I meant to post a link to this terrific interview on Furious Seasons last week, but I forgot. I certainly hope that anyone reading here is also reading him as he covers some of the troubling issues in mental health treatment today. He is a strong and important voice.
The interview, with Chrisotpher Lane, who has written a book about the medicalization shyness, touches on some of these difficult issues. A tidbit from the interview --
Well, let’s just say I’m far more concerned about psychiatry now than I was going into this project. After all, I reviewed literally hundreds of the psychiatrists’ letters and memos. I know every small and major reform they pushed for, including highly confidential recommendations that of course were never made public, but that had serious consequences behind the scenes. And much of what they did was very questionable.
Some of them pushed for their own disorders to get adopted. Some wanted to promote their friends or thwart their enemies, and openly joked about that. Some of their sample sizes were embarrassingly low—-in one case involving just one person the advocate of the disorder had himself treated! That’s no basis for saying a disorder belongs in the DSM-—especially not if you’re claiming the manual is highly scientific. Even one of the main players has since gone public, saying much of their research was “really a hodgepodge—scattered, inconsistent, ambiguous.” That tells you something, but it’s honestly not even the half of it.
It is very interesting to me that he is a professor of English. Interesting but not surprising as there is a timidity within the field about critiquing something so basic as the DSM -- fears about being tagged as a renegade or unsound and damaging a career in the process. Most of the folks I know and respect in the field talk about the very issues he raises but none of us has undertaken writing about it.
