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North Shore Times Advertiser
June 6, 2000
Psychologist discusses effects of child abuse.
A
Devonport psychologist is addressing an international symposium on
schizophrenia in Norway this week.
Dr John Read will be attending the 13th international symposium for the
psychological treatments of schizophrenia which runs from June 5 to 8.
Dr Read of Auckland University is one of a group of
two Auckland clinical psychologists and two
psychiatrists who have been invited to attend. He will be presenting his research on the
need to take abuse histories as early as possible and to train staff in how
to respond therapeutically to abuse disclosures.
His recently published research - along with psychiatrist Dr Nick Argyle -
found that 77 % of psychiatric inpatients who had been abused as children
experience schizophrenic symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions.
He aims to tell the conference that such research needs to be incorporated in
training programmes because some mental health professional still believe
that schizophrenia is a biological genetic disorder that has little to do
with traumatic life events, and therefore tend not to ask questions about
important life events, such as trauma.
Dr Read says he will encourage the international mental health community to
follow Auckland's lead in introducing training
programmes for staff on abuse issues in May this year.
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North Shore
Times Advertiser
June 13, 2000
Taking Issue with views on psychiatric illnesses
by Gordon Waugh
[the published letter was slightly
abridged by the Times Advertiser]
It is cruel, offensive and entirely unprofessional for a psychologist to
claim, or even suggest, that schizophrenia and similar psychotic disorders
are caused by childhood abuse.
In your article "Psychologist discusses effects of child abuse"
that is exactly what Dr John Read has done in his study of psychiatric
patients.
People become psychiatric patients because they often have a less than firm
grip on reality. They are prone to adopting ambient social hysterias. During
the 1950's mentally unwell patients reported persecution by communists. More
recently, some reported abduction by aliens.
Childhood sexual abuse is the current one. Self-reports of abuse by
delusional psychiatric patients are not credible unless externally
corroborated. It is widely accepted that psychotic disorders have bio-genetic
causes.
To justify his claim, Read's "research" must meet elemental
scientific standards by showing clear proof through credible external
verification, that patients studied were in fact genuinely abused, and that
no other possible cause of the disorder existed. It must clearly distinguish
between metaphor and reality, and between cause and association. His pet
theory is fatally flawed. It failed on all these counts and wrongly assumed a
causal link between abuse and a mental disorder.
Parents and families of people suffering with schizophrenia will be
distressed and disgusted to learn that Dr Read continues to promote his
unsubstantiated, daft and odious gospel.
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