As I’m going through the past few months of accumulated email (yes, it’s been that kind of summer!), I ran across a submission about a month ago pointing me to a blog entry over at The Trouble with Spikol (also mentioned in a recent blog entry by one of my co-bloggers).

It’s a great entry that rips into a Psychiatric Services article, published by the American Psychiatry Association. You’d think that the peer review process might have found some of the same flaws (some of which are blindingly obvious to anyone who has spent any amount of time actually with consumer groups) that Spikol calls out, but it once again shows the weakness and inadequacy of this process.

The humiliating logical fallacies the authors of the Psychiatric Services article, David J. Rissmiller and Joshua H. Rissmiller, engage in are shameful. The first and most serious fallacy is called poisoning the well, and it’s a popular fallacy to employ in argument when your argument is weak from the start. By using the loaded, emotional word “antipsychiatry” to describe a supposed historical perspective of “mental health consumerism,” they’ve set the stage. Are people who search for and want to educate others about alternative, less invasive “treatments” than electroshock therapy (ECT) really “antipsychiatry”?

Being “anti-” anything is seen as a negative. That is why the pro-life side of the abortion debate in America redefined the original terms — “pro-life” sounds a lot better than “anti-abortion.” And the media bought it. You very rarely hear a news article or announcer discuss an “anti-abortion” advocate or rally.

By poisoning the well up-front, they’ve already set the stage for the argument that this is their field under attack by forces lined up against them.

Another fallacy employed by the article’s authors is guilt by association. By lumping together peaceful, educational groups and extremists who would like to see the end of psychiatry as we know it, the authors place the strong suggestion that these groups all stand for the same thing. They do not. If this were a serious article that examined the detailed and nuanced evolution of mental health consumerism, the authors would not only recognize this distinction, they would call it out and discuss it.

Spikol hit it right on the money and it is sloppy academic articles of this nature that provide future evidence of belief for the psychiatric profession. It’s a shame, because the mental health consumer movement deserves better treatment and attention.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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Psychiatry, anti-psychiatry and mental disease: Does psychiatry suck? | Encefalus (8/3/2008)

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 29 Jul 2006
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