Scientific method in psychiatry

All prescription medications have the risk of being toxic. That is why they are prescription...so a doctor can monitor the effects on an individual. Over the counter medication also can be toxic. Tylenol can destroy the liver. Aspirin can cause permanent damage to the auditory nerve. They are called medicines for a reason. Even natural substances can be toxic like drinking too much water can cause seizures related to severe electrolyte imbalances.

Your belief that your diagnosis was wrong is because you THINK it is wrong? No doctor has actually said otherwise?

You were completely normal leading up to the time they started you on the medications?

Entropy82 said:

I’m at work atm. Yes even without medication or the previous diagnosis I’m living a fulfilling life. I had two psychologists writing to the hospital stating they did not think I have have schizophrenia. The hospital rejected those claims. I seen a registered psychiatrist who’s response was “You do not have “schizophrenia or bipolar” currently working on replacing it with something completely different. As for as I’m concerned everything the hospital psychiatric system told me are pure ideological claims. I do not trust or believe anything they say. And why is it reported that mainstream psychiatric journals have no scientific publishing policy?

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Because it is hard to test. How do I test whether or not a patient is hallucinating...especially if they are in an acute situation? I can't hear or see things that don't exist. I can only monitor and document evidence that people are responding to hallucination. Most in patients don't believe or admit that they are hallucinating....even when they are yelling down the hall and having conversations with an empty hall. I know you don't like the lack of a blood test or an image to prove what is going on in your mind but that is all the tools are that we have at this time. There are also plenty of medical diagnoses that are also given with no lab test or imaging....fibromyalgia is one example.

I'm curious of what your psychiatrist is coming up with. However, most hospitals don't change records which is why you don't tell the hospital that you are "allergic to tomato" because you don't like tomato so they don't put any on your tray and then try to order spaghetti or ketchup. I have seen people lie where they said they were allergic to tylenol and motrin because they were hoping to get a stronger medication and then were denied any medication for a headache because no doctor is going to prescribe a narcotic for a regular headache. Ice packs are all you are going to get.

Since the doctor's diagnosis isn't based on just the few minutes you see him while in the hospital but the sum total of all the charted observations of every nurse, mental health aide, social worker, etc ..., it is hard to say "you are wrong" because the observations of all the people who are charting on each patient are evidence, not unlike a lab report.

In your case, there was at least two incidents that gave you the diagnoses of schizophrenia and schizoaffective. Some cyclical diagnoses a person can manage their conditions and not cycle high or low very often, often with years between cycles. I remember a bipolar woman who had self-admitted herself because she saw herself starting to cycle for the first time in 7 years....but she didn't want to loose her life like she did the last time. She simply needed a medication tweek and she leveled out and went home.

Are you denying that they have any reason to admit you when you were admitted for acute psychosis the first time? You were just shopping for a weeks worth of groceries and someone came and forced you into the hospital? You have never had hallucinations?

Entropy82 said:

I’m at work atm. Yes even without medication or the previous diagnosis I’m living a fulfilling life. I had two psychologists writing to the hospital stating they did not think I have have schizophrenia. The hospital rejected those claims. I seen a registered psychiatrist who’s response was “You do not have “schizophrenia or bipolar” currently working on replacing it with something completely different. As for as I’m concerned everything the hospital psychiatric system told me are pure ideological claims. I do not trust or believe anything they say. And why is it reported that mainstream psychiatric journals have no scientific publishing policy?

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People with mental health diagnoses often can live fulfilling lives.

I don't know that medical journals have scientific publishing policies beyond being peer-reviewed...so the same would apply to psychiatry.

I have been fighting with my doctor that my severe low back/hip pain seemed to originate in my back over my SI joint. He showed me x-rays and told me I was wrong and said it was hip arthritis and that I needed a total hip replacement. I finally found a doctor willing to do an injection that would test my theory that the pain was related to the SI joint. I am now sitting in almost no pain. That doesn't mean my hip doesn't have severe arthritis (x-rays don't lie) but things like pain and SI joint dysfunction don't show up on xrays...and I have a high level of pain tolerance when they take my leg & hip through the series of diagnostic movements. I will still need the total hip but now the pain is under control so that I can schedule surgery on my schedule instead of risking my job. Not all diagnoses have tangible ways to diagnose them...physical or mental health. Maybe you don't have schizophrenia...but at the time, the doctors diagnosed you the best they could based on your own actions and words. Good luck on finding out what is wrong. But that doesn't mean that psychiatry doesn't have merit. Maybe you, like me, had a "look alike" condition...or multiple conditions on top of each other.

Entropy82 said:

I just want someone to answer the question. I would like three references that prove the chemical imbalance theory so I know it has validity..

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1. as said already, science isn't the business of "proving" things. It can only support things with evidence. Or prove them false.

2. as also said already, psychiatrists are doctors not scientists. It's a practical application of medical science

3. evidence to support the "chemical imbalance theory"? give a psychotic person anti-psychotic medicine and it will pull them out of psychosis. Don't give them such medicine and they'll end up with severe brain damage. Science is pretty results based. In the same way, we laymen can know that atomic theory is pretty accurate, because nukes explode.

Entropy82 said:

Why is it people diagnosed with schizophrenia can do better without drugs?

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Assuming the diagnose is correct, that's simply not true.
I happen to personally know a few such patients. I've seen what happens when they stop taking their meds. It's not pretty.

The psychiatric publishing industry actively suppresses criticism. Doesn’t that go against science?

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First, let's see some evidence to support that accusation.

Entropy82 said:

Pretty simple really.. I weaned off slowly through a compounding chemist a year ago. How many years do I have to wait for this alledged brain disease to come through?

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YOU are just one person. And one person with nothing more then an anecdote, it seems.

Statistically, it is well-supported that people prone to psychosis do a lot better when taking anti-psychotic medicine then not.

It's just how it is. Little is known about the condition (and alike), that is certaintly true.
Nobody knows what causes it for example. Psychiatry mostly can only treat / suppress the symptoms but not the actual desease. I think that's partially why psychiatry tends to have a bad name. But they do the best they can.

They can't cure those things of which they don't know how they occur.
That's where the medical science comes in. Researchers are trying to find out what causes it, in hopes of being able to cure or prevent it when and if they find out.

In the meantime, anti-psychotics are the best we can do.

Entropy82 said:

I am done..

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You seem agitated.

I take it you had a bad experience with a psychiatrist or clinic or something. Perhaps indeed even a misdiagnose. However, as another poster has said already, something certainly made you end up in a psychiatrist's practice or clinic. Perhaps what you had merely resembled symptoms of schizofrenia, or even psychosis. That might all very well be the case.

My dad just got out of the hospital. He was misdiagnosed no less then 7 times before they got it right. It brought him to the very edge of being in a coma or even dying. He had atypical symptoms. What caused it was in itself pretty rare. And the atypical symptoms all made sense in other, much more common, conditions. A diagnose is in a sense like a hypothesis that needs to be tested. They started treating for those things and say that it didn't imporve like it had to, so they looked further.

That's unfortunate, but it's kind of unproductive to "blame" all of neurology for it, because it was a neurologist that misdiagnosed him. It wasn't even a "mistake". The symptoms and blood values were a match for the condition he got diagnosed with. With the information available, it was the rational conclusion.

His doctors and surgeons are now actually preparing a detailed case study to publish in the scientific literature, so that other doctors may also learn from this experience.


Doctors are humans. They can be misled, mistaken, ill-informed, brilliant, average,...
You having a bad experience and then, based on that, going ahead and creating this thread... it's kind of like trying to throw the baby out along with the bath water.

Entropy82 said:

This is not about having a gripe with a psychiatrist. I know they are only human, but they are grossly misled by big pharma. I’ve read all my freedom of information files which is a mess. I provided the relevant information to my consulting psychiatrist. No symptoms were displayed on the wards when I was initially hospitalised. They relied heavily on what was alleged by my ex-wife who worked at the hospital as a registered nurse. I had severe night terrors and woke up in a panic screaming obscenities in context of severe sleep deprivation and marriage/work stress. I also heard voices on two occasions, that she reported to them. But I’ve had absolutely nothing since then, that was in early 2011. When I eventually stopped the abilify drug abruptly I had severe withdrawal mood affects but nothing mirroring schizophrenia. But that didn’t stop them. They immediately changed it to schizoaffective mood disorder and dismissed advice from my clinical psychologist at the time. I since slowly weaned off valproate and ability and no symptoms at all. That was a year ago now completed. How many years do I have to wait?

Professor Szasz was right when he said psychiatrists have moved away from the human touch and become like quacks where they talk act and impersonate doctors. They talk about diagnosis and treatments of the brain in which they know basically nothing. I’m not completely anti-drug for some people but they are majorly intrusive with a host of side effects. They are being pushed on people too much and should be given with the greatest of care because they reduce life span by around 20 years. People are simply not told this..why?

I had to find a psychiatrist for a second opinion who thinks outside the box. The rest are too stubborn and set in their ways because of way too much emotional investment into this pseudo-science. You simply cannot reason or challenge these people. It’s a professional delusion because of their own poor insight and judgement.

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I'm sorry, but you are doing exactly what I said you were doing.

You, as in one person, had a bad experience (involving an ex wife even, apparantly) and now you're trying to blame psychiatry in general with the broadest brush you can find.

This is not very rational. Clearly, you are being led by emotion here.

Entropy82 said:

Are you saying I should have not question them?

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I'm saying that whatever you personally went through, has no bearing on psychiatry as a medical practice at large. A bad doctor doesn't make all doctors bad. A bad clinic doesn't make all clinics bad.

And for the record, just to be completely honest here: we are also only hearing your version of this story. We don't have any of those doctors here to hear their version of this story.

This is why argument by anecdote isn't very usefull. Why should I trust you? You are just some random internet guy. I don't know anything about you. You are furthermore the patient in this story. That also kind of puts extra question marks around your "testimony", since you are emotionally involved and if you really did have some psychiatric thing that was serious enough that it warranted hospitalization (and why wouldn't it be....) then any anecdote you tell me concerning that specific time period, is extra suspect as well.

So surely you understand that it's kind of hard for me to just take your word for it, without also having the other, medical, side of this story.


In any case, none of this is really relevant to the point being made.

For the sake of argument, I'll completely accept your story.
Point remains: your particular personal experience, your single case, can not be held up as the complete standard of the entire medical field. Yet when asked for some evidence to support your claims about the entire field, your own anecdote is all you seem to be able to come up with.

So once more: your anecdote does not cut it. Even if your anecdote is completely accurate. Then it only tells us something about that particular clinic or that particular doctor - not about the entire medical field.

Entropy82 said:

Are you saying I should have not question them?

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The mind is a spiritual arena, where there can be battles between opposing parties: the soul, the thief, and God. Psychiatrists who are secular do not understand the matters in that way, instead following alternative philosophies and as BlackRibbon has said, their best attempts are "educated guesses" based upon observed patterns.

It is better to find a counsellor who knows about the spiritual reality and to not let the psychiatrists get an upper hand. As you have seen, they have a tendency to record information against you for purposes of demonstrating a pattern of vulnerability so as to strengthen their case for compulsory treatment in future, and are not interested in your facts that provide balance. I encourage you to study the law that binds them, because there is usually a short timeframe in which you can bring a criminal case against them if you find them breaching the law.

Entropy82 said:

^^^ You raise some interesting points, I’ve been to a tribunal where the hospital tried to force a CTO on me. I abruptly stopped those psychotropic drugs which I admit was not wise on my part. The government hospital went to great lengths exaggerating claims about me in their reports to force me on their drugs. With the help of a mental health lawyer the tribunal rejected the hospitals case. And I won.

In medicine they are dealing with the biological body and the processes of biology, but in psychiatry they are dealing with the mental realm and the processes of mind. Now do the principals of biological science apply to the mental or spiritual realms to everyone? There are groups out there critical of biological psychiatry. Made up of doctors and patients who have been through the system like me. I am part of a Facebook group specifically for others who have a similar story, being off medications. What are the principals that separate science to non-science? If you ask mainstream psychiatrists, they say its medicine therefore biological. From the information I have learned this question needs to be examined carefully and not just something you can just assume to be true for everyone. The majority of psychiatrists around the world are absolutely convinced the principals of biological medicine apply wholly to the mental realm and they will give a full explanation to all mental life. They just apply this to everyone. They just assume all mind and or spiritual issues are reduced to the brain and that’s all there is to that..

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Ignorance does not equip a person in battle, but it might guard their culpability in judgement. The light reveals the true nature of a person's spirit (Ephesians 5:13-14). The health of brain does certainly contribute to our strength in the battle, as does circumstance, insofaras love is stressed by grief, suffering and tribulation (1 John 4:16). So when the brain or the body is suffering, it drains our comfort which in turn drains the fruits of the spirit - joy, peace, love etc. Notice how children bounce back quickly, but grown ups struggle to get back up again .. a large part of that is the love that children receive because they are cute and innocent, whereas grown-ups do not receive as much mercy for their failings (and that is only while the parents are not resenting the children.. Malachi 4:6).

A psychiatrist who has closed their eyes to the knowledge of spirituality is therefore blinded and enslaved by the spirit that has taken them captive to think in opposition to the truth - a deceiving spirit (2 peter 2:18-19). For this reason, with persistence and patience, not giving the devil a foothold (Ecclesiastes 7:9), it becomes obvious that they have errors in their thinking - their error is revealed through their own words. (Use a dictaphone app on your phone). It is precisely because their spirit is opposed to the knowledge of the truth of spirituality that Christianity is (Matthew 12:29, John 18:37), that their treatment of those who threaten to bring light to their misjudgements becomes particularly biased.

.. so hang in there with the confidence you have of the injustice you see, and print a copy of the relevant legislation. Go right through it with a highlighter and you might well be surprised to find that they haven't got as much power in this war as what the public automatically assumes, because at the end of the day, there is an enduring truth of justice, succinctly stated in 1 Peter 3:13, that even the forces of evil are constrained by in the present age.