[Flaunt: To show oneself off or move in an ostentatious way.]
Social media often emphasizes a need for one to promote oneself, to have a “brand”, to make oneself and one’s abilities known and available.
Saying “flaunt it” is somewhat of a dramatic usage, perhaps even melodramatic, but it serves to emphasize that there are things one can do to make oneself and one’s abilities known and used.
A much less vivid expression, perhaps, would be “If you’ve got it, use it; if you can’t use it, get rid of it.”
Why is this important?
There are group insanities that suppress people from being effective. It can be manifested in a number of ways.
Here are some examples: 1. Exclusion of others — an obvious example is a refusal to employ someone or allow them to belong. 2. A failure to use people — Making practical and effective use of people; if they are well-trained in an area but not allowed to perform in that area. There can also be a disparity between what someone is doing and what they consider is their purpose or interest. 3. The substitution of violence for reason, all too common in this current society.
We’re sure you can think of other examples. One’s optimum survival, and the optimum survival of all the groups to which one belongs, depends on being effective, having a high worthwhile purpose, and demonstrating a mutual confidence between the individual and the group.
Yet there is one group dedicated to suppressing these things.
It should be obvious by now that psychiatry is not an encouraging industry, neither by definition nor by example. Psychiatry is an Industry of Death.
The main resource in consideration here is people, the most critical building blocks of society. Yet psychiatry has no cures, and depends on damaging their patients to continue in business.
Psychiatrists proclaim a worldwide epidemic of mental health problems and urge massive funding increases as the only solution. Yet Community Mental Health programs have been an expensive and colossal failure, creating homelessness, drug addiction, crime and unemployment all over the world.
The end result of psychiatric treatment is not a cured patient, returned to society as a well-adjusted, functioning contributor, but rather a person with the same or worse mental symptoms, told they must remain on debilitating psychiatric drugs for life, because psychiatrists know of no other cure.
Psychiatry defines “self-promotion” as an aberration of presenting oneself to others as accomplished, and that it is boastful and obnoxious. An entire category of psychological research is devoted to so-called “Imposter Syndrome”, making people wonder if they are really competent or not, and heavily suggesting that one may need psychiatric treatment for such. There is a psychiatric lobby for including this fraudulent condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
We’re totally sure that you can promote yourself effectively without bragging or being obnoxious. After all, the whole subjects of Marketing and Public Relations are involved with making things known and well-liked. Just don’t depend on psychiatry to help you with that!
The many critical challenges facing societies today reflect the vital need to strengthen individuals through workable, viable and humanitarian alternatives to harmful psychiatric options.
“You can tell a bigot, but you can’t tell him much.”
Bigot: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a religious, racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.
[From French bigot, a religiously intolerant person, hypocrite]
They might qualify the condition as “pathological bigotry” to emphasize that they really mean a medical disease condition, rather than just plain ignorance. Although they’ve got ignorance covered as well, with a diagnosis of “neurocognitive disorder.”
Of course, they need to make it seem to be a medical condition in order to diagnose it as a psychiatric disorder and prescribe harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs for it.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) enshrines discrimination as a mental disorder: “Target of (perceived) adverse discrimination or persecution”. But notice that it’s the victim, not the perpetrator, who is labeled with a diagnosis.
To what might we owe the surging prevalence of bigotry and prejudice in modern society? How does an apparently rational person sink to the level of devious writhings of secret hate?
In truth, the hard core bigot is completely terrified of anyone becoming more powerful than them. To such a person, everyone else is an enemy.
When confronted by a bigot, what can you do about this? It is counterproductive to make someone wrong for their attitude. Here is what I do: With a big smile, I tell them exactly what they are doing. For example I might say, “That’s a particularly bigoted attitude.” They’ll usually deny it, because such a person cannot detect this in themselves. End of interaction. You are now forewarned; go cultivate better relationships.
As a way of fighting back, report instances of intolerance, discrimination, bigotry and prejudice by clicking here.
Agitation, as with many English words, has multiple definitions. Here are a few: 1. moving back and forth with an irregular, rapid, or violent action 2. a feeling of being restless 3. a state of excessive tension and irritability 4. a state of anxiety, emotional disturbance, worry, upset, or nervous excitement [From Latin agitare, put into motion]
Agitation is a side effect of various psychotropic drugs, such as psychostimulants given to children for so-called ADHD; newer antidepressants such as SSRIs; antipsychotics often called major tranquilizers; anti-anxiety drugs often called minor tranquilizers.
So, pretty much all psychiatric drugs, often prescribed to reduce agitation, have a side effect of agitation. Counter-productive, wouldn’t you say?
— Restless legs syndrome — 54 individual diagnoses using the word “anxiety” — High expressed emotion level within family — Adjustment disorder, With mixed disturbance of emotions and conduct
Pretty much anybody, then, can be diagnosed with some form of agitation or anxiety and prescribed one or more psychiatric drugs which have the potential to exacerbate the agitation.
The Latest Agitation Drug
On April 6, 2022 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved BioXcel Therapeutics dexmedetomidine (Igalmi™) sublingual film for the acute treatment of agitation associated with schizophrenia or bipolar I or II disorder in adults.
Dexmedetomidine is a sedative whose safety and effectiveness cannot be established beyond 24 hours from the first dose, usually used to anesthetize a patient or animal before surgery. It inhibits the release of norepinephrine in the brain, stopping propagation of pain signals. They don’t really know how it “works” for agitation, other than the obvious fact that it knocks you out. It’s mostly eliminated from the body within hours. It’s metabolized in the liver by Cytochrome P450 (CYP450) enzymes, so the side effects can be exacerbated by abnormal CYP450 metabolism which can lead to a toxic level causing acute agitation.
The most common side effects (incidence ?5% and at least twice the rate of placebo) were sleepiness, burning or prickling sensations, oral numbness, dizziness, dry mouth, and low blood pressure.
Since it is self-administered by placing the film under the tongue, it’s used by an individual to knock themselves out when they are having an anxiety attack.
Psychiatrists promoting this “treatment” are ecstatic about it, since the patients can knock themselves out whenever they feel the need.
If you feel the need, please contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know what you think about this.
The latest update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM-5-TR, 3/18/2022], the billing bible used by psychiatrists, includes a new officially voted-upon condition called “prolonged grief disorder” [PGD].
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) formally released on March 18, 2022 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR), with prolonged grief disorder added.
This so-called disorder has these salient points: 1. The bereaved individual has experienced the death of a person close to them at least 12 months ago (for an adult). 2. The bereaved individual continues to be upset about it nearly every day for the last month, and the grief interferes with normal activities. 3. “The duration and severity of the bereavement reaction clearly exceed expected social, cultural, or religious norms for the individual’s culture and context.”
There is a lot more mumbo-jumbo in the official text of the diagnosis. Essentially, it is the opinion of a psychiatrist, since there are no medical tests against which such a diagnosis can be confirmed (and no medical treatment, either.)
Allen Frances, the American psychiatrist best known for chairing the APA task force for DSM-IV, tweeted about DSM-5-TR, “Its only new new diagnosis ‘Prolonged Grief’ is a disaster”.
Psychiatrists who support this ridiculous diagnosis may hope that it explains the difference between “normal grief” and “abnormal grief.”
In point of fact, there is such a thing as an upset of long duration. But it’s not a mental illness; it’s a spiritual trauma.
Really, what is an upset?
An upset is a sudden drop or cutting of one’s Affinity, Reality, Communication or Understanding with someone or something. It’s a lack of Affinity, Reality, Communication or Understanding that is common to all upsets. If one discovers which of these points have been cut, one can bring about a rapid recovery. When such an upset continues over too long a period, they become sad and mournful. This condition is handled by finding the earliest such upset and indicating which of these points were cut.
Psychiatrists want to prescribe an antidepressant for this (or some other harmful and addictive mind-altering drug to suppress the symptoms) instead of actually dealing with the original trauma — primarily because they don’t know how to deal with it, so they default to the quickest way to make a buck off of it.
Such brutal treatment is all too common in psychiatric mental health care.
The APA’s DSM extends the reach of psychiatry deeply into daily life, making as many people as possible eligible for psychiatric diagnoses and thus for psychotropic drugs. More than ten per cent of American adults already take antidepressants, in spite of their horrific side effects such as violence and suicide.
With the DSM, psychiatry has taken countless aspects of human behavior, such as grief, and reclassified them as a “mental illness” simply by adding the term “disorder” onto them. While even key DSM contributors admit that there is no scientific or medical validity to these “disorders,” the DSM nonetheless serves as a diagnostic tool, not only for individual treatment, but also for child custody disputes, discrimination cases, court testimony, education and more. As the diagnoses completely lack scientific criteria, anyone can be labeled mentally ill, and subjected to dangerous and life threatening “treatments” based solely on opinion.
The psychiatricizing of normal everyday behavior by including personality quirks and traits is a lucrative business for the APA because by expanding the number of “mental illnesses” even ordinary people can become patients and added to the psychiatric marketing pool.
There are non–psychiatric, non–drug solutions for people experiencing mental difficulty, there are non–harmful alternatives.
Contact your State Legislators and ask them to remove all references to the DSM from State Law.
A revised mental disorders diagnostic manual being released this month already faces controversy over attempts to explain the impact of and “under-diagnosing” of racism and discrimination as mental illness.
“Oppression and racism are real, and anyone subjected to this is going to feel denigrated, upset, angry or any of a wide array of justified emotional responses to injustice. However, this is not a mental ‘disease.’ History warns us about defining the effects of racism as an illness, with claims that ‘victims’ are discriminated against by inequitable treatment.”
Controversy is surrounding the soon to be released revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) over its inclusion of “an analysis of the effects racism and discrimination on the manifestation and diagnosis of mental disorders.”[1] The mental health industry watchdog, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) International said there is a risk that the impact of oppression on minorities will be pathologized and increase the numbers of them prescribed mind-altering psychotropics.
Rev. Frederick Shaw, a spokesperson for CCHR, founder of its Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics and president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Inglewood South Bay branch, said that it was predictable during the massive racism protests in 2020 that efforts would be made to define racial anguish and anger as mental disorder. Rev. Shaw says: “Oppression and racism are real, and anyone subjected to this is going to feel denigrated, upset, angry or any of a wide array of justified emotional responses to injustice. However, this is not a mental ‘disease.’ History warns us about defining the effects of racism as an illness, with claims that ‘victims’ are discriminated against by inequitable treatment.”
During slavery African Americans were diagnosed with Drapetomania (drapetes, runaway slave, and mania, meaning crazy) and Dyasethesia Aethiopis (laziness and impaired sensation). Drapetomania described Blacks having an “uncontrollable urge” to run away from their “masters.” The “treatment” was “whipping the devil out of them.”[2]
In January 2021, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) publicly apologized for psychiatry’s “role in perpetrating structural racism” that “hurt Black, Indigenous, and People of Color” (BIPOC).[3] This included these two disorders and that in 1792 the “father” of American psychiatry, Benjamin Rush, declared that African Americans’ skin color was a “disease” called negritude, derived from leprosy. The “cure” was when their skin turned “white.”[4]
APA’s apology said that since its inception, practitioners had subjected persons of African descent and Indigenous people to “abusive treatment, experimentation, victimization in the name of ‘scientific evidence,’ along with racialized theories that attempted to confirm their deficit status.”[5]
The DSM has been criticized in the past for perpetuating racism.
Professors Stuart A. Kirk and Herb Kutchins, co-authors of Making Us Crazy, said: “Defenders of slavery, proponents of racial segregation…have consistently attempted to justify oppression by inventing new mental illnesses and by reporting higher rates of abnormality among African Americans or other minorities.”[6]
DSM-II was published in 1968 when civil rights protests against racism had escalated. Psychiatrists claimed such protests caused violent “schizophrenic” symptoms in African Americans, inventing the diagnosis “protest psychosis.” Ads for antipsychotics used African symbols to reflect so-called “violent traits” in minorities to increase antipsychotic prescriptions and sales.[7]
DSM-III-R was published in 1987, during the 1980s and 1990s racial riots. Researchers under the aegis of the federally-funded Violence Initiative Project theorized that violence was the hereditary characteristic of Black and Latino people. One study bogusly hypothesized that a racially inherited genetic predisposition to aggressive behavior and violence existed, which could be countered by increasing serotonin levels in the brain.[8] This meant prescribing an antidepressant to “prevent” violent behavior, yet the drug was known to cause violent and suicidal behavior.[9]
In 1992, the psychiatric head of the National Institute for Mental Health, who helped develop the “Violence Initiative,” compared Black youth to “hyperaggressive” and “hypersexual” monkeys in a jungle who only want to kill one another, have sex and reproduce. He was forced to resign.[10]
DSM-5 was released in 2013 by psychiatrist Jeffrey Lieberman, then president of the APA, who was recently suspended from his position at Columbia University over his racist tweet about a dark-skinned model.[11]
Shaw said that in response to the racism protests in 2020, suddenly statistics were espoused about the increasing rates of African Americans showing signs of anxiety or depressive disorders.[12] In June 2020, the APA established a Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry.[13]
In October 2021, the American Psychological Association also issued an apology for hurting many through “racism, racial discrimination, and denigration of people of color.”[14]
However, some Black psychologists responded, stating: “While the apology details many of the past racist practices in psychology, it largely omits a key portion of this history: how the fields of psychology and psychiatry colluded with the state to suppress rights, liberties and, in many cases, political freedom.”[15]
Shaw predicts the DSM-5 revision addressing racism could victimize minorities, swelling the number of his community that will be considered to be disordered and in need of “equitable” treatment, meaning potentially debilitating psychotropic drugs and electroshock. He recommends individuals sign a Psychiatric Living Will to avoid treatment being forced on them.
[6] Herb Kutchins & Stuart A. Kirk, Making Us Crazy – DSM: The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders, (The Free Press, New York, 1997), p. 200.
[14] “Apology to People of Color for APA’s Role in Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism, Racial Discrimination, and Human Hierarchy in U.S.,” American Psychological Association, 29 Oct. 2021, https://www.apa.org/about/policy/racism-apology
Overthinking is the habit of thinking too much or too long about something, or making something more complicated than it actually is. Overthinking is also known as “analysis paralysis” because by thinking too much one is getting stuck and stopped from taking action.
Overthinking is a favorite topic for psychiatric and psychological review, as a symptom of a possible mental health issue like so-called depression or anxiety, with recommended treatments of psychotropic anti-anxiety or antidepressant drugs, or other harmful psychiatric interventions.
Sometimes the word “rumination” is used as a scholarly euphemism for overthinking. It means “obsessive or abnormal reflection upon an idea or deliberation over a choice.”
Overthinking may also be a symptom of justified thought, which is one’s futile attempt to analytically explain an irrational reaction to something.
Another word for this is a “via,” as in “They took a via instead of a direct approach.” That’s a Latin word meaning “way.” In this sense it means a roundabout way, instead of just a straight A to B. A via is a relay point in a communication line, and represents some interference between a cause and an effect. A totally rational activity strings a straight line between cause and effect; the reasons one cannot are vias. Enough vias between cause and effect make a stop. Almost all anxieties in human relations come about through an imbalance of cause and effect.
Well, how does one determine if one’s route is A to B, or if it is A to C to X to B? In other words, to B or not to B?
That is indeed the question!
We’d like to emphasize that overthinking is not a mental illness. However, psychiatrists have many ways to call this phenomenon a mental disorder, so that they can make a buck, and a patient for life, off of an unsuspecting and vulnerable person.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is used to diagnose a number of related symptoms that could be presented by one’s overthinking:
Back to the question. How does one effectively deal with this?
It can’t hurt to address it as a manifestation of anxiety. Anxiety is an emotion, and is really a conflict, or the restimulation of a conflict, or something containing indecision or uncertainty — in other words as above, obsessive deliberation over a choice. It is exemplified by a conflict between something supporting survival and something opposing survival. It is rooted in an inability to assign the correct cause to something, which itself is rooted in an inability to observe. The cure is not a drug, but in observing the correct cause.
Opposing ideologies, violent revolutions and a frail social economic structure have subjected more than one-third of the world’s population to oppression, poverty and brutal human rights violations. Terrorism and a global economic crisis rips at the very fabric of society, propagating a mindset governed by hysteria, fear and anxiety. It’s no small wonder why some are gripped by anxiety and its attendant overthinking.
The Bottom Line
Anything one can do to improve one’s condition in life, enhance one’s ability to get along well in life, to make good judgments and decisions, to reduce anxiety, and to relieve stress in the environment and in society, can likely help. But however one addresses the condition, the wrong way to deal with it is with psychiatry.
Forced to obtain electroshock statistics through FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), CCHR finds states electroshocking those 0–5 and up to age 12. UN defines any ECT without consent as an act of torture—yet this increasingly occurs throughout the U.S.
Statistics on electroshock treatment (ElectroConvulsive Therapy – ECT) usage in the U.S. for 2019 reveals at least four of 27 states reporting ECT use under Medicaid, to children five years of age or younger. The Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a mental health industry watchdog, condemns the practice of electroconvulsive therapy, which sends up to 460 volts of electricity through the brain to treat mental issues, saying that its use, especially in youngsters, is simply cruel and brutal. As children are too young to consent, non-consensual ECT constitutes torture, according to United Nations bodies such as its Committee Against Torture. In 2013, it recommended “an absolute ban on all forced and non-consensual” use of electroshock. The World Health Organization made similar recommendations in June 2021.
Electroshock remains a contentious issue because there are no clinical trials that have proven the safety and efficacy of its devices. This is because the FDA grandfathered the device in 1976 as it had been in use since 1938, when an Italian psychiatrist discovered it calmed pigs before they were slaughtered.
Psychiatrists opine that forcing electroshock on an individual to damage the brain is therapeutic and as such harm is redefined as benefit.
Psychiatry, following in the steps of a Russian science, has a basic and brutal assumption which is that a shock cures aberration. It springs from the same impulse that assumes punishment cures wrongdoing. The limited workability of this is apparent around us on every hand. The basic psychiatric assumption that enough punishment will restore sanity is easily disproven.
After 84 years, psychiatrists still admit they don’t know how ECT “works,” yet they still administer it, well aware that it cannot cure—but it can cause serious damage.
MECTA Corp, the manufacturer of two ECT devices could not provide evidence of how ECT works other than its machines are designed to cause a grand mal seizure. Any legitimate medical doctor will tell you that seizures are harmful. In fact, the psychiatric billing bible Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) lists seizures as a mental disorder, yet psychiatrists continue to promote ECT as a “treatment” for mental disorders.
Electroshock is like administering medical blunt force trauma. It should be banned. Sign the petition here to support a total ban on all ECT.
Titration is the process of adjusting the dose of a drug for the maximum benefit that can be obtained without any adverse effects. When a drug’s recommended dosage has a narrow therapeutic range, titration is especially important, because the range between the dose at which a drug is effective and the dose at which side effects occur is small. The starting dose is very low, and then increased regularly until the symptoms subside, or the recommended maximum dose is achieved, or side effects occur.
[Titrate ultimately derived from Latin titulus, “inscription, label, title”.]
When changing to a different medication, sometimes one can be stopped and the other then started without overlap. However, with some there needs to be overlap, called cross-titration.
Since some psychiatric drugs may take weeks or months to demonstrate an effect (or an adverse reaction), titration is pretty much just guesswork. There is a general lack of evidence regarding the impact of titration rate on clinical outcomes. There are no specific recommendations on what titration rate is optimal for achieving rapid response while minimizing adverse effects.
The half-life of a drug is the time it takes for the amount of a drug’s active substance in the body to reduce by half. Psychiatric drugs are metabolized in the liver by Cytochrome P450 enzymes in order to be eliminated from the body. A person genetically deficient in these enzymes, or who has an ultrarapid drug metabolism, or who is taking other (legal or illegal) drugs that diminish CYP450 enzyme activity, is at risk of a toxic accumulation of the drug leading to more severe side effects.
Most antipsychotics have an average half-life of 1 day or longer; it can take up to 5 days or more for patients to reach steady-state concentrations with the same daily dose. One would not generally want to titrate the dose until a relatively steady-state concentration was reached.
One recent retrospective study of 149 hospitalized patients on antipsychotics was relatively inconclusive; it was unclear to what extent titration rate either improved symptoms or reduced length of hospital stay. Patients who continued to have their dose increased were less likely to adhere to treatment, due to increasing adverse reactions. Also, delayed adverse effects may occur if dose increases occur sooner than necessary.
Since the 1960s, there has been a large push for patients in psychiatric hospitals to be discharged as quickly as possible. In such an inpatient setting, pressure may be put on prescribers to titrate antipsychotics quickly with the hopes of reducing length of stay and hospitalization costs.
All this goes to show the general lack of predictability in the administration of psychiatric drugs, although it doesn’t even begin to address the fact that these drugs are generally addictive and harmful, and that they are prescribed for fraudulent diagnoses.
One must also keep in mind that the psychiatric industry generally pushes psychotropic drugs without regard to these considerations. This is the direct result of the unscientific psychiatric diagnoses perpetrated by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) which fraudulently justifies prescribing these harmful drugs for profit in the first place.
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 because they preclude finding out the real causes of mental trauma and treating those.
At best one might consider psychotropic drugs as “first aid”; they never have and never will cure any mental trauma. While the patient may be lulled into a temporary sense of wellness, whatever condition has caused the symptom is still present and often growing worse. 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.
Do you sneeze when you emerge into bright sunlight?
Sneezing is a natural response that removes irritants from the nose. But is sunlight a nasal irritant?
Officially known as “photic sneeze reflex” or “photic sneeze syndrome”, sun sneezing is a condition that triggers a sneeze when people are exposed to bright lights. It affects an estimated 18 to 35 percent of the population. Some think it is a genetic condition, as it often occurs within families.
Apparently the reflex isn’t triggered by light itself, but by a change in light intensity.
Sun sneezing has been documented for many centuries. While the exact mechanism of the photic sneeze reflex is not understood, the most common explanation can be traced to psychiatrist Henry Everett whose 1964 theory proposed that the effect resulted from mixed up nerve signals in the brain.
Some psychiatrists and psychologists have jumped on this bandwagon, possibly because the phenomenon can’t yet be explained, so it may be a ripe area for getting government funds for brain research.
One study suggested that individuals who sun sneeze are more likely to suffer from psychological distress.
Another theory says that intractable sneezing is a manifestation of a psychiatric condition called “conversion disorder” [a condition in which the brain and body’s nerves are unable to send and receive signals properly, sometimes thought to occur because of a psychological conflict].
In the psychiatric billing bible the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), there are nine entries with some type of “Conversion disorder,” or “functional neurological symptom disorder.”
So if you sneeze when you walk outside, you can be labeled with a mental disorder and prescribed an antidepressant.
The fifth cranial nerve, called the trigeminal nerve, is thought by some to be related to sneezing. Some psychiatrists speculate that a malformation in this nerve causes it to be overstimulated in bright light. Some psychiatrists have also targeted the trigeminal nerve for harmful therapies.
For example, a prescription-only device, called the Monarch external Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation (eTNS) System from NeuroSigma, sends an electric current into the brains of children diagnosed with so-called ADHD.
There are lots of quotes and sayings about forgiveness, not least from the Bible, and there is an abundance of published psychological and psychiatric “research” about it and its relationship to mental health. But we know that when so much discussion and argument about a subject persists, the total truth is generally widely unknown or unacknowledged, and speculation predominates.
Current research is limited by the fact that there is yet no consensus on the definition and measurement of forgiveness. Yet it is not necessary to know everything about it in order to use it. It’s not necessary to know “why” in order to know “how.”
It’s not that forgiveness is necessarily good or bad, but there may be more to know about it. And there is more to know about how psychiatry and psychology continue to promulgate crackpot theories for dealing with it, particularly how psychiatry focuses on harmful psychotropic drugs as the cure-all for all things related to mental health.
What Might It Be?
A common definition for forgiveness is a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.
One opinion is that forgiveness should also include offering something positive—empathy, compassion, understanding—toward the one who hurt you.
A contrary opinion is that forgiving someone is a sign of weakness.
And there are several different proposed psychological multi-step process models that purport to move one through various emotional stages in addressing a given situation.
The psychiatric billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), lists a number of diagnoses for which forgiveness might be considered as a treatment, but which more likely result in a money-making prescription for an antidepressant. Here’s an example: a diagnosis of “Victim of crime.”
Our Advice
We’re not going to give a conclusive definition here, nor specify how to definitively handle such situations. We think guidance from one’s own circle of supporters is a primary consideration. But we do have a bit of advice we can add to the fray.
When one forgives, one validates and accepts that another’s action against one was bad. There is no reason one must accept it. There may be such things as justice and mercy involved, but the real way to deal with it is to continue loving one’s fellows because one understands them in spite of their provocation. Considered in this light, forgiveness is pretty low on the scale of usefulness.
The wrong thing to do is accept a psychiatric diagnosis and a psychiatric treatment.
