Critique of the DSM

 
●   The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR): “The quackery of labels.”

   “Carefully honed and marketed by psychiatrists for over four decades, the DSM/ICD now feature heavily as diagnostic tools, not only for individual treatment, but also child custody battles, discrimination cases based on alleged psychiatric disability, court testimony, education, and more. In fact, wherever a psychiatric opinion is sought or offered, the DSM/ICD are presented and increasingly accepted as the final word on sanity, insanity, and so-called mental illness.”

●  Keneth Gergen, Lynn Hoffman and Harlene Anderson: Gergen argues that the reach of these      diagnostic labels has been extensive to the point of being ridiculously over-inclusive:

   "At the present time, one may be classified as mentally ill by virtue of cocaine intoxication, caffeine intoxication, the use of hallucinogens, voyeurism, transvestism, sexual aversion, the inhibition of orgasm, gambling, academic problems, antisocial behavior, bereavement, and non-compliance with medical treatment."

Critique of Psychiatry and Medication

 

  ●  Anti Psychiatry Coalition: A collection of articles and resources.

●  Mind Freedom: Support Coalition International – Defending the human rights of people in the   psychiatric system.

 ●  Critical Psychiatry Website.  Joanna Moncrif’s article - The Medicalization of Modern Living, and the articles by Duncan Double are recommended.

●  Loren Mosher M.D. Articles include: I want no part in it anymore; Letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association; The biopsychiatric model of “mental illness” – a critical bibliography.

  After 30 years in the organization, he charged in his letter of resignation that psychiatrists had become the "minions of drug company promotions.” Mosher goes on to lambaste the DSM:

  "DSM IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document. To its credit, it says so, although its brief apologia is rarely noted. DSM IV has become a bible and a moneymaking bestseller - its major failing notwithstanding. It confines and defines practice; some take it seriously, others more realistically. It is the way to get paid. Diagnostic reliability is easy to attain for research projects. The issue is what do the categories tell us. Do they in fact accurately represent the person with a problem? They do not, and cannot, because there are no external validating criteria for psychiatric diagnoses."

●    Successful Schizophrenia: Psychiatry Deconstruction Zone. Al Siebet’s article - Similarities Between Nietzche’s Uber Mensch and the Survivor Personality is an original contribution.  

●   Network Against Coercive Psychiatry. The Anti-Psychiatry Reading Room. 

●   Wildestcolts:  A resource site for parents and for adult healing and transformation, and a challenge to the biomedical mental health industry.

 Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

 
  ●  This site offers powerful arguments against the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnostic category, and against the use of psychiatric drugs (Ritalin).

  ●  International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP): Dr. Peter Breggin’s site.

  "We are the first adults to handle the generation gap through the wholesale drugging of our children. We may be guaranteeing that future generations will be relatively devoid of people who think critically, raise painful questions, generate productive conflicts, or lead us to new spiritual and political insights."

Rethinking Psychology and Therapy

 

   ●  Radical psychology Network

   ●  Oikos Towards an Ecology of Mind

   ●  The Thomas S. Szasz Cybercenter for Liberty and Responsibility

   ●   Non-Mainstream Psychotherapy and Counseling Resources on the Internet

●   Academy for the Study of the Psychoanalytic Arts, an organization dedicated to redefining psychoanalysis as a discipline and way of thinking about people and working with them that existed outside of a medical model. Our agenda has been to re-think a conceptualization of psychoanalysis, which is more closely allied with the humanities, the arts, the anthropic sciences, philosophy, poetry, and the theater of the mind, than with medicine, and to promote these conceptualizations to the professional, lay and academic communities.