An Open Letter to Lou Wynne

Abstract

Dear Lou, You and I have spoken often about the damage done to the field of psychology because of its uncritical acceptance of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and its imitation of psychiatry. We've discussed how mainstream psychiatry's insistence that problems in living are mental illnesses explained by chemical imbalances in the brain or other biological factors has produced a field best described as a pseudoscience and a humbug. Finally, we have agreed that psychiatry's reliance on powerful brain-altering methods including ECT and various chemicals as treatments has produced enormous damage and very little real help for those seeking better relationships, more effective ways of living, and the means to be happier, healthier, and more creative people. However, I've just come across a story that reveals just how dangerous, nonsensical, and flat out immoral the mental health field has become because of its reliance on and uncritical acceptance of psychiatry's medical model. I think it is high time that we attempt to redirect our field's basic ideas concerning humanity and the means we employ to help people change their behavior. I feel strongly that we must employ concepts that are totally free of all vestiges of psychiatry and convince as many professionals to join with us in the transformation of the field. The story that has so deeply affected and outraged me involves the death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley who, at the age of 2, was diagnosed as having bipolar disorder and placed on a cocktail of chemicals including clonodine, Depakote, and Seroquel. It appears that Rebecca revealed "symptoms" of a serious mental illness including temper tantrums, mood swings, and being disorganized. It turns out that Rebecca's parents were able to obtain large numbers of these pills, none of which have been approved for children, and keep her heavily drugged with them for the final 2 years of her short life. Her teachers, relatives, and other caretakers were fully aware that she was like a rag doll but were unwilling and/or unable to interfere with this process. The parents have now been charged with first-degree murder, and while the treating psychiatrist has been criticized by some for being aggressive in her treatment of Rebecca and had her license temporarily suspended, her colleagues support her and her attempts to regain her former status. It seems to me that this tragedy represents a new low in the failure to think about real human beings living actual lives in the context of real families. It is also a failure to account for the natural developmental processes that define individuals at various stages of their development. Just how could a child psychiatrist not remember that Rebecca was going through what we refer to as the terrible twos? What level of organization do we require of a 2-year-old, and what is the standard to diagnose? Have you ever known a 2-year-old who would not be likely to weep hysterically one moment and be totally happy the next? Finally, it seems to me to be a total failure of what might be called common sense when trying to understand the behavior of this baby! I think what incenses me as much as anything else is our field's collective failure to rid itself of the use of make-believe illnesses that are in reality bad names used to judge and condemn rather than to understand and explain. Until this is done, psychiatry and its imitators, of which clinical psychology is one, and the huge pharmaceutical companies that provide the chemical handcuffs used to control children will continue to damage individuals and our society as a whole. We will continue to have to fight TeenScreen and other government-sponsored programs that seek to evaluate every man, woman, and child in the United States for mental illness, and to watch as our legal system is further degraded by the so-called expert witnesses who see to it that real criminals go free while those labeled mentally ill are incarcerated without trials and treated against their will. …