President Trump’s pick to run federal mental health services has called for a bold reordering of priorities — shifting money away from education and support services and toward a more aggressive treatment of patients with severe psychiatric disorders.
The proposal has some psychiatrists — a generally liberal bunch — cheering despite their distrust of the Trump administration.
But it’s also sparked concern among other health professionals, who worry that the administration will put too much emphasis on medicating and hospitalizing patients, and remove supports that might help them integrate successfully into society.
About the Author Reprints
A nurse practitioner friend of mine told me The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is just a code so psychiatrists can get paid a lot of money.
Yes that’s a very big part of it too.
The problem is, once you define mental illness(es) (severe or otherwise) as “brain diseases” (despite a *complete* lack of scientific evidence demonstrating it, yes, that’ correct), the only “real” treatment becomes pharmacological (everything else is just “ameliorative”, helping people “come to terms” with their “condition”).
Oh yes, it also then makes it possible to use coercion on people “for their own good” (and out of “compassion”).
Tim Murphy says there’s no science in SAMHSA? How about in biopsychiatry? It’s all smoke and mirrors (and to say the federal government has been emphasizing peer recovery is like saying the DoD overprioritizes pacifism).
Yeah, that’s a laugh, eh? The psychiatric profession complaining about someone being unscientific? Where they are operating on scientific verities like “Mathematics Disorder” or “Intermittent Explosive Disorder” or “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” or “Disruptive Mood Regulation Disorder?” And they VOTE their disorders in and out of existence? It would be funny, except that people take them seriously and they have a lot of power to do serious damage!
Psychiatric hospitals are set to see a boost in population as they rival the prison system & Trump turns over their running to private for-profit corporations.
Let’s hope not.