Let's get this straight. Classic manic-depressive disorder was identified by Emil Kraepelin in the late 19th century, after years of observing asylum admissions. He was motivated to differentiate it from schizophrenia, to provide family members a reliable prognostic picture. /1 This disorder has been found in many cases to be peculiarly responsive to lithium, a natural element--not a patentable medication. It was renamed bipolar I disorder by the APA, our trade organization, at the same time that they introduced bipolar 2 disorder--a vague catch-all /2

I've been practicing psychiatry for 38 years. I love my job, my peers, and my patients. But I've come to the conclusion that I'm participating in the biggest intellectual scam of this era. We claim to be a science, but have no understanding how thought or behavior is generated./1 Many billions of dollars are spent each year in an industry built on a corrupt body of pseudoscience, cultivated and exploited by monied interests for decades. This scientific fraud has been more successful than any other of our day. Our diagnoses are contrived by our guild, /2

@ProfRobHoward @balfe_robert @dranniehickox @jonathanstea @SameiHuda The point is HUMILITY. Biological psychiatry has taken a small amount of information about the most mysterious and complex thing that we know of—the brain-mind—and run with it, to the utter neglect of ALL THAT WE DON’T KNOW. Hence a 30 percent increase in suicide in the US, 1/ @ProfRobHoward @balfe_robert @dranniehickox @jonathanstea @SameiHuda while more people are receiving psychiatric treatment than ever before. This finding suggests that our psychiatric treatment model might just be shit. And rather than defending this simplistic, obviously corrupt corporatist model of treatment, we should be soberly examining it 2/

On the news yesterday saw a psychologist going on about the “rise in mental health disorders” associated with the COVID-19. Although sympathetic toward the stress the pandemic is causing, I can’t abide the pathologizing of healthy human feelings associated with this real-world threat. We have fallen into this twisted trap of believing life should ALWAYS be safe, convenient, and pleasant—which is why when we go through divorce, death, or growing pains we ascribe our negative feelings as a mental disorder that requires intervention. Grief, pain, anxiety,