Mental Illness

Psychiatry, historically consisted of specialist doctors observing patients and producing a diagnosis based upon their contextual observations. However, in the 1970's this came under fire in part due to R. D. Laing and a series of experiments, one of which was the Thud experiment.

Thud Experiment

This psychological experiment saw psychologist David Rosenhan send 10 normal people to be committed into mental institutions across the US. Rosenhan asked only one thing of those that were to be committed, to tell the psychiatrists that they kept on hearing the word thud in their head. All else those that were committed acted normally. Each participant thought that when they gave up the rouse they could go home, on average they were committed for 2 months and were only let go when they accepted to the doctor that they were mad and were getting better.

This lead to a restructuring of psychiatry from subjective, bias prone practitioner analysis to objective psychometric tests. By using a yes / no algorithm based upon reported symptoms it was found that 50% of all US citizens had a mental disorder. This was an issue, pharmaceutical corporations invented an answer the first ever antidepressant SSRI, Prozac / fluoxetine, this rapidly became the most widely prescribed drugs in history. 1 in 7 now take an antidepressant daily in Australia.

However, by using psychometric tests which don't account for the patients context of whether they are bereaved or just lost their job, the normal ups and downs in life (exogenous) are confused with mental disorders (endogenous). This has then created an illusion of a vast mental health epidemic.