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CBT is a scam and a waste of money

helperofearth123

Senior Member
Messages
202
I went to CBT but didn't know what to say so left after half an hour. Seemed she wanted me to write a diary of my daily routine so she could go through it and say what I was doing or thinking wrong that was causing my physical disability. The following views of mine don't really have anything to do with CFS but are just my views on "mental health" in general:

I do think there's a huge problem in psychotherapy/"mental" health in general. In my understanding, there are neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, which used to be treated as psychological, but after enough research its found it was are as actually just as physical as cancer or a broken leg. CFS/ME looks more and more like a similar story.

Things like 'bi-polar disorder' are today called 'mental illnesses' whereas in my view that is probably a neurological disease in very bad cases or in more mild forms its merely 'disposition' or 'personality' and isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, it can even be a gift. A mental illness is something that can be cured by changing your mind/having some kind of emotional breakthrough. If something can be cured by having an emotional breakthrough then its not an illness, which leads me to say that there may be such thing as mental illness. There are mental symptoms such as anxiety/depression, but if the root cause is in the mind its not an illness and the person should be helped from a social or spiritual perspective, not medical.

Who's ever been cured of bipolar? These things are caused by neurological cycles.

People have emotional pain and grief from events in their life and this a natural healthy response to life, but sometimes their social support networks aren't enough to help them through it, so they seek a friendly ear to listen. They are then "diagnosed" with a "mental illness" when all they needed is someone to confide in.

This problem is part of a spiritual problem at the heart of society. Some people go to a priest to talk about their problems, and escape a diagnosis. But this doesn't work for everyone because to be part of the church or any major religion a whole load of controversial things need to be believed in. in my view the religious institutions are failing to bring everyone together and rather serve division, which is the opposite of their purpose.

This spiritual fracture in society means we have people who just need a friend being wrongly categorized as having a medical problem and in need of 'therapy', which is nonsense. Many people with depression or anxiety just need a constant source of inspiration and companionship and make miraculous recoveries when they discover religion.

I've not organized these thoughts too well as I'm really tired, but I think my point is made...
 
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Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
I agree with both chipmunk and adreno - but we should not be so hard on old Descartes. Descartes did quite a good job, it is just that everybody twisted what he said.

Descartes more or less had to start from scratch setting out a full explanation of the world (Galileo was good but limited). He reckoned that more or less everything was 'mechanical' - which meant matter bumping into matter, having been supplied at creation with some 'oomph' or action or motion, which he called spirit, to get it bumping. And this action, which followed very reliable rules was 'God'. Note that for him God was not supernatural, 'He' was the natural cause of everything - i.e. he was physics.

Then Descartes tried to put himself in this scheme and found it was no good. Firstly he seemed to be indivisible, and matter always had a shape so always had parts and was divisible, so he did not seem to be matter. Moreover, he used language and no other matter did that. And he seemed to be able to cause things, over and above the rules of motion of God. So he decided that all motion or spirit everywhere was God, except for human souls, which were units of spirit in their own right.

Notice that in 1640, when Descartes said this nobody had yet invented a clear concept of force or motion. Descartes got the maths a bit wrong for motion but Leibniz and Newton sorted that out within 50 years. But then it becomes clear that Descartes's duality was simply the duality that we now totally accept - that between force and matter. Light is made of force units, atoms are made of matter units (in simple terms Bosons and Fermions). Descartes was simply saying that the human soul is more like light than pebbles - and neuroscience seems pretty happy with that since it thinks the mind is electromagnetic fluxes.

OK, Descartes got some technical bits wrong, like the pineal, but his insight that the mind is a dynamic unit, rather than a pebble, set the scene for Leibniz to produce a very clear account of how everything works, which remains very good today, even if many people find his writing hard to follow. People argued a lot about Descartes's soul not being able to interact with matter but of course force interacts with matter - that is now the whole of physics.

But to get back to the thread, the reason CBT and suchlike are unscientific is that psychiatrists haven't a clue either about Descartes or, maybe, how to do an experiment properly.
 

duncan

Senior Member
Messages
2,240
Can't forget that William was one of the key proponents (founder?) of the philosophical school of pragmatism. I'm thinking it was a fairly competitive family. Enough to give them each, ahem, a turn at being screwy.

Sorry.
 
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CFS_for_19_years

Hoarder of biscuits
Messages
2,396
Location
USA
I think there should be a distinction made between Behavioral Medicine, which helps bring patients with manic and psychotic disorders back into balance with pharmaceuticals, and Behavioral Health, which is talking therapy designed to help the patient cope with reactions to life's bumps, like divorce and grief.

Is it helpful to give a depressed recently divorced individual antidepressants? Certainly, if they are unable to sleep or have stopped eating. I'm not a behavioral scientist at all, so I don't know what happens to someone's brain when the trials of life have just gotten to be too much. When I was going through separation and subsequent divorce, I was prescribed antidepressants and took them, but for a time I thought. "WTF, I need to get rid of my husband, not take a bunch of pills.":confused:
 
Two of our Government Puppet Advocacy Groups, Solve CFS/SMCI and Pandora are echoing those researchers who say that CBT, GET and Anti-Depressants are the way to treat CFS patients. We do not need groups like that claiming to represent patients best interests. If they keep doing this to us, they need to be crushed. lol