Posts Tagged ‘suicide’

New Study Tells Consumers the Truth of Potential Lethal Electroshock and Antidepressant Risks

Monday, February 21st, 2022

Over 14,800 ECT patients were 16 times more likely to try to commit suicide than a control group of 58,369; antidepressants can also induce suicidal feelings and frightening long-term withdrawal effects.

By CCHR International
The Mental Health Industry Watchdog
February 7, 2022

A new study published in Psychological Medicine questions the two principle physical treatments recommended for depression: antidepressants and electroshock therapy (ECT) and raises the alarm about their adverse effects on the brain.[1] Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a 53-year mental health industry watchdog, says the study contains vital information for consumers recommended for ECT, including the risk of suicide, all of which adds weight to the argument that the potentially brain-damaging practice should be prohibited as a mental health treatment.

The study by two UK experts, John Read, Ph.D., a psychologist and Joanna Moncrieff, M.D., a psychiatrist, discusses the need for non-harmful alternatives that are safe and effective. They cite the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandates that ECT machines have signs stating: “The long-term safety and effectiveness of ECT treatment has not been demonstrated.” Yet, the practice is given to an estimated 100,000 Americans every year, including, in some states, children aged up to five years old.

Antidepressants can also cause long-term sexual dysfunction and severe withdrawal effects, the study shows.

The authors wrote: “With the World Health Association and the United Nations calling for a paradigm shift away from the medicalization of human distress, new evidence about millions of people struggling to get off antidepressants, and ongoing debate about the value and safety of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT),” and questions “biological psychiatry’s ‘medical model’ when we become sad or depressed.”

The authors debunk the theory that chemical imbalances cause depression and that treatments work by correcting underlying biological dysfunctions, triggered, for example, by a supposed genetic predisposition. They point that “there is no evidence that there are any neurochemical abnormalities in people with depression, let alone abnormalities that might cause depression.”

Many medical experts confirm there are no medical tests (X-rays, blood or urine tests, MRIs, etc.) that can prove a physical source for people’s emotional issues.[2]

Yet, the authors add, until January 2021, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) website advised: “Psychiatric medications can help correct imbalances in brain chemistry that are thought to be involved in some mental disorders.” This is not true.

The authors went on to say, “At present, most drugs are assumed to work according to a ‘disease-centered’ model of drug action, which proposes that they act on the biological processes assumed to underpin symptoms, in the same way as drugs do in most medical conditions.” However, “Like other psychiatric drugs, [antidepressants] are psychoactive substances that cross the blood-brain barrier and alter normal mental processes and behavior by changing the normal functioning of the brain.” [emphasis added]

“That long-term antidepressant use may lead to persistent brain modifications is also evidenced by the prolonged and severe withdrawal state they can induce…around 56% of people experience withdrawal effects after discontinuing antidepressants, and for 46% of those the effects are severe. In general, the longer someone takes an antidepressant, the more likely they are to experience a withdrawal reaction, and the more severe it will be.”

The study also discloses:

  • Hundreds of placebo-controlled trials suggest that antidepressants are marginally better than placebo at reducing depressive symptoms as measured by depression rating scales.
  • The majority of placebo-controlled trials have been conducted by the pharmaceutical industry, which has an investment in inflating results, but government-funded research also fails to confirm that antidepressants have beneficial effects.
  • SSRI antidepressants cause “sexual dysfunction in a large proportion of users, and more worryingly, some people report that this persists after stopping the drug.”
  • “The adverse effects of withdrawal can be so intolerable that some people trying to discontinue treatment have to reduce by tiny amounts over many years, and accumulating evidence suggests that the effects may even persist for months or years after the drugs are finally stopped.” 

Electroshocking Harms Mental Health

As is the case for antidepressants, the various biological deficits that are supposedly corrected by ECT have never been demonstrated, the authors continue. “[T]he story of ECT appears to be one of a biological intervention being claimed to correct biological deficits, but in reality having negative effects on healthy brains, some of which are misconstrued as signs of improvement.” 

A neutral observer would assume that the effects on the brain of repeatedly passing sufficient electricity through it to cause seizures are likely to be negative. ECT advocates, however, “tend to interpret abnormal brain changes caused by multiple electrocutions as beneficial, sometimes even linking them to reduced depression. They don’t consider that the changes might be negative or might be characterized as brain damage.”

The authors further discuss inequities in ECT studies:

  • In the 84 years since the first ECT there have only been 11 randomized placebo-controlled studies (RCTs) for its target diagnosis, depression, all before 1986. A recent review, involving Dr. Irving Kirsch, Associate Director of Placebo Studies at Harvard Medical School, highlighted the poor quality of the 11 studies.
  • Only four studies describe their processes of randomization and testing the blinding (procedure in which one or more parties in a trial are unaware of which participants are subjects of the treatment and those who are not, and helps to reduce bias). None convincingly demonstrate that they are double-blind. Five selectively report their findings. Only four report any ratings by patients. None assess Quality of Life. The studies are small, involving an average of 37 people.
  • No studies showed that ECT outperforms placebo beyond the end of the treatment period.
  • Nevertheless, all five meta-analyses of these flawed studies somehow conclude that ECT is effective.
  • The meta-analyses failed to identify any evidence that ECT prevents suicide, as often claimed. Numerous studies have found ECT recipients are more likely than other patients to kill themselves.
  • In a 2020 study, 14,810 ECT patients were 16 times more likely to try to kill themselves than a matched control group of 58,369. Other studies cited so-called reduce suicides were so small as to be negligible and were not even for depression.
  • A 2021 U.S. study found that 1,524 homeless US veterans who received ECT had made significantly more suicide attempts, at 30 days follow up, than 3,025 matched homeless veterans who hadn’t had ECT. The difference remained significant at 90 days and 1 year.
  • A review of 82 studies found that one in 39 ECT patients (25.8 per 1000) experience ‘major adverse cardiac events,’ the leading cause of ECT-related deaths.
  • As well as the short-term memory loss, which is widely acknowledged, between 12% and 55% of ECT recipients suffer persistent or permanent memory loss (typically defined as six months or longer).
  • Even the APA acknowledges that “ECT can result in persistent or permanent memory loss.”

The fact that discrepancies and bias in ECT studies are exposed draws strong opposition from advocates of the procedure, as doctors Read and Moncrieff point out. The advocates’ “defense” is to “shoot the messenger.”

“Researchers and ECT recipients who question the efficacy and highlight the adverse effects of ECT, are often publicly denigrated, by ECT advocates, as ‘anti-psychiatry ideologues’, ‘extremists’ ‘Scientologists’ and ‘non-medical zealots,’” or “part of a ‘guild war’ between professions.” [See CCHR’s report, Why Psychiatry Sees Itself as a Dying Industry.]

Read and Moncrieff continue: “The President and Chair of the International Society for ECT and Neurostimulation recently accused authors (including two ECT recipients) who had published some inconvenient findings of being ‘ideologically driven,’ of ‘spreading misinformation’ and of having ‘questionable motives.’”

Of note, the Church of Scientology established CCHR in 1969 as an independent organization, along with eminent professor of psychiatry, the late Dr. Thomas Szasz. CCHR comprises members of the church and people of various faiths or none at all. It has been outspoken against electroshock since its inception and has been pivotal in obtaining laws that either introduced safeguards such as informed consent to treatment (and the right to refuse it), as well as banning use of ECT on minors. In Australia, CCHR obtained a ban on deep sleep treatment (DST) that involved ECT and drugs, with criminal penalties, including jail, should anyone administer it. Indeed, in 2002, U.S. psychiatrist Richard Abrams, co-owner of Somatics LLC, which manufacturers an ECT device, wrote: “Absent Scientology there would hardly be an organized anti-ECT movement in the United States or anywhere else.”[3] This, from a “doctor,” who egregiously and misleadingly claims that ECT is about ten times safer than childbirth![4]

A Call for Alternatives

Read and Moncrief call for non-harmful alternatives: “We propose an alternative understanding that recognizes depression as an emotional and meaningful response to unwanted life events and circumstances.” This alternative view, they say, “is increasingly endorsed around the world, including by the United Nations, the World Health Organization and service users who have suffered negative consequences of physical treatments that modify brain functions in ways that are not well-understood.”

Furthermore, “believing you have a brain disease requiring medical intervention can be profoundly disempowering. It encourages people to view themselves as the victims of their biology, to adopt pessimistic views about recovery, increases self-stigma and discourages people from taking active steps to improve their situation.”

“Common sense,” they add, “suggests that the conditions needed to lead an emotionally balanced and fulfilling life, relatively free of major ongoing worry and distress, include a dependable income, housing, secure and rewarding employment, engaging social activities, and opportunities to form close relationships. Some people may need relationship counselling or family therapy, others support with employment or finances. People who feel severely depressed for a long time may simply need to be cared for, reassured with kindness and hope, reminded of times when they have felt good, and kept safe until they feel better, which they often do with time. There is no scientific evidence for some of these suggestions. We learn how to support our fellow humans through our life experience, through being cared for ourselves, and sometimes through art and literature.”

As the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Dr. Dainius P?ras, a Lithuanian psychiatrist, wrote: “Current mental health policies have been affected to a large extent by the asymmetry of power and biases because of the dominance of the biomedical model and biomedical interventions. This model has led…to the medicalization of normal reactions to life’s many pressures, including moderate forms of social anxiety, sadness, shyness, truancy and antisocial behavior.”

In 2021, the World Health Organization echoed these sentiments in its “Guidance on Community Mental Health Services” which says the biological model has resulted in “an over-diagnosis of human distress and over-reliance on psychotropic drugs to the detriment of psychosocial interventions.”[5] The document offers 22 examples of alternatives to drugs and electricity, Read and Moncrieff stress.

CCHR’s has a strong position against ECT; it wants it prohibited. Over 125,000 people have supported its online petition calling for the ban. Sign here.

References:

[1] John Read, Ph.D., Joanna Moncrief, M.D., “Depression: why drugs and electricity are not the answer,” Psychological Medicine, Cambridge University Press, 1 Feb. 2022, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/depression-why-drugs-and-electricity-are-not-the-answer/3197739131D795E326AE6913720E6E37

[2] “No Medical Tests Exist,” CCHR International, https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/no-medical-tests-exist/

[3] Richard Abrams, M.D., Electroconvulsive Therapy, Fourth Edition, (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 10

[4] Richard Abrams, M.D., “The Mortality Rate with ECT,” Convulsive Therapy, 1997

[5] Jan Eastgate, “World Health Organization New Guidelines Are Vital To End Coercive Psychiatric Practices & Abuse,” CCHR International, 11 June 2021, https://www.cchrint.org/2021/06/11/world-health-organization-new-guidelines-are-vital-to-end-coercive-psychiatric-practices-abuse/

Drug-Smart St. Louis Month

Monday, October 11th, 2021

The St. Louis Metro region continues to be the epicenter of the drug overdose epidemic in Missouri and accounted for approximately 55% of all drug overdose deaths in Missouri in 2019 and 2020.

While the majority of these drug-involved deaths involved opioids in St. Louis City and County in 2020, we observe that illegal stimulants were also a major contributor. Unfortunately, legal stimulants, depressants and other prescribed psychotropic drugs can also share in the shame, as violence, suicide and heart attacks are known potential side effects of antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs.

Recreational use of prescription drugs is a serious problem with teens and young adults. National studies show that a teen is more likely to have abused a prescription drug than an illegal street drug. Depressants, opioids and antidepressants are responsible for more overdose deaths (45%) than cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and amphetamines (39%) combined.

To promote drug education, October 2021 has been proclaimed “Drug-Smart St. Louis Month in St. Louis County, Missouri“:

[L-to-R Stephen Forney, Ellen Maher-Forney, Dr. Sam Page, Moritz Farbstein]

“I, Sam Page, St. Louis County Executive, do hereby proclaim the month of October 2021, as Drug-Smart St. Louis Month in St. Louis County, Missouri, and do hereby recognize the Foundation for a Drug-Free World – St. Louis Chapter, volunteers and St. Louis drug educators and encourage the citizens of St. Louis County to participate in drug education activities.”

The fact missed by most is that psychiatric, mind-altering drugs have been found to be the common factor in an overwhelming number of acts of random senseless violence and suicide. On the surface, the idea of psychiatric treatment, tranquilizers or antidepressants creating hostility and violence may not make sense. After all, they are supposed to make people better, calm and quiet. But the reality is that they can and do create such adverse effects. This is called “Drug Induced Psychosis.”

It could be dangerous to immediately cease taking psychiatric drugs because of potential significant withdrawal side effects. No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and assistance of a competent medical doctor.

Psychiatric treatments such as drugs, electric shock and involuntary commitment are supposed to assist people who need help, not kill them. Too often, delinquency, suicide and violence have been falsely attributed to someone’s “mental illness,” when in fact the very psychiatric methods used to “treat” such “illness” are the cause of the problem. In addressing the rise in drug overdoses, senseless violence and suicide in society, the role of psychiatric drugs must be investigated.

Chantix is in Trouble Again

Wednesday, September 29th, 2021

We’ve been regularly warning about the dangers of Chantix since 2009, and now it’s causing trouble again.

The FDA warned in 2009 that Chantix (generic Varenicline), a psychiatric drug made by Pfizer, can have serious side effects, namely suicide.

Chantix is a benzodiazepine-based anti-anxiety drug promoted for smoking cessation. Benzodiazepines are prescribed to treat anxiety, insomnia or panic attacks, typically for a few weeks to six months; an estimated 50% of patients take them for two months or longer. These drugs have significant risks, because they are highly addictive and can have severe side effects, including heart problems, violence and suicide.

However, in 2016 the FDA removed the Black Box warning, after heavy lobbying from Pfizer claiming that additional data showed that the benefits of Chantix outweighed its adverse side effects (oh, and since its sales had significantly dropped.)

But the adverse side effects did not go away; only the Black Box warning went away.

Chantix Recall

Now (9/17/2021), Pfizer has issued a voluntary recall for all lots of Chantix 0.5mg and 1mg tablets due to the presence of unacceptable N-nitroso-varenicline levels, a suspected cancer-causing agent.

If you smoke, you are susceptible to cancer. If you take anti-smoking drugs, you are susceptible to cancer. But what’s the real danger here?

Chantix was developed to specifically affect nicotinic receptors in the brain, under the unproven theory that this would reduce nicotine craving and block the rewarding effects of smoking. As we’ve warned before, messing with neurotransmitters in the brain is playing Russian Roulette with your mind.

The psychiatric industry considers that smoking cessation therapies are their territory, however this drug masks the real cause of problems in life and debilitates the individual, thus denying one the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future.

Recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems, apparently such as smoking, as a “mental illness”, and stigmatize this unwanted behavior as a “disease.” 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.

Qelbree, The Newest ADHD Drug

Monday, June 21st, 2021

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new drug April 2, 2021 for treatment of the fraudulent “disease” Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children ages 6 to 17.

Like many other psychiatric drugs, this one also carries an FDA warning:”Qelbree may increase suicidal thoughts and actions in some children with ADHD, especially within the first few months of treatment or when the dose is changed.”

Qelbree (generic viloxazine hydrochloride) is a non-stimulant drug, although it is a Selective Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitor (sNRI), which means that it is really an antidepressant and is similar in operation to other ADHD drugs such as Strattera. The bottom line is that this class of drugs messes with neurotransmitters in the brain, and taking them is playing Russian Roulette with your brain.

Qelbree is an inhibitor of several Cytochrome P450 enzymes, which may intensify the drug’s side effects especially in combination with certain other drugs.

And again, like other similar psychiatric drugs, “The mechanism of action of viloxazine in the treatment of ADHD is unclear.

There is no valid ADHD clinical test for children. There is no valid ADHD clinical test for adults. The ADHD diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis is simply a list of behaviors that may appear disruptive or inappropriate, and is essentially just an opinion.

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.

ADHD Newborn

Depersonalization – Another Fake psychiatric Disorder

Monday, March 29th, 2021

Are you feeling unreal? Are you a stranger to yourself? You may have “Depersonalization Disorder”!

ROFL, forgive me. Like we don’t already have a surfeit of fake diseases in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)! Oh, wait! It’s already in the DSM-5, as “Depersonalization/derealization disorder” (DDD).

There is increasing evidence that psychotropic drugs evoke an unbearable state of mind, such as feeling unreal, feeling detached, feeling like a stranger to oneself, not having sensations, or feeling like a walking cadaver — so much so that the person opts for suicide or violence as a means of relief.

Oh, wait again! This sounds just like some of the side effects, or adverse reactions, of various psychiatric drugs! Note that derealization means that the perception of the world and of external reality are altered. Sounds like a hallucination or delusion, which are known side effects of antidepressants.

For example, newer antidepressants have reported side effects of: abnormal thoughts; agitation; akathisia (severe restlessness); anxiety; confusion; delusions; emotional numbing; hallucinations; mood swings; panic attacks; paranoia; suicidal thoughts or behavior; violent behavior; withdrawal symptoms including deeper depression.

And since DDD is in the DSM, a psychiatrist can prescribe additional harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs for this diagnosis.

Psychiatrists do not know what causes these symptoms or how to cure it, and there are no clinical tests which can diagnose it. Diagnosis is based solely on opinion. Treatment is generally an antidepressant or anti-anxiety drug, often in combination with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) which is basically telling the patient what is wrong with them (evaluating for them).

There are whole organizations devoted just to DDD, providing a base for requesting research funds, getting articles published, and of course “treating” victims with more psychiatric drugs — when the actual treatment should include getting off the psychiatric drugs which are causing these side effects in the first place.

What about the person who experiences symptoms of so-called DDD without being on any drugs? Well, yes, Life can certainly include trauma needing some kind of relief; but it shouldn’t include drugs which can continue to cause these same symptoms, making the person a patient for life.

So What Actually Is The Condition Known As Depersonalization or Derealization?

A person’s inability to feel the reality of things stems directly from the introduction of some arbitrary consideration — something which has no basis in natural law or fact. This is often called “superstition.” For example, some person is feeling under the weather, and someone tells them “it’s all due to the lack of Prozac in your diet.” The person’s acceptance of this “solution” to their problem causes some unreality, since it is arbitrary and false. The introduction of any arbitrary thing into a problem or a solution invites further arbitraries to help “explain” it away. Eventually, one’s life becomes one exception after another, all arbitraries trying to correct the original misconception and on down the line.

One resolution is to trace back these arbitraries throughout one’s life and get the original one corrected. Obviously, psychiatric drugs cannot do this, as they merely deaden the nervous system to suppress symptoms and can never actually correct any arbitrary.

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.

Contact your public officials and tell them what you think about this.

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.

Here Come The Judgment

Monday, July 27th, 2020

We keep coming across the subject of Judgment. So many news articles and social media posts deal, directly or indirectly, with good or bad judgment.

We see so many people asking “How do I deal with this or that situation?” where the only truly comprehensive response should be “use good judgment.”

Of course, then they want to know what is good judgment? And while there is a good answer, it isn’t easy to give this a short answer. So we decided to address it here. We’ll give an example from which we hope one can make some useful generalizations.

There is no shortage of advice, aphorisms and quotes about judgment; and when there is so much discussion around a topic one can be sure it is generally not well understood, not the least of which is exactly how to spell the word. “Judgment” and “judgement” are alternate spellings of the same word. They are both common in British English, although only one, judgment, is acceptable in American English.

Not even to mention the religious overtones of Judgment, with which we respectfully leave to other experts.

Definitions

Just as a simple word, there are a number of dictionary meanings to fit different circumstances. Here are some common definitions:
— the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing
— the cognitive process of reaching a decision or drawing conclusions
— a formal utterance of an authoritative opinion
— a formal decision given by a court
— good sense

[Ultimately from Latin judicare, from judic-, judex judge, from jus right, law + dicere to decide]

How Does One Make A Judgment?

Judgment is measured by the ability to evaluate relative importances. One must be able to evaluate what is important or unimportant in order to make a judgment. Yet this still does not fully answer the question of how to do this, since one must still recognize what is or is not important in the situation under consideration.

Motivation

There are several areas of Life along which one either survives or succumbs. One can be relatively constructive or destructive along each area of Life. One is motivated by these impulses.

Let’s say one has to make a decision that impacts not only oneself but also one’s family. Should I take this new job in another city? On the one hand, it surely benefits my own career and income; on the other hand it uproots my family which is comfortable where it is. How do I decide? It’s constructive for me myself, but destructive for my family. There isn’t a hard and fast rule about which is better or worse; but there is judgment.

Judgment

Judgment is how many of these motivational impulses can one evaluate instantly, and whether these impulses are constructive or destructive. Looking at all sides, all the facts, each area-of-life impulse, its importance or unimportance, its constructive or destructive nature.

You can see there isn’t a fixed answer; there is an evaluation of importances. What are the consequences? How is the survival of both myself and my family benefited or harmed by each different decision?

Good judgment then is dependent on recognizing benefit and harm along every area of Life touched by the situation at hand. How fast can you reach a decision given all the facts? What’s best for me and my family may not be best for you and your family.

The Psychiatric Connection

Given this knowledge about judgment, how does all this relate to psychiatric fraud and abuse?

One obvious connection is psychiatry’s corruption of justice. Psychiatry’s influence has eroded the once-firm basis of justice: the differentiation of right and wrong, compromising the ability of justice systems to reach sane judgments. And everyone knows that both the prosecution and the defense hire psychiatrists to testify on opposite sides of a judgment.

Studies also show that professional clinicians do not in fact make more accurate clinical judgments than lay persons. The fraudulent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the basis of psychiatric diagnoses, skews and subverts the judgment of what is sane or insane, benign or harmful, behavior.

The huge and growing variety of mind-altering psychiatric drugs impair one’s ability to make correct judgments. Side effects include many things which can interfere with one’s ability to make judgments, such as hallucinations, aggression, irritation, mood swings, psychosis, abnormal thoughts, anxiety, delusions, forgetfulness, panic attacks, confusion, poor concentration, fear, and just simply trouble with judgment. The consumption of these drugs can cause loss of judgment and self-control leading to increased violence and suicidal impulses.

Involuntary Commitment, euphemistically called “civil commitment”, is a tool psychiatrists use to coerce treatment and collect insurance money, not to mention its use as a political tool to suppress dissent. Who judges someone to be a danger to themselves or others as a criterion for this unconstitutional practice? Why, the psychiatrists of course. They say they are the only ones qualified to make such judgments. Yet psychiatrists themselves admit that they cannot predict violence.

The Bottom Line

Where judgment is concerned, psychiatry is not your friend. Beware, judgment may be in short supply when under the influence of psychiatry.

The psychiatric Community Chest Get Out of Jail, Free

People’s Resilience in Times of Disasters

Monday, June 29th, 2020

We must be witnessing a societal aberration something like “effective communication must be in person,” since so many people seem to experience anxiety from the social isolation imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns.

The psychiatric industry is heavily pushing the fraudulent idea that loneliness is a mental illness, in order to sell more drugs.

Loneliness is quite simply a lack of communication, not a lack of personal contact; and it is not a mental illness, as the psychiatric industry would have you believe. But we see daily reports all over the media from psychiatrists and psychiatric facilities claiming that loneliness and anxiety are mental illnesses needing anti-anxiety drugs. Such anxiety can be cured by more communication, which is basically free; drugs can only suppress anxiety, not cure it, but they provide massive profit for the mental health industry.

Reliable reports are showing that psychotropic drug prescriptions have significantly increased since the start of the pandemic lockdowns. Prescriptions for anti-anxiety drugs rose 34.1% in February and March; and there were 86% more prescriptions for other psychiatric drugs, primarily  antidepressants. Evidently many people are being fooled by the psychiatric propaganda machine.

A tolerance to these highly addictive drugs can build up, leading to people taking higher dosages, and subsequent severe withdrawal effects when stopped. These drugs are not benign, they have serious adverse side effects.

The history of the mental health industry shows them using epidemics, Spanish Flu, Hong Kong Flu, and much more, to push for increased mental health treatment with commensurate increases in funding, but showing no effective results. Psychiatry and psychiatric drugs thrive under such conditions.

Psychotropic drugs Prozac and Luvox, known to cause violence and suicide, are now being tested to treat Covid-19. Two antipsychotics, Haldol and Thorazine are also being tested. Thorazine, known as a “chemical lobotomy,” has killed 100,000 Americans due to its toxic side effects. This practice of using existing drugs is called “repurposing,” using them for new indications and expanding their reach into new patient populations.

On May 8, the next stage of a clinical trial using LSD to treat adult “ADHD” was also announced. Repurposing psychotropic drugs during a global epidemic puts the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry back on track for greater profits.

There are already “mental health” apps for your smartphone using artificial intelligence algorithms to predict suicide risk. We can see in your future compulsory psychiatric treatment if these trends persist.

Resilience

One definition of resilience is “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties,” from the Latin word resiliens “rebounding”. In the most basic sense, resiliency has been defined as the ability to adapt and cope successfully despite threatening or challenging situations. Thus, competency in relevant areas is a strong supporter of resiliency.

CCHR’s research has found that people’s resilience in times of disasters such as pandemics, wars and terrorism, has often been the people’s best treatment, and that the sources of predictions about so-called “mental health epidemics” often have conflicts of interest with manufacturers of psychotropic drugs.

Psychiatry’s billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is ultimately an instrument for weakening human resilience, making people prey to entrepreneurs of human misery. Existing evidence indicates that prior psychiatric treatment is associated with increased (rather than decreased) rates of future suicidal thoughts and behaviors.

CCHR is fully aware of the country’s challenging times (with its own staff part of the stay-at-home restrictions) and how, generally at a societal level, this can impact mental and physical health. But psychiatric and other mental disorder groups making claims that high percentages of people will be anxious, depressed or have PTSD (based largely on surveys of a small number of people, and often with a Public Relations firm spin) is totally self-serving to rake in future profits with no cures.

Find out what the real crisis in mental health care is today. It isn’t the pandemic — it’s the lack of science and results within the mental health industry!

Anatomy of an Epidemic

Missouri Public Schools May Become Mental Health Clinics

Monday, April 13th, 2020
A bill in the Missouri House (HB2561), if it becomes law, would provide a state subsidy up to $40,000 to public schools to hire a mental health professional.

This is part of a nationwide psychiatric effort to turn public schools into mental health clinics, while legitimate educational professionals continue to bemoan the sorry state of public education.

The sponsor of this bill, recently elected Missouri State Representative Yolanda Young (Democrat, District 22 in Kansas City), has an impressive career as a community activist. We suspect she genuinely believes that turning schools into mental health clinics is a way to improve education.

We disagree.

Children worldwide are under extremely dangerous assault. Today, parents and teachers are also deceived in the name of improved mental health and better education. The results are devastating.

As a result of psychiatric and psychological intervention in schools, harmful behaviorist programs and psychotropic (mind-altering) drugs now decimate our schools.

According to educators, academic, knowledge–based curricula have been jettisoned in favor of psychology that places so-called “mental health,” emotions and belief systems above educational outcomes.

Drugging children with addictive, violence-causing mind-altering psychotropic drugs, particularly in low-income neighborhoods, is the “mental health” currently being employed by the psychiatric mental health industry. The false rationale is, the drugged kids will now be able to compete with children from wealthier families who attend better schools.

Psychiatric drugs and psychological programs have been implicated in increasing child violence. Skyrocketing youth suicide rates have also followed in the wake of widespread psychiatric, drug–based, child programs. Meddling with the brains of children via these harmful and addictive chemicals, and fraudulent “mental health” programs, constitutes criminal assault, and it’s time it was recognized for what it is.

Contact your state legislators and tell them what you think about this.

Alexa Is Listening For Your Own Good

Sunday, April 5th, 2020
Recently I was at my sister’s house and I told a joke that had the word “suicide” in it. Unbidden, Alexa started to tell us how to call a suicide hotline. For a moment I half expected the police to barge in and take me away.

You see, in Missouri and all other states, involuntary commitment “for your own good” is the law.

According to the Revised Statutes of Missouri (RSMo) state law 192.2465, when a peace officer has probable cause to believe that an adult will suffer an imminent likelihood of serious physical harm if not immediately placed in a medical facility the officer may summarily take the person against their will to a psychiatric hospital.

Missouri law euphemistically calls this “civil detention”; also known as civil commitment or involuntary commitment.

There is a religious exemption, so CCHR recommends that you execute a Living Will (Letter of protection from psychiatric incarceration and/or treatment) that expresses this.

Involuntary Commitment

Can this really happen in America today? Can this happen in a country where even criminals are set free if they are not given their rights, where the strongest Constitution in man’s history guarantees the individual his liberties? It not only can, but it does. The fact is, more than 1.5 million U.S. citizens per year become the next victim of involuntary incarceration in a psychiatric hospital, forced to undergo dangerous and harmful treatments against their will. And there’s nothing they can do about it.

This less-than-charitable “concern for the troubled individual” yields the psychiatric industry upwards of $25 billion per year. And it is ultimately financed by the unwitting taxpayer who, more likely than not, has never even heard of involuntary commitment procedures.

While involuntary commitment laws enrich the psychiatric industry, they not only deprive individuals of their freedom of choice, but milk millions of health insurance dollars annually from private, state, national and military health plans. And while psychiatrists and psychiatric hospitals are today being investigated nationally and in state hearings for insurance fraud, mistreatment of patients, sexual violations and other crimes, the crux of their power — involuntary commitment laws — receives no focused attention.

Contact your state legislators and tell them what you think about this.

For more information download and read the full CCHR reportInvoluntary Psychiatric Commitment — A Crack In The Door Of Constitutional Freedoms“.
Involuntary Commitment