Posts Tagged ‘stigma’

American psychiatrists are the craziest of them all

Monday, November 26th, 2012

Pravda – Russia – November 26, 2012
by John Flemming
Author of Word Power

Psychiatrists are considered dregs even by their professional brethren-a fact that abets their disgraceful lack of devotion to what is supposed to be a humane profession.

American psychiatrists (A) incorporate themselves to avoid taxes; (B) have no compunction about skewering their clients with in-American-society highly stigmatic labels like “schizophrenic,” “paranoid schizophrenic,” and “psychotic depression”; (C) charge inflated fees, and, after devoting all of five or ten minutes to a patient, turn around and bill the insurance company for a thirty-minute session; (D) make their patients unnecessarily wait a long time in their office to see them, sometimes for as long as two or three hours without so much as a “sorry”; (E) are ignorant of many basic medical subjects, such as alternative and complementary medicine, nutrition, the history of medicine, vitamins and nutritional supplements, behavioral and cognitive therapy, milieu therapy, holistic medicine, social psychiatry and European medical innovations; (F) are devoid of compassion, including compassion for the welfare of their patients; (G) refuse to return the customary once-a-month phone call to disliked patients; (H) employ still the discredited, mind-destroying lobotomy, in the guise of the “leucotomy,” “orbital undercutting,” and “cingulotomy”; (I) automatically label “paranoid,” without any contradicting evidence, anyone who complains of harassment, despite the fact that in this Manichean world harassment is ubiquitous; (J) mindlessly refer to “DSM” (“Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,” published by the American Psychiatric Association in its latest bizarre edition), despite trenchant criticism of it as unscientific medical imperialism (there is an alternative to “DSM” in the “ICD”); (K) uncritically accept psychoanalytic quackery, crediting pseudoscientific Freudian imbecility, without any evidence, with having made important contributions to psychology and psychiatry; (L) look down on their patients as dirt, “pulgas,” as a sort of subhuman malingerers-an attitude that conditions their don’t-give-a-damn treatment; (M) employ more insurance billing clerks and debt-collectors than nurses; (N) constantly whine and complain about the cost of liability insurance and working with the fee-adjusting insurance industry but never about their own profiteering fees; and, finally (O) view free health clinics for the poor and impoverished as purgatory, and in fact there are none in the U.S.

An overwhelming majority of medical school students, as professional polls have discovered, admit that they chose the field to make much money

An overwhelming majority of medical school students, as professional polls have discovered, admit that they chose the field to make much money. Considerable time in medical school is devoted to how to set up a physician practice, incorporating oneself, inflating the status of physicians, attacking vitamin therapy and rival self-help therapies, and maximizing profit. The practice leaves that much less time for learning anatomy, physiology, nutrition and the like. Spaces in medical schools are deliberately limited in order to minimize competition and ensure high incomes for physicians. The limitation has led to a serious shortage of doctors, who, victims of their own greed, now are given to the “Beklagung” that they are overworked. It is hence common to find lecture halls in medical schools where one-third or less of the seats are taken.

The status of the American M.D. is very high, as is his income. Surgeons make the most money, while certain specialties like psychiatry and pediatrics are at the bottom of the medical hierarchy. Somewhere in the middle are endocrinologists, hepatologists, ear-nose-throat doctors, immunologists, ophthalmologists, gastroenterologists, and so forth. Psychiatrists are considered dregs even by their professional brethren-a fact that abets their disgraceful lack of devotion to what is supposed to be a humane profession.

The tragicomic psychoanalysts (“depth psychology” charlatans) are actually marginalized in the U.S., despite the fact that Freud caught on nowhere so great as the States. The international headquarters of psychodynamic tomfoolery is New York City. American psychoanalysts must earn a regular M.D. or osteopathy license, since there is no accreditation for the mere study of Freud’s cocaine-intoxicated delusions. Psychoanalysis per se is as therapy singularly worthless. Not many psychiatrists practice the laughable art. American psychoanalysts constantly fight a rear-guard battle for occupational survival, claiming intellectual freedom and patient-choice rights. Fortunately, most Americans are skeptical of the nonempirical bogus “science.” Credat Judaeus Apella, non ego!

The lobotomy was popularized by a Portuguese miscreant named Egas Moniz, who received the 1949 Nobel Prize for his crimes. A 1972 psychiatric text blandly remarked “the treatment of chronic psychotic patients by frontal lobotomy spread throughout the world, and for a time was the treatment of choice in such cases.” Two famous American lobotomy victims were an actor, Warner Baxter, and, in 1941, Rosemary Kennedy (sister of President  Kennedy), at the behest of father Joseph Kennedy-the founder of the clan of arch heirs and heiresses-allegedly because he wanted to silence Rosemary after having had incestuous sex with her. In reality, the lobotomy is nontherapeutic and should be permanently outlawed as a crime against humanity.

The sociological purpose of American psychiatry is to detect deviance, apply a stigmatic label to deviants and proceed to punish them. See Thomas Szasz’ book, “Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted” (1994). There are doctors who tour the country trying in lectures, conferences and workshops to destigmatize emotional illness. Yet it is like attempting to drain the ocean through splashing, since the stigma, in a society that has a long appalling list of stigmas (the mortification of the aged, any dummy “slow on the uptake,” the “slanty eyes” of Chinese-Americans), is deeply culturally ingrained.

Read the rest of the article here

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The Death of Mental Illness

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

PsychCentral
By Will Meecham, MD, MA
May 18, 2011

In writing this post, I may be crashing the American Psychological Association’s annual blog party. Naturally, I’m in favor of joining others to increase awareness and reduce stigma around psychiatric problems. But despite the spirit of solidarity, I’m perhaps an outsider, because I no longer believe ‘mental illness’ serves as a helpful concept.

In this era of burgeoning diagnoses, it’s a bit awkward to declare our great emperor, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), naked and unfleshed. Especially at a party.

Let me be clear: people sometimes behave in ways that look incomprehensible or even insane. Suicidal behavior, profoundly delusional speech, and irresistible compulsions represent severe behavioral problems for individuals and society. No doubt they stem from cognitive activity and emotional tones that differ from average day-to-day awareness. These sorts of disordered conduct do indeed derive from ‘mental’ processes, but do they qualify as ‘illnesses?’

It seems to me that to define something as a disease implies that we can also recognize its absence. But this isn’t always easy with mental conditions. Take the example of suicide. Frank attempts on one’s own life lie at the extreme end of a spectrum of self-destructive thoughts and actions. Some of these get labeled as mental illness, and some don’t, but the distinction is rather arbitrary.

I suspect a majority of the population would have to admit to moments of wondering if life is worth the effort, and to brief thoughts of ending it. We aren’t mentally ill just because we have moments of doubt. How frequently or how seriously does a person have to question life’s value in order to be deemed sick? Or consider that a man with advanced emphysema who continues to smoke kills himself just as surely as a woman who takes an overdose of pills. But our culture doesn’t define the dying smoker’s senseless behavior as mental illness. What’s the difference? Does the fact that a man doesn’t admit to wanting to end his life relieve him of responsibility for doing so? The honestly suicidal woman is arguably more rational and clear than the smoker clouded in denial who works toward the same end.

Or consider delusions. If a man believes the CIA has implanted thought control devices in his brain, everyone agrees he is out of touch with reality; we call this paranoid schizophrenia. But if a political leader proclaims that environmental exploitation isn’t a problem, even as the ecosystem destabilizes, no one considers her delusion a sign of mental illness. Director Tom Shadyac’s delightful documentary, I Am, makes a similar point about how many of the values our culture promotes are actually insane.

What about obsessions? Someone who won’t leave the house without checking the doors and windows two dozen times earns a diagnosis of OCD. But a billionaire obsessed with accumulating ever more money gets worshiped like a modern deity.

Furthermore, psychiatrists dismiss highly positive spiritual experiences as delusional and hallucinatory simply because such states hint at phenomena that aren’t endorsed by materialist science. When for a time I entered what seemed like profoundly awakened consciousness back in 2000, I wasn’t congratulated. The psychiatrists labelled my experience a ‘manic psychosis’ and started me on Haldol. I was too trusting to doubt them at the time, but now I wish they’d referred me to a spiritual leader rather than the psychiatric ward.

Obviously, people spiral into all kinds of behavioral crises and need help. Sometimes they recognize their need for assistance, and sometimes not. But whether a particular maladaptive conduct gets labelled as mental illness or not has to do with cultural values, not medical science. If there weren’t so much stigma, and so much risk of over-medication, it wouldn’t matter. But a life may be derailed for years (or forever) after the hammer of a major psychiatric diagnosis shatters a person’s reputation and self-image.

Tradition tells us that the seventh century Korean Zen Buddhist Wonhyo achieved enlightenment when following an exhausting journey without water he collapsed at night in a deep cavern. He found an ivory bowl while groping in the dark, and relished the sweet water it contained with a rush of relief. But when he arose the next morning he realized he had reclined in a tomb. The ‘bowl’ was the cap of a human skull, and he saw that he had not drunk clean water but a putrified soup of decay. At first nauseated and repulsed, he spiritually ‘awoke’ shortly afterward when he recognized how what he thought about reality (and not reality itself) so decisively determined his experience.

The conditions we label mental illness are a bit like that, only in reverse. In my case a lifetime of profound sadness, plus the ministrations of countless therapists and doctors, convinced me that I suffered from a major psychological disease caused by my upbringing (which included early bereavement and severe child abuse) and genetic endowment (my depressed mother committed suicide). This view of myself had a major impact on my self esteem for much of my life, but I don’t believe it anymore. Now I understand that my sadness was a natural grieving reaction that may have been prolonged because no one validated my understandable sorrow after such a childhood.

No longer do I see my melancholy as the psychiatric equivalent of a decomposing skullcap. I now appreciate that life dealt me hardship early on, and I reacted normally. With time I overcame my grief, so that the traumatic past now stands as one of my most important teachers. Despite its ordeals, it led me to how I feel today: contented and more than a little knowledgeable about misfortune and its transcendence. The skullcap has transformed into the ivory bowl. Of course, neither perspective is necessarily ‘correct’ in any objective sense. But which picture I hold in mind has a powerful impact on how I feel.

I’ve already sketched how psychiatrists diagnosed as mania an experience that in another time and place would have been viewed as a divinely granted spiritual awakening. My epiphany landed battered and defamed in the charnel grounds of mental illness, when it could have been an elegant container of grace.

How experiences are framed determines how we feel about ourselves and how others view us. Does the frame of mental illness serve the majority of patients? Or does it more often sap vitality and confidence? I read in many blogs of the relief people feel when doctors finally define their problems as diagnosable mental diseases. I remember reacting similarly myself when a lifetime of moodiness finally earned me the ‘bipolar’ label. It felt so comforting to have my condition named and seemingly validated. But instead of decisively helpful treatments, the mental health system strung me along with decades of therapy and thousands of little pills, none of which improved my mood or outlook very much. It seems to me that if psychiatric diagnoses were truly valuable, they would guide clinicians to life-changing therapeutic choices. But how often do people diagnosed with ‘major mental illness’ leave the Psychiatry Department with an effective cure? Although they may feel transiently relieved, they and their family now must endure the burden of ‘knowing’ their minds are sick.

Read entire article here:  http://blogs.psychcentral.com/happiness/2011/05/the-death-of-mental-illness/

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Campaign to “Stop the Stigma” of Mental Illness—Is a Pharmaceutical Marketing Campaign

Monday, December 20th, 2010

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights, (CCHR) has launched a new video to expose the hypocracy of the pharmaceutically driven campaign to “Stop the Stigma” of mental illness.    With its seemingly altruistic sounding agenda to eliminate “stigma”  the fact is the real  “stigmatization” is coming from those behind this campaign—pharma, psychiatry and pharma-funded front groups such as  NAMI and CHADD to name but a few.    There are currently 20 million kids & adolescents labeled with mental “disorders” that are based solely on a checklist of behaviors, no brain scans, x-rays, genetic or blood tests can prove they are “mentally ill”,  yet they are being stigmatized with psychiatric labels, which will be part of their permanent medical record,  and prescribed dangerous, life-threatening psychiatric drugs.

Child drugging is a $4.8 billion-a-year industry, and the industry knows where to put its funding to get the most bang for its buck.    For example, take NAMI’s campaign to stop the “stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill—the “Founding Sponsors” were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs. (For an in-depth look at what else Pharma funds and how this funding not only helps set mental health policies but campaigns such as this, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies at the bottom of this post)

The real stigmatization is coming from those that benefit from labeling behaviors as diseases to be “cured” or “treated” despite the complete lack of  medical/biological evidence to support them.  George Orwell coined the term Doublespeak, meaning words redefined to mislead, distort and disguise, and no better example exists than psychiatry’s pathologizing and redefining behaviors into mental “illness”.      For example,  If an adolescent is strong willed,  this is redefined as  “oppositional defiant disorder.” If a kid acts like a kid,   sometimes losing pencils or toys, or acting “on the go” then this has been pathologized into  “ADHD.” If a teenager has normal adolescent mood swings, then this has been repackaged as “bi-polar disorder.” And shyness?  Doesn’t exist.  It is now called  “social anxiety disorder.” Moreover, once labeled, these kids are stigmatized for life.

Psychiatric labels are the stigma.

Various canned press releases and “studies” circulated by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry profess,  “more people now believe that illnesses like schizophrenia and depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.”  This is marketing at its best—say people believe in a chemical imbalance so you don’t have to bother pointing out the fact that there is no chemical imbalance .  How can the layperson be sure of this? It’s simple. Find one person who has a lab test showing their chemical imbalance.  Not one of the millions of people taking drugs to cure their “chemical imbalance” has a lab test showing they have an imbalance.

So when it comes to “stigmatization” one need look no further than those who benefit from labels which are simply based on opinion—not science, and not medicine. Now it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out… does it?

Watch video: Psychiatry—Stigmatizing Kids with Bogus ‘Mental Disorders’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv49RFo1ckQ

For more information  about pharmaceutical front groups see this:  http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

For an in-depth look at this topic, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies

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Psychiatrist Asks, “Why Are People So Divided When It Comes To Children’s Mental Health?” We’ve Got the Answer…

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

20 million kids are being prescribed dangerous mind-altering drugs

By CCHR

Today’s Huffington Post features an article from psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz, frequently seen in the press leading the cheer for more psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of children.   In today’s article, Koplewicz makes a plea to ‘Stop the Stigma’ which is preventing children from being diagnosed mentally ill.   Pretty catchy slogan isn’t it? “Stop the Stigma.”  It ought to be, it’s a brilliant marketing campaign, brought to you by Big Pharma, via the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), a group that  masquerades as a “patient’s rights group for the mentally ill”  but receives tens of millions in Pharma funding.

But here’s the real rub—What entity is most responsible for stigmatizing millions of children? What group has pathologized childhood behavior and repackaged a list of behaviors into a “disease” called ADHD?  Psychiatry and Pharma.   You can’t be a kid anymore.  If you display child-like behaviors you can be  branded mentally ill for life. And its not just us saying this.  Consider that the former Chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM task force,  psychiatrist Allen Frances, stated “Our country is in the midst of a fifteen year ‘epidemic’ of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). There are six potential causes for the skyrocketing rates of ADD—but only five have been real contributors. The most obvious explanation is by far the least likely – that the prevalence of attention deficit problems in the general population has actually increased in the last 15 years. Human nature is remarkably constant and slow to change, while diagnostic fads come and go with great rapidity. We don’t have more attention deficit than ever before-we just label more attentional problems as mental disorder.”

He  also talked about “stigma,” but sourced the industry creating it—psychiatry: “The ‘epidemic’ of childhood Bipolar Disorder has created a public health dilemma” and that it is  “based on much hype and very little scientific evidence. The label Bipolar Disorder also carries considerable stigma, implying that the child will have a lifelong illness requiring lifetime treatment.”

Exactly.

The title of Dr. Koplewicz’s article is “Why Are People So Divided When It Comes to Children’s Mental Health?” so we’d like to answer that question, as it’s pretty simple —Some of us are for children’s rights and putting their best interests above all else, while others are for Psycho/Pharma and putting their best interests above all else.

That’s the short version.  Here is a bit more detailed answer;

Point 1) Millions of children have been stigmatized with bogus psychiatric “labels” that are based solely on opinion, and not one shred of medical evidence that there’s anything physically wrong with them.  No blood tests, brain scans, X-rays, MRIs or any proof whatsoever they are “mentally ill” and require drugs euphemistically being called “medicine.”    Unlike real medical diseases which are discovered in labs, psychiatric diagnoses are invented by psychiatrists in committee, by  the following “scientific” process;  Cluster a number of behaviors into a nice little package, give it a name and add “disorder” on the tail end of it,  then take a vote.  Majority wins.   That’s about it. And that’s why mental disorders can be here one day and gone the next, because of majority opinion — namely, psychiatry’s.   So while psychiatrists talk about the “amazing progress” they’ve made, and how “close” they’ve come to proving mental disorders are “real medical conditions,” we’d like to point out the obvious—they haven’t.   They couldn’t prove mental disorders were physical/medical conditions 50 years ago, and can’t prove it today despite billions in government funding.    No progress.  Whatsoever.   Zippo.  Nada.    So understandably, Dr. Koplewicz,, as people become more educated about this ludicrous subjective process of disorders made to order, they are concerned about the lack of real science to psychiatric “diagnoses” particularly where their children are concerned.

Point 2) The majority of psychiatrists within the American Psychiatric Association that “decide” on what will and will not be a mental “disorder” are funded by Pharma.  That’s called a Conflict of Interest.  A serious, egregious conflict of interest.  No “conspiracy” here Dr. Kopelwicz, just some facts about your colleagues and their incentives for developing more mental disorders.

Point 3) Due to these subjective, invented mental disorders,  20 million children are currently taking mind-altering, life-threatening drugs, acknowledged by international drug regulatory agencies to cause future drug dependence, stunted growth, mania, psychosis, violence, aggression, hallucinations, heart attack, stroke, sudden death and suicidal ideation.  All international studies and warnings on psychiatric drugs along with all the reports filed with the U.S. FDA’s Medwatch by doctors, pharmacists and healthcare providers reporting suicidal ideation and death from psychiatric drugs given to toddlers, young children and teenagers can be found here:  http://www.cchrint.org/psychdrugdangers/

Point 4) While Koplewicz has the audacity to call the “over-drugging” of children “a myth”,  consider that the Government Accountability Office has launched a federal investigation into the massive increase of drugging children in foster care.  “The investigators will attempt to account for estimates in the hundreds of millions of dollars of possible fraud arising from prescriptions for drugs explicitly barred from Medicaid coverage.  The GAO is collecting data from six states to search for patterns of abuse.  According to a number of foster care experts who spoke with Politics Daily, children in foster care, who are typically concurrently enrolled in Medicaid, are three or four more times as likely to be on psychotropic medications than other children on Medicaid. Alarmingly, many of these drugs are medically prohibited for minors and dangerous to the children taking them.”

Point 5) Senate investigations this past year revealed that some of the “leading” psychiatrists touting the wonders of diagnosing and drugging kids, and largely responsible for massive increases in kids unnecessarily placed on dangerous psychiatric drugs, were on Pharma’s payroll, and failed to disclose this.  Psychiatrists such as Joseph Biederman, who was being paid millions of dollars by the Pharmaceutical companies while skewing the results of drug trials to show false benefits for kids, in order the launch a nationwide campaign to get children diagnosed as “bi-polar.”

And he’s not the only one: Here are some of the “leading” psychiatrists exposed by Senate investigations:

Melissa DelBello, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati, was exposed in 2007 by the Senate Finance Committee for concealing $180,000 she received from AstraZeneca in 2003 and 2004.  DelBello’s studies of the antipsychotic Seroquel, made by AstraZeneca, in children helped to fuel the widespread pediatric use of antipsychotic drugs.

In 2008, Joseph Biederman, a leading Harvard child psychiatrist whose work helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic drugs in children, was exposed for withholding earning at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers between 2000 and 2007.

Alan Schatzberg, president-elect of the APA, and Professor and Department of Psychiatry Chair of Stanford University was also investigated in 2008 by the Senate Finance Committee.  Schatzberg was forced to step down as principal investigator in an NIH funded research project into a drug called Mifeprestone, to treat “psychotic depression.” Senate investigators found that Schatzberg failed to report $4.8 million worth of stock in Corcept Therapeutics, a drug company which he co-founded and acted as lead researcher on a drug development project for until he was forced to surrender that role after being exposed.

A Senate investigation found Charles Nemeroff, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine had concealed $2.8 million he earned from drug companies. He was forced to step down as Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory due to being exposed for his hidden pharmaceutical pay and attempted cover up.

In December 2009, Sen. Charles Grassley filed a complaint about Fernando Mendez-Villamil to federal authorities for his excessive prescribing of antipsychotics to children that were not approved by the FDA.  This cost taxpayers $43 million over six years.  Mendez-Villamil is apparently also currently under investigation by the Medicaid program.  Mid 2009, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration reported that that Mendez Villamil is the top Medicaid prescriber of mental health drugs in the state—for all ages.  It was calculated that he wrote more than 150 prescriptions a day, seven days a week for six years

So to summarize, we don’t have an epidemic of mentally ill children, we have an epidemic of psychiatry stigmatizing children with mental disorders that cannot be medically/scientifically proven to exist.  We have an epidemic of children prescribed dangerous and potentially lethal psychiatric drugs, including infants and toddlers.  And we have the real source of stigmatization—the Psychiatric/Pharmaceutical industry.

To read Koplewicz’s article, click here

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-harold-koplewicz/mental-health-being-openminded_b_791706.html

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Stop the Stigma of Mental Illness? Try Stopping the Pharma Funded Campaigns & Groups Behind the “Stigmatizing”

Friday, September 17th, 2010

(Image taken from: http://herinst.org/sbeder/corppower/pharm-agenda.html)

by CCHR Int

A new study, the result of a joint collaboration between Indiana University and Columbia University, and published  by the American Journal of Psychiatry, reports that prejudice and discrimination still exists among people with serious mental illness.  Headlines include “Mental Illness Stigma Hard to Shake, Survey Finds” and “Despite Deeper Understanding of Mental Illness, Stigma Lingers.”

So what exactly is behind this study? Taking aside the fact that Columbia University is well known for its collaboration with pharmaceutical companies, its medical center having collaborated with AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceutica, Merck, Novartis and Pfizer. Or the fact that Indiana University received a $1 million grant from Eli Lilly.

With a seemingly altruistic agenda, the fact is the campaign to end the “stigma” of mental illness is one driven and funded by those who benefit from more and more people being labeled mentally ill—pharma, psychiatry and pharmaceutical front groups such as  NAMI and CHADD to name but a few.   For example, take NAMI’s campaign to stop the “stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill—the “Founding Sponsors” were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs. (For an in-depth look at what else Pharma funds and how this funding not only helps set mental health policies but campaigns such as this, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies at the bottom of this post)

The fact is that the  “stigmatization ” is coming from those that benefit from people being labeled/stigmatized with mental disorders that have no medical/biological evidence. Case in point, if you are rebellious, you are “stigmatized” with the label “oppositional defiant disorder.” If your kid acts like a kid he is “stigmatized” with the label “ADHD.” If you are sad, unhappy (even temporarily) you are “stigmatized” with the label “depressive” or “bi-polar disorder.” If you are shy you are “stigmatized” with the label “social anxiety disorder.” Moreover, you or your child are now stigmatized for life as this label, which is based solely on opinion, is now part of your medical record, despite the fact there is no medical evidence to prove you are “mentally ill”.

This is also true of people diagnosed “schizophrenic.” There is no medical test to verify someone has a brain abnormality or medical condition of schizophrenia. And while no one claims  people can’t become psychotic, the fact remains there is no biological evidence to support schizophrenia as a brain disease or chemical abnormality.  And consider this, if people do become psychotic, or irrational,  is it in fact caused by some  underlying medical (not psychiatric) problem?   And why did a 15-year multiple follow up study find that there was a 40% recovery rate for those diagnosed schizophrenic who did not take antipsychotics, versus a 5% rate for those who did?  What happened to their supposed “brain disease?” Did it simply vanish?  Moreover, if they could recover from such a mental state, do they deserve the “stigma” of “schizophrenia” still being part of their permanent medical record?  For life?   Think about it.  Imagine you were extremely overweight—obese.  You lose all the weight so you are no longer obese.  Yet your medical records continue to say that you are.

And if schizophrenia is in fact a “disease” despite the fact there is no medical or biological evidence (note we did not say speculation, or theories, but evidence) then why is it that psychiatrist Loren Mosher, the former Chief of Schizophrenia Research for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) openly state that there is no biological condition of schizophrenia as a disease or brain malfunction? And why didn’t the mental health industry take advantage of his 2-year-outcome studies proving that those diagnosed schizophrenic could recover without the use of drugs? Is it because this proved that recovery was possible and thereby disproved the theory that something was wrong with their brain? Or was it the fact that they recovered without the use of drugs, thereby threatening a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry?  Maybe this explains why Mosher was fired from his position at NIMH (http://www.moshersoteria.com/)

As a final note regarding “stigmatization,” keep in mind that psychiatrists admit there is no recovery from “mental illness.” They admit no cures. So once you are labeled—game over.

The new “study” also reports, ” more people now believe that illnesses like schizophrenia and depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.”  This is marketing at its best—say people believe in a chemical imbalance so you don’t have to bother pointing out the fact that there is no chemical imbalance .  How can the layperson be sure of this? It’s simple. Find one person who has a lab test showing their chemical imbalance.  Not one of the millions of people taking drugs to cure their “chemical imbalance” has a lab test showing they have an imbalance.  Now it really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out… does it?

For more information  about pharmaceutical front groups see this:  http://www.cchrint.org/psycho-pharmaceutical-front-groups/

For an in-depth look at this topic, read Pharmaceutical Industry Agenda Setting in Mental Health Policies

Abstract: The development of political agenda-setting through the use of sophisticated public relations techniques is threatening to undermine the delicate balance of representative democracy. This has important ramifications for policies aimed at providing mental health services and the implementation of mental health laws. The principal agenda setters in this area are pharmaceutical companies with commercial reasons to promote public policies that expand the sales of their products. They have manufactured highly effective advocacy coalitions that incorporate front groups in order to set the policy agenda for mental health. However, policies tailored to their commercial purpose are not necessarily beneficial either for patients or the society at large.


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Biological Psychiatry—Following the Money

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

The New American
By Beverly Eakman
July 28, 2010

Despite the public relations campaign aimed at “de-stigmatizing mental illness,” scores of permanent, stereotyping labels are assigned to what are basically annoying habits: clicking a pen repeatedly (anxiety), talking fast (hysteria), repeating a favorite song over and over (obsessive-compulsive disorder), wiggling in a chair (hyperactive). Even crazes like text-messaging are not immune from diagnosis. Attitudes that may be in bad taste or out-of-fashion, but certainly not “dangerous” or “wrong,” are also viewed with suspicion and sometimes criminalized.

Another sleight-of-hand explains why the public doesn’t come down harder on legislators, schools and other agencies that play hardball with their mental-health extremism. It’s called the private-public partnership. This has become a way to muddy the waters so that parents and other taxpayers have to spend weeks or months figuring out exactly who paid for what. For example, the UNC’s schizophrenia study was paid for by researchers from Columbia University, which merely “contributed” to it. Federally funded grants form the National Institute of Mental Health paid the lion’s share, with a large influx from the privately funded Foundation of Hope — a public-private partnership in and of itself that supports mental-health causes.

The Foundation’s website gives a fairly representative look at how the public-private process works: “The Foundation of Hope has given over $2 million to fund local [mental health] research projects and treatment programs. This ‘seed money’ has leveraged an additional $89 million in federal grants at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Dorothea Dix Hospitals.” [Emphasis added]

Thus, it is seed money from established, private entities that helps spread legitimacy. That legitimacy leads the federal government and other well-endowed groups (charities, universities, and even political think tanks) to commit resources to the same cause and in the end institutionalizes it.

This round-about method of securing funds is not peculiar to the United States, nor is it limited to causes like mental illness. Candidates for public office, professional agitators for or against certain hot-button issues, and even some government agencies seeking to garner support for oddball legislation use the same game, which is not in the least affected by laws that purport to limit how much individuals or groups can give to a cause or candidate. Small, unorganized bands of “concerned citizens” who don’t know the ropes are often left to locate the money trails — only to discover they have too few resources with which to challenge entities that can afford hire scores of attorneys.

Another financial bonanza lies within the legislative process itself. Example: For every child diagnosed with an ongoing physical or mental illness, a school district – or even individual families — become eligible for various government greenbacks — Medicaid, Special Education and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), for instance.

Let’s take SSI, for example. SSI is yet another program aimed at low-income parents with a child categorized as having a “disability.” These include classifications for mental illnesses found in that official bible of the psychiatric profession, the DSM. The school will get Medicaid or additional Special Education funds. So, there is every incentive for parents — and school districts — to get as many kids as possible diagnosed.

As always, there’s a catch: If a child is referred to a psychiatrist, it is rare for the youngster to walk out without a treatment entailing psychotherapy and/or psychiatric drugs. If a parent later has second thoughts and suspends drug treatment or psychotherapy, he or she can be cited for “medical neglect,” which carries significant penalties, including the child’s removal from the home. Thus any parent who seeks to profit from SSI benefits may regret it.

Intimidation of whistleblowers and dissenting experts are a problem as well. One such professional recently wrote to Dr. Fred A. Baughman, the retired pediatric neurologist cited in Parts I and II of this series, to complain that his refusal to go along with the “chemical imbalances of the brain” theory was rebuffed with the prospect of a suspended license.

Dr. Baughman responded to the gentleman by citing a response he himself had received in 2002 to a letter on that very topic from Bernard Alpert, M.D., President of the Medical Board of California (MBC):  “As you outline in your letter,” wrote Dr. Alpert, “there is tremendous professional support for categorizing emotional and psychological conditions as diseases of the brain.  In published materials, some quoted in your letter, you will find that support from chairs of psychiatry departments, the American Psychiatric Association and professors of major medical schools.  It is clear that the psychiatric community has set their standard, and while one might disagree with it, that standard becomes the legal standard upon which the Board (CMB) must base its actions.”

Citing Dr. Alpert’s response, Dr. Baughman had this to say to his beleaguered colleague:

Unbelievably, what Alpert, speaking for the Medical Board of the State of California, appears to be saying here is that whatever the majority do, including … knowing[ly] violating a patient’s right to informed consent, that that becomes the unassailable, legal ‘standard of practice’. This puts any physician who purveys the truth [as determined through the scientific method], in legal jeopardy….

Separately, antipsychotics have been implicated in a number of deaths, particularly in veterans. The story got little play, but in what coverage it did get, Lt. General Eric B. Schoomaker described “a series, a sequence of deaths” in the “warrior transition units.” In a press release, Dr. Fred A. Baughman said the deaths were “not suicides or ‘overdoses,’ but sudden cardiac deaths due to prescription antipsychotics and antidepressants.” Again, the story got little attention while parents buried their sons and daughters who didn’t have to die.

Read the rest of this article here: http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/health-care/4161-biological-psychiatry-following-the-money

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The Los Angeles Examiner: Psychiatric Overdiagnosis Means “Normal” Could Become Obsolete

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Examiner.com
By jenny Westberg
July 13, 2010

An intolerance of individual differences, according to some, has led to overdiagnosis.

Are you normal? Are you sure?

A growing number of behaviors and moods are being relabeled as mental disorders, according to two recent articles. Sadness, shyness, personality quirks and the ups and downs of everyday life may qualify almost anyone for a psychiatric diagnosis, effectively pathologizing normality.

Allen Francis, MD writes in the Psychiatric Times that almost everyone meets the criteria for one or another of the conditions listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the book psychiatrists use to determine whether you have a mental illness. The fifth edition of the manual (DSM-5), due in 2013, will relax these criteria even further, giving psychiatric labels to even more people.

According to 2010 figures from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), more than 25 percent of the adult population has a diagnosable mental disorder. That’s approximately 60 million people. A prospective study found that, by age 32, half of U.S. adults could be diagnosed with anxiety; 40 percent with depression; and 30 percent with alcohol abuse or dependence.

With criteria proposed for the DSM-5, psychiatrists could diagnose “Nicotine Use Disorder” or “Caffeine-Induced Sleep Disorder.” If your child has temper tantrums, that’s one of the signs of “Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria.” Bad dreams? It could be a case of “Nightmare Disorder.”

Why is this a problem? Mental illness carries a stigma. A diagnostic label can follow you for the rest of your life. It is shared with your insurance company. Your family and friends might make certain assumptions about you. Your doctor may insist you need psychiatric drugs.

More and more behaviors, however, are being stamped as “mental illnesses.”

Francis writes that individual differences that were once accepted as normal have become medicalized. Our society, he says, has become perfectionistic and intolerant of even short-term distress.

Read entire article:  http://www.examiner.com/x-31400-Portland-Mental-Health-Examiner~y2010m7d13-Psychiatric-overdiagnosis-means-normal-could-become-obsolete

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Just a great article: The Huffington Post—A Psychiatric Drug Story of Tragedy and Triumph by Dr. Peter Breggin

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

The Huffington Post
By Dr. Peter Breggin
July 7, 2010

Today I am reproducing for my readers a letter that we recently received from a woman I will call “Janice.” My wife Ginger reads and responds to most of the many communications that come to us each day through email and the networking sites she has joined. Several times a week we will get a communication that tells us that our reform work “saved my life.” I have never talked about this before because it seems self-serving, but people need to know how lifesaving it can be when health professionals dare to be honest about the hazards of psychiatric drugs and the value of empathic therapeutic approaches.

This week we received several more such letters but one stood out with its dramatic and heartfelt detail. Janice vividly portrays how she suffered not only from the disabling effects of the drugs, but also from the stigma of psychiatric diagnosis that discouraged her and made her well meaning family insist that she remain on drugs. As it seems to be in Janice’s case, the vast majority of the adults labeled “bipolar” that I see in my practice are suffering from antidepressant-induced mania in addition to whatever original life trauma led them to be diagnosed in the first place. I document several similar stories and provide the background science in Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime.

Notice how much courage and motivation Janice received from a single doctor verifying for her that her problems were due to psychological trauma and not to an alleged psychiatric disease. This should lend inspiration to health care practitioners who choose to speak honestly to their patients about the origins of their emotional problems in the story of their lives.

Janice went off psychiatric drugs cold turkey and suffered greatly as a result. I never recommend this. But unfortunately too few health care providers have any idea about the merits of withdrawing from psychiatric drugs and how to help patients go about tapering off psychiatric drugs in way to minimize the withdrawal effects.

Janice’s story moves from tragedy to triumph. I offer it to you for the inspiration that it provides and I wish to thank Janice for the trust she has shown in sharing her story with us, and in allowing us to publish it anonymously.

Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/a-psychiatric-drug-story_b_634352.html

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