The “mental illness” paradigm—an insidious cancer: I find it interesting to turn the “medical model” language of “mental illness” back onto itself and consider this entire “mental illness” paradigm as acting like an insidious cancer (the difference in my use of the term “cancer” here being that I’m readily acknowledging that this is just a metaphor). Cancer is essentially what occurs when a cell of an organism “forgets” its role as a member of a larger whole and turns against the organism, becoming consumed only with its own reproduction. Using this metaphor, we can say the “mental illness” paradigm fosters this turning one part of a whole against itself. We see this taking place interpersonally between members of our society as we develop ever increasing fear of those labelled “mentally ill,” and we see this taking place intrapersonally as we develop ever increasing fear and suspicion of our own “unusual” or “extreme” subjective experiences. We see signs of this cancer spreading throughout nearly every branch of contemporary Western society—our schools and education systems, our media, our government policies, our way of trying to make sense of ourselves and others’ experiences and behavior, and of course our health care systems. We also notice that this type of cancer thrives particularly well on a diet of greed, fear and ignorance—greed (enormous financial incentive to many in the pharmaceutical and mental health industries), fear (especially our fear of uncertainty, preferring an understanding that is clear although flawed to having to make some peace with mystery and the unknown), and ignorance (just think of the daily bombardment by massive amounts of misinformation coming at us from almost every angle).
James Goodman on 12 May 13In a bold and unprecedented move for any professional body, the UK Division of Clinical Psychology, a sub-division of the British Psychological Society, will issue a Position Statement tomorrow which calls for the end of the unevidenced biomedical model implied by psychiatric diagnosis. (Editor's note: MIA will link to statement here as soon as it is made available) The key message of the statement is: "The DCP is of the view that it is timely and appropriate to affirm publicly that the current classification system as outlined in DSM and ICD, in respect of the functional psychiatric diagnoses, has significant conceptual and empirical limitations. Consequently, there is a need for a paradigm shift in relation to the experiences that these diagnoses refer to, towards a conceptual system not based on a 'disease' model." In brief, the argument is that the so-called 'functional' diagnoses - schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, ADHD and so on - are not scientifically valid categories and are often damaging in practice. The statement argues that we already have alternatives, such as psychological formulation, and that there is a need to work in partnership with service users and professional groups, including psychiatrists, in order to develop these further. The full statement can be read here.
