Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to George W Albee.
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This article argues that it is futile to try and treat the many serious mental disturbances now confronting society with individual psychotherapy. Only by preventing the occurrence of mental disturbance can headway be made in dealing with this source of human suffering. Prevention means confronting and ameliorating the major cause of mental disturbance: stress. The sources of stress include poverty, rampant sexism, being born unwanted, and other forms of social injustice. This article demands that those in the mental health field examine their moral and scientific beliefs and begin to take steps to change the existing unfair political and economic practices.
Prescribing drugs for mental disorders by psychologists means accepting an invalid model--the brain disease, biological-defect explanation of psychopathology--that is advanced by political conservatives and accepted by some naive, well-intentioned, but misinformed moderates who have not thought critically about the issue. Conservative psychiatry serves the ruling class by rejecting or ignoring the fact that most mental disorders are learned in the context of social and economic injustice, and familiar dysfunction. If we accept the fallacy of brain disease and genetic defect as the major causes of mental disorder and succeed in getting prescription privileges we will have sold our soul to the devil!