Post by Jurriaan Plesman BA (Psych), P on Feb 22, 2013 13:15:20 GMT 10
Obstacles in the Reform of the Mental Health Industry
by
Jurriaan Plesman, BA (psych), Post Grad Dip Clin Nutr
by
Jurriaan Plesman, BA (psych), Post Grad Dip Clin Nutr
There are a number of powerful factors standing in the way of proper treatment for "mental illness".
1. The insistence by the professionals in the mental health industry to treat the illness mainly by medication and/or psychotherapy, despite the fact that studies have shown that such treatments leave about 60 percent of patients with "treatment resistant depression". Source and See also here
2. The very fact that drugs are used to treat mood disorders with such a low success rate indicate that 1) these professionals think the illness must have a physical or biological basis.
3. Yet, patients are referred to "psychologists" for "talk therapy" although the side effects of these drugs would render calm and logical thinking, necessary in talk therapy, rather counter-productive.
4. The general unquestioned assumption that "mental illness", as the definition implies, to be a illness of the mind and not of the body. This despite the fact that the "mind" remains an indefinable and obscure term in what is supposed to be a scientific approach to the treatment of "mental illness".
5. Seeing "the mind" as the cause of "mental illness" is not only confusing causes and consequences, but amounts to "Psychological Projection".
6. The mental health industry is dominated by "professionals" with either background in psychiatry or psychology that generally ignore the influence of nutrition on mental health. See Dr MR Werbach, Nutritional Influences on Mental Illness
7. It is unlikely that reform in the mental health industry will come from top-down, but rather from bottom-up, as the victims of mood disorders and the general population - its market - becomes more educated about the causes of mental illness and science becomes the criteria in this field of knowledge.
