Today, if your behavior, thoughts, or feelings begin to concern you or a family member, for a fee many doctors will translate your experiences into mental illness terminology. Synonyms for mental illness, are mental disease, mental sickness, mental disorder, and psychopathology. These terms, as metaphors for experiences someone doesn’t like, have been with us for centuries. When used in this way, it can communicate something about…
In recent years, we have been hearing about several unsettling stories involving the pharmaceutical industry, one involving suicide under pressure. Another, about the exorbitant cost of life saving EpiPens. And another, about the deadly selling of addictive pain killers. Suicide Under Pressure On August 11, 2016, the New York Times carried a story titled “Driven to Suicide by an ‘Inhuman and Unnatural’ Pressure to Sell.”…
Welcome to “From Insults to Respect.” Regular readers know that I have some serious objections to how mental health service providers treat those seeking their services. As things stand now, unless you can afford to completely pay for such services without any insurance coverage, to access services you are very likely to be required to be labelled as having a mental disorder. Now, many mental…
Recently I provided a post titled, “Are Mental Illnesses Really Illnesses? And Why do People Care?” There are a lot of people out there who were very supportive of the post, but at the same time, some were angry that I would even raise the question. One of the most angry person mentioned that the proof that mental illnesses are real illnesses was that the…
Welcome back to From Insults to Respect. For those of us who seek to be respected members of our community, when we declare our judgments on the different issues of the day, we have a great opportunity to shine. Today, I want to present a model that just might help you to explain why you have reached your opinion in a manner that could help…
Today, I want to consider if the American Psychological Association’s participation in the mental disorder labelling practices promoted by the the American Psychiatric Association is due to something other than science and promoting human welfare? The American Psychological Association’s Emphasis on Science and Human Welfare First of all, I should note that I am a member of the American Psychological Association, and have been so…
Last year at the American Psychological Association Convention, I presented a paper on a proposal for an alternative to the current psychiatric diagnosis system, which can be read HERE. It provoked supportive comments, suggestions for making some improvements, and an invitation to write up my approach for an article in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. Now I have been invited to present an update to…
Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today’s topic, addiction. When we see we have become addicted to something and find we are having difficulty breaking the habit, we may begin to lose some self respect. And sometimes our actions related to our addictions lead to others losing respect for us. So, it makes sense that we spend a little time giving this topic some thought….
In 1961 psychiatrist Thomas Szasz published an article in the American Psychologist titled, “The Myth of Mental Illness.” There he proposed that the set of experiences, behaviors, and thoughts viewed as “mental illness” are more aptly construed as “problems in living.” The following year, Dr Szasz published a best selling book by the same name. Some loved it while others writhed in anger. One reviewer, for example,…
Between 1931 and 1933, Albert Einstein engaged Sigmund Freud in a discussion that addressed the question, “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?” Their exchange was subsequently published as a pamphlet that is available for free on line by clicking HERE. In today’s From Insults to Respect post, we’ll take a look at the main points that both men made back then,…
