Posts Tagged ‘psychiatric hoax’

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.

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The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry

Monday, September 19th, 2022

Book Review
The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry
Infiltrating the school system, businesses and your home
C.F. van der Horst
© 2022 Per Veritatem Vis Foundation
All rights reserved.
http://www.psychhorrors.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Horrors-Psychiatry-Infiltrating-Businesses/dp/9082177250/

The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry addresses several significant and shocking issues related to psychiatry that have been rarely exposed or are altogether unknown. 

Everyone involved with mental health care—and especially caregivers such as physicians, psychologists, nurses, social workers, as well as psychiatrists themselves—should be well aware of these issues. And, because of their far-reaching impact, public representatives, legislators, judges, forensic doctors, lawyers, members of police forces, and employers should also be familiar with this data. 

With a chapter dedicated to the current education crisis and increasing illiteracy rates, this book is indispensable for remedial educators, teachers and parents.

Although The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry focuses on ADHD and shows how arbitrary diagnoses are used to medicalize child behavior, it goes far beyond ADHD. Indeed, it pertains to any mental health issue. The general pattern of medicalizing, diagnosing, and drugging or otherwise treating is very similar to the treatment of ADHD.

The well-documented and sometimes horrifying data presented in this book shed new light on medicine and psychiatry, their alliance with the pharmaceutical industry, and the scientific underpinnings of psychiatric diagnoses and potentially very dangerous psychiatric treatments.

These facts show that the hidden horrors of psychiatry can affect you too, professionally or privately, and perhaps sooner than you might think.

The Hidden Horrors of Psychiatry

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Epes Tut Zikh (Something Is Happening)

Monday, September 20th, 2021

The Yiddish idiom “epes tut zikh” (????? ??? ???) loosely translates to “something is happening”. It expresses the idea that one does not know the reason for whatever is happening. For example, being stuck in traffic without knowing why is “epes tut zikh.”

Things are happening today on many fronts with no discernible reasons to explain exactly why.

Now, the physical Universe in which we live is unthinking, and there are no “reasons” for things that happen solely in the physical Universe, in the sense that the Universe has “thought” about it with some purpose.

However, living beings do think and have purposes, and so can have (but do not have to have) a reason for doing something.

When we look around we see any number of events and situations with no clearly discernible reasons. If there are reasons, they might be considered hidden. Or in many cases, there are so many possible reasons that no one can agree on them, provoking constant and debilitating argumentation.

If one actually knew all the true reasons for some unwanted event or situation, it could theoretically be terminatedly handled. Whenever such an event or situation occurs which persists and resists being handled, the true reasons are generally widely unknown or unacknowledged; and speculation, gossip, and arguments predominate.

Examples:

Antisemitism
Random senseless violence
School shootings
Motiveless and unpredictable suicide
Racism
War
Terrorism
Religious intolerance
Sexual discrimination
Pandemic outbreak

It is to the advantage of certain professions to let, or even encourage, this kind of negative situation to persist. This is called “the dangerous environment,” in which it is thought that one’s livelihood would be compromised or endangered if the situation were to be totally handled.

This includes professions which require a dangerous environment for their continued existence, because they make their living off of it — such as the politician, the policeman, the newspaperman, the insurance salesman, the undertaker, the terrorist, the psychiatrist, and others.

Why Does psychiatry Persist?

Since 1969 CCHR has documented and exposed the failures, fraud and abuse of psychiatry; yet psychiatry persists in its relentless quest to harm as many people as it can.

“So, why is the truth of psychiatry’s consistent record of getting it wrong and doing damage not setting society free to toss psychiatry on the garbage heap of history?”
[10 Reasons Why Psychiatry Lives On, by Bruce Levine, PhD]

“How is it that governments keep investing billions of dollars into psychiatry—known within the mental health system as a “non-science”—to improve conditions it admits it cannot cure?”
[“Why Psychiatry Sees Itself As A Dying Industry“]

These references highlight many of the hidden reasons psychiatry continues its fraudulent and abusive practices. Underlying these is a common human failing — the inability to confront evil.

Evil takes a bit of confronting. One must start with observation and education. The information is there; the reasons are there; we’ve pointed you to it. Find Out! Fight Back!

Psychiatry does not commit human rights abuse. It is a human rights abuse.
Psychiatry does not commit human rights abuse. It is a human rights abuse.

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Going On Hoping

Monday, April 5th, 2021

Hope is the desire that sometime in the future, one will cease to have something which is no longer wanted but one can’t seem to get rid of (like a chronic pain), or that one will acquire something wanted.

“Going On Hoping” is the condition where one continues to hope in spite of no possibility of realizing one’s goal, particularly when one is not actively involved in realizing the goal.

Giving something a lick and a promise and hoping it will somehow be all right stems from laziness and stupidity. I hope that doesn’t offend anyone.

The better alternative is to control one’s environment by doing things well and thoroughly, leading to one’s goals.

The Psychiatric Way

Psychiatrists speak about “adaptation to one’s environment” as the way to handle Life. One of the primary ways psychiatric treatment attempts to adapt one to one’s environment is with drugs, which reduce or block restimulative stimuli by deadening the perceptive abilities of the central nervous system.

Many psychiatric studies on the topic emphasize how one’s environment, over which one apparently has little control, influences or controls one’s troubles. Toxins and contaminants in the environment; stress in the environment; one’s genes; one’s community and its social factors; the climate; PTSD; crime and other violent or dangerous situations in the environment; endemic systemic pandemic polemics.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), psychiatry’s billing bible, promotes these environmental factors against which one supposedly cannot fight back as the diagnostic criteria showing the presence of a “mental disorder”. One such is the diagnosis of “Victim of crime.”

Of course, one can certainly find situations where it is helpful to adapt to an environment. Think of wearing a protective suit in a hostile environment such as outer space or under water.

We don’t minimize these environmental factors, which have been found to be major contributors to mental stress and trauma. Rather, we point out that the common psychiatric point of view is to only find ways a person can adapt to such stress, when there might also be ways to exert more control over the environmental factors and adapt the environment to oneself. There are even terms to describe this psychiatric viewpoint, such as “stress-adapted children”; meaning that they have learned how to adapt to stress in their environments.

In fact, the data indicate that drug treatment is not usually necessary if a proper interpersonal environment and social context is provided as alternatives to psychiatry.

The Better Alternative

It has also been found that if one knows the technology of how to do something and can do it, and uses it, he cannot be the adverse effect of it. So for example in the matters under discussion here, the more one knows about something in the environment, and the more one can handle and control that, the less bad effects it can cause one. This leads to the insight that the more one can adapt the environment to oneself, instead of only adapting oneself to the environment, then the less the environment can harm one.

One may exclaim all kinds of ifs, ands and buts in the matter. But the fact remains that it behooves one to find out more about whatever the trouble is, and search diligently for ways to influence or control that.

Recommendations

CCHR recommends various strategies to proactively cope with psychiatric fraud or abuse, an environmental stress to which one may be subjected. For example:

The Motto here is “FIND OUT! FIGHT BACK!“

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Logic, Superstition, and Psychiatry

Monday, February 15th, 2021

Effective Definitions
Logic — the subject of reasoning; the ability to think clearly and reach correct conclusions. [ultimately from Greek logos “speech, reason, word”]
Superstition — an irrational attitude or notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary. [ultimately from Latin super- “over” + stare “to stand”]

What Is Logic?

Logic is a process of observation and thought that leads to correct conclusions. This process is called “reasoning.” Reason depends upon data. When data is faulty or unobserved the conclusions are unreasonable (i.e. illogical.)

What Is Superstition?

Superstition is the substitution of false or faulty data for correctly observed data leading to incorrect, unreasonable or illogical conclusions.

One of the primary ways superstition takes hold is by having fixed ideas. A fixed idea is something accepted without personal inspection or agreement. It may appear normal or reasonable, but on close observation and inspection can be shown to be faulty.

Sanity and Insanity

It can be seen that sanity is one’s reasoning toward optimum survival. Specifically it is one’s ability to recognize differences, similarities and identities. This is a necessary ability one must have to be logical.
[Sanity: Soundness of judgment or reason; derives ultimately from Latin sanus “healthy”.]

The opposite of sanity is insanity, which can be seen to be faulty reasoning leading toward nonsurvival, or the inability to recognize differences, similarities and identities. The result of this is to be illogical.

Cause and Effect

No amount of logic can replace some good, solid, imaginative superstition, which is the assignment of cause to something or someone other than the person themself.

By this we mean that in the absence of a person’s ability to be responsible and cause things to happen — that is, the person is only being the effect of others — logic is ineffective and superstition will take its place.

Notice that one of the main uses of both logic and superstition in this case is to covertly justify how one is not responsible and has not caused anything. It’s always something or someone else — i.e. “The Why Is God!” syndrome.
Thus, someone will say “It’s only logical” when on close inspection it isn’t logical at all. This red herring leads to no end of superstition and failures.

Psychiatry Is Superstition

In the case of psychiatry, the Why is the Brain. Insanity is all the brain’s fault; and they justify this with both (faulty) logic and (imaginative) superstition. They’ve got it covered.

In the case of psychiatry, neither logic nor superstition is sanity. In fact, psychiatrists do not know what sanity or insanity is, since it is clear that psychiatry cannot distinguish the sane from the insane. This, psychiatrists when pressed about it, readily admit.

“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

As a result, all psychiatric diagnoses and treatments are based on superstition, which is called a “pseudoscience.”

The only thing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is good for is to bill insurance for bogus treatments.

“In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.” [Dr. Thomas Dorman, Member of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom and Canada]

Recommendations

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

The Missouri Revised Statutes (RSMo) contains several explicit mentions of the DSM in Chapter 376 on Life, Health and Accident Insurance. Contact your Missouri State legislators and ask them to remove all references to the DSM from Missouri State Law.

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Individual Results May Vary

Monday, May 11th, 2020
We noticed that many pharmaceutical ads carry the phrase “individual results may vary”, or words to that effect. Since we are already skeptical about results claimed by psychiatric drug manufacturers and prescribers, we thought we’d investigate this more thoroughly.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) makes rules and recommendations about such claims in advertising. FTC 16 CFR 255 “Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” is the reference. [CFR = Code of Federal Regulations]

The FTC calls an ad which touts the results of using a product an “endorsement.” It expects that any claims made for the product can be supported by a recognized expert in the field who has examined actual results for safety and efficacy.

The advertiser must either depict the generally expected consumer experience, or clearly and conspicuously disclose the typical experience a consumer can reasonably expect.

The use of the phrase “individual results may vary” is an attempt by the advertiser to “get off the hook” if the product does not produce the claimed results, and the FTC discourages the usage of this or similar qualifications.

Examining manufacturers’ fine print for their psychiatric drugs, we always see words to the effect that “we don’t really know how this drug works,” or “the exact mechanism of action is unknown.” Since they don’t know how the drug really “works”, there is no sure way to guarantee its safety and efficacy; they’re just guessing. Their “experts” then must of necessity use a “safe harbor” in their advertisements, since they cannot actually claim that the drugs work for everyone.

Of course, the drugs are just the tip of the deception. Psychiatrists must first make a diagnosis before they can prescribe a drug. The real problem, then, is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior or study problems as “diseases” or “mental disorders.”

Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. The psychiatric billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), is a fraudulent hoax designed to sell harmful and addictive drugs in order to keep vulnerable patients coming back for more treatments.

Contact your local, state and federal representatives and let them know what you think about this.
Results May Vary

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Profiting from mental ill-health

Sunday, March 4th, 2012

Profiting from mental ill-health

There’s a reason psychiatrists prescribe drugs rather than talking therapy: the latter makes no money for pharmaceutical firms

Psychotherapist Harriet Fraad of New York City lambasts psychiatric drugs:

“Do these psycho pharmaceuticals work to restore mental health? Actually, the evidence is overwhelming that they fail. Antidepressants, the most popular psycho-pharmaceuticals, work no better than placebos. They work 25% of the time and stop working when the user stops taking them. In addition, they may actually harm patients in the long run. They disrupt brain neurotransmitters and may usurp the brain’s organic soothing functions.

“All 30 of the available antidepressants have suffered lawsuits within five years of their appearance on the market. These suits are often settled with large payments and gag clauses. … Every major company selling anti-psychotics – Bristol Meyers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca – has either settled investigations for healthcare fraud or is currently being investigated for it.

“Experts agree that there is no long-term improvement in children’s lives from taking anti-psychotic drugs. In fact, these drugs have a substantiated pattern of metabolic problems and rapid weight gain that often leads to diabetes. The use of bipolar diagnoses and bipolar medications is one small example of how market-driven mental healthcare works in the United States. It illustrates the transformation of US healthcare into a system dominated by some of the richest corporations in the world.

“Caring about profit is first, and that is why psychiatry has turned to drug therapy.”

cartoon

Of course, we do not recommend psychiatric treatment of any kind, drugs or talk therapy. There are good reasons why we do not recommend psychiatric treatment. We do recommend informed consent, and sound medical diagnosis and treatment. For more information, download and read the free CCHR booklet, “Psychiatric Hoax — The Subversion of Medicine.”

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