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Pushing
the Psychiatric Envelope
In June 2000, the
Toronto Globe and Mail ran an article headlined, “The Gap Is Closing Between
Psychiatry and Family Medicine,” which reported: “Psychiatrists are wary
of the unfamiliarity family doctors often show with mental health problems.”
The arti cle quoted Glenn Thompson, the executive director of the Ontario
division of the Canadian Mental Health Association, saying that there’s
nothing wrong with the primary care physician being “the likely first
port of call,” provided the physician is working with a psychiatrist.
The “mental health problems”
to which the article refers are those outlined in the DSM. This contrived
system of diagnosis and the inevitable assignment of a psychoactive drug prescription
is the singular “expertise” that psychiatry has to offer.
Non-psychiatric medical
acceptance of psychiatric thinking and practice may come at a steep price.
Say J. Allan Hobson and Jonathan A. Leonard, authors of Out of Its
Mind, Psychiatry in Crisis, A Call For Reform, “… DSMIV’s authoritative
status and detailed nature tends to promote the idea that rote diagnosis
and pillpushing are acceptable.”
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