Why Do People Still Trust in Therapy and Psychiatry?
Perhaps you’ve come across instances of the mental health system failing or even abusing its clients. Maybe you’ve had a bad experience yourself that left you questioning: why do people still trust in therapy? Why do they still trust in psychiatric drugs? I think there are many reasons why faith in psychotherapy and psychiatry persists and that most of these hang off of one major factor: the mental health system has attained a lot of undeserved authority and perception of expertise in public consciousness. There is also a Christian take on the matter, and for that I will refer you to T.A. McMahon.
How did the mental health industry manage to get this power and prestige in society? In the following quote, Psychologist Toby Watson gives a good idea of how it happened:
Psychiatry has not only misled the general public but psychiatry in general and the pharmaceutical industry has misled the media, the politicians, legislation. When you have billions of dollars at your disposal, it grants you access to all of them to give false and misleading information. The problem is these people are not trained or equipped to ask the tough questions of asking for proof, of evidence about their false and misleading claims that mental suffering is somehow a biological disease. In psychiatry and psychology, there are no medical tests, no scans, no blood work that can diagnose anybody with a mental disorder. When they come up with a diagnosis, they literally do it by a show of hands, based on a vote. That is totally unlike any true medical illness where people have true physiological tissue damage or there’s an actual test to verify whether somebody has a medical condition or that they don’t.
– CCHRInt (2017, Mar. 20). Psychologist Toby Watson – Psychiatry is Misleading the Public About Mental Disorders [Video]. Youtube.
Basically, psychiatry (and psychology) scammed their way into positions of authority in society by using a veneer of science to dupe people who had no idea what they were talking about but could provide access to desired resources and power. This is why today we can find mental health professionals on staff in courts, police stations, schools, hospitals, corporations, correctional facilities, and military bases.
Psychology and psychiatry have both faced controversy from their beginnings in 1879 and the late 1700s, respectively. Psychology has been criticized for issues such as poor science, lack of effectiveness in regards to therapy, and a lack of consensus on a core ideology. Besides not providing any actual cures, early psychiatry has been criticized for inhumane treatment of patients, such as locking them indefinitely in asylums, illegally depriving them of their rights, forcing sterilizations for eugenics purposes, and performing horrific procedures such as insulin shock therapy and lobotomies.
Interestingly, a not insignificant portion of the criticism of the mental health system is internal in origin. Besides the above quote from Dr. Watson, I have many quotes from psychiatrists and psychologists admitting that there is no biological basis for the standard mental illness diagnoses and that the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness is wrong. Moreover, honest mental health professionals acknowledge that psychiatric drugs are essentially no different than street drugs in regards to how they work. Many who are opposed to psych drugs choose to place their trust in therapy instead, but the poor performance of psychotherapy has been exposed by psych professionals themselves in quotes going all the way back to the 1950s and 60s to the present time.
The mental health system has continued to climb in the public eye even as dissenters sprang among its own ranks. I could be wrong, but I suspect that a lot of these dissenters usually end up preaching to the choir. For example, Dr. Tana Dineen, who has been called a “renegade psychologist” by the press, wrote a book she titled Manufacturing Victims to expose the failures of her profession. After this book was first published in 1996, it apparently caused a big stir among fellow psychotherapists. However, psychology has only increased in popularity since then; moreover, when I looked her book up on Amazon, it only had 20 reviews. Compare that with, say, an ADHD guide from two psychiatrists, ADHD 2.0: New Science and Essential Strategies for Thriving with Distraction – from Childhood Through Adulthood, which has 3.7 thousand reviews! The public generally does not go out of their way to find the truth, until they encounter a problem. By then, they have already handed their money and time to psychiatry, psychotherapy, or both.
The criticisms and confessions are ongoing. Some time ago, I came across a now 2 year old interview of a psychiatrist, Dr. Chris Palmer, on the podcast of a physician, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. The conversation started off with them discussing the current epidemic of mental illness. (The idea that there is an epidemic of mental illness at this time is in itself quite telling considering that mental health services are more available than ever before and that the stigma over seeking such services is at an all time low.)
At any rate, Dr. Palmer described how he struggled as a young psychiatrist to actually help clients. Eventually, he became “discouraged and demoralized that for 95 percent plus of the patients that [he] was seeing, [they] weren’t finding the right pills.” Though patients could improve on psychiatric drugs for months or a few years, eventually they went back to square one. Dr. Palmer goes on to conclude that the pills are not the answer. Then, he drops the bomb: the mental health field has been misleading their patients with the notion that they are suffering from mental health problems because they have a chemical imbalance that needs to be corrected with psychiatric drugs. He goes to on to claim that mental illness is due to metabolic dysfunction. (This can have truth to it on an individual basis, but why do psychiatrists have this tendency to declare one factor as the ultimate cause of mental illness for all, when there are so many different things that can factor into the equation?)
Dr. Chatterjee takes the revelation of psychiatry’s deception in stride (perhaps they talked beforehand, and he know what was coming?). But, wouldn’t the knee jerk response for many people have been: since you just admitted that psychiatry has been lying for years, why should we believe anything that comes from your profession now? I guess that would have been inappropriate for the context.
I want to clarify that when I call out the mental health field as a whole, I am not bashing individuals (unless I specifically call them out). I don’t mean to bash Dr. Palmer; he rightfully calls out the flaws of his field and looks to other factors (such as diet) to address mental health problems, which makes him well above average for his field. Some psychiatrists are above average in that they help clients by exploring medical factors, environmental issues (such as mold and heavy metal toxicity), diet, and so forth. Also, some psychotherapists genuinely have a talent (and I do believe the ability to be a good counselor is an inborn talent we don’t learn in college) to connect with people and “get through to them.” However, here’s food for thought: why can’t a regular doctor take over the role of psychiatry for the medical side of the issue and why can’t regular people (everyday social connections with experience in a given area) substitute for counseling?
Ultimately, I believe another major factor why people still trust in therapy and psych drugs is that they really, really want these things to work because they see it as their only option. This is understandable, and I too developed an interest in psychology before I found a better way. Life is so complicated, and people really do lean on established authority because it’s simply overwhelming to take everything on yourself.
It is not going to be easy to knock the mental health system off the pedestal they have climbed on. We’re just going to have to keep exposing them again and again. In that spirit, share this article when you get a chance!
More exposes of the mental health system below: