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50 Years Ago Thomas Szasz Rocked The World of Psychiatry: The Difference Between A Disease and a Disorder

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

By Dr. Jeffrey Schaler
Assistant Professor of Justice, Law & Society

The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas SzaszIt is fifty years now since Thomas Szasz rocked the world of psychiatry by writing The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct. His work continues to have a profound impact on how we think about disease, behavior, liberty, justice, responsibility, and most important of all, what it means to be human.  Szasz has shown us how the idea of mental illness is used by the state to deprive innocent people of freedom, and guilty persons of justice.  Without the state involved, the medicalization of behavior means nothing.

He has shown us how the idea of mental illness functions as legal fiction within our legal system. In this sense, the idea of mental illness has been used much as the idea that African American slaves were considered three-fifths of a person. Persons labeled as mentally ill are now considered three-fifths of a person. It is as if there was a postscript at the bottom of the Bill of Rights that reads: “PS: For mentally healthy people only.”

The courts will not allow the idea of mental illness to be disproved, in much the same way that the idea that slaves could be three-fifths person was not allowed to be disproved. Today, mental illness as legal fiction maintains the institution of psychiatric slavery.

The Theraputic State by Thomas SzaszMental illness diagnoses have more to do with politics and science fiction, than medicine and science. Take for example the idea that people with a homosexual orientation are mentally ill. The category was excluded from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – our contemporary “Malleus Maleficorum,” or “Hammer of Witches” – the same way it was included, for political reasons, not scientific reasons. No one discovered that homosexuality was a disease, and no one discovered that it isn’t a disease. They pronounced it as such, in each case, because of political pressure.

About two years after The Myth of Mental Illness was first published, Szasz published another book that has had an equally profound impact on freedom and responsibility. In Law, Liberty and Psychiatry he predicted the following:

“Although we may not know it, we have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of social control.”

Thomas Szasz wrote that in 1963.

We live in a Therapeutic State today. Moral management now masquerades as medicine. The state dictates a “duty to be healthy.”

Seventy years ago another state, Nazi Germany, dictated a “duty to be healthy.” Back then, murder masqueraded as medicine. I think you all know what I’m referring to. We don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Today, good health practices have become a social responsibility. Bad health practices are viewed as socially irresponsible behavior. When health and illness are applied to the mind and behavior, this means that people must think and speak and act the right way. Otherwise, they may end up in a prison called a mental hospital.

I am one of the few college professors in the United States, if not in the world, who teaches Szasz’s ideas on a regular basis in college. And in every course, my students have always said at least two things to me: This stuff by Szasz is changing my life. And why hasn’t anyone ever taught his work in class before?

Because professors are punished for teaching Szasz; they can lose their jobs if they do so. I know. I have the scars to prove it. If you read my book, Szasz Under Fire, you will see how the same thing almost happened to Thomas Szasz. He came a hair away from being fired for teaching Thomas Szasz!

The Myth of Mental Illness and the subsequent Law, Liberty and Psychiatry are not so unsophisticated as to deny the existence of behaviors that people find disturbing. Quite to the contrary, Szasz’s writings clarify the difference between behavior and disease, description and explanations for behavior, and the consequences of labeling behavior as a disease within the arenas of law, medicine, social and public policy.

Szasz has simply pointed out what pathologists have always known: A disease refers to cellular pathology. Period. A behavior cannot be a disease. And he has also fought endlessly for the rights of persons labeled mentally ill. He will be ninety years old on April 15. He is still writing one book after another. He writes books faster than I can read them!

He has also shown us how behavior is strategic, the expression of what philosophers call moral agency. Today’s neuroscientists, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists have attempted to reduce man to the category of things. They deny the existence of moral agency. Let me give you one simple example of how this is so.

Conventional wisdom, particularly as it appears in the media, leads people to believe that brains cause behavior, as if the brain could act. Psychiatrists and the neuroscientists they aspire emulate, regard man as a machine, an incredibly complicated machine, but a machine nevertheless. Everything that is human is ultimately reducible to electrical and chemical interactions.

This is especially so when it comes to socially unacceptable, abnormal, disturbing and criminal behavior. Bad brains are said to cause bad behavior. Bad brains, in this, sense refers to problems in the structure and function of the brain.

Now if bad brains cause bad behavior, it only follows that good brains must cause good behavior. In other words, brains that work correctly, brains that are structurally and functionally healthy, cause good and admirable behaviors.

While psychiatrists try to excuse bad behaviors by ultimately blaming bad brains, they inadvertently (or perhaps intentionally) are removing personal responsibility for the good things that people do. When someone commits a heroic deed, for example, shows courage, compassion, and care for others at great personal expense and with great risk of danger, the person is then not choosing to do what is clearly important to do.

The brain, according to this way of thinking, is causing the person to do this good thing, in the same way that a bad brain causes someone to prey on others. There is no need to praise someone for his altruism, heroism, and courage, his brain made him do it.

Some psychiatrists have equated human behavior with seizure activity: An alcoholic reaching for that drink too many is having an epileptic seizure. So is the mother sacrificing her own life for the life of her child.

What is left of the person, if this is so? What is left of the person if brains cause bad and good behavior? What is that represented by the pronoun “I?” What happens to moral agency?

Nothing. From this way of thinking, human beings are reduced to the category of things. Things do not choose, they are caused. Things do not feel. Things are not alive. Things have no conscience, no values, no morality, no ethics. And most important, things do not care, for self or others.

This is the legacy of psychiatry and neuroscience today, when it comes to entertaining biological explanations for behavior. Mind is equated with brain, behavior with disease, good with bad, morality with medicine, and ethics with mechanics. In other words, there is no soul. That which we consider uniquely human is destroyed by psychiatry and neuroscience.

How does this fit into law? Through a simple equation. Liberty and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. If we increase one, we increase the other. If we decrease one, we decrease the other. The more free man is, the more responsible he must be. The more responsible man is, the more he is captain of his own ship.

What institutional psychiatry as an extension of the state would have us believe is this: The more we decrease responsibility, the more we increase freedom. In other words, the more you allow us to be in charge of your life, the more you abdicate responsibility, the more you embrace the paternalism we say is good for you, the more you will be free. For obedience to authority is the greatest political virtue.

What then must we do? Szasz has done his job, what is ours? I believe our job is this: We get psychiatry out of the courthouse. We do not need to destroy psychiatry. It will destroy itself if we sever its invisible umbilical cord to the mother-state. Once psychiatry is available to people by choice only, it will die a natural death. Very few people will seek out psychiatrists if they cannot hire and fire them at will.

Psychiatrists know this. That is why they are so afraid of Thomas Szasz.

And that is why they are so afraid of those who understand what I am saying here. As I tell my students every semester, “don’t believe a word I say. Just think about it and come to your own conclusion.” That kind of independence and autonomy scares institutional psychiatrists and those who run the therapeutic state.

It should.

Jeffrey A. Schaler is an assistant professor of justice, law, and society at American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. Professor Schaler’s work is focused on the “therapeutic state”—the union of medicine and state. He completed his doctoral and master’s degrees in human development at the University of Maryland College Park, where the major emphasis of his research was addiction and social policy. Dr. Schaler is particularly interested in how research in the behavioral sciences is interpreted and applied in public, social, and legal policy arenas. He writes and speaks extensively on the relationship between liberty and responsibility.

Dr. Thomas Szasz is a Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, State University of New York. He is a well known critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry and has authored more than 30 books on the subject including the Manufacture of Madness, The Myth of Mental Illness and The Therapeutic State. He is the co-founder of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) and has said of the organization, “We should all honor CCHR because it is really the organization that for the first time in human history has organized a politically, socially, internationally significant voice to combat psychiatry. This has never been done in human history before.”

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Think They Don’t Electroshock People Anymore? Think Again–Even toddlers and pregnant women are being shocked

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

By Dr. John Breeding, author of The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses

child close-upAsk the average person about the use of electroshock treatment in today’s society and 9 out of 10 will respond, “They still shock people?”

They do. It’s estimated that more than 100,000 Americans are electroshocked each year; half are 60 and older, and two-thirds are women. In Australia, it was recently revealed that psychiatrists had electroshocked 55 toddlers age four and younger. In the UK, three year olds have been brutalized with it. And one of the country’s leading mental health “patients’ rights” groups—the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI)—recently endorsed the use of electroshock on pregnant women. One would wonder why a patients’ rights group would endorse such an obviously harmful procedure if not for the fact that the group has recently been exposed as a major front for the psycho/pharmaceutical industry.

The FDA reports pregnant women miscarrying following ECT, while studies show that in addition to the risk of death, the fetus can suffer malnutrition, dehydration and violent injury. Electroshocking children, pregnant women and the unborn is tantamount to torture and should not only be banned but those administering it prosecuted.

Given the factual truths of sending up to 360 volts of electricity searing through the brain – the obvious question is why the “treatment” has not gone by the wayside like its psychiatric sister treatments during the 1940s and 1950s, insulin coma shock and lobotomy.

Electroshock was indeed challenged, and its low point pretty much coincided with the release in 1975 of the Academy Award-winning film version of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the feisty Randle Patrick McMurphy. The horrible scene of his undergoing “unmodified” shock treatment, i.e., without anesthetic and muscle-paralyzing drugs, along with his reduction to a vegetative state was seared in the public’s mind. This, together with public exposure of the shameful state of psychiatric institutions, certainly gave electroshock treatment a bad name—so much so that the treatment was renamed Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT). The bad publicity caused its use in public institutions to fall sharply, and its overall use was also considerably diminished. It would be naïve, however, to think that this curtailment was strictly due to increased public awareness about the brutalities of the procedure. The advent of neuroleptics (nerve-seizing drugs) was perhaps the major factor in this development. The indiscriminate use of these drugs replaced the indiscriminate use of ECT as the primary means of subduing and pacifying inmates who resisted incarceration and wouldn’t cooperate.

In the last two decades, however, electroshock has made a comeback.

Most electroshock is insurance-covered. ECT specialists on average have incomes twice that of other psychiatrists. The cost for inpatient ECT ranges from $50,000 to $75,000 per series (usually 8 to 12 individual sessions). Electroshock is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry—yet its damaging effects are well known to those who endorse it.

Max Fink, a professor of psychiatry and the “Grandfather of American ECT” believed the “therapeutic” effect from ECT is produced by brain dysfunction and damage. “Effects on memory, common in ECT, come in two flavors,” wrote Fink in Psychiatric Times in 2006. “Delirium is common with each seizure and is well documented by immediate measurable changes in brain chemistry and physiology” and “the second complaint is of a persistent loss of personal memories…They do not recall the names of their children, family holidays, or personal events….Their complaints cast a public shadow on ECT practice.”

The Procedure

Electroshock is a psychiatric procedure that involves the production of a grand mal convulsion, similar to an epileptic seizure, by passing from 70 to upwards of 600 volts of electric current through the brain for one-half second to four seconds. Before application, ECT subjects are typically given anesthetic, tranquilizing and muscle-paralyzing drugs to reduce fear, pain, and the risk (from violent muscle spasms) of fractured bones (particularly of the spine, a common occurrence in the early history of ECT before the introduction, in the mid-1950s, of the muscle-paralyzing drug succinylcholine [Anectine]). The ECT-induced convulsion usually lasts from thirty to sixty seconds and may immediately produce disorienting, painful, and even life-threatening complications, such as apnea (temporary suspension of breathing) and cardiac arrest. The convulsion is followed by a period of unconsciousness of several minutes’ duration. Electroshock is usually administered in hospitals because they are equipped to handle emergency situations that often develop during or soon after an ECT session.

Brain Damage

The brain naturally operates in millivolts of electricity, and ECT administers on average between 150 and 400 volts of electricity to the brain, a force sufficient to induce a grand mal seizure, rupture the protective blood-brain barrier and incite glutamate toxicity (glutamate is a powerful neurotransmitter released by nerve cells in the brain and is responsible for sending signals between nerve cells. In glutamate toxicity there is too much glutamate that leads to over-excitation of the receiving nerve cell, which can cause cell damage and/or death). It is prima-facie, common sense obvious fact that ECT causes brain damage. After all, the rest of medicine, as well as the building trades, do their best to prevent people from being hurt or killed by electrical shock. People with epilepsy are given anticonvulsant drugs to prevent seizures because they are known to damage the brain. The Electroshock Quotationary, a collection of quotations, excerpts, and essays about the history and nature of electroshock, by shock survivor Leonard Roy Frank, includes the testimony of Peter Sterling, a University of Pennsylvania neuroscience professor, describing the nature of ECT-caused brain damage, dated May 31, 2001, to the New York Assembly Standing Committee on Mental Health at a public hearing on ECT.

Sterling affirms the obvious: that massive amounts of electricity directly into the brain cause profound damage.

Lack of Efficacy

Not only does electroshock directly violate the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, the practice has never been proven effective. There are no lasting beneficial effects of electroshock; sham-electroshock (anesthesia but no electroshock) has the same short-term outcomes as electroshock (Ross, 2006). Even leading shock researcher and advocate Harold Sackeim now provides a proof. In an article from 2001, he and his colleagues conclude, “Our study indicates that without active treatment, virtually all remitted patients relapse within 6 months of stopping ECT.” (Italics mine)

The FDA

The battle against electroshock has been ongoing since its advent. The two recent chronicles by electroshock survivor activist leaders, Leonard Roy Frank (The Electroshock Quotationary) and Linda Andre (Doctors of Deception), tell the story best. Just now, the fight has centered on the FDA review of the “efficacy and safety” of ECT machines.

Many activists, including myself, have submitted testimony urging the FDA NOT to reclassify these devices from Class III (high risk) to Class II (low risk). I have worked with scores of electroshock survivors, and I can tell you the damage is consistent and terrible. I can also tell you as a psychologist that there are methods so much gentler, safer and more effective to help people with depression.

A Repackaged Product

The reason for electroshock’s endurance and resurgence is best described by Linda Andre, shock survivor and leader of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, in her masterful new work, Doctors of Deception: What They Don’t Want You to Know About Shock Treatment—it is simply the triumph of public relations over science. A concerted PR campaign has allowed electroshock to continue despite clear scientific evidence of its dismal and tragic record on safety and efficacy.

The industry repackaged the product to keep it selling. They touted a “newer and safer ECT,” bragging about improved equipment and the introduction of anesthesia and muscle paralysants, which actually came on the market in the 1950s. While the muscle paralysants greatly reduced the risk of broken bones from unrestrained convulsions, there was no lessening of permanent damage to the brain caused by the electroshocks. The drugs made the procedure appear much more benign because they suppressed the body’s natural, violent reaction to a grand mal convulsion. However, as Doug Cameron (1994) and other researchers have shown, the new machines, because they are more powerful than ever are capable of releasing greater amounts of electricity into the brain thus causing more damage than the older devices.

With the newer technique modifications there is also an added risk. The drugs used to prevent bone complications raise the seizure threshold so that more electrical current is required to induce the convulsion, which in turn increases brain damage. Moreover, whereas ECT specialists formerly tried to induce seizures with minimal current, they commonly use suprathreshold amounts in the belief that they are more effective. Again, the more current, the more brain damage. Proponents, and the public, have missed the point that the supposed “effectiveness” of ECT is in direct ratio to the amount of brain damage it causes.

In addition to the propaganda effect and the financial incentives, there is a less well-considered reason for ECT’s popularity among psychiatrists. Although electroshock is often described as psychiatry’s “treatment of last resort,” it is actually psychiatry’s “treatment of next resort.” Next resort after psychiatric drugs, which are the main “treatment”—a treatment whose lack of effectiveness and lack of safety are well documented. Like ECT, these drugs can damage and disable the brain. Like ECT, they can cause a fully justified resentment that goes with the experience of having been betrayed by one’s supposed helpers.

Activist and electroshock survivor Leonard Roy Frank’s recent letter to the FDA in regards to their review of ECT devices is one of the best. I end this blog article with his conclusion:

As a destroyer of memories and thoughts, electroshock is a direct, violent assault on these hallmarks of American liberty: freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, freedom of thought, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from assault, and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Tens of thousands of people every year in the United States are deceived or coerced into undergoing electroshock. The FDA should do everything in its power to discourage the use of electroshock by:

  • keeping ECT’s Class III, high-risk rating;
  • insisting that electroshock psychiatrists, manufacturers of ECT devices, and executives and administrators in hospitals where ECT is administered, substantiate with scientific proof their claims that the procedure is “safe and effective”;
  • and calling upon the Congress and the Department of Justice to investigate the fraudulent and coercive use of this cruel and inhuman procedure.

Despite the evidence of grievous harm and failure to help, electroshock’s proponents rave on; as an example, an electroshock psychiatrist told Washington Post reporter Sandra Boodman in 1996, that, “ECT is one of God’s gifts to mankind. There is nothing like it, nothing equal to it in efficacy or safety in all of psychiatry.”

Given that ECT causes brain damage, memory loss, and other serious cognitive impairment, electroshock serves to cover up and impede any potential malpractice or personal injury litigation. It generally takes years for a shock survivor to recover enough to figure out what has happened to them, and most states have a statute of limitations (usually one or two years) on medical malpractice and personal injury suits. As a result, electroshock survivors are effectively prevented from pursuing litigation against those who harmed them, making electroshock psychiatrists almost malpractice-proof.


John Breeding, Ph.D. has been a counseling psychologist in Austin, Texas for 25 years.
He is an outspoken critic of electroshock treatment and has testified against its use before legislative bodies on numerous occasions. Dr. Breeding is also the director of Texans For Safe Education, a citizens group dedicated to challenging the ever-increasing role of psychiatric drugs in schools. He is the author of numerous articles and four books including: The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses and True Nature and Great Misunderstandings.

For more information on the damage caused by ECT, visit www.endofshock.com

References

Ayd Jr., F.T. (November-December 1963). “Guest editorial: Ugo Cerletti, M.D. (1877-1963),” Psychosomatics, Vol. 4, pp. A-6 – A-7.

Boodman, S.G. (September 24, 1996). “Shock therapy: It’s back,” Washington Post (Health Section), pp. 14-20.

Frank, Leonard Roy, The Electroshock Quotationary, June 2006, www.endofshock.com/102C_ECT.PDF.

Andre, Linda, Doctors of Deception, www.doctorsofdeception.com.

Kalinowsky, L.B. (1988). Quoted in R. Abrams, “Interview with Lothar Kalinowsky, M.D.,” Convulsive Therapy, Vol. 4.

Ross, C.A. (Spring 2006). “The sham ECT literature: Implications for consent to ECT,” Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, Vol. 8.

Sackeim, H.A. et al. (March 14, 2001). “Continuation pharmacotherapy in the prevention of relapse following electroconvulsive therapy,” Journal of the American Medical Association.

Sackeim, H.A. (2001). “Memory loss: From polarization to reconciliation,” Journal of ECT, vol. 17, no. 3, p. 229. Sackeim, H.A., Prudic, J. et al. (January 2007). “The cognitive effects of electroconvulsive therapy in community settings,” Neuropsychopharmacology, Vol. 32, pp. 244-254.

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Green Mental Health Care – Reclaiming Lives From Psychiatric Drugs

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

by Genita Petralli, Nutritional Biochemist

Genita_Petralli_blog_295x193The so-called “War On Drugs” has a new battleground – your doctor’s office, where the unholy alliance between the pharmaceutical and psychiatric industries presents a pseudo medical model that inflicts addictive, chemical abuse on innocent victims while lying to the public with “sales science” and calling it medicine. Their drugs are nothing more than variations of the very same illegal drugs the government has spent billions of dollars fighting—not because they care about you, only to preserve pharmaceutical sales. Make no mistake; a drug is a drug—pushed or prescribed. They are all toxic, and psychotropic pharmaceuticals are far more toxic to brain tissue and the liver; diminishing quality of life, causing multiple addictions and ultimately resulting in disease and death—never health and wellness!

My life is dedicated to reclaiming lives from psychiatric drugs and exposing psychiatry for what it is; a gang of white collar drug pushers robbing our society of every resource that supports it right down to our future; the children.

As a scientist and licensed practitioner I want to educate all those interested in what is causing the epidemic mental health crisis of today, how to avoid it, how to get off of psychiatric drugs if you are on them now, and why toxic drugs should never be sold as medicine.

My work is toward a medical model for all mental health issues to be based on patient outcomes and not profit. This is accomplished with Orthomolecular Neurochemical Rehabilitation (ONR).

green mental health careI wrote Green Mental Health Care – How to Get Off & Stay Off Psychiatric Drugs because the psychiatric patient with Prozac in his/her medicine cabinet is in even more danger than the crack head smoking crack. This is because the crack head knows they have to stop smoking crack to get well—the psychiatric patient thinks they are taking medicine and that their condition is the best they can hope for—when neither is true. They don’t recognize the fundamental truth that drugs injure the body and mind – prescribed or pushed.

To sit on the sidelines and do nothing while I watch people suffer from the effects of psychiatric drugs is not an option. I know what these drugs do to cells, tissues, critical organs and brain function and I can’t just turn my head because everywhere I turn I see more pain and suffering while Big Pharma continues to make bank and control society. They are literally using our money against us, forcing out all evidence-based holistic options that should be sponsored by public medicine like pharmaceutical drugs are. They are using our taxes and out of pocket cash spent on their drugs to buy lobbyists in Washington to get pro-Pharma laws passed and forced medical practices pushed through such as the Mother’s Act, the language of which is now in the health care reform bill. Come on, the notion of giving an antidepressant to a pregnant woman? These drugs are extremely harmful to grown adults; can you imagine what they do to the development of a fetus that doesn’t have the functional maturity to even try to protect itself from them? They will stunt every process of development in that child and already have been shown in numerous studies to cause birth defects.

Psychiatric drug use is particularly destroying the youth in our society. The vast majority of the mass school shootings are done by young adults on psych meds (see www.ssristories.com). People will say, “Well, that’s why they were on meds, there was something wrong with them” or “They weren’t taking their meds, therefore they went crazy.” Don’t believe this for a second, kids have been going through all the challenges and discomforts of adolescent bullying, ostracism etc.… since the beginning of time and it wasn’t until our toxic health care system started drugging them that they started taking guns to school and initiating mass murders.

Psychiatric drugs are responsible for increased car accidents, domestic violence, emergency room visits, hospital admissions, diabetes, cancer, aneurysms, tardive dyskinesia, suicide, violence, they are more abused by school children today than their illegal counterparts. As the damage these drugs do to the health of our global citizens takes its toll, they turn once productive people into parasites of society as we pay through our taxes for their subsidized housing, health care costs, and SSI/Disability payments monthly. Is it their fault? No- after all, they were told to take their medicine to get better—the only fault is that they believed their doctor whose practice is dictated by the “standards of care” created by a corrupt Big Pharma. We are all suffering the deluge of destroyed lives by these drugs and humanity as a whole is becoming crippled by them. I want to help stop the pain and suffering these drugs cause and teach what is causing their symptoms, how to find out what is the root cause, and how to cure it and live this one precious life we all share in the full spectrum capacity they were born capable of living it. I want to see humanity flourish and witness the beauty we are capable of creating on this planet. I want the planet to be inhabitable by my grandchildren and I don’t want them forced onto drugs for being children.

Government agencies are now forcing children to take drugs if a psychiatrist labels them with a “mental illness.” And they are calling those who speak against the government’s toxic health care initiatives “terrorists” and “crazy,” incarcerating and drugging them. The day I always feared has now seen its dawn; we are losing our right to refuse “medical care,” even with the volumes of evidence piled up that proves it is harmful, toxic and does not deliver its recipients to health. The people are too fog-brained by and addicted to their pushed and prescribed drugs in their food, environment and medicine to see what is happening and reclaim their lives and the potential of humanity that “God” is capable of. People are literally chemically lobotomized today and it is a pandemic.

You are no longer a freethinker if you are addicted to a drug, be it pushed or prescribed, and people are becoming more and more compliant as legal drugs become more and more prolific in our society. Only someone addicted, misinformed and symptomatic would find it plausible to believe that a toxic drug is a medicine and that that “medicine” has any chance of producing health and wellness. Big Pharma has done a very good job at creating masses of people who are addicted, misinformed and symptomatic in a very short period of time. The drug companies now have undue influence over our medicine, standards of care, our government and the FDA. They have become so powerful that they run our government to the point of using our own police to enforce laws that are unconstitutional that require parents to drug their children if their child is diagnosed with a mental disorder. Parents have had their children taken away for refusing to give them psychiatric medications! Yes, our own police officers have removed children from homes because their parents wouldn’t give them legal cocaine (Ritalin)!

This book is my contribution toward helping them get well and bring them from the dark corners they have quietly suffered in, into the light of health and wellness, hope, and the empowering feeling of being embraced by the love and compassion that those of us have for those harvested by the pushers of toxic “medicine.” With each person I detoxify and help to natural mental health, I am building an army of healthy environmentalists. By making the decisions you need to make to get well—starting with the needs of an individual cell to get well, you will by default become an environmentalist helping the planet detoxify and survive as well. When we discontinue the demand for the products that are making people crazy, we take their power and ability to buy Washington, the FDA, the NIH and their front people, psychiatrists (grants, ghost writing payoffs, schools, etc.) away. Our medicine and laws will become patient outcome driven as opposed to profit driven and those toxic chemicals that are causing disease, death and loss of quality of life will no longer be pushed upon us and offered at every turn of our head.

Believe it or not, we live in an era of “harvesting” and people are being harvested by psychiatry for future income. The pharmaceutical companies that are making the laws that force their drugs into people now pave the way for psychiatry’s methods. Psychiatrists are being sent to grade and intermediate schools to evaluate our children, they are the first “doctors” people being incarcerated see, elderly people in senior homes are being drugged to death. If you lose a loved one and are sad you get drugged, if you get in a car accident you are drugged, if you have anxiety about finals in college you get drugged, if you are going through a divorce you get drugged, if you’re not good at math you get drugged, if you speak against the government you are crazy and drugged. Psychiatric medication prescriptions skyrocket for those 65 and older, psych drugs are being pushed on television, in newspapers, magazines and through schools. The unholy alliance between Big Pharma and psychiatry is causing more deaths yearly than any illness if you consider not only the suicides and murders, but the diseases they are associated with.

Big Pharma and psychiatry are literally sucking the life out of humanity and destroying the ability to achieve the quality of life people hope to reclaim when they go to their doctor. For anyone interested in a free copy of the pamphlet version of my book, Green Mental Health Care – How to Get Off Psychiatric Drugs & Stay Off – A Comprehensive Guide to Staying Sane in a Toxic World, send an email to FindPeace@ShangriLaBioSpa.com.

Genita Petralli H.H.P., N.C., M.H., Nutritional Biochemist ~ Orthomolecular Neurochemical Rehabilitation, Psychiatric Drug Detox & Neuroendocrine BioRepair

For more information on non-drug alternatives for mental health or for more information on safely coming off of psychiatric drugs visit our alternatives page.

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Pharma’s Drug Ads: From Million Dollar TV Ads to $1.7 Billion Internet Marketing Campaign

Monday, November 16th, 2009

On November 13th, 2009, Pharmaceutical companies flocked to a two-day FDA hearing into online drug advertising, which could influence their use of social media on the net. 1  Already, the explosive growth in online advertising has intensified public concerns: the pharmaceutical industry spent more than $1 billion on Internet ads last year and is projected to spend $1.7 billion on such marketing efforts in 2012, according to the Direct Marketing Association.2

Both Eli Lilly and Merck have received warning letters this year from the FDA accusing them of misleading online advertisements.3  But while the FDA scrambles to monitor online ads, who monitors the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry’s use of front groups to indirectly market their products?

A Washington Post article of June 16, 2009 reported that an increasing number of pharmaceutical firms are turning to social media tools, such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and MySpace, to market their products.  It cites how a community site sponsored by drugmaker McNeil called “ADHD Allies”—aimed at adults with ADHD—was established and offered an online podcast on financial advice and an “ADHD self-assessment tool.”4

British psychiatrist Joanne Moncrieff explains how this ultimately increases drug sales because only a biomedical approach is promoted: “Drug companies…provide funds for pro drug patient and carer groups and address advertising or disease promotion campaigns to the general public…This influence has helped to create and reinforce a narrow biological approach to the explanation and treatment of mental disorders and has led to the exclusion of alternative” treatments.5

Such websites do not mention company’s product but rather market the “disease.” In advertising, it can be accomplished through a strategy known as “condition branding,” where “mental illness” can be pitched just like cars, beer or laundry detergent.  Witness the brand name “bipolar” and “social anxiety disorder” that drug companies marketed at a fever pitch.

John Read, PhD, Psychology Department, University of Auckland did an analysis of 54 random “advocacy” groups for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) through the Internet. The results, published in the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation this year, found 42% of the websites received drug company funding. The researchers found:

  • “Patients tend to trust these organizations to act in an unbiased manner” but as earlier researchers argued in some cases “patient organizations have become a mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry in influencing regulatory authorities.”
  •  “Drug company influence within the area of mental health is prevalent and now extends to the Internet. This influence is not always transparent. This study suggests that drug company sponsorship of websites leads to a greater emphasis on pharmacology in the treatment of PTSD,” Dr. Read’s report concludes.6

ADHD Allies/ADHD Moms

In June 2008 Concerta was given an expanded indication by FDA and is now indicated for patients aged 6 to 65.7 In July 2008, McNeill Pediatrics—a subsidiary of Ortho-McNeill Pharmaceuticals—launched what they called an “unbranded group” called “ADHD Moms.” ADHD Moms markets the trademarked name “Mom-bassadors” to get mothers into the Facebook page. 8

  • McNeill spuriously claims “the group is not product-specific, nor are there any advertisements for the company’s ADHD drug Concerta (methylphenidate).” Well not directly, but providing material for the site is a Dr. Quinn, a paid consultant and speaker for McNeil Pediatrics. 9  April White, who also provides content is a paid spokesperson for McNeil Pediatrics.10
  • On April 22 2009, McNeill launched a second ADHD-focused Facebook page called “ADHD Allies,” this time targeting adults.  The “Allies” are board members of another front group Attention Deficit Disorder Association (ADDA), funded by McNeill.11
  • The pharmaceutical company has trademarked “ADHD Allies” and “ADHD Moms.”  ADHD Allies was responsible for a “2008 Harris Interactive survey of 1,000 adults with ADHD.” Not surprisingly, the survey found the condition significantly affects them. 12

Log onto The Bipolar Journey: Living With Bipolar Depression website and while it does show AstraZeneca on the home page, there’s no mention of its blockbuster antipsychotic drug Seroquel, approved by the FDA in 2006 for “bipolar.”  The site looks like a patient information site providing facts about the “disease” and misleadingly saying that it may be caused by a chemical imbalance—for which there is no evidence.

It refers people to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) that has received $23 million recently from at least 18 drug companies. The site shows that of 17 cites for the exhibit’s showing in 2009, 12 are conferences or events put on by NAMI.

It also links to The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, a group that received close to $1 million in pharmaceutical company funding in 2007.

According to an August 27 2009 press announcement, AstraZeneca launched its interactive exhibit, endorsed by New York psychiatrist Janet Taylor. The press release does not mention that Dr. Taylor has financial ties to the company.13

In 2005, global sales for Seroquel reached $2.8 billion.  October 20, 2006, company announced Seroquel was FDA approved for bipolar.14 Within a year, sales reached $3 billion and then soared again in 2008 to $4.66 billion.15

By funding social media front groups that talk only about the “disorder,” drug companies can overcome fears of running afoul of FDA regulations that govern drug advertising and “are embracing social networks to help brand and position their companies in a positive light with consumers and practitioners.”  The top 10 drug companies using social media are: Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson, Novartis, Boehringer Ingelheim, AstraZeneca US, Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi-Aventis, Roche, and Merck.16

This post was written by CCHR International.
Coming next from CCHR Int: Psycho Pharma Front Groups

1 “FDA Addresses Drug Ads in Online Social Media,” Red Orbit, 13 Nov. 2009.

3 “FDA Addresses Drug Ads in Online Social Media,” Red Orbit, 13 Nov. 2009.

5 Joanne Moncrief, in a “Study of the Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry on Academic and Practical Psychiatry,” http://www.critpsynet.freeuk.com/pharmaceuticalindustry.htm

6 http://www.isst-d.org/jtd/mansell_&_read_ptsd_drug_cos_&_internet%20.pdf; Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 10:9–23, 2009

12 “Adults ‘Facing’ ADHD: ADHD Allies™ Offers Unique Online Community for Adults with ADHD on New Facebook® Page,” http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/concerta/36533/

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We’re All in China Now: New Initiative Launches Police State Under Guise of Mental Health

Friday, October 30th, 2009

by Beverly Eakman,
Author, Educator
Former Editor-In-Chief, NASA’s Newspaper (JSC)

Chinese flag

It’s zero hour in America. Do you know where your country went?

Now that America’s education system and parenting “experts” have brainwashed a generation of now-grown schoolchildren-cum-parents into believing that what we once called personality quirks, character flaws and moral issues are, in essence, mental disorders, politicians have taken the ball and run with it.  Law enforcement agencies and the judicial system are in the process of adopting Stalinist and Mao-inspired methods of controlling dissidents at home.

Only a few, short years ago, what was held up as independent thinking, speaking one’s mind, and robust dialogue is now decried as a prelude to terrorism.  Our nation’s leaders are pulling off communist-style thought-control by implying that any words uttered in print or out loud that run contrary to “accepted wisdom” (and that can change in a “New York Minute”) is the result of mental illness.

Don’t believe it?  Well, “google” this:

A recent report out of Missouri labeled “not-for-public-distribution” (circulated anonymously by a shocked and patriotic police officer) specifically describes supporters of the three presidential candidates as potential “militia”-influenced terrorists and instructs police to be on the lookout for bumper stickers and other paraphernalia associated with, of all things, the Constitution—such as “Campaign for Liberty.”  Even a few Members of Congress were implied to be security risks themselves (potential domestic terrorists).  The document, entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” (February 20, 2009), emanated from the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC), one of several so-called “Fusion Centers” established by the federal government around the country.

Most people are probably not familiar with the term “Fusion Center.”  These were originally intended to allow local and state law-enforcement agents to work alongside federal officers after 9/11 so that terrorist-related activities could be identified, then pounced upon by all three entities at once.  “Fusion Center” offices, therefore, incorporate local, state and federal law-enforcement personnel, a strategy which, prior to the launching of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was deliberately avoided to maintain independence and preserve impartiality.  Predictably, these Centers got out of hand and fell into what is referred to as “mission creep.”

Mission creep is defined by Wikipedia as:

“the expansion of a project or mission beyond its original goals, often after initial successes…. [I]t is usually considered undesirable due to the dangerous path of each success breeding more ambitious attempts, only stopping when a final, often catastrophic, failure occurs. The term was originally applied exclusively to military operations, but has recently been applied to [other] fields, mainly the growth of bureaucracies.”

Ongoing improvements in tracking and monitoring of opinions via magazine subscriptions, charitable gifts, school and household surveys, and other computerized data collection has made political prediction on hot-button topics that much easier to secure.  “Predictive computer technology” (already a staple of school assessment testing) entails analysis by behavioral psychiatrists with concurrent degrees in statistics. This same capability has greatly accelerated mission creep among the nation’s Fusion Centers.

The PBS News Hour (not known for its conservatism or, for that matter, for being “alarmist”) recently reported on how political dissidents in China are forced into to psychiatric hospitals Video: Chinese Dissidents Committed to Mental Hospitals.  In the segment, aired September 13, 2009, the manner in which complainants (called petitioners), whistleblowers and outright protesters are “managed” bears an eerie resemblance to a policy shift right here in America.  States’ rights (or the 10th Amendment) are among the first casualties of a top-down, federal effort to minimize, and eventually suppress, dissent.

Psychopolitics is as the art and science of asserting and maintaining dominion over the thoughts and loyalties of individuals, officers, bureaus, and “the masses,” via various techniques ranging from “group dynamics,” “cognitive dissonance,” “de-sensitization,” “super-imposing alternate value structures,” “artificial disruption of thought,” the Delphi Method, the Tavistock Technique, to negative or positive “reinforcement.”   If you don’t recognize any of these, don’t feel too badly, because they are not part of any school curriculum.  The people who created them are, for the most part, unknown in our own country, except among those groomed by extremist political organizations to become “change agents,” professional agitators or “provocateurs.”  The pioneers of psychopolitics, including attitude prediction, include individuals such as Wilhelm Reich, Kurt Lewin, Theodor Adorno and Erich Fromm (Germany); A. S. Neill, A. J. Oraje and John Rawlings Rees (Great Britain); Antonio Gramsci (Italy); Anatoly Lunacharsky and Georg Lukacs (Russia); G. Brock Chishom and Ewen Cameron (Canada); and the U.S.’s own Ralph Tyler and Ronald Havelock.

Although psychopolitics originated under Vladimir Lenin as “political literacy” and “polytechnical education” in the old Soviet Union, and was carried to the free world via Peter Sedgwick (1934–1983) a translator for Victor Serge, author of PsychoPolitics and a revolutionary socialist activist as well as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, the term psychopolitics found its way into the American lexicon via Isaac Asimov, a master of the sci-fi genre.  But psychopolitics is no science fiction adventure, and never was.

By the 1970s, a slew of enablers were establishing a system of numerical codes for so-called mental disorders that would accommodate computerization.  This lent legitimacy to what would otherwise have been considered “questionable illnesses.” The goal was to ensure that medical professionals, the media and government accepted these terms as they might “diabetes,” thereby ensuring that the mental illnesses so codified would remain indelible, beginning with the youngest and most vulnerable.

The long-term game plan of psychopolitics is the conquest, usually by proxy, of enemy nations through “mental healing,” better known as “re-education.”  This entails what we know as “encounter groups,” extensive self-disclosure surveys and peer pressure to conform.  If all that doesn’t work, if certain individuals are still not amenable, then the first step is marginalization as “mentally unbalanced.”

Example:  A study by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation, funded by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of $1.2 million, announced on 1 August, 2003, that adherents to conventional moral principles and limited government are mentally disturbed. NIMH-NSF scholars from the Universities of Maryland, California at Berkeley, and Stanford attribute notions about morality and individualism to “dogmatism” and “uncertainty avoidance.”  Social conservatives, in particular, were said to suffer from “mental rigidity,” a condition which, researchers assert, is probably hard-wired, condemning traditionalists to a lifelong, cognitive hell, with all the associated indicators for mental illness: “decreased cognitive function, lowered self-esteem, fear, anger, pessimism, disgust, and contempt” (Jost, J. T., J. Glaser, et al. (2003). “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition.” Psychological Bulletin 129(3): 339-375 online at http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~hannahk/conservatism.html).

This is the sort of unprovable, but nevertheless libelous condescension that is  heaped upon anyone from talk show hosts, to authors to patriots who dare to contradict “common wisdom” (a.k.a. “political correctness”).  If that doesn’t work, contempt may be followed up with “mandatory [psychiatric] counseling” (already a feature of the American judicial system), or even forcible psychiatric drugging (well on its way to legitimacy in this nation’s schools). Finally there is incarceration in a psychiatric hospital, which gratefully is not yet a fixture in American democracy for potential dissenters, but the handwriting is on the wall, as the expression goes.

Totalitarian states like Communist China and Russia may be more blatant in their affronts to human rights and personal property — inasmuch as they don’t need a “reason” — but the differences are narrowing precipitously.

As emphasized during interviews on the PBS segment, the Chinese system is set up in such a way as to pre-empt complaints.  The Chinese government doesn’t wait around for somebody to sound off; it pre-emptively seeks out individuals likely to become troublesome, by assigning a mental-health diagnosis to anyone at the first sign of a provocative or inflammatory remark.

This lies at the heart of what is going on here in America, and we absolutely must put a stop to it, if it isn’t already too late.  Data-mining (which actually pre-dates 9/11), along with longitudinal tracking (that’s tracking over long time periods) and, therefore, ongoing monitoring of individual perceptions, worldviews and beliefs is gaining momentum with every moment that computer technology evolves — which means constantly.  Combine this with the practice of assigning mental-illness labels to private opinions, based on snippets of various information — with anything that might be favorable to the individual conveniently left out!

This “diagnosis,” like the American school child’s, follows the person for life, often compromising his or her college and career prospects.  An why not, after all?  Computerization makes it impossible for anyone to prove that an erroneous or falsified accusation has been purged from the system with no backup copy.

Today’s Chinese authorities, like Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Zedong (Tse-tung) before them, in order to avoid drawing attention to policies that may be morally or ethically distasteful abroad (e.g., the one-child policy and forced abortion) or invite protests that coincide with an event at which international media attention is expected (such as the Olympics), they employ spies, block careers and intimidate family members.

It may be shocking to hear from your college-age children that we going down the same road.  Several universities, like the University of Delaware, in which a lawsuit was filed, have planted paid opinion-monitors in university dormitories (called “resident assistants,” or RAs).

Adam Kissel, Director of the Individual Rights Defense Program, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, explains in a 2008 speech:

The freshman arrived for her mandatory one-on-one session in her dormitory at 8 pm. Classes had been in session for about a week. Her resident assistant handed her a questionnaire. He told her it was “a little questionnaire to help [you] and all the other residents relate to the curriculum.” She “looked a little uncomfortable.”

“When did you discover your sexual identity?” the questionnaire asked.

She wrote in response: “That is none of your damn business.”

Another question: “When was a time you felt oppressed?”

Her response: “I am oppressed every day [because of my] feelings for the opera.  Regularly [people]…jeer me with cruel names.… But I will overcome!  Hear me, you rock-loving majority?”

The resident assistant felt appalled…. He wrote up an incident report and reported her to his superiors.

This one-on-one session was not a punishment…for a recalcitrant student who had committed an infraction. It was mandatory sensitivity training, indeed, but it was part of a program that was mandatory for all 7,000 students in the University of Delaware dorms. It was a thorough thought-reform curriculum that was designed by the school’s Residence Life staff in order to treat and correct the allegedly incorrect thoughts, attitudes, values, and beliefs of the students….

Many other features — the mandatory one-on-one and group sessions throughout the year; the “confrontation” training to help RAs challenge students who were not complying [with political correctness]; the posters with [politicized] messages spread throughout the dorms; the zero-tolerance policy against anything deemed “oppressive”; the individual files on students and their beliefs, in some cases called “portfolios,” which were to be archived after graduation; the RA reports on their “best” and “worst” one-on-one sessions; the scientific analysis of the questionnaires in order to measure improvement toward the “educational objective”; the “strong male RAs” who were hired to break the “resistance to educational efforts” among [especially] the young male students — all of this, according to the university’s own materials, was part of a cutting-edge educational model that had won awards from a professional association for university administrators, the American College Personnel Association.

As if this weren’t enough to prove that psychopolitics is alive and well in America, with the pervasive undercurrent of “mental illness” as justification, schools below the college level have thoroughly succeeded in exchanging academic testing for mental-health “assessment”; left out, rewritten, and altered history texts until virtually nothing is left of the Framers ideals of a constitutional republic; redefined and watered down morality into something called “situation ethics”; removed the physiology from health classes and replaced it with graphic sex education, beginning in kindergarten.

Already, we see the results:

Do you vocally promote the right to self-defense?  Do you voice support for the intact family; national sovereignty and strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution? Do you criticize easy immigration (i.e., without a citizen-sponsor); unrestricted free trade; free condoms hanging on some college freshmen’s dormitory doors; formalization of same-sex unions; abortion on-demand; mandatory mental-health screening of all pregnant women and schoolchildren?  Do you have a problem with the policies of the Federal Reserve; with “traffic” cameras and other surreptitious surveillance devices; industry-wide bailouts; no-fault divorce and illegitimacy?  Then, my friend, you are not merely holding to a “divergent viewpoint,” to use the 1950s term; you are mentally ill and a potential terrorist.  You are a person who is ripe for radicalization and therefore suspect.  Did you volunteer for certain political candidates in the 2008 election?   Do you, by your choices of magazine literature and religious preference, show that you have “bought in to” theological tenets such as the Creation?

If any of these apply to you, good luck in ever securing a government grant or contract, or getting your child into a top university, when there are others who carry none of this psychological “baggage.”

Americans are supposed to view any opposition to all this as “paranoia.”  Of course, the term paranoia carries a chilling effect, because it screams “mentally unbalanced” to the world.

Once it becomes possible, via technology, to track and legislate private opinions — and even to classify those that don’t conform as “mentally ill” — then we have left the realm of politics and moved into coercion.  We have facilitated the stigmatization of political dissent and vocal objection using labels like “acute stress disorder” or “paranoid schizophrenia,” just as they do a right now, today, in China, according the aforementioned PBS segment.

As a former employee of the U.S. Justice Department, I personally saw several precursors to the MAIC document — “watch-out” reports (for lack of a better term), on a smaller scale, under Janet Reno’s tenure there.  These were distributed to employees following the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing.  Obviously, such alerts have been greatly expanded, what with the network of government “Fusion Centers” in state after state.

With pharmaceutical company moguls and politicians sitting on each other’s boards (E. I. Lilly’s chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, sat on the Homeland Security Council under George W. Bush’s administration); with nationwide mental health assessments like the New Freedom Initiative (funded by the House in 2002) sizing up the political “health” of schoolchildren (and curriculum being altered accordingly); and with “behavioral detection officers” (“BDOs”) looking for any signs of irritation among model citizens in airport security lines, while U.S. borders are left open for drug-runners, who then get to sue Border Patrol agents for shooting at them—all this points to an America in big trouble.

“Political dissent” is now in the eye of the bureaucratic beholder — or the surveillance camera, erected under the guise of traffic safety to pursue revenue and to intimidate through meaningless “gotchas.”

We’re all in China now.

Beverly K. Eakman is a CCHR Commissioner, a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper at the Johnson Space Center.  Today, she is a Washington, DC-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker on the lecture circuit. Her most recent work is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers).

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Congressman Ron Paul’s Parental Consent Act

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009

Ron PaulBy John Breeding
Psychologist, Author, The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses

On April 30, 2009, Congressman Ron Paul introduced H.R. 2218, known as The Parental Consent Act of 2009.

The bill forbids federal funding for universal or mandatory mental health screening, and also forbids money for any educational or other government agency that would use a parent’s refusal to consent to their child’s screening as basis for a charge of child neglect or abuse.

Click here for video interview with Kent Snyder, Ron Paul’s Presidential Campaign Manager, speaking about why Congressman Paul introduced the Parental Consent Act.



A little recent history is relevant. On April 29, 2002, President George Bush created the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. In 2003, this industry-studded commission presented their recommendations for the reform of the United States mental health system.

“To aid in transforming the system,” the authors of the report wanted to do many things, including:

  • Improve and expand school mental health programs.

  • Screen for co-occurring mental and substance use disorders and link with integrated treatment strategies.

  • Screen for mental disorders in primary health care, across the lifespan, and connect to treatment and supports.

This rhetoric serves to hide the truth that New Freedom is better called No Freedom or New Intrusion, and that mental health screening really means mass marketing and target recruitment of a captive population.

By the time of these New Freedom Commission recommendations, there already existed very large numbers of citizens around the country wising up to the extraordinary intrusion of psychiatry into our schools, as demonstrated in the first four years of this millennium by a number of resolutions, education department statements and state laws, all defending a parent’s right to make treatment decisions for a child without coercion, and a child’s right to education without psychiatric labeling and drugs.

Through 2003, there had been at least 46 state bills or resolutions supporting parental choice, in 28 states, that had either passed or were still pending action across the United States.  For example, Connecticut, Minnesota and Texas had passed laws explicitly stating that a parent’s refusal to consent to the administration of a psychotropic drug to a child does not constitute neglect, therefore is not in itself grounds for Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation.  Other states have passed related laws either monitoring or curbing CPS policy in this area.

Many states are pursuing related legislation as the wave of activity in support of parental choice continues to expand.  Texas law now prohibits school personnel from suggesting a diagnosis or recommending a psychotropic drug to a parent for their child.  The public will is clearly for the schools to educate, not medicate, and for the state to allow privacy and autonomy to parents and families.  At a federal level the fight over the Child Medication Safety Act was eventually won so that nowhere in the country is it legal to require a psychiatric controlled substance as a condition of attending school.

Ron Paul has been a key leader in this effort for some time.  On October 6, 2004, he introduced an earlier incarnation of his current Parental Consent Act.  This one, aptly titled the Let Parents Raise Their Kids Act, also attempted to forbid federal funds from being used for any universal or mandatory mental-health screening of students without the express, written, voluntary, informed consent of their parents or legal guardians.

Since that time, the fight has only intensified.  In 2005 in Texas, for example, we fought tooth and nail to the bitter end to defeat a bill that would have initiated mental health screening in schools throughout Texas.  Since we have defeated them consistently, this session they tried to get a pilot program approved for San Antonio and we defeated that as well, but the psychiatric and pharmaceutical lobbies are relentless.  PsychSearch.net provides one of the best websites on mental health screening and the ongoing resistance. 

We have been aided by our awareness.  Made possible largely by the work of Pennsylvania whistleblower Allen Jones, we know that many of the New Freedom commissioners are linked directly or indirectly to the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), which provides formulas recommending specific psychotropic drugs to treat various “mental illnesses.”  It has been revealed that TMAP pushed an off-label drug marketing scheme that appears to skirt federal law.  We know, therefore, that this commission’s recommendations are intended to encourage an expansion of the fact that “appropriate services” in today’s psychiatric world means psychotropic drugs; there are already millions upon millions of school-age children on psychiatric drugs.

Senator Charles Grassley’s work outing the severe ethical financial conflicts of so many psychiatric industry spokespersons makes it a little easier to challenge these things.  For example, it tends to impress legislators when they hear that three psychiatry department chairs—Charles Nemeroff of Emory University ($1 million from GlaxoSmithKline alone), Martin Keller of Brown University (associated with a severely compromised drug trial) and Alan Shatzberg of Stanford (who was principal investigator on a drug developed by a company in which he owned $6 million of stock) have all recently resigned their positions as a result of Grassley’s investigation.

The very high number of false positives in mental health screening is good data.  In one study at Columbia University, the authors concluded that use of the Columbia Suicide Screen would result in 84 non-suicidal teens being referred for further evaluation for every 16 youths correctly identified.  It also helps to know that these type programs tend not to work anyway.  For example, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) found that screening for suicide risk does not reduce suicide attempts or mortality.

Finally, the facts about the severe dangers and lack of efficacy of the various types of psychiatric drugs gets attention once the truth is made known.

I consider this to represent a tragic situation, and a clear and present danger to our children.  Here is a pledge that thousands specifically signed and that so many more are acting on in the concerted challenges around the country to this scourge:

We promise to actively resist further intrusion of psychiatry into the public schools, and will not cooperate in any way with those who act as agents of this wrong-headed government initiative.  We do not now and will not later consent to the psychiatric or psychological testing of our children by those who act as agents to implement New Freedom recommendations for universal mental health screening of our children.

The Parental Consent Act of 2009 is a great idea. Passing this bill in Washington would make a significant difference in protecting children and families against further intrusion of psychiatry into the schools. I know it would also make this Texas activist’s life a little easier!

John Breeding, Ph.D. has been a counseling psychologist in Austin, Texas for 25 years. He is the director of Texans For Safe Education, a citizens group dedicated to challenging the ever-increasing role of psychiatric drugs in schools.  He is the author of numerous articles and four books including: The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses and True Nature and Great Misunderstandings: On How We Care For Our Children According To Our Understanding.

Click here to read The Parental Consent Act

Contact your member of Congress to support The Parental Consent Act. To find your Representative and get their contact information, go to http://www.congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt to look them up (you need to enter your zip code).

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No More ADHD

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

by Dr. Mary Ann Block
Author, No More ADHD:Ten Steps to Help Your Child’s Attention and Behavior without Drugs

Because of my medical training, my goal as a physician is to look for and treat the underlying conditions causing the patient’s problem, rather than just covering up those symptoms with drugs. I have seen and treated thousands of children from all over the United States, who had previously been labeled ADHD and treated with amphetamine drugs. By taking a thorough history and giving these children a complete physical exam as well as doing lab tests and allergy testing, I have consistently found that these children do not have ADHD, but instead have allergies, dietary problems, nutritional deficiencies, thyroid problems and learning difficulties that are causing their symptoms. All of these medical and educational problems can be treated, allowing the child to be successful in school and life, without being drugged.

The Annals of Allergy, reported in 1993, that children with allergies perform less successfully in school, across the board, than children who do not have allergies.

A study in the Journal of Pediatrics, 1995, reported that children who ate sugar had an increase in adrenaline levels that caused difficulty concentrating, irritability and anxiety. A double blind, crossover study published in Biological Psychiatry, 1979, found that Vitamin B6 was more effective than Ritalin in a group of hyperactive children. Another study found that children with magnesium deficiencies were characterized by excessive fidgeting and learning difficulties. There are many more studies indicating an association between nutritional deficiencies and attention and behavior problems.

There is no valid test for ADHD. The diagnosis called ADHD is completely subjective. While some compare ADHD to diabetes, there really is no comparison. Diabetes is an insulin deficiency that can be objectively measured. Insulin is a hormone manufactured by the body and needed for life. ADHD cannot be objectively measured and amphetamines are not made by the body or needed for life.

The drugs used on children diagnosed ADHD come with a host of potential side effects. According to the manufacturers of the drugs, the following side effects can and do occur: insomnia, anorexia, nervousness, seizures, headaches, heart palpitations, cardiac arrhythmia, psychosis, angina, abdominal pain, hepatic coma, anemia, depressed mood, hair loss, weight loss, tachycardia (too fast a heartbeat), increased blood pressure, cardiomyopathy (weakening or change in heart muscle), dizziness and tremor to name a few. The U.S. FDA has warned ADHD drugs such as Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta can cause heart attack, stroke and sudden death. These drugs are classified as schedule II controlled substances with high abuse potential. According to reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the drug Ritalin has been found to be very similar to and more potent than cocaine. Ritalin and cocaine are so similar that they are used interchangeably in scientific research. There are no long-term studies on the safety and effectiveness of these amphetamine drugs, though millions of children are treated with them for years at a time.

When I was in school and when my children were in school, there was no need to drug millions of children. While there are children who have attention and behavior problems and these problems may have increased due to poor diets, an increase in soda and candy in our schools, an increase in allergies due to changes in our environment and an increase in learning problems does not mean these children have a psychiatric disorder called ADHD. It means they have medical and educational problems that can be fixed.

Most of the children I have seen who have been prescribed these drugs have never even had a physical exam. No doctor listened to their hearts even though many of the side effects are heart related. Since there is no valid test for ADHD, most doctors get the information for the diagnosis from the child’s teacher in the form of a checklist. If the teacher wants the child to be taking these drugs, all she or he has to do is fill out the checklist indicating the child has many problems in the classroom. One child was diagnosed as ADHD and prescribed Ritalin. I treated him instead. Once his allergies and learning problems were corrected he went on to become a National Merit Finalist and accepted to an Ivy League University.

Every child deserves that opportunity. Many of the parents of these children have told me that the teachers and principals have pressured them to put the children on these drugs, threatening to report them to Child Protective Services (CPS) if they do not comply. CPS actually removed a child from his home after the school reported the mother for not giving the child his drugs. The ironic thing was, she had given him the drug, but the drug made his symptoms worse, not better. I cannot imagine any reason to give a child an amphetamine to cover up symptoms when the problem can be fixed and no drug is required. Let’s give our children the medical and educational evaluations they need to diagnose the real problems. Let’s treat those real problems and give our children the future they deserve, without drugs.

Dr. Mary Ann Block is founder and Medical Director of the Block Center in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.  Dr. Block specializes in the drug-free treatment of health problems and learning disabilities and is an outspoken critic of the dangers of psychiatric drugging of children. She travels the world speaking to public and professional audiences about safer and more effective non-drug treatments for children with attention and behavior problems. Her books include No More ADHD: Ten Steps to Help Your Child’s Attention and Behavior without Drugs and No More Ritalin: Treating ADHD Without Drugs.

For more information visit Dr. Block’s website:
http://www.blockcenter.com/web_content/ADD_ADHD/ADHD.html

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The CIA Mind Control Doctors: From Harvard to Guantanamo

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

by Colin A. Ross
Psychiatrist, Author,
The CIA Doctors, Military Mind Control
 and Project Bluebird

My book, The CIA Doctors,[i] is based on 15,000 pages of documents I received from the CIA through the Freedom of Information Act and dozens of papers published in medical journals.  These papers report the results of research funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Department of the Army, the Office of Naval Research and the CIA.  From 1950 to 1972, the CIA funded TOP SECRET research at many leading universities including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and Stanford.  There was a series of CIA mind control programs including BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKULTRA, MKSEARCH and MKNAOMI.

MKULTRA and related programs had several over-lapping purposes.  One was to purchase mind control drugs from suppliers.  Another was to form relationships with researchers who might later be used as consultants at the TOP SECRET level.  The core purpose of these programs was to learn how to enhance interrogations, erase and insert memories, and create and run Manchurian Candidates.  All of this is described clearly and explicitly in the declassified CIA documents, which provide a glimpse into the tip of the iceberg of CIA and military mind control.

The CIA mind control experiments were interwoven with radiation, chemical and biological weapons experiments conducted on children, comatose patients, pregnant women, the general population and other unwitting groups who had no idea they were subjects in secret experiments.  Radiation, bacteria and funguses were released over urban areas.  A large cloud of radiation was released over Spokane during OPERATION GREEN RUN; plutonium was injected into a comatose patient in Boston by Dr. William Sweet, a member of the Harvard brain electrode team; plutonium was placed in the cereal of mentally handicapped children at the Fernald School in New England; 751 pregnant women were injected with plutonium at Vanderbilt University; the bacteria serratia maracens was released into the air in San Francisco, resulting in a series of infections and plutonium was injected into an amputee at the University of Rochester.  All these experiments were conducted without any informed consent or meaningful follow-up.  Hallucinogens, marijuana, amphetamines and other drugs were administered to imprisoned narcotic addicts in Lexington, Kentucky, terminal cancer patients at Georgetown University Hospital, hospitalized sex offenders at Ionia State Hospital in Michigan and johns picked by prostitutes hired by the CIA in San Francisco and New York.

Most of these experiments were conducted by psychiatrists with TOP SECRET clearance.  These included Louis Jolyon West, Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma and later at UCLA; Dr. Robert Hyde in Boston; Dr. Carl Rogers at the University of Wisconsin; Dr. Martin Orne at Harvard; Dr. Charles Osgood at the University of Illinois; Dr. James Hamilton at Stanford; Dr. Charles Geschichter at the University of Richmond and Dr. Harold Abramson and Dr. Harold Wolff at Cornell.  Other TOP SECRET-cleared MKULTRA contractors included Dr. Maitland Baldwin, a neurosurgeon at the National Institutes of Health and Dr. Carl Pfeiffer, a pharmacologist at Emory.

The CIA doctors violated all medical codes of ethics dating back to Hippocrates, including the Nuremberg Code.  The experimental subjects were not told the real purpose of the experiments, did not give informed consent, were not afforded outside counsel and received no meaningful follow-up.  As described by the psychiatrists in published papers, experiments with LSD and other hallucinogens, combined with sensory deprivation, electroshock and other interrogation techniques, resulted in psychosis and death among other “side effects.”   The purpose of these experiments was to see how easily a person could be put into a psychotic state or controlled.

In a series of MKULTRA projects, the CIA paid a former Bureau of Narcotics officer, George White, to set up safe houses in San Francisco and New York that were decorated like brothels.  George White then hired prostitutes to pick up johns at bars, bring them back to the safe house, give them LSD without their knowledge, and then have sex with them.  The CIA officers watched the sex through one-way mirrors.  The project documents state that the purpose of the experiments was to test the effects of LSD on unwitting subjects under field conditions that mimicked an interrogation of a foreign operative.

In one of the memos contained in the MKULTRA files for these projects, however, another purpose of the safe house operation is revealed.  The CIA was actually testing the performance of “Jekyll-Hyde” identities they had created in the prostitutes.  They wanted to see if they could make female spies or female agents with alternate controllable personalities.  Another purpose of these experiments was to test the CIA’s Manchurian Candidate prostitutes under conditions that mimicked a field operation.  The johns were given LSD as part of the cover for testing the CIA’s female Manchurian Candidates prior to their use in actual operations (the mission being to have sex with and extract information from targets).  The recruitment of street prostitutes provided an additional layer of cover for the testing of the Manchurian Candidates, plus it provided free live pornography for the CIA officers.

In other experiments, conducted by Dr. Jose Delgado at Yale and Drs. Vernon Mark, Frank Ervin and William Sweet at Harvard, brain electrodes were implanted in people and their mental state and behavior was controlled from a remote radio transmitter box.  These experiments were conducted with funding from the Office of Naval Research.  In experiments at Tulane funded by the CIA and the Army, implantation of brain electrodes was combined with injecting mescaline and other substances directly into the experimental subjects’ brains.

BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA were the precursors of present-day enhanced interrogation programs used by the CIA at secret prisons outside the United States.  Water-boarding, electric shock, hooding, prolonged sleep deprivation, death threats and other techniques discussed in the Senate and Congress and in the media, are, in my opinion, elements of a limited hangout, a CIA strategy in which a little bit of the truth is revealed in order to cover up the greater part of the truth.  None of these experiments or operational programs would be possible without the participation of doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists.  The doctors are directly involved in testing the interrogation techniques and monitoring their effects.

The purpose of mind control experiments is controlling human behavior: making enemy combatants open up during interrogation; protecting secret information by erasing memories; making spies more resistant to interrogation because secret information is held by hidden identities and making people more prone to influence, social control and suggestion.  It has nothing to do with medical treatment, easing suffering or curing disease. The mind control experiments and operational programs violate basic human rights and all codes of medical ethics.

Dr. Colin Ross is a psychiatrist, internationally renowned researcher, author and lecturer. In addition to The CIA Doctors and Military Mind Control, he is also author of Project Bluebird, in which he exposes unethical experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new identities, hypnotic access codes, and new memories in the minds of experimental subjects. His research is based on 15,000 pages of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Dr. Ross is a past president of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation. He is the founder and President of the Colin A. Ross Institute for Psychological Trauma.

[i] Colin A. Ross (2006). The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations By American Psychiatrists. Richardson, TX: Manitou Communications.

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Teen Screen, Cynical Deception, Dangerous Illusion

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

By Allen Jones, Former Investigator, Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General

As human beings we have a strong natural impulse to protect our kids from harm.  As a society we create norms, laws and institutions to protect, educate and nurture our young.  Consciously and instinctively we safeguard our children.

Teen Screen is a bitter and cynical betrayal of this noble human impulse. Promoted as an aid to preventing suicide and identifying so-called mental disorders, Teen Screen is in fact a nefarious effort to recruit our children into the quagmire of biological psychiatry.

I believe the majority of parents who support Teen Screen are well meaning and genuinely have the best interests of children at heart.  I believe they have been duped and beguiled by slick marketing that appealed to their better instincts while simultaneously defeating those instincts.

Teen Screen was developed and promoted by persons with deep financial ties to makers of psychiatric drugs.  These drug companies have a profit-driven incentive to maximize the use of their drugs.  Teen Screen furthers this corporate goal by following a psychiatric model intended to translate normal human experience into symptoms of mental illness.

Teen Screen’s centerpiece is a survey which claims to identify signs of mental illness and suicidality in children and adolescents.  How does it do this?  Teen Screen identifies feelings and emotions experienced by children and adolescents. It then translates these feelings and emotions into “symptoms” of mental illness. In this way, Teen Screen is in lock-step with modern psychiatry.

The field of psychiatry has attached clinical pathology to the presence or absence of literally every mood or feeling in the normal range of human emotions. The diagnostic criteria outlined in psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) essentially identify the presence or absence of feelings and subjectively determine if these feelings are “normal” or “abnormal.”  If the feeling or emotion is considered inappropriate in intensity or context, that feeling becomes a “symptom” of “mental illness,” treatable by medication.  After all, psychiatric drugs are designed to treat “symptoms” not cure illness.

Any child who lives life fully and freely will experience a full range of human emotions.  They will experience sadness, gladness, apathy, energy, optimism, pessimism, fear, fearlessness, love, hate, suspicion, trust and myriad other feelings.  Experiencing these feelings and learning to be guided appropriately by them is a vital part of growth and maturation.  Teen Screen identifies these feelings, subtlety manipulates or ignores context and labels the feelings as possible “symptoms” of mental illness.

Imagine the emotional states experienced by a child before, during and after a major life event such as playing in the “Big Game” with an archrival school.  The child might be distracted by excited anticipation for days before the event.  He might have difficulty sleeping the night before the game.  He might be unable to think of anything else on game day, even during classes.  He will likely be very highly energized during the event.  Depending on the game outcome, the child might be elated or saddened for days afterwards.

Now imagine the child later being asked questions such as these:

Have you ever felt so full of energy that it was difficult to sit still?

Have you ever felt anxious when you had to say or do something in front of people?

Have you ever been so concerned about something that you could not sleep?

Have you ever felt so happy that you could not concentrate?

Have you ever felt so sad that you could not focus on your school work?

The participant in the big game and the spectators of the big game might answer “yes” to most or all of the above questions.  Following the creed of modern psychiatry, Teen Screen would determine the child to be at risk of mania, social anxiety disorder, depression and possibly bipolar disorder.  The child would be flagged for further psychiatric evaluation.

The above scenario is not far-fetched. Things like this are happening every day. Teen Screen has been proven to have “false positive” rates as high as 84%.

Teen Screen is a device to distill “symptoms” from normal life experience and generate unlimited referrals to mental health professionals whose primary method of treatment involves drugging.  Please do not be duped by this ferocious, Pharma-friendly wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Allen Jones, worked as an investigator in the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General (OIG), and gained widespread national and international attention as a whistleblower after uncovering pharmaceutical industry payments to government officials for the purpose of implementing a national mental health screening/psychotropic drug treatment plan based on the controversial Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP). In May, 2004 the British Medical Journal reported Jones had uncovered evidence major drug companies sought to influence government officials and that Jones was escorted out of his workplace on April 28, 2004, after OIG officials accused him of talking to the press. Jones chose to disclose his findings to the press precisely because of corrupt behavior by OIG officials themselves, alleging the OIG’s policy was “unconstitutional.”

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Drugged to Death; Our Kids and Our Troops

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

By Jim Marrs
Investigative Journalist
New York Times bestselling author

Today, one of the biggest problems we have, and one of the things that shocks so many Americans, is the rise of teen suicides and the rise of school shootings. Yet all we hear from the corporate mass media on the shootings is “Well, we need to take the guns away.” Let me tell you something, I went to school in Texas. We took guns to school. Nobody shot anybody. So what’s changed? Drugs. Kids on psychiatric drugs. Nearly every school shooter in this country can be shown to have been involved with psychotropic drugs—either taking them at the time of the shootings, or what can be even worse, coming off of them. And teen suicides? Read the FDA black box warnings, these drugs can cause suicidal ideation. So logically, if kids are being drugged up with antidepressants, and if in fact teen suicides are rising, then it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that we better stop drugging our kids to death.

Psychiatric drugs cause major changes in brain chemistry and in behavior. International drug regulators warn that the drugs we are doling out to kids can cause mania, psychosis, depersonalization, suicidal and even homicidal ideation. If we take a look at the school shooters that were under the influence of these drugs, you have to wonder why there hasn’t been a federal investigation into the correlation between drugs documented to cause violence and suicide and kids taking them who then became violent and suicidal. If even a handful of these school shooters were found to be taking PCP or smoking crack we would have headline news announcing a causal relationship between illicit drug use and acts of violence. But because these kids are taking legal drugs, prescribed by a psychiatrist for an alleged mental disorder, something we use to refer to as “childhood,” the powers that be don’t think it merits an investigation. Well we are all aware of how much Pharma spends on lobbying efforts. Regarding corporate media I would venture a guess that the reason they haven’t taken on the issue is simple: Big Pharma is now one of, if not the largest, advertisers in the United States, with $5 billion a year spent on direct to consumer advertising.

The rise of drug-induced acts of violence and suicide isn’t limited to our schools. In January 2009 it was reported that more of our military died of suicide than of combat deaths. Why is that? Could it be because our military are getting pumped full of psychiatric drugs? What Time Magazine referred to as “America’s Medicated Army?” Well if we are “medicating” our troops with antidepressants and antipsychotics, drugs documented to cause suicidal reactions, let’s put 2 and 2 together and state the obvious—these drugs are minimally a contributing factor.

Many people don’t realize that psychiatry’s love affair with the military dates back more than 90 years; During World War I the biggest problem the German military had was desertions—people leaving the front lines of the War. So the Germans turned to psychiatrists who came up with a solution: Electroshock. Psychiatrists theorized that if the shock soldiers experienced due to the brutalities of war made them desert the front lines, then another kind of shock—electroshock—could get them to be good little soldiers and willingly return to combat. Maybe because electroshock wiped out their memory, or maybe because soldiers chose to face the front lines rather than have another 450 volts of current tear through their brain, it worked. Psychiatry had come up with a winning strategy for the military to deal with reluctant soldiers and since that time the love affair between the two entities has never waned.

Today there are mobile psychiatric units that travel with the troops to ensure they’re drugged up as needed. And though they are not yet employing electroshock, as more Americans are made aware that these psychotropic drugs are killing our troops, don’t be surprised if sometime soon you pick up a newspaper and find psychiatrists promoting a new cure for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; Electroshock.

Jim Marrs is an award-winning journalist and author. After graduating from the University of North Texas with a degree in journalism, Marrs worked for and owned several Texas newspapers before becoming an independent journalist/author. Marrs is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, the basis for the Oliver Stone film JFK, and Rule by Secrecy.

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