Burstow Bonnie - Psychiatry disrupted: theorizing resistance and crafting the (r)evolution

PAULA J. CAPLAN

Activism to improve the way we deal with emotional suffering is essential, and the time for it is now. This books title announces that revolution is needed, given the magnitude of past, current, and unless we act now and act large future suffering.

Many of us have spent decades writing and speaking about the harm done by not all but far too many professionals, but far too little has changed. Let me offer a perspective from my experience, and keep in mind as you read that I am only one of a great many who have tried to impel significant improvements and are saddened by the paucity of progress despite massive public education, and by marked increases in the harm caused by some whose job is to help.

I was at American Psychiatric Association headquarters as it prepared an edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (D S M) in the mid-1980s, thereby falling through a rabbit hole into the realm of psychiatric diagnosis, where I learned of a myriad of problems that can cascade from the applying of a mental disorder label. The diagnostic system is the first cause of everything bad that happens in the mental health system, because labeling is used to justify treatments that are often damaging and destructive. If the powers-that-be deem you normal, theres much less they can do to hurt you. I started a petition protesting two proposed DSM categories that would have been especially dangerous to women. The petition ultimately represented more than six million people, but virtually nothing changed (Caplan, 1995). Decades later, I started a change.org petition called Boycott the DSM : A Human Rights Issue (http://www.change.org/petitions/boycott-the-dsm-a-human-rights-issue), and nothing changed.

I learned from the inside about the enterprise of creating diagnostic categories when I spent two years on two DSM-IV committees, resigning in horror after seeing how starkly D S M -I V head Allen Frances and his cronies misused junk science to suit their purposes and ignored, distorted, even lied about good research that conflicted with their aims. I tried using the power of theatre and created videos about harm from diagnosis, created a website and a Facebook page and a blog, organized two Congressional briefings, and called for Congressional hearings, but nothing changed. I have tried in vain for decades to find lawyers who will file lawsuits against the APA and to explore ways to stop the harm caused by the psychiatric diagnoses in the D S M and International Classification of Diseases.

I organized the filing of nine ethics complaints with the APAs Ethics Committee, describing how complainants had been damaged because of the false advertising of the DSM as scientific and helpful and the failure to warn of the harm it often causes. They summarily dismissed the complaints on highly spurious grounds, with no attention to their merits. Despite dismissing the complaints, they could have made restitution and implemented the complainants many suggestions to prevent future harm, but they did nothing. When four of us went peacefully to A P A headquarters simply to request a meeting, someone apparently ordered security guards to eject us from the building. Five of the complainants also filed complaints with the Office of Civil Rights of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, since psychiatric diagnosis is