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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Medicalization Of Mental Disorders: 1970- To The Present, W. Joseph Wyatt
Medicalization Of Mental Disorders: 1970- To The Present, W. Joseph Wyatt
Psychology Faculty Research
A thirty-five year escalation of emphasis on biological causation has rendered, for many, medications as the treatment of choice for mental disorders. Non-drug treatment may be cast aside, as a result.
Has Behavioral Science Tumbled Through The Biological Looking Glass? Will Brief, Evidence-Based Training Return It From The Rabbit Hole?, Donna M. Midkiff, W. Joseph Wyatt
Has Behavioral Science Tumbled Through The Biological Looking Glass? Will Brief, Evidence-Based Training Return It From The Rabbit Hole?, Donna M. Midkiff, W. Joseph Wyatt
Psychology Faculty Research
Time constraints and professional demands leave practicing professionals unlikely to enroll in extended training such as a semester-long graduate course. Thus, the three-hour continuing education format has become a standard for those in practice. One may ask what sorts of training strategies optimize that format. To explore that, a three hour training program for seventy-six practicing mental health professionals, most of whom self-identified as psychologists, was devised. It made use of primarily antecedent techniques that have been shown to bring about changed perceptions on a number of topics. Content focused on two areas of importance to behavior analysts, the culture’s …
Psychiatry’S Thirty-Five-Year, Non-Empirical Reach For Biological Explanations, W. Joseph Wyatt, Donna M. Midkiff
Psychiatry’S Thirty-Five-Year, Non-Empirical Reach For Biological Explanations, W. Joseph Wyatt, Donna M. Midkiff
Psychology Faculty Research
This is our third article in a series that began with a special issue of Behavior and Social Issues in 2006. Here we briefly review our central points from the first two articles. First is that over the past thirty-five years, claims of biological causation of mental and behavioral disorders have gone well beyond the research data, for reasons that are largely related to psychiatry’s lost esteem and protection of its “turf,” as well as to the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. Our second position is that claims of psychotropic drugs’ effectiveness have been overstated. We respond, as well, …
Biological Psychiatry: A Practice In Search Of A Science, W. Joseph Wyatt, Donna M. Midkiff
Biological Psychiatry: A Practice In Search Of A Science, W. Joseph Wyatt, Donna M. Midkiff
Psychology Faculty Research
The rise of the biological causation model in the past thirty years is traced to psychiatry’s efforts to regain lost status and to protect itself from intrusions by non-medical practitioners, as well as to the pharmaceutical industry’s drive for profits. Evidence in support of the model, including studies of identical twins and of brain structure and function, are less revealing than was earlier thought, due to problems in methodology and interpretation. Organized psychiatry, when challenged in 2003, was unable to provide compelling evidence for biological causation of most mental and behavioral disorders. A paradigm shift away from biological causation and …