“While psychiatrists everywhere are doing their best to help people, their profession is in crisis”.
John Read, Olga Runciman, Jaqui Dillon.

The DSM “deals in categories, not in pain”
– Dan Siegel MD, Psychiatrist

There are, of course,  a great many individuals who do try and when they have some small measure of success it seems they do so because they somehow manage to retain their humanity despite not because of their training and the systems within which they work

It takes about eight years to train to become a psychiatrist yet, it seems, the training they receive leaves them ill-equiped  to understand and work with humans in distress.

The training is too often more to do with assigning people to categories and then practising the many subtle and not so subtle ways of coercing people into believing they are the problem than it is about helping people heal. 

And the same is trie of the other professions and institutions builded upon the same assumptions and that focus on correcting and managing perceived deficits within an individual’s biology and behaviour.

The word “psychiatry” means “soul healing” yet much of the time, it seems, the institutions of psychiatry and those who follow their teachings are those with both the least interest in and least ability to help us heal our wounded souls.

Read, J., Runciman, O., & Dillon, J. (2016). In search of an evidence-based role for psychiatry. Future Science OA, 2(1). doi:10.4155/fsoa-2015-0011

Related:

•  In Search of an evidence-based role for psychiatry  http://www.future-science.com/doi/pdf/10.4155/fsoa-2015-0011