profession haws many roots. Foucault in his book
madness and Civilisation probably explains and understands better than I
can. Essentially I think what happened was the Industrial Revolution
(mass production, mass schooling, factory systems etc) advantaged
certain types of human beings but others became 'disabled' or outcast.
The mad, fools, the backward and the dull (there are old terms for the
mentally il and disabled).
Here's what I mean. Imagine what it was like in an original Ford
factory. The Model T Ford meant lots of people could have this amazing
new technology. To make it possible and cheap everything was
standardised. A Ford factory worker would do the same job every single
day and usually just a small, simple task as part of the assembly line.
The might be a panel beater who shaped a piece of metal into the same
shape day after day after day.
This is soul crushing working. Imagine van Gogh in this situation. He
would want to create different shapes every day. He was a creative
person. He was also a mad person. His image adorns the front cover of
Richard Bentall's book Madness Explained. His creative need would mean
he would be useless in the assembly line factory system which made the
Model T Ford possible. He would make mistakes and he would want to ceate
something different rather than doing the same thing all day, every day.
The needs of the Industrial Revolution meant many like him were seen as
useless and unproductive. Their errant behaviour meant people like him
(before the time of psychiatry) would become outcast, homeless and poor.
There are stories of the ship of fools (detailed in Foucault's book)
which were sailing ships where the mad were put onboard with some food
then cast out of towns to drift to the next port or die.
At some point human compassion kicked in. People saw the mad were still
human beings and in an act of compassion they chose to look after them.
Laws like the Poor Law and other medico-legal instruments allowed the
creation of the asylum system. (There's a lot more about the history of
mental illness on Andrew Roberts site - http://studymore.org.uk/ -
including a mental health timeline)
While madness and stupidity had been around for ages it was what came
with the Industrial Revolution which accelerated the so-called
disability (so-called because the disability is a society not made to
accept the full diversity of human types) and exclusion It was people
who were advantaged by the Industrial Revolution who judged those
different from them and made their lives hell. Compassion created the
asylum system but this was one of the great seeds of the modern epidemic
of illness in society.
The mad were incarcerated in the asylums and the illness in society got
worse. Generations of people wouldn't see the mad because they would
disappear from view. Foucault calls this period The Great Confinement.
The mad, the dumb, the different all disappeared from view and 'normal'
people were left. 'Normal' is synonymous with being like a robot,
because the factory worker in the Model T Ford factory did the job og a
robot. Today Ford's cars are mainly made by machines. Alvin Toffler and
his book the Third Wave goes on about this idea of the next phase of
humanity being not about the rules of mass production but something new
and better but that's not what I'm talking about here.
The caretakers of the asylums ended up becoming psychiatrists. It was at
this point the biomedical model of human behaviour, emotion and
experience of consciousness was created. This is the fundamental
paradigm of mental illness and why people call it an illness - because
they assume there is a biological cause for behaviour...and they're sort
of right but that doesn't make it an illness. This is the prototype
model of psychiatric illness though there have been other dogmas such as
the mental hygiene movement which promoted the idea of psychological
distress.
To understand what the early psychiatrists were doing needs to know a
few facts...drapteomania was the diagnosis given to black slaves who
kept running away...homosexuality used to be a mental illness...hysteria
was apparently an epidemic to which Freud and Jung as well as their
contemporaries in psychiatry attempted to solve....I'm sure there are
other examples.
The paradigm of treatment - to make change to 'normality' - is
fundamental to the biomedical model of treatment. Until the sexual
rights movement in the 1970s homosexuals would be treated to be straight
because straight was 'normal' and anyone who was different had a mental
illness. With the advance of modern neuroimaging I'm sure it would be
possible to show that there are neurobiological differences between
straight and gay people. I'm sure genetic evidence could be applied to
show the presence of a genetic 'defect' and that certain families or
family types are more prone to produce homosexual offspring. These
paradigms are what psychiatrists use to call beheaviour, choices or
whatever a mental illness.
The dogma of science was used to label people and explain how people
become. This took over from the truth of religion. Religous orders did
even worse things that modern psychiatrists do. What is now a psychotic
disorder might be diagnosed as heresy, witchcraft or possession (as well
as canonisation if the experience agreed with the Church's dogma).
(Romme and Escher, Accepting Voices).
And it's still being done today. DSM-V will be a frightening tome of
labels of different types of people but the types are judged as bad
rather than just observed as types or experiences in life. Judgements
about normality and acceptability are really what the diagnostic
criteria is about.
The biomedical arguments still dominate psychiatric research and
thinking however a new model of mental illness is growing in acceptance:
the biopsychosocial model of mental illness. It is also the model of how
people become so if a person wanted to ask how does Tom Cruise become
successful then the reason is the biopsychosocial model of how people
become. That is the truth and that is all the science can currently
show. It is just the bullshit of psychiatry which says that people who
are different or unwanted by a society which expects docility and
passivity, robot-like behaviour and conformity (because anything else is
disadvantaged) are in some way ill. In truth it is an ill society which
disables and disadvantages people who are human.
Essentially psychiatry is a fucked up system akin to the system which
enslaved black people. They were considered subhuman and the people
accepted it. Many are still subjugated by the mental health system,
incarcerated and have their rights taken away without due process
afforded by the criminal justice system.
The mass slaughter of the elderly in the UK is a perfect example of
what's happening through the methods of psychiatry.
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/10October/Pages/Antipsychotic-use-in-dementia.aspx
I can't find the study which prompted the Royal College of Psychiatry
report but it showed a reduced life expectancy of 50% in the elderly who
had antipsychotics used on them. I'm surprised it doesn't come up in a
quick search in Google. The RCPsych report detailing the 1,800 deaths is
linked to at the bottom of the NHS Choices Behind the headlines article.
When people get old they get mad and cranky but carers and people in
care homes can't be bothered to deal with cranky old people. Doctors had
a solution which is the chemical cosh. It is more commonly know as the
antipsychotic but it used to be know as the major tranquiliser. Society
deemed such hasslesome behaviour as something to be dealt with by
doctors. Doctors had the power to use a chemical to effectively gag and
subdue the elderly, just as they had been doing to people with psychotic
disorders for years.
There was no need to use the drugs but it was a convenience which carers
and people in care homes easily accepted because doctors...well....they
take an oath and stuff to first do no harm. They're meant to be healers
and they know what they're doing...or they're expected to by patients
who think that mental illnesses are actually illnesses rather than just
a way to subjugate human difference.
Many, many old people died early as a result. They only had
antipsychotics used for a short period of time. The drugs were used
because I think the public would have reacted strongly to the gagging of
their elderly. They have no problem with it if it happens by chemical
means...at least until they found out it killed a lot of old people.
the drugs were used because society was ill and couldn't be arsed to put
up with the elderly when they got old and mad and cranky, just like old
people have been for generations. the drugs do not heal the disease in
any way other than to remedy a behavioural 'problem' (it's not a
problem. It's just behaviour).
That's pretty fucking bad right? Imagine that people with schizophrenia
have these drugs used on them for their entire lives. The drugs do not
heal the supposed brain illness. They are not confirmed in the research
to reduce the hallucinations and delusions which people assoicate with
schizophrenia and which many patients want as their reasons for
accepting treatment. (There is no retrospective meta analysis seeking
only the effect on the internal experience only which is the cause of
the distress of schizophrenia - at least not one that anyone I know
knows about.).
Basically psychiatrists are totally screwing a different type of person
using a pill which subjugates them and kills them quicker. The drugs
don't heal the illness, they cause real physical illness (and death),
the make schizophrenics unhappy. The drugs suppress creativity and
sexual promiscuousness as well as making schizophrenics fat and
lethargic. Psychiatrists know it's not a real illness but a behavioural
and emotional problem. I don't know how many accept that it isn't an
illness because they've seen the brain studies and they've been trained
to believe that brain difference rather than being a sign of a different
type of human being is a sign of an illness.
It's sort of like the thinking which allowed slavery to happen. A
biological difference - black skin - is just a different type of human
being, but we're all part of the human race however 'normal' (white
skinned in this case) people decided that dark skinned people were
sub-human and to be subjugated. They had different skin colour - clearly
a biological difference. Their families and their hereditary and their
genetics all point to a clear difference. Poorly applying logic like
they did back in the day could easily make being black skinned an illness.
That is, of course, if you think like a psychiatrist and human
difference means illness or is an opportunity to subugate and oppress
something which you don't understand.
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