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Mental Illness: Difference between revisions
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=== 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. | This psychological experiment saw psychologist David Rosenhan send 10 normal people as shills 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. Apart from this the shill were told to act completely normally. Each participant was subsequently diagnosed insane an committed for a number of days. After the rouse was up, the shills thought that they would tell the psychiatrist so and simply go home. However, this was not the case, on average the shills 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 | This and other founded criticisms of psychiatry led to a restructuring of the science 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, and the pharmaceutical [[Corporation|corporations]] diligently invented an answer releasing the first ever antidepressant, fluoxetine in 1988. Prozac as it was called, rapidly became the most widely prescribed drugs in history. In fact, in Australia, 1 in 7 now take one antidepressant daily. | ||
However, by | === Endogenous vs Exogenous Depression === | ||
Given these numbers, its seems there is a huge mental health pandemic globally. However, if you look closer...by relying on psychometric tests to diagnose depression psychiatrists fail to account for a patients context. For instance, the patient might be recently bereaved or had just lost their job, the normal ups and downs in life. These external effects are called exogenous and by using purely behavioural psychometric test that are mixed in with more biological endogenous, disorders. This has created an illusion of a vast mental health epidemic. | |||