You can say that about any powerful first world society. — Anaxagoras
Which is what I've done during my residency yet according to you, psychiatrists/psychologists are agents of oppression. — Anaxagoras
pray tell what system do you refer? — Anaxagoras
I’m talking about individuals. You’re talking about generalities. — Noah Te Stroete
You, me, Dr. Israelstam, and the head psychiatrist at UW. — Noah Te Stroete
Are you sure that was your first reference to it? According to the site's search function you were the first user. It's possible that it's malfunctioning or I am using it wrong.I cited Leo's mention of Nazism — boethius
Godwin's law is about the probability of a comparison to the Nazis. That is what you did above when you said there were parallels.No one here is calling anyone else a Nazi, so you're not even using Godwin's law correctly to begin with. — boethius
How so? — boethius
and that my view is effective democracy solves the problems of the dangers of behavioral sciences used to manipulate society; just as effective democracy solves the problem of the dangers of police and military institutions. — boethius
I'm not referring to a particular system. — boethius
The United States have used race to oppress people. Portugal more specifically King Leopold II used religion (in addition to race) to oppress. — Anaxagoras
That remains to be seen. I never experienced what effective democracy looks like, and considering that any political system that stems from a human is flawed so I look at your worldview with much skepticism. — Anaxagoras
The problem with your view is that you lack understanding to the nature of various psychological illnesses and conditions. Your so-called explanation does not address the generations of psychological/physiological disorders and diseases people of have contracted, nor does it explain how the removal of the systems of oppression will prevent future mental distress and the necessary removal of psychiatrists/psychologists. — Anaxagoras
How does effective democracy answer for ADHD, Down Syndrome, Anti-Social Personality Disorders (which research has indicated that some children have experienced behaviors associated with it)? — Anaxagoras
If community values are indeed reflected in an effective democratic system where no one is disenfranchised and everyone has equal say and political dialogue is open without parties with disproportional external or internal manipulative or obstructionist force, then I would expect mental health professionals to be in constructive dialogue with society to manage the issues outlined above without any fear of career repercussions of criticizing current policies as potentially unethical.
Yes, if mental health professionals are engaged in creating and/or enforcing state propaganda, directly or through all sorts of subtle ways their profession in organized, I place a tremendous amount of moral responsibility on them for their participation. — boethius
There was no incompatibility between the Nazi value system and the science of mental or physical health. — boethius
The German psychiatrists and psychologists had all sorts of "science based" theories on why some people needed to be put in concentration camps, developed the criteria for putting people in camps and, once in camps, criteria for distinguishing "good laborers" from the bad. They also experimented on and found chemicals to help people adapt to the conditions in the camp without challenging authority as much. — boethius
However, the justification of mental health interventions rests on the justification of the government policies, both in the specific systems that deploy mental health but also in the general good governing sense. — boethius
So I don't see what you're suggesting, that it was some voluntary shift of a system that "worked" (to avoid uncomfortable but ultimately unfounded criticism?) to the sad only alternative of increasing punishment, decreasing all forms of rehabilitation (which, again, is a false equivalence with psychiatry and mental health to begin with), and increasing the prison population as a whole? — boethius
Are the Chinese mental health professional that are helping to track and predict using integrated surveillance and AI systems to minimize disruptive Muslim behaviour doing good work (are they potential terrorists with the mental culturally wide health conditions the Chinese government claims, or legitimate political actors seeking self-determination, as most other nations did at some point)? — boethius
And you would say this of all first world nations? — boethius
I do not say an effective democracy is without flaws and humans would be perfect within it; I say democracy can solve the issue of dangerous state organs, as with the police and military. — boethius
This is not my view at all. I do not say removing oppression would remove mental illness, nor that removing psychiatrists/psychologists would remove oppression. Where do you get that from? — boethius
I also say that even in an oppressive system, successes could be pointed to of effective mental health treatment. — boethius
under an oppressive state, dissidents, mentally healthy people subject to intolerable conditions (i.e. the oppressed), and the mentally ill, are all grouped together and the state does not employ (or tolerate the employment of such people by others) people interested in distinguishing these categories. — boethius
However, the difference with a oppressive state is that an effective democracy would consider and debate all aspects of these issues and try to tease out ethical nuances as well as allow different opinions from both professionals and laypersons to be voiced as to the causes due to environment and social organization that better government policy can do something about. — boethius
The point is that the psychologists themselves, who you are suggesting are drunk with power to control society, arrived at the conclusion that forced psychiatric treatment was ineffective in resolving criminal propensities. — Hanover
Have the balls to apply to a doctoral program as I did, make sure you have the grades, the letters of recommendation, as well as the background to support your excellent character. Get in, complete the program as well as residency. Get on the APA board and change the game from within. Getting on an online philosophy forum does shit to change the system. I at least put in the work to try and make a difference in the system and yes there is plenty to debate and disagree with, but for certain I've seen an excellent group of board members who are listening to people in psychiatric distress and we are evolving better methods of producing a better way in treating the human condition. — Anaxagoras
We don't have to live in a Utopian state in order to allow psychologists (or anyone for that matter) to provide input into the democratic process. Psychologists are but one voice among many, and their power is checked by the multitude of other interests in society. — Hanover
Psychologists are but one voice among many, and their power is checked by the multitude of other interests in society. — Hanover
The point is that the psychologists themselves, who you are suggesting are drunk with power to control society. — Hanover
The findings of psychologists resulted in turning the system into one more retributive than rehabilitative and therefore reduced their own influence. — Hanover
Did I say anything remotely like this: that only in a utopian state can psychologists (or anyone have input) into the democratic process? — boethius
If one feels one's government is not sufficiently just and fair, then one should expect such a government to use the tools of psychology/psychiatry and mental health sphere to maintain the power relations, where ever possible. — boethius
What I say was that an oppressive government is going to have oppressive policy objectives and will train for and select for psychologists and psychiatrists that are effective at achieving those objectives, just as with the police and military (which doesn't imply "all police are bad" or "the science of criminology doesn't exist" or that the only solution is a "utopia, and until we have utopia we must get rid of police, soldiers or psychologists"). — boethius
My secondary point, tangentially related to the main issues of the debate, is that I view a direct link between the civil rights movement, dissident scientists challenging the status quo of psychiatry (it was certainly not the psychology/psychiatry community as a whole that suddenly abandoned pseudo-scientific theories justifying segregation and other social injustices), and a direct link with features of American society that are part of what I would call effective democracy (freedom of speech, independent press, etc.). — boethius
That view of a democracy is Utopian. There is not any such democracy nor could there be. It's an ideal you've posited. — Hanover
This complaint is not a universal objection, having no more to do with psychology than any other science, religion, political theory, or common mythology. Bad people use recognized authorities to persuade others to their view. There's no reason to target psychology in this attack over any other group of alleged experts or authorities. — Hanover
It seems like you think you can have an impact on societal affairs. If so, that sounds an awful lot like delusions of grandeur.
— Noah Te Stroete
Really? That's what you understood from my comments. — boethius
I'll concede the tautology. Oppressive governments will be oppressive. I just don't see how that translates into oppressive governments being more likely to use psychologists than they will plumbers to get what they want. Why are you targeting psychologists as the masterminds for the oppressive governments? If you think, for example, that today's America is manipulated by the government (and some surely do), that doesn't mean that this manipulation was orchestrated by a team of dark psychologists. What it means is that the people in power have manipulated people by the rhetoric and whatnot. They've not had their opposition institutionalized into psychiatric hospitals and declared crazy. — Hanover
For instance, using pharmacology to make bad working conditions more tolerable, — boethius
If you think, for example, that today's America is manipulated by the government (and some surely do), that doesn't mean that this manipulation was orchestrated by a team of dark psychologists. — Hanover
Most people don't need to ingest pills to feel better and cure or hide their 'mental illness'. They simply need to be accepted, respected, listened to, supported. If mental health practice was focused first of all on that, I'm sure it would be much much more effective. — leo
Sure, it used to be considered a psychiatric illness to be homosexual, but it was hardly psychologists who first vilified homosexuals. They were pretty much just parroting the ideology of the times. Today's psychologists seem to be much farther left than right, being a force for greater human rights. — Hanover
Why is mental illness in quotes? Does it not really exist? — Hanover
And what do you base your suggestion that the majority in the mental health field reject, disrespect, ignore, and refuse to support their patients? — Hanover, just before posting a pic of James Holmes as a trump card
And what do you base your suggestion that the majority in the mental health field reject, disrespect, ignore, and refuse to support their patients? — Hanover
All that you're saying is that corrupt people will use corrupt means to corrupt. That is true regardless of the means. It's irrelevant who or what they use to corrupt, whether that be physicians, psychologists, priests, police officers, judges, military personnel, or whoever. I get that psychologists, as recognized authorities, wield certain power, but so do all sorts of people. I just don't see that psychologists have that much power over policy in today's society or that they are a particular group that needs to singled out as oppressors. — Hanover
Thing is, what this demonstrates is that there is no essential difference between mental illness and social stigma. And when I say 'essential' I mean a difference that allows psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers or anyone else to reliably tell them apart. — unenlightened
Well, based on the context, the quotes are clearly meant to differentiate it from physical illnesses, and associated approaches to curing them. — csalisbury
think it's telling that your response to someone who is discussing how people with mental illness are shamed and stigmatized, making their problems worse - how the response is to post a highly inflammatory image meant to evoke the worst fears that people have about mental illness (fears shared by the mentally ill themselves.) — csalisbury
I was lost for a long time in the system, out of the system, back in the system - untiI Ifound a therapist who actually seemed to care, or think me as something other than an in-the-wild example of a DSM species. — csalisbury
As to why mental illness was in quotes, if you had cared to read my post seriously you would have seen the examples where being a slave wanting to escape and being homosexual were mental illnesses. Do these mental illnesses really exist to you, are they due to a defect in the brain of these individuals, or were they a fiction in the minds of the people who wanted their slaves to behave and who didn't like homosexuals? — leo
Thing is, what this demonstrates is that there is no essential difference between mental illness and social stigma.
Now suppose the profession were to actually bite this bullet. Then we could stop talking about illness, and simply talk about distress as a manifestation of broken relationship. — unenlightened
I can't buy into the argument, though, that Charles Manson was essentially fine and that I can't reliably tell him apart from the average man next door. — Hanover
What kind of social environments produce autism and catatonia?
Also, if there are anatomical and/or physiological causes of atypical behaviour, and there is not a widely accepted general definition of the noun phrase "mental illness", would it be more appropriate to refer to neuro-behavioural typicality and atypicality? — Galuchat
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