"If we look at modern physical medicine it has, indeed, made marvelous strides in easing physical pain and saving and proplonging lives. Its achievements must not be mocked or ignored. On the other hand, in its dealings with the human mind and human behavior, medical care has little or nothing of which to be proud. Rather, the history of mental medicine, with the exception of neurology ... has been a disgrace and a continuing story of un- and antiscientific fumbling and bumbling; on occasion it has been marked by outright fraud and malpractice. ... In many ways American psychiatry has gone backward rather than forward."
Anyone seeking help for a mental problem has one of three choices: talk, pills, or a combination of both. Psychotherapy, or professional "talk", is terribly expensive and, in the long run, is usually no more effective than discussing your problems with your friend, minister or bartender. As for pills, you're better off without them. Period.
Dr. Robert A. Baker, a retired psychologist, warns us that we and we alone are responsible for our mental health and that the professional "talk" and "pill" therapy provided by psychiatrists and psychologists seldom brings about any "cures" or other desitable, lasting changes in our behavior. Moreover, many current psychotherapeutic methods and treatment techniques can be dangerous to your mental and physical well-being, leaving you worse off than you were before. As for the "mind pills", all - without exception - have numerous, varied, and unpleasant side effects. Some of these drugs are so toxic they can produce permanent physcial and mental damage to the brain and other organs, and several have been linked to suicide and even murder.
Baker also warns about the dangers of "iatrogenesis", mental disorders caused by the shrinks themselves in their misguided efforts to help and heal. So-Called clinical depression and the wholly iatrogenic disorders Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) have become the new, in vogue "illnesses" of the decade. Baker clearly demonstrates, however, that these "ailments", if they are present at all, are the creations of overzealous, misinformed therapists eager to slap medical labels on unsuspecting patients with emotional (not medical) problems.
In our present era of the "Physician-Insurer-Drug Company Complex" and unaffordable health care, we must learn to take steps to help ourselves and give up entirely our delusion that psychiatry can provide some kind of magic cure for the anxieties and depressions common to everyday life. Mind Games: Are We Obsessed with Therapy? gives us concrete ways to do so.
Robert A. Baker, Ph.D. is professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington and is a Fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). He has authored over a dozen books, including They Call It Hypnosis and Hidden Memories, and his professional career as a military, industrial, forensic and clinical psychologist has spanned forty years.