Welcome to the future of reductionist psychiatry. You can now be diagnosed, labeled and treated free from a doctor ever having to even look you in the watch or hear the stories that make you tick. Just click the boxes instead of your symptoms, fill out the questionnaire and the complexities of the human psyche can be unraveled as quickly as e-filing your taxes in the finally hour of tax day. Never mind the subtle differences that circumscribe us or the experiences that got us here.
This is not some luddite rant about the technology takeover, though to some extent there is a worthwhile wariness in that discussion. I’m talking encircling the power of the DSM, which was never meant to subsist a stand-alone collection of boxes to check off in diagnosing, very lately essentially uploaded and online to be used in just that manner.
From Australia’s The Age:
MENTALLY ill Australians are increasingly root diagnosed and treated online in virtual psychiatric clinics, without ever inasmuch as a doctor.
Patients suffering from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic boisterousness disorder are being assessed by computer and given ”e-prescriptions” against online counselling courses instead of medication or treatment sessions with a psychologist or psychiatrist…
With e-therapy, patients are clinically diagnosed for completing psychiatric reviews by answering online questions
“Assessed by computer”? It makes you surprise what we need all these psychiatrists for? Apparently all we indeed need are the DSM committee and a handful of tech guys to work out the interface and we’ll be well on our progress to solving those pesky problems that keep cropping up and reminding us by what means hopelessly human we all are.
One positive point is that it presents a shift from drug and toward some sort of counseling but I see that air of it as short lived. It seems likely to follow the tend of “real life” psychiatry and revert to drug based care, printing out its e-prescriptions for the latest in pharmaceuticals. Also, it makes you awe — if these kinds of treatments are so effective, why terminate we need a computer to veer away from drugs? I have power to see computer based communication and the easy transfer of information while useful but only as a supplement to truly involved care from a active, breathing human – not a replacement. I question the quality of online counseling while compared to real counseling. Of course it’s limited to comparatively minor difficulties like depression, anxiety and PTSD. They wouldn’t dare try to treat the as yet uncharted depths of serious intellectual illness — would they?
In Melbourne, David Austin, the co-monitor of the National eTherapy Centre’s Anxiety Online program, what one. is run from Swinburne University of Technology, said the service did not try to treat people with more serious conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disarrangement but there was scope for that in the future.
“Within five to 20 years we decision have a proven e-therapy for most of the psychological conditions. Once you do that, you have 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week derogatory-cost access for everyone,” said Professor Austin.
Everyone. Oh expert. At least they’re planning ahead. This is where the drugs are that may be liked to come into play as most things perceived as serious intellectual illness are treated with drugs as a chemical problem in the brain not solely a coping, life handling or perception problem.
Patients log on anonymously to consummate modules on cognitive behavioural therapy and breathing and relaxation techniques from one side videos, podcasts, online forums and interactive questionnaires.
Next month, courses disposition begin for people with eating disorders and gambling addiction.
I’m convinced computers be possible to be of some benefit in a therapeutic setting whether it’s to impart information, the support found in many forums or supplemental counseling. The biggest moot point, though isn’t in the counseling aspect of it if it were not that in the assessing. While the move to computer based diagnosis promises to widen mental health care to more people, we need to question the take aim of care and its potential to do more harm than profit. We’re talking about diagnosing people online that we’ve not ever met. The internet has proven to be an unreliable way to procure to know people. Something gets lost in translation between the keyboard at single in kind end and the screen at the other. That’s wherefore some people hide behind them, filtering and crafting their online persona and others through the best and most honest intentions just don’t arrive across as themselves. Many would argue that the computer isn’t not only so a good way to determine whether someone is dateable but somehow we think we can ascertain someone’s mental and emotional condition and diagnose them which will have a huge and far reaching pack together on the course of their lives.
We are all complex individuals to varying degrees. One be able to no more experience another’s state of mind through a computer’s riddle than the fullness of a symphony through its tinny, crackling plastic speakers. I can’t imagine letting the care of someone’s ideal well being hinge on that poor a translation.
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