Posts Tagged ‘alternatives’

What is Happiness?

Monday, November 6th, 2017

If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.

[Chinese Proverb]

What is happiness, really? Is it “happy pills?” Mother’s little helper? Is “happiness” the opposite of “depression,” so that an anti-depressant should make one happy? Unfortunately, what anti-depressants do is actually detach one from reality; and the only happiness accrues to pharmaceutical companies who rake in $80 billion a year worldwide for psychiatric drugs.

As is usual with English words, “happiness” has more than one definition: 1) transient pleasure; 2) overcoming not unknowable obstacles toward a known goal; 3) a condition or state of well-being, contentment, pleasure; 4) joyful, cheerful, untroubled existence; 5) the reaction to having nice things happen to one.

Psychiatry, however, redefines happiness as a manic or hypomanic indication (associated with a bipolar diagnosis) which occurs in 14 separate entries in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5.)

Manic: characterized by frenetic activity or wild excitement; excitement of psychotic proportions manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganization of behavior and elevation of mood.
Hypomanic: A mild form of mania, marked by elation and hyperactivity; a mood state characterized by persistent dis-inhibition and pervasive euphoria.

“Treatment” generally includes psychotropic mood stabilizers, unless the state is a result of drug abuse or drug side effects — in which case the “treatment” may include psychotropic sedatives. All of these psychotropic drugs are addictive, mess up the central nervous system, and can have many disastrous side effects including violence and suicide.

For more information about mood stabilizers such as Lithium, Depakote (sodium valproate), Depakene (sodium valproate), Lamictal (lamotrigine), Lamictin (lamotrigine), Lamogine (lamotrigine); download and read the booklet Mood Stabilizers — the facts about the effects.

One psychologist even overtly proposed happiness as a psychiatric disorder. [From the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, a division of the National Institutes of Health]. One might think this was an April Fool’s joke, except that it was published in June.

Published in the Journal of Medical Ethics – J Med Ethics. 1992 Jun;18(2):94-8
“A proposal to classify happiness as a psychiatric disorder”
Richard P Bentall, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool in the UK:

“It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains–that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.”

We think we can safely say this psychologist’s attitude is a misanthropic manifestation; the DSM-5 might call it “Adult antisocial behavior”, “Antisocial personality disorder”, or maybe just “Unspecified anxiety disorder”.

It is true that a euphoric condition is often associated with certain hallucinogenic drugs. We wouldn’t actually call that “happiness”, however; and the mania associated with many psychiatric drugs is not sustainable.

What would promote happiness is an actual cure for mental distress. The psychiatric industry itself admits it has no capacity to cure. We generally take cure to mean the elimination of some unwanted condition by some effective treatment. The primary purpose of any mental health treatment must be the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance. The only effective measure of this treatment must be “patients recovering and being sent, sane, back into society as productive individuals.” This, we would call a cure.

While it is illegal for FDA-regulated products to make cure claims, there are in fact many non-drug and non-psychiatric alternatives which may prove effective in handling traumatic conditions. The trick is in finding out what is really wrong and fixing that, not just suppressing the central nervous system with drugs so that one does not feel the bad emotions.

Click here for more information about alternatives to fraudulent and abusive psychiatric treatments.

Click here for the truth about psychiatric drugs.

Click here for The Way To Happiness, the first moral code based wholly on common sense, containing twenty-one basic principles that guide one to a better quality of life.

Are You Depressed?

Monday, October 23rd, 2017

The sudden realization that someone might actually enjoy one’s company is a better antidepressant than anything one could get on a prescription.
[With thanks to Charles Stross, The Atrocity Archive.]

Psychiatry is heavily pushing false data about depression. You should know exactly what psychiatry and psychiatrists are:

  • Psychiatry is an antisocial enemy of the people.
  • Psychiatrists are undesirable antisocial elements.

What exactly is “depression?” The dictionary has this to say about what “depression” means:

A condition of feeling sad, despondent, hopeless, or inadequacy; A reduction in physiological vigor or activity such as fatigue.

The fact is, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association and the National Institute of Mental Health admit that there are no medical tests to confirm mental disorders as a disease but do nothing to counter the false idea that these are biological/medical conditions when in fact, diagnosis is simply done by a checklist of behaviors.

Yes, people experience symptoms of depression. This does not make them “mentally diseased” and there is no evidence of physical/medical abnormality for the so-called diagnosis of “depression.” This doesn’t mean that there aren’t solutions for people experiencing difficulty; there are non harmful, medical alternatives. But they do not require a psychiatric “label” to treat them. There is no mental illness test that is scientifically/medically proven. This isn’t a matter of opinion — psychiatrists who are opposed to the labeling of behaviors as mental illness openly admit this.

There are understandable possibilities for someone experiencing symptoms of depression. One is an undiagnosed and untreated medical condition that presents mental symptoms; and there are many of these medical conditions, requiring a full and searching clinical examination by a competent medical—not psychiatric—doctor to find the underlying undiagnosed and untreated physical problem. Go to this site for examples of medical conditions which can have mental symptoms. These all have non-psychiatric-drug alternatives.
A second possibility arises from stress, which is actually a situation in which a person is being suppressed in some area of their life — meaning there is something in their life, such as an antisocial person or element, which is putting them down, stopping them from getting better, invalidating or making less of one or one’s efforts.

Another possibility is simply a life event, such as grief, which has occasioned sadness or fatigue.

In the news now is a major source of false information about depression. Google is promoting this false information by teaming up with the National Alliance for Mental Illness to present a questionnaire to people who search for the word “depression” to recognize if what they are feeling is what psychiatrists call “clinical depression.” Don’t be fooled; this is simply an attempt to funnel vulnerable people into the mental health care system and prescribe them harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs. This questionnaire takes about five minutes to complete, and is just a list of behaviors, or as Dr. Thomas Szasz said, “The term ‘mental illness’ refers to the undesirable thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of persons.” More properly, it is just what psychiatry and psychiatrists have inappropriately labeled as “undesirable behavior;” the prime undesirable antisocial people on the planet telling you what they think is undesirable!

This questionnaire has no clinical value, using ten questions such as “Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?” or do you have “trouble falling or staying asleep?” If you are logged in to Google while taking this questionnaire you will be sharing this information about yourself with Google.

Click here for more information about psychiatric abuse.

Psychiatry and Other Enterprises

Sunday, July 30th, 2017

Book Review

Psychiatry and Other Enterprises
Personal Experiences and Reflections after 57 Years in the Field of Psychiatry
by Nelson Borelli, MD (Mill City Press, Inc., 2015)
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Northwestern University

“Psychiatry as it stands now, a neurological and drug-oriented enterprise, poses a bleak predicament for those suffering from emotional or existential problems.

“Psychiatry’s pursuit of the enterprising route as a means of survival is backfiring: psychiatry is on the brink of extinction as a medical specialty to once again become a stepchild of neurology. …

“Organized psychiatry lost a chance to achieve solid medical identity after WWII because its leadership refused to analyze itself, to listen to its critics, and to consider a new paradigm. Instead psychiatry sank its head into the ground to continue to rely on State support for its survival.

“The possible survival or the new birth of psychiatry would need a new paradigm. A paradigm which priority and main clause would be: separation-from-the-State.”

Dr. Borelli emphasizes that a fuller understanding of psychiatry’s failures can be found by following the money trail, particularly the governmental money trail.

Over the course of his career it became clear to Dr. Borelli that the people that consulted with him were not “mentally ill”; that the consultees either had medical problems with emotional symptoms or had ordinary life problems caused by poor management. As a Life Analyst, Dr. Borelli assists people seeking help in managing their personal lives. Rather than diagnosing and treating medical conditions, he now identifies the blind spots in the assessment and management of the life of his clients. He does not tell people how to live their lives. He strongly believes that psychiatry should do away with the forced treatment of people (involuntary commitment) and the insanity defense practice.

Patients With Mental Disorders Get Half Of All Opioid Prescriptions

Wednesday, July 19th, 2017

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Path to Restoring Lives

Sunday, May 7th, 2017

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

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

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

This Path is amazing on several levels.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, April 17th, 2017

False information published by the Federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration claims that “19.9 percent of American adults in the United States (45.1 million) have experienced mental illness over the past year.”

In fact, statistics provided on the number of people suffering mental illness are completely false or, at best, questionable.

Psychiatry has literally covered every base with invented criteria. The child who fidgets is “hyperactive;” the person who drinks coffee has “caffeine intoxication;” if you smoke or chew you could have “tobacco use disorder;” a low math score is an “academic or educational problem;” arguing with parents is “oppositional defiant disorder;” and of course the catchall “unspecified mental disorder” for the rest of us. Many of these so-called “disorders” are really medical conditions, such as “restless legs syndrome” — there is sufficient evidence that restless leg syndrome can be caused by a magnesium deficiency. And if you’ve been held up at gunpoint, you are a “victim of crime,” and consequently in desperate need of an anti-anxiety drug.

Counting these normal human problems, emotions and reactions as “mental illness” is a fraud, designed to solicit funds for the mental health industry and sell more drugs.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is the book that contains names and descriptions of 955 so-called mental disorders (including everything from “alcohol intoxication” and “religious or spiritual problem” to “wandering.”)

Doctors, psychiatrists and other medical and mental health practitioners use the DSM to diagnose patients. Each DSM mental disorder description carries a code that clinicians can use to substantiate claims for health insurance reimbursement.

Though it has become very influential since it first appeared in 1952 (when it contained only 112 disorders), there is one crucial test the DSM has never passed: scientific validity. In fact, after more than 50 years of deception, broad exposure is now being given to the unscientific and ludicrous nature of this “947-page doorstop.”

Psychiatric diagnosis has come to be accepted as legitimate, reliable and scientific, though it is based on a system whose own authors admit that it is not. Within the covers of the various editions of DSM, its editors freely admit to the book’s intended use and its limitations.

For example, the DSM-IV states, “…although this manual provides a classification of mental disorders, it must be admitted that no definition adequately specifies precise boundaries for the concept of ‘mental disorder.'”

The fifth edition of DSM, released in 2013, has been garnering continuous criticism for the inclusion of ridiculous so-called behavioral disorders — “lack of adequate food or safe drinking water;” “alcohol-induced sexual dysfunction;” “cannabis intoxication;” “discord with neighbor, lodger, or landlord;” “extreme poverty;” “low income;” “inadequate housing.” Being diagnosed with a “conviction in civil or criminal proceedings without imprisonment” can lead to involuntary commitment. And to tie in with the current frenzy over opioid addiction, you can have a mental disorder called “opioid use disorder” for which you can be prescribed, guess what, another addictive psychotropic drug.

The contention of many is that the DSM’s developers are seeking to label all manner of normal emotional reactions or human behavioral quirks as mental disorders — thereby falsely increasing the numbers of “mentally ill” people who would then be prescribed one or more drugs that carry all manner of serious side effect warnings.

Based on the DSM then, statistics are touted about near “epidemic” rates of mental illness in order to demand more government funds and sell more harmful drugs, making people “patients for life” as the drug adverse events then require more drugs to handle these side effects.

The apparent epidemic of “mental illness” is because the psychiatric industry, working with the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration, invents new disorders almost every year. Take, for example, “intermittent explosive disorder,” often referred to as “road rage” and which psychiatrists report afflicts one in 20, about 16 million Americans. How, exactly, did psychiatrists come up with this? They conducted a survey. The survey asked American adults if they had ever experienced three anger outbursts in their entire life. Not surprisingly, a whole lot of people said they had. From this flimsy evidence the Archives of General Psychiatry printed the survey results that hype this fictitious disease.

In September 2001, a U.S. Senate hearing on “Psychological Trauma and Terrorism” was told that, “Seventy?one percent of Americans said that they have felt depressed by the [9/11] attacks.” It’s a worrying statistic, until one realizes that the survey was conducted during the six days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks when Americans were, naturally, in a state of shock. The survey sampled 1,200 people only, which, by some quantum leap, led to the conclusion that nearly three-quarters of Americans were mentally damaged, requiring “professional” help.

What did have an impact were psychotropic drug sales. Immediately following the 9/11 attacks, new prescriptions for antidepressants in New York jumped 17% and prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs rose 25%.

Behind the alarming reports of mental illness gripping our nation are psychiatrists and drug companies inventing diseases and placing healthy people at risk.

People can have serious problems in life; these are not, however, some mental illness caused by a deficiency of psychotropic drugs in their brains. Click here to find out the alternatives to psychiatric drugs.

With $76 billion spent every year on psychiatric drugs internationally, and billions more in psychiatric research, one would and should expect an improving condition. However, after decades of psychiatric monopoly over the world’s mental health, their approach leads only to massive increases in people taking addictive and harmful mind-altering drugs, escalating funding demands, and up to $40 billion a year in mental health care fraud in the U.S.

What are you going to do about it? Get the Facts. Fight Back.

Risky Business of Sleep Drugs

Saturday, March 5th, 2016

Risky Business of Sleep Drugs

After reading about the dangers of sleeping pills in the February 2016 edition of Consumer Reports magazine, we thought you might like to know something about that.

Some psychotropic drugs are prescribed as sleeping pills. Trazodone, an antidepressant, is often prescribed off label as a sleeping pill. Benzodiazepines such as Valium are also prescribed as sleeping pills. Other examples are Ambien (an anti-psychotic), Lunesta (an anti-anxiety drug), and Sonata (another anti-anxiety drug).

These have all the potential side effects we have come to associate with psychiatric drugs — including violence, suicide, addiction, and so on.

The latest sleeping pill fad, touted as “the new insomnia drug”, is Belsomra (generic “suvorexant”). It is classified as a “sedative-hypnotic” which means it is a central nervous system depressant; it alters brain chemistry by targeting a neurotransmitter called orexin.

Belsomra is manufactured by Merck, Sharpe & Dohme Corporation, and was approved by the FDA for insomnia in August of 2014.

Guess what? This drug carries the same warnings as other psychotropic drugs; it may cause memory loss, anxiety, confusion, agitation, hallucinations, depression, addiction, and thoughts of suicide — all this along with its own special side effects: inability to move or talk, sleep-walking, sleep-driving, and drowsiness lasting through the next day.

Here is what Consumer Reports has to say about Belsomra: “…people who took a 15- or 20-milligram dose of Belsomra every night for three months fell asleep just 6 minutes faster on average than those who took a placebo. And those on Belsomra slept on average only 16 minutes longer than people given a placebo. Such small improvements didn’t translate to people feeling more awake the next day, either. Instead, more people who took Belsomra reported that they felt drowsy the next day than those who took a placebo.”

“Because of the limited benefits and substantial risks of sleeping pills, Consumer Reports’ medical experts advise that sleep drugs should be used with great caution.”

“Merck spent $36 million on TV ads for its new drug Belsomra from Aug. 1 to Nov. 24, 2015, making it the second most advertised Rx drug in that time frame, according to iSpot.tv. The ads note that Belsomra is the first drug to target orexin, a chemical that plays a role in keeping people awake. But Belsomra doesn’t work much, or any, better than other sleep drugs. And because it’s new, little is known about its long-term safety.”

One take-away here is that even if a prescription drug is not advertised or prescribed for psychiatric reasons, if it messes with the brain’s neurotransmitters and has all the same side-effects as a psychiatric drug — well, you must get the picture by now.

The Consumer Reports article goes on to discuss non-drug sleep alternatives at some length; it is a good and helpful read.

When your doctor prescribes a drug, it is good practice to ask questions so you can give your full informed consent. These are some example questions you can ask:

1. What is the evidence for the diagnosis?
2. How does the treatment affect the body?
3. How does the treatment affect the mind?
4. What unwanted effects may occur?
5. Is it approved by the FDA for this condition?
6. What is known and not known about how safe it is and how well it works?
7. What are the alternatives, including the option of no treatment?
8. Does the doctor or the clinic have a financial interest in pushing the diagnosis or treatment?

The Cure Conundrum

Saturday, September 19th, 2015

The Cure Conundrum

We often say that psychiatry produces no cures, and for good reason. There is a lot of history behind the concept of “cure;” we’d like to touch on a small piece of that.

The psychiatric industry itself admits it has no capacity to cure.

“We do not know the causes [of any mental illness]. We don’t have the methods of ‘curing’ these illnesses yet.” [Dr. Rex Cowdry, psychiatrist and director of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 1995]

“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.” [Norman Satorius, president of the World Psychiatric Association in 1994]

“What’s a cure?…it’s just that it’s a term that we don’t use in the medical [psychiatric] profession.” [Dr. Joseph Johnson, California psychiatrist during court deposition, 2003]

We generally take cure to mean the elimination of some unwanted condition with some effective treatment. The primary purpose of any mental health treatment must be the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance. The only effective measure of this treatment must be “patients recovering and being sent, sane, back into society as productive individuals.” This, we would call a cure.

Interestingly enough, elements in this society have systematically tried to downplay or eliminate the concept of cure, especially in the area of mental health. Consider the following quote:

“In the early 1900s, years of exaggerated claims finally caught up with the rest of the patent medicine industry. Inspired by muckrakers like Samuel Hopkins Adams, the official medical community embraced his expose called The Great American Fraud and began their battle against the nostrum-peddling industry. The public demanded appropriate labeling for patent medicines. But the newspaper lobby, supported by the advertising dollars from an $80 million patent medicine industry, kept national legislation tied up for months. Finally, the Pure Food and Drug Act was adopted in June of 1906 with regulations forcing the sellers who made patent medicine to disclose contents and give quantities of ingredients such as alcohol, morphine, opium, cocaine and heroin. Six years later, the government passed an amendment forbidding the use of the word ‘cure’ on a bottle.” [page 141, Pure Sea Glass, Richard H. LaMotte, Sea Glass Publishing, 2004]

[A nostrum is a medicine, especially one that is not considered effective, prepared by an unqualified person; from Latin meaning our, used in the sense ‘(something) of our own making’.]

While it is illegal for such FDA-regulated products to make cure claims, there are in fact many non-drug and non-psychiatric alternatives which may prove effective in handling traumatic conditions. The trick is in finding out what is really wrong and fixing that. Or at the very least, using a broad-spectrum, many-pronged approach aimed to handle a wide variety of possible conditions. In any case, the point is to use a treatment that does not itself cause further harm, such as is the case with psychiatric drugs and other “treatments” promoted by the psychiatric mental health industry.

Click here for more information about alternatives to fraudulent and abusive psychiatric treatments.

Psychiatric Drug Users Experience Zombie-like State

Friday, May 22nd, 2015

Psychiatric Drug Users Experience Zombie-like State

A recent research study published in the International Journal of Mental Health Nursing [“Living with antipsychotic medication side-effects: The experience of Australian mental health consumers” DOI: 10.1111/inm.12110] reported that “Each participant reported between six and seven side-effects on average, which were often pronounced and had a major disruptive impact on their lives. Of these effects, the most commonly mentioned was sedation, which the participants described as leaving them in a ‘zombie’-like state.”

No surprise there. To date there have been 72 warnings against antipsychotics issued by regulators in eight countries.

Courts have determined that informed consent for people who receive prescriptions for psychotropic (mood-altering) drugs must include the doctor providing “information about…possible side effects and benefits, ways to treat side effects, and risks of other conditions…” as well as, “information about alternative treatments.” Yet very often, psychiatrists ignore these requirements. If you are taking these drugs, do not stop taking them based on what you read here. You could suffer serious withdrawal symptoms. You should seek the advice and help of a competent medical doctor or practitioner before trying to come off any psychiatric drug. This is very important.

There is no question that people do experience problems and upsets in life that may result in mental troubles, sometimes very serious. But to say that these are “medical diseases” or caused by a “chemical imbalance” that can only be treated with dangerous drugs is dishonest, harmful and often deadly.

What psychiatric drugs do instead is mask the real cause of problems, often denying you the opportunity to search for workable, effective solutions.

Imagine how it would be to believe that you could never overcome your personal obstacles, and come to lead a happy and rewarding life. Unfortunately, psychiatrists will most often tell you that your emotional problems or mental distress is incurable, and that you must take their drugs to “manage” it, often for the rest of your life.

But there is one thing they typically leave out—a concept called informed consent. This means that every patient has the right to be told the risks and benefits of the treatment the practitioner recommends; the risks and benefits of alternative treatments; and the risks and benefits of not treating the problem at all.

Psychiatrists routinely do not inform patients of nondrug treatments, nor do they conduct thorough medical examinations to ensure that a person’s problem does not stem from an untreated medical condition that is causing the mental disturbance.

Therefore, it is recommended that all patients first see a medical doctor (especially one who is familiar with nutritional needs), who should obtain and review a thorough medical history of the patient and conduct a complete physical exam, ruling out all the possible problems that might cause the person’s symptoms. According to top experts, the majority of people having mental problems are actually suffering from nonpsychiatric disease that is causing emotional stress.

There are far too many workable alternatives to psychiatric drugging to list them all here, though psychiatry insists there are no such options and fights to keep it that way. In the end, patients and physicians must urge their government representatives to endorse and support the funding of non-drug workable alternatives to dangerous drugs.

The Truth About PTSD

Saturday, October 4th, 2014

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Pathologizing Tragedy and War to Sell Drugs

So-called post-traumatic stress disorder emerged in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when veterans were having difficulties overcoming the brutal events they had witnessed.

Three American psychiatrists coined the term PTSD and lobbied for its inclusion in the 1980 edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. While the effects of war are devastating, psychiatrists use people’s logical reactions to it to make money at the expense of their vulnerability.

Some experts say that most of the soldiers suffering the effects of participating in particularly dangerous missions were experiencing battle fatigue, or in other words, exhaustion, not “mental illness.”

Today, PTSD has become blurred as a catch-all diagnosis for some 175 combinations of symptoms, becoming the label for identifying the impact of adverse events on ordinary people. This means that normal responses to catastrophic events have often been interpreted as mental disorders.

Psychiatric trauma treatment at best is useless, and at worst highly destructive to victims seeking help. By medicalizing what is a non-medical condition and introducing harmful drugs as a therapy, victims have been denied effective treatment options.

Dr. Frank Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University, who at that time was involved in updating the DSM, said he and his colleagues wanted it called a disorder because — only half–jokingly — “we figured if we did, then Blue Cross would pay for it.”

The favored “treatment” for PTSD is psychotropic drugs known to cause violence and suicide.

The cornerstone of psychiatry’s disease model today is the theory that a brain-based, chemical imbalance causes mental illness. Despite the billions of pharmaceutical company funding in support of the chemical imbalance theory, this psychiatric “disease” model is thoroughly debunked. The whole theory was invented to push drugs.

In an effort to create the “Super Soldier,” the U.S. military spends hundreds of millions of dollars on psychiatric research programs that can only be described as science fiction-esque experimentation. It’s no secret that the nation’s military forces long have been used as guinea pigs for psychological and pharmaceutical experiments. Recent history is littered with examples of the botched experiments brought to light in the form of lawsuits and congressional investigations. As for the troops, well, it appears they truly are expendable. The military is spending billions of dollars on psychiatric drugs. In a 2012 assessment, the Institute of Medicine found that the majority of patients in the VA diagnosed with PTSD receive more than one psychotropic drug, and that 80 percent of them receive an antidepressant.

The Army and the other fighting services form rather unique experimental groups since they are complete communities and it is possible to arrange experiments in a way that would be very difficult in civilian life.

Psychiatrists used the Second World War as an opportunity to try some very risky treatments on soldiers who had very little to say in the matter.

From the 50’s through the 70’s psychiatrists in countries like Britain, the United States, and the USSR, continued to use their militaries as proving grounds for an arsenal of new experimental treatments such as LSD.

The drugging of the military is off the charts, especially in the United States. From 2005 to 2011 the U.S. Department of Defense increased its prescriptions of psychiatric drugs by nearly seven times. These powerful mind-altering psychiatric drugs carry warnings of increased suicidal thoughts, anxiety, insomnia, and psychosis, especially with high dosages or when abruptly stopped.

In early 2013, the official website of the United States Department of Defense announced the startling statistic that the number of military suicides in 2012 had far exceeded the total of those killed in battle – an average of nearly one a day. A month later came an even more sobering statistic from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: veteran suicide was running at 22 a day — about 8000 a year.

The situation became so dire that the U.S. Secretary of Defense called suicide in the military an “epidemic.”

Some have claimed that this spate of self-harm is because of the stresses of war. But the facts reveal that 85% of military suicides have not seen combat — and 52% never even deployed.

So what unsuspected factor is causing military suicide rates to soar?

According to the CCHR documentary The Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda, all evidence points in one direction: the soaring rates of psychiatric drug prescribing since 2003. Known medication side effects of these drugs such as increased aggression and suicidal thinking are reflected in similar uptrends in the rates of military domestic violence, child abuse and sex crimes, as well as self-harm.

Pull the string further and you’ll find psychiatrists ever widening the definitions of what it means to be “mentally ill,” especially when it comes to post traumatic stress disorder in soldiers — and PTSD in veterans.

And in psychiatry, diagnoses of psychological disorders such as PTSD, personality disorder and social anxiety disorder are almost inevitably followed by the prescription of at least one psychiatric drug.

Psychiatrists know that their drugs do not actually cure anything, but merely mask symptoms. They are well aware of their many dangerous side effects, including possible addiction. However, they claim that the risks of the medication side effects are exceeded by their benefits. And while the soldier’s real problem goes unaddressed, his health deteriorates.

In the face of these grim military suicide statistics, more and more money is being lavished on psychiatry: the U.S. Pentagon now spends $2 billion a year on mental health alone. The Veterans Administration’s mental health budget has skyrocketed from less than $3 billion in 2007 to nearly $7 billion in 2014—all while conditions continue to worsen.

The Hidden Enemy reveals the entire situation in stark relief, while urging that soldiers and vets become educated on the true dangers of psychiatry and psychiatric drugs. The answer lies in their right to full and honest informed consent—as well as exercising their right to refuse treatment. Our service members need to know there are safe and effective non-psychiatric solutions to the horrors of combat stress, and that these solutions will not subject them to dangerous and toxic treatments that will only send their health spiraling downward.

For more information:

Download and read the CCHR reportA Review of How Prescribed Psychiatric Medications Could Be Driving Members of the Armed Forces and Vets to Acts of Violence and Suicide.

Watch the CCHR documentary onlineThe Hidden Enemy: Inside Psychiatry’s Covert Agenda.

If you are in the military, a veteran, a member of a military or veteran support group, or family or associate of a member of the military or a veteran, you quality for a free Hidden Enemy DVD. Fill out this form to receive a free DVD.