In our supposedly modern, technologically advanced society, everyone from politicians to scientists to your local doctor want an “easy fix” to mental health problems.
There isn’t a truly scientifically-based test for issues concerning your mental or emotional wellness. Any issue you have is literally subjective to the doctor or therapist you’re talking to at the time. Their diagnosis (and therapies) can vary wildly from person to person.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is considered the “bible” of psychiatry. It lists several hundred conditions that have no practical, real-world system of testing that proves or disproves any of them.
No blood work, x-rays, brain scans, urine specimens, or biological samples beneath a microscope can definitively prove the existence of these disorders and conditions.
Yet they treat a patient anyway! Without knowing the cause or scope of the problem, they treat based on their personal interpretation of what a patient (or loved one) tells them. No aspect of your health – physical or mental – should ever be based on opinion.
In the realm of mental health problems, subjectivity is how things operate. One doctor might diagnose you with depression while another determines you suffer from bi-polar disorder and another still tells you the issue is attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Misdiagnosis is shockingly common in the field of psychiatry.
-Without a scientific test that leaves no doubt that “this is the condition you have,” it falls to human imperfection again and again.
-Mental health professionals are influenced by the latest “popular” disorders in the news and medical journals (which are often dictated by the pharmaceutical industry).
-They guess the diagnosis based on faulty patient information (patients aren’t always reliable) and without much time devoted to a visit.
In case you’re still not convinced of the ridiculous guessing game that is used to address mental health problems, there’s more.
The Psychiatry journal published a study that analyzed patients with bi-polar disorder. Their data found that 69% of patients with the condition were misdiagnosed when they sought care and more than 30% didn’t receive the correct diagnosis for more than 10 years!
After guesses are made about a patient’s mental health based on what the patient says and the doctor interprets, therapies are determined.
This is where things get interesting. By “interesting,” I mean irresponsible and barbaric.
The “therapies” supposedly intended to help men, women, and children who are mentally ill have included some truly terrible techniques. Even the worst of them are still used in the United States and Great Britain.
- Powerful, toxic chemicals (including SSRIs)
- Electroshock convulsion treatment
- Lobotomies
Though they have no real-world diagnostic tests to determine the cause or extent of mental health problems, these people perform treatments that irreparably destroys brain tissue and permanently alters how basic cognition works.
To the point that patient quality of life is forever affected.
Physical Conditions that Manifest in Mental Health Problems
My biggest problem with mainstream medicine (in every field) is the refusal of doctors and scientists to treat the whole patient. They determine symptoms and apply simplistic thinking to resolve them…without ever getting to the cause.
Mental illness can be caused or worsened by…
- Rampant inflammation
- Food intolerance or allergies
- Heavy metal contaminants
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Hormone imbalances
- Traumatic injury
- Unknown parasites and pathogens
Do you see the obvious solution so many ignore? Address the physical problems first! Exhaust every option that can be scientifically studied with existing tests.
Will it resolve every mental health problem? No, of course not, but I’d bet a lifetime of medical knowledge and basic common sense that it will garner far more positive results than the guessing games mental health professionals use now!
The world doesn’t need a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of theoretical disorders. We need a book of root causes.
It’s time to treat the mind, body, and spirit as one entity – because it is – rather than ignoring two out of three and guessing at the third.
So few people with mental health disorders seek the help they desperately need. There is a better way…and it involves addressing physical health as well as mental health.