ColonizationThomas Szasz's NYT article from 42 years ago. Fairly prophetic.

submitted by [deleted] from (nytimes.com)

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]haveanicedaytoo💗💜💙 19 insightful - 1 fun19 insightful - 0 fun20 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Wow, this is excellent. I don't want to go off-topic, but I do believe that that the entire psychiatric profession needs a complete overhaul from the bottom up. The blame for this transgender bullshit is firmly on the shoulders of psychiatrists and the medical hacks who threw "do no harm" out the window and performed these surgeries. There is A LOT wrong with psychiatry today. Patients are not getting the help they need. Generational trauma is being completely ignored. Childhood trauma is being completely ignored. Millions of people have been tricked into believing that their depression/anxiety/etc is due to "Chemicals imbalance in my head" that comes from a genetic predisposition, rather than through untreated trauma and an epidemic of parental and school abuse, not to mention societal abuse and poverty. (I don't mean to imply that the chemical imbalance thing is always wrong, but more often than not, trauma is the actual cause.)

We are so advanced, but we are soooo sooo so incredibly backwards when it comes to mental health. I remember when we were teenagers, the boomers would scoff and say "How can you be depressed? You're a teenager?" and today I look at kids that same age and think "Of course you're depressed! You're a teenager!"

[–]MarkTwainiac 18 insightful - 1 fun18 insightful - 0 fun19 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The author of this piece, Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) was an eminently-respected psychiatrist and iconoclast who challenged the moral and "scientific" claims and foundations of psychiatry.

Millions of people have been tricked into believing that their depression/anxiety/etc is due to "Chemicals imbalance in my head"

This idea has only become mainstream in the time period since Big Pharma introduced the first SSRI Prozac in the late 1980s and in a push to promote mass use of benzos, began rebranding them as safe in the 1980s too.

As to the issue of genetic disposition vs trauma response vs chemical imbalance: all can be extant at the same time, and thus all of them often come into play as causes or contributors to depression, anxiety, breakdowns, neuroses, maladaptive coping strategies etc in individuals.

Also, there's considerable evidence that some "chemical imbalances" in human brains that can and do lead to depression, anxiety and even suicidal feelings, also can be the result of inflammatory processes set off by immune responses to physical illnesses, including a host of infectious pathogens and run-of-the-mill physical ailments like UTIs. Again, however, in most cases a lot of different things are going on at once.

[–]hetisachoice 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

He was right and they vilified him for it.