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Keeping Up Aperients's avatar

As a GP registrar interacting with the those who have brushed up against the mental health system and accrued multiple diagnoses like wartime medals, with overlapping symptom profiles and a shopping list of drugs to ‘treat’ them, the case study of the girl in this essay is very familiar. I once had a patient say to me ‘I take the venlafaxine for my Borderline Personality, but I need something for my Depression’. I didn’t know where to start. My theory is that the language of mental health is so dependent on diagnosis that it has become an obsession for clinicians and then consequently becomes an obsession for patients. But it is wholly inadequate for meeting the needs of those people who need help the most.

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Niall McLaren's avatar

I have long said that the game of handing labels to people just replaces any understanding of what is happening to them. It is a variant of the nominal fallacy: "Here's your label, that's all you need to know." In fact, that's all the psychiatrist knows as they don't have a model of mental disorder.

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Jason Aull's avatar

I sent a link of this page to my sister in law. She has a son with severe “autism”.

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Niall McLaren's avatar

We hope the child has "autism" and not the real thing. It is a devastating condition.

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Pest and Mortar II's avatar

Out-right fraud actually! Categorically it is placed with all other "mental health" designations! See Dr. Peter Breggin, Robert Whitaker, Dr. Fred Baughman, Dr. Richard Sail, et al. The science is rubbish, and there is something more which is tantamount to the largest scandal ever evinced!

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