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.
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.
Modern Psychiatry, in league with pharmaceutical and insurance companies, promotes language which advances the idea that emotional “problems” were neurophysiological ‘disorders’.
Lack of curiosity is a dangerous thing–in medicine, therapy, culture. Trump’s manner of speaking certainly promotes “not knowing what you don’t want to know”. He is a disturbing model for over-simplified explanations and sneering at complexity or any level of sophistication or subtlety.
In many professions now, so-called “quality measurement” is the dominant language, reducing, quantifying, and eventually, side-lining the importance of human interaction. This can not be good for us as living, breathing, multi-dimensional beings.
Dave: In my view the depressed person is often the emotionally healthiest or better, the most emotionally adequate member of
Check out this thought-provoking article from The New York Times by psychiatrist Julie Holland. She notes how women are given psychiatric medications nearly
Check out this hilarious piece from the satirical rag The Onion. They discuss the growing “problem” of Youthful Tendency Disorder