April 10, 2008What Progress Have Psychology And Psychiatry Made?That's the broad question posed by Stephen Dubner, who is co-author of the bestselling Freakonomics and a blog of the same name at the New York Times. He asked a collection of big shots in the psych and neuroscience worlds, including Peter Kramer, and the mother of a suicide victim who'd been diagnosed with bipolar disorder: "How much progress have psychology and psychiatry really made in the last century? Do we know enough about the human psyche to prescribe the medication that we do?" The answers are worth reading and although most of the people defend the basic biopsych model, they also admit that, as far as we've come in both psychology and psychiatry over the last 100 years, we still haven't gone so far. I don't agree with Kramer's continued obsession with criticizing psychoanalysis, for example, because psychoanalysis isn't exactly a field with much influence in mental health care these days. I do agree with the respondents, however, that we have come a long way in both psychology and psychiatry compared with where we were in 1900 or so. It's just that we have so much further to go. I liked Dubner's post for another reason, as it opens with this lede: "The debate about the effectiveness and safety of psychiatric drugs rambles on while new (if not conclusive) psychological studies come out with the frequency of fad diets." If you go to his post, you'll see that "effectiveness" is a link back to the article I recently had published in Willamette Week on Erick Turner's study showing that pharma companies had hidden negative clinical trials data on anti-depressants for two decades. Always nice to have my work get some attention, especially coming as it did two days after my best shot at a full time job in journalism went down the tubes--the Seattle Times laid off 200 people on Monday, including 40 newsroom personnel and, yes, they are people I know and admire--and mere hours before I got a thumbs down for a different writing job outside of journalism (I was deemed a "bad fit" for the latter, which means someone didn't like me). So, yes, dear readers, I continue to run into the brick wall of non-employment and after 14 years as a journalist with two masters degrees, I simply shake my head at why there seems to be no way to make a decent living in or out of journalism. And, yes, it is bugging the hell out of me. I'm far from alone among reporters facing this same quandary, of course, but it sure makes it no easier to handle. Maybe, I'll go become a pharma rep. Posted by Philip Dawdy at April 10, 2008 12:03 AM
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If you can stand moving to Virginia, you're over-qualified to be a magistrate in this state. You only need a bachelor's degree. Pays decently and no lay-offs. You could write on the side. Posted by: Alison Hymes at April 9, 2008 11:41 PMUgh, can't speak, too pissed but will just note all those revolutionary breakthroughs touted in the article have been around in radical psychology for decades. And featuring the leading evolutionary psychologist makes the endeavor a complete joke -- evolutionary psych is not science, for godsakes it's sexist right wing politics; meanwhile this commenter nails it: Of the six people participating in this blog about psychology, five are men and the only woman isn’t a psychologist. It’s hard to believe there aren’t any women psychologists whose insights would be as interesting to your readers as those of these men. As a field, psychology is teeming with women–you must have had to work pretty hard to avoid them. Yes, it certainly is "an exciting time to be a neuropsychologist." /hurl. Psychiatry and psychology have keep generations of children, who are the offspring of the dimmest bulbs in academicia, clothed and fed and put through collge on the backs of society's weakest. Posted by: chandra at April 10, 2008 04:54 AMDear Philip: I will start with the latter first. Disappointment is always a bitter pill to swallow. Of course considering the pills you could be swallowing at this time it’s not the worst case scenario or state of affairs. Because of your diligence, stead fastness, talent, and with your journalistic prowess you have affected thousands, if not millions of readers with invaluable understanding and information. Believe it or not you have actually made a huge difference. This in itself makes you one of the treasured few. Many go through a whole life without standing up and battling against all odds to do that very thing; especially with a disorder such as bipolar piggy backing your journey each step of the way, and the struggles you have to grapple with on a daily basis. I know, and believe with each situation we perceive as either a failure or set back, we can make the choice to allow that to be catalyst to move forth and achieve even greater and loftier goals. I believe the doors of opportunity will open at their own timing and place, in spite of those demons of disappointment and doubt that try to take hold and continuously whisper in our ears. You “Philip” have countless admirers and supporters out here rooting you on in this time of disappointment and frustration. This is far from an ending; just a new beginning down other paths you may have been hazy or even blinded to before this rude wakeup call rang loudly into your life. Yet, I can’t help but believe this perceived set back in time will be looked back on as a blessing in disguise for both your life and professional career. You can take these words with a grain of salt of course; but it still doesn’t take away your incredible accomplishments, and those that believe steadfast in you. I know you are out there on the street personal involved with those that have serious debilitating mental illness and the lives they struggle with each and every day. Maybe it’s time for you to take a step back for just a moment and count your blessings in this time of reevaluation. I know many of us could be that person living from a shopping cart or rack sack if it weren’t for a few fortunate breaks, supportive people, and events that shaped our journey in another direction. I Hope that made some sense in the larger scheme of things for you Philip? With the rates of violence, suicide, death in war, starvation, the labeling of people as mentally ill and such on the rise, it's hard to make a case that psychiatry or psychology has improved people's lives. I'm not saying that psychology causes war, but if psychology were effective shouldn't the mental health of us humans be improving not deteriorating. Bipolar Babies indeed! Posted by: Sally at April 10, 2008 06:17 AMThe job market is increasingly bad for anyone whose training and skills are not purely instrumental and measurable in quantitative terms. It's terrible how many brilliant Ph.D.-holders just can't get jobs in their fields after years of study and sacrifice. Notwithstanding the idiotic remarks of the "evolutionary psychologist" on that panel (now there's a 21st-century pseudoscience), I agree we are in the middle of a long-term scientific revolution, which will result in better pharmacotherapies in the long run. The problem is that ongoing revolutions don't progress in a straight line - they are murky, messy, and have a way of defying the most confident predictions about their future course. What we lack are the institutions (an "FDA on steroids, as one of the commentators said) to protect the public against the risks of this productive chaos - which are amplified, yes, the involvement of corporate interests, but also by the uncritical ideology of "progress" that is still dominant in our society, even in the era of nuclear warfare and global warfare. Posted by: Garth at April 10, 2008 06:34 AMPhilip, I agree with Stan, sometimes doors slam shut, and we don't know what will become of our outcomes, leaving us at a crossroad of sort that basically has been created by something out of our control; this is the time to stop and take a look at your accomplishments, and say, "I did good." Then know there will be another window opening, and most likely will tie in with all of the experiences you've had in the mental health system. You are too valuable to lose in this arena. I also believe we often do not ever know the people we have helped or motivated by being a force in their lifetime, even if it's just once. You've made an impact in Seattle and the Northwest that is undeniable, and you've got awards to prove it. Whatever happens, we all know you'll be successful, I hope you know it too. Stephany Posted by: Stephany at April 10, 2008 09:34 AMSeattle Times-Our layoffs are your loss too. Posted by: Stephany at April 10, 2008 10:16 AMDo you think you were a "bad fit" because of your views on mental health treatment and psych drugs in particular? I do think people are really scared of critics of biopsychiatry even though I know you are not "extreme". But I hope it was some other reason you didn't "fit". Still hoping for your breakthrough into a forum that welcomes you and where your voice can be heard soon! Posted by: Sara at April 10, 2008 03:05 PMthanks all for your kind comments. to answer one specifically, i don't know that my views on mental health affected things at all. the job was in the world of tax policy analysis. but you never know. Posted by: Philip Dawdy at April 10, 2008 03:37 PM"tax policy analysis"??!! Your talents would have been wasted there -- they were right! Sorry -- I know full time work is dearly desired but hopefully there's another arena for your talents besides tax policy. Posted by: Sara at April 10, 2008 04:20 PMHi Phil, Just wanted to drop by and tell you I'm a daily reader of the site with two huge thumbs up. It's a comfort to hear your perspective. Keep it up, my friend, and don't let the unemployment get you down. You're too good for something not to pop up. Cheers, Progress in psychiatry? and the author of this blog agrees? I disagree. You call moving from ice pick leucotomies, to placing someone in a neuroprison of daily chemical lobotomies progress? It's not. Things have only gotten worse, and its evident in the increasing march and reach of psychiatry's power... there are no positives to the mental health story... apart from those who completely disavow psychiatry and dedicate lives to destroying it. Who are not scientologists also, that helps. Psychiatry is the greatest peacetime threat civilization has ever faced when famine is excluded. Training hundreds of thousands of ideologues in sick, evil, biopsychiatry, and having it pump through the media veins and PR the public to death until the creation of a genetic underclass happens based on no genetic tests for the inductees into the underclass, is a holocaust, and genocide, and there is nothing positive to report, at all. Mr. Dawdy, face it. People in the know like me, know it, there's no money in antipsych, part time's better than no time, how do you think the rest of us deal with this prospect, by bucking up and being a man and stopping complaining at least once a month about the paucity of economic backing for mental health activism. You understand, or at least someone with masters degrees I would say should, completely understand that the only people paying mortgages with money earned in the mental health arena, are the killers, and the only money to be made is blood money at the hands of dipping into biopsych and other pseudosciences. If you want to help on a macro level, as you clearly would, just face up to facts, and do it part time. Life wasn't meant to be fair. Very few of us are born into money. Secure your economic future, don't begrudge having to dedicate time and lifeblood to other parts of the economy in which your labor of love doesn't lie, and just stop complaining, it's getting annoying. Want Ad: single issue fanatic blogger seeks easy street so he can bunker down on the net all day... It's a sick world that makes mental health's future martin luther king figures spend six hours pumping gas a day and gives them only all night and all weekend to blog. Greed is good. Gordon Gekko. Find a part time job. Give us your remaining time. Part time's better than no time. I really don't see how collating freely available mental health news, cutting and pasting it, and adding your two cents, and occasionally speaking to the media or a college, is a full time job anyway... even the freakonomics blogger guy finds time to a lot more than just write a blog. Where's your book? where's your manuscript? where's your documentary film? Where's your grassroots nonprofit and radio show like Oryx Cohen and the Freedom Center guys? You do an ok job, it's valuable, the work on the blog. But if you want a dedicated life to mental health reform, a blog isn't gonna be enough to make you remembered at your funeral as being a force for change. It's a good blog, but it's a blog. Face it, by its very nature, last week's hard won and thought out work is chucked deep in the archives never to been again by most of the traffic, blogs are a weak format for impact. Not just in mental health, but you need an overall message. and to stay on message. You need a web designer, not just some template of rolling posts that you clearly spend time crafting, but wouldn't a central website of your theses and central ideals, and categories, and some flair and graphics, be better? This shit doesn't cost money, you can pirate the best web design software on bittorrent, learn how to use it, and improve your web presence. It's all very fleeting, the spotlight shown on your work, is completely at the mercy of the calendar, and the 'blog model' of information presentation. Information is not as important as knowledge. And a guy who comes online, and even speaks in the media, and appears in person some places, who doesn't even have a photo and a comprehensive account of his actual experiences with mental health, his current views on clear display, looks like a scared anonymous fence sitter really. This blog has no color, it's like the google news health news section, all neatly providing pertinent MH stories, but with a couple of paragraphs of the guy who occasionally shares with the world his desperation to be paid full time for 'writing' in some vague way... why don't you personalize, human face it more, you clearly let neurotic stream of consciousness style stuff get posted every few days... and talk to us like we know you, but we don't even know where you stand on key issues. And to tell the viewer to fish through mountains of ancient archives to divine your views is just not practical to the time poor viewing public. I think if you want reform, I think your blog needs reform, it needs to become a 'website'. It could have a forum, with a life of its own, instead of some sporadic engagement on a calendar date blogpost. If you like staying at home so much, why don't you import a container ship container of cigarette lighters and become an ebay powerseller? Like I said pal, 6000 waking hours in a year, a phd takes 5000. Guys who want donations, and want to subject us all to the vagaries of your experiences with want ads, need to do more than collate news articles and write a brief opinion on the matter and call it a career in activism. And to preempt the undoubted groupthink rubbish that someone is going to yelp at me... "where's your mental health reform career, Dawdy's a mental health hero" "It's all good to criticize" I'd say shut up and watch. My life's gonna be damn impressive, plans are afoot. I'm alot younger than the blogger. Not to mention, it's CONSTRUCTIVE criticism when I offer heaps of free ideas and advice... And at the end of the day, if I was being too incendiary and militant, this won't even get postal approval. As he has done in the past when I have misguidedly wasted my time using his soapbox as my soapbox, which I no longer see the point in doing, as most of you are damaged, and or medicated indoctrinates and half baked 'consumer' complainers who've got nothing to add to this world but blogs encircling your complaints and diatribes about 'side effects' without ever questioning the basis for 'disease' you claim to all suffer. God it's depressing coming here. Haven't in weeks. Mr Dawdy, stop whining about not getting it the way you want in the world of wage slavery. I don't think there's place for someone to be paid a full time salary for what you do. What you do is good. But it isn't substantial, you don't actively innovate, you don't even have a clear position on the issues. You're a fence sitting, half biopsych advocate, heavily invested in disease models, and frightenly bereft of righteous anger at your needlessly wasted years of full cognitive function at the hands of the dominant ideology. Maybe some time off to, introspect and grow, would be in order, a vacation. You're burnt out. We will still be watching when you decide to fully commit. Guys who spend all day mired in the BLEAK world of mental health, end up tending to neglect important things in the other areas of life, such as economic security, just face it, part time is better than no time. Make a long term, life plan, of decades, and stick to it. What are you gonna do? grow old poor as dirt, happy some decent traffic saw the front page of your blog, and point us to archives every time you need to demonstrate some clear progress? eating beans from a can? Go out there, into the economy, time manage. You'd be a fool to continue the way you're going. Journalism is mug's game, it's dominated by an establishment, and so is mental health, you can't have it both ways. Either you're ready to provide an alternative to psychiatry, by showing us your life, and how you recovered, or you're not recovered, and you're a fence sitter... You know what, I'd NEVER do what you've done. That is go online daily with stream of consciousness half decided speculative positions on life and death issues, under your real name, and then let us all know you're some financial cripple asking for a handout with no plan for the future? You're a middle aged man who claims to have had decades in newpapers? with no family or something? where's your investments? where's your savings? where's your skills you can rent out in a realistic way, to come on here and cry poor and blame your 'valiant speaking out and criticism' has made you so radical, that you're unemployable, is just absurd and self defeating, and is clearly most likely a symptom of the learned helplessness drummed into you by psychiatry from day one when you started to think you had a disease... This is a reaction to your inaction, from a smart, anonymous source, who is smart enough to secure his economic future elsewhere, and then thoroughly plan out his future official web presence. You're like those drunk chicks who post photos on facebook and then complain when the employer thinks he wouldn't want to employ a slut. You haven't thought the PERMANENCE thing through... you should take some time off. Put the blog on ice, think about your own needs, not just the needs of the neurotic middle aged women who come on here to vaguely ruminate about side effects and pharma scandals, and helplessly go around in circles after sons top themselves... either you have a clear plan to reform mental health or you don't. If you're nothing but a lowly citizen journalist, adding your two cents to the daily establishment press releases, you'd be better off not letting all these mindless plaudits and accolades from people you get online go to your head. If you really want your life to make dent in something, decide exactly what you oppose and favor, and educate and inform on your alternative ideologies. This whole enterprise is just a mish mash of confusion. This blog, In my learned, considered opinion, is the vague, publicly humiliating ruminations of a confused individual who hasn't figured out the particulars of anything in particular about anything. Anything at all. Big pharma bad. Big pharma buy ads in newspaper, newspaper no hire me, donate to me, or I threaten to leave you, cruel world, without my valuable collating of mental health news you can find yourself anyway, you don't have a clear narrative, I don't think I dislike you, but I think you're a vague, ordinary typical product of long term psychiatry, treading water is a waste of time, the people on here, you could find this 'news' which is just press releases and court reports and factoids, yourself, and I really fail to see any compelling reason to donate to man who has decided to remain unemployed and inflated his own efforts in his own mind, a mind which isn't even clear what happened to it for twenty years, and sometimes, it's just sad to watch. Just get a job. The reason you don't write a book is because you don't know what to say. You have no message from mankind apart from kneejerk reactions to the day's news. There's no substance here coming from within you. There's hours of web scouring, and a close, glazed eye, on the mental health world, but the world doesn't need that, the mental health world needs its complete, and utter, wholesale reform, and many parts of it need complete war waged against it. You're a lightweight and I'm gonna try to come here less, its always the same, big pharma bad, this drug bad, this guy said this, there's no lasting change worth donating to here at all. There are 6000 odd waking hours in a year. The average full time job asks for around 2000. It's true. Calculate it yourself. Social time and family time are not what revolutionaries generally want. Posted by: Bill at April 12, 2008 09:52 AMWell, Bill that was quite a rant. Might you consider what the author of this blog does for others while not typing? Before you judge someone you should meet them. If you think the blog has nothing to offer you with regard to bells and whistles; then realize the blog also does not take away from the topics that some other mental health blogs do that are flooded with ads, and junk so much so that it's hard to find the fucking article. Go ahead and try and come here less, that's the goal of your rant is it not? that you know this site gives you something or you wouldn't be here? Younger than the author? that just proves you are immature and have witnessed nothing in the real world that Philip has, and frankly what I have. Grow up. Posted by: Stephany at April 12, 2008 04:28 PMDear Mr. Bill: I’m going to make this as short and sweet as I can here; since I believe you got so long winded and repetitive enough here for all of us to nod into a deep slumber reading your critique. I actually have no problem what so ever with an honest evaluation on a blog site about its content, creator, and usefulness. Yet, in reading your comment I couldn’t help get the sense that you were not just giving actually critique and advice; but in all rational observation displayed an exceedingly mean spirited tone and theme of judgment underlying the whole text comment.
Sounds like you're doing okay with the outside projects in the meantime despite some of those that fell through. Do what all the journalists who leave journalism do. Go into PR. ;) Posted by: Marissa Miller at April 21, 2008 08:54 AMPost a comment
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