Posts Tagged ‘Schizophrenia’

Are You Authentic?

Monday, October 24th, 2022

We have noticed a gush of social media posts about “authenticity” or “being real” and thought it might be an appropriate subject for this blog.

Authentic:
– worthy of acceptance or belief
– conforming to an original
– not false or imitation
– true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character
– being really what it seems to be, genuine
– genuineness as a reflection of the true person and not simply of a professional acting in a role

[Ultimately from Greek authentikos, from authent?s perpetrator, master; from autos self + -hent?s accomplisher, achiever.]

Checking it out, we also noticed a surfeit of psychological and psychiatric dialog about authenticity. Apparently the subject is not so well understood, given the excessive amount of scholarly discussion and argument over it. An example is “What the new science of authenticity says about discovering your true self“, a recent article we saw from a psychologist who claims that “it can be challenging to find your authentic self.”

We think the real challenge is recognizing what is authentic in spite of all the psychobabble.

One’s Real Self

We would like to think that everyone would agree with the statement that they are themselves and not someone else. So we can call one’s own self or personality “oneself,” or one’s “identity,” or one’s “beingness.”

Interestingly enough, a person has the ability to combine with or take on parts of another. When done willingly and knowingly, we call this “acting” and extol this ability in actors and actresses.

However, when done unwillingly or unknowingly, this becomes a problem and could be called a “facsimile personality.” Without detouring into the mechanics of how this occurs, we note that a person can display the characteristics of one or more personalities in addition to, or in place of, their own. In extreme cases this might produce a “split personality” or certain symptoms of so-called schizophrenia.

Psychiatric Confusion about Authenticity

Some psychiatrists notice that some thoughts and feelings are genuine expressions of oneself, and some are expressions of mental trauma or the side effects of psychiatric drugs. However, we do not find an effective psychiatric process for self-discovery, or an effective method for recognizing or rehabilitating authenticity.

We do find a lot of psychiatric psychobabble, so instead of burrowing down the rabbit hole of psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, let’s just get down to what we can do about it.

Practical Aspects of Authenticity

The subject of facsimile personalities is extensive, and not something we are going to fully address here. However, we can address some aspects which might prove useful in our original quest for authenticity.

There are three elements that bring about an Understanding of oneself, others, and the world around you. These three elements are Affinity, Communication, and Reality. After all is said and done, authenticity is recognizing what is real. And in no small measure, recognizing what is inauthentic and unreal about psychiatry.

Nursing Home Psychiatric Abuse of the Elderly

Monday, December 13th, 2021

Almost 300,000 nursing home residents are given harmful antipsychotic drugs each week, even though most have no psychosis to justify it. In 2019 only about 2% had qualifying conditions for such drugs.

The FDA only approves antipsychotics for people who have serious mental diagnoses, such as so-called schizophrenia. The danger of these drugs to older adults can be profound. They come with black box warnings from the FDA, saying they can increase the risk of death in older people, especially those with dementia.

“The high rate of antipsychotics use across our nation’s nursing homes shows that many facilities continue to resort to the use of these potentially dangerous drugs as a chemical restraint — in lieu of proper staffing — which has the potential to harm hundreds of thousands of patients.”

The extensive off-label use of antipsychotics in nursing homes was found in one study to be associated with a 50% increased risk of experiencing a serious fall-related bone fracture.

Some evidence suggests that some nursing homes may be falsifying psychosis diagnoses to avoid citations for inappropriate antipsychotic prescriptions. In 2018 in Missouri, data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services show there were 108 citations for unnecessary use of antipsychotics in skilled nursing facilities (SNF). This involved 20% of all SNFs in Missouri which received at least one citation; and this had been increasing for at least four years.

“It is reasonable to conclude that the overuse and misuse of antipsychotics is pervasive and continues to occur at unacceptably high rates.”

Such extensive abuse of the elderly is not the result of medical incompetence. The abuse is the result of psychiatry maneuvering itself into an authoritative position over aged care. From there, psychiatry has broadly perpetrated the tragic but lucrative hoax that aging is a mental disorder requiring extensive and expensive psychiatric services.

Recommendation

Insist that any nursing home where an elderly person is to be admitted has a policy of respecting the resident’s wishes not to undergo any form of psychiatric treatment, including psychoactive drugs. Sign a “Psychiatric Living Will” to prepare for this and give a copy to the nursing home staff.

Are You Schizophrenic? More About the Condition

Monday, November 8th, 2021

If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.

When I was a child in school, it was a common taunt to call someone “schiz.”

I realize now that was cruel; but I also understand that it was a byproduct of misunderstanding the condition. And I believe now that it was also one result of the fraudulent psychiatric labeling of the condition as a “mental illness.”

The German term “schizophrenie” was introduced as another term for “dementia praecox” by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1908.

Schizophrenia is commonly defined as a mental illness with delusional symptoms. As psychiatrists don’t really know what it is, definitions usually include long lists of symptoms, making its diagnosis a matter of opinion rather than fact, but usually defined so vaguely that it is often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.

[schizo from Greek schizein “to split, part, separate”; phren from Greek “mind, wits”; ia from Greek “a suffix forming feminine nouns”]
[dementia from Latin dement “mad”, from de “away” and ment “mind”; praecox from Latin “premature”]

The original definition, referring to a split mind, was in observation of a shift of identity, such that a person may appear to be multiple personalities. It can certainly be triggered by various medical or spiritual conditions. For more information about medical causes, download and read the report “Twenty-Nine Medical Causes of Diagnosis of Schizophrenia.

There are nine separate symptomatic entries in the psychiatric billing bible DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) with some form of the term, further showing that its etiology is unknown. Psychiatrists remain committed to calling “schizophrenia” a mental disease despite, after a century of research, the complete absence of objective proof that it exists as a physical brain abnormality. So, too, is the absence of any generally effective psychiatric cure.

The Use of Antipsychotics

Psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the “treatment” for so-called “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

11 million Americans (of which over 829,000 are aged 0-17) take antipsychotics. Tardive dyskinesia (TD), a debilitating side effect causing irreversible damage, occurs in 20%-50% of patients taking antipsychotics. Potentially between 2.23 and 5.57 million Americans can be permanently damaged by antipsychotic drugs.

“The person who walks the street having a spirited conversation with himself, his body jerking and tongue lolling about, is in the grip of TD—prescription drug-induced bodily damage,” Rev. Fred Shaw, spokesperson for CCHR International and president of the NAACP Inglewood-South Bay branch, said. He has long spoken out against the over-representation of African Americans prescribed antipsychotics and founded an educational website Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics.

Antipsychotics and Foster Care Children

Antipsychotic drugs are among Medicaid’s most costly and commonly prescribed drugs, particularly for foster children.

State Medicaid programs spent over $2.8 billion on antipsychotics for all ages in 2007, the single largest drug expenditure category for Medicaid. A decade later it was reported to be $3.5 billion—a 25% increase. Nationally, about 12% of all the nation’s 500,000 foster care children had received Medicaid-paid antipsychotics at some point.

In Missouri, roughly 13,000 children under age 18 are in the foster care system, with about 25% of them prescribed harmful psychiatric drugs. On December 5, 2019, United States District Court Judge Nanette Laughrey granted final approval to a Joint Settlement Agreement regarding children in Missouri foster care and the overuse of harmful psychotropic drugs.

Recommendation

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

Metaphoric Disease

Antipsychotic Antics

Wednesday, September 15th, 2021

Paliperidone, sold under the trade name Invega among others, is an atypical antipsychotic. Paliperidone is the primary active metabolite of the older antipsychotic risperidone, although its specific mechanism of action with respect to any psychiatric diagnosis is unknown. It blocks the action of dopamine and serotonin in the brain, which as we’ve previously observed is playing Russian Roulette with the brain.

On September 1, 2021 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a 6-month injection form of the long-acting atypical antipsychotic paliperidone palmitate (Invega Hafyera, manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceuticals) for the treatment of what is fraudulently diagnosed as schizophrenia in adults.

Adverse reactions, or side effects, can include upper respiratory tract infection, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, seizures, high blood sugar, diabetes, decreased blood pressure, fainting, falls, low white blood cell count, headache, tachycardia, somnolence, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, cough, dystonia, akathisia, muscle rigidity, parkinsonism, weight gain, anxiety, indigestion, constipation, and an increased risk of death in elderly people with dementia-related psychosis.

It can be addictive and have acute withdrawal symptoms (euphemistically called “discontinuation syndrome”), including rapid relapse, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, restlessness, increased sweating, trouble sleeping, a feeling of the world spinning, numbness, muscle pains, tardive dyskinesia, and psychosis.

The primary reason for prescribing a drug that has only two doses per year is to handle the situation where a patient stops taking their daily prescribed drugs because of their unpleasant side effects.

Psychiatric Fraud

Psychiatrists remain committed to calling “schizophrenia” a mental disorder despite, after a century of research, the complete absence of objective proof that it exists as a physical brain abnormality.

Psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

The late Professor Thomas Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

These are normal people with medical, disciplinary, educational, or spiritual problems that can and must be resolved without recourse to drugs. Deceiving and drugging is not the practice of medicine. It is criminal.

Bear in mind that the drug “treatments” being prescribed are for “disorders” that are not physical illnesses—essentially, they are being prescribed for something that does not exist.

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 Schizophrenia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled with so-called Schizophrenia 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.

Any person falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.

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

Surprise, Another New Antipsychotic Drug

Monday, July 26th, 2021

Cerevel Therapeutics announced June 29, 2021 the “CVL-231 Phase 1b Clinical Trial Results” for patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. They say the trial participants had statistically significant scores on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) compared to placebo.

CVL-231 is a muscarinic M4-selective Positive Allosteric Modulator. While that’s quite a mouthful, it basically means that it is supposed to reduce dopamine neurotransmitter activity in the brain.

The purpose of this new antipsychotic drug is the same as other dopamine-related antipsychotic drugs, but the emphasis with this drug is on reducing the side effects such as headaches, nausea, gastrointestinal upsets, exacerbation of psychotic symptoms, and debilitating movement disorders (e.g. akathisia, dyskinesia.)

They still don’t have a real clue about why messing with dopamine has any relationship to psychotic behavior, and as we’ve said before messing with neurotransmitters is playing Russian Roulette with your brain.

The PANSS Scale is used for assessing the severity of psychotic symptoms. The patient is rated by the opinion of an interviewer during a 45-minute interview covering 30 items about the patient’s symptoms on a scale of 1 (absent) to 7 (extreme).

The psychiatrist’s problem with side effects is that patients often stop taking the drugs because of the painful side effects and they relapse. The drugs don’t actually cure anything, they just temporarily relieve the pressure that an underlying problem may be causing, by breaking into the routine rhythmic flows and activities of the nervous system. Once the drug has worn off the original problem remains, and the body is worse off from the nerve damage.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a child or adult exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist fraudulently calls “schizophrenia” can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. The correct action on a seriously mentally disturbed person is a full, searching clinical examination by a competent non-psychiatric medical doctor to discover and treat the true cause of the problem.

CCHR’s cofounder the late Professor Thomas Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

Today, psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

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

Any person falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.

Side Effects

You’re Not Paranoid, It’s Really Happening

Monday, April 26th, 2021

Paranoia is an unfounded or exaggerated distrust of others, sometimes reaching delusional proportions. The word comes from the Greek word paranous “distracted”, ultimately from para- “irregular” + nous “mind”.

It’s a popular psychiatric designation, occurring in the fraudulent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) as “Paranoid personality disorder”. As “paranoid schizophrenic” it can also come under one of the several DSM headings related to schizophrenia, meaning “delusions of persecution”.

It’s also the subject of various jokes such as:

“The mental-disease-of-the-month club is being disbanded because during paranoia month all the members moved and left no forwarding address.”
“What does a paranoid have in common with the all-knowing master of time space and dimension that secretly controls all of our lives? … Right, like you don’t know.”

What is it really?

Paranoia is a dramatization, which is an irrational set of thoughts and actions coming about from the restimulation of past moments of pain and unconsciousness, often containing a phrase such as “You’re all against me.” Some drugs in particular can restimulate this type of behavior.

Various Other Restimulants of Paranoia

Newer antidepressants such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) may have a side effect of paranoia. Smoking crack cocaine, marijuana, or taking LSD, methamphetamines or ecstasy (MDMA) can also cause paranoid behavior. The ADHD drugs Adderall, Concerta, Strattera, and Ritalin all have a potential side effect of paranoia. The psychedelic dimethyltryptamine (DMT) has a side effect of paranoia.

Being bullied may lead to a feeling that people plan to harm you, which can be misconstrued by a psychiatrist as a “mental illness” and considered a psychotic symptom for which psychotropic drugs can be prescribed, some of which then also have more paranoia as a side effect.

Addressing a person’s difficulties with getting a good night’s sleep, or with getting proper nutrition, may lead to improvements in psychotic symptoms such as paranoia.

Hypothyroidism, an insufficient production of thyroid hormone, can lead to paranoia.

A deficiency of vitamin B12 or folic acid (vitamin B9) can produce paranoia.

An allergic response to wheat, corn, cow’s milk, or tobacco can produce paranoia.

Undiagnosed and unhandled infections such as pneumonia, urinary tract infection, sepsis, malaria, Legionnaire’s disease, syphilis, typhoid, diphtheria, HIV, rheumatic fever and herpes can all cause such devastating mental symptoms.

Recommendations

One can plainly see that the symptom of paranoia has many possible triggers which are unrelated to any so-called psychiatric “mental disorder”.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a person exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist calls paranoia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled as paranoid 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.

The use of various psychiatric drugs, since they can themselves trigger a paranoid response, should be specifically avoided.

Any person falsely diagnosed as paranoid which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.

Cap It Off With Caplyta

Monday, September 21st, 2020

Emerging from a cloud of regulatory questions and mixed clinical results, Caplyta (generic lumateperone) an atypical antipsychotic from Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. was given FDA approval 20 December 2019, and is now being heavily marketed. There are over a dozen of these second-generation antipsychotics, with varying activity at the brain receptors for various neurotransmitters.

It is hardly clear whether lumateperone has any advantages over other antipsychotic drugs. The primary reason for researching and releasing another atypical antipsychotic is to try to reduce the side effects, rather than to actually eliminate the symptoms, since no one really knows what causes these symptoms. The manipulation of neurotransmitters in the brain is just a guess, unfounded by any real understanding, just as the actual causes of so-called schizophrenia (psychiatry’s “For Profit Disease”) are not understood.

Side Effects of this dangerous drug include: stroke, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, tardive dyskinesia, diabetes, low white blood cell count, low blood pressure, falls, seizures, sleepiness, trouble concentrating, high temperature, difficulty swallowing, withdrawal symptoms in newborn babies exposed to Caplyta during the third trimester, pruritus (itchy skin), rash, urticaria (hives), increased mortality in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis.

Patients are urged to avoid Cytochrome P450 (CYP3A4) inducers or inhibitors, since these may exacerbate the adverse reactions, causing violence and suicide.

List Price: $44 per 42mg capsule, with a peak sales estimate of $60 million in 2020 and $400 million by 2024. There may be conditions for insurance approval; for example, UnitedHealthcare may require the failure, contraindication, or intolerance to three other atypical antipsychotics before giving approval to pay for the use of Caplyta.

The antipsychotic activity of Caplyta is thought to be mediated through a combination of antagonism of serotonin receptors and antagonism of dopamine receptors in the brain, however the actual mechanism of action of Caplyta in schizophrenia is unknown.

Clinical trial results were measured by the opinion of a clinician observing or asking the patient about their feelings. The results require cautious interpretation and could represent chance findings. One phase III trial showed some symptomatic improvement and another phase III trial failed to show any improvement over placebo.

Obviously use this drug at your own serious risk, and insist on Full Informed Consent.

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.

It is vital that patients watch the video documentary “Making A Killing – The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging“. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of psychiatric abuse victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore.

Schizo Christmas Present from the FDA

Sunday, December 29th, 2019
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally approved the new antipsychotic drug lumateperone (Caplyta, from Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc) on December 23, 2019 for treatment of schizophrenia in adults, in spite of previously canceling its review because of mixed results in testing, which were blamed on positive responses to placebos.

As with other antipsychotics, lumateperone includes a boxed warning that elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis are at an increased risk for death.

Also as with other antipsychotics, the mechanism of action is unknown — they’re just guessing about how it is supposed to “work.” It plays Russian Roulette with serotonindopamine and glutamate (another neurotransmitter) in the brain.

It has all the usual possible side effects – neuroleptic malignant syndrome, tardive dyskinesia, hyperglycemia, diabetes, weight gain, sedation, increased risk of falls, seizures, infertility, etc.  Newborns exposed to antipsychotic drugs during the third trimester of pregnancy may suffer withdrawal symptoms.

Since cytochrome P450 enzymes such as CYP3A4 are involved in its metabolism in the liver, a person’s genetic abnormality with these can lead to the drug or its metabolites reaching a toxic level in hours or days, correlating with the onset of severe side effects. One is also ill-advised to drink grapefruit juice with this drug because it strongly inhibits the CYP3A4 enzyme, again increasing the risk of serious adverse reactions.

Of course, psychiatrists attribute any attempts at suicide to the underlying diagnosis and not to the drugs.

Speaking of the Underlying Diagnosis

Today, psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

The late Professor Thomas Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

These are normal people with medical, disciplinary, educational, ethical or spiritual problems that can and must be resolved without recourse to drugs. Deceiving and drugging is not the practice of medicine. It is criminal.

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 Schizophrenia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled with so-called Schizophrenia 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.

Any person falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.

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

For more information, click here to download and read the full CCHR report “Schizophrenia—Psychiatry’s For Profit ‘Disease’“.
Calvin and Hobbes

Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry

Monday, October 7th, 2019

In 1976 Dr. Thomas Szasz, the co-founder of CCHR, published an article in The British Journal of Psychiatry called “Schizophrenia: The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry,” in which Szasz argues that there is no such disease as schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia — the most common and most disabling of the so-called mental illnesses — has become the poster disease for psychiatry, the psychiatric symbol of why we need psychiatrists.

However, Szasz recognized that there are no clinical tests for such a “disease,” and that labeling the symptoms was rather psychiatry’s attempt to control deviant behavior rather than to cure disease.

Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

Psychiatrists today remain committed to labeling “schizophrenia” a mental disease despite, after a century of research, the complete absence of objective proof that it exists as a physical brain abnormality.

The unfortunate aspect of this is that psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

Psychiatry is Enamored of Symbols

This deserves a more complete examination of the subject of “symbols.” We name, or label, objects and ideas, which in itself is not a bad thing, as long as we realize that the symbol is not the thing itself.

A symbol is something which has mass, meaning and mobility. An example is a body. We label a body with a name which we then use to mean the person; the body moves, carrying its mass and meaning around for others to see and experience.

On top of that, we label it “schizophrenic”, so we have a symbol of a symbol. Now we don’t have to directly confront the painful symptoms; we just label it “a schizophrenic.” We no longer have to cure it, since now we “know” what it is.

Psychiatry insists that one have a label, which is one way to trap and keep a person located. Using and being slaves to symbols is basically a substitute for just knowing. We no longer have to really know what it is, because we “know” it is “a schizophrenic.” So psychiatry has operated on this basis for over a hundred years, never really finding out what schizophrenia is so it can be cured. People just have to live with it, and take psychiatric drugs which are highly profitable and which suppress the symptoms but do not actually fix it.

Psychiatry Uses Other Symbols As Well

The psychiatric or psychological analysis of symbols in dreams has been a fruitless red herring for many centuries. It can certainly be interesting and fun to imagine all the ways dreams could be interpreted; but really, it doesn’t actually lead to cures. Dreams are mostly puns on words and situations.  Thiamine (vitamin B1) has been used successfully at doses of 250 mg/day to treat patients having nightmares. B1 at roughly $20 per bottle beats any anti-anxiety or anti-psychotic drug currently being prescribed for bad dreams, since one of the possible side effects of these drugs is (wait for it…) nightmares!

Now think of the Rorschach Ink Blot Test, originally developed in 1921 by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach as a tool for the diagnosis and labeling of schizophrenia. Over the years several different scoring systems were used, including pure subjective judgment; one present day scoring system wasn’t developed until the 1960s, and another scoring system was published in 2011. There are naturally many critics of these systems, including some court cases calling the results bogus.

Given the fraudulent nature of psychiatric “diagnosis” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), we are calling the Rorschach symbol test a total hoax.

And Speaking of the DSM and the ICD

Of course, the names of so-called mental disorders in the DSM and ICD are the ultimate in misleading symbols. They appear to designate actual mental states, but upon close inspection they are empty of scientific meaning.

With these tomes, psychiatry has taken countless aspects of normal human behavior and reclassified them as a “mental illness” simply by adding the term “disorder” onto them. 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.

Though the DSM weighs less than five pounds, its influence pervades all aspects of modern American society: our governments, our courts, our military, our media and our schools.

Using it, psychiatrists can enforce psychiatric drugging, seize your children and even take away your most precious personal freedoms. It is the engine that drives a $330 billion psychiatric industry.

Missouri law explicitly names the DSM as the official reference for mental illnesses. Contact your State Senator and Representative and ask them to remove all references to the DSM from State Law. We should not support symbolism that hits you over the head; a symbol should not be a cymbal.

Are You Schizophrenic?

Friday, January 18th, 2019

“Mental health advocates are lobbying Congress to help them get schizophrenia classified as a brain disease like Parkinson’s or Alzheimers, instead of as a mental illness, a move that could reduce stigma and lead to more dollars for a cure.” This according to a January, 2019 article on Politico.com.

More and more health officials, scientists and doctors are recognizing that so-called “mental illnesses” such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are poorly understood and are really physical, medical issues — not some nebulous mental thing for which harmful and addictive psychotropic drugs are prescribed.

There are no clinical tests for these “mental” diagnoses. But there are clinical tests for whatever turns out to be the real medical issue. So why are psychiatrists handing out so many harmful drugs without performing blood or other well-known clinical tests? Could it be because it is profitable, and insurance will pay for them?

Today, psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

Linda Stalters, executive director of the schizophrenia alliance, said, “We are still treating people like they did in the medieval times.”

The late Professor Thomas Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

These are normal people with medical, disciplinary, educational, or spiritual problems that can and must be resolved without recourse to drugs. Deceiving and drugging is not the practice of medicine. It is criminal.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of someone exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist calls schizophrenia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled with so-called schizophrenia 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.

Any person falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with CCHR, the police, and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation. In Missouri, file a complaint with the Board of Registration for the Healing Arts.

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

For more information, click here to download and read the full CCHR report “Schizophrenia—Psychiatry’s For Profit ‘Disease’“.