Talk:Psychiatry

Psychiatry has replaced religion in this secular age in order to describe or prescribe how people ought to behave to conform to societal norms. See DSM 5. In ye olden days one would gain 'confirmation' from the priest. Or else be accused of witchcraft. Since the demise of religion, psychiatrists have jumped into performing this role... and have claimed that medical 'science' justifies their position in promoting 'group think.' Of course herd mentality has played a pivotal role in promoting this pseudoscience. The benefits of sheeple mentality have become too powerful for the extreme individual to fight against and exist and function within the uniform groupthink mentality. As expressed by Orwell and others, rhetoric has become the dominant idealogy in order to prop up existing authoritarian structures. Discuss?--Dirk Steele (talk) 04:36, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * didnt you already make a forum about this?-- Mikal Harass  Follow 05:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

You said: "Psychiatry has replaced religion in this secular age in order to describe or prescribe how people ought to behave to conform to societal norms." This is not true. While there are multiple definitions of what is a mental illness (generally depending on your school of thought within psychiatry/psychology) they pretty much all include:

1) The behavior/thought pattern is very unusual

2) The behavior/thought pattern is unpleasant or disturbing for the person experiencing it

3) The behavior/thought pattern inhibits social functioning of the person experiencing it

4) The behavior/thought pattern has been present more-or-less continuously for an extended period of time* (as a note on this one, the DSM IV-TR criteria for pretty much all mental illnesses requires multiple months)

The condition you listed is effectively part of one criteria. The rest of your position amounts to ignorance of the subject at hand--Logic and Empricism (talk) 20:58, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Plus, you're going to reference a book that hasn't even been published yet? -- Seth Peck (talk) 21:07, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Anti-psychiatry talking points. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:09, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I think you do Orwell a disservice, Dirk, when you imply that he didn't understand rhetoric. Sadly, the rhetoric page here is woefully undeveloped.  I shall have to do something about that, I reckon.Dowdicus (talk) 03:23, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Decision to kill psychiatric patients was made by Nazi-era German psychiatrists and not Hitler
from https://annals-general-psychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1744-859X-6-8

"Hitler never gave the order to kill patients with mental illness. He only permitted it in a letter written in October 1939 and backdated to September 1, 1939 [2, 6]. Psychiatrists were therefore never ordered to facilitate the process or carry out the murder of mentally ill...they were empowered to do so. Activity by psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions thus constituted the connection between euthanasia and the larger scale annihilation of Jews and other "undesirables" such as homosexuals in what came to be known as the Holocaust."

"Hitler never gave the order to kill patients with mental illness. He only permitted it in a letter written in October 1939 and backdated to September 1, 1939 [2, 6]. Psychiatrists were therefore never ordered to facilitate the process or carry out the murder of mentally ill...they were empowered to do so. Activity by psychiatrists and psychiatric institutions thus constituted the connection between euthanasia and the larger scale annihilation of Jews and other "undesirables" such as homosexuals in what came to be known as the Holocaust." Neiltyson1fan (talk) 02:44, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

new additions don't help
| This series of edits has many problems that I'm gonna act on, but, since there's some promising stuff, here's my concerns:
 * 1) New headings don't fit the prior style of the article. They could be OK with help, if the new content survives intact.
 * 2) New paragraph starting "Modern psychiatry in the US" misinterprets reference. Ref says belief is associated with mental illness (not cause). New text implies that psychiatry causes increased diagnoses in religious. Not correct.
 * 3) Paragraph about Rosenhan experiment overstates the modern relevance. First, "unfalsiable" does not lead to "sticky". Second, ref doesn't say unfalsiable. It indicts the practice of psychiatry from nearly 50 years ago, a period in which psychiatric dx has progressed in ways not accounted for here. Third, modern book disputes large parts of the Rosenhan article, including evidence that large parts of it were falsified. Rosenhan article has credibility issues that require it to be considered much less seriously than here.
 * 4) "reliable blood tests" section was MUCH better before changes.
 * 5) Paragraph starting with "The closest psychiatry gets ..." covers far too much ground (falsifiability, neurology, nature, hiding in science) and covers it poorly. If there's validity here, it needs work to clarify. I don't like this paragraph or the points here, but it does at least show promise for eventually being good enough.
 * 6) Don't let patients masturbate? They also don't usually let them order take out pizza.

I'm gonna revert it all, dispute re-inclusion of anything except a much better version of too-much-ground paragraph. DerFluchtPlan (talk) 03:50, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Gonna make a draft cuz the article can be improved, and i agree my raw edit additions had issues Neiltyson1fan (talk) 16:17, 23 December 2020 (UTC)