Posts Tagged ‘Fraud’

What Is Your Emotional Intelligence?

Wednesday, May 31st, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fraud in the Psychiatric Industry

Monday, April 10th, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take Action – Missouri Legislature

Monday, April 3rd, 2023

Psychiatry’s Attack on 1st Responders

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

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

Why Is This Bad?

We all support First Responders, and are particularly grateful for their training and services. We also recognize that they can be subject to many stresses on their jobs; stresses which may compromise their good mental health. Mental health care is thus both valid and necessary.

However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.

The issue is that, while these bills may have some helpful provisions for First Responders, they also serve to funnel First Responders into the psychiatric mental health “care” system, where they will likely be prescribed harmful, mind-altering psychotropic drugs and other harmful psychiatric “treatments.” Read the text of the bills to see how this can be, and urge your Missouri state legislators to reject these bills in their current form.

The Missouri Legislature

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four Very Very Bad Bills

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

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

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

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

Summary

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

Take Action – Missouri Legislature

Monday, March 27th, 2023

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Four Very Very Bad Bills

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

and

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

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

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

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

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

Read more about this fraud here.


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

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

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

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

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

Chesterfield Psychiatrist Admits Health Care Fraud

Monday, November 21st, 2022

Dr. Franco Sicuro, a psychiatrist from Chesterfield, Missouri, pleaded guilty November 15, 2022 to a felony conspiracy charge and admitted that Medicare, Medicaid and other insurers lost more than $3.8 million based on fraudulent reimbursement claims submitted by clinical laboratories that he owned.

Sicuro was associated with various health care businesses including Millennium Psychiatric Associates, Advanced Geriatric Management, Centrec Care, Sleep Consultants of St. Louis, Midwest Toxicology Group, Genotec Dx and Benemed Diagnostics.

Criminal Fraud is rampant in the psychiatric industry. Psychiatric membership bodies do not police this criminality. Instead, as former president of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), Paul Fink, arrogantly admitted, “It is the task of the APA to protect the earning power of psychiatrists.”

The mental health monopoly has practically zero accountability and zero liability for its failures. This has allowed psychiatrists to commit far more than just financial fraud, such as repeated allegations of physical and sexual abuse involving patients in various psychiatric facilities.

The primary purpose of mental health treatment must be the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance. It must never be the financial or personal gain of the practitioner.

Experience has shown that there are many criminal mental health practitioners. If you become aware of such, file a fraud report here: https://www.cchr.org/take-action/report-psychiatric-abuse.html.

What is needed is legislation that provides not only more effective oversight but also stronger accountability measures: criminal and civil penalties, removal from CMS programs (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and their funding, and hospital closure where systemic abuse is found. Only such a comprehensive solution can begin to thwart the level of abuse, fraud and malpractice that is so widespread today in the for-profit mental health industry. Contact your local, state and federal representatives and express your opinions about this.

Doctor Pleads Guilty to Mental Health Care Fraud

Monday, November 7th, 2022

A Stratford, Connecticut internist pleaded guilty November 3, 2022 in Hartford federal court to health care fraud and kickback offenses.

Dr. Ananthakumar Thillainathan, 44, a citizen of Sri Lanka and owner and president of MDCareNow LLC, a medical practice with offices in Stratford and Milford, submitted to Connecticut Medicaid over $800,000 in fraudulent claims for psychotherapy services that he knew patients did not receive.

Thillainathan submitted fraudulent claims to Medicaid that falsely represented his employees had rendered 60-minute psychotherapy sessions when, in fact, his employees only had very brief conversations with patients, had only left a voicemail for patients, or had no contact with patients at all.

This news shows that mental health care fraud is being perpetrated not only by psychiatrists but also by non-psychiatric medical doctors engaged in mental health care.

The fact is, mental health care fraud in the U.S. is estimated to be up to $20 billion per year. There should be no place for criminal intent or deed in the field of mental health.

There are as many types of mental health insurance fraud as the criminal mind can invent. For example, a U.S. congressional committee issued a report estimating that Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs) had diverted between $40 million to $100 million to improper uses. Various CMHCs had built tennis courts and swimming pools with their federal construction grants and, in one instance, used a federal staff grant to hire a lifeguard and swimming instructor. [Reference: Rael Isaac and Virginia Armat, Madness in the Streets, (The Free Press, New York, 1990), p. 98.]

The primary purpose of mental health treatment must be the therapeutic care and treatment of individuals who are suffering emotional disturbance. It must never be the financial or personal gain of the practitioner. Those suffering are inevitably vulnerable and impressionable. Proper treatment therefore demands the highest level of trustworthiness and integrity in the practitioner.

Experience has shown that there are many criminal mental health practitioners. If you become aware of such, file a report about this fraud here: https://www.cchr.org/take-action/report-psychiatric-abuse.html.

More About the ADHD Hoax

Monday, October 10th, 2022

In 1987, “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder” (ADHD) was literally voted into existence by a show of hands of American Psychiatric Association members and included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Within a year, 500,000 children in America alone were diagnosed with this fraudulent “disease”.

Sarah Durston, Professor of Developmental Disorders of the Brain at the University Medical Center Utrecht in Utrecht, Netherlands, spent 13 years (between 2003-2018) and over 2.5 million euros searching for the source of ADHD in the brain, and did not find it.

She concluded in a 2021 article about ADHD in Scientific American that, “Calling the condition a disorder falsely implies we know of a cause located in the brains of people diagnosed with it—and we don’t.” She says, “The most common psychiatric handbooks (DSM-5 and ICD-11) are clear on the status of their classifications: they are purely descriptive and are not based on underlying causes” and that “ADHD does not cause attention problems any more than low socioeconomic status causes poverty.”

Trying in vain to find a biological cause is not unique to ADHD; this deficiency exists for virtually all 541 disorders in DSM-5. The DSM says, “in the absence of clear biological markers or clinically useful measurements of severity for many mental disorders it has not been possible to completely separate normal and pathological.”

Moreover, the symptoms used to “diagnose” ADHD are typical of the side effects of central nervous system stimulants (such as methylphenidate [e.g. Ritalin, Concerta]) used to “treat” ADHD. This confusion is not so surprising because much ADHD research is done on children who are already taking stimulants.

All stimulants work by increasing levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the brain. The body must strictly regulate dopamine levels since both an excess and a deficiency can be very problematic. Thus drugs which mess with dopamine play Russian Roulette with your brain.

Methylphenidate is often referred to as “amphetamine-like” or “cocaine-like.” It has hallucinogenic properties as well as being a stimulant. It binds to the same sites in the brain as cocaine, thus producing effects that are indistinguishable from cocaine; in fact, it is more potent than cocaine. For this reason it is also called “kiddie cocaine.”

Why do people who take amphetamine-like drugs such as methylphenidate say that their attention and concentration improves? One explanation is that this drug can cause psychosis, and compulsive-psychotic behavior may make the person less likely to be distracted by external stimuli. This is called “tunnel-focus”, and prompts the additional moniker of “chemical straightjacket.” Long-term use increases the likelihood of addiction and psychosis.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has this to say about methylphenidate: “There is neither specific evidence which clearly establishes the mechanism whereby Ritalin produces its mental and behavioral effects in children, nor conclusive evidence regarding how these effects relate to the condition of the central nervous system;” and “Treatment emergent psychotic or manic symptoms, e. g., hallucinations, delusional thinking, or mania in children and adolescents without a prior history of psychotic illness or mania can be caused by stimulants at usual doses.”

Furthermore, there is no evidence that stimulants result in any long-term improvement in either behavior or academic achievement.

The ADHD diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis is simply a list of behaviors that may appear unwanted, disruptive or inappropriate.

Meanwhile, a former nurse practitioner who ran psychiatric clinics in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, admitted October 4, 2022 to writing illegal Adderall prescriptions while suspended for other drug charges. He continued to prescribe Adderall despite his suspension and submitted claims to Medicare for office visits under a co-worker’s license. Adderall is another habit-forming stimulant amphetamine drug prescribed for ADHD.

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

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, inattention, 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 diagnosis, drugs and other psychiatric treatments are not workable.

Reference
The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry by C.F. van der Horst (Per Veritatem Vis Foundation, 2022)

Intuition – Your Friend or Foe?

Monday, October 3rd, 2022

Lately there has been an abundance of social media postings about intuition or gut feelings. We were curious about this, as many people seem to be promoting the use of intuition to reach critical Life decisions rather than direct observation and rational thought. We suspect this might be related to a misunderstanding, mistrust, or confusion between rational and emotional reactions to Life situations.

There are many ways to describe and define the word “intuition”:
– insight, a snap judgment
– instinctive knowingness, spiritual perception
– perceive directly without reasoning
– an impression that something might be the case
– knowledge gained without evident rational thought or facts
– knowledge gained by feelings rather than thought
– knowing or understanding something without reasoning or evidence
– knowledge dependent more upon past experience than present perception

[from Late Latin intuitio “act of contemplating”, from Latin intu?ri “to look at, contemplate”]

The idiom “gut feeling” speaks to the visceral sensation or emotional reaction one is said to experience. The idea that emotions are experienced in the gut has a long historical legacy, and many nineteenth-century doctors considered the origins of mental illness to derive from the intestines.

In truth, pure knowingness, not influenced by space or energy, is a property of a spiritual being; it is not dependent upon observation. Below this state there is knowing about, which is the province of data, or speculations or conclusions or methods about data. True knowledge is certainty, not data.

In order to play any game (such as The Game Of Life) one has to reduce one’s knowingness by assuming one cannot know or knows wrongly, since if one fully knew everything about the game (e.g. knowing all the moves of both sides in a card game), it would no longer be a game.

One convenient way many humans accomplish this is to substitute for rational observation in present time with irrational recall of past events. This gives rise to the type of intuition we know as a gut feeling, where unconscious recalls impinge upon the body and mind to produce feelings that may or may not apply to present circumstances.

This type of intuition has a formal definition in psychiatry and psychology: a faculty in which hunches are generated by the unconscious mind rapidly sifting through past experience. Psychology and psychiatry provide guesses about how this is supposed to work, with many wasted efforts attempting to justify the substitution of intuition for rational observation and thought.

Of course, consulting one’s past experiences is certainly a valid use of experience in evaluating present time situations. The problem with gut feelings is that this process is unconscious and liable to pull up irrational responses rather than rational ones.

Attempts by psychology and psychiatry to teach people how to use their intuition is, to be blunt, fraudulent; since their concept of intuition is by definition an unconscious process based solely on the past, and as likely to be irrational as it is to appear rational. They may promote meditation as a path to using intuition, and we have written previously about the psychiatric corruption of meditation.

On the other hand, true intuition which is a spiritual knowingness and awareness can be rehabilitated by boosting one’s awareness, and improving one’s ability to consciously observe and consider things in present time, as well as considering consequences in future time. Learning more about how to make good judgments is also a positive approach.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness” and stigmatize unwanted behavior as “diseases,” using the psychiatric billing bible the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as their justification. The bottom line is that all psychiatric “treatments” are harmful, including attempts to focus on intuition where it unconsciously restimulates past events.

The High Number Of Suicides After Electroshock

Monday, September 26th, 2022

A recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry [1] showed an astounding rate of suicide death for those who received electroconvulsive (shock) therapy (ECT), contrary to the claims of its proponents.

Here is the study’s conclusion: “The risk of suicide mortality 30 days and 1 year following treatment was similar in patients treated with an index course ECT and in a matched group. There was no evidence that an ECT course decreased the risk of death by suicide.”

The electroshock study utilized electronic medical record data from the Department of Veterans Affairs health system between 2000 and 2017 to include 5,157 index courses of ECT therapy, along with 10,097 matched controls who did not receive ECT. Index ECT usually refers to the initial phase of treatment in hospital to induce maximum response. The typical number of treatments is 6–12.

The study found the risk of suicide death was similar in patients treated with an index course ECT and in a matched group who were not given ECT. In the cohort, suicide deaths were: 138.65 per 10,000 in 30 days and 564.52 per 10,000 in 1 year. “ECT does not appear to have a greater effect on decreasing the risk for suicide than other types of mental health treatment provided to patients with similar risk,” the authors wrote.

Assertions by psychiatric organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association that ECT is a life-saving treatment is so misleading that it could constitute consumer fraud.

Between Tricare [DoD health insurance] and Veteran Affairs, the Department of Defense (DoD) spent more than $70 million dollars on electroshock treatment between 2010 and 2019. During this same period, there was a 46% increase in the number of veterans that were given ECT. [2]

The tragic expectation is that more patients will commit suicide after receiving electroshock. Psychiatrists and the FDA will blame this on their “illness” rather than failed treatment. [3]

Electroshock carries the risk of driving people to commit suicide. Patients sold on the fraudulent idea that the treatments correct a “chemical imbalance” or faulty chemical messengers in the brain become hopeless when those treatments fail them and go on to make fatal decisions about their lives.

There needs to be accountability for false claims made in defense of these treatments—better still, take them off the market when their risks are so high. Consumer fraud litigation should ensue in addition to any personal injury claims.

Vulnerable patients seeking mental health care deserve much, much better. Non-harmful practices should be made available to them.

Why Use Shock Treatment At All?

The barbaric and shameful use of shock treatment unfortunately has a lengthy history. ECT had its beginnings in early Roman times when people would place an electrical torpedo fish against their heads to rid themselves of headaches.

The purpose of ECT shock treatment is to cause convulsions and create brain damage in order to reduce one’s awareness of their troubles. Make no mistake, shock treatment is painful. Stick your finger in an electrical outlet if you doubt this. Shock treatment uses an anesthetic to numb the pain and render the patient unconscious. A muscle relaxant is administered, causing a virtual shutdown of muscular activity to reduce damage from the convulsions.

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

Today, psychiatry is not particularly interested in increasing awareness; they would rather blunt someone’s awareness in a misguided attempt to make a person less aware of their troubles.

Thus we see that ECT does not and never can cause an improvement in mental health, since it produces only the reduction of awareness.

Psychiatry’s brutal ECT can now be seen for what it really is: an attempt to overwhelm an individual, eventually rendering them unaware of their mental traumas and compromising any efforts to actually get better.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness” and stigmatize unwanted behavior as “diseases,” using the psychiatric billing bible the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as their justification. The bottom line is that all psychiatric “treatments” are harmful.

Contact your local, state and federal representatives and urge them to ban ECT.

References:

[1] Bradley V. Watts, MD, MPH, Talya Peltzman, MPH, and Brian Shiner, MD, MPH, “Electroconvulsive Therapy and Death by Suicide,” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Apr. 2022, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35421285/

[2] https://www.cchrint.org/2021/05/25/cchr-supports-veterans-against-electroshock-dod-spends-70m-on-shocking-minds/

[3] https://www.cchrint.org/2022/08/05/new-study-shows-high-number-of-suicides-after-electroshock/

World Psychiatric Group Must Tell Its Members To Expunge Chemical Imbalance Myth

Monday, August 29th, 2022

CCHR, a global mental health industry watchdog, has demanded the World Psychiatric Association advise its 180 members to remove all references to a chemical imbalance causing mental disorders from their websites and literature.

By CCHR International Mental Health Industry Watchdog August 9, 2022

Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a 53-year mental health industry watchdog, has demanded the World Psychiatric Association issue a Positioning Statement urging all of its members to remove any reference or suggestion that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental disorders from their websites. In a letter sent to Dr. Afzal Javed, president of the WPA, CCHR called on the organization to condemn the theory and now wants the organization to also send an advisory to national psychiatric associations to inform their members to remove references to the disproved chemical imbalance theory from their websites, literature and any patient informed consent forms.

WPA has 145 member societies, mostly national psychiatric associations, including the American Psychiatric Association, and 36 affiliate member associations, representing some 250,000 psychiatrists worldwide.[1] As the association says it emphasizes the need for “the highest possible standards of clinical practice and ethical behavior in psychiatry,” CCHR says a priority must be that psychiatric groups to stop misleading consumers that a chemical imbalance underlies their mental health issues.[2]

The letter to Dr. Javed at the WPA Congress held in Bangkok, Thailand, pointed out that the chemical imbalance theory was a myth that has been exploited in the mental health field for over 30 years to fuel antidepressant sales, but was recently thoroughly debunked by researchers from University College London (UCL) in a study published in Molecular Psychiatry. The researchers reviewed major studies published over several decades and found no convincing evidence to support the theory that a chemical imbalance causes a mental disorder. The letter said the WPA should formally condemn the debunked theory because to do otherwise constitutes consumer fraud and violates patient informed consent rights.

In 2019, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK had already responded to research that found no proof of low serotonin levels causing depression, and issued a position statement dismissing the idea that antidepressants “correct a chemical imbalance in the brain.”[3] However, the American Psychiatric Association website continued to promote mental health issues as “brain disorders,” without evidence to prove this, and its patient leaflets declared “antidepressants may be prescribed to correct imbalances in the levels of chemicals in the brain.”

As one of the UCL researchers stated, this misleading situation has arisen because it serves the interests of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry. “Our view is that patients should not be told that depression is caused by low serotonin or by a chemical imbalance, and they should not be led to believe that antidepressants work by targeting these unproven abnormalities,” the lead researcher said.

CCHR says the WPA must take immediate action to ensure this view is conveyed to its members. Giving patients misinformation prevents their making an informed decision and has already resulted in many millions of people taking antidepressants or other psychotropic drugs with harmful side effects, erroneously believing these would “correct” something that simply never existed, CCHR wrote to Dr. Javed.

In 2020, WPA issued a Position Statement, “Implementing Alternatives to Coercion” which acknowledged that coercion in psychiatry has long been subject to controversy and contravenes patients’ rights, including violation of “rights to liberty; autonomy; freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment….”

The WPA admitted that coercion in psychiatry is “over-used,” contravening patients’ rights—although CCHR says it should never be used.

It pointed out that practices that constitute coercion include, “treatment without consent (or ‘compulsory treatment’), any form of treatment including the use of psychotropic medication; seclusion locking or confining a person to a space or room alone; restraint actions aimed at controlling a person’s physical movement, including prolonged or unsafe holding by other person(s), the use of any physical devices (‘mechanical restraint’, chaining, etc.) and the use of psychotropic drugs for the primary purpose of controlling movement (‘chemical restraint’).”

It warned that the use of coercive practices “carries the risk of harmful consequences, including trauma” and individuals subject to physical coercion are susceptible to harms that include physical pain, injury and death.”

CCHR wants this statement expanded so that WPA tells its members that to purport, in any way, that a chemical imbalance may be a source of people’s mental travails, harms patients, and could constitute consumer fraud. Troubled patients being misled about what causes their problems and being told that they need to take a psychotropic drug to “correct” this, is a form of coercion and contradicts the WPA 2020 Position Statement and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that the statement is based upon.

References:

[1] https://www.wpanet.org/
https://www.wpanet.org/members-affiliates
[2] https://www.wpanet.org/what-we-do
[3] Royal College of Psychiatrists, “Position statement on antidepressants and depression,” May 2019