It's kind of frightening that views haven't changed in the 40+ years since the book was written. I guess the difference is that they will simply overmedicate rather than lobotomize.
Secondly, closely related to this is the famous Rosenhan experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
The really relevant bit is this paragraph:
For example, one nurse labeled the note-taking of one pseudopatient as "writing behavior" and considered it pathological. The patients' normal biographies were recast in hospital records along the lines of what was expected of schizophrenics by the then-dominant theories of its etiology.
I also remember that one participant had their habit of standing around outside the cafeteria waiting for it to open for lunch noted down by a nurse as "neurotic behaviour around eating and food" and again framed as part of their disorder and used as a reason to keep them there.
Remember though that this was in america in the 70s, and things have changed a lot since then. Partly as a direct result of that study, which made a huge impact on the profession and caused a lot of soul searching. Someone repeated it, I think in the 90s, and they were all just put on pills rather than being committed. The crucial difference being that one can choose not to take pills.
And the same is obviously true of those 'under observation' - psychiatric disorders or not.
I am not sure just how many of my strange habits would be diagnosed under the DSM - but enough to worry me :-)
That is exactly why doctors don't diagnose just using the DSM checklists. Obviously if they did, we'd all be mad as hatters. There are a whole load of other criteria which must be met, for example, the behaviours have to be detrimental to your life or to the lives of others around you. They also must be abnormal within your culture, which is why religious people aren't all immediately locked up and sedated.
I really wish I could remember/find the name of this other set of assessments that doctors make but alas I cannot. Also my knowledge is based on the UK system, where incidentally they use the ICD-10, which is like the european version of the DSM. Things may very well be different in the states or elsewhere.
[tl:dr, they really didn't come to any conclusion]
Why do you say this? From everything I've read I don't think there have been many changes at all.
I admit that they probably bear some similarities in the patterns of procedure and behaviour that take place in them, but they are not the stark, inhumane, prisonlike environments portrayed in that book/film. You're right though, "utterly unlike in every respect" is probably too strong.
So you lack first-hand knowledge, and your argument is easily seen as a biased defense of a family member -- an authority figure, even.
I don't think you're helping your cause any.
Granted letting people fend for themselves on the streets and be poor and destitute through financial marginalization isn't always a lot better.
What blew me away was the effectiveness: it was like rebooting a system. After the treatment an entirely different person came back.
And "effective" by whose measure, anyway? A husband who wants his wife to "act normal"? The health establishment? You?
In reality, clinical depression is a condition that causes great suffering to the patient and their loved ones, and massively changes their personality (to a state where they lose all will to live). It is not something easily misdiagnosed or confused with any state anyone would want to be in.
Any effective therapy will not be questioned by anyone because the patient is too happy about getting back their ability to enjoy life, and their relatives about seeing them turn back into the person they were before.
Maybe depression is a natural state that shouldn't be interfered with. It certainly leads to great works of art and literature. For all we know, it may be necessary for the fitness and survival of the species. It may be a prerequisite to civilization. So now, because society grants a license to psychologists to play God with patients' emotions, and just because you, and they, and even the patients say they're only too happy to be "cured" of their depression, that's supposed to provide a valid mandate for a license to play God?
See if you can answer this question directly: By your logic, is there any reason people should not be lobotomized if it produces a happier or calmer patient?
See if you can answer this question directy: by your logic, is there any reason to cure any disease at all because "for all we know" some may be necessary for the fitness and survival of the species, and some inspire great art?
See, this is why I'd never visit a shrink. But there's always some sanctimonious jackass who thinks he's so happy, everyone who isn't as happy as he is should be doped in the interest of the public good. It's hard to express the absolute loathing I have for your assumptions about my experiences with depression, or your drippingly patronizing tone, other than to compare it with my feeling for other kinds of teetotalers and those authoritarians who profess to know what's in everyone else's best interest. Luckily most of them are powerless and cowardly, and can't get their hands on me or my loved ones to lobotomize.
I love my loved ones the way they are, depressed or otherwise. Since you didn't answer my question, this is the end of our conversation. Thanks and goodnight.
And they were probably just given pills because that's what doctors to do make their customers happy. The "anti-authoritarian" diagnoses are also demand-driven. Parents want a mental health diagnosis to explain why their kids aren't the perfect overachievers they wanted them to be, and then they want pills to make it better. The elastic definitions of mental disorders make it possible for the customer to always be right.
Nothing brings out authoritarianism like parenthood.
The ability to delegitimize an individual's arguments by labeling his point of view a "disease" is a power accorded only to mental health professionals, and the closest historical analogs are the labels of "anti-American", "counter-revolutionary" and "heretic" (and now, maybe, "terrorist"). What these labels have in common is that they not only confer on the authorities the public's blessing to treat or re-educate the non-conformist, they also carry a freight of social stigma and fear of open association that's sufficient to scare other people away from openly sympathizing with the now-isolated individual - making it impossible to determine from that point forward whether the charges were accurate, or if the individual was targeted solely for being anti-authoritarian. In fact, making an example of one non-conformist pays dividends for the authorities running the inquisition, by cowing the rest of the population further into submission, while forcing the most vehement of the other non-conformists to expose themselves in defense of whatever is said to be "indefensible". As counter-revolutionary thought was considered contagious under Mao and Stalin, and as people were terrified to even ask where their relatives had disappeared under Pinochet, so defending a non-compliant individual becomes socially unacceptable once the labels and drugs have been applied. There's no reason to think this principle doesn't operate at the level of psychiatrist and patient, since that relationship (other than the individual's relationship to mass culture through television) is exactly where most people with the financial means to effectively contest authority are actually presented with ideas of what constitutes "healthy" conformist and consumerist behavior.