Posts Tagged ‘TMS’

Treatment Resistant Depression is Apparently a Thing

Monday, February 6th, 2023

Psychiatrists like to fund research studies for so-called “Treatment Resistant Depression” (TRD). They say that if someone has been given antidepressant drugs but their symptoms haven’t improved, they may have treatment-resistant depression.

Of course, the treatments of choice for TRD are more psychiatric drugs, such as ketamine and esketamine (dissociative anesthetics), olanzapine (an atypical anti-psychotic drug) and fluoxetine (Prozac). Some claim that Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT or shock treatment) “work” for this. Of course, all these “treatments” just knock your brain for a loop, so you don’t feel depressed, or much of anything anymore. None of these actually address the root causes for these symptoms, which psychiatrists conveniently forget to tell you.

One study suggests that between 29% and 46% of patients are still depressed after taking antidepressant drugs. Another study claims 20%-60% do not respond to psychiatric drugs. Well, we’ve known for years that not only is there no such “mental illness” as depression, but also that these mind-altering drugs don’t help.

People can, of course, experience symptoms commonly labeled as depression. In fact, there are hundreds of genuine medical conditions which can produce such mental symptoms — each of which has clinical tests and recognized medical treatments which do not involve psychiatric drugs.

While the fraudulent psychiatric “brain chemical imbalance” theory has been debunked for many years, it has been held firmly in place by the psycho-pharma public relations machine in order to sell more harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs. These drugs make patients for life since the drugs do not cure anything and have devastating side effects.

Psychiatrists have known since the beginning of psychopharmacology that their drugs do not cure any disease, and that antidepressants do not have any legitimate medical value. These are just public relations theories to support the marketing and sale of drugs. This is why the words “depressed” or “depressive” occur 77 times in various fraudulent diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in a vain attempt to legitimize this so-called “disease.”

Troubled patients being misled about what causes their problems and being told that they need to take a psychotropic drug to “correct” this is a form of coercion. Giving patients such misinformation prevents their making an informed decision and has already resulted in many millions of people taking antidepressants or other psychotropic drugs with harmful side effects, erroneously believing these would “correct” something that simply never existed.

These drugs mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future. This is the real reason why psychiatry is a violation of human rights. Psychiatric treatment is not just a failure — it is routinely destructive to the individual and one’s mental health.

If you know someone who has bought into these lies, suggest they investigate non-psychiatric, non-drug alternatives. Contact your local, state and federal representatives and demand that they stop government funding of these drugs.

Magnetic Seizure Therapy – How Unattractive!

Monday, December 14th, 2020

In 1993 a team of researchers from the United States and Switzerland triggered seizures in patients with a magnetic field. They thought this was wonderful, and could lead to a revolution in treatment of various ailments.

Yet competent medical experts warn that seizures are linked to developmental disabilities, learning and behavioral disorders, and many other negative long-term outcomes. The Mayo Clinic advises people to seek immediate medical help if one has a seizure.

Psychiatrists, however, are banking on making a ton of money by forcing vulnerable people to have seizures for depression.

Magnetic Seizure Therapy (MST) is a brain stimulation therapy in which magnetic pulses deliberately induce seizures, similar to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), in patients under general anesthesia.

Like Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), MST uses magnetic pulses instead of electricity to restimulate a precise target in the brain. However, unlike rTMS, MST aims to induce a seizure like ECT does, in the forlorn hope that this would not have all the horrific side effects of ECT.

The claim is that this assault on the brain reduces symptoms from major depression or bipolar disorder in 30-40% of individuals so treated. Well, of course it might temporarily reduce symptoms, since it basically shuts down normal activity of the brain for a period.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t cure anything and never will, while also carrying the significant risks of anesthesia exposure and induction of seizures.

Even the psychiatric billing bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), carries a category for seizures [“Conversion disorder (functional neurological symptom disorder), With attacks or seizures”], for which psychiatrists can prescribe one or more psychotropic drugs. [A Conversion Disorder is a mental condition in which a person has some neurologic symptoms unrelated to a specific disease.]

All competent medical personnel know about the grave consequences of untreated seizures, yet psychiatrists actually promote this as a “treatment.” How do they get away with this?

Seizures are also one of the possible adverse side effects of various psychiatric drugs such as psychostimulants, antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, and lithium. What’s one more so-called “treatment” that causes seizures?

The psychiatric industry has a history of deliberately reducing their patient’s intelligence as a “treatment.” Evidence that electroshock lowers IQ is certainly available. Documented side effects of ECT include lowered intellectual function, with a 20- to 40-point drop in IQ.

Are you beginning to see the pattern here? Since psychiatry cannot cure any mental disorder, they turn to “treatments” which just knock you out so you don’t feel bad any more. Of course, you don’t feel good, either.

Sure, fry your brain with magnetic seizure therapy! Who knows, it may enhance your natural animal magnetism (Not!).

Traumatic Brain Injury

The New ECT – Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

Thursday, April 4th, 2013

The New ECT – Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

In our last newsletter we discussed Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) as an alternative to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in order for the psychiatric industry to continue generating income if ECT were banned.

One can even buy, with a doctor’s prescription, a portable home cranial electrical stimulation device for $695 from Fisher Wallace Laboratories, with a special price of $595 for the military. The doctor, by the way, does not have to be your own doctor; the company will provide someone for $50 who will write the prescription with a phone call.

As if that prospect wasn’t bad enough, we now have Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), the new horizon of psychiatric brutality, for use when other psychiatric methods have failed. TMS is recommended for those who are squeamish about getting ECT.

Guess what — none of these psychiatric methods have failed to produce their intended effect — making patients for life and ensuring the continuation of psychiatric profits at the expense of actually helping anyone.

With TMS, a large electromagnetic coil is placed against the scalp near the forehead. The electromagnet used in TMS creates electric currents that stimulate nerve cells in the brain. As with VNS, TMS is experimental; no one knows quite how it works or its long term adverse effects; it is still under investigation, so anyone succumbing to this procedure is in actual fact a research subject, a guinea pig as it were. There is still considerable controversy over its effectiveness, with the psychiatric industry touting miracle cures and pretty much everone else highly skeptical.

TMS is an outpatient procedure that doesn’t require anesthesia, surgery or electrode implantation. A typical course of “treatment” is five 40-minute sessions per week for up to six weeks. The cost can range from $6,000 to $10,000, depending on the clinic and the number of sessions, and is usually not covered by insurance. The cost of a portable TMS machine is around $6,000.

Health care costs are being driven out of control by litigation, malpractice suits, fraud, and the coercive use of psychiatric drugs and other psychiatric methods. Decades of psychiatric monopoly over mental health has only lead to upwardly spiraling mental illness statistics and continuously escalating funding demands.

The many critical challenges facing societies today reflect the vital need to strengthen individuals through workable, viable and humanitarian alternatives to harmful psychiatric options. For more information, download and read the CCHR booklet The Real Crisis in Mental Health Today – Report and recommendations on the lack of science and results within the mental health industry.