Additional, abridged, comments to me from Paula Caplan, PhD, in response to this post:
"I am always glad when I hear that ANYTHING has been helpful to someone who is suffering and that as Whitaker's scrupulous review of the research has shown, every drug marketed as psychiatric helps some people sometime at least for awhile and maybe for along time but harms vastly more people. For you to keep saying how helpful these drugs are is to commit a major act of omission by neglecting to point out that they are harmful vastly more often. It's sort of like saying it's safe to drive that car that was shown sometimes to explode, on the grounds that sometimes it doesn't.
And the other major point I make ... is that almost never does any professional truly disclose fully (please see the point I [made] previously about the two criteria that need to be met and that almost never are) everything thatis known about the potential benefits AND documented kinds of harm for a drug or electroshock or other approaches that carry risks, and therefore -- and this you will see as crucial to your concern about coercion and control -- the person does not in fact even have the chance to give truly informed consent.
ANY PROFESSIONAL EVER recommending anything to help reduce a person's suffering has the moral, ethical, and legal obligation to meet two criteria, and almostno one ever meets them. They are: (1) When recommending approach or treatment ordrug X, to tell the person, "I am going to tell you everything I have been able to learn about both the potential benefits and potential kinds of harmfrom X, but if it is a drug, in all honesty, I have to inform you that the drugcompanies have been proven repeatedly to produce falsely positive information about it and to conceal even very serious harms about it, so I cannot claim that I learned everything that could be known about it, and
(2) Although I am recommending X, I am now going to tell you about the vast range of other kindsof things that have been helpful to people who are going through what you are going through.
(And that MUST include NOT just drugs and therapy but also the many nonpathologizing approaches that entail little or no risk, some -- but not all -- of which you can find at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL51E99E866B9D735E (this was from a conference I organized for veterans, but these approaches are goodfor anyone)."
This comment was sent to me by Steven Lamm, MD, DTPH. I am publishing it here with his persmission.
"I think that you should make the distinction between harm from making a diagnosis and harm from treating a diagnosis. There is often a great benefit to a patient to receive a diagnosis because that conveys to the patient that their personal condition which unknown to them and associated with great anxiety is, after receiving a diagnosis, associated with less anxiety because the diagnosis conveys to them that what they are suffering from is known and knowable and therefore potentially treatable or relievable. That is a benefit. Whether the course of treatment is itself beneficial is a secondary matter , which may or may not be beneficial."
Additional, abridged, comments to me from Paula Caplan, PhD, in response to this post:
"I am always glad when I hear that ANYTHING has been helpful to someone who is suffering and that as Whitaker's scrupulous review of the research has shown, every drug marketed as psychiatric helps some people sometime at least for awhile and maybe for along time but harms vastly more people. For you to keep saying how helpful these drugs are is to commit a major act of omission by neglecting to point out that they are harmful vastly more often. It's sort of like saying it's safe to drive that car that was shown sometimes to explode, on the grounds that sometimes it doesn't.
And the other major point I make ... is that almost never does any professional truly disclose fully (please see the point I [made] previously about the two criteria that need to be met and that almost never are) everything thatis known about the potential benefits AND documented kinds of harm for a drug or electroshock or other approaches that carry risks, and therefore -- and this you will see as crucial to your concern about coercion and control -- the person does not in fact even have the chance to give truly informed consent.
ANY PROFESSIONAL EVER recommending anything to help reduce a person's suffering has the moral, ethical, and legal obligation to meet two criteria, and almostno one ever meets them. They are: (1) When recommending approach or treatment ordrug X, to tell the person, "I am going to tell you everything I have been able to learn about both the potential benefits and potential kinds of harmfrom X, but if it is a drug, in all honesty, I have to inform you that the drugcompanies have been proven repeatedly to produce falsely positive information about it and to conceal even very serious harms about it, so I cannot claim that I learned everything that could be known about it, and
(2) Although I am recommending X, I am now going to tell you about the vast range of other kindsof things that have been helpful to people who are going through what you are going through.
(And that MUST include NOT just drugs and therapy but also the many nonpathologizing approaches that entail little or no risk, some -- but not all -- of which you can find at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL51E99E866B9D735E (this was from a conference I organized for veterans, but these approaches are goodfor anyone)."
This comment was sent to me by Steven Lamm, MD, DTPH. I am publishing it here with his persmission.
"I think that you should make the distinction between harm from making a diagnosis and harm from treating a diagnosis. There is often a great benefit to a patient to receive a diagnosis because that conveys to the patient that their personal condition which unknown to them and associated with great anxiety is, after receiving a diagnosis, associated with less anxiety because the diagnosis conveys to them that what they are suffering from is known and knowable and therefore potentially treatable or relievable. That is a benefit. Whether the course of treatment is itself beneficial is a secondary matter , which may or may not be beneficial."
Steve Lamm, MD DTPH
Pediatrician, epidemiologist
non-psychotherapist