Posts Tagged ‘Stigma’

Psychiatric Labels Are The Stigma

Monday, July 11th, 2022

In this Universe, all people run on the same common denominators (matter, energy, space, time, thoughts, location, form), but the interrelationships of these things and one’s personal experiences create unlimited combinations.

Never forget that a label is a convenience for communication, it isn’t the thing itself. Labels are a necessary thing in the field of communication. They are a symbol used to represent some real thing, such as one or more of these common denominators.

Labels only really become an issue when one confuses the real thing with the label and thinks they are the same.

Labels are also an obligatory element of psychiatric diagnoses. The psychiatric billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), is the standard handbook of “mental illnesses” as determined by a show of hands at the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Through psychiatrists’ false diagnoses, stigmatizing labels, easy-seizure commitment laws, brutal, depersonalizing “treatments,” thousands of individuals are harmed and denied their inherent human rights.

Using the DSM, a psychiatrist need only label the patient with a “mental disorder”, prescribe a drug and bill the patient’s insurance or Medicaid. The psychiatrist with the DSM in hand can try various labels on the patient as if they were different sizes of apparel until he finds one that either fits the patient’s symptoms or comes close enough to allow him to bill the patient’s insurance.

With the DSM, psychiatry has taken countless aspects of human behavior and labeled them as a “mental illness” simply by adding the term “disorder” onto them. Even key DSM contributors admit that there is no scientific or medical validity to these “disorders.”

Why do we say psychiatric labels are stigmatizing?

Well, what is a stigma? A common definition is a mark or characteristic indicative of a history of a disease or abnormality. Is there a stigma associated with mental distress? First of all, the psychiatric manifestation known as “mental illness” is not a disease, it’s a symptom. And let’s face it, what a psychiatrist calls “abnormal” is just a label for something they don’t like.

The questions to ask are: Do any of these “disorders” or “mental illnesses” actually exist? Does the DSM have any relationship to a patient’s actual condition, or is it just a convenient and simplistic method of compartmentalizing symptoms without actually working to isolate the true cause of the patient’s real problems?

Since there are no clinical laboratory tests for these “diseases,” making lists of behaviors, applying medical-sounding labels to people who engage in them, then using the presence of those behaviors to prove they have the illness in question is scientifically meaningless.

Thus we call the DSM a fraudulent mechanism for falsely diagnosing symptoms as diseases so that a drug to suppress those symptoms, rather than cure them, can be prescribed and billed — making a patient for life, as the root cause has not been found and treated.

The real stigmatization is coming from those that benefit from labeling behaviors as diseases to be “treated” despite the complete lack of medical or biological evidence to support them.

Psychiatric labels themselves are the stigma.

Moreover, the campaign to “stop the stigma” of mental illness is a pharmaceutical marketing campaign.

Fraudulent diagnoses perpetrated by the DSM obscure the role of family, drug abuse, undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions, nutritional deficiencies, stress, illiteracy, and other factors contributing to mental distress. The result is often further stigma, discrimination and social exclusion.

Recommendation

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. Contact your local, state and federal officials to express your viewpoint about this.

The Hoax of Antidepressants

Monday, July 4th, 2022

Over time, using antidepressants is not associated with significantly better health-related quality of life (HRQoL), compared to people with depression who do not take the drugs.

These are the findings of a study published April 20, 2022 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The study included all noninstitutionalized U.S. adults (?18 years) who had depression documented in their medical condition files during the first year of the two-year follow-up. Over the duration of the study (2005–2016), on average there were 17.47 million adult patients diagnosed with depression disorder every year with two-year follow up. About 57.6% of these patients received treatment with antidepressant drugs.

The researchers recommend that “Physicians, mainly primary care providers who are caring for most of these patients, may need to reconsider referring patients with depression to receive some kind of non-pharmacological therapy.”

The research study concludes with this quote:
“The ultimate goal of using antidepressant medications or psychotherapy is to improve patients’ important outcomes, such as HRQoL. The real-world effect of using antidepressant medications does not continue to improve patients’ HRQoL over time, as the change in HRQoL was comparable to patients who did not use any antidepressant medications.”

This is not even to mention the potentially horrific side effects of antidepressant use. The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has this to say about antidepressant side effects: “Antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children and adolescents with MDD [major depressive disorder] and other psychiatric disorders.”

Recognize that 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.

If you are taking any of these drugs, do not stop taking them based on what you read here. You could suffer serious withdrawal symptoms. Click here for more information about harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.

Psychiatrists euphemistically call withdrawal side effects “discontinuation symptoms” to disguise the addictive nature of these drugs.

You should seek the advice and help of a competent non-psychiatric medical doctor or practitioner before trying to come off any psychiatric drug.

Contact your local, state and federal officials and let them know your viewpoints about harmful psychiatric treatments.

Public Service Announcement — Psychiatry Kills!

Monday, November 9th, 2020

Recently, during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, TV has been saturated with advertisements for psychiatric mental health care.

One of the most common is Robin Meade’s “Public Service Announcement” (PSA) hustling for NAMI.

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) was founded in 1979. It has since changed its name to National Alliance on Mental Illness. The group has and continues to rely upon pharmaceutical funding—-more than $41 million since 1996.

NAMI says it is a “grassroots mental health organization,” but falsely claims that 20% of the population are mentally ill.

NAMI’s campaign to “stop the stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill is really a pharmaceutical-funded front to sell harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs; the “Founding Sponsors” of the campaign were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs.

You should know the chain of ownership that produced this NAMI PSA. Robin Meade is a news anchor at HLN TV, which is owned by CNN, which in turn is owned by WarnerMedia. The PSA was produced by WarnerMedia.

The whole purpose of this PSA, apparently, is to funnel people affected by the pandemic into the for-profit psychiatric mental health system.

The real NAMI encourages you to think you are mentally ill and relentlessly pushes psychiatric drugs and electroshock, gets millions from Pharma, and lobbies for Pharma’s vested interests. “Grassroots” indeed!

While these are definitely uncertain times, NAMI and the mental health industry are taking advantage of people’s fears and creating a market for dangerous psychotropic drugs in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis. One thing is certain — psychotropic drugs with their innumerable dangerous side effects are not the solution.

Take Action Now and Support CCHR.

Drinking too much coffee.

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 255Use 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

Stigma

Wednesday, February 13th, 2013

What is a “stigma”?

A mark or characteristic indicative of a history of a disease or abnormality. [Middle English stigme, brand, from Latin stigma, stigmat-, tattoo indicating slave or criminal status, from Greek, tattoo mark, from stizein, stig-, to prick]

Is there a stigma associated with mental distress? First of all, the psychiatric manifestation known as “mental illness” is not a disease, it’s a symptom. And let’s face it, what a psychiatrist calls “abnormal” is just a label for something they don’t like.

Thomas Szasz proposed in 1960 that we view the phenomena conventionally called “mental diseases” as simply behaviors that disturb others (or oneself.)

So how do you fix disturbing behavior? Do you suppress it with drugs, involuntary commitment, restraints, surgery, or electric shock?

Or do you actually handle it by finding and treating the root cause, whatever that may be?

The campaign to “stop the stigma” of mental illness is a pharmaceutical marketing campaign.

With its seemingly altruistic sounding agenda to eliminate “stigma” the fact is the real “stigmatization” is coming from those behind this campaign — pharma, psychiatry and pharma-funded front groups such as NAMI and CHADD. For example, take NAMI’s campaign to stop the “stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill — the “Founding Sponsors” were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs.

The real stigmatization is coming from those that benefit from labeling behaviors as diseases to be “cured” or “treated” despite the complete lack of medical/biological evidence to support them.

Psychiatric labels are the stigma.

The forthcoming 2013 revision of the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) will increase the number of people in the general population diagnosed with a mental illness — but what they need is help and understanding, not labels and medication.

Fraudulent diagnoses perpetrated by the DSM obscure the role of family, drug abuse, undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions, nutritional deficiencies, stress, illiteracy, and other factors contributing to mental distress. The result is often further stigma, discrimination and social exclusion.

What shall we do about this? How about labeling jars instead of people?

CCHR: Psychiatry Labeling Kids with
Bogus ‘Mental Disorders’

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Stop the Stigma: Buy More Psych Drugs?

Sunday, October 28th, 2012
Little known but Extremely Relevant Fact: The Campaign to “Stop the Stigma” of “Mental Illness” was launched by the Pharmaceutical Industry.

Lately we have been reading a deluge of news articles from all around the country about various campaigns to “stop the stigma of mental illness.” We wondered what all the fuss was about.

With a seemingly altruistic agenda, the fact is the campaign to end the “stigma” of mental illness is one driven and funded by those who benefit from more and more people being labeled mentally ill — pharma, psychiatry and pharmaceutical front groups such as NAMI and CHADD.

For example, take NAMI’s campaign to stop the “stigma” and “end discrimination” against the mentally ill — the “Founding Sponsors” were Abbott Labs, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Pfizer, Novartis, SmithKline Beecham and Wyeth-Ayerst Labs. So next time you see an ad promoting “stop the stigma” see it for what it is, a pharmaceutical marketing campaign.

The majority of the public may or may not be familiar with these so-called mental health advocacy organizations, such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD), or the myriad of bipolar, depression or ADHD “support groups” that are inundating the internet.

But they need to be.

ARE THESE SO-CALLED MENTAL HEALTH ADVOCACY GROUPS FOR PATIENT’S RIGHTS OR PHARMA’S RIGHTS? YOU DECIDE!

These are groups operating under the guise of advocates for the “mentally ill,” which in reality are heavily funded pharmaceutical front groups — lobbying and working on state and federal laws which effect the entire nation — from our elderly in nursing homes to our military, pregnant women, nursing mothers and school children.

Presenting themselves as patient advocacy groups is highly disingenuous not only to their membership, many of which may have a sincere desire to help a loved one or a family member with mental problems, but to legislators, the press and the American public — for they have consistently lobbied for legislation that benefits the mental health and pharmaceutical industries which fund them, and not patients they claim to represent.

Certainly any organization claiming to be for the rights of patients diagnosed mentally ill would have as their primary goal, full informed consent in the field of mental health — including full and complete disclosure of all drug risks, the right to refuse treatment, the right to know that psychiatric diagnoses are not medical conditions (evident by the fact there is not one confirmatory medical or scientific test). Above all such groups would provide patients with an abundance of information on non-harmful, non- drug, medical solutions and options considering the dangerous and well documented risks of psychiatric drugs by international drug regulatory agencies.

These groups do not.

To put it simply, these groups are not what they appear to be. Yet their influence over legislation, lobbying, drug regulation (or lack thereof), and public relations campaigns is substantial and effects the entire nation. For they claim to be the voice of the “mentally ill.” But are they? Or are they the result of a brilliant marketing/lobbying campaign designed to benefit the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry that funds them?

Go here to read how all this started!

There are groups that are not funded by pharmaceutical companies, that truly do have the best interests of the consumer/patient and parent as their goal. You can find out more about such organizations here.

Do Something About It

Show a CCHR documentary DVD to all your family, friends, neighbors, and associates.

Psychiatry Stigmatizing Kids with Bogus Mental Disorders

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Click Here To Watch Our New Video:

Stigmatizing Kids