Are Psychological Diagnoses Valid Diseases?
Or are they social constructs?
Answer: So called “mental disorders” are social constructs that are voted on in committee.
“There is no evidence for mental illness or disorder as a biological fact rather than as a social construct.” — Wayne Ramsay, J.D., Does Mental Illness Exist?
It might surprise you to know that there are currently no genetic, biological, chemical or other physical tests of any kind that can determine the presence or absence of any mental disorders. The diagnosis of a “mental disorder” is based on the subjective evaluation of someone’s behavior.
Quite often, psychiatrists prefer to talk about a mental disorder, rather than a mental illness or disease, which is because psychiatric diagnoses are social constructs…. psychiatrists have blown life into a social construct that is nothing but a variation of normal behavior and have given this construct a name, as if it existed in nature and could attack people.
— Dr. Peter Gotzsche, Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial
We need to de-medicalize our language to assert that emotional problems are not a medical disease. Yes, people suffer from emotional distress that we can label anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. But these are not medical diseases. And no biochemical or genetic cause has ever been found. None.
Mental illness is a metaphor (metaphorical disease). The word “disease” denotes a demonstrable biological process that affects the bodies of living organisms (plants, animals, and humans). The term “mental illness” refers to the undesirable thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of persons.
Classifying thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying the whale as a fish. As the whale is not a fish, mental illness is not a disease.
Individuals with brain diseases (bad brains) or kidney diseases (bad kidneys) are literally sick. Individuals with mental diseases (bad behaviors), like societies with economic diseases (bad fiscal policies), are metaphorically sick. The classification of (mis)behavior as illness provides an ideological justification for state-sponsored social control as medical treatment.
—Thomas Szasz “Myth of mental illness”
Great Videos to Go Deeper
Below are some video clips and documentaries that explore the fraud and deceit of psychological diagnoses. We share these so that you can educate yourself and discover drug-free solutions that do work.