Dr Michael Cornwall says psychiatrists bring harm to patients out of stupidity

There has been a growing awareness of how tragically flawed the psychiatric paradigm is for dealing with mental health care. Dr Michael Cornwall, who is a Jungian/Laingian psychotherapist, says psychiatrists are harming their patients out of stupidity.

Dr. Michael Cornwall reports in Mad in America that in his opinion psychiatrists are displaying stupidity when they believe in and when they practice the disease model approach to what they call mental illness. This turns out being to the detriment of their patients. The Oxford Dictionary has described stupidity as “behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.”

According to Dr. Cornwall there is a large failure of imagination of most psychiatrists which is part of their formulation and aggressive defense of the psychiatric disease model. This leads to the creation of a closed system of thinking where there is a type of unquestioning conformity which exists.

Dr. Cornwall says that the status of psychiatrists as licensed physicians has given them a great deal of power to take a dominate position in the mental health industry hierarchy. The psychiatrists generally arrogantly expect humble submission and respect from their patients and co-workers. It is the position of elitist psychiatrists that a rude lack of respect is being shown when their ideas and authority are being questioned or challenged.

It has been shared by Dr. Cornwall that patients who have been harmed by psychiatry generally share the same disbelief that anyone with a medical degree could keep missing what they actually need for their mental health and keep treating them as if they are invisible. With considerations of these many hurting patients, he, therefore, decided to write an article dealing with the inherent stupidity of blindly adhering to the clearly failed theory and practice of the destructive discipline of psychiatry.

The disease model of psychiatry has been used to rationalise the death rates of psychiatric patients being 25 years sooner than the average life expectancy. This is generally due to psychiatry itself, not to so-called psychiatric illnesses. Brutal human rights abuses are also justified by the disease model of psychiatry.

The human rights abuses of psychiatrists include forced treatment, medicating kids and teens and seniors who are vulnerable, ECT, psychosurgery and more abuses. Dr. Cornwall points out that psychiatrists clearly therefore often display a tragic lack of good sense and judgment, which is what stupidity is all about.

Psychiatrists emotionally distance themselves from their patients and blindly inflict medical interventions which generally harm instead of helping the person in distress. They also insist that the so-called illnesses they see are lifelong as they diagnostically label patients in what Dr. Cornwall describes as a “hope-killing ritual ceremony of identity degradation.”

Dr. Cornwall points out that there has been a growing awareness of the obvious truth about the fallacy of the disease model of psychiatry and it is, therefore, likely to collapse. The idea that all emotional distress is caused by physical illness has again and again been proven wrong. A humane, warm hearted paradigm of mental health care is needed to replace the cold hearted dangerous ignorance of psychiatry.

CCHR International reports that a United Nations health rights expert has reported a revolution in mental health care is needed worldwide. Dr. Dainius Puras has called for a moving away from the biomedical, drug model approach to mental health care. He feels an international revolution in mental health care worldwide is needed to put an end to “decades of neglect, abuse and violence” inherent in the psychiatric approach to mental health care. Clearly, the consistently destructive discipline of psychiatry should be abolished and replaced with humane natural approaches for mental health care.