Beyond the Medical Model: Renewing the Promise

Abstract

Jonathan Leo, PhD, has retired as coeditor of Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry to pursue exciting new academic and scientific ventures. We wish him well and thank him for all of the considerable time and effort he has expended in keeping EHPP the beacon of light that it is in a field that is increasingly moribund, intellectually fractured, and ethically challenged. Psychologist Louis Wynne, PhD, has joined with Laurence Simon, PhD, as coeditor, and with this changing of the guard we thought it appropriate to evaluate our past achievements and suggest new and different paths we might tread. It seems to us that an examination of our success as "the scientific conscience of psychiatry" points to the direction we should take if we are to continue giving ourselves such a lofty title. What have been our successes as a scientific journal, concerned as we are with the normative behaviors of our field, and what do these achievements demand with regard to future goals? In the 8 years of EHPP's existence we have convincingly demonstrated the following: 1. There is no genuine, replicable scientific evidence that any of the diagnoses in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), including psychiatry's sacred symbols, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are medical diseases caused by any biological and/or genetic factors. Indeed, the articles we have published strongly suggest the opposite. 2. The biogenetic model of mental disorders that now dominates the mental health field is largely a fiction created by psychiatry and supported by the massive pharmaceutical companies whose main goal is the sale of psychiatric drugs. 3. The pharmacopeia of drugs and other methods of changing brain functioning, such as electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery, that now comprise the dominant treatment of the ever-growing list of disorders contained in the DSM are far less safe and effective than is claimed by mainstream psychiatry and its patrons in the drug companies. Indeed, the work of Peter Breggin, MD, and others strongly suggests that these medicines operate by disabling normal brain functioning, that they are addictive, that they often involve severe withdrawal problems, and that they produce side effects including increases in psychoses and even suicidal and other forms of aggressive behavior. 4. We have shed light on many supposedly scientific publications whose results fail the test of established scientific procedure. These failures have resulted from the dismantling of the necessary firewall that must be maintained between the needs of science and those of the marketing departments of corporations. 5. We have evaluated the advertising of the drug companies concerning the claims for safety and effectiveness made for a variety of "miracle" drugs sold to the consuming public. In addition, we have dismissed claims regarding the "etiology" of psychological problems, advertised as "serious medical problems" that are allegedly no different than diabetes, heart disease, or other conditions that involve known biological abnormalities. 6. We have provided ample evidence that the suffering of those labeled mentally ill and disordered seems best ameliorated, or at least not worsened, by psychotherapy and other forms of psychosocial interventions. 7. We have addressed serious difficulties created by mainstream psychiatry that relate to the political climate in our society. Profound issues of civil liberty are raised by forced hospitalization, home care, and treatment as well as problems involving informed consent, especially where children are concerned. The call by politicians, with the complicity of psychiatry and the massive economic support of drug companies, for the universal screening of our citizenry for mental illnesses and disorders is perhaps one of the most serious challenges to our democracy. A number of interesting questions arise from this list of what we have demonstrated, and it is these questions to which we invite responses to be published in EHPP. …