Patrick Kelly, M.D. is a child and adolescent psychiatrist at The David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles, California. He completed both his general psychiatry residency and child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and is a Board Certified practitioner in both fields. After practicing as an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and directing the training program in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, he moved back home to California and now directs Emergency Services and Consultation Liaison Services for Child Psychiatry at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, a UCLA affiliate hospital in Torrance, CA. His research is focused on the emergency management of children and adolescents, and in pediatric delirium on the inpatient medical units. He has co-authored 2 books about specific topics: “Borderline Personality Disorder, New Reasons for Hope” and “Adolescent Depression, A Guide for Parents.”
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Wow Dr Dave. I am again in awe of your interview skills and great tact! Listening to this interview reminded me of all that i think is wrong with biological psychiatry (even though he sounds like a lovely fellah). The holes in psychiatric theory and models are simply big enough to drive a Mac truck through. dr Kelly repeatedly revealed this with his statements (made several times, each time he was asked about presumed psychiatric causes) “we dont really know…” The ‘really’ was thrown in as means of diminishing the ‘we dont know’ part of his statement. Only on one occasion did he say, with total honesty “we dont know”. The facts remain (as clearly demonstrated by decades of research):- there is no known biological cause of depression; there is no reason to call some depression ‘biological’ , as there are no known causal biological markers of depression; there is no demonstrated genetic factor- News Flash!- the human genome project was completed years ago- we now know all of the genes which make up humans- and there is not one single gene for depression, or any other emotional/psychological/psychiatric diagnoses; SSRI anti-depressants have been repeatedly demonstrated to increase suicidal ideation and behaviour in young people- read the label warnings- they are dangerous for adolescents. Around 50% of people on SSRIs report ’emotional blunting’- some people actually want this, but it is a very common side effect of the drugs, and usually a very unwelcome one. All psychiatric drugs impact on the brain- many of them cause irreversible brain damage (eg. Tardive Dyskonesia in around 50% of neuroleptic users- including an increasing amount of children). ECT causes gran mal epileptic seizures- if these happen naturally, neurologists will do just about anything they can to stop them, as they are know to cause brain damage. Depression is not a condition like a flu, or appendicitis that one just gets- it results from bad experiences. SSRIs change the brain, and depending on how long they have been used, these changes can be permanent- meaning the person may be stuck on them forever- sounds a bit like an addiction to me.
The medical model is a blunt and stupid tool when applied to humans in psychological distress, and its proponents are simply playing at being neurologists, complete with pretend neurological theories, generally which years of research in neurology have demonstrated to be false. Thanks for your interview Dr Dave- it has reinvigorated my desire to counteract ‘folk-psychiatry’ when i hear it.