Britney Spears’ Conservatorship Challenge

Posted on August 9, 2021 by cchrstl

[Condensed from Jan Eastgate, President, CCHR International]

The pop icon’s traumatic story of being held captive by a punitive guardianship law, with abusive psychiatric evaluations and forced mood-altering drugs, has prompted legislators to act. But proposed laws, while applaudable, fall short on needed protections.

Conservatorships, which place guardians over the control of a person’s life when deemed incompetent, are often based on a subjective psychiatric evaluation. As such, while it is very easy for someone to be placed under a conservatorship order because of a psychiatric diagnosis, it’s very hard to get out of one. The diagnosis is stigmatizing and is hard to disprove because of its subjectivity. It can also expand over the years, especially where there may be deterioration in the individual from powerful psychotropic drugs prescribed to them.

The late professor of psychiatry and co-founder of Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) Dr. Thomas Szasz, warned against state intervention that allows psychiatry to circumvent individual and constitutional rights. He called it “The Therapeutic State,” where the state gives psychiatry the power to be an institution of social control. “When I use the term therapeutic state, I use it ironically, it’s therapeutic for the people who are doing the locking up, who are doing the therapy, it’s not therapeutic for the victims, for the patients,” Szasz said. “The therapeutic state seeks to remedy personal and social problems defined as diseases; its beneficiaries are often ‘helped’ against their will; it is a totalitarian state, governed by the rule of therapeutic discretion.”

CCHR asks legislators to review the World Health Organization’s recent guideline for protections of people with mental health disabilities. WHO recommends countries “repeal guardianship and other substitute decision-making legislation and replace it with laws that recognize legal capacity and promote supported decision-making, including the use of advance plans [living wills] and best interpretation of will and preference.”

In Britney’s case, the conservatorship was put into place in 2008, while she struggled with her mental health, and gave her father broad control over her life and finances. Britney obtained a court order recently to reinforce her inherent right to obtain the legal counsel of her choice. Her new attorney must petition the court to have the current conservatorship removed.

Britney pleaded that the conservatorship over her affairs has made her feel “demoralized and enslaved.” She has been subjected to numerous psychiatric evaluations and medications, stating: “I want to end the conservatorship without being evaluated,” she said. The system in place is “abusive,” Britney said in court, accusing her conservators of forcing her to take mood-stabilizing drugs and perform against her will.

Britney also told the court that her previous psychiatrist (who died in 2019) was abusive in his treatment of her. She alleged that she was subjected to lengthy psychological evaluations, forced into a $60,000-a-month inpatient facility and told that she wouldn’t be able to see her children if she failed to comply. “To be totally honest with you, when [the doctor] passed away, I got on my knees and thanked God,” she said. She was then forced to see a therapist three days a week. Paparazzi humiliated her by taking photos of her crying after the emotional sessions. She asked the judge last month to be allowed to be part of her own care plan.

NBC News reported that allegations of abusive psychiatrists in conservatorships are not uncommon. Doctors are asked to file capacity declarations with the court which form about 75 percent of how judges base their decisions to keep someone under court-ordered guardianship.

The WHO’s “Guidance on community mental health services: Promoting person-centered and rights-based approaches” released in June 2021, is very clear about abuse in the mental health system: “Many people with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities are denied the right to exercise their legal capacity; that is, the right to make decisions for oneself and to have those decisions respected by others. Based on stigmatizing assumptions about their status – that their decisions are unreasonable or bring negative consequences, or that their decision-making skills are deficient, or that they cannot understand and make decisions for themselves or communicate their will and preferences – it has become acceptable in services in countries throughout the world, for others to step in and make decisions for people with mental health conditions and psychosocial disabilities. In many countries, this is implemented through schemes like guardianship, supervision and surrogacy, and is legitimized by laws and practices.”

As an organization that has exposed abuses in the mental health industry for more than fifty years, CCHR has definitely come across unscrupulous guardians that have been able to secure the help of psychiatrists to maintain control over an individual, especially their finances. The diagnostic aspect of conservatorship needs closer scrutiny.

State laws need to ensure that someone who is subject to a psychiatric evaluation also has freedom of choice and the right to obtain a second medical—as opposed to a psychiatric—opinion. Contact your state legislators and express your viewpoint about this.

The WHO guidelines are clear about protecting individual rights to choose. It also recommends people sign a Living Will to express their treatment and guardianship preferences should their liberty be threatened by competency issues.

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Psychiatrists Redefine “Recovery”

Posted on August 2, 2021 by cchrstl

Because psychiatry doesn’t work, psychiatrists have had to redefine the idea of “recovery” to ensure their own survival.

The lexicon of psychiatry engenders a false view of the human condition. When such words are used, one should be warned that psychiatry borrows from the language of medicine to look legitimate, but this is only to disguise its utter lack of claim to any authority. An example is the term “mental illness,” a fraudulent usage that implies a medical condition, when psychiatrists know that there is no valid medical, clinical test for any psychiatric diagnosis.

Would you go to a practitioner to treat an illness if you knew that practitioner couldn’t cure that illness? Likely not.

Such is the case with psychiatry – their treatments are not cures. Psychiatric drugs are more akin to over-the-counter cold remedies. They seek to minimize the symptoms of the so called “illness” without ever addressing its cause.

For psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies, long term treatment of symptoms is far more profitable than a cure. After all, a person with an infection can be cured in very short order with a small regimen of relatively inexpensive antibiotic medications. A person taking expensive new generation antidepressants is a long term customer and far more profitable.

According to the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (Final Report July 22, 2003), “The discovery of effective treatments using medications currently on the market is also encouraging. However, since these medications are treatments and not cures, some individuals with chronic illnesses, including children, are expected to use these medications over an extended period of time.”

So, psychiatry has had a problem. How do you attract patients if you can’t cure them? The solution to this problem is Public Relations (PR), a careful selection of words and the redefinition of the concept of “recovery”.

Psychiatric front groups openly promote that mental trauma is “treatable” but will never say that it is curable.

Psychiatric proponents believe that people don’t seek psychiatric care because of their negative attitudes about mental trauma and treatments. One of the main negative attitudes is that psychiatric disorders are not curable. To counter public fear and negative attitudes the psychiatric PR machines heavily promote the idea of “recovery”.

We think it is important that you know exactly what psychiatrists mean when they say, “recovery”.

Traditional (allopathic) medical science says, “You’re ill. There is a pathogen or source of your illness. By identifying the cause of the illness we will give you treatment (e.g. medicine or surgery) to eliminate the illness at its source and you will no longer be ill.”

Psychiatry says “You’re ill. We don’t know what causes “mental illness”. We can randomly give you some medications which are known to minimize your symptoms in some people, some of the time. Although we cannot cure your condition there is some hope that over time with adherence to your medication that you may feel not as bad. When you have learned to come to terms with your condition, accept it and function in life despite it, we will consider that you have recovered.”

According to A. Kathryn Power, former Director for the Center for Mental Health Services in the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, “Recovery does not necessarily mean a cure. Recovery is a process, sometimes lifelong, through which a person achieves independence, self-esteem, and a meaningful life in the community.”

Certainly no one will disagree that people should have hope, independence, self-esteem, and a meaningful life in the community. We would wish these things for anyone. But by changing the very nature of the word “recovery” from “cured” to “has hope and is able to live despite a mental condition” we have moved psychiatry even farther away from a science and into the realm of a philosophy or even a religion. One could get the idea of a mental health consumer struggling his whole life to achieve this mythical state called, “recovery”.

You may see a number of public service announcements in the media showing mental health consumers who have “recovered.” Recognize them for what they are. They have not been cured. It’s debatable if they were even ill in the first place. They are however, life-long customers of the psychiatric industry and followers of the new religion of “recovery”.

Recognize that 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.

Contact your local, state and national officials and tell them what you think about this.

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Surprise, Another New Antipsychotic Drug

Posted on July 26, 2021 by cchrstl

Cerevel Therapeutics announced June 29, 2021 the “CVL-231 Phase 1b Clinical Trial Results” for patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. They say the trial participants had statistically significant scores on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) compared to placebo.

CVL-231 is a muscarinic M4-selective Positive Allosteric Modulator. While that’s quite a mouthful, it basically means that it is supposed to reduce dopamine neurotransmitter activity in the brain.

The purpose of this new antipsychotic drug is the same as other dopamine-related antipsychotic drugs, but the emphasis with this drug is on reducing the side effects such as headaches, nausea, gastrointestinal upsets, exacerbation of psychotic symptoms, and debilitating movement disorders (e.g. akathisia, dyskinesia.)

They still don’t have a real clue about why messing with dopamine has any relationship to psychotic behavior, and as we’ve said before messing with neurotransmitters is playing Russian Roulette with your brain.

The PANSS Scale is used for assessing the severity of psychotic symptoms. The patient is rated by the opinion of an interviewer during a 45-minute interview covering 30 items about the patient’s symptoms on a scale of 1 (absent) to 7 (extreme).

The psychiatrist’s problem with side effects is that patients often stop taking the drugs because of the painful side effects and they relapse. The drugs don’t actually cure anything, they just temporarily relieve the pressure that an underlying problem may be causing, by breaking into the routine rhythmic flows and activities of the nervous system. Once the drug has worn off the original problem remains, and the body is worse off from the nerve damage.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a child or adult exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist fraudulently calls “schizophrenia” can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. The correct action on a seriously mentally disturbed person is a full, searching clinical examination by a competent non-psychiatric medical doctor to discover and treat the true cause of the problem.

CCHR’s cofounder 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.”

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.

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.

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.

Side Effects
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Something is Rotten in Canton

Posted on July 19, 2021 by cchrstl

Let’s Electroshock Children Who Misbehave

In March of 2020 the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) banned the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Massachusetts from using electric shock devices on their autistic and other mentally troubled children. In July of 2021 a federal appeals court removed the ban. The school is once again electro shocking about 60 students a day.

The school administers electric skin shocks in a form of “aversion therapy” for aggressive or self-injurious behavior. School staff trigger a shock to a child by using a remote control that zaps children with electric current when they misbehave. The school calls this a “medical device.” Since 1987 a state court must determine that such forced treatment is appropriate.

This electrical stimulation device delivers a powerful and painful electric shock to the wearer’s skin in an effort to punish. This school is the only facility in the country that uses coercive electric shock therapy to “treat” individuals who severely self-injure or are aggressive.

The FDA finally recognized in March 2020 (after 20 years) that these devices “present substantial psychological and physical risks and, in fact, can worsen underlying symptoms—while leading to heightened anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Unfortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned the FDA ban on July 6, 2021, stating that the ban was a regulation of the practice of medicine, which is outside the FDA’s area of authority.

The History of Abuse

In April 2016, the FDA first proposed banning electrical stimulation devices for self-injurious or aggressive behavior.

In 2018, the media reported that the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center would be allowed to continue administering electric shocks to its special needs students after a judge ruled the procedure conformed to the “accepted standard of care,” in spite of the practice being condemned by disability rights groups and the ACLU.

On December 3, 2018, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of The Organization of American States published a Precautionary Measure calling for the school to immediately cease electroshocking special needs children as a disciplinary measure.

In March 2020 the FDA finally determined that the devices presented a substantial and unreasonable risk to self-injurious and aggressive patients, justifying banning the devices for that purpose.

The Appeals Court

The appeals court examined the question, “Does the FDA have legal authority to ban an otherwise legal device from a particular use?”

The court concluded that current law prohibits the FDA from regulating the practice of medicine, and therefore it vacated the FDA’s rule banning electrical stimulation devices for self-injurious and aggressive behavior. There was one dissenting opinion; the Chief Judge found in favor of the FDA. [Read the full court opinion here.]

Of course, the lie in the argument is that electro shocking children is “practicing medicine.” In fact it is torture, not medicine.

The Case Against Torture

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment has remarked that Electro Convulsive Treatment (ECT) amounts to torture. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also stated that there are no indications for the use of ECT on minors. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) calls for a ban on “forced treatment.”

Granted that ECT is more severe than electric skin shocks, just have someone force you to stick your finger into an electric wall socket and tell us that this is not torture.

“Disguising social control as medical treatment is a deceit which conceals an abuse.” This is a de facto abuse of power, as it seeks to limit and control the individual instead of helping the individual to get better and improve their conditions in life.

In the United Nations July 24, 2018 Annual Report of the High Commissioner “Mental health and human rights,” it states, “States should ensure that all health care and services, including all mental health care and services, are based on the free and informed consent of the individual concerned, and that legal provisions and policies permitting the use of coercion and forced interventions, including involuntary hospitalization and institutionalization, the use of restraints, psychosurgery, forced medication, and other forced measures aimed at correcting or fixing an actual or perceived impairment, including those allowing for consent or authorization by a third party, are repealed. States should reframe and recognize these practices as constituting torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and as amounting to discrimination against users of mental health services, persons with mental health conditions and persons with psychosocial disabilities.”

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, formally adopted on December 10, 1948 states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

CCHR’s own Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1969, states these rights, among others:
“The right to refuse any treatment the patient considers harmful.”
“No person shall be given psychiatric or psychological treatment against his or her will.”

Sign the petition to ban electroshock here.

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Is That Going To Be A Problem?

Posted on July 12, 2021 by cchrstl

Problems are huge now. Everyone has one or more of them. Seems like everyone accuses someone else of them. They are therefore a ripe subject for our blog. There’s a lot to know about the subject.

Some things to know about Problems

A problem is as important as it is related to survival.
The human mind’s basic purpose is the posing and resolving of problems related to survival.
Problems begin with an unpredictability.
Problems are a necessary component of games.
One might say that the best problem is one that never solves.
The old maxim “If you want something done, give it to a busy person to do,” expresses the idea that a person suffers if they do not have enough problems. A person chafes and grows bored when there is a total lack of problems. Giving a busy person one more thing to do adds to their problems, and thus they suffer less.
On the other hand, enough unsolved problems add up to a huge confusion. The balance between too few problems and too many of them is critical, and varies from person to person and time to time.

Some definitions of the word

Problem:
— A question or puzzle raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution.
— A source of perplexity, distress, or vexation.
— Something or someone difficult to achieve, deal with, or control.
— A matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.

[From Greek problema, “obstacle”, from proballein “to throw forward”, from pro- “forward” + ballein “to throw”.]

Even better definitions, ones which lead to methods of resolution, are:
— Two or more opposed purposes; also expressed as Purpose versus Counter-purpose.
— Intention versus Counter-intention.
— Postulate versus Counter-postulate.
— Something that persists because it contains a lie or altered facts, since if it were totally truth it wouldn’t be a problem.

Problems and Creativity

Creation is a primary ability of a person. Unfortunately when a person loses their ability to create, about the only thing they can create is a problem. So somebody comes along and says, “Let’s all be happy and healthy.” Next thing you know, all you can see are problems about being happier or healthier. When the problems get too great to do something about, what happens then? One creates lies, because the lowest order of creation is lying, and the problem will then persist because it contains a lie.

Problems and Psychiatry

Problems are no stranger to psychiatrists. In fact, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is full of problems. (While the DSM itself is a problem, here we mean that many different problems are described in the DSM as mental disorders.)

Let’s give some examples. These are problem-related mental disorders listed in the DSM-5 for which psychiatrists can prescribe harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs:

— Academic or educational problem
— Other problem related to employment
— Other problem related to psychosocial circumstances
— Parent-child relational problem
— Phase of life problem
— Problem related to current military deployment status
— Problem related to lifestyle
— Problem related to living alone
— Problem related to living in a residential institution
— Problems related to multiparity [i.e. five or more childbirths]
— Problems related to other legal circumstances
— Problems related to release from prison
— Problems related to unwanted pregnancy
— Religious or spiritual problem
— Sibling relational problem
— Unspecified housing or economic problem
— Unspecified problem related to social environment
— Unspecified problem related to unspecified psychosocial circumstances

The Problem of Psychiatry

Psychiatry itself is a problem of magnitude. While psychiatry claims to be the arbiter of good and bad mental health, it has demonstrated over many years that it cannot cure any mental problems.

In fact, psychiatry invents the very problems that it then fraudulently claims to handle. Mental “disorders” are voted into and out of existence based on factors that have nothing to do with medicine. Psychiatry admits that it has not proven the cause or source of a single “mental illness;” the DSM is simply a list of symptoms.

Recommendations

The DSM should be removed from use in all government agencies, departments and other bodies including criminal, educational and justice systems. None of the mental disorders in the DSM should be eligible for insurance coverage because they have no scientific, physical validation. Provide funding and insurance coverage only for proven, workable treatments that verifiably and dramatically improve or cure mental health problems.

Contact your local, state and federal officials and representatives to express your viewpoints about this.

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World Health Organization New Guidelines Are Vital To End Coercive Psychiatric Practices & Abuse

Posted on July 5, 2021 by cchrstl

The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a damning report [“Guidance on community mental health services“, 9 June 2021] that lashes out against coercive psychiatric practices, which it says “are pervasive and are increasingly used in services in countries around the world, despite the lack of evidence that they offer any benefits, and the significant evidence that they lead to physical and psychological harm and even death.”

It points to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) which in essence, calls for a ban on “forced hospitalization and forced treatment.”

Citizens Commission on Human Rights® International (CCHR Int) welcomes the report not just for recognizing psychiatric abuses and torture as being rife, but also as a vindication of CCHR’s efforts since 1969 and other groups that have fought for the recognition of patients’ rights violations that WHO now acknowledges. CCHR’s Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1969, includes many of the rights that the WHO report now addresses.

For example, WHO points to a series of UN guidelines and Human Rights Council resolutions that have called on countries to tackle the “unlawful or arbitrary institutionalization, overmedication and treatment practices [seen in the field of mental health] that fail to respect… autonomy, will and preferences.” People who are subjected to coercive practices report feelings of dehumanization, disempowerment and being disrespected, WHO further states.

CRPD says patients must not be put at risk of “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and recommends prohibiting “coercive practices such as forced admission and treatment, seclusion and restraint, as well as the administering of antipsychotic medication, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and psychosurgery without informed consent.”

Coercive Practices Create Harm

Psychiatry has failed to take responsibility for the fact that its own coercive practices have caused the stigmatization which drives medical students and patients away from it, while it tries to blame this on its critics. WHO says stigmatization exists among the general population, policy makers and others when they see those with mental disabilities as being “at risk of harming themselves or others, or that they need medical treatment to keep them safe”—a psychiatric mantra—which results in a general acceptance of coercive practices such as involuntary admission and treatment or seclusion and restraint.

Many U.S. states allow electroshock to be given to involuntary patients against their will, constituting torture, as UN agencies have clearly stated. The WHO report specifically highlights the problem that “coercive practices are used in some cases because they are mandated in the national [or state] laws of countries.”

In Missouri, “Involuntary electroconvulsive therapy may be administered under a court order.” [RSMo 630.130]

Further, coercion is “built into mental health systems, including in professional education and training, and is reinforced through national mental health and other legislation.”

Countries must also ensure that “informed consent” is in place and that “the right to refuse admission and treatment is also respected.” “People wishing to come off psychotropic drugs should also be actively supported to do so, and several recent resources have been developed to support people to achieve this,” WHO says.

CCHR will continue to monitor and document psychiatric abuses and with this WHO guideline against involuntary treatment, refer this to attorneys who may be able to seek charges of torture where forced treatment is administered. Until laws enact the necessary protections, more pressure is needed to bring abuses to account through the courts. Contact your local, state and federal officials and express your viewpoint about this.

[See the CCHR International Press Release here.]

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Please Accept Our Regrets

Posted on June 28, 2021 by cchrstl

Regret means “to miss” or “mourn the loss of” or “be remorseful about”. Some etymologies trace it back to Old Norse grata “to weep”.

In truth, regret is trying to turn the Cycle of Action backwards. The definition of regret is to return something through time, to run time backwards.

The Cycle of Action in this case is the consideration that things progress from Start to Change to Stop, or from Create to Survive to Destroy.

In the psychiatric billing bible Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), it is expressed as some mental disorder “in remission.” Remission comes from the Latin remittere “to send back.”

Thus we get regret being redefined by psychiatry as a mental disorder.

While regret may indeed be an unwholesome emotion, it isn’t a mental illness; it’s a symptom of a messed up Cycle of Action.

Psychiatric Regret

Some psychiatrists are finally realizing that what they once diagnosed as biological mental illnesses are in fact fake. They are now acknowledging that no biological markers have ever been identified for the non-organic mental disorders in the DSM; and that the psychotropic drugs prescribed for these fake illnesses are harmful.

Yet regret is still a hot topic in psychology and psychiatry, wasting precious funds on scholarly articles and research programs rehashing all the ways one can experience regret and what to do about it. An Internet search on “psychiatric regret” produces hundreds, if not thousands, of references.

Please forgive us if we jump on this bandwagon; nor do we regret doing so.

Cause and Effect

Regret is also the subject of Cause and Effect. An individual naturally desires to cause things, and not become the effect of something bad. Regret can be seen in this light as remorse for having caused something bad, or having been the effect of something bad and wishing it to be reversed. Thus the way out of this painful emotion is the rehabilitation of one’s ability to be a cause or to be an effect without all the accumulated trauma of bad causes and bad effects.

Masking these real emotions with psychiatric drugs, or endless talk sessions, only prolongs the pain and cannot relieve it. Psychiatry and psychology are not an answer; they only confuse the issues.

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Qelbree, The Newest ADHD Drug

Posted on June 21, 2021 by cchrstl

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new drug April 2, 2021 for treatment of the fraudulent “disease” Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children ages 6 to 17.

Like many other psychiatric drugs, this one also carries an FDA warning:”Qelbree may increase suicidal thoughts and actions in some children with ADHD, especially within the first few months of treatment or when the dose is changed.”

Qelbree (generic viloxazine hydrochloride) is a non-stimulant drug, although it is a Selective Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor (sNRI), which means that it is really an antidepressant and is similar in operation to other ADHD drugs such as Strattera. The bottom line is that this class of drugs messes with neurotransmitters in the brain, and taking them is playing Russian Roulette with your brain.

Qelbree is an inhibitor of several Cytochrome P450 enzymes, which may intensify the drug’s side effects especially in combination with certain other drugs.

And again, like other similar psychiatric drugs, “The mechanism of action of viloxazine in the treatment of ADHD is unclear.“

There is no valid ADHD clinical test for children. There is no valid ADHD clinical test for adults. The ADHD diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis is simply a list of behaviors that may appear disruptive or inappropriate, and is essentially just an opinion.

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.

ADHD Newborn
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Planned Parenthood = Planned Extermination

Posted on June 7, 2021 by cchrstl

“Eugenics is not a closed book of past history. It casts a long shadow over both science and society in the Western world and, in fact, also globally.”

[Psychiatry and the Legacies of Eugenics]

The May 17, 2021 National Review magazine contained this observation:

“In the New York Times, Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson formally criticized the institution’s infamous founder, Margaret Sanger, for her association with white-supremacist groups and the eugenics movement. After about a century, and the last year of racial tension, the abortion provider is finally ready to admit what many of us have been saying for quite some time: Sanger was a leader in the U.S. eugenics and population-control movements, motivated especially by her animus toward the poor, the “unfit,” and the “feeble-minded.” Sanger’s repulsive sentiments should shine a harsh light on the present-day business model of her organization. Nearly 80 percent of its clinics are located within walking distance of neighborhoods occupied predominantly by black and Hispanic residents. While constituting only 13 percent of the female population, black women represent more than one-third of all abortions in the U.S. each year, and they are five times more likely than white women to obtain an abortion. In recent years in New York City, more black babies were aborted than were born alive. Some day, let’s hope, Planned Parenthood will be apologizing for more than just Sanger.”

Pushed by mental health practitioners, the eugenics idea of racial inferiority became ingrained in the U.S. and led to Sanger’s “cure” for racial inferiority — sterilization. Sanger planned to “exterminate the Negro population” by inducing several black ministers with “engaging personalities,” to preach that sterilization was a solution to poverty. She stated that reaching Blacks “through a religious appeal,” would be the “most successful educational approach.”
[Elasah Drogin, Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society, 1986]

The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) recent apology (January 18, 2021) for its support of structural racism understates psychiatry’s racial human rights abuses and its long history of instigating racism by providing “rationales” that justified and perpetuated it.

Over the last 50 years, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has exposed that sordid history and intensified its efforts by forming the Task Force Against Psychiatric Racism and Modern Day Eugenics.

It is noteworthy that in the late 1700s, psychiatry’s own “Father of American Psychiatry,” Dr. Benjamin Rush, a slave owner, created a medical justification for racism by claiming Blacks suffered from a disease called “negritude,” supposedly a form of leprosy, and recommended their segregation to prevent them from “infecting” others.  A logo with the image of Benjamin Rush is still used for APA ceremonial purposes and internal documents. The APA still gives a Benjamin Rush Award.

Psychiatrists in the American mental health movement later latched onto and promoted the false science of eugenics [from the Greek word eugenes, well-born, from eu- well + -genes born], which claims some humans are inferior to others and should not have children.

African Americans are disproportionately diagnosed with mental illness and disproportionately committed to psychiatric facilities. They are more likely to be labeled with conduct disorder and psychotic disorders, especially schizophrenia, and overly prescribed antipsychotic drugs.  Black men are more likely to be prescribed excessive doses of these psychiatric drugs. Black children are overly labeled with ADHD. 

The APA’s incomplete apology may be viewed as political pandering and an attempt to whitewash history to pave the way for the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry to expand – very profitably – into the African American community.

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Style Is As Style Does

Posted on May 31, 2021 by cchrstl

Style is the FORM of something.

The word “style” means:
— a distinctive manner of expression or behavior or conduct
— a distinctive quality, form, or type of something
[from Latin stilus, “spike, stem, stylus”]

FASHION is a prevailing style.

A LIFESTYLE is the typical way of life of an individual, group, or culture.

Style In Psychiatry

“Style” appears in the psychiatric billing bible Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as “Problem related to lifestyle.” With no discussion other than its indication as a billable medical diagnosis, it leaves its interpretation and treatment solely to the opinion of the psychiatrist.

There are suggestions that this diagnosis may be related to problems with physical exercise, diet and eating habits, sexual behavior, gambling, and sleeping patterns; although these have evolved to their own entries in the DSM or ICD (the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases).

Other psychiatric discussions name such things as “parenting style” or “attachment style” when dealing with people’s relationships with others. And psychiatric debates have occurred over whether compulsive shopping for the latest styles should be considered a sign of mental illness.

Now we see that “lifestyle” is being re-defined by the psychiatric industry as a mental illness.

Psychiatric Redefinition of Terms

There is a long history of psychiatry redefining terms to create more advantage for their industry. In their anxiety to keep their failures explained while they lobby governments for more funds, psychiatry continually redefines key words relating to the mind and mental trauma. Psychiatry tries to describe instead of cure; witness the DSM, which is all description and no cures. As a matter of fact, Norman Sartorius, president of the World Psychiatric Association in 1994 said, “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.”

The first version of the DSM in 1952 listed 112 disorders. DSM-IV in 1994 listed 374 disorders. The current revision DSM-5 from 2013 has 955 line items.

With the DSM, anyone can be said to have some form of insanity just by saying a big word, leaving the psychiatrist as an “authority” who can only label and not cure. The government billions given to psychiatry bought no cures but only a lot of big words and how they are all incurable.

One should certainly prefer a cure rather than a label. A cure is “Patients recovering and being sent, sane, back into society as productive individuals.” A label leads to no cure, topped off with harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs, or barbaric and damaging “treatments” such as electroconvulsive therapy or psycho-surgery.

Recommendations

1. Mental health homes must be established to replace coercive psychiatric institutions. These must have medical diagnostic equipment, which non-psychiatric medical doctors can use to thoroughly examine and test for all underlying physical problems that may be manifesting as disturbed behavior. Government and private funds should be channeled into this rather than abusive psychiatric institutions and programs that have proven not to work.

2. Establish rights for patients and their insurance companies to receive refunds for psychiatric treatment which did not achieve the promised result or improvement, or which resulted in proven harm to the individual, thereby ensuring that responsibility lies with the individual practitioner and psychiatric facility rather than with the government or its agencies.

3. Government, criminal, educational, judicial and other social agencies should not rely on the DSM and no legislation should use this as a basis for determining the mental state, competency, educational standard or rights of any individual.

The Latest Style
The Latest Style

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