Tag Archives: label

Caroline Leaf – Carrie Fisher killed by bipolar meds

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No longer content with just wilful ignorance, Dr Caroline Leaf has stooped even further by using the death of a beloved actress as a sick segue against psychiatric medications.

Dr Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and self-titled cognitive neuroscientist.  She markets herself as an expert in neuroscience and mental health despite not knowing how genes work (https://cedwardpitt.com/2014/09/27/dr-caroline-leaf-and-the-genetic-fluctuations-falsehood/ and https://cedwardpitt.com/2017/01/07/dr-caroline-leaf-the-christian-churchs-anti-vaxxer/).

In her latest “Mental Health News – January 2017” e-mail newsletter, Dr Leaf makes some astounding and outlandish statements about mental health.

She starts by claiming that Carrie Fisher’s death was ultimately caused by the psychiatric medications she was taking.

“Few people, however, are talking about the possible link between her heart attack and her psychiatric medication. As mental health activist Corinna West shows, ‘new antipsychotics cause weight gain, diabetes, and a bunch of other risk factors associated with heart disease.’ We have to take these risk factors seriously. We are not merely talking about statistics—we are talking about real people, people like Carrie Fisher.”

Dr Leaf, no one’s talking about the possible link between her heart attack and her psychiatric medication because we respect the Carrie Fisher too much and would rather celebrate her life and achievements, not perform a hypothetical post-mortem motivated by prejudiced speculation.

No one’s talking about the possible link between her heart attack and her psychiatric medication because no one really knows what caused Carrie Fisher’s heart attack.  No one knows if she had any other risk factors for heart attacks, or what medications she was on.  There could be a dozen other reasons why she had a heart attack.  No one else is asking because it’s none of our business.

No one’s talking about the possible link between her heart attack and her psychiatric medication because we know that psychiatric medications do much more good than harm.

No one is talking about the possible link between her heart attack and her psychiatric medication because it’s highly disrespectful to use someone’s death to promote your political or ideological position.  Using Carrie Fisher’s death as a segue to your soapbox about psychiatric medications is like someone using Princess Diana’s death as an opportunity to talk about the dangers of speeding in tunnels.  It’s ungracious, unbecoming, and in poor taste.

What’s even more dishonouring to Carrie Fisher is that Dr Leaf’s claims about psychiatric medications are not accurate.

“Sadly, individuals suffering from mental health issues ‘die, on average, 25 years earlier that the general population.’ These medications are incredibly dangerous, and we have to start asking ourselves, as the investigative journalist and mental health campaigner Robert Whitaker notes, if the benefits of these drugs truly outweigh the risks.”

Notice the giant hole in her argument?  She assumes that the increased risk of death in those with mental illness is the medications they’re on, just like she’s assumed that Carrie Fisher died because she was taking psychiatric medications.

That’s confirmation bias, not science.

Real mental health experts – the ones with training, clinical experience and research acumen – directly contradict Dr Leaf.  Experts like Correll, who say that, “Although antipsychotics have the greatest potential to adversely affect physical health, it is important to note that several large, nationwide studies providing generalizable data have suggested that all-cause mortality is higher in patients with schizophrenia not receiving antipsychotics.” [1]

In other words, the life expectancy of people with schizophrenia is shorter than the rest of the population, but it’s much shorter in schizophrenics not on meds.  Psychiatric medications help people with schizophrenia live longer.

In fact, the use of any anti-psychotic medication for a patient with schizophrenia decreased their risk of dying by nearly 20% [2] whereas the risk of dying for schizophrenics who didn’t take anti-psychotics was nearly ten times that of the healthy population [3].

This is the same for other psychiatric medications as well, “clozapine, antidepressants, and lithium, as well as anti-epileptics, are associated with reduced mortality from suicide.” [1]

Psychiatric drugs aren’t “incredibly dangerous”.  Like any tool, when used in the right way, they can bring radical transformation.  What IS incredibly dangerous is the disingenuous and ill-informed making libellous and inaccurate statements about medications they don’t understand.

Not content to just insult Carrie Fisher’s memory, Dr Leaf went on to claim that psychiatric labels are also as harmful as psychiatric drugs.  “These risks are not limited to taking medication. Psychiatric labels can also harm the individual involved. Child psychiatrist Sami Timimi recently discussed the adverse effect the autism label can have on children and adults alike. Labels can lock people in, taking away their hope for recovery, affecting their ability to perform everyday tasks and crippling their determination to live above their circumstances. Words can harm people as much as “sticks and stones” do, as psychologist Paula Caplan notes in her talk on psychiatric survivors and diagnoses.”

It’s witless to suggest that labels harm people or that they somehow lock people in and take away their hope.  The right label, which doctors call a diagnosis, doesn’t lock people in at all, it does the exact opposite:
* The right diagnosis gives hope – hope that comes from receiving the right treatment and not wasting time, money and energy pursuing the wrong treatment.
* The right diagnosis gives power – it empowers people by giving them the ability to make accurate decisions about what’s best for themselves and their loved ones.
* The right diagnosis gives certainty – in many situations, knowing what the diagnosis is reduces unnecessary anxiety and fear.

Imagine that you had a freckle on your arm, and it started growing suddenly.  You go to the doctor, and the doctor says that the freckle is actually a skin cancer.  Does that label lock you in and take away your hope?  Of course not.  It gives you the certainty of knowing that treatment is needed, and the power to decide if you want that treatment.  And it gives you hope that with the right treatment, you can continue to live a healthy life.

In the same way, a psychiatric diagnosis doesn’t lock people in and remove their hope.  A child who understands that they have autism can stop beating themselves up for being ‘odd’ and instead, they can understand that their different wiring gives them special powers that other kids don’t have.

Psychiatric labels do not harm an individual, it’s the backwards opinions of so-called mental health experts that harm individuals with psychiatric illness.  The stigma of a diagnosis is related to the way in which society treats individuals with that diagnosis, not the diagnosis itself.  Perpetuating the myth that that ‘depression and autism aren’t really diseases’ reduces the acceptance of society for those who suffer from those conditions.  That’s what causes harm.

Dr Leaf should apologise to her followers for showing such disrespect for Carrie Fisher, and to all those who take psychiatric medications.  Carrie Fisher spent her life supporting people with mental illness, trying to break down the stigma of psychiatric illness and treatment.  Her life’s work should be celebrated, not defaced by Dr Leaf and her unscientific opinion.

References

[1]        Correll CU, Detraux J, De Lepeleire J, De Hert M. Effects of antipsychotics, antidepressants and mood stabilizers on risk for physical diseases in people with schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder. World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association 2015 Jun;14(2):119-36.
[2]        Tiihonen J, Lonnqvist J, Wahlbeck K, et al. 11-year follow-up of mortality in patients with schizophrenia: a population-based cohort study (FIN11 study). Lancet 2009 Aug 22;374(9690):620-7.
[3]        Torniainen M, Mittendorfer-Rutz E, Tanskanen A, et al. Antipsychotic treatment and mortality in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia bulletin 2015 May;41(3):656-63.

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Labels – the good, the bad, and the ugly

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Yesterday, I wrote a rebuttal to Dr Caroline Leaf’s social media post, that “Psychiatric labels lock people into mental ill-health.” In my rebuttal, I suggested that psychiatric labels don’t lock anyone into mental ill-health any more than a medical diagnosis locks people into physical ill-health.

In the feedback I received, one intelligent young lady commented that, “I understand your point completely, but I took her words differently. I have often seen people who use their diagnosis as an excuse. For example, a kid gets diagnosed with Autism or ADHD, and suddenly the parents are using that as an excuse for their bad behaviour instead of teaching and helping them to deal with it. Another example, an adult is diagnosed with something mild, but uses it as an excuse to no longer care about trying to get a job or trying to get treatment and make an effort to get better”.

I certainly understand where she’s coming from. I’ve seen it too. A diagnosis is used as an excuse for someone’s avoidance, or a tool to milk every drop of sympathy from another. Giving someone a label seems to hinder some people more than help them.

Thankfully, there’s more than one side to the label story. I wanted to use today’s post to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly side of diagnostic labels.

First, lets look at the ugly side of a diagnostic label. There will always be emotional and social connotations to every diagnosis that a person receives. Sometimes that’s sympathy, and sometimes that’s stigma. If a young woman told her friends that she had breast cancer, I’m sure that news would be met with an outpouring of care and support. If the same young woman told the same friends that she had chlamydia or genital herpes, I’d bet that most of the responses would be blaming or shaming, which is one reason why no one tells other people they’ve got chlamydia or herpes.

The same goes for mental health. The media often portrays people with mental illness as either homicidal or weak [1]. So the general response to mental health diagnoses is either fear or contempt. Even those who are neutral towards mental health often don’t understand it, so it’s difficult for those with mental health issues to receive true empathy for their plight.

Then, there is the bad side of a label. Labels can be misused, intentionally or unintentionally, for all sorts of reasons. They can also be wrongly applied. It might be that someone uses their diagnosis to draw sympathy from people, or money, or help when they don’t really need it. They might use their label as an excuse to avoid certain things they don’t like. There are innumerable ways that people can milk secondary gain from their problems.

However, appropriate diagnosis can bring many benefits. For example, correct labelling brings with it understanding and empowerment.

A diagnosis can help us understand more about ourselves, or the person with the diagnosis. That child with ADHD isn’t just being naughty, but has difficulty regulating their behaviour. That person with Asperger’s isn’t being intentionally rude, but has trouble with social cues, understanding body language, and communicating in an empathic way. A correct diagnosis also helps us understand our own strengths and weaknesses. They help us recognise what it is about ourselves that we can’t change, what we can change, and what we need to change.

Once you understand what it is you can change and what you can’t change, it empowers you to change what you can for the better, and accept and adapt to what you can’t change. You stop wasting precious strength and time fighting what you can’t change. Instead, all of the effort that would have been needlessly spent on the unchangeable can be effectively spent on improving what needs to be, and can be, changed.

In fairness, I should point out that a diagnosis isn’t always needed to make positive change. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is a form of psychological therapy that encourages flexibility to accept those parts of our lives that are uncomfortable, whether they have a label or not, and allow our values to shape our life direction. Sometimes we can spend so much energy looking for a diagnosis that we stagnate, forgoing the forward momentum of what we value to focus on having a label for the symptoms.

But where a diagnosis can be made without undue effort, it can provide clarity to what often seems to be a jumbled mess of dysfunctional traits.

So, sure, sometimes labels can be used for the wrong things. That doesn’t mean they’re not useful or we should stop using them. There may be a stigma to a diagnosis of herpes or depression, but there are also good treatments available. The diagnosis may provide a way of changing a life of ongoing suffering to a life fulfilled.

More often than not, a good diagnosis helps bring clarity to a situation, enabling understanding, acceptance and empowerment. Rather than locking people in, a correct label usually unlocks a person’s potential to grow despite the problems they face.

References

  1. Corrigan, P.W. and Watson, A.C., Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness. World Psychiatry, 2002. 1(1): 16-20 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16946807

Dr Caroline Leaf – Exacerbating the Stigma of Mental Illness

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It was late in the afternoon, you know, that time when the caffeine level has hit critical and the only way you can concentrate on the rest of the day is the promise you’ll be going home soon.

The person sitting in front of me was a new patient, a professional young woman in her late 20’s, of Pakistani descent. She wasn’t keen to discuss her problems, but she didn’t know what else to do. After talking to her for a few minutes, it was fairly obvious that she was suffering from Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and I literally mean suffering. She was always fearful but without any reason to be so. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep, her heart raced all the time.

I was actually really worried for her. She let me do some basic tests to rule out any physical cause that was contributing to her symptoms, but that was as far as she let me help her. Despite talking at length about her diagnosis, she could not accept the fact that she had a psychiatric condition, and did not accept any treatment for it. She chose not to follow up with me either. I only saw her twice.

Perhaps it was fear for her job, social isolation, or a cultural factor. Perhaps it was the anxiety itself. Whatever the reason, despite having severe ongoing symptoms, she could not accept that she was mentally ill. She was a victim twice over, suffering from both mental illness, and its stigma.

Unfortunately, this young lady is not an isolated case. Stigma follows mental illness like a shadow, an extra layer of unnecessary suffering, delaying proper diagnosis and treatment of diseases that respond best to early intervention.

What contributes to the stigma of mental illness? Fundamentally, the stigma of mental illness is based on ignorance. Ignorance breeds stereotypes, stereotypes give rise to prejudice, and prejudice results in discrimination. This ignorance usually takes three main forms; people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character [1].

Poor information from people who claim to be experts doesn’t help either. For example, on her social media feed today, Dr Caroline Leaf said, “Psychiatric labels lock people into mental ill-health; recognizing the mind can lead us into trouble and that our mind is powerful enough to lead us out frees us! 2 Timothy1:7 Teaching on mental health @TrinaEJenkins 1st Baptist Glenardin.”

Dr Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and self-titled cognitive neuroscientist. It’s disturbing enough that Dr Leaf, who did not train in cognitive neuroscience, medicine or psychology, can stand up in front of people and lecture as an “expert” in mental health. It’s even more disturbing when her views on mental health are antiquated and inane.

Today’s post, for example. Suggesting that psychiatric labels lock people in to mental ill-health is like saying that a medical diagnosis locks them into physical ill-health. It’s a nonsense. Does diagnosing someone with cancer lock them into cancer? It’s the opposite, isn’t it? Once the correct diagnosis is made, a person with cancer can receive the correct treatment. Failing to label the symptoms correctly simply allows the disease to continue unabated.

Mental illness is no different. A correct label opens the door to the correct treatment. Avoiding a label only results in an untreated illness, and more unnecessary suffering.

Dr Leaf’s suggestion that psychiatric labels lock people in to their illness is born out of a misguided belief about the power of words over our thoughts and our health in general, an echo of the pseudo-science of neuro-linguistic programming.

The second part of her post, that “recognizing the mind can lead us into trouble and that our mind is powerful enough to lead us out frees us” is also baseless. Her assumptions, that thought is the main driving force that controls our lives, and that fixing our thought patterns fixes our physical and psychological health, are fundamental to all of her teaching. I won’t go into it again here, but further information on how Dr Leaf’s theory of toxic thinking contradicts basic neuroscience can be found in a number of my blogs, and in the second half of my book [2].

I’ve also written on 2 Timothy 1:7 before, another of Dr Leaf’s favourite scriptures, a verse whose meaning has nothing to do with mental health, but seized upon by Dr Leaf because one English translation of the original Greek uses the words “a sound mind”.

So Dr Leaf believes that labelling someone as having a mental illness will lock them into that illness, an outdated, unscientific and purely illogical notion that is only going to increase the stigma of mental illness. If I were @TrinaEJenkins and the good parishioners of 1st Baptist Glenardin, I would be asking for my money back.

With due respect, and in all seriousness, the stigma of mental illness is already disproportionate. Mental illness can cause insurmountable suffering, and sometimes death, to those who are afflicted by it. The Christian church does not need misinformation compounding the suffering for those affected by poor mental health. Dr Leaf should not be lecturing anyone on mental health until she has been properly credentialed.

References

  1. Corrigan, P.W. and Watson, A.C., Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illness. World Psychiatry, 2002. 1(1): 16-20 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16946807
  2. Pitt, C.E., Hold That Thought: Reappraising the work of Dr Caroline Leaf, 2014 Pitt Medical Trust, Brisbane, Australia, URL http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/466848