Monday, October 11, 2010

The official view about mental illness

I was not intending to be personal about the bloggers on Healthy Minds. Heathy Lives. in two of my previous postings (see link to the first and to the second). The reason I've focussed on this blog is because it's published under the auspices of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It therefore has the official backing of American psychiatry.

I've expressed concern before about the biomedical bias which has developed within the APA (see article). It's not so long ago that the APA was more pluralistic. Although I stand to be corrected, I think the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK would be more cautious about tying its ideological understanding of mental illness, at least in official statements, to a biomedical model.

Loren Mosher resigned from the APA in 1998 saying it had become the American Psychopharmacological Association rather than the American Psychiatric Association (see his resignation letter). Will the Healthy Minds. Healthy Lives. blog allow a debate about this situation? I doubt it, which I think is a cause for concern.

1 comment:

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