Psychiatric Guesswork
In his book A Dose of Sanity, the late neurologist and psychiatrist Sydney Walker III wrote of the dangers of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, citing cases such as these:
John, a successful and happy family man, began experiencing fatigue and sadness. Two psychiatrists saddled him with a variety of DSM labels and treated him with 26 different drugs without ever conducting a single neurological examination. When a qualified medical doctor finally conducted a thorough diagnostic evaluation, he discovered that John had a brain tumor. Once removed, his “emotional” problems and tiredness rapidly vanished.
Lilian, a 46-year-old normally athletic woman, felt sad and weary. A psychiatrist prescribed an antidepressant. “After all, Lilian had enough symptoms to be lumped into the DSM category of ‘depression’—and that was all he needed to know.” However, in the final analysis, “the simplicity was that her husband’s chronic snoring had been waking her up every five to ten minutes during the night—she was suffering from a severe case of sleep deprivation.”
Another example is Austin, who was hailed as “the poster child for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.” He had been kicked out of 11 preschools in three years for doing everything from shouting obscenities and hitting other children to poking a teacher in the eye with a pencil. He was prescribed stimulants. But after a blockage was removed from his colon, he suddenly stopped terrorizing his teachers and classmates. Austin, who is now nine, was able to sit quietly and was a joy to be around. He gave up the medication. His mother said she never would have thought to connect Austin’s behavior with the chronic constipation he had suffered since infancy. “The bad behaviors disappear as soon as the impaction is removed,” said Dr. Paul Hyman, chief of pediatric gastroenterology at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.
Dr. Walker concluded, “It’s important to remember...that a number of DSM-oriented psychiatrists have, to a large degree, abandoned the science of differential diagnosis, and thus consider most psychiatric illnesses ‘incurable.’ This leaves them with only two weapons: psychotherapy and drugs. It’s not surprising that they’re among the first to leap on each new drug bandwagon; like long-ago doctors who recommended bleeding for every ailment, they have little else to offer....”
