A Therapeutic Space for Individuals, Couples, and Families
“Chemical Imbalance” has become a generally accepted way to think about psychological conditions like depression and anxiety. But David Keith offers another perspective: In fact, emotional problems may be a sign of mental health.
Good physicians take a clinical history in the interest of arriving at a diagnosis. While the clinical history is a review of ‘facts’, there are in fact, few ‘facts’ about human experience. Different examiners will get different histories depending upon what they ask about. Different family members give different reports of the same set of events. In my view clinical histories are a form of fiction pretending to be ‘objective’.
The idea of being “ruthless” sounds jarring at first, until we realize how it’s an essential ingredient in healthy living, both personally and professionally. It speaks to how we maintain our integrity in the face of demands for conformity.
Dave offers his reflections about what it’s like to be a psychiatrist disguised as a family therapist. Hint: The language is different, and no medications required
This Family Medicine hospital consultation involved a mute patient who had just had her leg amputated. The hospital staff was angry at her. Then this young doctor took the time to learn what was going on and everything changed.
Part of the appeal of the “chemical imbalance” metaphor is that it people don’t have to feel ‘guilty” about their depression, or problems with their kids. But it can keep both patients and therapists from getting to the all-important bottom of things.
The logic of “chemical imbalance” persuades both patients and practitioners that context and subjective experience are not important. But that logic interferes with the understanding the person’s pain, and what it’s made of.
Check out this Op-Ed from The New York Times by Internal Medicine physician Danielle Ofri. She cites a recent Canadian study which shows that empathic, caring conversation from their physical therapists actually reduced the patients’ pain more than a medical procedure designed to treat their condition.
There is no chemical imbalance. At least there is none that can be measured or quantified. “Chemical Imbalance” is a persuasive metaphor used by psychiatrists, physicians and drug companies to convince people to take medication.
Modern Psychiatry, in league with pharmaceutical and insurance companies, promotes language which advances the idea that emotional “problems” were neurophysiological ‘disorders’.