good doc i am watching at the moment

[julieannboo]

[jr1985]

Hmm, interesting...

I can believe that psychiatrists are motivated by the pharmaceutical companies to prescribe their drugs, despite side effects, withdrawal and not really knowing why they work (or if they work at all). But I disagree that psychiatrists make up mental illnesses.

The brain is an organ and can malfunction like every other organ in the body. The mind, our perception of reality, emotions, etc are all products of the brain, so it stands to reason that some kind of brain malfunction would disrupt these processes.

To say that bipolar patients are just sometimes happy and sometimes sad, or that people with social anxiety are just shy, grossly trivialises the patients suffering. Most people do not start going on massive spending sprees while also believing theyre God sent to earth to save mankind. Most people wouldn't rather kill themselves than give an oral presentation in front of their class. The difference between normal and mentally ill is that the illness must cause SIGNIFICANT IMPAIRMENT.

However, the problems arise because the brain is so complicated and our tools for studying it are limited, so there are no real objective tests (blood tests, brain scans) for diagnosing mental illness. So you have to rely on the subjective interpretation of the patients subjective experience of their symptoms, which is obviously unreliable. Hence, there are probably a lot of misdiagnoses.

[julieannboo]

obviously it is very biased against anti depressants but it opened my eyes alot.