Ah, The Divided World Of Mental Health

Twenty years after the Prozac revolution took hold in America with all of its remarkable promises of cures for scientifically-determined mental health diagnoses through recalibrating human brain chemistry with drugs that offered few if any side effects, I am literally stunned at how divided people who care about these issues remain on basic issues such as the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness, diagnoses of conditions and the treatment of these conditions. That's bad news from where I sit because I view the evidence base as being so corrupted that it's not to be trusted and am puzzled that people keep aggressively defending its precepts.

But it's good news that people are obviously passionate about these issues, even where their critiques are largely off-base. Which is a long way of saying recent posts of mine have generated a lot of comments over on Daily Kos and have led to some readers over there dubbing me the equivalent of Tom Cruise and L. Ron Hubbard (but not Michel Foucault, I'm so hurt) while at this site some in the anti-psychiatry camp have styled me as a kind of frontman for psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies.

Most of the kicking and screaming has been over on Kos and if you are amused by such things, you read them here. Meanwhile, an anonymous reader from Australia chided me on this site for apparently being a pro-psychiatry ideologue.

"I suppose you are gonna censor my 'malicious comment' phil. Wake up to yourself phil. You're an ideologue for pseudoscience with a half baked commitment to human rights and safe drugs."

I almost never censor comments and approved his or hers and, then, left this comment of my own.

"and what's your commitment to schizophrenics who are homeless? when you get off your lazy ass and do some work on that front, i'll respect you. until then, stick in in your ear."

Oh, and my name is Philip, not Phil.

Of course, he's been back to comment since and call me out for being a bogus human rights activist. Seriously. You can read that bit of illogic here. He also claims schizophrenia doesn't exist. I wish that were true (that's not to say that all diagnoses of schizophrenia are accurate, or that the disorder is a lifelong affliction. I've seen enough cases that argue against that).

What amuses me greatly is that as I--and the critical neutrality I advocate--were being parsed on the 'Net, I was actually working my butt off at a homeless shelter. I've not written much about it because I'm not ready to.

Because where would you start?

Now, I have to start heading to work. I am picking up a shift that opened all of a sudden 'cuz I could sure use the money.