Faith.

Also, very bizarre and great and frankly concerning Shibbolethink, shall we remind you that this talk page is NOT a place to attack psychiatry? You're comment is well on its way to being deleted. More importantly, your suggestion that psychiatry and blood rituals are somehow related is, not to mince words, insane (Personal attack removed). 176.46.113.248 (talk) 17:47, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Uhhhh, what. I was responding to you suggesting we mention blood rituals. I said: this footnote is bizarre and appears to be related to a WP:POLEMIC-style opinion about psychiatry, which is not supported by either sources or scholarly consensus. As a medical professional myself, I have no interest in "attacking psychiatry" I don't think we should mention blood rituals at all, since they are entirely unrelated to this topic and thus WP:UNDUE. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:55, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, absolutely what. Well done, wut Shibbolethink. Now stop playing suicide word games and fix your bad mistakes now. You argued, insanely, that there's some kind of confusion amongst scholars about whether there is a difference between (a) involuntary invasive psychiatric interventions based on subjectively-determined criteria performed by highly-credentialed officials for the interests of the community and (b) involuntary invasive non-psychiatric interventions based on subjectively-determined criteria performed by highly-credentialed officials for the interests of the community. There is no such confusion, except in your own mind: academic scholars are entirely in agreement that psychiatry and blood rituals are unrelated.

That this has to be stated at all is mind-boggling. I will refer you to the banner of this talk page one last time. This talk page is not a place for criticizing psychiatry.

...In fact, your ridiculous suggestion that medical professionals have a biased opinion with regards to psychiatry, and so an encyclopedia article on the topic shouldn't necessarily rely almost exclusively on them as sources, crosses the line. Your comment is struck.

You are trolling and you have as many medical qualifications as any COVID-19, anti-pschiatry skeptic.

176.46.113.248 (talk) 20:00, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

The archives should be a record of discussion as it occurred, please do not reformat or move things around in a way that does not reflect what happened. MrOllie (talk) 19:59, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

That's a nice idea for a Wikipedia policy! Don't unarchive any automatically archived discussions! Unfortunately though you've just broken the existing policy and are banned :( 176.46.113.248 (talk) 20:08, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Nobody has been banned (yet?), although the person who posted the above message is blocked for a month and may not edit this or any other page on Wikipedia. This administrator will protect this talk page, if necessary, to enforce the block. —C.Fred (talk) 11:50, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

There's a Wikipedia user (Talpedia-Spaully-MrOllie-Shibbolethink-Acterion) that's having some fun with this Wikipedia entry as described; I'm remiss to get in the way of that fun but I also wonder if it's ultimately worth sacrificing page quality for - so we'd be interested in gathering some more opinions.

With regards to the original topic, I naturally have no horse in the race myself, so I'm inclined to go with the consensus that was reached. 176.46.113.248 (talk) 20:45, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

I like that we've now got a consensus going on the "Psychiatry as a religion" discussion but honing in on one point mentioned there, namely: how psychiatric inpatients are raped at an extremely high incidence - and if I recall correctly there was also a UK study where a large percentage of psychiatrists admitted to raping patients explicitly for the patients' perceived benefit. By rape, I'm specifically referring to genital rape as opposed to brain rape (i.e. invasively stimulating the nerves higher up in the nerve pathway, or attempting to invasively exert coercion over another person's brain generally), which the UK study I believe did not bother enquiring about.

While I know we're dodging a bullet by avoiding including it in the article, is there a way to make the omission less striking? We haven't gone into conservateeship here in the Criticism section either but maybe we can give it a mention instead without explicitly going into the Thirteenth Amendment implications.

Again, I'm not saying we upset the careful line we're treading but if we want to keep not mentioning (a) gender dysphoria, gender affirming care, detrans & the separation of children from anti-trans parents, (b) (progressively increasing) rates of suicide amongst those being subjected to modern psychiatric treatments, (c) schools which taze special needs students, (d) failures of drug studies to be "conducted on the same timeframe to which they are recommended to be prescribed" (i.e. lack of follow-up studies) and various other "hallmarks of pseudoscience" ("failure to provide controls using spurious reasoning," "gathering results that are inherently subjective but are in this case subjective explicitly on the part of the person who is supposed to be impartially running the study"), (e) the insane and selfish geopolitical critiques about psychiatry as being a parallel hegemonic one-world government that gave the Marxist East a foothold in each country in the otherwise democratic West which was then leveraged as "wokeness" to bring the West to the heel in the space of a few short years, (f) the so-called "addictive" nature of pharmaceuticals and they're "common failure" to produce any result other than symptoms of mental disease (leading to that old fallacy that mental illness doesn't actually have a biological root in hormone imbalances), (g) the failure of psychiatry after many decades and billions of dollars invested to "find any objective markers of most mental diseases whatsoever" (i.e. diagnoses continuing to be unfalsifiable by those subjected to them despite, as the article rightly points out, psychiatry trying very hard to make their diagnoses falsifiable - even if they haven't necessarily made any visible progress in the last half-century or whatever), (h) the incompatibility of psychiatry with almost every other major religion (and involuntary psychiatry especially), (i) the (probably coincidental) ideological similarities and common motifs shared between modern psychiatry and what a Jew would explicitly describe as Satanism, (j) involuntary deaths frequently caused by forced psychiatric therapies and professional liability insurance and laws protecting from recourse against it amounting to a "license to kill," (k) the difficulty of a person generally to seek legal recourse once they have been targeted by it, getting put on treatment before an appeal, having one's body controlled by the people one is suing, indefinite limits on incarceration, bla bla, (l) discrimination by psychiatry on racial, gender, age but, most particularly, class grounds, (m) the use of "This person is encouraging others not to take their meds!" as a dog-whistle and quirky silencing tactic illegalizing so-called legitimate concerns raised about psychiatry, especially on harms experienced by people taking their meds, (etc.) to name a few, including in the Criticism article itself, we should probably throw a bone to the critics, just making sure it's not a big one IMO.

In short, I don't think we're doing a good enough job drawing away from the framing of psychiatry in constitutional, human rights, political, criminal, legal, religious or (conventional) health grounds, and so my thought is if we're going to include the Criticism section at all we throw in another sentence or two that keeps the same tone but really paints one or two standard objections in the proper light.176.46.113.248 (talk) 07:57, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

By the by, instead of "Lobotomies haven't been performed since the 1970s." we should specify "surgical lobotomies" in case someone tries to be clever and point out that involuntary inpatients are given chemical lobotomies almost without exception, now that they have replaced surgical lobotomies.176.46.113.248 (talk)

Also, I can see why we've got it in the article that there's a specific subset of psychiatrists that are disgraced for being anti-medical ethics, but even mentioning that might encourage people to examine the relationship between psychiatrists generally and medical ethics in pursuit of a comparison. "See glossary of psychiatry" in the lede is a bit overtly cult-like. On the other hand, can I just say I love the "The success of the drug... proved mental illness has a biochemical basis" line. Whoever didn't want that statement included must have a lead deficiency, haha! Great article overall.176.46.113.248 (talk)— 176.46.113.248 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

FWIW, I agree with each one of the above points. For the Wikipedia uneducated (see discussion in other talk page sections), this is now what is known as a consensus. 91.129.100.0 (talk) 05:54, 24 August 2022 (UTC)— 91.129.100.0 (talk) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

Comment struck: obvious block evasion. —C.Fred (talk) 11:52, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

FYI, Anonymous users who have made few other edits carry very little weight in determining consensus. And, as a side note, posting with multiple IP addresses to feign a consensus is considered Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry and will often get an IP address permanently blocked. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 11:41, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the discussion of scientologists in anti-psychiatry can often be a little distracting. They do appear to have been *historically* relevant to the movement. See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz#Relationship_to_Citizens_Commission_on_Human_Rights, but I guess history isn't so relevant in this article. Also I don't know how much work the Citizens Commission on Human Rights does... Talpedia (talk) 08:39, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

too influenced by ideas from medicine causing it to misunderstand the nature of mental distress

@Talpedia It is a speciality of medicine, you meant by other specialities? Most critics I've read are the opposite: that it lacks what all other specialities of medicine have: diagnoses are subjective, biochemical explications for mental disorders lacks replicability and that diagnosis criterias are mostly empirical and arbitrary, in short that is not EBM; (or that it is justification for social control). I think this goes against most critics (I also did not find something similar from my glance at your cite but you may have reformulate).

its use of drugs is in part due to lobbying by drug companies resulting in distortion of research

Your quote from the source does not says that it distorts research.Hploter (talk) 21:38, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Your quote from the source does not says this may well be a bad summary. I'm open to a suggestion of better wording - and would look into making one now, but am doing other things. In general this sort of distortion works by changing *what* is researched rather than the outcomes, so for example people might be more inclined to look for drug based interventions than social ones. To be clear, I have not seen good evidence that proves or disproves this, rather the source asserts that people make these criticisms.

lacks what all other specialities of medicine have my thoughts on this are it *wants* well-defined diagnoses with biological causes that can be addressed with general interventions. It doesn't necessarily want complicated psychological models that are difficult to test with multiple specific interventions. In trying to fit its interventions into this framing it at time fails (e.g. misdiagnoses, people moving between diagnoses, receiving multiple medications. But... I think the source sort of says "ignores psychological and social explanations bececause they don't find into the model". Basically if it didn't pretend that it had diagnosis and treatments all the time it might have better interventions.

BTW the source is open access so would could look at the some context for the quotes for different summaries and better wording. Also I found this paper as a reasonable good secondary source summarizing critiques from psychiatrists, but there may well be better sources out there: we should uses WP:BESTSOURCES. The author is potentially a bit biased being critical of some psychiatric ideas herself, but that doesn't necessarily undermine the scholarly standard. There are also potential WP:DUE arguments if we found some other sources that had different focuses

Talpedia (talk) 22:18, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

The dominant view, even among its critics, is that the nature of psychiatric disorders is in fine biochemical (see Type physicalism), and that we can study them with neurology and neuropsychiatry (medicine). They're misunderstood, because of the difficulty and lack of medical study, not because of its influence. Hploter (talk) 11:26, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that above is really in conflict with a physicalist viewpoint. Critics viewpoint would be that speech influences "thought" which in turns influences the biochemical function of the brain. The assertion would be that the best way to understand the brain's function might be through social and psychological constructs (and potentially those of the patient) rather than neurological ones. The analogy would be between particle physics and thermodynamics. No physicist really disagrees with partical physics, and yet they might still argue that the concept of temperature and thermometers are useful tools.

I don't really disagree that massive advances in Neusopsychology could be useful for treating a range of psychiatric and psychological disorders. But I don't think that's at odds with the idea that the underlying assumptions and practices of medicine are at times an ill-fit for addressing people's thoughts and behaviours.

Of course, here we are only saying that some notable people have made these criticisms and that it is WP:DUE. I might dig up some sources describing this sort of thought a little later but for now both Anti-psychiatry and Controversies about psychiatry will cover some of it. Talpedia (talk) 12:55, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

The assertion would be that the best way to understand the brain's function might be through social and psychological constructs (and potentially those of the patient) rather than neurological ones

That's better said. A reductionist / medical approach ignores its external causes, so social environnement approach is needed. But Psychiatry already do that so I think it is a minor view and doesn't belong at first or even in a summary. Hploter (talk) 15:29, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

But Psychiatry already do that I agree that there has been some acceptance of psychosocial interventions within psychiatry, especially with the rise of multidisciplinary teams. I still suspect more psychologists would view psychiatry as "overly biomedical" and for certain diagnoses (e.g. psychosis) the diagnosis is still entirely biomedical (though psychology doesn't really have any tested interventions...). Perhaps some of this critique is out of date. I know that psychiatry differs between countries in terms of how much psychology gets pulled into psychiatry.

I've added some material that discusses how psychiatry has embraced anti-reductionism itself from a paper. Talpedia (talk) 18:19, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

It has been argued that psychiatry confuses disorders of the mind with disorders of the brain that can be treated with drugs

Double argues that most critical psychiatry is anti-reductionist

We should put valid criticism instead of dualist pseudo-scientific view that one guy said.

The section should be overhauled. IMO we should summarise the controversies article (which is good content IMO) with the structure of this draft (french): https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion:Psychiatrie#Critiques_2 and some scholars.

(a critic section was once removed, maybe this was good content and we should look at the archive) Hploter (talk) 08:49, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

pseudo-scientific I mean... it's a contextualised quote from the british journal of psychiatry that is anti-critical-psychiatry and adds your argument that psychiatry has already internalised the critiques of critical psychiatry. We are getting a little niche here... so I wouldn't necessarily expect systematic reviews. I don't think it's pseudo-scientific or dualist, arguing that social constructs exists is not so say that mind exists separately from the brain. Do you like the second sentence, and do you think we should include response to the critiques of psychiatry?

I mean everything always needs "an overhaul". The french version looks like a very short version of the longer controversies article. I have no issues with starting to expand this section out here in a similar way... but also don't see much wrong with the summary as it stands with a link to the full article. Talpedia (talk) 09:19, 2 August 2022 (UTC)

It's in the paper which is an argument for WP:DUE. But I guess would agree that there should be additionally information on psychiatry's adoption of psychosocial models along with this content.

If we could find other sources that talk about controversy surrounding psychiatry (and perhaps give defences) it might be easier to assess WP:DUE... Talpedia (talk) 16:40, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

for certain diagnoses (e.g. psychosis) the diagnosis is still entirely biomedical

It's not, it's behaviour assement. Hploter (talk) 17:18, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Sure the diagnosis is behavioural but the hypothetical theoretical causes are mostly biological as are the treatment modalities. Talpedia (talk) 17:33, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

Throwing in some other sources. This looks interestin for contextualization / defence from within psychiatry (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7684769/)

The collection of essays "Philosophical issues in psychiatry" probably lets us go deep into these issues.

Here is a course offered by the royal college of psychiatry (uk's professional body for psychiatrists) teaching a course by one of the author of the paper on the same topic. Talpedia (talk) 17:08, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

doesn't belong at first I've reordered the clauses in the sentence so that it appears last. I have no particular preferene for the order. My take is that if it's in a section on controversies and the end of the article and people are still arguing it at the moment then it probably belongs - but I've added contextualization to anti-reductionist critiques to the section. Talpedia (talk) 18:34, 1 August 2022 (UTC)