Behaviors Are Not Diseases

Yes, People Can Get Depressed, Sad, Anxious and Even Act Psychotic. That Doesn’t Make Them Mentally “Diseased.”

No one is saying that people don’t get depressed, sad, troubled, anxious, nervous or even act psychotic. The question then is simple—is this due to some mental “disease” that can be verified as one would verify cancer or a real medical condition? The answer is no. For example, can soldiers returning from war experience extreme and often debilitating stress? Yes. It is something wrong with their brain? No. It’s the horrors of war. Can children become distracted and not pay attention? Since time immemorial, yes. But psychiatry has pathologized childhood behaviors into a “mental illness.” The same is true of mothers. Can a new mother become distraught after a joyous occasion such as the birth of a child? Yes. Is it a brain abnormality or mental disease? No. And is the most humane solution to put these people on drugs documented by international regulatory agencies to cause mania, psychosis, worsening depression, heart attack, stroke, sudden death? Or for new or nursing mothers to risk birth defects or damage to their infants from being prescribed such powerful drugs?

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? A 15-year multiple follow up study found 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.

Loren Mosher, a psychiatrist and the former Chief of Schizophrenia Research for the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) openly stated that there is no biological condition of schizophrenia as a disease or brain malfunction. His 2-year-outcome studies proved that those diagnosed schizophrenic could recover without the use of drugs.