I have read pic related which makes the argument that mental illnesses (if defined as being some sort of genetic illness) aren't real. At best "mental illnesses" are just behaviour patterns developed as defence mechanisms against childhood trauma, or are due to deluded beliefs that the sufferer holds.Depression being "cured" by anti-depressants is used by mainstream medicine to argue that depression is caused by imbalances in brain chemistry. But this is flawed thinking as alcohol also cures depression, therefore is depression caused by a brain alcohol imbalance?Are there any other books that go into this?
The medicalization of psychology is gay and blue pilledSent from my IPhone
>>25236221I appreciate his thinking, I think he has some really good ideas, but I flinched during the part of this book when he can't help himself but to bitch about Canada being "white-men-centric". It's contextualised in his argument that people who are detached from their culture and way of life, and placed in environments alien to them are more likely to develop mental issues, which I agree with, but if only the solution to that problem was perhaps to live in the environments that you are adapted to through millennia of evolution of your ancestors, instead of deciding to break the chain by moving to a completely alien culture and environment. And then claiming that it's the environment's fault, and that it has to change. But to get back to your question OP, no I don't know any other books that address your question.
>>25236221>are just behaviour patterns developed as defence mechanisms against childhood trauma, or are due to deluded beliefs that the sufferer holds.Yeah that's how most clinicians define most mental disorders/illnesses. There are a few that appear to be anatomical and congenital. But sounds like this book just defined the term as defined to argue it's "not real." Thats dumb.
>>25236221this is the guy that's convinced everyone that they're "traumatised".complete fucking charlatan.
>>25236486Agree completely, I think that was the only chapter of the book I skipped just from seeing "race" in the title and just knowing it was going to be a bunch of bs like that, sounds like I made the right decision kek
>>25236489Do you think that's really the mainstream opinion? Why are so many kids with "adhd" and autism put on drugs when they're 10 years old? It seems to me that the prevailing medical opinion is that those two illnesses are assumed to be genetic with the only cure being to pump you full of drugs. Or else attempts would actually be made to identity what kind of home environment was causing this behaviour and to correct that, not just mask the symptoms with drugs.
>>25236221Thomas Szasz - The Myth Of Mental Illness is what you're looking for
>>25236559That sounds like exactly what I was after, will check it out, thanks!
>>25236598No problem
>>25236558Yeah, I do. You should check into a BHU sometime, and meet someone experiencing true acute psychotic symptoms, or schizophrenia. It will really open your eyes. What you described happening to yourself is associative delusion, which can be caused by a lot of things. Grandiosity, a schizoid or schizotypal personality expression, etc. But someone who is congenitally or temporarily psychotic, or is in a state of unmedicated schizophrenia, is not present in reality. They say things that make zero sense, at all, and literally see or hear things that aren't there. It's very frightening, and very sad, to be around. The only thing that mitigates this for these people, are physical treatments, because the issue is physical. Gabor is being very reckless, to play the role of "knowing better."On autism; that's not true. Autism has a spectrum, and for people on Level 1, medications may be introduced to treat particular symptoms, like meltdowns, but they may not be. Cognitive therapy may be applied, or the person may just show resilience, but the disorder itself is treated less as a disorder by this point and more as a different form of brain. Not disordered necessarily or ill. Just different. However autism probably is genetic, in some cases. That debate is still genuinely open.
>>25236621I will concede to your observations of schizophrenia as it sounds like you have a lot of experience.I believe Gabor's position is that people's emotional sensitivity *is* genetic, which can heavily predispose people to developing mental conditions, but the actual mental conditions themselves are not genetic. I believe for schizophrenia he thinks the cause is a highly emotionally sensitive person that underwent so much trauma in childhood the only way their brain was able to cope was to split their personality and detach half of it from reality.He also makes the point in the book that for all the conditions in the DSM there hasn't been a single gene found that can diagnose any of them. Every diagnosis is still done purely on behaviour - while telling the patient what they're suffering from is genetic. Do you have any thoughts on that?
>>25236651I think he is glossing over the role that in utero disruptions play on the way an infant develops post utero. And, epigenetics. Where i can concede to some of the things he is trying to get at, is that in the DSM, many non physical "disorders," are spoken of or treated as if theyre physical illnesses or diseases, like tuberculosis, rather than patterns of negative symptoms in the way a person feels or has learned to cope with trauma or some other experience, with unconscious, habituated patterns that harm themselves and others. This, I do agree with it and it does frustrate me too. A person with "NPD," or "BPD," doesn't have a physical disease in their body labeled borderline personality disorder. They have a series of negative patterns and symptoms that get classified that way for therapeutic treatment convenience. Some of these PDs may have physical components exacerbating them, but they aren't physical conditions, like actual diseases, and they do get spoken of as if thats the case sometimes by clinicians. So, a person with BPD, might have, say, prefrontal cortex inhibition from traumatic exposure. Thats physical, and might be aided by physical means, or restored through meditation, therapy, conscious rehabituation, over time. But the thing happening to the prefrontal cortex isn't "borderline personality disease," it's a brain structure augmented by trauma. In that narrow sense, I agree with Gabor, but I think he is still being too broad and recklessly so. If I understand correctly.
>>25236651Also, you said he's basically talking about genesis of schizophrenia rather than denying that the change ultimately becomes physical; but thats kinda what epigenetics addresses. The potential for schizophrenia is indeed genetic, aka, physical. But, it is true that it can be "unlocked" by various environmental, or psychological, mechanisms where it otherwise may not have been for said individual. Physical, too; there's some evidence that cannabis accelerates the development of acute schizophrenia for people with the genetic propensity.
>>25236667>>25236672Thanks, I pretty much agree with all you've saidI am probably doing Gabor a disservice by condensing all his opinions down to "hot takes" - they actually are presented with a lot more nuance in the book and I think you may actually agree with some of what he says.The book was extremely helpful to me anyway because it was the first time anyone had told me that my mental issues may not just be purely genetic and I actually did have the ability to help myself. Not to trauma dump but my grandpa committed suicide and my mum has bipolar disorder and has been sectioned multiple times and I always felt like I had a shadow looming over me that I was geneticly predetermined to end up with severe depression in adulthood. Reading this book and realising that depression might actually not be genetic but might actually just be the brain creating a completely ""logical"" conclusion to the view of the world you choose to build up in your own mind really opened my eyes. I just had a deluded view of the world and of other people, and when I really became conscious of all the little negative ideas about myself and the world I kept reinforcing every day it was no wonder that the conclusion my brain decided to derive from this that I lived in a bleak and hostile world and should be anxious and depressed constantly.Since becoming conscious of this I've challenged a lot of those negative beliefs and in the past 2 years have become a lot happier and at peace with the world. If I was still holding on to the idea that my depression was genetic I probably would have continued to build up even more negative beliefs and spiralled down to a point where things might be getting scary now. I wish other depressed people could come to the realisation that I did and learn that they have the power to help themselves. That's what Gabor tries to get across in the book. It's not your fault, but you do have the power and the responsibility to help yourself.
>>25236559>>25236598This book kinda suck, no lie. Admirable Evasions is better imo.
>>25236747I am very sorry that that happened to you, and glad that you've been able to find a road to resiliency. You've described metacognition, which does, or can, have an actual remedial impact upon a mental deficit or illness pattern. And you've also described self fulfilling prophecy, which I agree is a big issue in pop psychology. If you're ever feeling like this isn't enough to stop negative patterns, don't be averse to physical interventions like medications; be selective, it is your health. Not the psychiatrists. But don't dismiss them out of hand, sometimes these things really do have physical components. I have a trauma history too, I won't go into detail, and metacognition did help me a lot. But I did not become truly stable until medicated. In either case, if the book helped you to get there, that's good, and I am very happy that you're feeling better. Best wishes to you.
>>25236755Never heard of it
>>25236763Thank youI will keep in mind what you have said
>>25236221Hello anon, medical student here. Most psychiatrists these days do appreciate the role that your upbringing plays in mental illnesses: the idea that they are caused purely by imbalances in brain chemistry is outdated - no clinician worth his salt holds such a simplistic view of psychiatric disorders.There are doctors aligned with the 'anti-psychiatry' movement of the late 20th century whose books may interest you - e.g. Lidz believed that the biological causes of schizophrenia were overvalued and that environmental factors were the real culprit. Other more controversial phsyicians, such as Szaz and Antonucci, criticize commonplace practices which form the basis of psychiatry, such as involuntary commitment and the use of psych medications.
>>25236486>I flinched during the part of this book when he can't help himself but to bitch about Canada being "white-men-centric"Weird, you wouldn't expect that kind of shit out of a Hungarian.
In my backlog
>>25236933ikr, because hungarians are normally so frickin trad and based! pretty out of character for one to do an epic cringe like that
>>25236221>But this is flawed thinking as alcohol also cures depression,>Depression is cured by a depressant.X
>>25236221>MatéTwo charlatans punching way above their weight. They’re glorified slopstack “writers”
>>25236221does this book actually argue that booze "cures" depression? what is his definition of cure if so
>>25236558The thing is that stimulants are associated with wildly positive life effects for kids diagnosed with ADHD. Massively improved academic performance, lower suicide risk, lower criminality, lower drug abuse risk, lower vehicle fatalities, lower all cause mortality in general
>>25236651>there hasn't been a single gene found that can diagnose any of themThis is a bit of a dumb understanding of genetics. There’s rarely a single gene for anything, including extremely heritable traits
>>25238790Would giving kids stimulants who *don't* have ADHD not also produce those same effects?All I'm really hearing is "stimulants improve academic performance" but is that a valid reason to pump kids full of stimulants? We could make autistic kids more social by giving them alcohol.I just don't like the idea that "drug X reduces the symptoms of condition Y" seems to be used to backwardsly justify that condition Y must be caused by a deficiency of drug X and therefore ever child needs to be pumped full of drug X, instead of actually examining why all our children are developing all these mental disorders in the first place.People suffering from fatigue live greatly improved lives when prescribed cocaine.
>>25236486>when he can't help himself but to bitch about Canada being "white-men-centric".>Maté was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944 to a Jewish family.Yeah, fuck this kike and his book.
>>25238824No. There are a number of studies showing that stimulants, especially the ones approved in more medically conservative countries (Ritalin or extended release Ritalin, Wellbutrin), don't have the same effects on people without ADHD. They feel more productive but their lives don't improve, and the quality of work tends to suffer. People without ADHD have their reckless and impulsive behaviors increase, but people with ADHD will show a decrease in those behaviors. You'll see things like reduced fatality from car crashes or suicides. People without ADHD also tend to develop tolerance very quickly and need to keep increasing dose over a few years. But people with ADHD show significantly reduced tolerance factors and can usually stay on the same med for years with only minor changes.
>>25236558I came back to this thread and realized here>>25236621That i conflated this thread with another one that was up where an anon claimed he "thought his way out of" schizophrenia and that it was just associative delusion. So, sorry about that. My other points still stand.
>>25236221>Depression being "cured" by anti-depressants is used by mainstream medicineBut it's not cured by antidepressants. It's managed by them and often poorly. People on antidepressants also still largely exhibit symptoms of depression but without the associated emotional turmoil. They're frequently apathetic and unmotivated. Or worse, antidepressants are often associated with increased suicidality.
>>25239011Welbutrin fuckin rocks
>>25239074Depends on which ones and which dosages. But depression, I think it is poorly understood by a lot of clinicians. Depression is more often a symptom of an underlying problem, physical or mental or environmental, than it is itself an illness. Take a person with cptsd. This person will be, very often, depressed. They'll also often become addicted to adrenaline and rage, bc it is their protective mechanism and one of the times they arent feeling depressed. So that person needs mood stabilizers and norepinephrine inhibitors more than SSRIs or Prozac/zoloft
>>25236486You think too individually. It has nothing to do with him being a woke jew trying to brand you with ideology, his analysis takes into account national power dynamics. Immigrants are pushed to the west to earn a living, escape poverty and destabilized warfare that the west conjured through arming insurgents and strapping their countries with debt, and are pulled with the promise of wealth and assimilating to esteemed culture. Your country created the culture they value more than their own, and you don't want to assume the responsibility of how your nation (really just capitalists) profits from proliferating that hegemonic influence, to not mention the natural resources & labor it keeps of cheap value. I wager you live in a "white-men-centric" nation and think just like every uneducated person on the planet that believes they all fret upon stages and meritocratically barter for fulfilment in their lives, with no idea of who built the stage and gave you your parts.
>>25239136That's every system on earth. Are you arguing that theocracies, communist states, or any other form of arrangment doesnt "build the stage and give you your parts?"Theyre called "normals" for a reason.
>>25239136>Immigrants are pushed to the west to earn a living, escape poverty and destabilized warfareNonsense. There's no war occurring within China or most of India and these two countries are major sources of immigrants to the West. The migrants themselves frequently come from wealthy families that can fund them during their overseas studies which prohibits most of the poorer classes from ever having a chance. Their wealthy upbringing also guarantees they can make a good living at home. None of your reasons make any sense nor do they track with the actual facts about migration. You're abusing a sympathetic minority subset of migration and extrapolating to the broader class of foreign capitalist children looking to acquire a Western education so they can abuse their own people.
>>25236221There is a case to be made here. Like slapping an ADHD label on a kid who can't sit still in a classroom for 6 hours is retarded. Even more retarded is giving them meds to make them sit still for 6 hours. It's really only slightly better than lobotomizing a hysterical woman.
Part of the problem I have with these behavioral claims is that SSRIs work on a very large range of mental illnesses. I can believe depression is often behavioral because treatment-resistant depression exists (and because white housewives love to abuse diagnoses to explain the malaise of doing nothing all day). But SSRIs cured the OCD I've had since early childhood. Within a month of finding the proper dose, I noticed that the behavioral momentum was also slowly coming undone despite not being able to afford therapy. If OCD were entirely behavioral, then I should've been able to overcome it by conscientious exposure to triggers, but it only worsened my anxiety and solidified uncontrollable emotional overreactions. For me, there was some level of genetic component that must've be broken with medication first. >>25239198Unless you work in education, it's wild the amount of denial parents are in about their children. Most educators are aware that kids can't sit still for 6 hours and plan accordingly. But there are kids (teens even) who can't even sit still for less than a minute, whose parents insist they are totally fine despite compulsively their shouting and stimming that disrupt everyone else. And if a stimulant causes a kid to suddenly become quiet and well-behaved, that's a moderate indicator they have an actual attention disorder because it's a paradoxical effect. Overdiagnosis has only really become a problem in the past decade because something about exposing kids to iPads from a young age has really fucked up attention spans and functioning.
>>25239011Too bad I don't like the sound of sniffing because im autistic
>>25236933>>25238839He is an anti-zionist though and calls out Israel for the evil things they are doing.
>>25239248>And if a stimulant causes a kid to suddenly become quiet and well-behaved, that's a moderate indicator they have an actual attention disorderThis was the same excused used for lobotomizing hysterical women. If compliance is the goal, why not just start whipping them again? That's certainly less damaging them psychoactive medication on a developing brain.
>>25236558>Do you think that's really the mainstream opinion? NTA but yes>Why are so many kids with "adhd" and autism put on drugs when they're 10 years old?Because the school system, parents, and healthcare providers (insurance companies) want an easy one-size-fits all solution whose cost schedule is predictable and therefore can be factored into budgets. Most parents also lack the time/energy/patience/know-how to carry out the slow and strenuous treatments for their children's mental "deficiencies".>It seems to me that the prevailing medical opinion is that those two illnesses are assumed to be genetic with the only cure being to pump you full of drugs.Like I said. It's not except for in institutions so thoroughly colonized by big pharma that they treat illnesses, mental and physical, like a matching game. Drug A to disease A, drug B to disease B and drug B-2 if drug B is not available and so on and so forth. It's easy to see why this has become a huge issue in places like the USA. One could also say it's a side effect of mass production and industrialization, we want treatments that can be industrialized for >Or else attempts would actually be made to identity what kind of home environment was causing this behaviour and to correct that, not just mask the symptoms with drugs.You greatly underestimate how much work goes into proper treatment
>>25239412You can use that excuse to argue against all medicine. But the difference is that stimulants are temporary and lobotomies are not, and lobotomies reduce higher level functioning and self-perception while stimulants change reward pathways. Kids can articulate how they feel both during and after the drug wears off. Some like it, some don't. And the kids who need medication the most often don't get it because ADHD is extremely heritable, so you get parents with ADHD unable to recognize that their own behavior and childhood were irregular. Anyway, assuming you're just retarded and not baiting, the paradoxical nature of stimulants is a known phenomon specifically among people with ADHD. A child taking a stimulant would normally be, obviously, stimulated. But ADHD kids who calm down after taking stimulants are experiencing a more regulated dopamine response because their baseline brain does not process rewards and motivation the same way as a normal brain. ADHD is better viewed as a condition of malfunctioning internal reward and satisfaction systems, not an inherent lack of focus. There are non-stimulant medications that reduce hyperactivity by slowing the body--Intuniv, for example, is a blood pressure medication that also often helps those with hyperactive ADHD but can cause excessive sleepiness in those with inattentive or combined type (since it slows the system down). It's usually a first line prescription for ADHD in children specifically because of fearmongering about stimulants. Stimulants are the most effective drug for alleviating the symptoms of ADHD and have been studied extensively. The only downside is the potential for a rebound effect crash and a reduction in height by a fraction of an inch if started in childhood.
