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Diagnostic
Deception
What constitutes a true science? Ed Bulkley, in Why Christians Can�t Trust
Psychology, emphasizes that it is the systematically arranged knowledge
of the material world which has been gathered in a four-step process: 1) observation
of phenomena; 2) collection of data; 3) creation of a hypothesis or theory by
inductive reasoning, and 4) testing of the hypothesis by repeated observation
and controlled experiments. It should be workable and invariably right.
Do psychiatry and psychology pass the test? The answer is categorically no.
Webster�sdictionary defines fiction as �anything made up or imagined.�
Anyone reviewing psychiatry�s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM) and the mental health section of the International Classification
of Diseases (ICD, tenth version) would find it difficult to place these
texts in any other category.
Dr. Thomas Szasz, says: �If an �illness�� is to be �scientifically meaningful,
it must somehow be capable of being approached, measured or tested in a scientific
fashion, as through a blood test or an electroencephalograph. If it cannot be
so measured�as is the case [with] � �mental illness��then the phrase �illness�
is at best a metaphor � and that therefore �treating� these �illnesses� is an
� unscientific enterprise.�
Canadian psychologist Tana Dineen says, �Unlike medical diagnoses that convey
a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders
listed in DSM-IV [and ICD-10] are terms arrived at through peer consensus��a
vote by APA committee members. In other words, there is no objective science
to them.
Christian author and former psychologist Lisa Bazler stated in 2002, �We cannot
consider psychology � a scientific discipline � the therapist and psychiatrist
[can] not objectively measure and analyze the causes and cures of anxiety with
statistical repeatability as a doctor and patient could measure and analyze
the causes and cures of a broken ankle.�
Clinical psychologist Ty Colbert says that in order to adopt psychiatry�s
biological model, one has to �believe in a materialistic, non-spiritual world
� the medical model claims there is no mental activity that is due to the spiritual
dimension. All activity, even one�s religious beliefs or the belief in God,
are nothing more than the workings of the brain.�
The only evidence, he says, that makes mental illness a disease �are the symptoms
used by professionals to label someone mentally ill. But the symptoms used to
diagnose someone as mentally ill (despair, hopelessness, sadness, anger, shame,
guilt �) are not biological markers. There is no evidence that these expressions
are physical in nature. They all point to a hurting soul.�
Today, there is hardly a problem in life that has not been diagnosed: the child
who fidgets or is overzealous at play is �hyperactive�; if the child refuses
to take the mind-altering psychiatric drugs, that�s �non- compliance with treatment�;
the person who gives up drinking coffee has �caffeine withdrawal.� If a child
has a low math score, it�s a �mathematics disorder.� If he or she has problems
composing expressive written text or has poor paragraph organization, this is
not, by psychiatric standards, a problem a teacher should correct but a �disorder
of written expression.�
In a 1989 study entitled �Religion and Guilt in OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder]
Patients,� it was hypothesized that religion, through its stringent morality,
tends to drive people insane. The authors concluded: �� [O]bsessive-compulsive
pathology was significantly and positively correlated with degree of religiosity.�
As the ultimate in irony and arrogance, psychiatry�s latest DSM-IV
and ICD-10 include religion as a new category of mental illness: �V.62.89�
(DSM-IV) and �Z71.8� ( ICD-10) covers �religious or spiritual
problems.� Not only have psychiatrists audaciously pathologized Jesus Christ,
they are now affixing the mental disorder label to religion in general.
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