Citizens Commission on Human Rights St. Louis

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases”.

Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax — unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

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