| elementalwellbeing.org |
I have recently been fortunate enough to come into contact
with a lovely lady by the name Marion Aslan, who runs the charity Elemental
Wellbeing. Elemental Wellbeing provides
non-medical approaches to mental wellbeing, with a particular focus on the
THRIVE approach and emancipation from diagnoses of mental illness. Marion recently asked me to write a few lines
on emancipation; I got a bit carried away and the result is this piece!
To me, the importance of emancipation from a diagnosis of a mental
health conditions is obvious. I say this
not just because I feel strongly that
this is the case, but also because research evidence firmly supports the
statement. Worryingly, said evidence is not
even a new phenomenon; huge problems with mental health diagnoses were unearthed
back in the 1970s, when Rosenhan and colleagues conducted a brave and
fascinating experiment to see how easy it would be to get themselves admitted
to psychiatric hospitals.
Having reported no other symptoms than hearing a voice
saying the word ‘thud’, all eight participants in the aforementioned experiment
were admitted to their respective hospitals for anywhere between several weeks
and several months, despite acting perfectly normally and feeling quite
well. What got them out was not
convincing staff that they were not unwell, but agreeing that they were and
feigning getting better.
It doesn’t end there!
When Rosenhan came into contact with one of the hospitals after the episode
outlined above, he was challenged to send more people there to try and get
admitted. This challenge was accompanied
by a promise that they would be spotted this time. The hospital later contacted him to boast
that they had uncovered 41 ‘fakes’. How
many people had Mr Rosenhan actually sent, I hear you ask? None.
For me, the Rosenhan experiment is one of the most poignant
I’ve ever read about, and the perfect illustration of the dangerously ambiguous
nature of mental health diagnosis. But
there are other factors that support my argument too: Results from similar
studies supports the above findings, plus there is other research to show that in
a great many cases, one psychiatrist will give a different diagnosis to the
same patient as another psychiatrist. We
should also give consideration to the fact that our diagnostic criteria for ‘mental
illnesses’ are based on nothing more scientific than a bunch of guys at the APA
(American Psychiatric Association) sitting in a conference room and pondering
what name to give to each collection of symptoms that psychiatry deems as
constituting a mental illness.
Collectively, the above points serve to illustrate the very
arbitrary nature of the diagnosis of mental health conditions. To me, this is slightly sickening and made
worse by the fact that once a person has been labelled with a mental health
diagnosis, psychiatry holds them to have a lifelong illness, and it is near
impossible to shake off that label. The
reason I find this so disgusting is that psychiatry will then proceed to deem
every single thing that person does as a feature of their illness, which is
incredibly unhelpful in the process of enabling that person to recover and
achieve a high level of functioning beyond their diagnosis.
To illustrate my point in more detail, I’m fairly confident
that elements of my own experience and behaviour could, on occasions, be
interpreted as signs of ‘mental illness’; something like bipolar disorder. If I challenged you to spend a month or two interpreting
my behaviour as though I were a psychiatric patient with this diagnosis, I reckon
I would probably appear as ‘mad’ as anyone else with that label! What’s happening is that a medical label is
being placed on normal human experience, which I maintain is a dangerous practice.
To me it is incredibly unfair that people should be
subjected to this kind of preconception just because they have had periods of
difficulty and distress, and it would be far more productive to recognise such
periods as transient experiences that can be fully recovered and moved on from
completely.
Many of my colleagues who work in the field of mental health
will argue that there are some patients who will never recover, will always
need medication and will always be susceptible to further episodes of
difficulty, or ‘illness’. My own stance
is that each person is different, and to be honest I am currently unsure
whether I believe this is ever the case or not.
However, to me, even if there are some people who will suffer multiple
periods of distress throughout their lives, surely it is far more helpful to
those people to allow them space to be free from diagnosis and to live
accomplished and meaningful lives? I
feel that the concept of mental illness is an unhelpful and quite inhumane one,
and much prefer to treat people as people rather than illnesses, move away from
the assumption that they will be forever subject to their psychiatric label,
and ultimately empower people (or rather allow them to empower themselves) to
recover and thrive.
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