"There is no such thing as mental illness" - Stefan Molyneux

[AnCap Dave]

I've never been one to find an interest in this kind of thing, but Stefan presents a rather interesting case here. What are your thoughts?

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[FSBlueApocalypse]

Sounds like he's arguing semantics more than anything

[Lord T Hawkeye]

Not really.  "Illness" is actually a very important distinction.  You treat an illness with drugs because it's something physically wrong with you.  The reason why mental problems aren't improving is because we're treating it with drugs as though it were an illness but it's not.  Mental problems are something you need to sit down and discuss and find the source of, not just cover it up with meds.

[MrBogosity]

But some mental illnesses--such as bipolar disorder--ARE effectively treated with drugs. And the weird thing about it is, untreated the person could have no problems, no traumas, or anything, be as perfectly happy as anyone, and commit (or attempt) suicide in their next fit.

The brain is a physical thing. If there's something wrong mentally, doesn't it stand to reason that there's something physical as well?

[AnCap Dave]

Here is more stuff from Stefan on the matter of mental health.

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[VectorM]

Ooookey, these videos are not good for my current paranoia 

[Virgil0211]

But some mental illnesses--such as bipolar disorder--ARE effectively treated with drugs. And the weird thing about it is, untreated the person could have no problems, no traumas, or anything, be as perfectly happy as anyone, and commit (or attempt) suicide in their next fit.

I can vouch for that. My girlfriend's mood can swing wildly when she doesn't take her medication, even in the span of a few minutes.

The brain is a physical thing. If there's something wrong mentally, doesn't it stand to reason that there's something physical as well?

The way I was always taught in psychology classes was that it was something of a two-way street. A change in one affected the other and vice-versa.

The way I see it, no treatment method is inherently 'better' than the other. Their value depends on their efficacy. I don't get where this idea came from that taking a medication = covering up your problems with medication or running away from them. Yeah, great, you fixed your depression by thinking deeply about it and talking through it with a counselor for one hour a week at $50 a session. I took a pill in the morning that takes me a second to swallow and costs me about $10 a month (and no, the therapy isn't necessarily temporary and the medication isn't necessarily permanent).

I don't quite have the time to go through the whole video right now, but the little bit I did see didn't instill me with confidence. For example, he fudged the definition of mental illness. Mental illness is NOT simply defined as an imbalance in brain chemicals which can be treated with psychiatric drugs. If it were, we'd have to be a lot more knowledgeable of brain chemistry than we are right now as we can't simply look at someone's 'brain chemicals' and identify a disorder. Disorders are identified by patterns of behavior and thought. Medication is only one among a myriad of treatment options (including varying forms of therapy). He also seems to level the same criticism at psychiatry that others have attempted to level at economics, that its subjective nature (which will be present whenever one studies human beings) prevents it from being a 'real science'.

Secondly, he presents several statistics for the increase in the number of people taking medication for mental illness, being treated for mental illness, etc, then implies that this should indicate that the number of disabled mentally ill in the united states per capita should have declined where it has instead increased. What argument does that sound like to you? If you need a hint, read the antivax-tard comments on any of Shane's videos criticizing the anti-vax movement. When doctors discover a disease/disorder, the likelihood that they will diagnose that disorder increases quite a bit due to the fact that they're now aware of it.

I also wish he'd include citations in his presentations. This one just has a list of sources in apparently random order, making it harder to track down which source includes the information he uses. For one thing, I'd like to know his source for the claim that a 'certain percentage' of individuals on SSRIs will suffer drug induced manic/psychotic episodes, be newly diagnosed at the hospital with a disorder in addition to depression and placed on a second drug, and that this was standard procedure. For one thing, how was his source able to determine that the manic/psychotic episode was drug-induced while the psychiatrist was not? Did they have evidence that there was a deliberate pattern of deception within the Psychiatric community? Were they incompetent? Was it deception on the part of the drug manufacturers? I don't know, because the source is buried in that junk drawer of a bibliography.

Anyway, just a couple of thoughts.

(EDIT: Just had an idea- pause the video and read the slides. So, he first says that a mental illness is defined as a chemical imbalance in the brain, then later says that it's defined based on patterns of behavior, and says the lack of physical tests means it lacks scientific reliability/validity. What other field of study gets this same criticism? Again, economics, another behavioral science. One must try to remember the 'behavioral' part.

They didn't have physical tests for specific diseases at one point, either. Does that mean that the black death didn't occur?

Wait. You mean all that time doctors didn't know what caused AIDS and identified it primarily by the symptoms, they weren't being scientific? Good to know.

I think I'm going to stop here. This is just starting to piss me off. I may be a bit biased. The implication that one's problems don't actually exist is a bit insulting to me.)

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I think I'm going to stop here. This is just starting to piss me off. I may be a bit biased. The implication that one's problems don't actually exist is a bit insulting to me.)

He said nothing of the sort.  In fact he made it VERY clear right from the start that the suffering is very real.  The problem is the condition is mislabeled, not non existant.

[Goaticus]

"For one thing, I'd like to know his source for the claim that a 'certain percentage' of individuals on SSRIs will suffer drug induced manic/psychotic episodes, be newly diagnosed at the hospital with a disorder in addition to depression and placed on a second drug, and that this was standard procedure."

Sometimes bipolar people are misdiagnosed with simple depression and have a bad reaction to depression medication. I don't know why Stefan thinks this means treating with medication is a bad thing. Lots of conditions that have nothing to do with mental illness are misdiagnosed and treated wrong. Aortic Dissections can be diagnosed as heart burn. That doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with taking heart burn medication for actual cases of heart burn. 

[Virgil0211]

He said nothing of the sort.  In fact he made it VERY clear right from the start that the suffering is very real.  The problem is the condition is mislabeled, not non existant.

When you fudge the definition of mental illness, of course you're going to think it's mislabeled.

No, the suffering isn't nonexistent. On that note, the psychiatric profession is full of charlatans who mislead their patients into taking unnecessary medicine in order to profit from their ignorance. That's not even mentioning the fact that the whole of psychiatric medicine is built on shaky evidentiary and theoretical grounds. And now for Ben Stein on the Theory of Evolution...

I was going by the content of his presentation, which seemed rather clear. He can say whatever he wants in his introduction, it doesn't change what he said later. Again, though, maybe I'm reading too much into it.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I think the issue is treating mental illness with drugs as a REPLACEMENT for actually sitting down and talking to get to the root of it.  It's like taking pain killers for cancer.  You might feel better but you aren't actually getting better.

[Virgil0211]

I think the issue is treating mental illness with drugs as a REPLACEMENT for actually sitting down and talking to get to the root of it.  It's like taking pain killers for cancer.  You might feel better but you aren't actually getting better.

Medicating a mental illness isn't akin to taking painkillers for cancer, though. For example, I got off of anti-depressants after a year and haven't needed to go back on them since. I used it as a replacement for sitting down and talking out my issues, and it worked as a permanent solution. In my psychology classes, even the most ardent "depression is a learned behavior that should be treated through therapy" proponent still recommended at least starting with medication. Some individuals may decide that taking the medication in lieu of therapy works better for them, whether due to time or cost reasons. I don't think it's anybody's place to try and dictate what therapeutic methods work best for them. The implication that the entire industry is engaged in a large-scale swindle is damned insulting to both the patients and the providers of the care. If all Stefan has are some statistical aberrations, dubious accusations, and an increase in diagnosis/treatment rates as information and awareness become more widespread, then he has little basis for such an implication.

[evensgrey]

I think the issue is treating mental illness with drugs as a REPLACEMENT for actually sitting down and talking to get to the root of it.  It's like taking pain killers for cancer.  You might feel better but you aren't actually getting better.

That might be the case for some types of mental illness, but most of the types that are treatable with psychotherapy tend to not respond very well to drug treatment, and vice versa.

[Virgil0211]

That might be the case for some types of mental illness, but most of the types that are treatable with psychotherapy tend to not respond very well to drug treatment, and vice versa.

That's not necessarily true either. There are some disorders that respond to therapy and medication, and there are some that REQUIRE medication while some therapy can help the patient to better cope with the disorder (such as Bipolar Disorder and schizophrenia).

I'm sorry if I came off as a bit abrasive in my previous posts. Lack of sleep + chugging venti cups of espresso = irritability, but I've always had a problem with the idea that there was some inherent ethical superiority of therapy over medication. It sounds a bit like that extension of the old 'you don't need psychiatric help. You just need to learn to cope and suck it up.' attitude I've run into a few times before, an attitude that actually resulted in my girlfriend not receiving treatment for bipolar disorder until she was much older. She still has several issues resulting from that, issues that probably wouldn't have developed to the point that they did had she been able to get help sooner. I hate this idea that, when it comes to the mind, the rules are suddenly different. 'Deal with it on your own!' 'Therapy's okay, but medication's just covering it up!' 'Therapy's unreliable, you should primarily medicate!' 'Psychiatry is evil because it's motivated by profit!' How about we leave it up to the patients? After all, for something as subjective as the human mind, different approaches will work for different people. This ethical BS has no place in a discussion like this.

And again, Stefan's evidence was sketchy at best/pseudoscientific at worst. I've enjoyed Stefan's videos on other subjects which were better researched and cited, but this is just something of a disappointment.