Tag: Mental Health

Covid-19 Get A Grip On It

Posted on by cchrstl
Looking at the News the past several weeks, it seems like every single mental health facility, psychologist and psychiatrist in the country is advertising their services for people with anxiety about the Covid-19 pandemic.

Overall, the number of Americans on drugs used to treat mental trauma has substantially increased since 2001; more than one?in?five adults was on at least one of these drugs in 2010, up 22 percent from ten years earlier. We can only suppose that has continued to increase into present time; the latest data from 2017 shows over 32 million Americans taking anti-anxiety drugs.

Anti-Anxiety Drugs

Anti-anxiety drugs can cause hallucinations, delusional thinking, confusions, aggression, violence, hostility, agitation, irritability, depression and suicidal thinking. They are also some of the most difficult drugs to withdraw from.

There have been 39 warnings from 8 countries (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States) and the European Union warning that anti-anxiety drugs cause harmful side effects. There are 79 studies from 19 countries (Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom and United States) showing that anti-anxiety drugs cause harmful side effects.

Many people who have taken psychiatric drugs have found out the withdrawal effects of the drugs can persist for months, even years after they stop taking them. No one should attempt withdrawal from psychiatric drugs without a doctor’s supervision due to the potential for serious withdrawal symptoms.

Recommendations

CCHR recommends a full, searching medical examination by a non-psychiatric health care professional, with appropriate clinical tests, to determine if there are undetected and untreated medical conditions that could be causing or contributing to mental distress.

It has been known for a long time that certain kinds of infections are known to cause mental symptoms, but they are rarely considered during psychiatric examinations and diagnosis. Be very wary of any psychiatrist or psychologist who claims you have a mental illness when you are suffering from some infectious disease.

This information is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease; mental symptoms can be caused by many different conditions, so see a qualified health care practitioner (not a psychiatrist) who can perform legitimate clinical tests.

Be prudent, lawful, observant, helpful — basically just be the good people you know you should be anyway!

Download and read “The Role of Infections in Mental Illness” by Frank Strick here.
Stressed Out

How psychiatry Blunts Innovation and Scientific Research

Posted on by cchrstl
Reference:
United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development
Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015 “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.

[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.

Target 9.5: Enhance scientific research, upgrade the technological capabilities of  industrial sectors in all countries, in particular developing countries, including, by 2030, encouraging innovation and substantially increasing the number of research and development workers per 1 million people and public and private research and development spending.

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 9.5

Basically we see two major ways that psychiatry obstructs scientific research.

1) Psychiatric research is not scientific.

In 40 years, “biological psychiatry” has yet to validate a single psychiatric diagnosis as a disease, or as anything neurological, biological, chemically imbalanced or genetic. While medicine has advanced on a scientific path to major discoveries and cures, psychiatry has never evolved scientifically and is no closer to understanding or curing mental problems.

While medicine has nurtured an enviable record of achievements and general popular acceptance, the public still links psychiatry to snake pits, straitjackets, and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Psychiatry continues to foster that valid impression with its development of such brutal treatments as electroshock (ECT), psychosurgery, the chemical straitjacket caused by antipsychotic drugs, and its long record of treatment failures.

With the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry has taken countless aspects of human behavior and reclassified them as a “mental illness” simply by adding the term “disorder” onto them. While even key DSM contributors admit that there is no scientific or medical validity to the “disorders,” the DSM nonetheless serves as a diagnostic tool, not only for individual treatment, but also for child custody disputes, discrimination cases, court testimony, education and more. As the diagnoses completely lack scientific criteria, anyone can be labeled mentally ill, and subjected to dangerous and life threatening “treatments” based solely on opinion.

The DSM is the key to false escalating mental illness statistics and psychiatric drug prescriptions and usage worldwide. Untold harm and colossal waste of mental health funds occur because of it. It is imperative that the DSM diagnostic system be abandoned before real mental health reform can occur.

2) Psychiatric treatments and research waste funds and other resources that should be used for legitimate scientific research.

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 research and 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.

Reports show that psychiatry has the worst fraud track record of all medical disciplines. An estimated $20-$40 billion is defrauded in the mental health industry in any given year.

With at least $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 upwardly spiraling mental illness statistics, massive increases in people taking mind?altering drugs, and escalating funding demands.

The claim that only increased funding will cure the problems of psychiatry has lost its ring of truth. Psychiatry and psychology should be held accountable for the funds already given them, and irrefutably and scientifically prove the physical existence of mental disorders they claim should be treated and covered by insurance, in the same way as physical diseases are.

Any form of psychiatric funding is actually unethical and harmful, since it precludes patients from finding out what is actually wrong and getting that effectively treated.

Psychiatric fraud and abuse must be eradicated so that SDG 9 can occur.
More funding.

How psychiatry Perpetuates Itself Through Environmental Psychology

Posted on by cchrstl
Reference:
United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development
Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015
“Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.

[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy
for all.

Target 7.a: By 2030, enhance international cooperation to facilitate access to clean energy research and technology, including renewable energy, energy efficiency and advanced and cleaner fossil-fuel technology, and promote investment in energy infrastructure and clean energy technology.

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 7a

Joel Stephen Kovel (1936–2018) was an American psychiatrist known as a founder of “eco-socialism”. He ran for the Green Party’s presidential nomination in 2000.

Eco-socialism is an ideology merging aspects of socialism with that of green politics, generally believing that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty, war and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism.

Kovel believed it is more important to restructure societies to reduce energy use before relying on renewable energy technologies alone. As a staunch socialist he was vehemently anti-capitalism and anti-globalization. We imagine this would have made him antagonistic to the United Nations and its Sustainable Development Goals.

Environmental Psychology

Apparently, though, one of the primary influences of environmental psychology is not a direct attack on renewable clean energy, but rather a profusion of psychological research and publications detailing the psychological trauma leading to mental health problems due to environmental concerns and effects, which of course can be profitably managed by expanding the funding and influence of psychologists and psychiatrists.

The United Nations also recognizes that achieving SDG 7 is related to the promotion of mental health. The unfortunate aspect of this is that the current international model for promoting mental health involves psychiatric and psychological services which are also known to be harmful.

Psychiatrists and psychologists proclaim a worldwide epidemic of mental health problems and urge massive funding increases as the only solution — funding that should rather be given, for example, to promoting access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. Decades of psychiatric monopoly over mental health has only lead to upwardly spiraling mental illness statistics and continuously escalating funding demands.

The claim that only increased funding will cure the problems of psychiatry has lost its ring of truth. Psychiatry and psychology should be held accountable for the funds already given them, and irrefutably and scientifically prove the physical existence of mental disorders they claim should be treated and covered by insurance in the same way as physical diseases are.

The many critical challenges facing societies today reflect the vital need to strengthen individuals through workable, viable and humanitarian alternatives to harmful psychiatric options.

Psychiatric fraud and abuse must be eradicated so that SDG 7 can occur.
Eco-Anxiety

Schizo Christmas Present from the FDA

Posted on by cchrstl
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally approved the new antipsychotic drug lumateperone (Caplyta, from Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc) on December 23, 2019 for treatment of schizophrenia in adults, in spite of previously canceling its review because of mixed results in testing, which were blamed on positive responses to placebos.

As with other antipsychotics, lumateperone includes a boxed warning that elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis are at an increased risk for death.

Also as with other antipsychotics, the mechanism of action is unknown — they’re just guessing about how it is supposed to “work.” It plays Russian Roulette with serotonin, dopamine and glutamate (another neurotransmitter) in the brain.

It has all the usual possible side effects – neuroleptic malignant syndrome, tardive dyskinesia, hyperglycemia, diabetes, weight gain, sedation, increased risk of falls, seizures, infertility, etc.  Newborns exposed to antipsychotic drugs during the third trimester of pregnancy may suffer withdrawal symptoms.

Since cytochrome P450 enzymes such as CYP3A4 are involved in its metabolism in the liver, a person’s genetic abnormality with these can lead to the drug or its metabolites reaching a toxic level in hours or days, correlating with the onset of severe side effects. One is also ill-advised to drink grapefruit juice with this drug because it strongly inhibits the CYP3A4 enzyme, again increasing the risk of serious adverse reactions.

Of course, psychiatrists attribute any attempts at suicide to the underlying diagnosis and not to the drugs.

Speaking of the Underlying Diagnosis

Today, psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

The late Professor Thomas Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

These are normal people with medical, disciplinary, educational, ethical or spiritual problems that can and must be resolved without recourse to drugs. Deceiving and drugging is not the practice of medicine. It is criminal.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a child or adult exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist calls Schizophrenia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled with so-called Schizophrenia needs to receive a thorough physical examination by a competent medical—not psychiatric—doctor to first determine what underlying physical condition is causing the manifestation.

Any person falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.

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.

For more information, click here to download and read the full CCHR report “Schizophrenia—Psychiatry’s For Profit ‘Disease’“.
Calvin and Hobbes

How psychiatry Perpetuates Illiteracy

Posted on by cchrstl
Reference: United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development
Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015: “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development“

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.
[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all 

Target 4.6: By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 4.6

Children worldwide are under extremely dangerous assault. Parents and teachers are being deceived in the name of improved mental health and better education. The results are devastating.

In 1967, a group of psychiatrists met in Puerto Rico to discuss their objectives for psychotropic drug use on “normal humans” in the year 2000. Their plan included drugs to “enhance the learning capacity of the individual.” Today, with at least 17 million children worldwide consuming mind-altering drugs and the almost exclusive use of psychology-based curricula in many schools, literacy is fast becoming a thing of the past.

In the U.S. alone, 1.5 million children and adolescents on antidepressants are at risk of known, drug-induced violent or suicidal side effects; while education achievement standards have plummeted as a result of psychology-based education curricula.

According to educators, traditional academics have been jettisoned in favor of psychological behavior modification that places emotions above educational outcomes.

In Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction, Ralph Tyler, president of the Carnegie Foundation (provider of private funding for education and testing), wrote that the “real purpose of education is … to bring about significant changes in the students’ pattern of behavior.” It meant targeting the child’s emotions, feelings, beliefs, and as a secondary objective, his intellect.

The current psychiatric push for mandatory “mental illness screening” in schools funnels children directly into the mental health care system, leading to rising illiteracy, crime, drug abuse and suicide rates.

School mental health programs have been designed to channel the lives of children towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of their literacy and well-being. Instead of directing children toward genuine achievement and the demonstration of competence, the psychiatric “self-esteem” concept is to tell the child he has accomplished something whether he has or not.

Psychiatric drugs and programs in schools have been implicated in increasing child violence. Skyrocketing youth suicide rates have also followed in the wake of widespread psychiatric, drug-based, child programs and psychological school curricula.

Research analyst Diane Alden stated, “We have had years of counseling, therapy, drugs and touchy-feely non-academics, and what we have gotten for this is dumb kids who feel good about being dumb and violent.”

Ultimately, psychiatry and psychology must be eliminated from all education systems and their coercive and unworkable methods should never be funded by the State.

Find out more by downloading and reading the CCHR report “Harming Youth — Psychiatry Destroys Young Minds — Report and recommendations on harmful mental health assessments, evaluations, and programs within our schools.“

Psychiatric fraud and abuse must be eradicated so that SDG 4 can occur.

The Remedy of Tiredness

Posted on by cchrstl

The fraudulent psychiatric billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), has quite a few entries related to one form or another of “sleep disorder,” many of which simply occur when a person is knocked out by some (legal or illegal) drug. And if a psychiatrist can’t find the real reason for a person’s troubled sleeping, they’ll just diagnose the catch-all “Unspecified sleep-wake disorder”. Psychiatrists assume that anything they can’t explain is a “mental illness.”

Of course, the psychiatric treatment of choice is a psychotropic drug, many of which have known side effects of difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep.

Lack of sufficient sleep, though, is only one cause of tiredness. There are quite a few medical and other reasons why someone might feel tired or exhausted, regardless of how much sleep they may or may not be getting. Clinical tests should be done by a competent, non-psychiatric health care professional, to determine if there are undiagnosed and untreated medical issues interfering with sleep. Oh, and the DSM also calls “sleep apnea” a psychiatric disorder, even though it may primarily be a medical or neurological issue.

Then there are a plethora of non-medical issues which might be causing tiredness. We’ll examine some, but not all of them, here.

We do not go deeply here into physical treatments; there are many good references on nutrition, exercise and body health which relate to the issues of sleep and tiredness.

What is Exhaustion?

Simple definition: Having wholly used up strength, patience, or resources; tired beyond endurance.

The surprising thing is that exhaustion can be a symptom of several things having nothing to do with extended effort. In fact, one thing that can cause exhaustion is inaction — the opposite of extended effort. Sitting around the house moping can make one just as tired as mountain climbing. It’s not real tiredness in this case; it’s psychosomatic.

Another thing tiredness can be traced to is some form of introversion or fixated attention. An example might be sitting in front of a computer or TV, eyes focused at a fixed distance for an extended period of time.

For these, the remedy is extroversion; go take a walk and look at the things around you.

Do You Feel Washed-Out?

Simple definition: Depleted in vigor or animation; faded.

When reading or studying, if you skip over words, symbols or abbreviations you don’t know and continue reading, you will start to feel washed-out. If you just now yawned, you are a good candidate for this remedy. The remedy is simple: go back, find the term you didn’t know, look it up in a dictionary, and use it in sentences until you understand it. Then re-read what you missed.

Have You Tried and Failed?

A blunted or abandoned purpose makes one feel tired or dopey. The remedy is to rekindle the failed purpose.

Are Your Efforts and Communications Cut or Incomplete?

Do you experience a lot of interruptions at work? Do people walk by, talk to you, and then walk away before you can respond?

When Cycles of Action or Cycles of Communication are cut or incomplete, you can experience tiredness that is otherwise unexplained. Again, the remedy is pretty simple: go back and complete the cycle of action or cycle of communication. Finish what was interrupted.

What Not To Do

These are not all the possible manifestations of tiredness, but these are fairly easy to recognize and have simple resolutions. The thing you must NOT do is think you have some “mental illness”, see a shrink, and take an antidepressant or other psychiatric drug which can be addictive and have horrific side effects. Take a nice long walk instead.

How psychiatry Perpetuates Mental Unhealthiness

Posted on by cchrstl

Reference: United Nations Promoting Sustainable Development
Resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2015: “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”

Sustainable: Of, relating to, or being a method or lifestyle for using resources so that the resources can be maintained and continued, and are not depleted or permanently damaged.
[from Old French sustenir (French: soutenir), from Latin sustineo, sustinere, from sub– (under) + teneo (hold, uphold, possess, guard, maintain)]

The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals

The 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 169 associated targets adopted in 2015 and accepted by all Member States seek to realize the human rights of all and balance economic, social and environmental factors towards peace and prosperity for all.

To this end we examine some of the existing factors which block or inhibit the realization of these goals, and which must be eliminated so that the goals can be achieved in practice.

SDG 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Target 3.4: By 2030, reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and wellbeing

How Psychiatry Obstructs Target 3.4

It’s the “promote mental health and wellbeing” that psychiatry fails at.

The psychiatric industry purports to be the sole arbiter on the subject of mental health. The facts, however, demonstrate otherwise.

In medicine, strict criteria exist for calling a condition a disease. Diseases are proven to exist by objective evidence and physical tests. Yet, no psychiatric “diseases” have ever been proven to medically exist, and there are no clinical tests for so-called mental illnesses.

Psychiatrists do not know the causes or cures for any mental disorder or what their “treatments” specifically do to the patient. They have only theories and conflicting opinions about the diagnoses and methods, and are lacking any scientific basis for these. As a past president of the World Psychiatric Association stated, “The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the future, the mentally ill have to learn to live with their illness.”

One prevailing psychiatric theory (key to psychotropic drug sales) is that mental disorders result from a chemical imbalance in the brain. As with its other theories, there is no biological or other evidence to prove this. There are no tests available for assessing the chemical status of a living person’s brain.

The brain is not the real cause of life’s problems. People do experience problems and upsets in life that may result in mental troubles, sometimes very serious. But to represent that these troubles are caused by incurable “brain diseases” that can only be alleviated with dangerous pills is dishonest, harmful and often deadly. Such drugs are often more potent than a narcotic and capable of driving one to violence or suicide. They mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future.

Of course, the real problem 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.

Psychiatry must be eradicated so that SDG 3 can occur.

Supporting and Treating Officers In Crisis Act of 2019

Posted on by cchrstl

Introduced by Republican Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, the “Supporting and Treating Officers In Crisis Act of 2019” (S. 998) was signed into law by President Trump on July 25, 2019.

This bill reauthorizes and expands certain Department of Justice grant programs to provide mental health, stress reduction, psychological services, suicide prevention services, and training for identifying, reporting, and responding to officer mental health crises and suicide, for law enforcement officers and their families. The bill authorizes up to $7,500,000 in appropriations each year for fiscal years 2020 to 2024, a maximum total of $37.5 million.

This sounds eminently socially acceptable, and indeed the bill was widely supported by Congress and various national advocacy groups.

The Real Crisis in Mental Health

While society certainly owes significant consideration and support to law enforcement officers (LEOs) and their families, we can’t help noting that in today’s environment, “mental health and suicide prevention services” really means psychiatric drugs and other harmful psychiatric treatments.

The real crisis in mental health care today is not officer stress, but psychiatric fraud and abuse.

While the bill specifically calls for evidence-based programs, the evidence actually shows that psychiatrists don’t know what causes mental trauma, are unable to predict violence or suicide, and cannot cure any mental disorder they claim to treat.

Psychiatric Fraud

By their own admission psychiatrists cannot predict violence or suicide, and often release violent patients from facilities, claiming that they are not a threat. In 1979, an American Psychiatric Association’s task force admitted in its Brief Amicus Curiae to the U.S. Supreme Court that psychiatrists could not predict dangerousness. It informed the court that “‘dangerousness’ is neither a psychiatric nor a medical diagnosis, but involves issues of legal judgment and definition, as well as issues of social policy.” In addition to not being able to predict violent behavior, psychiatrists certainly have no cures for it, a fact that even they admit.

Psychiatric diagnoses are not based on science, but opinion. Psychiatrists do not have any scientific or medical test to diagnose a person’s mental condition and rely upon faulty observation and opinion of behavior. They admit to not knowing the cause of a single mental disorder or how to cure them. The error in their opinions is enormous — they condemn the innocent, release the dangerous, induce violence in others through drugs and commit people who are not in need of help or turn those away who may genuinely be in need of it.

Recommendations

Rather than training psychiatrists and psychologists about LEO mental health, the grants should be used to train LEOs, security personnel, teachers, coroners, and other professionals to recognize that irrational, violent and suicidal behavior could be caused by psychiatric drugs.

Click here to download and read the CCHR report “Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide — School Shootings & Other Acts of Senseless Violence.”

Click here to download and read “Psychiatrists Cannot Predict or Cure Violence.“

Cratered by Kratom

Posted on by cchrstl

Kratom is an increasingly popular drug of abuse and readily available on the “recreational” drug market. Between 3 million and 5 million people in the U.S. use kratom, and reported poisonings from people taking it have soared.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned against using Mitragyna Speciosa, commonly known as kratom, a tree in the coffee family which grows naturally in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea. The concern is that kratom leaves, which affect the same opioid brain receptors as morphine, appear to have properties that expose users to the risks of addiction, abuse, and dependence.

There are no FDA-approved uses for kratom because there is no scientific evidence to support its medical use, and the FDA urges consumers to report any adverse reactions to the FDA’s MedWatch program.

The race is on to get patents for synthetics and derivatives of Mitragyna Speciosa. Doctors and mental health workers need to be aware of the psychopathological effects of these substances.

Because kratom is still legal in the U.S., it has become a go-to drug for individuals with chronic pain, promoted anecdotally by some psychiatrists both to mitigate pain and to ease withdrawal from other opioids.

Some other psychiatrists are convinced of kratom’s mental health benefits as a potential therapeutic agent.

Here again we see psychiatry, with its long history of harmful drug pushing, justifying and promoting the latest in a long line of such harmful, addictive and psychedelic drugs.

Similar to the dose-dependent characteristics of any drug, in relatively small amounts kratom acts as a stimulant; in relatively larger amounts it causes sedation; and when overdosed it can cause death.

Kratom’s psychoactive compounds, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine, are opioid-receptor agonists, which means they are chemicals that bind to the same receptors in the brain to which opioids bind, thus acting in the brain similar to other opioids like morphine and codeine.

Side effects of taking (or withdrawing from) kratom may include dependence, nausea, vomiting, aggression, hallucinations, delusions, psychosis, seizures, thyroid problems, increased risk of suicide, trouble breathing, brain swelling, seizures, liver damage, or death.

In spite of the American Kratom Association’s lobbying efforts to promote this harmful substance, and its repeated references to the American Psychiatric Association for support, we find that there is sufficient reason to be highly skeptical.

Click here for more information about kratom.

NARPA Annual Rights Conference

Posted on by cchrstl

ANNUAL RIGHTS CONFERENCE

September 18 – 21, 2019

Holiday Inn Hartford Downtown Area — East Hartford, CT

Visit http://www.narpa.org for registration form and updates.

 NARPA’s mission is to support people with psychiatric diagnoses to exercise their legal and human rights, with the goals of abolishing forced treatment and ensuring autonomy, dignity and choice.

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Attend the conference to promote social justice for people who experience the world in ways the psychiatric industry fraudulently calls “mental illness.”