Posts Tagged ‘Mental Health’

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Missouri Receives Federal Crisis Counseling Program Grant

Monday, August 28th, 2017

The Missouri Department of Mental Health received a $500,000 “Show Me Hope Crisis Counseling Program” (CCP) grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that funds psychological services for victims of flooding. The money is funneled to six Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC): BJC, Comtrea, Compass Health, Family Counseling Center, Ozark Center, and Ozarks Medical Center.

The CCP is a short-term disaster grant funded by FEMA and administered through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Federal Law authorizes the President to fund mental health assistance and training activities in designated disaster areas. President Donald Trump declared a major disaster in Missouri June 2, 2017 at the request of Governor Eric Greitens. There are other emergency funds being used for cleanup, recovery and other humanitarian efforts.

It is certainly encouraging that the federal government is backing up relief efforts to flood victims in Missouri; however, one does not consider psychological counseling as effective relief.

Natural disasters do not cause mental illness. People have emotions that are appropriate for the situation. If something terrible happens it’s only natural to feel bad. The severity of the disaster would determine the appropriate reaction of tears to hysterics. In fact, it would be abnormal not to have those emotions. Psychology and psychiatry would like you to believe otherwise. Psychologists and psychiatrists are taking the stress of disasters and making them into behavioral issues that can only be treated with “counseling” and harmful psychotropic drugs.

Most people are resilient and can cope with the stress resulting from a disaster. For those that can’t seem to bounce back or recover in a timely fashion, they will be the ones targeted by psychiatrists, psychologists and pharmaceutical companies to get them on counseling and drugs. Instead, the solution is not to agree with the false data and bogus diagnoses, but to actually find a true physiological cause of the symptoms. That way the cause can be treated and the symptoms would disappear.

Community Mental Health psychiatric programs started in the 1960s, made possible with the development and use of neuroleptic drugs, also known as antipsychotics, for mentally disturbed individuals. Neuroleptic is from Greek, meaning “nerve seizing”, reflective of how the drugs act like a chemical lobotomy. Service is provided through government-funded units called Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC). These centers tend to patients within the community, dispensing neuroleptics to keep traumatized individuals under control.

CMHCs became legalized drug dealerships that supply psychiatric drugs to their patients. There has been much debate within the psychology profession about the medicalization of counseling, since psychology has largely subscribed to the fraudulent biological model of psychiatry, in which psychotropic drugs are assumed to be needed to fix some chemical imbalance in the brain, an assumption that has never been clinically proven. Nearly every year legislation is introduced to allow psychologists to prescribe psychiatric drugs.

Wilhelm Wundt of Leipzig University founded “experimental psychology” in 1879. Declaring that man is an animal, with no soul, he claimed that thought was merely the result of brain activity — a false premise that has remained the basis of psychiatry and psychology until this day.

The entirety of psychological and psychiatric counseling programs are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve lives beyond the understanding and capability of their patients. The reality is that all mental health counseling programs are designed to control people’s lives towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of the person’s sanity and well-being.

A review of studies regarding disasters shows that the psychological treatment offered to individuals does more harm than good. Professor Yvonne McEwan, advisor to the U.S. government after the Oklahoma City bombing, said the booming profession [psychology] was at best useless and at worst highly destructive to victims seeking help: “Professional counseling is largely a waste of time and does more to boost the ego of the counselor than to help the victim….”

Click here for more information about the failure of community mental health programs.

Tell Debra.Walker@dmh.mo.gov what you think about this. Ms. Walker is with the Office of Public Affairs at the Missouri Department of Mental Health. Tell Mark Stringer at directormail@dmh.mo.gov, Director of the Missouri DMH, what you think about this. Tell Patrick Baker at Patrick.Baker@ltgov.mo.gov, Missouri Flood Recovery Coordinator, what you think about this.

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Patients With Mental Disorders Get Half Of All Opioid Prescriptions

Wednesday, July 19th, 2017

A June 26, 2017 article on Kaiser Health News by Vickie Connor presents the information that, “Adults with a mental illness receive more than 50 percent of the 115 million opioid prescriptions in the United States annually.”

Not surprisingly, it also says that while the opioids are prescribed primarily for pain, patients with mental illness find that the drugs alleviate their mental issues, too. We don’t know about you, but if we’re in severe pain our mental health suffers. Then again, you’ve probably heard of the “hammer effect” — if you’re having symptoms of mental trauma, smack your finger smartly with a hammer and we guarantee that you won’t be thinking about your mental troubles for a while. (This is one of those “please don’t try this at home” pieces of advice.)

Understand that when news media say “mental illness,” we read “mental symptoms,” since the symptoms are real but the illness is not. There may indeed be some physical, medical illness; but the fact is, there is no such thing as a “mental illness” the way the psychiatric industry touts it. In 40 years, “biological psychiatry” has yet to validate a single psychiatric condition/diagnosis as an abnormality/disease, or as anything neurological, biological, chemically imbalanced or genetic.

In any case, the best treatments for chronic pain are not opioids, but finding the underlying causes for the pain, learning how to deal with those, and treating those with workable, non-psychiatric methods. See also “The Medicalization of Addiction” for more information about the current craze of treating opioid addiction with more addictive drugs.

Opioid addiction and related deaths have become such an issue in Missouri that  Missouri Attorney General Joshua Hawley filed a lawsuit June 21, 2017 in the Circuit Court of St. Louis City against several pharmaceutical companies. Opioid sales now generate nearly $10 billion in sales per year, while countless individuals have become addicted to opioids as a result of the use of opioids for chronic-pain treatment, often with tragic results.

“Missouri faces an urgent public-health crisis. Each year, hundreds of Missourians die from opioid overdoses, while tens of thousands more are hospitalized or require emergency treatment. Opioid addiction and abuse have destroyed the lives of countless Missourians and ravaged communities across the State. This opioid epidemic is the direct result of a carefully crafted campaign of deception carried out by Defendants. For years, Defendants fraudulently misrepresented the risks posed by the drugs that they manufacture and sell, misleading both doctors and consumers.”

We don’t really know which came first — the mental trauma or the physical pain; but it doesn’t really matter which comes first. The bottom line is that neither opioids nor psychiatric drugs are workable treatments. Click here for more information about workable treatments.

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Terrorized by Climate Change

Saturday, June 3rd, 2017

The psycho-pharmaceutical industry has jumped full-time onto the climate change bandwagon. You don’t even need to believe in climate change, since there is also the satirical “Climate Change Denial Disorder”.

Scholarly articles are being published claiming that climate change affects mental health, along with the typical cries to fund more research, prescribe more antidepressants, and prepare for the worst. Here is an example quote: “Increasing ambient temperatures is likely to increase rates of aggression and violent suicides, while prolonged droughts due to climate change can lead to more number of farmer suicides. … Increased frequency of disasters with climate change can lead to posttraumatic stress disorder, adjustment disorder, and depression.” [Mental health effects of climate change, Indian J Occup Environ Med. 2015 Jan-Apr; 19(1): 3–7.]

The DSM-5 does not lack for possible disorders that can be tied to some climate change disaster for which antidepressants can be prescribed. Here are a few:

“Disruptive mood dysregulation disorder”
“Other specified trauma- and stressor-related disorder”
“Unspecified trauma- and stressor-related disorder”
“Specific phobia, Natural environment”
“Posttraumatic stress disorder”
or any one of over thirty depression-related disorders.

It used to be called “Seasonal Affective Disorder” (SAD). Although this is no longer classified as a unique disorder, it can still be diagnosed as a “mood disorder with a seasonal pattern.” SAD is considered a subtype of major depression or bipolar disorder. An example of a SAD diagnosis might be “Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent Episode, Moderate, With Seasonal Pattern”.

Here we have the “dangerous environment” in full bloom. A dangerous environment only persists if we fail to spread a safe environment across the world. What makes a dangerous environment? Confusion, conflict and upset.

The Merchants of Chaos who promote a dangerous environment make it seem as threatening as possible so that they can profit from it. How do you counter this? You spread the truth. Behind the truth comes the calm. You may still need technology to handle climate change, but you don’t need antidepressant drugs to do so.

The issue is not “is there or is there not climate change?” The issue is, get rid of the psychiatrists who are promoting and profiting from the confusion. Find Out! Fight Back!

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Path to Restoring Lives

Sunday, May 7th, 2017

Independence Center (IC) is a St. Louis nonprofit organization which “helps adults with mental illness access services to live and work in the community, independently and with dignity.” It is a mechanism to help end homelessness.

IC had revenue over $9.7 million in 2016, with expenses of $8.3 million (88% of which went to Program Services.) IC received a grant of $201,620 from the City of St. Louis Mental Health Board (MHB) in 2016. MHB is a special tax district which administers public tax revenues for support of vulnerable people in St. Louis City. The majority of individuals served (33%) were diagnosed with schizophrenia, followed by 24% diagnosed with depression, 19% with bipolar, 15% schizoaffective, and 9% some other diagnosis.

This is the Independence Center “Path to Restoring Lives”:
1. Independence Center social worker meets person discharging from hospital.
2. Schedules appointment at Midwest Psychiatry to start treatment plan and medication management.
3. Receives employment services at Independence Center’s Clubhouse and starts part-time job.
4. Collaborates with Independence Center social worker to locate safe, affordable housing.
5. Lives independently and with dignity in the community.

This Path is amazing on several levels.

IC counts success with their psychiatric programs as “Successfully managing symptoms,” as indicated by the percent of those receiving Medical Doctor or Advanced Practice Nurse services who did not report a psychiatric hospitalization or emergency department visit (94% and 89% respectively, out of 603 total unduplicated services provided.) In 2016, they counted 323 individuals enrolled in the Healthcare Home wellness program, 116 individuals who secured employment, and 78 individuals “Living independently and with dignity” as a result of their services.

If you spotted the second Path item above as the subject of our scrutiny, very well done. Let’s take a closer look at that item. Apparently according to Independence Center, the path to independence and dignity cannot occur without psychiatric drugs.

Because of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatrists have deceived millions into thinking that the best answer to life’s many routine problems and challenges lies with the “latest and greatest” psychiatric drug.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, anxiety or panic. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well–being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.

The larger problem is that the biological drug model (based on bogus mental disorders) is a disease marketing campaign which prevents governments from funding real medical solutions for people experiencing difficulty. There is a great deal of evidence that medical conditions can manifest as psychiatric symptoms, and that there are non–harmful medical treatments that do not receive government funding because the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry spends billions of dollars on advertising and lobbying efforts to counter any medical modality that does not support the false biological drug model of mental disorders as a disease.

Because the general public has been so misled by the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries about the actual dangers of psychotropic drugs, CCHR has created the psychiatric drug side effects search engine. Visit it to Get the Facts! Fight Back!

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The Bogeyman is Coming to Get You

Monday, May 1st, 2017

There is a tradition, especially in film, of a person with mental illness representing the boogeyman — or the reverse case of a boogeyman frightening a person into a traumatic mental state. A boogeyman (also spelled bogeyman) is a folk creature in most cultures used by adults to frighten children into good behavior.

Have you noticed how the media consistently represents someone who goes on a killing spree as having some mental illness? It’s often the first question asked in the case of a mass murderer, i.e. “was he/she ever in a mental hospital?”

In point of fact, there is a relationship between crime and insanity, but that’s not exactly what we are going to discuss right now. We’re more interested in the rush to mental judgment by the media, and by the rush to involuntary commitment instead of a rush to justice and rehabilitation.

The Fresno shooter of Tuesday, April 18 gunned down 3 white men. During his arrest, Kori Ali Muhammad shouted “Allahu Akbar,” but the Fresno Police Chief said the shootings had nothing to do with terrorism.

The media quickly pointed out that in 2005, on the heels of another incident, the court determined that Muhammad suffered from a mental disease, and he was committed to a psychiatric facility for some months.

So there were at least two previous failures — the psychiatric treatment failed, and justice failed.

And they also got it wrong about the terrorism; but that’s not even the point, and just muddies up the real issue, which is that the person committed a crime, but instead he is labeled mentally ill. He’s become the boogeyman.

Criminal acts, terrorism or otherwise, are being reported as mental illness instead of what they really are — criminal acts or terrorism. Oh, don’t call it terrorism, it will upset the sensitive ears of those who prefer to call it mental illness.

No one even asked if he was taking, or withdrawing from, psychotropic drugs — which as we know carry a side effect of violence and suicide.

There will be a rush to involuntarily commit him and give him painful and addictive psychotropic drugs — instead of dealing with the actual criminal act and attempting to rehabilitate him.

By the way, insanity is not an illness, it is an injury. When drug treatments are piled on top of it, drugs known to cause violence and suicide, it becomes even harder to treat because the person is even more desperately injured and pain crazed.

Add on the various prescription drug monitoring programs in society, and we now have a rush to “pre-crime” — where a person is restrained, with involuntary commitment and more drugs, before any crime is committed. We’re moving toward that as a society, where so-called “treatment” occurs to prevent the possibility of a crime, instead of imposing justice after the fact of a crime. And guess who will be deciding when and whom to treat? The psychiatrists.

What are you going to do about it? Find Out! Fight Back!

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1 in 5 Mentally Ill? Don’t Believe It!

Monday, April 17th, 2017

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.

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Does NIMH have your back (or your brain)?

Monday, March 13th, 2017

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) is the lead federal agency for research on mental disorders. NIMH is one of the 27 Institutes and Centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s medical research agency. NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

An argument could be made that NIMH is an unconstitutional organization. Constitutionally, the federal government was only delegated very limited powers, and mental health care was not one of them. Amendment X, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

James Madison made it clear that the powers delegated to the federal government by the States were limited primarily to external (foreign) objects, specifically levy war, conclude peace, establish foreign commerce, and alliance negotiations; and that powers reserved to the States extend to all the objects which concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa45.htm

Madison further says that the clause “promote the general Welfare” in the preamble to the Constitution (and similarly in Article 1 Section 8) was not meant to be used as a justification to expand the power of the federal government beyond its limitations, but simply states the purpose of the powers which had been explicitly enumerated within the Constitution itself.
http://lawandliberty.org/genwel.htm

The process by which the federal government expands its powers and makes such organizations as HHS, NIH and NIMH “legal” is called Regulatory Agencies. For example, in 1912 Congress established a Children’s Bureau in the Department of Labor. In 1939 the Federal Security Agency was created by the Reorganization Act of 1939. In 1944 the Public Health Service Act created the Office of the Surgeon General, the National Institutes of Health, and other new government bureaus. In 1946, the Children’s Bureau was moved to the Federal Security Agency. In 1953 the Federal Security Agency became the cabinet-level Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. In 1979 the Department of Education Organization Act split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); and HHS manages NIH and NIMH.

These Executive branch Regulatory Agencies, established by the Legislative branch (Congress), are then controlled by the Executive branch; and these agencies make Rules (Regulations) which have the force of Law, since Congress originally authorized them by passing a Law creating them.

This is an extremely abbreviated discussion of the matter; whole books and many web sites expound on this subject of Constitutional Liberty. The remedy for this situation, called Nullification, was suggested by Thomas Jefferson, among others: “That the several states who formed that instrument [i.e. The Constitution], being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.”
http://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/primary-source-documents/virginia-and-kentucky-resolutions/

NIMH Vision
“NIMH envisions a world in which mental illnesses are prevented and cured.”

NIMH Mission
“The mission of NIMH is to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for prevention, recovery, and cure.”

On the surface, the Vision and Mission are not bad statements; the devil is in the details, and the fact that the term “mental illness” is a red herring.

Psychiatric disorders are not medical diseases. There are no lab tests, brain scans, X-rays or chemical imbalance tests that can verify any mental disorder is a physical condition. This is not to say that people do not get depressed, or that people can’t experience emotional or mental duress, but psychiatry has repackaged these emotions and behaviors as “disease” or “illness” in order to sell drugs. This is a brilliant marketing campaign, but it is not science.

Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D. is a psychiatrist and the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. His research focuses on the analysis of neural activity in mice. Psychiatrists often believe that studying mouse brains is a worthwhile activity, and that the federal government should pay for this research.

Shelli Avenevoli, Ph.D., is a psychologist and the Acting Deputy Director for NIMH. She completed an NIMH-funded postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology (the branch of medicine dealing with the incidence, distribution, and control of diseases and other health factors.) So her psychiatric indoctrination was bought and paid for by NIMH with your tax money.

NIMH has official Offices under the NIMH Director for AIDS, Autism, Clinical Research, Public Relations, Genomics (genetic risk factors for mental disorders), Global Mental Health Concerns (particularly for those living in rural areas), National Mental Health Policies, and all things related to brain and behavioral research. Additionally there are various Divisions having to do with Neuroscience, Genomics, Training, Technology, and Public Relations. It is quite an extensive bureaucracy.

Email Addresses for officials of NIMH Offices and Divisions:
NIMHinfo@mail.nih.gov
NIMHpress@nih.gov
drausch@mail.nih.gov
ebrouwer@mail.nih.gov
IACCPublicInquiries@mail.nih.gov
Nitin.Gogtay@nih.gov
anna.ordonez@nih.gov
quarteyp@mail.nih.gov
tlehner@mail.nih.gov
pamela.collins@nih.gov
hustonad@mail.nih.gov
meredith.fox@nih.gov
masonjl@mail.nih.gov
FarberG@mail.nih.gov
lbrady@mail.nih.gov
koesters@mail.nih.gov
anjene.addington@nih.gov
lwinsky@mail.nih.gov
nancy.desmond@nih.gov
Jamie.Driscoll@nih.gov
ashlee.van’tveer@nih.gov
mgrabb@mail.nih.gov
merikank@mail.nih.gov
mishkinm@mail.nih.gov
murraye@mail.nih.gov
rheinsse@mail.nih.gov
jsherril@mail.nih.gov
jnoronha@mail.nih.gov
sarah.lisanby@nih.gov
kanders1@mail.nih.gov

The NIMH Strategic Plan has four main Objectives:
1. Define the Mechanisms of Complex Behaviors [really, Brain Research]
2. Chart Mental Illness Trajectories To Determine When, Where, and How to Intervene [really, Brain Development as a person ages]
3. Strive for Prevention and Cures [really, Drug Research]
4. Strengthen the Public Health Impact of NIMH-Supported Research [really, Partnering with Insurers; Medicaid; the FDA; Local, State and Federal legislators; Technologists e.g. Apps for hand-held devices].

The Fiscal Year 2017 NIMH Budget is $1,518,700,000 (i.e. over $1.5 billion). It has gone up from $1.4 billion in 2007. Roughly at least $25 million goes to basic brain research, with a total for all research grants over a billion dollars. There are roughly 550 NIMH employees at an average salary of $107,901; with total personnel compensation (salary + benefits) roughly $95 million for 2017.

Look at the actual products, not at the lofty words. No Cures. Harmful and Addictive brain-modifying drugs. Harmful “treatments” like electroshock, lobotomies, and magnetic brain bombardment. Massive bureaucracy. And You Paid For It.

For example, NIMH recommends the antipsychotic drug clozapine for individuals at risk of suicide. Clozapine (brand name Clozaril) is a newer atypical antipsychotic with side effects such as suicidal thoughts and violence. Long-term use of antipsychotics may lead to tardive dyskinesia which causes muscle movements that a person can’t control, and in some cases cannot be cured.

Do you still think that NIMH has your back, or just your brain?

Find Out! Fight Back!
http://www.cchrstl.org/

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Passage of the 21st Century Cures Act

Saturday, December 17th, 2016

If you contacted your Senators and Representative about the dangers of the 21st Century Cures Act, thank you very much.

Unfortunately it passed — 392 to 26 in the House, and 94 to 5 in the Senate.

While some of the $6.3 Billion funded by this legislation is not controversial and may even be beneficial, a large chunk of the money will go to fund suicide-prevention programs, mental health services for children, and programs for court-ordered psychiatric outpatient treatment. It reinforces current laws that require insurers to treat mental illness as they do any other illness in terms of benefits (“parity“). And it creates a new position in the US Department of Health and Human Services called the Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use for coordinating mental health programs across the federal government.

The bill also lowers the regulatory bar of the Food and Drug Administration,  which may result in less safe and effective products reaching the market by putting less emphasis on clinical trials, which has caused some critics to label it the 21st Century Quackery Act. The FDA insists it will not compromise safety and efficacy; but they have already shown their fake reliance on safety and efficacy by approving psychotropic drugs and trying to make it easier to approve electric shock machines.

How concerned should we be? Very concerned. Proliferation of coercive and abusive mental health “care” by the current psychiatric industry is a waste of lives and funding.

Instead, here is what we should be doing:
1. Mental health hospitals must be established to replace coercive psychiatric institutions, where appropriate medical diagnostics and treatments can be performed. Proper medical screening by non-psychiatric diagnostic specialists could eliminate more than 40% of psychiatric admissions.
2. Establish rights for patients and insurance companies to receive refunds for harmful and abusive mental health treatment.
3. Clinical and financial audits must be done for all psychiatric facilities to uncover and correct fraud and abuse.
4. All mental disorders in the DSM should be validated by scientific, physical evidence.
5. Abolish mental health courts and mandated community mental health treatment.
6. Citizens groups and responsible government officials should work together to expose and abolish psychiatry’s hidden manipulation of society.

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Missouri Mental Health News

Thursday, August 18th, 2016

Recent information from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch indicates some progress in reducing psychiatric fraud and abuse in Missouri. Of course, the Post-Dispatch slants the information to beg for more government and insurance money for psychiatrists and psychiatric facilities; but we can take a win seeing the number of psychiatrists declining.

We do understand that people can have mental trauma needing compassion and effective care. Psychiatric drugs and other “treatments” such as shock therapy, however, are harmful. Not only do psychiatrists not understand the etiology (cause) of any mental disorder, they cannot cure them. In effect, psychiatrists are still saying that mental problems are incurable and that the afflicted are condemned to lifelong suffering—on psychotropic drugs. Psychotropic drugs, however, are unworkable and dangerous, and while they may temporarily mask some symptoms they do not treat, correct or cure any physical disease or condition.

We generally take cure to mean the elimination of some unwanted condition with some effective treatment. The primary purpose of any mental health treatment must be the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance. The only effective measure of this treatment must be “patients recovering and being sent, sane, back into society as productive individuals.” This, we would call a cure. Psychiatry produces no cures.

There are plenty of healthy alternatives to psychiatry. The correct action on a seriously mentally disturbed person is a full searching clinical examination by a competent medical, not psychiatric, doctor.

The real problem with the psychiatric industry is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

There is no licensed psychiatrist in 72 Missouri counties. That’s some progress. People needing help in those areas need competent medical care, not psychiatric abuse.

A majority of psychiatrists don’t accept Medicaid, and a growing number refuse all health insurance plans. That’s some progress. We should be providing funding and insurance coverage only for proven, workable treatments that verifiably and dramatically improve or cure mental health problems.

The average wait to see a psychiatrist in the St. Louis area is estimated at 10 to 30 days and can reach six months for children and teens; what are they doing in the meantime? They should be exploring non-psychiatric alternatives.

There are 1,174 psychiatric hospital beds in the state, down from 2,600 in 1990. That’s some progress. Contact your Missouri state legislators and encourage them to continue reducing psychiatric hospital beds in favor of real and effective medical treatment.

Many people with mental trauma end up in county jails when they fail to find treatment elsewhere. This is not progress; this is overloading an already failing system with more failures. A major part of the treatment for prison inmates (used less for rehabilitation than for managing and disciplining inmates) is a regimen of powerful psychiatric drugs, despite numerous studies showing that aggression, violence and suicide are tied to their use. Prisons and jails have become America’s new mental asylums. The number of individuals with serious mental symptoms in prisons and jails exceeds the number of patients in state psychiatric hospitals tenfold. The cost of maintaining these inmates in prison skyrockets when psychiatric drugs are being used.

The Veterans Health Administration has also been actively recruiting psychiatrists from private practices to help treat an increase in so-called post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, CCHR has investigated how psychiatrists are using the “War on Terror” to broaden their niche within the military to push mind-altering drugs on not only the fighting forces, but on veterans and the public at large.

Contact your Missouri state legislators to introduce and pass legislation designed to curb psychiatric fraud and abuse. For examples of Model Legislation, click here.

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Missouri Mental Health

Saturday, August 13th, 2016

“Gov. Jay Nixon today [7/15/2016] said that Missouri is among the top five states in the number of people trained [27,730] in Mental Health First Aid and, among that group, leads in the percentage of the population trained. Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a national program to teach the skills to respond to the signs of mental illness and substance use disorders. … Working with members of the General Assembly, the Governor secured $10 million annually for the Strengthening Mental Health Initiative.”

Sounds progressive, doesn’t it? Sounds like the Governor is committed to helping Missourians, doesn’t it?

But what’s wrong with this? Only that psychiatric treatment not only does not work, but is actually harmful.

For decades psychiatrists and psychologists have claimed a monopoly over the field of mental health. Governments and private health insurance companies have provided them with billions of dollars every year to treat “mental illness,” only to face industry demands for even more funds to improve the supposed, ever–worsening state of mental health.

No other industry can afford to fail consistently and expect to get more funding.

The fact is that psychiatrists don’t try to cure people of mental illness. They use drugs in an attempt to dull the pain.

The mental health monopoly has practically zero accountability and zero liability for its failures. This has allowed psychiatrists and psychologists to commit far more than just financial fraud. The roster of crimes committed by these “professionals” ranges from fraud, drug offenses, rape and sexual abuse to child molestation, assault, manslaughter and murder.

The primary purpose of mental health treatment must be the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance. It must never be the financial or personal gain of the practitioner. Those suffering are inevitably vulnerable and impressionable. Proper treatment therefore demands the highest level of trustworthiness and integrity in the practitioner.

For more information, click here to download and read the CCHR report Massive Fraud — Psychiatry‘s Corrupt Industry — Report and recommendations on the criminal mental health monopoly.

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