Introducing ... Anti-Psychiatry!

From here:

New U of T grant backs studies in 'anti-psychiatry;' 

U of T’s ‘anti-psychiatry’ scholarship is affront to science and could hurt mentally ill patients, critics say

By Tom Blackwell | January 10, 2017 6:05 PM ET; Ottawa Citizen Wed January 11 2017 P.#NP3.

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Field 'does not stand up to scrutiny': prof

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As Bonnie Burstow sees it, there’s no such thing as mental “illness,” no evidence that psychological problems stem from physical imbalances in the brain, and even less that treatments like anti-psychotic drugs actually help people.

But PhD students who follow the University of Toronto professor’s radical ideas have a tough time winning financial support: arguing that mental health care as we know it should be abolished can be a hard sell.

So Burstow has put up $50,000 of her own money and convinced the U of T to back a striking new scholarship – for studies in “anti-psychiatry.”

The university defends the grant as an embodiment of academic freedom, but the controversial initiative is raising questions about just how far that freedom should extend.

"This is a case where academic freedom should be quashed

Burstow says her grant gives new legitimacy to a burgeoning field, and notes that many of the donors — who so far have matched her commitment with another $12,000 — are ”survivors” of psychiatric treatment or their parents.

“When they send it and they say, ‘I wish I could send more, but you’re saving the lives of those not yet born,’ you know that donation meant a lot to them,” she said. “A quite large number are parents of kids who have been hurt by psychiatry and want to see this line of research encouraged.”

Critics, however, worry the university is endorsing an anti-scientific, anti-intellectual exercise – a false attempt at “balance” that could inadvertently convince some patients to eschew treatment and put their lives at risk.

Indeed, the scholarship has won support from an organization founded by the Church of Scientology, zealous foes of psychiatry.

Barbara Kay: U of T’s ‘antipsychiatry’ scholarship — and not believing in mental illness — is an attack on science 

“This is a case where academic freedom should be quashed,” Edward Shorter, a U of T professor and expert in the history of psychiatry, states bluntly. “People will read this and think ‘Well, maybe mother doesn’t need that psychiatrist after all, it’s just a lot of bunkum.’ And then the first thing you know, someone has committed suicide.”

Dr. Joel Paris, a McGill University psychiatrist who does not hesitate to criticize elements of his own specialty, said he was “ashamed” the Toronto institution would endorse a scholarship dismissing the whole field.

While there is much unknown about psychiatry and problems with how it is sometimes practiced, the scientific foundation of mental illness and its treatment is undeniable, he said.

BULLSHIT. Just read Psychiatry founder Dr. Thomas Szasz's "The Myth of Mental Illness!"

“We don’t have an anti-neurology scholarship or an anti-hepatology scholarship. Psychiatry is the only specialty that has people trying to abolish it,” said Paris. “This doesn’t make sense.”

NO, what doesn't make sense are your evasive excuses; neurology (the study of the brain and nervous systems) exists because nerves exist; hepatology exists because the liver exists - but psychiatry isn't a real 'hard' science because the 'mind' is by definition an imaginary construct! Or at least, it hasn't been correctly presented as a hard science until now, because you charlatans are really only acting as high priests and claiming an unearned expertise and authority over other people, to give your selves rights over them without a concomitant  corollary responsibility to educate them all to become self-reliant autonomous beings; in short, you and your kind are hypocrites exactly as are all other sub-categories of criminals   who claim extra rights by offloading their own responsibilities onto their slave-victims, by selling them victimology! 

Unluckily for you and your complicit gangster cohorts, I have actually taken the time to solve these problems, and as such can describe the mind in far greater and more detailed hard-science terms that you could ever have dreamed of from behind the fact-shields you use to deny the existence of any and all universally objective facts in the first place!

But a spokesman for the university’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), home to Burstow and the scholarship, said the project flows from the right of academics to freely research even unpopular ideas.

"Psychiatry’s tenets and claims do not stand up to scrutiny. 

We do not have to begin by trying to prove that

And all disciplines should be open to critical analysis, said Charles Pascal, an applied psychology professor at OISE. 

He cited widespread concerns, for instance, about over-medication of conditions like ADHD,

“The best of us live in a grey zone,” he said. “The best of us do not say black-and-white things about how good any profession is.”

Wow - all the usual and sadly predictable critical-thinking logical fallacies in play here, I see!

"There are no right answers. Since life is too complex for any of us to ever really be able to understand cause and effect, and since all facts are really only opinions anyway, then our entirely fact-free subjective opinions are the diversely opposite equals to your silly objective scientific facts! And furthermore, since we are all so obviously such helpless victims, and we all do it, too, the only real crime should be to accuse other victims of being 'criminals' with free will choices and intentions, just because they commit 'crimes' against other helpless victims, you meanies! We should always go along (with criminal lies) to get along (with all the other lying criminals)! Whee!" 

In other words, Prof. Pascal just proudly confessed to being non-compus mentis, and so ungracefully bowed out of this very serious adult discussion!

;-)

And yet Burstow herself, who has a doctorate in educational theory with a minor in psychology, does not subscribe to a grey area on the topic. She denies the anti-psychiatry label implies any pre-conceived notions or that non-scientists are unqualified to study the area – because it’s already well established mental illness does not exist.

“Psychiatry’s tenets and claims do not stand up to scrutiny. We do not have to begin by trying to prove that,” said Burstow. “I am saying these are not diseases … There is not a single proof of a single chemical imbalance of a single so-called mental illness.”

Shorter and Paris said such statements are simply “absurd,” that thousands of scientific studies – now incorporating sophisticated imaging of the brain – bolster the idea that biology is behind many psychological conditions and that various treatments do, in fact, work.

NONSENSE! There have been absolutely zero instances of any cures for mental 'illnesses!'
And in fact, ALL the scientific evidence goes the other way, in the exact opposite direction!

Morally and legally, rights can only come with responsibilities. "Liberal" crime and hypocrisy is all about avoiding that fact. And not-so coincidentally, so are ALL examples of "mental illness!"


;-)

While controversy in the past often centred around involuntary commitment of psychiatric patients – epitomized by the Ken Kesey novel and 1975 movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – the vast majority of treatment today is voluntary, and institutionalization relatively rare, said Paris.

Even electro-convulsive therapy, portrayed by Kesey as almost an instrument of torture, has won support recently, with research suggesting new, safer versions of the technology can help severely depressed patients who are unresponsive to other therapy.

More bullshit. ECT simply fries people's memories, so they can't remember their fears!

;-)

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