Thursday, July 15, 2010

Daniel J Carlat

Daniel J Carlat, a psychiatrist, speaks of the lack of psychotherapy in his profession.

"Medications don't do a good job of solving basic life problems," Carlat states.

Carlat also speaks of payoffs for psychiatrists for pushing certain medications on patients. He speaks, specifically, of Effexor and Neurontin.

Carlat further tells of "The reality that...since we don't have objective criteria, we don't have a blood test, we don't have x-rays to make a diagnosis, we use these symptoms..."

See video speech and questions:

daniel j carlat, "The Trouble With Psychiatry"

Towards the end of his speech, he says that, regardless of country,"...there's an often cited 1% prevalence of schizophrenia...implying that maybe it's a biological disorder." Implying. Maybe.

Schizophrenia has not been proven to be a biological disorder.

Carlat concludes saying, "We do overmedicate...We haven't tried a different strategy, which is to wean people off the medications, because we haven't been trained to do that."


More, from NPR, an interview with Daniel J. Carlat and excerpts from his book:


daniel j carlat and excerpts from his Unhinged


Carlat discusses the fact that theories of the neurobiology of mental illness are just that, theories. Nothing has been proven regarding a relation to mental illnesses. Though Carlat reveals his feeling that there is a relation to neurotransmitters, he admits that even "the APA textbook authors, utterly unable to tie together these disparate findings, concluded that the 'central question of what variables drive the pathophysiology of mood disorders remains unanswered.' "

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