Psychiatry and Urban Anxieties
The article says, “For decades, psychiatrists were considered the outcasts of the medical profession, the fringe students and oddballs who couldn’t hack it as surgeons or heart specialists.”
It is no surprise that they keep this reputation. With the proliferation of mental health services has come an escalation of the very ailments they profess to “heal,” and no doubt contributed to by the debilitating drugs they prescribe. The failure of their drug solutions are admitted to in the article by Dr. Louis Jolyon West when he says, “You find people stacked in board-and-care homes, almost like zombies who are really just being fed and medicated.”
When are our legislators going to learn that throwing more money at the psychiatrist-dominated mental health industry is not the solution to the serious social problems mentioned in this article?
ROBERT M. LIPPMANN
Trabuco Canyon
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