I didn't have time to watch the video so I'm not sure how extreme the cases mentioned were, but to some extent there is truth in the idea that mental illness isn't "real". Mental health diagnoses depend upon a cultural understanding of normal behaviour and experience, and it is not (at the moment) observable in the way that many physiological conditions are. That isn't to say that peoples' symptoms and suffering isn't real - just that the concept of mental illness is only one way of making sense of it. In the States in particular, many psychiatrists are paid by pharmaceutical industry but many also work in the field because they are compassionate people who want to make a difference. In the UK, the big pharma culture is not perpetuated by practitioners so much, though drugs prescribed will obviously be implicated in that kind of process.
Whilst it is terrifying to think that so many lives are affected by a culture promoting diagnosis and drugs, remember that this is often not the case in terms of individual psychiatrists. A good doctor, whether they work in physical or mental health, should be able to see the pros and cons of diagnosis and work with the patient to come to a shared understanding of what is going on for them.
|