As a holistic psychologist, I am quite fortunate to work with children, teens, adults and couples as they work to strengthen various areas of their lives, whether quieting ineffective thoughts and replacing them with positive self statements, learning new behaviors and ending unsuccessful behaviors, accessing and regulating emotions or healing from recent or longstanding trauma. In my work with clients, I do this using comprehensive body based and brain based approaches usually missed by many practitioners. For example, appropriately credentialed health coaches or yoga instructors are taught to help people heal by entering the body, they do not have the required training to integrate cognitive or brain based approaches. Likewise, many mental health practitioners work to help clients resolve the same trauma or negative experiences through cognitive based or talk based therapy. In reality, neither in isolation is enough. There is now definitive research to suggest that the mind (brain) and body are inextricably tied and must both be integrated into meaningful healing. To do so effectively and responsibility takes significant training and experience. With that in mind, I recently found a few articles that, in different ways, begin to speak to this critical point.
In the article, “Can Psychiatry Heal Itself?” John Horgan discusses a Harvard historian’s position that psychiatrists need to focus more on helping people and far less on making money. He focuses on “Mind Fixers: Psychiatry’s Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness” by historian Anne Harrington. What immediately struck me about Horgan’s post was the decision to choose a piece that is in fact very metered in its criticism of psychiatry in comparison to the positions laid out by other authors. As a psychologist, I found Harrigan’s indictment of this arena quite startling and damning for precisely this reason.
The post by Horgan provided a brief meandering through the field of psychiatry, noting that the “psychobable” of Freud was to be replaced by good biological theories of and treatment for the brain. Meaning what? You guessed it…drugs. Thorazine, Valium, Lithium, and Prozac were touted as bringing psychiatry into a truly scientific discipline. However, in her work, Harrington stated that this narrative is clearly false. I do agree with Harrington’s position that the bio-psychiatry of the 1980s and 1990s “over-reached, over-promised, over-diagnosed, over medicated, and compromised its principles.”
In her book, Harrington outlines the history of the development of psychiatry and, through its failures, the opening for psychoanalysis. As a psychologist practicing in the 21st century, I have nothing to say on the later account. In my view, psychoanalysis has long been irrelevant and not worthy of discussion here. I can see, however, why modern bio-psychiatrists are Harrington’s current target. As prescriptions for psychiatric medications have soared over the past few decades, their limitations have become abundantly clear. While appropriate and effective use is, in reality, limited in comparison to the ever rising prescription rate, the adverse side effects, including weight gain, addiction, agitation, and suicide itself , really beg the question, is this worth it? Harrington clearly believes not. And, in many cases, so do I.
It seems that some psychiatry insiders are also saying that the answer to this question may be no. I was heartened to read the transparency that Steven Hyman (Director of the National Institute of Mental Health from 1996-2001) and Thomas Insel (Director of the National Institute of Mental Health from 2002-2015) display by maintaining that psychiatry has not moved the needle in a positive direction to help those millions struggling with mental illness, whether by reducing suicide rates, hospitalization rates, or improving recovery overall.
Harringtons”s book concludes with a number of calls to action, if you will, for modern psychiatry, including:
- to admit its mistakes and its tendency to follow the money instead of the human suffering
- to overcome its reductionist view and meaningfully collaborate with social scientists and scholars in the humanities
- to listen more carefully to self described “survivors,” or those successful in mental health treatment
- to focus on severe mental illness and allow psychologists to treat the “worry well” that does not need medication
I agree with Harrington, who states that this last step requires tremendous professional ethics and courage on the part of psychiatrists. It is asking them to focus on the appropriate patient, thereby slashing their market share and their income. So, where does that leave you, you might ask? Well, as psychiatry works to fix itself, or not, be encouraged that holistic psychologists work to assist you in changing your physical activity, looking at quality and quantity of food intake relevant to quieting symptoms of depression, anxiety, or inattentiveness, and integrating body based approaches to change and healing. While medication is, of course, needed and valuable in some instances, for most the battle cry really must be “Mind Fixers, find an experienced holistic psychologist and fix yourselves!”
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/can-psychiatry-heal-itself/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-food-that-helps-battle-depression-1522678367?mod=e2fb