Melissa Raven has done us all a great service by sharing this article



It is not just the mental health profession (often overworked) and the pharma industry who are obstacles to a more rational and compassionate view of people in distress, we have created a popular culture which seems set to medicalise sorrow and despair.



We have done a little study with the wonderful Suicide Prevention Network on the Central Coast of NSW. The study  is called "Pathways to Despair" (http://issuu.com/mhirc/docs/mhirc_2.pathways/1) because, however useful it may be to label some people as being "depressed", this can often be another way to hide from the social factors behind such tragic events. A famous and otherwise great doctor in Australia continues to say that 90% of people killing themselves are "mentally ill".



A plea: this study is done on men. I have found an unfortunate resistance even in progressive SDOH colleagues to any suggestion that SDOH is an essential way forward to understand not only suicide, but male health. If you feel resistance to this notion, please exercise your rational and compassionate nature when you read the paper, which is subtitled The Social Determinants of Male Suicide.



John


Professor John Macdonald
Foundation Chair in Primary Health Care,
Director, Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre
University of Western Sydney
Box 1797 Penrith 2751 Australia
061245701123
Fax 061245701522
Mobile 0404008760



________________________________
From: Social Determinants of Health [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Melissa Raven [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 07 January 2012 04:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SDOH] Levine 2012 7 Reasons America's Mental Health Industry Is a Threat to Our Sanity

7 Reasons America's Mental Health Industry Is a Threat to Our Sanity
Drug industry corruption, scientifically unreliable diagnoses and pseudoscientific research have compromised the values of the psychiatric profession.
January 2, 2012 |
Why do some of us become dissident mental health professionals?
….
7. Diversion from Societal, Cultural and Political Sources of Misery
When we hear the words disorder, disease or illness, we think of an individual in need of treatment, not of a troubled society in need of transformation. Mental illness expansionism diverts us from examining a dehumanizing society.
In addition to pathologizing normal behavior, the mental health profession also diverts us from examining a society that creates the ingredients—helplessness, hopelessness, passivity, boredom, fear, and isolation—that cause emotional difficulties. We are diverted from the reality that many emotional problems are natural human reactions to loss in our society of autonomy and community. Thus, the mental health profession not only has financial value for drug companies but it has political value for those at the top of societal hierarchies who want to retain the status quo.
Today, a handful of dissident mental health professionals do challenge and resist their profession’s dehumanizing standard practicies. I know several of these dissidents, and they are the only psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health professionals that I have any respect for.
http://www.alternet.org/story/153634/7_reasons_america's_mental_health_industry_is_a_threat_to_our_sanity?page=entire


Melissa Raven
Psychiatric epidemiologist and policy analyst
Adjunct lecturer, Discipline of Public Health, Flinders University, South Australia
Member, Healthy Skepticism www.healthyskepticism.org<https://email.uws.edu.au/owa/UrlBlockedError.aspx>







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