panic attacks
By shag carpet bomb • May 18th, 2010 • Category: Books & Book Reviewsjeffrey fisher wasn’t too keen on the books i was reading last year since both exposed the faulty research behind various drugs, from drugs to treat heart burn to anxiety attacks to heart disease. jeffrey mentioned having taken medication for anxiety/depression, that they’d helped him, etc. a few weeks ago, though, jeff wrote to tell me that he’d said “fuck it” to d xanax after reading When Panic Attacks by David Burns. I immediately placed it on interlibrary loan, assuming it was like the other books I’d read. this one is more a self help book, though. Still, I was really interested in his discussion of how fucked up DSM IV diagnostic criteria are - because they are vague and created by people. Burns says something that, had I said it, I would have been crucified at the list! :)
“GAD [generalized anixety disorder] isn’t a real disease in the same sense pneumonia is a real disease. Worrying exists, but GAD doesn’t Shyness exists, but social anxiety disorder doesn’t.”
A few paragraphs later:
“I want to be clear about what I’m saying because I don’t want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
* Anxiety and depression are real
* These feelings can be painful and disabling
* People who struggle with anxiety and depression deserve treatment
* New, effective, drug-free treatments now xist, and the prognosis for full recovery is outstanding
*It’s not necessary or desirable to transform these feelings into a series of “disorders” or “brain diseases” in order to deal with them effectively.”
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I happen to be reading Thomas Szasz’ classic “The Myth of Mental Illness” at the moment - definitely worth a read if you haven’t. He articulates the epistemological gloss at the heart of the medicalization of suffering well, as well as its role in social (and therefore political) coercion.
yeah. I’ve been meaning to bring Szasz’s work up here and at LBO. I think I did bring it up at LBO once, years ago, or maybe someone else did. At any rate, the folks on the list who bristle at the sociological perspective on mental illness pretty much freaked out. I once brought up the social construction of alcoholism, particularly the way AA creates a disease model of alcoholism and uses social coercion to maintain and naturalize it as a disease. Woah. That totally pissed off a number of people who’d been helped by AA who were certain the critique of the disease model was some kind of attack on them personally. If you’re ever interested in an extension of Szasz’s work as it pertain to AA and alcoholism, David Rudy’s _Becoming alcoholic: Alcoholics Anonymous and the reality of alcoholism_, is pretty good.
ah.. looked it up. ON LBO, Szasz got trashed at a libertarian right winger.
Well, I think this author deserves to be “crucified” for it as well. This is one of the most frustrating as hell points of misunderstanding about mental illness. Depression, anxiety disorder, etc., are not just FEELINGS. The best way I can describe depression, for example, is an ABSENCE of feelings. Inertia. And as for anxiety, I still don’t have the words to describe it accurately. I think it truly is something that if you have not experienced one of these mental illnesses, you just can’t understand it. And I for one am sick and tired of saying this same tired old refrain over and over again and having my experience minimized and rewritten for me.
I’d like to second everything that Amber said.
Having actually been there suffering from depression, I can assure you that understanding it as being an illness or disease, with physiological and neurological causes and effects, was very helpful indeed in enabling me to deal with the emotional dimensions of it (which, as Amber describes, come closer to a deadening and devastating inertia and absence of feeling than anything else). Part of it is being able to say “I know what is happening, I do not need to be afraid of it.” I am deeply suspicious of medication as an approach to mental health issues, and have generally avoided it where I could afford to do so, but I know from personal experience there is a place for it in enabling those who suffer from illnesses such as depression, to take control of their own lives and be able to live them.
well, first of all, a person who does suffer from GAD recommended this book to me. they have taken medication for GAD. It’s just that their friends who suffer from GAD recommended the book and its treatment, so they thought I should read it based on my reading last year.