Monday, June 22, 2009

"Psychiatric diagnoses are less reliable than star sign "

"Psychiatric diagnoses are less reliable than star signs" The psychologist Richard Bentall says that psychiatrists dish out drugs but ignore the value of good relationships
Professor Richard Bentall

It is a state of affairs that makes Richard Bentall furious. In 2004, Bentall, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Bangor, wrote Madness Explained, in which he argued that hearing voices, hallucinations and other symptoms of “severe” mental illness are just exaggerations of quirks experienced by us all. That won him the British Psychological Book Of The Year award. Now, in Doctoring The Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail, he criticises mental health services, and psychiatry in particular.

Doctoring the Mind paints a stark picture of a mental health system riddled with corruption and incompetence, in which shrinks live it up on pharmaceutical company cash while patients are disrespected, dehumanised and drugged to the eyeballs. Like the legendary “anti-psychiatrist” R.D. Laing before him, Bentall believes that people with mental health problems need understanding, support and respect. Unlike Laing, he offers evidence to back his claims, declaring himself a “rational anti-psychiatrist”.

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