Slipping the 'Cognitive Straitjacket' of Psychiatric Diagnosis Psychiatry's diagnostic bible meets the awkward facts of genetics

Ahhh the 19th century psychiatrist, who brought us such memorable (and effective observations and treatments) as--

Dousing Therapy - Drowning as a Psychiatric Treatment

Dousing therapy was initiated by Flemish physician Dr. Jan Baptista van Helmont. It made its way to the United States during the 19th century where it was sometimes practiced in asylums. Dousing therapy involved placing a restrained individual into a tank of water until, in the words of one observer, "bubbles of air ceased to rise." The patient was then removed from the water and, with luck, revived.

The theory behind dousing was that someone who had come so close to death would get a fresh start, free from the psychiatric symptoms that had troubled him or her. Amazingly, the patients that survived the treatment did appear to benefit from it.

Status: The risk of drowning outweighed any potential benefits. The treatment is no longer in use.

Bleeding and Purging Calm the Savage Beast

During the 18th and 19th centuries, cutting a patient's vein to allow significant loss of blood or giving medicines to induce vomiting or diarrhea were common medical practices. Psychiatrists used them to relax agitated patients.

The treatments were indeed calming--patients suffering from severe loss of blood or dehydration rarely had the strength to be combative.

Spinning or Gyrating to Relieve Mental Health Symptoms

Status: The practices of bleeding and purging were abandoned as doctors gained greater understanding of the mechanisms of disease.

Benjamin Rush, an advocate for humane treatment of the insane, had some odd ideas about curing mental illness. He routinely had patients placed in harnesses suspended from the ceiling. Attendants then swung and spun the patients for hours on end. Rush's goals included reducing blood flow to the brain, relaxing the muscles, and lowering the heart rate.

Status: Perhaps some patients did find being swung and spun soothing, but the treatment never gained popular acceptance.

The phrase " barely beyond leaches and bleedings" comes to mind. However "beyond" in that phrase is INACCURATE as well as the leaching and bleeding carries on to this day in the form of leaching public and government coffers, insurance payments, and bleeding out their patients personal funds for "treatments" and drugs which are ineffectual at best and deadly in both short and long term models.

And specifically addressing the notion of "genetics" in psychiatry-if there HASN'T been a scientifically acceptable biological test verifying ANY mental-illness diagnosis to date, how could the tracking of "mental-illness" within familial generations be factually (or scientifically) verifiable?!?

This argument (of mental-illness tracking genetically) is a long held hold over from the 19th century psychiatric staple of EUGENICS. A way to "steer" societal make-up by selecting those "traits" deemed "valuable" or "desirable" and labeling anything NOT falling into those categories as "DISEASED" or negative. You may remember EUGENICS as a rather famous (or infamous) part of Hitler's NAZI movement where physically disabled, retarded, deformed, individuals were gathered and experimented upon. Later, they, the NAZI's focused on gays, indigents, catholics, so on and so forth, working their way through society until the FINAL SOLUTION was arrived upon.

Yes, the idea of genetics in mental-illness certainly ISN'T new-just as neither is it a verified scientific FACT.