What Is Your Emotional Intelligence?

May 31st, 2023

We notice continuing discussions in social media about “emotional intelligence”, although with few successful attempts to actually nail it down.

It used to simply be called “maturity.” Attempts by psychiatry and psychology to dissect it make it more complicated and subject to argument about what it really is. We thought we’d like to weigh in on the discussion, and relate it to psychiatric fraud and abuse.

Some definitions:
[These are not all the possible definitions, but are useful ones.]

Emotional: Relating to a state of feelings or sensations created or experienced by an individual or a body; the physical, mental and spiritual state of an individual manifested as a gradient scale of an individual’s state of being.
[From Latin emov?re to remove, displace, from e– + mov?re to move.]

Intelligence: The ability to perceive, pose and resolve problems; the ability to recognize differences, similarities and identities, and evaluate relative importances.
[From Latin intellegere, to understand.]

Maturity: Relating to a condition of full growth or development; behaving in a sensible way; well-balanced in personality and emotional behavior.
[From Latin maturus, ripe.]

We take the term “Emotional Intelligence” to mean the ability to use one’s emotions intelligently and appropriately in different situations.

Some psychiatrists and psychologists relate emotional intelligence to mental health disorders. Witness the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) which describes numerous fraudulent diagnoses for which they can prescribe any number of harmful, mind-altering psychiatric drugs. [The purpose of which is to be able to bill insurance for counseling or drugs for any of these diagnoses.] Here are some of those absurd DSM diagnoses:

— Adjustment disorder, With mixed disturbance of emotions and conduct
— High expressed emotion level within family
— Borderline intellectual functioning
— Intellectual disability (intellectual developmental disorder)
— Disinhibited social engagement disorder

This over-complication of an essentially simple concept leads to endless speculation, the wasted funds for hundreds of research papers, and no end of descriptions about its components and what to do about it.

There is one very simple way to learn to be more emotionally intelligent — by learning to identify the emotions one is feeling as well as understanding them. You won’t learn this, however, from a psychiatrist.

FDA Updates Warning on Stimulants Prescribed for ADHD, Now Lists Risks of Misuse, Addiction, Diversion and Overdose

May 22nd, 2023

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, May 18, 2023 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring new warnings in the prescribing information for stimulant drugs used to treat so-called attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) “to address continuing concerns of misuse, abuse, addiction, and overdose of the prescription drugs,” according to the FDA’s statement on the change. The “boxed warning” being updated is the most prominent warning the FDA can require for drugs.

Stimulants commonly prescribed for ADHD that will now carry the elevated warning include Adderall, Concerta, Dexedrine, and Ritalin. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classifies these drugs as Schedule II controlled substances – the same drug classification as for cocaine, morphine, oxycodone, and fentanyl. The DEA warns that use of stimulant drugs can lead to “severe psychological or physical dependence” and that “these drugs are also considered dangerous.” Diversion of the drugs is illegal.

In explaining its reason for the heightened warning, the FDA states, “The current prescribing information for some prescription stimulants does not provide up to date warnings about the harms of misuse and abuse, and particularly that most individuals who misuse prescription stimulants get their drugs from other family members or peers.”

Diversion of prescribed stimulant drugs from patients to others is a longstanding problem, particularly among children and young adults. Research has found that a range of 16% to 29% of students from grade school through college who have stimulant prescriptions are asked to give, sell, or trade their medications.

The FDA’s new warning for stimulants reads, in part: “WARNING: ABUSE, MISUSE, AND ADDICTION. [Name of drug] has a high potential for abuse and misuse, which can lead to the development of a substance use disorder, including addiction. Misuse and abuse of CNS [central nervous system] stimulants, including [Name of drug], can result in overdose and death.”

The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that overdose deaths from stimulant drugs have tripled from 10,255 deaths in 2017 to 32,478 in 2022. This increase is occurring in the context of a national overdose crisis, in which stimulants are increasingly involved, according to the CDC.

The FDA’s communication lists some of the serious side effects of stimulant drugs that require emergency treatment, including fast heart rate, fast breathing, increased blood pressure, restlessness, tremors, loss of coordination, nausea and vomiting, aggressive behavior, panic, confusion, and hallucinations. Stimulants are also linked to stunted growth in children.

Some 9.6 million Americans are prescribed stimulant drugs for so-called ADHD. However, there is no objective, scientific basis for “diagnoses” of mental disorders, as acknowledged by Thomas Insel, M.D., former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in his blog on the NIMH website in 2013. This means it is far too easy to “diagnose” ADHD.

The late psychologist Keith Conners conducted the first formal trials on the now-widely prescribed ADHD stimulant methylphenidate, commonly sold under the brand names Ritalin and Concerta. He later realized that ADHD diagnoses were out of control and called ADHD misdiagnoses “a national disaster of dangerous proportions.”

One in three Americans taking ADHD drugs is under the age of 18, but research has raised concerns over prescribing stimulants to children. Beyond the risks of serious adverse effects, a recent study found no convincing evidence of any long-term benefit to children from treatment for ADHD with stimulant drugs.

Another recent study found that children started on ADHD treatment with the stimulant methylphenidate were 18 times more likely to experience depression than before starting, and when the drug was discontinued, the higher risk dropped back to starting levels. [1]

Children who were first prescribed methylphenidate between the ages of 6 and 8 and continued to take the drugs had a 50% higher risk of being prescribed antidepressants for depression during their teen years, another study found. [2]

CCHR continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from psychostimulants and other psychiatric drugs, so consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an ADHD drug or any other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

[1] https://www.cpn.or.kr/journal/view.html?volume=20&number=2&spage=320#B19
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30828744/

More About Shock Therapy

May 15th, 2023

The barbaric and shameful psychiatric use of shock treatments unfortunately has a lengthy history. By shock we mean such atrocities as electrotherapy (various methods of shocking body parts with electricity), temperature therapy (shocking with hot or cold temperatures), insulin shock therapy, cardiazol (metrazol) shock therapy (a drug that induces seizures), deep brain stimulation, lobotomy (hacking off connections in the brain), deep sleep (narcosis), and of course the “modern” way of inducing seizures with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

The point is that these psychiatric treatments emphasize the aspect of shock.

Fraudulent Psychiatric Diagnosis

There is no evidence of any kind that there is anything called a mental illness as described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The whole of psychiatry is based on a wrong conclusion. Psychiatry looks only at a person’s stimulus-response behavior, and assumes that is all there is to a human being.

Why Shock Therapy?

Psychiatry resorted to such savage and bestial treatments as these various shock therapies because they were up against people who apparently would not be helped, and they had (and still have) no clue about how to actually help them — about how to gradiently replace stimulus-response behavior with self-determined behavior.

Someone with troubles is already at a lower level of awareness. Pain is then what they are most aware and certain of. The psychiatrist is there to deliver more pain in the mistaken idea that this will cause the insane to be less insane. However, the certainty and awareness of pain which is delivered by the impact of shock is a non-self-determined certainty. Certainty delivered by force, pain, blows and shock eventually brings about only unconsciousness and the certainty of unawareness.

Psychiatry is not particularly interested in increasing awareness; they would rather blunt someone’s awareness by shock in a misguided attempt to make a person less aware of their surroundings, their pain and troubles.

Shock does not and never can cause an improvement in mental health, since it produces only the reduction of awareness.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness” and stigmatize unwanted stimulus-response behavior as “disease,” using the psychiatric billing bible the DSM as their justification. The bottom line is that all psychiatric “treatments” are harmful.

Psychiatrists will tell you that brain damage itself is what causes an apparent improvement in depression symptoms. In fact, in 1942 American psychiatrist Abraham Myerson said: “The reduction of intelligence is an important factor in the curative process. The fact is that some of the very best cures that one gets are in those individuals whom one reduces almost to amentia [feeble-mindedness]”.

Need we really spell out for you that this is contrary to any healing or beneficial effect at all?

What You Can Do

Contact your local, state and federal officials and representatives and urge them to Ban ECT and other forms of psychiatric shock abuse.

Tolerance and Intolerance in Psychiatry

May 8th, 2023

Our reference here is the book Tolerance – The Liberation of Mankind, by Hendrik Willem van Loon, originally published in 1925. The volume we have was independently published on June 12, 2021, by an unnamed source. As the book says, it is “The history of Tolerance (or the lack thereof) in the history of man as described by one of the best popular historians of all time.”

The book introduces the word by saying, “I refer to the Encyclopedia Britannica. There on page 1052 of volume XXVI stands written: ‘Tolerance (from Latin tolerare — to endure): – The allowance of freedom of action or judgment to other people, the patient and unprejudiced endurance of dissent from one’s own or the generally received course or view.'”

Some additional dictionary definitions are:
— capacity to endure pain, hardship, harm, or unpleasantness
— a permissive attitude toward beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own
— the allowable deviation from a standard
— the diminished effect of a drug over time with its regular use.

One colloquial phrase representing tolerance is “live and let live.”

The book is basically a history of the world from the viewpoints of tolerance and intolerance. (Mostly intolerance, as the case may be.)

Tolerance and Racism

In the U.S., one generally thinks of intolerance as black/white racism or religious intolerance, with anti-semitism rising rapidly alongside. It isn’t necessarily the same in other countries or times. For example, in Belgium intolerance also exists between white Flemish speakers and white French speakers.

Tolerance and Psychiatry

It should be plain to see that psychiatry cannot tolerate any deviance from what they imagine is normal behavior, and seeks to compulsively and coercively “treat” it. Since psychiatry has never been able to understand, control or successfully cure such deviance, their efforts lead to continual failure.

When we speak of “coercive psychiatry” we mean that psychiatry is used as a means of social control against which one has no recourse and cannot fight back, which is destructive of one’s self-determinism, causing distrust instead of faith. Psychiatry intends to substitute their own vision of “normal” for any individual beliefs one may hold; which fits the definition of intolerance pretty closely.

The literature abounds with scholarly articles about tolerance and mental health, often involving exhortations to accept others’ differences. This corresponds with psychiatry’s insistence that one must adapt to one’s environment rather than control one’s environment.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders revision 5 (DSM-5) deals with tolerance only in the sense of Substance Use Disorders, when an individual requires increasingly higher doses of a substance to achieve the desired effect, or the usual dose has a reduced effect. Such tolerance as one criteria for a Substance Use Disorder does not apply in the case of a prescription drug used in the context of appropriate medical treatment (i.e. “generally accepted practices”).

One example of psychiatry dealing with tolerance/intolerance in patients is called the “Intolerance of Uncertainty;” the conjecture is that such individuals tend to be less tolerant of ambiguity, uncertainty, and unpredictability in their lives, and that this is a mental disorder. These individuals can then be labeled with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (or any one of several other diagnoses from the DSM) and prescribed harmful psychiatric drugs to suppress their anxiety. In particular, we noticed a number of psychiatric research articles examining this issue in relation to COVID-19, pregnancy, education, stress and burnout, autism, pain, religion, depression, vaccination, … in other words, pretty much in all areas of life.

The Root of Intolerance

Whenever there is so much unresolved discussion over a topic, we can be sure that there is a general lack of understanding about it. There is certainly an excessively long historical preoccupation with intolerance. Perhaps one can observe that intolerance of uncertainty is not really a psychiatric condition to be treated with drugs, but an expression of a human aberration which should be treated by increasing one’s ability to observe and confront different, unknown, confusing, or uncomfortable conditions.

This basic characteristic about tolerance is the ability to tolerate views; that is, the ability to look, to know by looking. Thus intolerance is an inability to tolerate views, viewpoints, or looking; it’s a decision to refuse to observe.

Intolerance as discussed in the cited Tolerance book is essentially concerned with a dismissive, antagonistic or hostile attitude toward others’ different beliefs, leading toward repeated attempts to suppress or eliminate those other beliefs. These beliefs run the gamut from political, economic, religious, racist, to just plain cussedness; and the political and economic conditions often seem to be behind a lot of the intolerance.

While many have perished for their contrary beliefs, we observe that there is a general failure to permanently stamp these out. We make no judgments here about the truth or falsity of any particular beliefs.

Consider what happens when one tries to control another person or situation, but fails to do so. One then attempts to justify one’s failure. One way to justify such a failure is to attack the other and make less of them. One way to attack another is to say oneself is right and they are wrong.

Thus we see a definite relation between tolerance/intolerance and the human condition which causes an individual to make oneself right by making another wrong.

The book reaches its final conclusion about tolerance by saying that “fear … is at the bottom of all intolerance.” This can be fear of another’s politics, economics, religion, race, or just plain fear of difference. It’s actually an inability to recognize similarities, and observing (and misunderstanding) only differences. Both sanity and intelligence are intimately related to one’s ability to recognize differences, similarities and identities.

How to Overcome Intolerance

The solution to tolerance should be fairly obvious: rehabilitate and enhance one’s ability to observe and recognize differences, similarities and identities. Find out how to identify what makes something logical or illogical by taking this short, free online course: “The Investigations Course“. We trust you understand that psychiatric labels install fear of behavior; and that psychiatric drugs or other treatments can only suppress the fear and not eliminate it.

It should also be obvious that psychiatry is not your friend when it comes to tolerance. Contact your local, state and federal officials and representatives and urge them to stop funding psychiatry.

Historical Underpinnings of Psychiatric Medical Training

May 1st, 2023

The evolution of mental healing from a spiritual undertaking to a brain and chemical based atrocity follows a number of historical paths.

One such path was carved out by “oil baron John D. Rockefeller’s ‘strategic philanthropy’ of using the Flexner Report and his funding of Johns Hopkins University to mold medical training into a model by which he could multiply his market,” since 80 percent of pharmaceuticals are oil-based.

[See page 193 in The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry, C.F. Van Der Horst, 2022 Per Veritatem Vis Foundation.]

The Flexner Report of 1910 by Abraham Flexner contained recommendations on the restructuring of medical education and the establishment of the biomedical model as the gold standard of medical training.

[Medical Education in the United States and Canada, July 8, 1910, Science magazine. See the National Lirarary of Medicine analysis here.]

The Report “contained recommendations requiring that medical educational institutions be funded by the big Foundations. It gave oil baron John D. Rockefeller the opportunity to steer medical education in such a way that the largely petroleum-based pharmaceuticals would play a central role and alternative medicine such as homeopathy would be barred. In writing the report, Abraham Flexner was directly coached by two Rockefeller Foundation employees.”
[See additional details in Deadly Lies: How Doctors and Patients Are Deceived, by C.F. van der Horst, 2023, Per Veritatem Vis Foundation.]

Today, the psychopharmaceutical marketing machine shamelessly pushes psychiatric drugs in spite of their known failures, leading the late Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus Dr. Thomas Szasz to say, “Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected society within the last 60 years.”

Psychiatrists tell us that the way to fix unwanted behavior is by altering brain chemistry with a pill — the legacy of the Flexner Report.

But unlike a mainstream medical drug like insulin, psychotropic medications have no measurable target illness to correct, and can upset the very delicate balance of chemical processes the body needs to run smoothly.

Nevertheless, psychiatrists and drug companies have used these drugs to create a huge and lucrative market niche.

And they’ve done this by naming more and more unwanted behaviors as “medical disorders” requiring psychiatric medication.

How did psychotropic drugs, with no target illness, no known curative powers and a long and extensive list of side effects, become the go?to treatment for every kind of psychological distress?

And how did the psychiatrists espousing these drugs come to dominate the field of mental treatment?

Find out by watching the Citizens Commission on Human Rights® (CCHR) Documentary “The Marketing of Madness – Are We All Insane?

Fraud in the Psychiatric Industry

April 10th, 2023

The March 31-April 6, 2023 St. Louis Business Journal “Highest-Paid St. Louis Occupations” list (on page 47) shows Psychiatrists having the second-highest Mean Annual Wage ($307,910) and Mean Hourly Wage ($148.04), with 170 estimated local psychiatrists.

Unfortunately, psychiatry’s baseless promises to improve mental health are promises that have repeatedly failed to deliver positive results, encouraging up to $20 billion a year lost in the U.S. due to fraudulent practices in the mental health sector.

Government funding, without accountability for successful patient outcomes, has enabled massive financial fraud, waste and patient harm from psychiatrists and psychiatric facilities.

Greater oversight could help reduce government waste and isolate and eradicate harmful practices and introduce patient protections so that lives could be saved.

Amid a rise in the use of telehealth for mental healthcare, fraud, and the consequent enforcement activities are increasing. More than 20 states report fraud, waste, and abuse as a “concern” with respect to telehealth services used to provide behavioral healthcare, according to information collected by the U.S. Office of Inspector General. But even greater oversight is needed and stronger penalties for violations.

Fraud- or theft-related crimes account for the second largest part of all the crimes conducted in the mental health industry in the U.S.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives and that they can be mentally unstable. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental health healing methods which improve and strengthen individuals by restoring them to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, responsibility, and well-being.

Contact your local, state and federal officials and urge them to stop funding harmful and fraudulent psychiatric practices; and urge them to provide greater oversight and stronger penalties for violations to help curb psychiatric fraud.

Take Action – Missouri Legislature

April 3rd, 2023

Psychiatry’s Attack on 1st Responders

A “1st Responder” is typically a person with specialized training who is among the first to arrive and provide assistance or incident resolution at the scene of an emergency such as an accident, fire, or other rescue or Emergency Medical Service situation. First Responders typically include law enforcement officers, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and firefighters.

This session of the Missouri Legislature has several bills demonstrating the psychiatric industry’s attempts to make First Responders a new patient category.

Why Is This Bad?

We all support First Responders, and are particularly grateful for their training and services. We also recognize that they can be subject to many stresses on their jobs; stresses which may compromise their good mental health. Mental health care is thus 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 issue is that, while these bills may have some helpful provisions for First Responders, they also serve to funnel First Responders into the psychiatric mental health “care” system, where they will likely be prescribed harmful, mind-altering psychotropic drugs and other harmful psychiatric “treatments.” Read the text of the bills to see how this can be, and urge your Missouri state legislators to reject these bills in their current form.

The Missouri Legislature

Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.

The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site:  http://revisor.mo.gov/.

You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.

The 2023 Regular Session (102nd General Assembly, 1st Regular Session) convened on Wednesday, January 4, 2023, and will end on Friday, May 12, 2023. You can see the House Bills (HB) by clicking here; and the Senate Bills (SB) are listed here.

If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.

Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.

We Urge You To Contact Your Legislators To Express Your Own Viewpoints.

We’d like to describe some bills about which we’d particularly like you to contact your legislators. Please write, call or visit to express your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB123 or HB123).

Four Very Very Bad Bills

SB24 Creates the “Missouri First Responder Mental Health Initiative Act”, promoting First Responder access to psychiatric behavioral health care services.
Sponsor: Senator Lincoln Hough (Republican, District 30, Part of Greene County)

SB654 Establishes a pilot program for certain medical services for veterans and other first responders. It promotes transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) for veterans, first responders, and law enforcement officers. Physically intrusive and damaging practices such as TMS create the appearance of scientific progress, but in the end, psychiatry is no closer to identifying any causes or effecting any cures.
Sponsor: Senator Bill Eigel (Republican, District 23, Part of St. Charles County)

HB539 Creates the “Missouri First Responder Mental Health Initiative Act”. This is similar to SB24, promoting First Responder access to psychiatric behavioral health care services.
Sponsor: Representative Adam Schwadron (Republican, District 105, St. Charles County)

HB1274 Creates new provisions relating to occupational diseases diagnosed in first responders, defining certain psychiatric diagnoses as an “occupational disease.”
Sponsor: Representative Anthony Ealy (Democrat, District 036, Jackson County)

Summary

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior 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.

Take Action – Missouri Legislature

March 27th, 2023

Periodically we let you know the progress of various proposed legislation making its way through the Missouri General Assembly and suggest ways for you to contribute your viewpoint to your state Representative and state Senator.

The Missouri General Assembly is the state legislature of the State of Missouri and is composed of two chambers: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The General Assembly is responsible for creating laws for governing the State of Missouri. The Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) are electronically available on this site:  http://revisor.mo.gov/.

You can find your Representative and Senator, and their contact information, by entering your 9-digit zip code here.

The 2023 Regular Session (102nd General Assembly, 1st Regular Session) convened on Wednesday, January 4, 2023, and will end on Friday, May 12, 2023. You can see the House Bills (HB) by clicking here; and the Senate Bills (SB) are listed here.

If you are not a voting resident of Missouri, you can find out about legislation in your own state and write your own state legislators; also, we are looking for volunteers to monitor legislation in Missouri and the states surrounding Missouri — let us know if you’d like to help out.

Check out our handy discussion about How to write to a legislator.

We Urge You To Contact Your Legislators To Express Your Own Viewpoints

We’d like to describe some bills about which we’d particularly like you to contact your legislators. Please write, call or visit to express your viewpoint as an individual or professional, and not as a representative of any organization. Let us know the details and any responses you get. The full text of each bill can be found on the House and Senate Joint Bill Tracking site. Just put the bill number into the search box (e.g. SB123 or HB123).

Four Very Very Bad Bills

HB1154 (Sponsor: Representative Dan Houx, Republican, District 54, Johnson county)

and

SB614 (Sponsor: Senator Holly Thompson Rehder, Republican, District 27, Bollinger, Cape Girardeau, Iron, Madison, Perry, Reynolds and Scott counties)

These bills require the Department of Health and Senior Services, in collaboration with a Missouri university hospital and medical center operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs in Missouri, to research and conduct clinical trials on the efficacy of using psychedelic drugs such as MDMA (Ecstasy), psilocybin, and ketamine, for the treatment of patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, treatment-resistant depression, substance abuse disorders, or who require end-of-life care.

The mythical and debunked theory that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes depression, which launched an antidepressant industry in 1989, is being rephrased today to sell Americans on taking psychedelic drugs for their mental health instead.

In the wake of SSRI antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil having been exposed as being no more effective than a placebo—with a threat to industry profits—psychedelics are being peddled to replace antidepressants and capture a projected $10 billion a year market. But this change in treatment and theories is like switching seats on the Titanic.

The theories behind how psychedelics “work” today remain hype rather than science. We are seeing the same rapturous reception given psychedelics, buoyed by a re-hashed brain chemical theory and claims of a “renaissance” in mental health treatment. It took 30 years for the “chemical-imbalance-in-the-brain-causes-depression” myth to be fully recognized as pseudoscience and dangerously misleading to consumers. We should recognize the trademark signs of this same marketing scam with psychedelics and prevent America from “turning on and tuning out” to these mind-altering drugs before it is too late. 

Read more about this fraud here.


HB1123 (Sponsor: Representative  Mike Stephens, Republican, District 128, Hickory and Polk counties)

This bill establishes the “Dialectical Behavior Therapy Task Force” which shall recommend standards and procedures for certifications in dialectical behavior therapy, and requires health benefit plans to provide coverage for dialectical behavioral services. This bill is similar to SB 397, sponsored by Senator Greg Razer (Democrat, District 7, Jackson county).

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is a psychotherapy for people who experience emotions very intensely (so-called “mood disorders”). It’s a type of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is a form of psychotherapy that attempts to modify dysfunctional emotions, behaviors, and thoughts — by evaluating for the person, challenging the person’s behaviors, and getting the person to change those behaviors, often in combination with psychiatric drugs.

While DBT may be advertised as a method to reduce psychiatric drug use, psychopharmacologic interventions are oftentimes considered appropriate adjunctive care.

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.

How to Cultivate Empathy

February 13th, 2023

Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing; to “walk in their shoes” so to speak.

[Derived from Ancient Greek ???????? (empatheia, “physical affection or passion”).]

We notice a huge amount of social media commentary about this concept, including a surfeit of pithy quotes. Wikipedia, for one example, discusses empathy extensively. We’re not going to go into it in such extraordinary depth, but we hope to add some useful observations.

One observation is that whenever there is so much back and forth discussion about a concept, there tends to also be major misunderstandings about it. We’d like to add our two cents.

Besides the obvious usefulness of empathy in the general social contexts of communication and understanding with others, there is also a practical application in marketing and public relations. For example, a product or service gets empathy by tying it in to one’s public using their local environment. This makes it more acceptable and improves its reach. As a local example, many products and services in the St. Louis metropolitan area are tied in name or picture with the Gateway Arch.

Some confuse empathy with compassion or sympathy. These are closely related but definitely different. Consult any good dictionary to understand the differences. (I recommend https://onelook.com/ to look up words online.)

One of the abiding concerns of commentary on empathy is how to teach it, how to develop it in a person when it is lacking. It is really a function of a living being’s awareness.

A large part of awareness training would be learning how to confront others and situations, while being open to all perceptions and remaining unrestimulated by noise and confusion. In this context, confront means to face without flinching.

People are not naturally aware of other people; they have to be drilled on observing others in order to bring about awareness. In many cases this normally occurs during one’s upbringing; in other cases this ability to observe may be lacking to greater or lesser degree and requires training. A century of psychological “know-best” that people are animals, not spiritual beings, has blunted this ability to observe in many unfortunate cases. Thus we get so much conversation on social media about how to develop empathy for others, which basically depends upon observing and being aware of others.

At the bottom of the scale of awareness there is delusion, in which a person sees one thing but thinks it is something else. This is more prevalent than one might suspect. Observational drills may not be enough to repair this failing.

Ways to Bring About a Heightened Sense of Empathy

A sensitivity to Human Rights is one way to cultivate empathy. Some notice that teaching about Human Rights brings about changes in attitude and behavior leading to more empathy toward others.

Another way to approach this is to recognize ways in which one’s awareness is turned to unawareness, and remedy those. A prime example of creating unawareness is psychiatric drugs.

These drugs create many of their effects by modifying the expression of neurotransmitters in the brain, which we call “playing Russian Roulette with your brain.”

Common and well-documented side effects of many psychiatric drugs include hallucinations, delusions, emotional disturbance, emotional numbing, confusion, akathisia (restlessness), brain damage, forgetfulness, memory lapses, hostility, aggressive behavior, and vision problems.

One can easily see that such side effects may contribute to one’s unawareness of what is going on around them, thus bringing about a destruction of empathy. The obvious remedy is to wean off taking these drugs and find non-drug alternatives for one’s troubles.

We hope these few observations have contributed to your understanding of empathy, and lead to a resurgence of your awareness of others.

Alien Mind Wipe

Treatment Resistant Depression is Apparently a Thing

February 6th, 2023

Psychiatrists like to fund research studies for so-called “Treatment Resistant Depression” (TRD). They say that if someone has been given antidepressant drugs but their symptoms haven’t improved, they may have treatment-resistant depression.

Of course, the treatments of choice for TRD are more psychiatric drugs, such as ketamine and esketamine (dissociative anesthetics), olanzapine (an atypical anti-psychotic drug) and fluoxetine (Prozac). Some claim that Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT or shock treatment) “work” for this. Of course, all these “treatments” just knock your brain for a loop, so you don’t feel depressed, or much of anything anymore. None of these actually address the root causes for these symptoms, which psychiatrists conveniently forget to tell you.

One study suggests that between 29% and 46% of patients are still depressed after taking antidepressant drugs. Another study claims 20%-60% do not respond to psychiatric drugs. Well, we’ve known for years that not only is there no such “mental illness” as depression, but also that these mind-altering drugs don’t help.

People can, of course, experience symptoms commonly labeled as depression. In fact, there are hundreds of genuine medical conditions which can produce such mental symptoms — each of which has clinical tests and recognized medical treatments which do not involve psychiatric drugs.

While the fraudulent psychiatric “brain chemical imbalance” theory has been debunked for many years, it has been held firmly in place by the psycho-pharma public relations machine in order to sell more harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs. These drugs make patients for life since the drugs do not cure anything and have devastating side effects.

Psychiatrists have known since the beginning of psychopharmacology that their drugs do not cure any disease, and that antidepressants do not have any legitimate medical value. These are just public relations theories to support the marketing and sale of drugs. This is why the words “depressed” or “depressive” occur 77 times in various fraudulent diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in a vain attempt to legitimize this so-called “disease.”

Troubled patients being misled about what causes their problems and being told that they need to take a psychotropic drug to “correct” this is a form of coercion. Giving patients such misinformation prevents their making an informed decision and has already resulted in many millions of people taking antidepressants or other psychotropic drugs with harmful side effects, erroneously believing these would “correct” something that simply never existed.

These drugs 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. This is the real reason why psychiatry is a violation of human rights. Psychiatric treatment is not just a failure — it is routinely destructive to the individual and one’s mental health.

If you know someone who has bought into these lies, suggest they investigate non-psychiatric, non-drug alternatives. Contact your local, state and federal representatives and demand that they stop government funding of these drugs.