False information published by the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration claims that “19.9 percent of American adults in the United States (45.1 million) have experienced mental illness over the past year.”
In fact, statistics provided on the number of people suffering mental illness are completely false or, at best, questionable.
Psychiatry has literally covered every base with invented criteria. The child who fidgets is “hyperactive;” the person who drinks coffee has “caffeine intoxication;” if you smoke or chew you could have “tobacco use disorder;” a low math score is an “academic or educational problem;” arguing with parents is “oppositional defiant disorder;” and of course the catchall “unspecified mental disorder” for the rest of us. Many of these so-called “disorders” are really medical conditions, such as “restless legs syndrome” — there is sufficient evidence that restless leg syndrome can be caused by a magnesium deficiency. And if you’ve been held up at gunpoint, you are a “victim of crime,” and consequently in desperate need of an anti-anxiety drug.
Counting these normal human problems, emotions and reactions as “mental illness” is a fraud, designed to solicit funds for the mental health industry and sell more drugs.
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is the book that contains names and descriptions of 955 so-called mental disorders (including everything from “alcohol intoxication” and “religious or spiritual problem” to “wandering.”)
Doctors, psychiatrists and other medical and mental health practitioners use the DSM to diagnose patients. Each DSM mental disorder description carries a code that clinicians can use to substantiate claims for health insurance reimbursement.
Though it has become very influential since it first appeared in 1952 (when it contained only 112 disorders), there is one crucial test the DSM has never passed: scientific validity. In fact, after more than 50 years of deception, broad exposure is now being given to the unscientific and ludicrous nature of this “947-page doorstop.”
Psychiatric diagnosis has come to be accepted as legitimate, reliable and scientific, though it is based on a system whose own authors admit that it is not. Within the covers of the various editions of DSM, its editors freely admit to the book’s intended use and its limitations.
For example, the DSM-IV states, “…although this manual provides a classification of mental disorders, it must be admitted that no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of ‘mental disorder.'”
The fifth edition of DSM, released in 2013, has been garnering continuous criticism for the inclusion of ridiculous so-called behavioral disorders — “lack of adequate food or safe drinking water;” “alcohol-induced sexual dysfunction;” “cannabis intoxication;” “discord with neighbor, lodger, or landlord;” “extreme poverty;” “low income;” “inadequate housing.” Being diagnosed with a “conviction in civil or criminal proceedings without imprisonment” can lead to involuntary commitment. And to tie in with the current frenzy over opioid addiction, you can have a mental disorder called “opioid use disorder” for which you can be prescribed, guess what, another addictive psychotropic drug.
The contention of many is that the DSM’s developers are seeking to label all manner of normal emotional reactions or human behavioral quirks as mental disorders — thereby falsely increasing the numbers of “mentally ill” people who would then be prescribed one or more drugs that carry all manner of serious side effect warnings.
Based on the DSM then, statistics are touted about near “epidemic” rates of mental illness in order to demand more government funds and sell more harmful drugs, making people “patients for life” as the drug adverse events then require more drugs to handle these side effects.
The apparent epidemic of “mental illness” is because the psychiatric industry, working with the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration, invents new disorders almost every year. Take, for example, “intermittent explosive disorder,” often referred to as “road rage” and which psychiatrists report afflicts one in 20, about 16 million Americans. How, exactly, did psychiatrists come up with this? They conducted a survey. The survey asked American adults if they had ever experienced three anger outbursts in their entire life. Not surprisingly, a whole lot of people said they had. From this flimsy evidence the Archives of General Psychiatry printed the survey results that hype this fictitious disease.
In September 2001, a U.S. Senate hearing on “Psychological Trauma and Terrorism” was told that, “Seventy?one percent of Americans said that they have felt depressed by the [9/11] attacks.” It’s a worrying statistic, until one realizes that the survey was conducted during the six days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when Americans were, naturally, in a state of shock. The survey sampled 1,200 people only, which, by some quantum leap, led to the conclusion that nearly three-quarters of Americans were mentally damaged, requiring “professional” help.
What did have an impact were psychotropic drug sales. Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, new prescriptions for antidepressants in New York jumped 17% and prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs rose 25%.
Behind the alarming reports of mental illness gripping our nation are psychiatrists and drug companies inventing diseases and placing healthy people at risk.
People can have serious problems in life; these are not, however, some mental illness caused by a deficiency of psychotropic drugs in their brains. Click here to find out the alternatives to psychiatric drugs.
With $76 billion spent every year on psychiatric drugs internationally, and billions more in psychiatric research, one would and should expect an improving condition. However, after decades of psychiatric monopoly over the world’s mental health, their approach leads only to massive increases in people taking addictive and harmful mind-altering drugs, escalating funding demands, and up to $40 billion a year in mental health care fraud in the U.S.
What are you going to do about it? Get the Facts. Fight Back.
