Talk:Biopsychiatry controversy/Archive 1

message: This article is about the scientific controversy in psychiatry; the Anti-psychiatry article is about the political implications such as activism, etc.  Both still need reworking and will try to do the job in the following days. —Cesar Tort 00:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two articles 

message: I haven't been following the development of this article. I just thought I'd throw an idea out there. There are those who are quite anti-psychiatry and yet do not dispute that there's a rough biological basis for phenotypes classified as psychiatric disorders. They may see psychiatric disorders as disabilities or neurodiversity that should not be medicalized. They see the immaturity of children, for example, as being a fact of biology, but the meaning given to said immaturity a fact of culture - i.e. disorder as a cultural construct. See, for example, , , ,. (For starters). Neurodivergent 16:04, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The above references refer to autism: a subject that has been discussed extensively in Talk:Anti-psychiatry/Archive 5. —Cesar Tort 02:45, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anti-psychiatrists who are not anti-organic basis 

message: Re Anarchist's comment in Edit summary: “avoid equating autism with bad parenting”.  Presently autism, as a subject, is a total mess.  But I’d be very happy to hear your comments.
Have you seen my debate about autism in Talk:Anti-psychiatry/Archive 5? —Cesar Tort 20:18, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, I haven't yet. I'm always suspicious of claims that any disorder is caused by "bad parenting"; after all there are a lot more "bad parents" than mentally children.  A friend of mine has twins, only one of which is autistic, which makes me doubt the "bad parenting" theory.  I suspect that most "mental illneses" result from a combination of numerous factors, and that any simplistic explanation or theory just leads to simplistic treatment. - Anarchist42 22:01, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I also know a family in which only one of the monozygotic twin became seriously disturbed or schizophrenic.  The environmental cause is explained in that archive.  Have you seen the movie Shine by the way? —Cesar Tort 23:35, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know about schizophrenia, but discordance of autism in monozygotic twins seems to be about 8%. It can be up to 40% if you narrow the criteria. There is no evidence of psychogenic factors playing a role - none - even though stress has been proposed. Neurodivergent 16:20, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

text: “One must note that autism is one of a number of children’s neurological disorders of psychogenic nature, i.e., caused by abusive and traumatic treatment of infants [...].  There is persistent denial by American society of the causes of damage to millions of children who are thus traumatized and brain damaged as a consequence of cruel treatment by parents who are otherwise too busy to love and care for their babies” (International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Vol 72 (4), 1991, pp. 585-91).
I can understand why parents see this theory as offensive and it’s not my intention to offend anyone.  However, for my own experience I know that my mother committed heinous psychological crimes with my sisters; but she has zero insight about her childrearing methods.  I’m pretty sure something similar happens in the mind of many other dissociative parents: no insight at all...
By the way, Tustin has written books, and there is a book about her work .  —Cesar Tort 17:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It is offensive, but scientifically that's irrelevant. The fact is that no study has attempted to determine if there's any merit to any psychogenic theory of autism. Peter Breggin is not an authority on autism by any means, and I would suggest his knowledge of autism approaches a negligible amount. Brain damage, such as that resulting from abuse, is not known to result in autism. That type of brain damage would be very unlikely to explain some of the cognitive features of autism (which we're starting to learn of recently), neuroanatomical features found, such as neuron density differences and grey and white matter volume differences; head circumference, and so on. Therefore, I'd discount any psychogenic or abuse-related theory without any autism-specific evidence to the contrary. Neurodivergent 20:04, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

text: “El nombre de la beba era Jenny [...]. La madre de Jenny era una mujer muy animada y extravertida que, en el primer encuentro, impresionó a Stern como una persona ‘invasiva, controladora y sobreestimuladora’. Cuando Stern inició la observación de Jenny y su madre, ambas habían desarrollado la siguiente rutina: cada vez que las miradas se encontraban, la madre, con excesiva vehemencia, comenzaba a hacerle muecas divertidas a su beba y a hablarle de una manera atropellada. Todo eso era demasiado para Jenny, que optaba por apartar la vista [...].  Stern dice que observar esa invasión pasivamente y sabiendo que no debiera intervenir era ‘casi físicamente doloroso; me generaba sentimientos de impotente indignación; se me cerraba el estómago o me empezaba a doler la cabeza’ [...].  A Stern le resultaba inconcebible que la madre de Jenny no se diera cuenta de lo agresiva que era su actitud [...]. Fue entonces cuando Stern comenzó a alarmarse.  Su alarma se debía a que sabía que la evitación del contacto visual y de cualquier tipo de interacción cara a cara, durante la primera infancia, suele ser uno de los síntomas precoces de autismo infantil” (pages 173ff).
—Cesar Tort 20:38, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Where to start? First of all, one case report is not "evidence" in the sense I'm coveying, any more than a parent reporting that a child has "regressed" after vaccination is evidence that thimerosal causes autism. Second, all this report suggests is that the mother conditioned the daughter to have an aversion to eye contact, which happens to be a symptom of autism. It does not say it turned the daughter autistic. Neurodivergent 21:25, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That may be "pretty lame", Neurodivergent, as you state in summary edit.  But biopsych theories about autism are lame too. —Cesar Tort 21:38, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I actually agree that all current theories suck badly. But psychogenics is the oldest theory and it hasn't made any headway. Ok, the US is biased against psychogenic explanations. But then why hasn't it made any headway in Europe, France in particular? Neurodivergent 22:19, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Autism mess 

message: In the External links style guide for Wikipedia PDF documents come under the heading of "Rich media" (i.e. not standard web pages). It states: "there is a strong presumption against linking directly to rich media," and says there should be an "explicit indication of the technologies needed to access the content." The example given shows (PDF) in brackets after the title of the document.
* Good advice.  I’ll remove PDFs. —Cesar Tort 18:00, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Rich media, poor usability

message: I don't understand why you included a reference to Brave New Brain, which promotes an extreme bio-psychiatric approach. Some visitors to the Wikipedia article might be supporters of biopsych who are looking for reasons to scoff at any criticism. Those who visit the Amazon page, and find that it contains favourable reviews, might say to themselves: "Wow! That's cool. Biopsych is the way to go!"
* I’m perfectly aware that Andreasen sells biopsych.  But at least she is honest enough to acknowledge that her profession has been unable to present biomarkers to the scientific community.  See my article . —Cesar Tort 18:00, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not obvious on the Amazon page. Visitors will get opposite impression -- Bookish 18:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

text: Which is why I removed that link already. —Cesar Tort 19:27, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

text: I haven't been able to keep up with all the changes recently. That's why I prefer to post a few thoughts here. It's possible I may be duplicating things you've said already. -- Bookish 18:13, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Brave New Brain

message: Cesar: There's an article stub on Wikipedia about Jay Joseph's first book, The Gene Illusion. It has a couple of references which might be useful to you. -- Bookish 11:16, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Jay Joseph, The Gene Illusion

message: Because of the ArbCom case the biopsych article is under close scrutiny from admins. It will have to meet a higher standard than would have been the case otherwise. To write criticisms first and leave supporting citations for later is asking for trouble. A who-said-what-and-where approach, with every statement derived from a reliable source, may be the only way forward under the circumstances. I have no wish to become involved in editing the text directly because the bar has been raised too high. My own feeling is that it might actually be more effective to keep the narrative text to a minimum and let the References - See also - External links sections speak for themselves. Nevertheless, I would be pleased to see the article develop into one of Wikipedia's better examples of how to handle a thorny subject.
I just read Rockpocket's suggestion for a brief summary. Basically, it's good, but there are a few points that would be better phrased another way.
#The phrase "vocal minority" has pejorative connotations. I think it would be better to rephrase it as "who are at present in the minority".
#"Instead a trauma model of me(n)tal disease is proposed." This is misleading. There have been a trauma models of mental illness within mainstream psychiatry for more than 100 years. It is only in past few decades that these have been brushed aside by mainstream orthodoxy.
#"They argue the lack of biomarkers is evidence for..." Actually, the lack of biomarkers is a flaw in the evidence.
My suggestion:
"The biopsychiatry controversy is an ongoing dispute over the scientific basis of biological psychiatry theory and practice. The debate is focused on criticism of mainstream psychiatric thinking, proposed by a vocal lobby of psychiatrists and scientists who are at present in the minority. Activist organizations support their views. Critics contend the field is flawed in a number of ways. They argue that the lack of biomarkers is a flaw in the evidence for a somatic, biological cause for mental illness. Instead they draw attention to trauma models of mental illness within the psychiatric literature which have been brushed aside as research efforts switched to the biological model."
Personally, I would be careful not to use the word "pseudoscience" too often. When I was at university I shared a student house with medical students. I'm familiar with the outlook most of them hold. Medicine is one of the most long-drawn-out and gruelling courses of study at university level. They tend to resent the implication that any part of what they were taught was misguided. -- Bookish 14:59, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Introductory summary

message: Here is a quote from a bestselling book, "Selling Sickness," by drug policy researcher Alan Cassels and journalist Ray Moynihan. -- Bookish 19:03, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Selling Sickness

message: From Bookish 20:03, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good advice!  I already followed all of your suggestions. —Cesar Tort 20:58, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Touchups

message: Don't worry, I'm giving careful thought to the paragraph that needs re-writing. Composing words is harder work for me than creating images (like the coloured graph).
The list of external links is quite long now. I was wondering whether it would be better to remove one or two, or sub-divide the section into:
* External links
:*Criticisms from psychologists & the medical profession
:*Methodolical problems
:*Other critiques
That way you can add more without making it too cluttered. Better than [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] in the narrative text, which most people will never click on.  Maybe you could remove the first link to Critical Psychiatry Network (Biomedical bias of the American Psychiatric Association). You already have David Kaiser's article at the top. The UK parliament website is a better example for the Critical Psychiatry Network. Duncan Double's website has good articles, but the site is so badly designed it's a nightmare to find them all. -- Bookish 00:28, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps converting existing references to the “ref” method of citation will solve this problem? —Cesar Tort 07:21, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Cherry picking

message: Hello Cesar. I really don't wish to get involved in this effort you are initiating here on your subpages. But could i ask that, when you are finishing moving the sections of anti-psychiatry to your new article and are happy with the results, you consider reworking the anti-psychiatry article so that it is more cohesive in describing the development of the activist movement (with the scholarly criticisms themselves now in the the new article). If you don't wish to do this, could you let me know when you are happy with the content and i can make sure the two articles are suitably different in content? This, i think, is the best way to avoid a future merge. Thanks. Rockpocket 22:50, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure: I’ll rework the Anti-psychiatry article once the new article is finished and I remove that section. —Cesar Tort 23:02, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Rockpocket 23:04, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

text:  Hello Cesar. I just wanted to congratulate you on your work in the biopsychiatry controversy article. It is fairly obvious that i was against splitting the two, but my argument was based on content, not principle. However, i'm happy to note that i do think you have managed to make it sufficiently different from anti-psychiatry to warrant its own existance and i think is - as much as these POV-forkish type articles can be - a good encyclopedia article. Thank you, also, for addressing my concerns so promptly and graciously. Rockpocket 01:49, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Request 

message: Um, about the point of the article.  The paragraph that reads:
"Modern biopsychiatric practice strives to create and use explicit diagnostic criteria for mental illness, the DSM. This method of practice is often called neo-Kraepelinian after Emil Kraepelin, and later Eugene Bleuler, who advocated such an approach" 
is lovely in its own way... but biopsychiatric researchers (in my experience) seem to think that the DSM is almost completely useless, on the fundamental grounds that the DSM is not biological.  The DSM is a behavioral book.  The DSM is what you give to clinicians, not researchers, and it's therefore filled with things that amount to "seems sad all the time" instead of "lower than average concentration of dopamine in the intraneural conjunctions of the upper cerebellum under live sedated dissection of mouse model."  "Seems sad all the time" is not a biological statement.  "Lower than average concentration of dopamine" is a biological statement. 
Fundamentally, I don't think we can accurately -- or simultaneously -- say that (a) biopsychiatry is all about neurochemistry and (b) the DSM, which contains almost nothing about anything even remotely physical, is a biopsychiatric book.  A plain old psychiatric book, I freely grant you; and it is certainly used by people with biopsychiatric beliefs -- but the DSM, itself, is a behavioral book, not a biological one.
Is someone else willing to clean this up?  I haven't got the time.66.124.70.108 00:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your point is taken. I’ll try to do the changes. —Cesar Tort 00:24, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good points here.  Clean up looks fine. JohnsonRon 20:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help requested