Patients Harmed by Diagnosis Find Their Voices

[Guest guest]

Source: Co-Cure

Co-Cure Note: One of the questions that may be raised here is whether the

proposed DSM 5 category of somatic symptom disorder would be

vulnerable to challenges such as those listed in this blog post.

Science Isn't Golden

Matters of the mind and heart / Psychology Today

by a J. Caplan, Ph.D.

Patients Harmed by Diagnosis Find Their Voices

Victims of psychiatric labeling file ethics complaints.

I have been working intensively for many months with people who have

had their lives damaged -- some forever -- because they were given

labels from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,

a product whose latest edition has brought $100 million in profit for

its publisher, the American Psychiatric Association, but that is not

scientifically grounded, helps little, and leads to a devastating

array of kinds of harm.

Yesterday and today, in what appears not to have been done before, a

number of them are filing ethics complaints with the APA. Very early

this morning, I filed my own complaint as an " interested party " who

has for more than a quarter of a century seen from the inside the way

the DSM people play fast and loose with the science yet have somehow

managed to convince many professionals and much of the public that

their manual is scientifically grounded, and during that time I have

heard from many hundreds of people who have been seriously harmed —

and not helped — in a stunning array of ways because of getting one or

more DSM labels. I had personally in conversations and then in many of

my writings made the powers-that-be aware of these problems, and I

have been deeply troubled by both their failure to publicize the

unscientific nature of their manual and their failure to take steps to

gather systematically any evidence of harm and to redress past harm

and prevent future harm.

Part of the story is in this article, which went up yesterday on the

Washington Post online under the headline " Psychiatry's Bible, the

DSM, is doing more harm than good. "

It is at: http://wapo.st/IO4X9M

Some people say they wanted their labels in order to get insurance

coverage so that they could get help, and it is true that the

insurance companies, school systems, the military and the Department

of Veterans Affairs, Medicare, and Medicaid hold many people hostage

by refusing to pay for their therapy if they don't have a psychiatric

label. At psychdiagnosis.net, I describe six different solutions to

these kinds of dilemmas, because of course people who are suffering

deserve to get help. But no matter how the systems work, everyone

needs to know of the dangers.

The courageous attorney Jim Gottstein of psychrights.org first made me

aware of the APA's complaints process and their ethical standards.

Then I received invaluable help from attorney Jeffery , Judge

Dunlap, psychologist H. s, and researcher H.

Cohen.

I hope that the filing of these complaints will move the APA to take

steps to make important changes and that it will make others aware of

the dangers that may await them when they go to see even the most

well-meaning professional. So many people have become mental health

professionals because they want to help people who are suffering, and

a lot of them have told me how devastated they have been to learn that

even the mildest-sounding labels that they have given their patients

have been used against them in courts, by family and friends, by

employers and prospective employers, by health insurance companies, by

the miitary and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and by those who

want to deprive them of their right to make their own medical and

legal decisions. Massive public and professional education is one way

to reduce the harm, and it would be good if the APA took a leadership

role in doing this, given that their profit-making product, the

manual, has been the source of so much damage.