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OfflineSterile
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Psychiatry the fraud
    #6885468 - 05/07/07 05:09 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

[url=
youtube.com/watch?v=EwP2PP8CU0Y&mode=related&search=[/url]

[url=
youtube.com/watch?v=-P6_FwpVo_s&mode=related&search=[/url]

:albundy:


--------------------
The Source Of The Force
Is The Power Of The Mind


"if you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove." - timothy leary"
Anno: "-I can do anything with those clouds!"
Annos Tek



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InvisibleClean
the lense
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Registered: 05/11/03
Posts: 2,374
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
    #6885697 - 05/07/07 05:59 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

yep.

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OfflineSneezingPenis
ACHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!111!
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
    #6885815 - 05/07/07 06:32 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I have been saying this on these boards since I got here.

I thought the most interesting point about the first link was that the expirement had gotten out of hand, because they couldn't leave, and eventually had to tell the psychiatrists "Yes, you are right, You have cured me".

Also the second link envelopes my entire stance on psychiatry.

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InvisibleClean
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Clean]
    #6885863 - 05/07/07 06:47 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)
Log in to view attachment

this is a nearly 2 hour documentary on the subject

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Offlinekotik
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Registered: 06/29/04
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Clean]
    #6886079 - 05/07/07 07:41 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

that video was also produced by the Church of Scientology. Nothing against the documentary itself, because I tend to agree with many of the points... but just keep it in perspective


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No statements made in any post or message by myself should be construed to mean that I am now, or have ever been, participating in or considering participation in any activities in violation of any local, state, or federal laws. All posts are works of fiction.

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InvisibleDisco Cat
iS A PoiNdexteR

Registered: 09/15/00
Posts: 2,601
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
    #6886116 - 05/07/07 07:51 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Nice vids, & I'll check that torrent later.

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Invisibleelbisivni
Registered: 10/01/06
Posts: 2,839
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
    #6886767 - 05/07/07 09:55 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Really like that first video, here's some more


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQveNlsSCuE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKZXH7MOwjI - 10.41
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b30iwhEw9ho - 4.25
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sstoa406Oa0 - 6.46

the first deals talks about ADHD, the second psychiatry, and the third antidepressants.


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From dust you are made and to dust you shall return.

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OfflineKickleM
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Registered: 12/16/06
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: elbisivni]
    #6887148 - 05/07/07 10:57 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

So, the argument is that people are inherantly evil? We diagnose schizophrenics because we want to control them?

Hmm.. I'm not so sure I agree with that. My uncle is schizophrenic, and quite often he will call my mother to say his goodbyes because he believes he will die on (insert date here). Humans have to interact. We can not live this nice, isolated life. When a person with schizophrenia is afraid of others, it is very difficult for them to operate.

Our options are limited in such situations. If we have a drug that can bring them closer to 'normal', why shouldn't we put it into use? We should allow what is to happen, to happen? We don't do that with anything else, so why is this the exception?

I don't know if I can buy the psychiatry doesn't do anything argument.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Invisibleelbisivni
Registered: 10/01/06
Posts: 2,839
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
    #6887266 - 05/07/07 11:23 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I lean toward neither pole. I believe mental illnesses exist and that they can occasionally be treated effectively with drugs but that the field of psychiatry, including methods of diagnosis and treatment, are inherently flawed or unsoundly based.

We are too quick to label ourselves or others with mental illness of whatever flavor, and accept or offer treatment in a form I feel is often unnecessary. The interests of pharmaceutical companies is great and I can not help but be suspicious, but I make no claim that they are entirely useless greedy soma manipulating drug pushing bastards.


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From dust you are made and to dust you shall return.

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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: elbisivni]
    #6887313 - 05/07/07 11:32 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I probably lean closer to the psychiatry sucks end of the spectrum, but I am no where near some of these videos. Such an extreme view on either side isn't a good thing (IMO).


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Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Invisibleelbisivni
Registered: 10/01/06
Posts: 2,839
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
    #6887417 - 05/07/07 11:57 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I agree, unfortunately you only tend to hear from those whose views are extreme enough to place them firmly on one end of the spectrum. Or, at least, they're often the only ones given airtime on television, 'publication' on youtube, reporting of in newspapers, etc.


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From dust you are made and to dust you shall return.

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Offlineleery11
I Tell You What!

Registered: 06/24/05
Posts: 5,998
Last seen: 8 years, 11 months
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
    #6887440 - 05/08/07 12:02 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

We all should have the common sense to know that all mental health dysfunctions are from a lack of pills.

If you are sad it is because you have gone your entire life without taking zoloft. Not because you have given your center away to a girl who doesn't like you and need your mind's ass kicked until it creates better perceptions of reality... nope, it's because you never took enough drugs and need to start popping those pills down.

This is the evil face of psychiatry, a drug dealer..... and he doesn't even let you get a good buzz, but the all the negative effects are there

We have stockholme's syndrome you know? We let our kidnappers make us feel bad then ask them to play doctor for us

it's pretty silly

but there is a good and fantastic side to mental health

i just think it rather obsolete and a dinosaur and bureaucrat and a useless middle man, that there are better ways to heal

and i'm a psychology major.

i will say psychology is a completely valid science, it is just that the science will go whatever direction pressures desire for it to go

and if the numbers show that pills make people feel a bit better then that will be done, even if all common sense and reason dictates that there are better ways, if the better ways aren't part of the cash flow, part of the political flow, they aren't going to be implemented as much

it becomes a poisonous dogma


--------------------
I am the MacDaddy of Heimlich County, I play it Straight Up Yo!

....I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow, to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human......
Om Namah Shivaya, I tell you What!

Edited by leery11 (05/08/07 12:04 AM)

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InvisibleClean
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
    #6887458 - 05/08/07 12:05 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
So, the argument is that people are inherently evil? We diagnose schizophrenics because we want to control them?





I don't think that's quite the argument. No one said all humans are inherently evil. Some might believe that, but I don't. I do believe that those who are profiting from the psychiatric drug industry are pulling one over on us. They would rather we're kept in the dark about the real causes of schizophrenia and other conditions, as well as cures that are purely psychological, no drugs needed. I've held this belief long before I saw any of these videos, so the testimonies therein only strengthens it.

This is about the power of the mind.

The whole psychiatric scheme, the way it is set up, strips us of our power over our own minds, and fills that void with literal poison. They tell us we have a disease even though it can't be biologically proven. As it is said in the youtube videos by psychiatrists themselves, there is not one biological test in existence that can totally confirm a "chemical imbalance" or "personality disorder".

They (the profiteers) rely heavily on the authority that we give people with 'PhD' after their name, and groups like the American Psychiatric Association. These so called doctors have us convinced that we can't personally do anything to rectify a problem rooted in our own consciousness without the help of big daddy and his little pill.

In many cases there may not be any sort of physical problem with the patient's brain, but rather their condition could be an affliction of consciousness which could be the result of many different social factors, and the individual's internal mechanisms of coping with their experiences.

There is no "normal". The drug industry would not exist if we all understood that.

Quote:

My uncle is schizophrenic, and quite often he will call my mother to say his goodbyes because he believes he will die on (insert date here). Humans have to interact. We can not live this nice, isolated life. When a person with schizophrenia is afraid of others, it is very difficult for them to operate.

Our options are limited in such situations. If we have a drug that can bring them closer to 'normal', why shouldn't we put it into use? We should allow what is to happen, to happen? We don't do that with anything else, so why is this the exception?





If there is to be any, the answers to conditions that greatly effect the lives of individuals and their families will come when we find the source of the problems.

Instead of doing that, we're treating the symptoms in an incredibly detrimental way. Ever look at the list of side effects for a psychiatric drug? And somehow these are supposed to be good for us?

I believe that conditions such as those put under the label "schizophrenia" are primarily psychological symptoms of the 'schizoid' society that we live in.

Would you agree that life is filed with little axioms where the punch line is "..you may not like it, but that's the way it is." ? Do you not notice all the contradictory messages we are bombarded with from day one of life?

I'll use war as one example.
We "fix problems" by destroying. That's like saying "I'm going to fix my bike today" and then running it through a trash compactor.
Save the forest - Use toilet paper
If you put your mind to it you can think of hundreds of examples which illustrate the conflicted state of our psyche. In my opinion, going through life just blindly accepting these contradictions takes a heavy toll on consciousness.

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OfflineKickleM
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Clean]
    #6887596 - 05/08/07 12:36 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

If someone knows the 'real' reason for schizophernia, I would absolutely love to hear it. I don't deny that there is much that we need to learn. But I also do not deny that at this point in time, I, nor anyone I know, has any better alternative for such a maladaptive trait than drugs. I can not believe that people go through years of schooling with the idea in their head that "hey, let's give people a ton of pills because I can make money off of it." Nor do I think that pills were originally created with this thought in mind. To me, they were created with good intentions, and money got thrown into the mix. That doesn't make the pills themselves evil, but perhaps out of control.

To me, psychologists are the other end of this pendulum. They are looking for the ties between experience and interpretation. The two have to work together. Psychotherapy by itself can be a very time consuming process, and very expensive process. People in general don't have the time nor money for this. Where else are they to turn?

The side effects of the drugs are made well known for a reason. It is your choice whether you feel that these horrible side effects are less horrible than your current condition. And with the percentage of people taking them, it must be a truly horrible condition, wouldn't you agree? The lesser of two evils, in a way.

And no, my life isn't really filled with "you may not like it, but that's the way it is." I am free to think and feel any way that I please. If I were chronically depressed, I would still have the choice of whether or not I wanted to go the meds approach. No one is shoving them down my throat. Blaming a psychiatrist for not finding out the true source, when they are trying as best as they can via biology, isn't the place to blame for peoples willful ignorance.


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Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Anonymous #1

Re: Psychiatry the fraud *DELETED* [Re: kotik]
    #6887777 - 05/08/07 01:57 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Post deleted by Anonymous

Reason for deletion: .


Edited by Anonymous (06/11/17 11:52 AM)

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Anonymous #1

Re: Psychiatry the fraud *DELETED* [Re: Anonymous #1]
    #6887781 - 05/08/07 02:00 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Post deleted by Anonymous

Reason for deletion: .


Edited by Anonymous (06/11/17 11:52 AM)

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Invisiblespiritualemerg
Stranger

Registered: 03/28/07
Posts: 366
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
    #6887992 - 05/08/07 06:00 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Kickle: If someone knows the 'real' reason for schizophernia, I would absolutely love to hear it.

Try here: How to Produce an Acute Schizophrenic Break

I don't deny that there is much that we need to learn. But I also do not deny that at this point in time, I, nor anyone I know, has any better alternative for such a maladaptive trait than drugs.

Quote:

"...85% of our clients (all diagnosed as severely schizophrenic) at the Diabasis center not only improved, with no medications, but most went on growing after leaving us."

Dr. John Weir Perry, Diabasis & Jungian Therapy




Quote:

... Ongoing research shows that over 80% of those treated with the approach return to work and over 75% show no residual signs of psychosis. Official government statistics comparing 22 health districts in Finland found that Dr. Seikulla's district was the only one not to have any new chronic hospital patients in a two year period ...

Dr. Jaakko Seikkula & Open Dialogue Treatment




I can not believe that people go through years of schooling with the idea in their head that "hey, let's give people a ton of pills because I can make money off of it." Nor do I think that pills were originally created with this thought in mind. To me, they were created with good intentions, and money got thrown into the mix. That doesn't make the pills themselves evil, but perhaps out of control.

The majority of my online time is spent talking with individuals who have undergone the experience known as psychosis and/or schizophrenia in this culture and those who treat them -- namely, psychiatrists and psychologists. You would be amazed by the number of professionals I encounter who believe that there is no cure for schizophrenia. They believe this because a.) that's what their textbooks and professors told them; b.) they worked damned hard and put out a lot of money to become a psychologist or psychiatrist; and, c.) they want to believe they received the best education.

Quote:

I once asked a clinicial psychologist with thirty years of experience under his belt if he had ever heard of anyone recovering from psychosis without neuroleptic medication.

"No," he said. "Not personally."





That, in a nutshell, is why most professionals behave the way they do -- they don't know anything better because they've never been exposed to anything better. It's worth noting, they sometimes don't want to hear about anything better either.

If you want more information I suggest you check out my blog linked below: Spiritual Recovery. And for the record, no, I'm not a scientologist -- I don't even know any. What I am is someone who has gone through the experience known as schizophrenia and/or psychosis in this culture. My "break" occurred roughly five years ago. Using the language of psychiatry the prodromal phase lasted about 14 months; the break itself lasted about six weeks; it was 14 more months before I was able to return to work in a part-time position only. I've now been working full-time for about three years, my relationships are all stable and by all apparent measurements, I am well. I have made a full recovery without hospitals, doctors, medication, or therapy. I grant that's not going to happen for everyone -- people are different -- but it's good to know that it can and does happen. Chances are it's more likely to happen in a developing nation.

Quote:

Most Americans are unaware that the World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly found that long-term schizophrenia outcomes are much worse in the USA and other developed countries than in poor ones such as India and Nigeria, where relatively few patients are on anti-psychotic medications. In undeveloped countries, nearly two-thirds of schizophrenia patients are doing fairly well five years after initial diagnosis; about 40% have basically recovered. But in the USA and other developed countries, most patients become chronically ill. The outcome differences are so marked that WHO concluded that living in a developed country is a strong predictor that a patient will never fully recover.

Source: Understanding Recovery

See also: Mental Breakdown as Healing






Music of the Hour: Vincent


.


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~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis

Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 06:22 AM)

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Invisiblebadchad
Mad Scientist

Registered: 03/02/05
Posts: 13,376
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
    #6887993 - 05/08/07 06:01 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

There is a lot more to psychiatry than treating patients. It involves the study of the mind and human behavior.


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...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge.  It is an indellible experience; it is forever known.  I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did.

Smith, P.  Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27.

...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely.

Osmond, H.  Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436

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InvisibleClean
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Registered: 05/11/03
Posts: 2,374
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
    #6888033 - 05/08/07 06:28 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Kickle said:
I can not believe that people go through years of schooling with the idea in their head that "hey, let's give people a ton of pills because I can make money off of it."




That's not exactly what I was trying to say. I tend to believe that most who are receiving psychiatric schooling genuinely want to help people. However, when I look at the roots and blossoming period of psychiatry in the late 19th and early 20th century, and those who built the foundations of the current system of psychiatric education, I see less than altruistic motivations at work.
Before mass proliferation of pills psychiatrists were using brute force methods of physical trauma to alter a person's behavior. Done in a medical setting this kind of behavior is more frightening to me than some random sicko torturing people in their basement. These guys put on lab coats and hid behind the assumed authority of science and got away with it.

And they had ample financial backing all the way.

Quote:

Kickle said
Nor do I think that pills were originally created with this thought in mind. To me, they were created with good intentions, and money got thrown into the mix. That doesn't make the pills themselves evil, but perhaps out of control.




I disagree. Money was not just thrown into the mix... it all started with money. None of it would have gotten off the ground were it not for some rich families giving large sums to institutions for the explicit purpose of advancing psychiatry.

These financiers were wealthy enough to have their hands in a few honey pots. Like pharmecuticals and higher education. Of course, all the money flowed through Foundations, a very convenient way to put a humanitarian face on things.

There was a concerted effort to fund institutions to carry out experiments and teach the techniques which would result in the demand for more drugs. A nice little racket that remains firmly in place to this day.

Quote:

Kickle said:
Psychotherapy by itself can be a very time consuming process, and very expensive process. People in general don't have the time nor money for this. Where else are they to turn?




To themselves, for one. I understand that this is a huge step for someone to take, and I don't blame anyone for not taking it.

This article is by a woman who got sick of painful hospital experiences and toxic drugs. She decided to step up and take a little responsibility for her own health and started to shift her awareness inwards, to notice patterns which she felt were affecting her condition.

here's a quote from the end of the article, but the whole thing is worth reading.
Quote:

While I know that I have a predisposition towards "manic-depression", I also know that I have some control over this process; I do not have to live in fear of the erratic whims of my biochemistry. Nor do I have to spend my life taking a dangerous drug. I have embarked upon an exciting process of self discovery through taking charge of my problem. I have gained an acute awareness of the subtle ways that my environment affects me and I have learned that I can control many factors which cause changes in my mood. Studying the interaction between mind and body has become a fascination to me. And it is my hope that scientists will begin to look more closely into the body/mind link, and that more humane, health promoting rather than symptom masking treatments will be developed for people with "mental" illness.




They can also turn to others who are willing to help in a truly compassionate manner, such as those involved with the Soteria project

Quote:

Basically, the Soteria method can be characterized as the 24 hour a day application of interpersonal phenomenologic interventions by a nonprofessional staff, usually without neuroleptic drug treatment, in the context of a small, homelike, quiet, supportive, protective, and tolerant social environment. The core practice of interpersonal phenomenology focuses on the development of a nonintrusive, noncontrolling but actively empathetic relationship with the psychotic person without having to do anything explicitly therapeutic or controlling. In shorthand, it can be characterized as "being with," "standing by attentively," "trying to put your feet into the other person's shoes," or "being an LSD trip guide" (remember, this was the early 1970s in California). The aim is to develop, over time, a shared experience of the meaningfulness of the client's individual social context-current and historical. Note, there were no therapeutic "sessions" at Soteria. However, a great deal of "therapy" took place there as staff worked gently to build bridges, over time, between individuals' emotionally disorganized states to the life events that seemed to have precipitated their psychological disintegration. The context within the house was one of positive expectations that reorganization and reintegration would occur as a result of these seemingly minimalist interventions.




Quote:

Kickle said:
The side effects of the drugs are made well known for a reason. It is your choice whether you feel that these horrible side effects are less horrible than your current condition. And with the percentage of people taking them, it must be a truly horrible condition, wouldn't you agree? The lesser of two evils, in a way.




Some people would prefer no evil and instead want real solutions, like the woman I mentioned above. This bogus choice between "evil" and "lesser evil" that we see in many different arenas is a perfect example of the contradictary messages we have conditioned ourselves to accept.

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Invisiblespiritualemerg
Stranger

Registered: 03/28/07
Posts: 366
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
    #6888051 - 05/08/07 06:38 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Clean: This article is by a woman who got sick of painful hospital experiences and toxic drugs.

Great link.  I'll be coming back to read all of them when I have a little more time.  Thanks for sharing! :thumbup:


.


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~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis

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InvisibleClean
the lense
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Registered: 05/11/03
Posts: 2,374
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
    #6888054 - 05/08/07 06:44 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

You're welcome. I do hope folks will check those links... some eye opening stuff there if you actually read.

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Invisiblespiritualemerg
Stranger

Registered: 03/28/07
Posts: 366
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
    #6888094 - 05/08/07 07:15 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I am familiar with some of the material, i.e., Soteria House. Mosher is a terrific example of what "good" psychiatry can be.

Quote:

Dr. Mosher was the first Chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia at the National Institute of Mental Health. He founded the Schizophrenia Bulletin and for ten years he was its Editor-in-Chief.

Mosher points out that the kind of therapy dispensed at Soteria House differed profoundly from the work that went on at the famous Chestnut Lodge psychiatric hospital in the '50s and '60s. There psychiatrists had tried to cure patients with traditional Freudian-style psychotherapy. "I'm fond of saying psychosis does not fit the 50-minute hour -- because it goes on 24 hours," Mosher says. "So you ought to conform your treatment to fit the problem." Rather than scheduling specific sessions with their charges, the Soteria staff members made a commitment to be available every moment of the schizophrenic residents' waking hours. Mosher says the overall feeling had much in common with the "moral treatment" asylums that appeared in America in the first half of the 1800s. Small, humane, and pleasant environments, these institutions promoted the concept that many lunatics could recover their sanity if treated with decency, gentility, and respect. As peculiar as that notion might appear today, Whitaker in Mad in America writes that "Moral treatment appeared to produce remarkably good results." He cites records from five moral-treatment asylums showing that between 50 to 91 percent of their patients were able to return to normal lives in their communities. Such outcomes led one asylum superintendent to declare in 1843 that insanity "is more curable than any other disease of equal severity.…"

Like this man, the staff at Soteria embraced the notion that "recovery from psychosis was not only possible but probable and to be expected," Mosher asserts, adding, "You start there, and you're way ahead of the game right away." And Mosher went further. By the time the Soteria project got rolling, he had come to believe that rather than being an unfathomable mystery, psychosis was an understandable coping mechanism.

He claims that in this way it resembles shell shock. "Men would be in combat and their entire platoons would be killed, and they would survive and be covered with blood and guts. And they would go out of their minds." What such individuals look like as they're ranting and raving "is really no different than what acute psychosis is like," Mosher says. "Except that the [shell-shock victim's] trauma -- the overwhelming experience -- is very readily identifiable. It's right there, easy to see."

In contrast, he says the trauma that drives schizophrenics over the edge "is not often so readily identifiable, and it is more often cumulative, rather than a single event."

Source: Still Crazy After All These Years






Perry also had great success providing round the clock care to individuals undergoing a schizophrenic crisis. This quality of care however should not be confused with the type of care that is available in most hospital settings -- it doesn't mean being there to give a shot if someone gets scared. Rather, it meant simply being present and available to listen or talk if the identified patient requested as much. In both Mosher and Perry's experimental settings, this type of care was provided by paraprofessionals and yet was enormously more effective and helpful than that provided by those with years of clinical training. Love is powerful medicine.


.


--------------------
~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis

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Invisiblebadchad
Mad Scientist

Registered: 03/02/05
Posts: 13,376
Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
    #6888292 - 05/08/07 08:47 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I don't think you would find a psychiatrist who wouldn't endorse psychotherapy and/or approve of it's use.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the means to obtain "round the clock care", and enter a "loving" institution where everyone holds hands and has "feel-good" time together. The real world, and real world psychosis simply doesn't work that way.

If you cherry pick your subject population, selecting high functioning people who are experiencing schizophrenia (e.g. 80% employed, non-drug using, educated, and subjects with extensive social support) of course you will get high success rate.

And here's the issue: Determine how much it costs to send someone to never never land, with round the clock care, where we all immerse ourselves in love and understanding. Surely this will help people, but who is going to pay for it all?


--------------------
...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge.  It is an indellible experience; it is forever known.  I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did.

Smith, P.  Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27.

...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely.

Osmond, H.  Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436

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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Clean]
    #6888729 - 05/08/07 11:07 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

Clean said:
I disagree. Money was not just thrown into the mix... it all started with money. None of it would have gotten off the ground were it not for some rich families giving large sums to institutions for the explicit purpose of advancing psychiatry.

These financiers were wealthy enough to have their hands in a few honey pots. Like pharmecuticals and higher education. Of course, all the money flowed through Foundations, a very convenient way to put a humanitarian face on things.

There was a concerted effort to fund institutions to carry out experiments and teach the techniques which would result in the demand for more drugs. A nice little racket that remains firmly in place to this day.





Everything requires financial backing. Artists, institutions, and psychiatrists alike. Certainly without someone who believed in the idea, it would never get off the ground. From my point of view, when meds became a major hot topic, and the money really started to flow in, over use became an issue. But before then, it was people doing what people felt was best. Like the news reporter, he was using the money to continue to write his story. It was when he finally had a conflict that he got out.

If a psychiatrist believs that medicine is the best way, there is no conflict for them to promote it. And even less reason for them to receive funding to learn more about it. However, I can see the argument that because it started based on this, it was destined to be reliant on it. And perhaps that is true, now drug companies have such a foothold that nothing can be done, and thusly, it did start back with the initial fundings.

None the less, even if that is the case, I can not fault the psychiatrists, as given their situation, I probably would have done the same thing. Without money, research sits dead in the water.

Quote:

Clean said:
To themselves, for one. I understand that this is a huge step for someone to take, and I don't blame anyone for not taking it.





Quote:

Clean said:Some people would prefer no evil and instead want real solutions, like the woman I mentioned above. This bogus choice between "evil" and "lesser evil" that we see in many different arenas is a perfect example of the contradictary messages we have conditioned ourselves to accept.




They are free to search for alternatives, and as your links, which thank you for posting, point out; exist. The story of the lady is a good example of what a person who has the personality to accomplish the changes, can. Not everyone is that lucky. Psychiatry itself might be in a bind right now, but the rest of the population isn't. There are alternatives to meds in every direction I look.

Speaking not from an article, but my own personal experience, there are several situations in which I've been faced with situations of mental health. My girlfriend, whom I've been dating for roughly a year, admitted to me that she has been depressed (suicidal) since middle school. I worked with her for quite some time about what we should do to help her with this problem. The end result was a psychologist who, luckily, was very very good. I went along with her for her first meeting, and observed. Eventually the conversation of anti-depressants came up, and the psychologist mentioned her distaste for meds in general. However, with depression, progress is best made when an individual isn't in a slump at all times. Being on a med, and then undergoing psychotherapy, raises the progress that can be made.

While the study about treating someone humanely having profound effects may have been true, I have found it certainly doesn't work with my girlfriend. Her family is very loving and supportive, as I have met them several times and watched the interactions. I myself love her, and support her at all hours of the day. But there are moments when she will just snap into a dark spell. Nothing anyone says will have an impact. Humor is about as close as I can get. It will receive a smile, perhaps a laugh, but it is immediately back down. Now, faced with this kind of a scenario, it is not difficult for me to see how using meds to raise that base level of emotion is very appealing. None the less, it is the individuals choice.

My girlfriend opted to try and push her way through herself, and I'm very proud of her for that. Excercise is a key, so I try to offer support and take her out hiking or running as often as I can. Every 2 or 3 weeks she goes to see the therapist, and does some psychotherapy. Advances have been made, but she still has her depression. I don't know if she will ever get over it, but all that I know how to do, is hope. It was, and still is, however, nice to know that should things go downhill, the meds are an option. I would rather have my girlfriend on meds, than commit suicide. That is really the bottom line for me, and I think it is also the bottom line for a lot of people.

Talking about these issues is one thing, but living them is another all together.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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InvisibleClean
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
    #6888942 - 05/08/07 12:21 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Thanks for sharing :thumbup:  This is certainly a deep issue, goes right to the heart of what it means to be alive and human.

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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Clean]
    #6889014 - 05/08/07 12:53 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

No problem. I liked this thread, maybe I should frequent this board more often. Very level headed discussion here.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Invisiblespiritualemerg
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: badchad]
    #6889194 - 05/08/07 01:44 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

badchad: Unfortunately, not everyone has the means to obtain "round the clock care", and enter a "loving" institution where everyone holds hands and has "feel-good" time together.

Part of the reason they don't have the means of doing so is because these kinds of environments are simply not available in this culture. The second thing you have to look at is cost -- both Mosher and Perry demonstrated that the costs of the type of care offered by Soteria House and Diabasis were less expensive than that offered in hospital. The third aspect you have to consider is recovery. Mosher produced recovery; Perry produced recovery; Seikkula is currently producing recovery -- the short terms costs of producing "cure" may be more intensive at the start but they pale in comparison to the societal burden of long-term chronicity.

The real world, and real world psychosis simply doesn't work that way.

Back up. Read my post where I note that I am someone who has gone through a schizophrenic break. Continue reading until you reach the part about full-recovery. I know how real world psychosis works and I know full recovery is possible for a lot more than just me. If you're sincerely interested in learning more, I have two blogs packed full of information.


.


--------------------
~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis

Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 04:28 PM)

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InvisibleStickyWater
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
    #6889709 - 05/08/07 04:01 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)


Edited by StickyWater (04/29/08 01:09 PM)

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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
    #6889810 - 05/08/07 04:34 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

pB0t said:
Quote:

kotik said:
that video was also produced by the Church of Scientology. Nothing against the documentary itself, because I tend to agree with many of the points... but just keep it in perspective




Ironically, Scientologists are living proof that mental illness is real.

"Yes, psychiatrists are quacks who only want your money. Instead how about you buy this copy of Dianetics? And for just $299.99 I can test you for thetans using this E-meter! Just sign this million year contract and start giving us money, and you'll be OT level 6 (happy) in no time!"

CCHR = Scientologist = bat shit insane





good debating skills there. CCHR was formed by Scientologists, but is not funded by Scientology. Your unprofessional opinion regarding the mental status of a group that encompasses millions of people is not only immature, but based in complete ignorance of the subject at hand.

Sure, you can keep quoting clambake and xenu.org but it has nothing to do with this discussion, nor does it have any credible information.

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OfflineSneezingPenis
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #6889841 - 05/08/07 04:46 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

also, one of those links had a great line in it.

" it only takes one person to have a physical disease, but it takes two people to have a mental one..."

but if anyone is interested, here is a year old thread that has a huge amount of research hours poured into it. It shows the political ties, and how Big Pharma got the stranglehold on America.My Thesis: Why Americans believe Depression and ADD exist.

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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #6889896 - 05/08/07 05:00 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Quote:

psilocyberin said:
also, one of those links had a great line in it.

" it only takes one person to have a physical disease, but it takes two people to have a mental one..."





:rockon:


--------------------
The Source Of The Force
Is The Power Of The Mind


"if you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove." - timothy leary"
Anno: "-I can do anything with those clouds!"
Annos Tek



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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
    #6889957 - 05/08/07 05:15 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

here is one more link with some very good discussion in it.

http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/5983691/page/0/fpart/3/vc/1

regarding the crimes of the FDA, as well as financial ties of members on advisory panels and the money spent on lobbying by each company.

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Invisiblespiritualemerg
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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
    #6889970 - 05/08/07 05:19 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

psilocyberin -- I have a hunch I may know you from another cyberspace and time. I might be wrong, but if I am, I'm pleased to meet you now.


.


--------------------
~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis

Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 05:20 PM)

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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
    #6889988 - 05/08/07 05:25 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

I have been psilocyberin for atleast 7 years on anything internet related. It is possible.

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Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: StickyWater]
    #6890578 - 05/08/07 07:47 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

Hey StickyWater, thanks for joining into the discussion! You bring up some very good points, some of which I'm going to counter but before I do, I'd like to clarify a few things.

The first is that I have different expectations of different people in regard to the topic of severe mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. When it comes to the average person... most of them have never seen, spoken with, or related to someone diagnosed with schizophrenia. As a result, they tend to form their impressions of "schizophrenics" via media reports and Hollywood screenplays.

I have a different expectation of professionals within the mental health field. They -- after all -- are often the only advocate an individual may have. In spite of this, many professionals have never seen, spoken with, or related to someone diagnosed with schizophrenia. This is especially true of those in the field of psychology; they tend to leave "the schizophrenics" to the psychiatrists because they operate from the belief that psychosis requires medication, a prescription privilege that most psychologists do not have. As a result, they tend to form the same impressions of "schizophrenics" as the average person but if they perpetuate those myths, it's more damaging because it carries the weight of educational credentials behind it. Anyway, that describes a little bit of my approach to such matters.

StickyWater: There was a guy living down the street from me in a halfway house where I used to live, he was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and paranoid schitzophrenia.

There is a misperception there that I feel it's necessary to address, although I recognize that you didn't put it there. I'll borrow on some words to do so...

Quote:

Contrary to popular misunderstanding the term "schizophrenia" does not refer to multiple personality syndrome. The Greek etymology of the word actually means broken soul or broken heart.

Source: When the Dream Becomes Real




Nicest guy you'll ever meet, just not very bright and almost child-ish in his level of trust, and the way he understood the world.

Some of the nicest, kindest, wisest, most compassionate, and most wounded people I've ever met have been diagnosed schizophrenics. I realize that there is a subset of those with this disorder who are violent and act out, but they are very much in the minority. Most schizophrenics are not violent; if anything, they are too empathic. I associate this with the lack of ego barriers. It can be very difficult for a person undergoing this experience to determine where they end and the other begins; as a result, if you are in pain, they tend to feel it. This depth of empathic intimacy does not invite violence or brutality.

I mean he says and does weird things, but it's because he never mentally matured, not because he's sick. He didn't break a store window because he was sick, he broke it because he was angry at the guy and simply doesn't know how to react to it. He throws a fit, like a kid, then he goes and sits on a bench looking really grumpy for about an hour.

According to mainstream psychiatry, all forms of schizophrenia are rooted in a biological counterpart. Yet, if you talk to these people and you're open enough to hear what they have to say -- to the extent that they'll trust you enough to tell you -- it doesn't take much to figure out why they "went crazy". Schizophrenia is a very human experience; a background in trauma theory and depth psychology can be helpful.

But if you actually talk to him, and don't just look down on him when you notice he's slow, and don't get annoyed when he keeps asking for cigarettes or change (I mean he's pretty much homeless, he can't help it) he's the nicest guy ever. Except when he goes to the hospital for his meds then disappears for 3 days, comes back still fucked up and rolls around on the road talking to the sun.

What you are describing is a condition of chronicity and that's what disturbs and saddens me, because I believe that chronicity is created by the societal response and treatment of those deemed to be schizophrenic in this society. The recovery rate from schizophrenia is as high as 90% in some cultures. Here in the west, schizophrenics are too often told that they are incurable and that's what they become. This is not the way it needs to be.

I'm going to close this post with a piece of music that was shared with me by a young man who was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. I wandered into his blog more than a year ago. I wish I could share that space with the rest of you because it was brilliant, funny, raw, beautiful, and so very fucking human -- Where others saw a schizophrenic, I saw a mystic... The following song featured there roughly a year ago. It doesn't apply anymore because that individual has recovered and moved on. What he did is possible for most every "schizophrenic" out there.


Quote of the Hour: A schizophrenic is no longer schizophrenic when they feel understood by someone else. -- Carl Jung


Music of the Hour: Creep


See also:
  • A Conversation With Dr. John Weir Perry
  • Confessions of a Non-Compliant Patient
  • Loving a Human Being


    .


  • --------------------
    ~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

    Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis

    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 10:19 PM)

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    InvisibleDirtMcgirt
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6890746 - 05/08/07 08:19 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)


    this is mostly responding to Kickle from my post in the pub yesterday, but i'll throw it in this thread...

    When humans first started dabbling in physics and chemistry and astronomy etc we had little in the way to measure what we were studying. We couldn't minimize variables well and therefore we could not understand the nature of cause and effect with whatever it was we were studying. Alot of this pre-science is referred to as alchemy


    SO alot of very intelligent people thought up all sorts of intelligent and creative things to explain the world around them but in scientific hindsight, now that we understand things better, it sounds foolish and often absurd.

    This is what is happening with psychology/psychiatry. Alot of intelligent people are saying alot of creative and insightful things about the human mind but the vast majority of it will all come out to have little more scientific merit than astrology. We are on to something but we are way, way, off in my unprofessional and slightly educated opinion. Its the modern day alchemy



    It is because there is no baseline or "off" measurements for human behavior/emotion.

    There is no objective perspective of humans, available to humans.

    In fact I think the least likely source of an objective perspective of a human is another human who is receiving external (and internal) rewards for giving that perspective. Money has always had the power to subtlety pervert even the most altruistic mind


    I even believe many of those dedicated to psychology/psychiatry rely on it to support their deterministic leaning perspective of reality (you could say the inverse of that I suppose. Saying no to psychology is like saying yes to free will). Thats why I believe psychology/psychiatry more a philosophic study than a scientific/medical one.


    There is no way to even sorta accurately recreate social, biochemical, and physical environments; the environments of a mental state . Isn't that ability to recreate like the foundation of the scientific method?


    I suppose brain chemistry could be referred to as empirical, but whose to say if these are the measurements caused by the problem (emotion/behavior) or are causing the problem or really have little to do with any of it?



    Right now we trying to turn lead into gold by guessing, throwing knives blindfolded, and chanting voodoo curses.


    --------------------
    "And we, inhabitants of the great coral of the Cosmos, believe the atom (which still we cannot see) to be full matter, whereas, it too, like everything else, is but an embroidery of voids in the Void, and we give the name of being, dense and even eternal, to that dance of inconsistencies, that infinite extension that is identified with absolute Nothingness and that spins from its own non-being the illusion of everything."

    Edited by DirtMcgirt (05/08/07 08:32 PM)

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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6890906 - 05/08/07 08:52 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    A Brief History of the Treatment of "Madness"

      One of the first English physicians to write extensively on madness, its nature, and the proper treatment for it was Thomas Willis. He as highly admired for his investigations into the nervous system, and his 1684 text on insanity set the tone for the many medical guides that would be written over the next 100 years by English mad-doctors. The book’s title neatly summed up his views of the mad: The Practice of Physick: Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes.

      His belief -- that the insane were animal-like in kind -- reflected prevailing conceptions about the nature of man. The great English scientists and philosophers of the seventeenth century -- Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, John Locke, and others—had all argued that reason was the faculty that elevated humankind above the animals. This was the form of intelligence that enabled man to scientifically know his world, and to create a civilized society. Thus the insane, by virtue of having lost their reason, were seen as having descended to a brutish state. They were, Willis explained, fierce creatures who enjoyed superhuman strength. “They can break cords and chains, break down doors or walls … they are almost never tired … they bear cold, heat, watching, fasting, strokes, and wounds, without any sensible hurt.” The mad, he added, if they were to be cured, needed to hold their physicians in awe and think of them as their “tormentors.”

      Quote:

      Discipline, threats, fetters, and blows are needed as much as medical treatment … Truly nothing is more necessary and more effective for the recovery of these people than forcing them to respect and fear intimidation. By this method, the mind, held back by restraint is induced to give up its arrogance and wild ideas and it soon becomes meek and orderly. This is why maniacs often recover much sooner if they are treated with tortures and torments in a hovel instead of with medicaments.




      A medical paradigm for treating the mad had been born, and eighteenth-century English medical texts regularly repeated this basic wisdom. In 1751, Richard Mead explained that the madman was a brute who could be expected to “attack his fellow creatures with fury like a wild beast” and thus needed “to be tied down and even beat, to prevent his doing mischief to himself or others.” Thomas Bakewell told of how a maniac “bellowed like a wild beast, and shook his chain almost constantly for several days and nights … I therefore got up, took a hand whip, and gave him a few smart stripes upon the shoulders… He disturbed me no more.” Physician Charles Bell, in his book Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting, advised artists wishing to depict madmen “to learn the character of the human countenance when devoid of expression, and reduced to the state of lower animals.”

      Like all wild animals, lunatics needed to be dominated and broken. The primary treatments advocated by English physicians were those that physically weakened the mad—bleeding to the point of fainting and the regular use of powerful purges, emetics, and nausea-inducing agents. All of this could quickly reduce even the strongest maniac to a pitiful, whimpering state. William Cullen, reviewing bleeding practices, noted that some advised cutting into the jugular vein. Purges and emetics, which would make the mad patient violently sick, were to be repeatedly administered over an extended period. John Monro, superintendent of Bethlehem Asylum, gave one of his patients sixty-one vomit-inducing emetics in six months, including strong doses on eighteen sucessive nights. Mercury and other chemical agents, meanwhile, were used to induce nausea so fierce that the patient could not hope to have the mental strength to rant and rave. “While nausea lasts,” George Man Burrows advised, “hallucinations of long adherence will be suspended, and sometimes be perfectly removed, or perhaps exchanged for others, and the most furious will become tranquil and obedient.” It was, he added, “far safer to reduce the patient by nauseating him than by depleting him.”

      A near-starvation diet was another recommendation for robbing the madman of his strength. The various depleting remedies—bleedings, purgings, emetics, and nausea-inducing agents—were also said to be therapeutic because they inflicted considerable pain, and thus the madman’s mind became focused on this sensation rather than on his usual raving thoughts. Blistering was another treatment useful for stirring great bodily pain. Mustard powders could be rubbed on a shaved scalp, and once the blisters formed, a caustic rubbed into the blisters to further irritate and infect the scalp. “The suffering that attends the formation of these pustules is often indescribable,” wrote one physician. The madman’s pain could be expected to increase as he rubbed his hands in the caustic and touched his genitals, a pain that would enable the patient to “regain consciousness of his true self, to wake from his supersensual slumber and to stay awake.”

      All of these physically depleting, painful therapies also had a psychological value: They were feared by the lunatics, and thus the mere threat of their employment could get the lunatics to behave in a better manner. Together with liberal use of restraints and an occasional beating, the mad would learn to cower before their doctors and attendants. “In most cases it has appeared to be necessary to employ a very constant impression of fear; and therefore to inspire them with the awe and dread of some particular persons, especially of those who are to be constantly near them,” Cullen wrote. “This awe and dread is therefore, by one means or other, to be acquired; in the first place by their being the authors of all the restraints that may be occasionally proper; but sometimes it may be necessary to acquire it even by stripes and blows. The former, although having the appearance of more severity, are much safer than strokes or blows about the head.”

      Such were the writings of English mad-doctors in the 1700s. The mad were to be tamed. But were such treatments really curative? In the beginning, the mad-doctors were hesitant to make that claim. But gradually they began to change their tune, and they did so for a simple reason: It gave them a leg up in the profitable madhouse business.

      In eighteenth-century England, the London asylum Bethlehem was almost entirely a place for the poor insane. The well-to-do in London shipped their family lunatics to private madhouses, a trade that had begun to emerge in the first part of the century. These boarding houses also served as convenient dumping grounds for relatives who were simply annoying or unwanted. Men could get free from their wives in this manner—had not their noisome, bothersome spouses gone quite daft in the head? A physician who would attest to this fact could earn a nice sum—a fee for the consultation and a referral fee from the madhouse owner. Doctors who owned madhouses mad out particularly well. William Battie, who operated madhouses in Islington and Clerkenwell, left an estate valued at between £100,000 and £200,000, a fabulous sum for the time, which was derived largely from this trade.

      Even though most of the mad and not-so-mad committed to the private madhouses came from better families, they could still expect neglect and the harsh flicker of the whip. As reformer Daniel Defoe protested in 1728, “Is it not enough to make any one mad to be suddenly clap’d up, stripp’d, whipp’d, ill fed, and worse us’d?” In the face of such public criticism, the madhouse operators protested that their methods, while seemingly harsh, were remedies that could restore the mad to their senses. The weren’t just methods for managing lunatics, but curative medical treatments. In 1758, Battie wrote: “Madness is, contrary to the opinion of some unthinking persons, as manageable as many other distempers, which are equally dreadful and obstinate.” He devoted a full three chapters to cures.

      In 1774, the English mad trade got a boost with the passage of the Act for Regulating Madhouses, Licensings, and Inspection. Thenew law prevented the commitment of a person to a madhouse unless a physician had certified the person as insane (which is the origin of the term “certifiably insane”). Physicians were now the sole arbiters of insanity, a legal authority that mad the mad-doctoring trade more profitable than ever. Then, in 1788, King George III suffered a bout of madness, and his recovery provided the mad-doctors with public proof of their curative ways.

      Francis Willis, the prominent London physician called upon by the queen to treat King George, was bold in proclaiming his powers. He boasted to the English Parliament that he could reliably cure “nine out of ten” mad patients and that he “rarely missed curing any [patients] that I had so early under my care: I mean radically cured.” On December 5, 1788, he arrived at the king’s residence in Kew with an assistant, three keepers, a straight waistcoat, and the belief that a madman needed to be broken like a “horse in a manège.” King George III was so appalled by the sight of the keepers and the straight waistcoat that he flew into a rage—a reaction that caused Willis to immediately put him into the confining garment.

      As was his custom, Willis quickly strove to assert his dominance over his patient. When the king resisted or protested in any way, Willis had him “clapped into the straight-waistcoat, often with a band across his chest, and his legs tied to the bed.” Blisters were raised on the king’s legs and quickly became infected, the king pleading that the pustules “burned and tortured him”—a complaint that earned him yet another turn in the straight waistcoat. Soon his legs were so painful and sore that he couldn’t walk, his mind now wondering how a “king lay in this damned confined condition.” He was repeatedly bled, with leeches placed on his templates, and sedated with opium pills. Willis also surreptitiously laced his food with emetics, which made the king so violently sick that, on one occasion, he “knelt on his chair and prayed that God would be pleased either to restore Him to his Senses, or permit that He might die directly.”

      In the first month of 1789, the battle between the patient and doctor became ever more fierce. King George III—bled, purged, blistered, restrained, and sedated, his food secretly sprinkled with a tartar emetic to make him sick—sought to escape, offering a bribe to his keepers. He would give them annuities for life if they would just free him from the mad-doctor. Willis responded by bringing in a new piece of medical equipment—a restraint chair that bound him more tightly than the straight waistcoat—and by replacing his pages with strangers. The king would no longer be allowed the sight of familiar faces, which he took as evidence “that Willis’s men meant to murder him.”

      In late February, the king made an apparently miraculous recovery. His agitation and delusions abated, and he soon resumed his royal duties. Historians today believe that King George III, rather than being mad, suffered from a rare genetic disorder, called porphyria, which can lead to high levels of toxic substance in the body that cause temporary delirium. He might have recovered more quickly, they believe, if Willis’s medical treatment had not so weakened him that they “aggravated the underlying condition.” But in 1789, the return of the king’s sanity was, for the mad-doctors, a medical triumph of the most visible sort.

      In the wake of the king’s recovery, a number of English physicians raced to exploit the commercial opportunity at hand by publishing their novel methods for curing insanity. Their marketing message was often as neat as a twentieth century sound bite: “Insanity proved curable.” One operator of a madhouse in Chelsea, Benjamin Faulkner, even offered a money-back guarantee: Unless patients were cured within six months, all board, lodging, and medical treatments would be provided “free of all expence whatever.” The mad trade in England flourished. The number of private madhouses in the London area increased from twenty-two in 1788 to double that number by 1820, growth so stunning that many began to worry that insanity was a malady particularly common to the English.

      In this era of medical optimism, English physicians—and their counterparts in other European countries—developed an ever more innovative array of therapeutics. Dunking the patient in water became quite popular—a therapy intended both to cool the patient’s scalp and to provoke terror. Physicians advised pouring buckets of water on the patient from a great height or placing the patient under a waterfall; they also devised machines and pumps that could pummel the patient with a torrent of water. The painful blasts of water were effective “as a remedy and a punishment,” one that made patients “complain of pain as if the lateral lobes of the cerebrum were split asunder.” The Bath of Surprise became a staple of many asylums: The lunatic, often while being led blindfolded across a room, would suddenly be dropped through a trapdoor into a tub of cold water—the unexpected plunge hopefully inducing such terror that the patient’s senses might be dramatically restored. Cullen found this approach particularly valuable:

      Quote:

      Maniacs have often been relieved, and sometimes entirely cured, by the use of cold bathing, especially when administered in a certain manner. This seems to consist, in throwing the madman in the cold water by surprise; by detaining him in it for some length of time; and pouring water frequently upon the head, while the whole of the body except the head is immersed in the water; and thus managing the whole process, so as that, with the assistance of some fear, a refrigerant effect may be produced. This, I can affirm, has been often useful.




      The most extreme form of water therapy involved temporarily drowning the patient. This practice had its roots in a recommendation made by the renowned clinician of Leyden, Hermann Boerhaave. “The greatest remedy for [mania] is to throw the Patient unwarily into the Sea, and to keep him under Water as long as he can possibly bear without being quite stifled.” Burrows, reviewing this practice in 1828, said it was designed to create “the effect of asphyxia, or suspension of vital as well as of all intellectual operations, so far as safety would permit.” Boerhaave’s advice led mad-doctors to concoct various methods for stimulating drowning such as placing the patient into a box drilled with holes and then submerging it underwater. Joseph Guislain built an elaborate mechanism for drowning the patient, which he called “The Chinese Temple.” The maniac would be locked into an iron cage that would be mechanically lowered, much in the manner of an elevator car, into a pond. “To expose the madman to the action of this device,” Guislain explained, “he is led into the interior of this cage: one servant shutsthe door from the outside while the other releases a break which, by this maneuver, causes the patient to sink down, shut up in the cage, under the water. Having produced the desired effect, one raises the machine again.”

      The most common mechanical device to be employed in European asylums during this period was a swinging chair. Invented by Englishma Joseph Mason Cox, the chair could, in one fell swoop, physically weaken the patient, inflict great pain, and invoke terror—all effects perceived as therapeutic for the mad. The chair, hung from a wooden frame, would be rotated rapidly by an operator to induce in the patient “fatigue, exhaustion, pallor, horripilatio [goose bumps], vertigo, etc,” thereby producing “new associations and trains of thoughts.” In the hands of a skilled operator, able to rapidly alter the directional motion of the swing, it could reliably produce nausea, vomiting, and violent convulsions. Patients would also involuntarily urinate and defecate, and plead for the machine to be stopped. The treatment was so powerful, said one nineteenth-century physician, that if the swing didn’t make a mad person obedient, nothing would.

      Once Cox’s swing had been introduced, asylum doctors tried many variations on the theme—spinning beds, spinning stools, and spinning boards were all introduced. In this spirit of innovation and medical advance, one inventor built a swing that could twirl four patients at once, at revolutions up to 100 per minute. Cox’s swing and other twirling devices, however, were eventually banned by several European governments, the protective laws spurred by a public repulsed by the apparent cruelty of such therapeutics. This governmental intrusion into medical affairs caused Burrows, a madhouse owner who claimed that he cured 91 percent of his patients, to complain that an ignorant public would “instruct us that patient endurance and kindliness of heart are the only effectual remedies for insanity!”

      Even the more mainstream treatments—the Bath of Surprise, the swinging chair, the painful blistering—might have given a compassionate physician like Rush pause. But mad-doctors were advised not to let their sentiments keep them from doing their duty. It was the highest form of “cruelty,” one eighteenth-century physician advised, “not to be bold in the Administration of Medicine.” Even those who urged that the insane, in general, should be treated with kindness, saw a need for such heroic treatments to knock down mania. “Certain cases of mania seem to require a boldness of practice, which a young physician of sensibility may feel a reluctance to adopt,” wrote Thomas Percival, setting forth ethical guidelines for physicians. “On such occasions he must not yield to timidity, but fortify his mind by the councils of his more experienced brethren of the faculty.”

      Source: Robert Whitaker (2002), Mad in America, pp. 6–13.



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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6890932 - 05/08/07 08:57 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Continued...

      For hospitals, the main drawback with insulin-coma therapy was that it was expensive and time-consuming. By one estimate, patients treated in this maner received “100 times” the attention from medical staff as did other patients, and this greatly limited its use. In contrast, metrazol convulsive therapy, which was introduced into U.S. asylums shortly after Sakel’s insulin treatment arrived, could be administered quickly and easily, with one physician able to treat fifty or more patients in a single morning.

      Although hailed as innovative in 1935, when Hungarian Ladislas von Meduna first announced its benefits, metrazol therapy was actually a remedy that could be traced back to the 1700s. European texts from that period tell of using camphor, an extract from the laurel bush, to induce seizures in the mad. Meduna was inspired to revisit this therapy by speculation, which wasn’t his alone, that epilepsy and schizophrenia were antagonistic to each other. One disease helped to drive out the other. Epileptics who developed schizophrenia appeared to have fewer seizures, while schizophrenics who suffered seizures saw their psychosis remit. If that was so, Meduna reasoned, perhaps he could deliberately induce epileptic seizures as a remedy for schizophrenia. “With faint hope and trembling desire,” he later recalled, “the inexpressible feeling arose in me that perhaps I could use this antagonism, if not for curative purposes, at least to arrest or modify the course of schizophrenia.”

      After testing various poisons in animal experiments, Meduna settled on camphor as the seizure-inducing drug of choice. On January 23, 1934, he injected it into a catatonic schizophrenic, and soon Meduna, like Klaesi and Sakel, was telling a captivating story of a life reborn. After a series of camphor-induced seizures, L. Z., a thirty-three year old man who had been hospitalized for four years, suddenly rose from his bed, alive and lucid, and asked the doctors how long he had been sick. It was a story of a miraculous rebirth, with L. Z. soon sent on his way home. Five other patients treated with camphor also quickly recovered, filling Meduna with a sense of great hope: “I feel elated and I knew I had discovered a new treatment. I felt happy beyond words.”

      As he honed his treatment, Meduna switched to metrazol, a synthetic preparation of camphor. His tally of successes rapidly grew: Of his first 110 patients, some who had been ill as long as ten years, metrazol-induced convulsions freed half from their psychosis.

      Although metrazol treatment quickly spread throughout European and American asylums, it did so under a cloud of great controversy. As other physicians tried it, they published recovery rates that were wildly different. One would find that it helped 70 percent of schizophrenic patients. The next wouldfind that it didn’t appear to be an effective treatment for schizophrenia at all but was useful for treating manic-depressive psychosis. Others would find it helped almost no one. Rockland State Hospital in New York announced that it didn’t produce a single recovery among 275 psychotic patients, perhaps the poorest reported outcome in all of psychiatric literature to that time. Was it a totally “dreadful” drug, as some doctors argued? Or was it, as one physician wrote, “the elixir of life to a hitherto doomed race?”

      A physician’s answer to that question depended, in large measure, on subjective values. Metrazol did change a person’s behavior and moods, and in fairly predictable ways. Physicians simply varied greatly in their beliefs about whether that change should be deemed an “improvement.” Their judgment was also colored by their own emotional response to administering it, as it involved forcing a violent treatment on utterly terrified patients.

      Quote:

      Metrazol triggered an explosive seizure. About a minute after the injection, the patient would arch into a convulsion so severe it could fracture bones, tear muscles, and loosen teeth. In 1939, the New York State Psychiatric Institute found that 43 percent of state hospital patients treated with metrazol had suffered spinal fractures. Other complications included fractures of the humerus, femur, pelvic, scapula, and clavicle bones, dislocations of the shoulder and jaw, and broken teeth. Animal studies and autopsies revealed that metrazol-induced seizures caused hemorrhages in various organs, such as the lungs, kidney, and spleen, and in the brain, with the brain trauma leading to “the waste of neurons” in the cerebral cortex. Even Meduna acknowledged that his treatment, much like insulin-coma therapy, made “brutal inroads into the organism.”




      We act with both methods as with dynamite, endeavoring to blow asunder the pathological sequences and restore the diseased organism to normal functioning … beyond all doubt, from biological and therapeutic points of view, we are undertaking a violent onslaught with either method we choose, because at present nothing less than such a shock to the organism is powerful enough to break the chain of noxious processes that leads to schizophrenia.

      As with insulin, metrazol shock therapy needed to be administered multiple times to produce the desired lasting effect. A complete course of treatment might involve twenty, thirty, or forty or more injections of metrazol, which were typically given at a pace of two or three a week. To a certain degree, the trauma so inflicted also produced a change in behavior similar to that seen with insulin. As patients regained consciousness, they would be dazed and disoriented—Meduna described it as a “confused twilight state.” Vomiting and nausea were common. Many would beg doctors and nurses not to leave, calling for their mothers, wanting to “be hugged, kissed and petted.” Some would masturbate, some would become amorous toward the medical staff, and some would play with their own feces. All of this was seen as evidence of a desired regression to a childish level, of a “loss of control of the higher centres” of intelligence. Moreover, in this traumatized state, many “showed much greater friendliness, accessibility, and willingness to cooperate,” which was seen as evidence of their improvement. The hope was that with repeated treatments, such friendly, cooperative behavior would become more permanent.

      The lifting in mood experienced by many patients, possibly resulting from the release of stress-fighting hormones like epinephrine, led some physicians to find metrazol therapy particularly useful for manic-depressive psychosis. However, as patients recovered from the brain trauma, they typically slid back into agitated, psychotic states. Relapse with metrazol was even more problematic than with insulin therapy, leading numerous physicians to conclude that “metrazol shock therapy does not seem to produce permanent and lasting recovery.”

      Metrazol’s other shortcoming was that after a first injection, patients would invariably resist another and have to be forcibly treated. Asylum psychiatrists, writing in the American Journal of Psychiatry and other medical journals, described how patients would cry, plead that they “didn’t want to die,” and beg them “in the name of humanity” to stop the injections. Why, some patients would wail, did the hospital want to “kill” them? “Doctor,” one woman pitifully asked, “is there no cure for this treatment?” Even military men who had borne “with comparative fortitude and bravery the brunt of enemy action” were said to cower in terror at the prospect of a metrazol injection. One patient described it as akin to “being roasted alive in a white-hot furnace”; another “as if the skull bones were about to be rent open and the brain on the point of bursting through them.” The one theme common to nearly all patients, Katzenelbogen concluded in 1940, was a feeling “of being excessively frightened, tortured, and overwhelmed by fear of impending death.”

      The patients’ terror was so palpable that it led to speculation whether fear, as in the days of old, was the therapeutic agent. Said one doctor:

      Quote:

      No reasonable explanation of the action of hypoglycemic shock or of epileptic fits in the cure of schizophrenia is forthcoming, and I would suggest as a possibility that as with the surprise bath and the swinging bed, the “modus operandi” may be the bringing of the patient into touch with reality through the strong stimulation of the emotion of fear, and that the intense apprehension felt by the patient after an injection of cardiazol [metrazol] and so feared by the patient, may be akin to the apprehension of a patient threatened with the swinging bed. The exponents of the latter pointed out that fear of repetition was an important element in its success.




      Advocates of metrazol were naturally eager to distinguish it from the old barbaric shock practices and even conducted studies to prove that fear was not the healing agent. In their search for a scientific explanation, many put a Freudian spin on the healing psychology at work. One popular notion, discussed by Chicago psychotherapist Roy Grinker at an American Psychiatric Association meeting in 1942, was that it put the mentally ill through a near-death experience that was strangely liberating. “The patient,” Grinker said, “experiences the treatment as a sadistic punishing attack which satisfies his unconscious sense of guilt.” Abram Bennett, a psychiatrist at the University of Nebraska, suggested that a mental patient, by undergoing “the painful convulsive therapy,” has “proved himself willing to take punishment. His conscience is then freed, and he can allow himself to start life over again free from the compulsive pangs of conscience.”

      As can be seen by the physicians’ comments, metrazol created a new emotional tenor within asylum medicine. Physicians may have reasoned that terror, punishment, and physical pain were good for the mentally ill, but the mentally ill, unschooled in Freudian theories, saw it quite less abstractly. They now perceived themselves as confined in hospitals where doctors,rather than trying to comfort them, physically assaulted them in the most awful way. Doctors, in their eyes, became their torturers. Hospitals became places of torment. This was the beginning of a profound rift in the doctor-patient relationship in American psychiatry, one that put the severely mentally ill ever more at odds with society.

      Even though studies didn’t provide evidence of any long-term benefit, metrazol quickly became a staple of American medicine, with 70 percent of the nation’s hospitals using it by 1939. From 1936 to 1941, nearly 37,000 mentally ill patients underwent this treatment, which meant that they received multiple injections of the drug. “Brain-damaging therapeutics”—a term coined in 1941 by a proponent of such treatments—were now being regularly administered to the hospitalized mentally ill, and being done so against their will.

      —Robert Whitaker, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2002), pp. 91–96.


    See also: What They Left Behind


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    ~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

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    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/08/07 08:59 PM)

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    InvisibleStickyWater
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6890944 - 05/08/07 08:58 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)


    Edited by StickyWater (04/29/08 01:08 PM)

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    InvisibleSilversoul
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: StickyWater]
        #6890996 - 05/08/07 09:09 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    I miss Phluck. :sad:


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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: StickyWater]
        #6891017 - 05/08/07 09:14 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    On the one hand StickyWater, I'm responding to you with the assumption that you fall into the class of "an ordinary person". Namely, someone who has never encountered someone considered to be schizohrenic.

    On the other hand, you don't fall into that class because you're someone who has. What's more, you actually see the human being there and that sets you very much apart from most people who respond with fear, false perception, stigma and judgement.


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    Anonymous #1

    Re: Psychiatry the fraud *DELETED* [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6891771 - 05/09/07 12:12 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Post deleted by Anonymous

    Reason for deletion: .


    Edited by Anonymous (06/11/17 11:55 AM)

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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
        #6891819 - 05/09/07 12:30 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    pB0t BTW I don't think these debate threads are appropriate for a forum where people are trying to get help and advice. Should be moved IMO.

    Moved where? To a place where people aren't trying to get help, advice and first-hand experience?


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    ~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

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    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/09/07 12:31 AM)

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    Anonymous #1

    Re: Psychiatry the fraud *DELETED* [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6892058 - 05/09/07 02:08 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Post deleted by Anonymous

    Reason for deletion: .


    Edited by Anonymous (06/11/17 11:56 AM)

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    InvisibleStickyWater
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
        #6892162 - 05/09/07 02:59 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)


    Edited by StickyWater (04/29/08 01:07 PM)

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    OfflineSneezingPenis
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
        #6892286 - 05/09/07 04:38 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    pB0t said:
    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    Quote:

    pB0t said:
    Quote:

    kotik said:
    that video was also produced by the Church of Scientology. Nothing against the documentary itself, because I tend to agree with many of the points... but just keep it in perspective




    Ironically, Scientologists are living proof that mental illness is real.

    "Yes, psychiatrists are quacks who only want your money. Instead how about you buy this copy of Dianetics? And for just $299.99 I can test you for thetans using this E-meter! Just sign this million year contract and start giving us money, and you'll be OT level 6 (happy) in no time!"

    CCHR = Scientologist = bat shit insane





    good debating skills there. CCHR was formed by Scientologists, but is not funded by Scientology. Your unprofessional opinion regarding the mental status of a group that encompasses millions of people is not only immature, but based in complete ignorance of the subject at hand.

    Sure, you can keep quoting clambake and xenu.org but it has nothing to do with this discussion, nor does it have any credible information.





    It has plenty to do with this discussion if people are going to present the CCHR/Scientology dogma as a credible source of information without mentioning the source. Also, that millions of people are Scientologists does not make their views any more credible. The fact they call psychiatry a pseudoscience and then turn around and use E-meters and personality tests to convince people that they need help from the CoS is laughable.




    credibility? it is a persons speech that consists mainly of his opinions. To bring Scientology into this is like me bringing The holocaust into this discussion. Merck had financial ties to the nazi party, as well as supplied them with Benzo's and amphetamines, from Action T4 with Friedrich Mauz, Helmuth Ehrhardt, Friedrich Panse and not to mention the head honcho Josef Mengele.
    So if you really want to insert dubious opinions that are non-sequitir, start with those.


    Quote:

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    also, one of those links had a great line in it.

    " it only takes one person to have a physical disease, but it takes two people to have a mental one..."







    Completely untrue, even if a guy in a tuxedo said it. Someone on desert island who has catatonic schizophrenia is still mentally ill.


    BTW I don't think these debate threads are appropriate for a forum where people are trying to get help and advice. Should be moved IMO.







    It would take another person to compare mental normality to. Just because the DSM printed it doesnt mean shit really, especially in the face of the debilitating quotes by APA, FDA, and DEA officials, that question the efficacy, as well as scientifically proved causation of mental illnesses.
    The biggest fundamental flaw to Psychiatry is that it truly believes sanity is measurable.
    Its second biggest flaw is that it adheres to it, and enforces it... all the while ignoring that it is in fact an imaginary line drawn by societal conditioning.
    There is no "Crazy" thought outside the context of society. For me to be mentally ill, someone else has to be mentally healthy by comparison.

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    Anonymous #1

    Re: Psychiatry the fraud *DELETED* [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6892360 - 05/09/07 05:26 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Post deleted by Anonymous

    Reason for deletion: .


    Edited by Anonymous (06/11/17 11:57 AM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
        #6892361 - 05/09/07 05:27 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    didnt watch the videos but alls i have to say about schizophrenia and shit is....

    that schizophrenia is well the way i have it (schizoaffective) its just when your logical mind is fighting your imagination and they both send conflicting messages but your imagination and logic then start to team up but they make some deluded logic about how your imagination makes sense.
    and what others will say are auditory hallucinations to me it seems just like i have better hearing then others and well my imagination always is kinda like is that person yelling at me but really its sjust someone far away beating there kid or some shit.
    i havent had the visual hallucinations without drugs but ive talked to many people who have and it seems to me that its the subconcsious manifestation of your fears that youre ignoring.

    and the bipolar part is just happy stuff happens sad stuff happens... you react to it with more passion then otheres deem apropriate. others would diagnose drama queen you know.

    i got theorys for them all. eatingt disorders. for the bulimia and anorexia it seems to be control issues. cuz i talked to my friend who was bulimic and she was talking about how like her dad was always tryign to control her and shit for until he died of cancer.

    the stress eating disorder is the bodys natural response to stress. it burns more calories when stressed and in nature when condidtions are tough you gotsta eat whenever you can. just happens we always can and thats the disorder.

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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
        #6892388 - 05/09/07 05:42 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    pB0t: This thread is a debate about psychiatry and science; there is no context of advice being provided. Therefore I believe it should be moved to science and technology.

    For you it may be a debate; it's not a debate for me or many of the people I talk to and for many of the people who may read this thread now or at some future point -- it's real life.

    However, that is not to say that there are no good psychiatrists or psychologists out there -- they're out there, but they can be hard to come by. The truth of the matter is that most people in this culture who experience psychosis are going to be brought to the hospital; they're going to be given neuroleptic medication (whether they want it or not); they're going to be given a diagnosis that often cannot be removed from their record even if it's later discovered it's wrong; they're going to be told they have an incurable disorder; and many of them are going to enter into a cycle of chronicity, perhaps in part as a direct result of the "advanced treatment" they have received...

    Quote:

    "The Germans, who invented neuropathology, looked at the brains of thousands of schizophrenics before there were any neuroleptics. And they were never able to find anything. They never reported increased ventricular volume, which at postmortem you can measure quite easily. And they also never reported any specific cellular pathology, and they studied many, many, many brains." He adds that "there are a whole lot of people who don't have schizophrenia and also have enlarged ventricles. And there are people who have other psychiatric conditions who have enlarged ventricles, and there are a number of known causes of enlarged ventricles that are not schizophrenia. So, yes, there is a statistical difference, but it is not specific."

    "On the other hand," Mosher continues, "there are studies that have shown that people treated with neuroleptics have changes in brain structure that are at least associated with drug treatment, dosage, and duration -- and have been shown to increase over time as drugs are given." He cites one "horrific study" of children between the ages of 10 and 15 in which the researchers measured the volumes of the kids' cortexes. "The cortex is what you think with, the part on the outside," Mosher explains. Over time, "They watched the cortical volume of these young people decline, while the cortical volume of the nonschizophrenic controls was expanding because they were adolescents and still growing." The researcher concluded that their schizophrenia had caused the decrease in the subjects. "And yet every single one was taking neuroleptic drugs," Mosher says.

    -- Dr. Loren Mosher






    Quote:

    "I absolutely believed the common wisdom that these antipsychotic drugs actually had improved things and that they had totally revolutionized how we treated schizophrenia. People used to be locked away forever, and now maybe things weren't great, but they were a lot better. It was a story of progress."

    That story of progress was fraudulent, as Whitaker soon found out when he gained new insight from his research into torturous psychiatric practices such as electroshock, lobotomy, insulin coma, and neuroleptic drugs. Psychiatrists told the public that these techniques "cured" psychosis or balanced the chemistry of the brain.

    But, in reality, the common thread in all these different treatments was the attempt to suppress "mental illness" by deliberately damaging the higher functions of the brain. The stunning truth is that, behind closed doors, the psychiatric establishment itself labeled these treatments as "brain-damaging therapeutics."

    The first generation of antipsychotic drugs created a drug-induced brain pathology by blocking the neurotransmitter dopamine and essentially shutting down many higher brain functions. In fact, when antipsychotics such as Thorazine and Haldol were first introduced, psychiatrists themselves said that these neuroleptic drugs were virtually indistinguishable from a "chemical lobotomy."

    ...

    Antipsychotic drugs may cause diabetes, but the FDA still allows their sale. Here's just one real powerful study on this: Researchers with the University of Pittsburgh in the 1990s took people newly diagnosed with schizophrenia, and they started taking MRI pictures of the brains of these people. So we get a picture of their brains at the moment of diagnosis, and then we prepare pictures over the next 18 months to see how those brains change. Now during this 18 months, they are being prescribed antipsychotic medications, and what did the researchers report? They reported that, over this 18-month period, the drugs caused an enlargement of the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that uses dopamine. In other words, it creates a visible change in morphology, a change in the size of an area of the brain, and that's abnormal. That's number one. So we have an antipsychotic drug causing an abnormality in the brain.

    Now here's the kicker. They found that as that enlargement occurred, it was associated with a worsening of the psychotic symptoms, a worsening of negative symptoms. So here you actually have, with modern technology, a very powerful study. By imaging the brain, we see how an outside agent comes in, disrupts normal chemistry, causes an abnormal enlargement of the basal ganglia, and that enlargement causes a worsening of the very symptoms it's supposed to treat. Now that's actually, in essence, a story of a disease process -- an outside agent causes abnormality, causes symptoms...


    -- Robert Whitaker





    You start looking at the history of the treatment of "mental illness" or the history of pharmacology, the CATIE study, financial ties between psychiatry, big pharma and the DSM, and it all starts to make Scientology look rather tame by comparison.


    .


    --------------------
    ~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

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    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/09/07 05:44 AM)

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    Invisiblebadchad
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: DirtMcgirt]
        #6892459 - 05/09/07 06:17 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    DirtMcgirt said:

    this is mostly responding to Kickle from my post in the pub yesterday, but i'll throw it in this thread...

    When humans first started dabbling in physics and chemistry and astronomy etc we had little in the way to measure what we were studying. We couldn't minimize variables well and therefore we could not understand the nature of cause and effect with whatever it was we were studying. Alot of this pre-science is referred to as alchemy


    SO alot of very intelligent people thought up all sorts of intelligent and creative things to explain the world around them but in scientific hindsight, now that we understand things better, it sounds foolish and often absurd.

    This is what is happening with psychology/psychiatry. Alot of intelligent people are saying alot of creative and insightful things about the human mind but the vast majority of it will all come out to have little more scientific merit than astrology. We are on to something but we are way, way, off in my unprofessional and slightly educated opinion. Its the modern day alchemy



    It is because there is no baseline or "off" measurements for human behavior/emotion.

    There is no objective perspective of humans, available to humans.

    In fact I think the least likely source of an objective perspective of a human is another human who is receiving external (and internal) rewards for giving that perspective. Money has always had the power to subtlety pervert even the most altruistic mind


    I even believe many of those dedicated to psychology/psychiatry rely on it to support their deterministic leaning perspective of reality (you could say the inverse of that I suppose. Saying no to psychology is like saying yes to free will). Thats why I believe psychology/psychiatry more a philosophic study than a scientific/medical one.


    There is no way to even sorta accurately recreate social, biochemical, and physical environments; the environments of a mental state . Isn't that ability to recreate like the foundation of the scientific method?


    I suppose brain chemistry could be referred to as empirical, but whose to say if these are the measurements caused by the problem (emotion/behavior) or are causing the problem or really have little to do with any of it?



    Right now we trying to turn lead into gold by guessing, throwing knives blindfolded, and chanting voodoo curses.




    In fact, I would say the opposite is true.

    The huamn genome has just been recently mapped, new imaging techniques are becoming available (fMRI, newer PET radiolabels, more specific compounds etc.). These are allowing us to study correlates of human behaviors at a much more precise level.

    People fear psychiatry and psychology because it doesn't make them feel "special" or like an "individual". In one sense, YES, this is true, but if you take a more general view of humanity we are all very much alike. Our bodies are similarly constructed (in an anatomical sense) and it makes sense that our thinking patterns and neurochemistry are similar.

    People are always wanting "proof". "Proof" of mental illness, that neurochemistry may underlie disease, but this takes time. Excellent links are starting to be found but it's like putting togeher an enormous puzzle one piece at a time.

    You mention "alchemy" and pseudoscience, but many of the links in this thread refer to "spiritual healing" and the "power of love" to handle mental illness. In fact, it is these attitudes that will bring us back to the days when we invoked the power of god to heal all things.


    --------------------
    ...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge.  It is an indellible experience; it is forever known.  I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did.

    Smith, P.  Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27.

    ...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely.

    Osmond, H.  Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436

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    OfflineEconomist
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
        #6892493 - 05/09/07 06:42 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    pB0t said:
    I watched that ridiculous documentary where they did exactly that. I am not even going to address the claim that psychiatry is a worldwide conspiracy bent on world domination, responsible for both the Holocaust and 9/11 because it's absurd.



    Thanks pB0t, I almost wasted some of my life watching that. I simply cannot believe that such claims are made, and I agree with you that they are inherently absurd.

    I did think the video on the Thud experiment was cute, and I completely disagree with the unwillingness of the hospitals to allow the patients to check themselves out, that is clearly wrong and I hope it has been changed in the interim.

    However, I think that psychiatry provides a very real and very important service to the community when it is used in a voluntary way.

    If you, as an individual, are suffering because of a condition that you cannot, for whatever reason, handle on your own or with the aid of simple therapy, what is the harm in allowing someone else to try and aid you? People turn to religious guidance or meditation or mushrooms (there are enough stories of this on these forums alone) all of the time to gain perspective on their own inner struggles. Similarly, if someone wants to approach a psychiatrist, voluntarily, and try their solutions, what is the harm in that?

    The world is already full of beliefs that cannot be readily quantified and yet are widespread (the desire to save endangered species from going extinct comes to mind, there's no direct benefit to anyone from saving a single species from extinction, yet many people participate in it anyway, and much pseudo-science has arrisen around it), so what is the harm in one more such belief?

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    OfflineSneezingPenis
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
        #6893914 - 05/09/07 02:14 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    pB0t said:
    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    credibility? it is a persons speech that consists mainly of his opinions. To bring Scientology into this is like me bringing The holocaust into this discussion. Merck had financial ties to the nazi party, as well as supplied them with Benzo's and amphetamines, from Action T4 with Friedrich Mauz, Helmuth Ehrhardt, Friedrich Panse and not to mention the head honcho Josef Mengele.
    So if you really want to insert dubious opinions that are non-sequitir, start with those.





    I watched that ridiculous documentary where they did exactly that. I am not even going to address the claim that psychiatry is a worldwide conspiracy bent on world domination, responsible for both the Holocaust and 9/11 because it's absurd.

    CCHR was founded by the Church of Scientology, and is an advocacy group that promotes Scientology's radical anti-psychiatry agenda. That is why the CoS is relevant.



    quit with the ad hominems. Advocacy groups promote agendas..... it is what they do. This isnt a discussion about Scientology, it is a discussion about psychiatry. The only reason you would even bring up Scientology is because it has a general negative stigma attached to its name. "Oh, im not even going to watch the video, it was made by those crazy scientologists".
    It is a debating Fallacy.

    Quote:

    To again address Tuxedo man's quote, sane/insane may be somewhat subjective, but the symptoms people suffer are real. At what point does a person have cardiovascular disease? I would guess that it is when their symptoms become threatening or have an adverse effect on quality of life. The same method can be applied to mental illness. (disclaimer: I am not a doctor) Someone who is so depressed they cannot get out of bed and obsess over suicide needs help because their condition threatens their life and well-being, much like a person with clogged arteries.



    See, the difference is that there is real, tangible, testable, and measurable normalcy that can be done on the biophysiology of man. Physical normalcy can be pinned down accurately as a constant.

    The biggest difference though is that when someone dies of heart failure, I can open up their chest and pull out their heart and study it and come to a logical scientific conclusion that his heart was the cause of death. When someone commits suicide, I cant pull out their emotions and come to a scientific conclusion that they caused him to commit suicide.
    The psychiatric community is under the false assumption that the rules set forth by society and the illusory paramaters of morality, righteousness, decency and sanity are a universal constant and that it is human genetics which have become abnormal and unable to fit into the criteria.... when in fact it is our society that needs to be fixed.
    Psychiatry wants you to believe that certain people are genetically predisposed to enjoying life less than others..... and that is laughable.

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    Invisiblebadchad
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6894523 - 05/09/07 05:27 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:

    See, the difference is that there is real, tangible, testable, and measurable normalcy that can be done on the biophysiology of man. Physical normalcy can be pinned down accurately as a constant.

    The biggest difference though is that when someone dies of heart failure, I can open up their chest and pull out their heart and study it and come to a logical scientific conclusion that his heart was the cause of death. When someone commits suicide, I cant pull out their emotions and come to a scientific conclusion that they caused him to commit suicide.
    The psychiatric community is under the false assumption that the rules set forth by society and the illusory paramaters of morality, righteousness, decency and sanity are a universal constant and that it is human genetics which have become abnormal and unable to fit into the criteria.... when in fact it is our society that needs to be fixed.
    Psychiatry wants you to believe that certain people are genetically predisposed to enjoying life less than others..... and that is laughable.




    Psychiatry is like a lot of other sciences, it predicts trends and outcomes. Not everyone who smokes dies of lung cancer, but there is a strong trend towards it. The same is true of cholesterol, high levels are correlated with heart diease and mortality.

    BOTH have a genetic component (Cancer and cholesterol) but this doesn't mean you are "geneticaly programmed" to succumb to either. Psychiatry works in a similar fashion. Psychiatry will never say you are "absolutely destined" or "genetically programmed" to any specific behavior, but it can predict trends.

    Moreover, psychiatry continues to develop new tools and new techniques which are able to get more objective, empirical data and then correlate these things to behavior. Again, this will not be "absolute" but it will predict trends (the same as any other science). In very real sense, we may someday "pull out" why someone committed suicide.

    In the interim,the more likely scenario is we will be able to say it looks like: "X, Y, and Z caused a person to commit suicide but we aren't certain". The specific, EXACT cause of cancer is unknown, but cancer research isn't dismissed as pseudoscience. People have linked cancer to genetics, environmental factors, hormonal levels etc. In the same way psychological disorders have been.

    As far as "rules of society" are concerned I would argue that across cultures, there are in fact constants. For instance, most do not condone murder.

    What is more interesting is "why" particular societies may endorse or engage in particular behaviors. People of different cultures all inherit a group of characteristics passed down among generations. This is why people of a particular ethnicity may all look alike, or have similar physical characteristics.

    Why is it such a crazy idea that particular behaviors may have a genetic basis? Other complex behaviors certainly seem to be inherited, some families inherit artistic ability. Others breed athletes, others breed highly intelligent people. My friend is an alcoholic and an asshole just like his dad.

    Why is it "laughable" that you could inherit a shitty dispostion towards life from your parents? Do you mean to say that you inherit the instructions for EVERY SINGLE physical charactertic from your parents, yet "personality" is 100% independent of genetic influence?

    environmental factors only account for so much.


    --------------------
    ...the whole experience is (and is as) a profound piece of knowledge.  It is an indellible experience; it is forever known.  I have known myself in a way I doubt I would have ever occurred except as it did.

    Smith, P.  Bull. Menninger Clinic (1959) 23:20-27; p. 27.

    ...most subjects find the experience valuable, some find it frightening, and many say that is it uniquely lovely.

    Osmond, H.  Annals, NY Acad Science (1957) 66:418-434; p.436

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: badchad]
        #6894783 - 05/09/07 06:43 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    I think that was a very well thought out post, kudos.

    To expand a little on the last thought; why is it that children from the same parent can vary so much, even in the earliest of years, if genetics play no role in their temperament. Some try to get attention by crying, while others will smile. I never have liked the nature versus nurture argument, because both seem to be very crucial in who we are, and will be.


    --------------------
    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: badchad]
        #6895168 - 05/09/07 08:15 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    badchad said:


    Psychiatry is like a lot of other sciences, it predicts trends and outcomes. Not everyone who smokes dies of lung cancer, but there is a strong trend towards it. The same is true of cholesterol, high levels are correlated with heart diease and mortality.




    Actually, doctors dont research trends, pharmaceutical corporations pretty much do that... the ones who truly make money from it.
    Ask any doctor what you could do to combat high cholesterol and lung cancer and they will all tell you to get lots of exercise, eat healthy, and dont smoke.
    Where as Psychiatrists when asked how to not be depressed will say "You need therapy and drugs".

    Quote:

    BOTH have a genetic component (Cancer and cholesterol) but this doesn't mean you are "geneticaly programmed" to succumb to either. Psychiatry works in a similar fashion. Psychiatry will never say you are "absolutely destined" or "genetically programmed" to any specific behavior, but it can predict trends.




    Correlation and Causation are not the same thing. Trends only show correlation. Also, the difference between physiology and psychology is that there is an observable malfunction, which can be treated, even without known causation. This organ fails, well we will get you another one.
    I would be just as outspoken against western medicine if all they did were throw pills at people based on trends and correlations. People died from heart disease long before cholesterol medication, and will continue to die from it long after...


    Quote:

    Moreover, psychiatry continues to develop new tools and new techniques which are able to get more objective, empirical data and then correlate these things to behavior. Again, this will not be "absolute" but it will predict trends (the same as any other science). In very real sense, we may someday "pull out" why someone committed suicide.



    hmmm, new tools? you mean like shock therapy? lobotomies? putting children on schedule II drugs? Claiming homosexuality is a disease?

    I cant wait for some new gems to cure the world!

    Quote:

    In the interim,the more likely scenario is we will be able to say it looks like: "X, Y, and Z caused a person to commit suicide but we aren't certain".



    right... and is this how science works? "We think X, Y and Z make a quantum computer, but we arent certain, it could be an atom splitter.

    Quote:

    The specific, EXACT cause of cancer is unknown, but cancer research isn't dismissed as pseudoscience. People have linked cancer to genetics, environmental factors, hormonal levels etc. In the same way psychological disorders have been.




    but cancer is a tangible thing. we know how it works, and we can accurately find it and remove it with a pretty good success rate instead of giving them lots of pain pills to ease the pain until they die. "Yes, you have cancer, and you will eventually die from it, so here are some pills that will make it seem like you dont have cancer. have a nice life".

    Quote:

    As far as "rules of society" are concerned I would argue that across cultures, there are in fact constants. For instance, most do not condone murder.



    remember war? man, that was a really long time ago, when at one time the majority of all countries were involved in murder. Oh wait, but that is different right? because society condones it.... so therefor it isnt a mental abberation.
    I get it now. makes total sense.

    Quote:

    What is more interesting is "why" particular societies may endorse or engage in particular behaviors. People of different cultures all inherit a group of characteristics passed down among generations. This is why people of a particular ethnicity may all look alike, or have similar physical characteristics.



    lol... this is like saying language is genetic. I inherited the english speaking gene.
    The way you view reality is shaped by your surroundings, and since the majority of people are surrounded most by their genetic predecessors, it isnt logical to just say that A must Cause B.

    Quote:

    Why is it such a crazy idea that particular behaviors may have a genetic basis? Other complex behaviors certainly seem to be inherited, some families inherit artistic ability. Others breed athletes, others breed highly intelligent people. My friend is an alcoholic and an asshole just like his dad.




    like above, an artistic family is going to have an environment condusive to being an artist, and which traits do you think the family full of artists would encourage in their offspring? UFC fighting or photography? You are not showing anything but coincidence, which isnt even correlation really.

    Quote:

    Why is it "laughable" that you could inherit a shitty dispostion towards life from your parents? Do you mean to say that you inherit the instructions for EVERY SINGLE physical charactertic from your parents, yet "personality" is 100% independent of genetic influence?




    yes. personality is 100% independant of genetics. I am saying that. However there is no accurate way to prove it, so it falls into belief. Which is where it should stay, rather than be considered a scientific finding based on correlation and not causation, and then go forward with legalizing drugs based on these weak assumptions.

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    InvisibleSilversoul
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6895186 - 05/09/07 08:20 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    I have a proposal: Anyone here who opposes psychiatry(all psychiatry) can adopt one of these people who are supposedly not really sick from a mental institution and judge for themselves how healthy they are.


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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Silversoul]
        #6895261 - 05/09/07 08:42 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    and I guess everyone who is opposed to the war should havea person from Iraq live with them?

    Come on people, your arguments are getting weaker and weaker.

    See, im not opposed to psychiatry, I am opposed to it calling itself a science, when it is based almost entirely on correlations and beliefs rather than logic and known causation.

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    InvisibleSilversoul
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6895291 - 05/09/07 08:50 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    I don't think of psychiatry as a science -- I see it as a medical practice. Psychiatrists aren't scientists anymore than surgeons are. It is, however, based on two related fields: psychology and neurology. Psychology is a social science, and thus is not considered as authoritative as one of the hard sciences, but has nonetheless greatly contributed to our understanding of the mind. Neurology, on the other hand, has all the qualifications of a hard science.


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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Silversoul]
        #6895307 - 05/09/07 08:54 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    here is an exercise for some of you.

    define insanity and/or mental illness.

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6895365 - 05/09/07 09:10 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Correlation may not be causality, but it also isn't as worthless as you would paint it. Statistics are used in a lot of the sciences. If they were worthless, I doubt this would be the case.

    However, you are very correct in saying that there is no proof positive that genetics play a role. But all signs I see point to yes.

    Twin studies, especially ones involving those adopted at birth and reared in seperate families, are relatively convincing to me. Twins would be a good way to determine genetic links.


    --------------------
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    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6895391 - 05/09/07 09:14 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    have any studies to show? or are you asking me to take your online word for it?

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6895492 - 05/09/07 09:35 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    I'll find some for you when I have free time. If you can't wait, feel free to look up twin studies on your own.


    --------------------
    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Silversoul]
        #6895601 - 05/09/07 10:03 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Silversoul: Anyone here who opposes psychiatry(all psychiatry) can adopt one of these people who are supposedly not really sick from a mental institution and judge for themselves how healthy they are.

    I'm not opposed to psychiatry, I'm opposed to bad psychiatry. Nor would I be willing to say that people aren't in need of care; my criticism is in regard to the type of care offered and the relationship between the field of psychiatry and pharmaceutical corporations, i.e.


      Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses, a new analysis has found.

      ...

      "I don't think the public is aware of how egregious the financial ties are in the field of psychiatry," said Lisa Cosgrove, a clinical psychologist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, who is publishing her analysis today in the peer-reviewed journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.

      The analysis comes at a time of growing debate over the rising use of medication as the primary or sole treatment for many psychiatric disorders, a trend driven in part by definitions of mental disorders in the psychiatric manual.

      Cosgrove said she began her research after discovering that five of six panel members studying whether certain premenstrual problems are a psychiatric disorder had ties to Eli Lilly & Co., which was seeking to market its drug Prozac to treat those symptoms. The process of defining such disorders is far from scientific, Cosgrove added: "You would be dismayed at how political the process can be."

      Source: Experts Defining Mental Disorders Are Linked to Drug Firms


    I don't think of psychiatry as a science -- I see it as a medical practice.

    If psychiatry is a branch of medicine it's aim should be on reducing harm in favor of producing recovery, healing and cure. This would be a noble endeavor. However, because big pharma drives much of what occurs, we instead have a culture where medication is nearly always the first line of defence; the preferred treatment may be producing, worsening, or prolonging the condition for which the individual sought assistance; and the recovery rate is nothing less than shameful when compared to what occurs in other cultures and settings. To cite but one example...

      There have now been three World Health Organisation studies showing that the outcome for schizophrenia in Developing countries is better than in the Industrialised world. This is extraordinary. How can places without psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, psychiatric facilities, rehabilitation programs, medication and therapies come up with results considerably better than our sophisticated, scientific industrialised world? A country such as the USA spends 1% of its GNP on one illness, schizophrenia, and has results far worse than countries that don’t spend anything!

      How can this be? If it is the case, where would you go to learn about recovery from schizophrenia? Where the best results are, of course. Where do we go to learn or read the latest research? The Industrialised world!

      Source: Dr. Simon Bridge: Roadmap to Recovery


    Earlier in this discusion, a comparison was drawn between mental illness and cancer. If patients' lives were diminishing as opposed to improving, if doctors were producing more cancer than they were curing, would anyone consider that to be "good" medicine?

    Even earlier in this discussion I cited the works of two clinicians -- one a psychologist, the other a Jungian trained psychiatrist -- both of whom had/have a recovery rate in the range of 85% using only minimal or no medication. Given what we know about the short and long-term effects of neuroleptic medication we should be willing to learn from their example. It does not happen in this culture. This culture produces chronicity instead of recovery. That's bad medicine, and it should be criticized.


    .


    --------------------
    ~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

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    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/09/07 10:23 PM)

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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6895680 - 05/09/07 10:18 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Kickle: ... feel free to look up twin studies on your own.


    Here's one.


      Schizophrenia: Medical students are taught it’s all in the genes, but are they hearing the whole story?

      Jonathan Leo, Ph.D.

      Jay Joseph, Psy.D. The abstract and Table 2 have been omitted from the present version. For these, please see the original paper: Leo, J. & Joseph, J. (2002) in Ethical Human Sciences and Services Vol. 4 No1, pp. 17-30.



      INTRODUCTION
      The idea that schizophrenia is due at least in part to a genetic predisposition is seen as an accepted fact in modern day psychiatry. The acceptance of this theory is not only important for how psychiatrists approach the research and treatment of schizophrenia, but also has implications for the entire field of psychiatry. As Edward Shorter, the author of the History of Psychiatry wrote, “Among the most convincing kinds of evidence for a neural origin of major psychiatric illness would be genetic studies” (Shorter, 1997, p. 240).

      The genetic theory of schizophrenia is frequently cited as evidence in favor of a genetic predisposition to other conditions; the thinking being that if schizophrenia is genetic, then depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder and a host of other DSM-IV categories must also have their roots in problematic genes. (By the expression “genetic theory of schizophrenia” we mean the view that although environmental factors might be important, genetic factors are equally if not more important.) Scientists have spent countless hours and numerous resources investigating the role of genes in certain behaviors, but a specific gene has never been found for those disorders which have no known neurochemical or neuropathological markers. In the case of schizophrenia, several scientists have reported finding a “schizophrenia gene” only to eventually retract their findings (Marshall, 1994; Sherrington et al., 1988).

      When citing evidence for the genetic basis of schizophrenia, psychiatry textbooks invariably mention the twin studies and adoption studies. As a group, these studies are one of the most frequently cited bodies of research in all of psychiatry. It is common for neuroscience and psychiatry textbooks that discuss the importance of genetics to focus on schizophrenia, because it is thought to be best example of a “mental illness” that has a genetic component.

      Unfortunately, most textbooks provide only a cursory and superficial review of the evidence supporting the genetic theory of schizophrenia. There are two types of errors commonly found in the standard textbook discussions of this topic. The first is that some of these books misstate the actual data. The second but perhaps more egregious error is one of omission. It is not so much what the textbooks say, but rather what they do not say. Unfortunately, most of these textbooks fail to point out the studies’ significant methodological problems, and fail to mention peer reviewed published critiques of these studies, (Boyle, 1990; Lewontin et al., 1984; Lidz and Blatt, 1983; Pam, 1995). A topic as complex as the etiology of schizophrenia should be presented to students in a fair but critical manner. Students can make sound decisions only by reviewing all the facts, and not just selected information that supports a particular viewpoint. For a first-year student who is unfamiliar with the topic, the way the material is presented will have a large impact on his or her subsequent opinions. If students were exposed to a more in-depth review of the actual data, would the genetic theory of schizophrenia at least be open to more discussion and debate?

      Principles of Neural Science, often referred to as the “bible of neuroscience,” is assigned to a significant number of first-year medical and graduate students in the United States. Its authors are Eric Kandel, James Schwartz, and Thomas Jessell. Dr. Kandel, who won the 2000 Nobel Prize in Medicine, is the author of Chapter 60: “Disorders of Thought and Volition: Schizophrenia.” Kandel’s analysis of the scientific evidence in support of the genetic theory of schizophrenia exemplifies the problems inherent in many textbooks that cover this topic (Kandel, 2000). In light of the fact that Kandel is one of the foremost research psychiatrists in the world, it is interesting to examine the data that Kandel cites in support of his fairly strong statements concerning the etiology of schizophrenia. It would not be an overstatement to say that within the current medical community, the overwhelming majority of practicing physicians and scientists received their introduction to the genetics of schizophrenia from this textbook.

      The purpose of this review is to examine what a Nobel Prize winning psychiatrist thinks is the strongest evidence in support of the idea that genes play a major role in schizophrenia. Kandel does not explicitly say that the environment does not play a role in schizophrenia, but in his discussion of the etiology of schizophrenia there is little mention of environmental factors. On the contrary, he writes, “the only reliable clue as to the cause comes from the finding that schizophrenia is due in part to a genetic abnormality” (p. 1193).

      The three methods most frequently cited in support of genetic factors in schizophrenia are family studies, twin studies, and adoption studies. Kandel says that all three of these methodologies support the role of genetics in schizophrenia. In this article, we examine the data that Kandel presents for each of these approaches and we will also point out the problems with each approach.


      FAMILY STUDIES
      Kandel’s Evidence. The goal of family studies is to determine if a condition is found more often in the biological families of affected persons as compared to the general population or to a control group. According to Kandel, “the first direct evidence that genes are important in schizophrenia was provided in the 1930s by Franz Kallmann.” Kallmann, a German psychiatrist who later emigrated to the United States, noted that while the worldwide incidence of schizophrenia was approximately 1%, there were some instances in which schizophrenia was found in 15% of the family members (Kandel, 2000, p. 1193). At first glance, the finding that schizophrenia is found to cluster in families might suggest a genetic basis for the condition.

      Problems. There is little disagreement that schizophrenia (or any other psychiatric condition) runs in families. The major problem with family studies is that while these studies suggest that schizophrenia does indeed run in families, this does not mean that genetic factors are involved. Traits can cluster in families for purely environmental reasons, meaning that family studies are suggestive at best. This fact was recognized by Kandel when he wrote, “Not all conditions that run in families are necessarily genetic – wealth and poverty and habits and values also run in families” (p. 1193).

      On a minor note, Kallmann did not provide “the first direct evidence that genes are important.” Kallmann’s family study was published in 1938, whereas Rüdin had published a large schizophrenia family study showing similar results in 1916 (Rüdin, 1916). In addition, schizophrenia twin studies were published in 1928 by Luxenburger (1928) and in 1934 by Rosanoff and colleagues (1934). It is also worth mentioning that even before the first family studies were conducted, both Kraepelin and Bleuler (respectively, the creators of dementia praecox and schizophrenia) believed that the condition was hereditary. In 1899 Kraepelin wrote, “An inherited predisposition to mental disturbances was apparent in approximately seventy percent of those case in which data could be evaluated” (Quoted in Boyle 1990, p 118). And Bleuler would write in his monograph that “heredity plays its role in the etiology of schizophrenia, but the extent and kind of its influence cannot as yet be stated” (Bleuler, 1950, p. 337). These views prompted Boyle (1990), a critic of the genetic theory, to write:

      Thus, before any attempt at systematic data collection was ever made, the two most prominent users of the concepts of dementia praecox and schizophrenia were disseminating the view that whatever phenomena they included under these terms were largely inherited (p. 118).

      Apparently, the people who created the schizophrenia concept did not need any more evidence than the behavior of their patients’ relatives to support the view that the condition was hereditary.

      It is also worth mentioning that Kallmann did not make blind diagnoses and, while working in Germany under Nazi rule, he advocated the forced sterilization of people diagnosed with schizophrenia as well as their healthy relatives (Müller-Hill, 1998). After emigrating to the United States Kallmann called for eugenic measures to eliminate the “schizophrenic genotype,” which included compulsory sterilization for “absolutely incorrigible schizophrenics who do not need hospitalization and who may be expected to propagate themselves, even out of wedlock and against medical advice” (Kallmann, 1938, p. 267)

      It is common for people to erroneously equate “it runs in the family” with “it’s genetic.” Kandel acknowledges the problems with the family studies and goes on to discuss other research strategies developed to disentangle the relative contributions of nature and nurture. These strategies involve looking at two groups of people: twins and adoptees.


      TWIN STUDIES
      Kandel’s Evidence. Twin studies are viewed as important because scientists can compare two different types of twins. Identical (monozygotic) twins have the same genotype, while fraternal (dizygotic) twins share on average only 50% of the same genes. If the development of a certain disease is due to heredity, then genetic researchers would expect more of the identical twins to share the disease as compared to the same-sex fraternal twins. When discussing the twin studies, Kandel groups Kallmann’s data and the data from more recent studies together and reports a combined concordance rate of 45% for identical twins, compared to only a 15% concordance rate in fraternal twins. The data seem to provide strong evidence for a genetic basis to schizophrenia, and based on the evidence that is reported most students would probably conclude that the twin studies unequivocally prove that schizophrenia has a genetic origin. However, it is our contention that if students were presented with a more complete discussion of the twin data, they might reach different conclusions.

      Problems. The first mistake that Kandel makes is to group together Kallmann and earlier researchers and cite a combined 45% concordance rate for monozygotic twins. What should be mentioned right at the start is that Kallmann and the newer studies are actually quite different. And more importantly, to critically minded reviewers of these studies it is these differences and not the similarities between Kallmann and the newer studies that have raised concern (Boyle, 1990; Lewontin et al., 1984; Pam, 1995).

      Kallmann did not find a 45% concordance rate; he actually found a 69% rate, which he increased to 86% after factoring in an age-correction (Kallmann, 1946). It was more recent research groups that found a 40% concordance rate. The discrepancy between Kallmann and the newer studies was addressed by Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin (1984) who pointed out in Not In Our Genes that, while Kallmann’s 86% concordance rate validated his theory of genetic predisposition (which he called “hereditary taint”) to schizophrenia, it is difficult to reconcile his findings with the more modest 40% concordance rate found in the newer studies. Thus, the fact that Kallmann found such a high concordance rate makes his data highly suspicious to Lewontin and colleagues. They go so far as to say, “Kallmann’s data have faded from the body of acceptable evidence, but the belief for which he was largely responsible – that a genetic basis for schizophrenia has been clearly established- still remains powerful in and out of science” (pp. 212-213). Anyone writing a review that supports the genetic theory of schizophrenia faces a dilemma with the Kallmann data: Should it be included or rejected? Kandel’s chapter is an example of the problems one faces when Kallmann’s data is included.

      Kallmann aside, the validity of the twin method is based on the assumption that identical twins do not have more similar environments then fraternal twins. The equal environment assumption (EEA) is critical for the twin method because if identical twins are treated more alike than fraternal twins, then any difference in the concordance rates between the two types of twins could be attributed to the environment.

      One way of judging the validity of the EEA is to compare fraternal twins to non-twin siblings since, in terms of their genetic makeup, fraternal twins are no more alike than non-twin siblings. Therefore, any difference in the rate of schizophrenia between fraternal twins and siblings must be due to something other than genes. According to genetic theory, if a fraternal twin develops a condition, his or her co-twin should have just as much chance of developing it as their other brothers and sisters. If the fraternal twins show an increased chance of developing the condition compared to the non-twin siblings, then this constitutes strong evidence of an environmental effect. If the data show that fraternal twins do indeed share a more similar environment than the non-twin siblings, then what about the identical twins? If the equal environment assumption is wrong and the identical twins share a more similar environment than fraternal twins, then the theoretical basis of the twin method is faulty (Jackson, 1960; Joseph, 2001c).

      In fact, Kandel acknowledges the importance of EEA and also the importance of the comparison between the non-twin siblings and the dizygotic twins. He defends the validity of the EEA by claiming that fraternal twins have a 15% concordance rate, which he states is the same as that found between non-identical twins and the other siblings. This evidence would seem to support the validity of the EEA, but it is not that simple.

      The data showing no difference in the concordance rate between fraternal twins and siblings are from Franz Kallmann, who reported an age-corrected fraternal “morbidity” rate of 14.7% and a full-sibling concordance rate of 14.3% (Kallmann, 1946, p. 313). As we mentioned earlier, there are significant problems with Kallmann’s data and at this point the reader is probably asking, why even include the Kallmann data? It is suspicious, it is over five decades old, and newer data supposedly prove the genetic theory of schizophrenia anyway. One reason for citing Kallmann in support of the EEA is because he is the only twin researcher whose data support the EEA. In fact, every twin investigator besides Kallmann that has compared the concordance rates between fraternal twins and siblings found the rate to be higher in the fraternal twins (Fischer, 1973; Gottesman and Shields, 1972; Kringlen, 1967; Luxenburger, 1928; Slater, 1953).

      It is problematic to cite Kallmann in support of the EEA and students would probably think differently about its validity if they were told the following: 1) six twin investigators have compared the concordance rates between fraternal twins and non-twin siblings; 2) the only investigator who found similar rates was Franz Kallmann; 3) the other five investigators found that the fraternal twins had a higher concordance rate compared to the non-twin siblings; and 4) two of the investigators found statistically significant differences between these two groups (See table 1).

      Thus Kallmann is the odd man out here and his numbers are not a fair representation of the overall data. Furthermore, Kallmann himself reported data that is not supportive of the EEA. Contemporary reviewers almost never mention that Kallmann’s fraternal same-sex twins had a 12% concordance rate, versus a 6% rate in his fraternal opposite-sex pairs. The difference, in fact, is statistically significant and it argues strongly against the validity of the EEA (Joseph, 1998). It only seems fair that if we reject Kallmann’s concordance rate of 86% found in identical twins, then we should likewise reject his findings when it comes to the discussion of the fraternal twins versus siblings. We should not pick and choose which numbers support the position we want, especially when we are presenting the material to students. Even if the Kallmann data is not rejected, it seems fair to point out to students that his data is not typical of the twin studies.

      The issue becomes even more complicated because Kandel reproduces a table from Gottesman (1991) which is inconsistent with the EEA. According to Gottesman’s table, the fraternal twin of a person diagnosed with schizophrenia has a 17% chance of receiving the diagnosis, whereas the non-twin sibling of a person diagnosed with schizophrenia has only a 9% chance (see table 2). Thus, the very data that Kandel reproduces in his textbook demonstrates the fallacy of the EEA and contradicts his earlier statement that dizygotic twins and non-twin siblings have the same concordance rate.
      If fraternal twins have an increased rate of schizophrenia compared to their non-twin siblings, what might account for this? A plausible explanation is that they share a more similar environment and emotional bond than siblings. Furthermore, the increased rate of schizophrenia found in monozygotic twins could then be explained by their more similar environments when compared with fraternals. Since Kandel has acknowledged the importance of the equal environment assumption to the study of twins, and given the fact that the data do not support the validity of the EEA, it is evident that the schizophrenia twin studies are flawed.

      In summary, the methodological problems with the schizophrenia twin studies indicate that they do not provide evidence of a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia. Kandel even mentions that “the high concordance rate in identical twins is still insufficient evidence for a genetic basis for schizophrenia” (p. 1193). We agree with Kandel that the twin studies are insufficient and do not prove that schizophrenia is genetic. To overcome the problems inherent in twin studies, researchers have looked at adoptees.


      ADOPTION STUDIES
      Kandel’s Evidence. The first adoption study that Kandel cites was conducted by Leonard Heston in 1966. According to Kandel, Heston began with adoptees who were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Since Kandel only briefly mentions Heston’s paper we will not discuss it in detail other than to point out that Heston did not start with adoptees who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, as Kandel reports. Heston actually started with women diagnosed with schizophrenia who had given up a child for adoption (Heston, 1966).

      The most convincing evidence for Kandel (and many others) that schizophrenia has an important genetic component comes from the work of Seymour Kety, David Rosenthal, Paul Wender, and their Danish colleagues, who examined adoptees in Denmark. There are several variations on these adoption studies, but the one that Kandel focuses on involved finding people who grew up as adopted children and were later diagnosed with a “schizophrenia spectrum disorder.” The goal was to then examine the rate of schizophrenia spectrum disorders among these adoptees’ biological family members (whom they did not grow up with) and compare that rate to the rate among the biological relatives of control adoptees, who were not diagnosed with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder.

      The most important papers from the Danish-American adoption studies were published in 1968 and 1975 with Seymour Kety as the lead author. The 1968 study was based entirely on institutional records (Kety et al., 1968). The 1975 study used the same index and control adoptees (plus one additional control adoptee) from the 1968 study but the investigators added the additional step of attempting to interview as many adoptive and biological relatives as possible (Kety et al., 1975). Because Kandel’s chapter primarily focuses on the 1975 study, in the interest of uniformity we will primarily discuss the Kety and colleagues 1975 study.

      Kandel presents a table claiming that 14% of the biological relatives were diagnosed with schizophrenia, while only 3.4% of the control relatives were so diagnosed (Kandel, 2000, table 60-1, p. 1194). If this evidence is valid, and if the study is otherwise methodologically sound, it makes a strong case for the role of genes in schizophrenia. In Kandel’s words, “In addition to documenting the importance of genetic factors in schizophrenia, these studies of adoptees in whom schizophrenia developed showed that rearing does not play a major role in the disease” (p. 1194). But is the evidence valid?

      Problem #1: The widening of the schizophrenia spectrum. The only way that Kety et al. could diagnose 14% of the biological relatives with schizophrenia was to greatly broaden the definition of schizophrenia to include diagnoses such as “latent schizophrenia,” “uncertain latent schizophrenia,” and “inadequate personality.” Kandel claims that these categories are “thought to be a mild form of the disease, a nonpsychotic condition related to schizophrenia” (p. 1194). But why should these cases be included in the overall totals when there is little evidence that chronic schizophrenia and the spectrum disorders are genetically related (Joseph, 2001a)? Kandel also claims, on the basis of family studies, that “odd” people are found among the relatives of people diagnosed with schizophrenia: “they are socially isolated, have poor rapport with people, ramble in their speech, tend to be suspicious, have eccentric beliefs, and engage in magical thinking” (p. 1194). The claim that “odd” people are found among the relatives of people diagnosed with schizophrenia means little, and was often made on basis of non-blind diagnoses by investigators devoted to the genetic position. In addition, it could just as easily be the result of the negative psychological and social environments experienced by family members. The fallacy here is that correlation is seen as being directly related to genetic causation, when there is little evidence to support this view.

      If one limits the comparison to cases of chronic schizophrenia among the Kety et al. 1975 biological relatives, one is left with 5 cases of chronic schizophrenia among the 173 biological relatives of index adoptees (2.9%) and zero cases of chronic schizophrenia among the 174 biological relatives of control adoptees. Yet, 5 cases of chronic schizophrenia out of a group of 173 individuals (2.9%) is not much higher then the general population rate of 1% (Joseph, 2001b).

      Problem #2: Misleading statistics. To some students even a 2.9% rate among these biological relatives compared to 0% in the controls would still seem important. This 2.9% index biological relative chronic schizophrenia rate serves as a demonstration of how statistics can be deceiving, since 4 of these 5 were half-siblings (second degree relatives). The problem is that genetic theory would predict that first-degree relatives would have a higher rate, but Kety’s research team found precisely the opposite result. In fact, all of the major conclusions from the 1968 and 1975 studies depended on counting second-degree relatives. Benjamin (1976), one of the early critics of the adoption studies, noted that “this finding is peculiar and contradictory. It shows, in effect, that the less consanguinity, the greater the ‘genetic’ effect. Differences should be weakest, not strongest, in the half sibling category” (p. 1131). Even behavior geneticists Gottesman and Shields (1976) commented that “genetic theory predicts a much higher risk for full siblings” (p.370). And finally, David Rosenthal, one of the co-authors of the Kety et al. adoption study, stated in an earlier paper that in order to “demonstrate that genes have anything to do with schizophrenia” the investigator must show that “the frequency of schizophrenia in relatives of schizophrenics [is] positively correlated with the degree of blood relationship to the schizophrenic index cases” (Rosenthal, 1974, p. 589).

      Kandel further complicates the issue by again citing Gottesman’s 1991 table (see table 2). Kandel uses this table to show that data from ordinary family studies indicate that the incidence of schizophrenia is higher in first-degree relatives than among second-degree relatives. Kandel summarizes the importance of this table by saying “These data strongly support a genetic contribution to schizophrenia.” On the one hand Kandel is acknowledging that a genetically based condition would be expected to appear more often in first-degree versus second-degree relatives, but on the other hand he fails to acknowledge that the Danish-American adoption studies found opposite results. Kandel, like many other textbook authors who address this topic, also fails to mention the fact that in the Kety et al. 1968 study not one of the 63 biological index parents was diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia.

      The fact that the statistically significant findings of the Danish-American adoption study were dependent on the inclusion of the half-sibling diagnoses and on the widening of the definition of schizophrenia is an important omission from Kandel’s presentation on the genetics of schizophrenia, and is certainly worthy of being mentioned to students.

      Problem #3: The lack of statistical significance. Kandel claims that the Kety et al. 1975 index versus control chronic schizophrenia biological relative difference is statistically significant (2.9% vs. 0%), but again this is not the case. In their 1975 paper Kety and colleagues simply decided not to count a control biological father who had a 1968 hospital diagnosis of chronic schizophrenia, but who had died and therefore could not be interviewed. Nevertheless, several other non-interviewed 1968 diagnosed relatives were counted in other statistical calculations when it supported Kety and associates’ argument. The counting of this control biological father is no longer an issue, since in 1988 Kety began counting him as a 1975 chronic schizophrenia biological control relative diagnosis (Ingraham and Kety, 1988; Kety et al., 1994). Therefore, according to Kety’s own data, the rate of chronic schizophrenia among the 1975 index versus control biological relatives is not statistically significant (2.9% vs. 0.6%; 5/173 vs. 1/174, p = .10, Fisher’s Exact Test, one-tailed).

      Problem #4: Alternate explanations. Kandel says that the adoption studies show that “rearing does not play a major role.” This is not a fact; it is an interpretation. Alternative ways of looking at the data lead to different interpretations. One example is that Kety and colleagues found only 16 hospital diagnoses of chronic schizophrenia out of a pool of 5,483 adoptees. This rate of 3 per 1000 is less than half the rate found in the general population. One could therefore conclude that being reared in an adoptive home reduced the chance that a person growing up in mid-20th century Denmark would be diagnosed with schizophrenia by over 50%! This finding alone speaks powerfully for the importance of the environment.

      Problem #5: Discounting the environment. It is common for researchers who support the genetic theory of schizophrenia to pay very little attention to the environment.ii In the current edition of Kandel’s textbook he mentions that genetics cannot be everything but he does not discuss what other factors might be involved. However, in the previous edition (3rd) of the textbook he wrote, “Environmental influences include not only parenting and other early social interactions but also, and perhaps particularly important, perinatal injury and infections of childhood” (Kandel, 1991, p. 857). Why Kandel has moved from his 1991 acknowledgement that the environment might be a factor to the deletion of any discussion in his current edition about environmental factors is unclear. However, it likely has more to do with the changing patterns of thought within the field of psychiatry in general than with the findings from any one specific study. Kandel’s decision not to discuss possible environmental influences is just one example of how far the pendulum has swung within psychiatry towards the biological model of mental illness. For those critics who declare that this shift is based on “science” we turn our attention to the most modern adoption study.

      Pekka Tienari’s, Finnish Adoptive Family Study of Schizophrenia, is similar in design to Leonard Heston’s 1966 study and David Rosenthal’s 1968 and 1971 studies, but whereas these earlier studies failed to look at the family environment, Tienari has extensively looked at the adoptive family environment (Tienari, Lahti et al., 1987; Tienari et al., 2000). According to Tienari, “The major goal of the Finnish Adoptive Family Study is to reassess genetic contributions to schizophrenia and to add measures of the adoptive family rearing environment” (Tienari, Sorri et al., 1987, p. 477).
      In order to determine the role of the family environment in the etiology of schizophrenia, psychiatrists classified the adoptive families into one of five categories ranging from (1) “healthy,” to (5) “severely disturbed” (Tienari, Lahti et al., 1987, pp. 40-41). Tienari’s study has shown the importance of the family rearing environment in the etiology of schizophrenia. In Tienari’s words, “all adoptees who had been diagnosed either as schizophrenic or paranoid had been reared in seriously disturbed adoptive families” (Tienari, Sorri et al., 1987, p. 482).

      While there are several problems with the Finnish adoption study, such as the use of the schizophrenia spectrum and the evidence of selective placement of the adoptees (Joseph, 1999a, in press), there is no way to reconcile Kandel’s omission of environmental factors with Tienari’s finding that, “The combination of a schizophrenic biological mother and a seriously disturbed adoptive family was associated with a notably high likelihood of severe disturbance and a low likelihood of health in the adoptee” (Tienari et al., 1989, p. 30; for a more extensive review of the Finnish adoption study, see Joseph 1999a). By not mentioning the Finnish adoption study in his review Kandel has left out an important contribution to the discussion.

      Problem #6: Ignoring the critics. Many of the problems with regard to the twin and adoption studies that we have pointed out have been addressed previously, yet the authors of psychiatry and medical textbooks typically ignore these criticisms. As just one example, Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin’s Not in our Genes pointed out many of the problems with the twin and adoption studies, yet it’s almost never mentioned in textbooks. Why textbook authors have ignored these critics is unclear, but one possibility is that most textbook authors are simply unaware of this literature and are too reliant on what the proponents of the genetic theory of schizophrenia have written. Another possibility is that textbook authors have indeed read the critics, but have so completely discounted what the critics are saying that the textbook authors do not even feel the need to mention them. However, it is quite likely that readers of Kandel’s chapter would think differently about the genetic theory of schizophrenia if they were exposed to some of the criticisms.


      THE HUNT FOR THE SCHIZOPHRENIA GENE
      Contrary to reports that often appear in the mainstream media, no one has discovered a gene for schizophrenia. Yet, because twin and adoption studies have convinced a generation of scientists that a “schizophrenia gene” exists, the search continues. Joseph Alper and Marvin Natowicz (1993) address the perils and pitfalls involved with searching for genes associated with and point out that genes for schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions have been “discovered,” only to be retracted later on. Alper and Natowicz do not believe that the failure to find genes for psychiatric disorders is due to our limited technology, but rather to the flawed belief that there is indeed a genetic basis for these conditions. In the words of Alper and Natowicz, “In view of the lack of scientific evidence for the hypothesis that there are genetic bases for mental diseases, we conclude that nonscientific beliefs play a major role in laying this hypothesis” (p. 388).

      Keeping this statement in mind, it is interesting to focus on the last section of Kandel’s chapter where he discusses the ongoing search for schizophrenia genes. In 1988 Sherrington and colleagues announced that they had found, “the first strong evidence for the involvement of a single gene in the causation of schizophrenia” (Sherrington et al, 1988 p.164). In this study, which was published in Nature, Sherrington and colleagues reported the finding of a susceptibility locus on chromosome 5. In the very same issue of Nature, however, there was a conflicting report by Kennedy and colleagues (1988), who did not find any susceptibility locus on chromosome 5. Sherrington’s results were never replicated and are now frequently cited as an example of the problems involved with searching for genes associated with behaviors classified as mental illnesses (Marshall, 1994).

      In the current (2000) edition of Kandel’s chapter he does not mention the events surrounding either the discovery or the failure to replicate Sherrington’s findings, but instead focuses on the ongoing efforts to find the gene or genes. However, in the third edition of the text Kandel (1991) mentioned Sherrington and colleagues discovery but did not mention Kennedy et al.’s negative findings, even though both studies were published in the same edition of Nature. The events surrounding the enthusiasm and subsequent disappointment about chromosome 5 would appear to be a perfect opportunity for textbook authors to describe the inherent problems associated with the quest for genes associated with psychiatric conditions.


      CONCLUSIONS
      Based on the data that Kandel presents in support of the genetic theory of schizophrenia most students would probably conclude that schizophrenia has a significant genetic component. However, these students have not heard all the facts, and it is likely that if the material were presented with a more complete discussion of the evidence, students would not so quickly accept the genetic theory of schizophrenia. Even those scientists who firmly believe that the genetic theory of schizophrenia is on solid ground would most likely agree that sound educational practice dictates a balanced discussion for such a complex topic. After all, a sound scientific theory should be able to stand up to a complete airing of the data.
      There will certainly be textbook authors who point out that in a short presentation to medical students it is impossible to present all the details of some very complicated studies, and that furthermore, it is unnecessary because the genetic theory of schizophrenia is such a well accepted fact. For these authors, we suggest the following sentence as an example for future chapters,

      The compelling evidence from the most frequently cited schizophrenia adoption study rests its case on the basis of counting spectrum disorders among index and control paternal half-siblings.

      Pointing out the limitations of the adoption studies would serve two purposes. First, medical students and other health professionals would be forced to think more critically about these studies, and second, those authors who maintain the validity of the genetic theory of schizophrenia would be compelled to support the theory in light of all the facts, and not by just selectively choosing those facts which support their views. Kandel’s conclusion that “schizophrenia is due in part to a genetic abnormality” should at least take into account the fact that the famous Kety et al. adoption studies are dependent upon spectrum disorders diagnosed among half-siblings.

      It is not our intention to single out Dr. Kandel. He is an exceptional scientist who has made great contributions to our understanding of how the brain works, particularly in the field of learning and memory, and the overwhelming majority of his textbook is outstanding. He and his co-authors have done an excellent job of presenting the material to students. However, his textbook chapter on schizophrenia is just one example of how psychiatry in general has uncritically accepted the genetic theory of schizophrenia. Most undergraduate, graduate, and medical textbooks do not go into the problems with the schizophrenia twin and adoption studies and commit similar errors (Joseph, 2001d).

      In light of the discrepancy between Kandel’s conclusion about the validity of the genetic theory of schizophrenia and the evidence that is presented, there are two choices for future editions of “Principles of Neuroscience” and other such textbooks. The first choice is to present a more complete discussion of the data, especially the all-important adoption studies, and to alter the conclusion. The second choice is to maintain the same conclusion but provide more evidence to support that conclusion. In other words, either the conclusion or the evidence has to change, because as of now the two are not compatible. The dilemma, for those who accept the genetic theory of schizophrenia, is to justify the theory and at the same time present a more balanced discussion of the data.

      In addition, because so much of the current thinking in psychiatry is dependent upon genetic theories, and that most textbook presentations of these theories have been very one-sided, we suggest that the debate concerning the role of genetics in schizophrenia be reopened and reevaluated in a more critical manner. We can only speculate as to how many physicians and scientists have concluded that psychiatric disorders are caused by problematic genes, after hearing only half the story.


      Source: The International Center for the Study of Psychology & Psychiatry



    .

    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/09/07 10:30 PM)

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    InvisibleSilversoul
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6895744 - 05/09/07 10:32 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    spiritualemerg said:
    I'm not opposed to psychiatry, I'm opposed to bad psychiatry.



    Then we agree. I think there's plenty of problems with psychiatry today, just as I think there's problems with other areas of medicine and science. What I object to is calling something a "fraud" simply because it is not infallible.


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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6895759 - 05/09/07 10:35 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    I wasn't really thinking of schizophrenia. But thanks for posting the article. It's good to hear that people are trying to refine the methods that are receiving such a hard time.


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    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6895802 - 05/09/07 10:44 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    http://www.heretical.com/miscella/rushton1.html

    Look at the webpage for graph that is referred to.

    Quote:

    Genes, Environment, or Both?

    A number of studies show that race differences are caused by both genes and environment. Heritabilities, cross-race adoptions, genetic weights, and regression to the average all tell the same story. Cross-race adoptions give some of the best proof that the genes cause rare differences in IQ. Growing up in a middle-class White home does not lower the average IQ for Orientals nor raise it for Blacks.

    Can any environmental factor explain all the data on speed of dental development, age of sexual maturity, brain size, IQ, testosterone level, and the number of multiple births? Genes seem to be involved. But how can we know for sure?

    Some traits are clearly inherited. For example, we know that the race differences in twinning rate are due to heredity and not to the environment. Studies of Oriental. White, and Mixed-Race children in Hawaii and of White. Black, and Mixed-Race children in Brazil show that it is the mother's race, and not the father's, that is the determining factor. But the role of racial heredity is found for other traits as well.
    Heritability Studies

    Heritability is the amount of variation in a trait due to the genes. A heritability of 1.00 means that the differences are inborn and the environment has no effect. A heritability of zero (0.00) means the trait is controlled by the environment and not at all by the genes. A heritability of 0.50 means that the differences come from both the genes and the environment.

    Heritability is useful for animal breeders. They like to know how much genes influence things like milk yields and beefiness in cattle or determine which dogs can hunt, and which are good with children. The higher the heritability, the more the offspring will resemble their parents. On the other hand, low heritabilities mean that environmental factors like diet and health are more important.

    For people, we measure heritability by comparing family members, especially identical with fraternal twins, and adopted children with ordinary brothers and sisters. Identical twins share 100% of their genes, while fraternal twins share only 50%. Ordinary brothers and sisters also share 50% of their genes, while adopted children share no genes. If genes are important, identical twins should be twice as similar to each other as are fraternal twins or ordinary siblings – and so they are.

    Some identical twins are separated early in life and grow up apart. The famous Minnesota Twin Study by Thomas J. Bouchard and others compared many of these. (See Chart 8).

    Even though they grew up in different homes, identical twins grow to be very similar to each other. They are similar both in physical traits (like height and fingerprints) and in behavioral traits (like IQ and personality).

    Identical twins who grow up in different homes share all their genes but do not share the effects of upbringing. As you can see in Chart 8, heredity accounted for 97% of the difference for fingerprints, and the environment only 3% Social attitudes were 40% heredity, 60% environment. IQ was 70% heredity, 30% environment.

    Identical twins are often so alike that even close friends cannot tell them apart. Although the twins in the Minnesota Project lived separate lives, they shared many likes and dislikes. They often had the same hobbies and enjoyed the same music, food, and clothes. Their manners and gestures were often the same. The twins were very alike in when they got married (and sometimes divorced) and in the jobs they held. They even gave similar names to their children and pets.

    One of these pairs, the "Jim twins," were adopted as infants by two different working- class families. But they marked their lives with a trail of similar names. Both named their childhood pet "Toy". Both married and divorced women named Linda and then married women named Betty. One twin named his son James Allen, the other named his son James Alan.

    Another pair of separated twins were helpless gigglers. Each twin said her adoptive parents were reserved and serious. Each one said she never met anyone who laughed as easily as she did – until she met her twin! Heredity also affects the sex drive. The age of our first sexual experience, how often we have sex, and our total number of sexual partners all have heritabilities of about 50%. So do the odds that we will get divorced. Several studies find that homosexuality, lesbianism, and other sexual orientations are about 50% genetic.

    Twin studies show that even social attitudes are partly genetic in origin. One Australian study of 4,000 twin pairs found there was a genetic influence on specific political beliefs like capital punishment, abortion, and immigration. It turns out that criminal tendency is also heritable. About 50% of identical twins with criminal records have twins with criminal records, while only about 25% of fraternal twins do.

    Genes influence helping behavior and aggression. A large study of British twins found that the desire to help or hurt others has a heritability of around 50%. For men, fighting, carrying a weapon, and struggling with a police officer are all about 50% heritable.

    My article in the 1989 Behavioral and Brain Sciences shows that who we marry and who we choose as friends is also partly genetic. When the blood groups and heritabilities of friends and spouses are compared, we find that people chose partners who are genetically similar to themselves. The tendency for like to attract like is rooted in the genes.
    Adoption Studies

    A good check on the results of twin studies comes from adoption studies. A Danish study (in the 1984 issue of Science) examined 14,427 children separated from their birth parents as infants Boys were more likely to have a criminal record if their birth parents had a criminal record than if their adoptive parents did. Even though they were brought up in different homes, 20% of the full brothers and 13% of the half-brothers had similar criminal records. Only 9% of the unrelated boys brought up in the same home both had criminal records.

    The Colorado Adoption Project found that genes increase in influence as we age. Between age 3 and 16, adopted children grew to be more like their birth parents in height, weight, and IQ. By age 16 the adopted children did not resemble the people who had reared them. The heritability of height, weight, and IQ in infancy are all about 30%. By the teenage years, they are about 50% and by adulthood, they are about 80%. Thus, as children grow older, their home environments have less impact and their genes have more impact, just the opposite of what culture theory predicts.





    --------------------
    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6895958 - 05/09/07 11:37 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Kickle: I wasn't really thinking of schizophrenia.

    It's relevant for this reason:

      The genetic theory of schizophrenia is frequently cited as evidence in favor of a genetic predisposition to other conditions; the thinking being that if schizophrenia is genetic, then depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder and a host of other DSM-IV categories must also have their roots in problematic genes.

    Schizophrenia is considered to be the most crippling and devastating of all "mental illnesses". Evidence that many, maybe even the majority, can recover without benefit of medication and that there are forms of treatment that are less disruptive, more humane, more sane, is deeply threatening to the pharmaceutical industry because it implies that other "less crippling and devastating" disorders can also be overcome with saner, safer, more humane forms of treatment.

    Meantime, I enjoyed reading your article related to the twin studies. I agree, that the idea that identical twins could share so many common elements is fascinating. However, the article doesn't include the back story and that's probably relevant in ways we cannot determine without that information.

    .


    --------------------
    ~ Kindness is cheap.  It's unkindness that always demands the highest price.

    Blogs: Spiritual Emergency | Spiritual Recovery | Voices of Recovery | A Jungian Approach to Psychosis

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Silversoul]
        #6896005 - 05/09/07 11:51 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Re: Bad Psychiatry

    Silversoul: What I object to is calling something a "fraud" simply because it is not infallible.

    It seems to me that what people are calling attention to is that something about psychiatry stinks to high heaven. It's worth noting that it's not only consumers or potential consumers that are doing so, but also those within the profession, itself.


      Dear Rod,

      After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this action is my belief that I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization's true identity requires no change in the acronym.

      Unfortunately, APA reflects, and reinforces, in word and deed, our drug dependent society. Yet it helps wage war on "drugs". "Dual diagnosis" clients are a major problem for the field but not because of the "good" drugs we prescribe. "Bad" ones are those that are obtained mostly without a prescription. A Marxist would observe that being a good capitalist organization, APA likes only those drugs from which it can derive a profit -- directly or indirectly. This is not a group for me. At this point in history, in my view, psychiatry has been almost completely bought out by the drug companies. The APA could not continue without the pharmaceutical company support of meetings, symposia, workshops, journal advertising, grand rounds luncheons, unrestricted educational grants etc. etc. Psychiatrists have become the minions of drug company promotions.

      APA, of course, maintains that its independence and autonomy are not compromised in this enmeshed situation. Anyone with the least bit of common sense attending the annual meeting would observe how the drug company exhibits and "industry sponsored symposia" draw crowds with their various enticements, while the serious scientific sessions are barely attended. Psychiatric training reflects their influence as well: the most important part of a resident's curriculum is the art and quasi-science of dealing drugs, i.e., prescription writing.

      These psychopharmacological limitations on our abilities to be complete physicians also limit our intellectual horizons. No longer do we seek to understand whole persons in their social contexts -- rather we are there to realign our patients' neurotransmitters. The problem is that it is very difficult to have a relationship with a neurotransmitter -- whatever its configuration. So, our guild organization provides a rationale, by its neurobiological tunnel vision, for keeping our distance from the molecule conglomerates we have come to define as patients. We condone and promote the widespread use and misuse of toxic chemicals that we know have serious long term effects -- tardive dyskinesia, tardive dementia and serious withdrawal syndromes. So, do I want to be a drug company patsy who treats molecules with their formulary? No, thank you very much.

      It saddens me that after 35 years as a psychiatrist I look forward to being dissociated from such an organization. In no way does it represent my interests. It is not within my capacities to buy into the current biomedical-reductionistic model heralded by the psychiatric leadership as once again marrying us to somatic medicine. This is a matter of fashion, politics and, like the pharmaceutical house connection, money.

      In addition, APA has entered into an unholy alliance with NAMI (I don't remember the members being asked if they supported such an association) such that the two organizations have adopted similar public belief systems about the nature of madness. While professing itself the "champion of their clients" the APA is supporting non-clients, the parents, in their wishes to be in control, via legally enforced dependency, of their mad/bad offspring: NAMI with tacit APA approval, has set out a pro-neuroleptic drug and easy commitment-institutionalization agenda that violates the civil rights of their offspring.

      For the most part we stand by and allow this fascistic agenda to move forward. Their psychiatric god, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey [See reference below], is allowed to diagnose and recommend treatment to those in the NAMI organization with whom he disagrees. Clearly, a violation of medical ethics. Does APA protest? Of course not, because he is speaking what APA agrees with, but can't explicitly espouse. He is allowed to be a foil; after all - he is no longer a member of APA. (Slick work APA!) The shortsightedness of this marriage of convenience between APA, NAMI, and the drug companies (who gleefully support both groups because of their shared pro-drug stance) is an abomination. I want no part of a psychiatry of oppression and social control.

      "Biologically based brain diseases" are certainly convenient for families and practitioners alike. It is no-fault insurance against personal responsibility. We are all just helplessly caught up in a swirl of brain pathology for which no one, except DNA, is responsible. Now, to begin with, anything that has an anatomically defined specific brain pathology becomes the province of neurology (syphilis is an excellent example). So, to be consistent with this "brain disease" view, all the major psychiatric disorders would become the territory of our neurologic colleagues. Without having surveyed them I believe they would eschew responsibility for these problematic individuals. However, consistency would demand our giving over "biologic brain diseases" to them. The fact that there is no evidence confirming the brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of intellectual /scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to continue to support by my membership.

      I view with no surprise that psychiatric training is being systematically disavowed by American medical school graduates. This must give us cause for concern about the state of today's psychiatry. It must mean -- at least in part that they view psychiatry as being very limited and unchallenging. To me it seems clear that we are headed toward a situation in which, except for academics, most psychiatric practitioners will have no real, relationships -- so vital to the healing process -- with the disturbed and disturbing persons they treat. Their sole role will be that of prescription writers -- ciphers in the guise of being "helpers".

      Finally, why must the APA pretend to know more than it does? DSM IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document. To its credit it says so -- although its brief apologia is rarely noted. DSM IV has become a bible and a money making best seller -- its major failings notwithstanding. It confines and defines practice, some take it seriously, others more realistically. It is the way to get paid. Diagnostic reliability is easy to attain for research projects. The issue is what do the categories tell us? Do they in fact accurately represent the person with a problem? They don't, and can't, because there are no external validating criteria for psychiatric diagnoses. There is neither a blood test nor specific anatomic lesions for any major psychiatric disorder. So, where are we? APA as an organization has implicitly (sometimes explicitly as well) bought into a theoretical hoax. Is psychiatry a hoax -- as practiced today? Unfortunately, the answer is mostly yes.

      What do I recommend to the organization upon leaving after experiencing three decades of its history?

      1. To begin with, let us be ourselves. Stop taking on unholy alliances without the members' permission.

      2. Get real about science, politics and money. Label each for what it is -- that is, be honest.

      3.Get out of bed with NAMI and the drug companies. APA should align itself, if one believes its rhetoric, with the true consumer groups, i.e., the ex-patients, psychiatric survivors etc.

      4.Talk to the membership -- I can't be alone in my views.

      We seem to have forgotten a basic principle -- the need to be patient/client/consumer satisfaction oriented. I always remember Manfred Bleuler's wisdom: "Loren, you must never forget that you are your patient's employee." In the end they will determine whether or not psychiatry survives in the service marketplace.


      Source: Dr. Loren Mosher's Letter of Resignation from the American Psychiatric Assocaition


    It's somewhat ironic to note that E. Fuller Torrey is convinced that the cause of schizophrenia is none other than cat poop.

    See also: The Dictionary of Disorder


    .

    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/10/07 12:01 AM)

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    OfflineKickleM
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6896047 - 05/10/07 12:11 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    spiritualemerg said:
    Kickle: I wasn't really thinking of schizophrenia.

    It's relevant for this reason:

      The genetic theory of schizophrenia is frequently cited as evidence in favor of a genetic predisposition to other conditions; the thinking being that if schizophrenia is genetic, then depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder and a host of other DSM-IV categories must also have their roots in problematic genes.





    I agree. But we also have to take into consideration that it is just recently being uncovered that there might have been problems with that initial study. And even then, the second study reinforced those results, although in a less dramatic way. Nothing has been proven or disproved, merely that we need to look deeper.

    It would make sense that people had no reason to argue against the studies, and I can not see faulting psychiatry as some do. Science is a learning process. The fact that people are trying to root out this problems is a good thing.

    I am not trying to insinuate that you yourself disagree with any of these points, but rather that some in this thread seem to have a grudge against psychiatry, that I simply can not understand.

    Quote:

    spiritualemerg said:
    Schizophrenia is considered to be the most crippling and devastating of all "mental illnesses". Evidence that many, maybe even the majority, can recover without benefit of medication and that there are forms of treatment that are less disruptive, more humane, more sane, is deeply threatening to the pharmaceutical industry because it implies that other "less crippling and devastating" disorders can also be overcome with saner, safer, more humane forms of treatment.




    It certainly warrants looking in to, however, I myself will remain a skeptic until such a time. I urge all to push for it, as I feel you are, and encourage an open mind for anything to help. No matter how much we discuss such matters, I hold that we do not know enough to state one way or another at this point, though.

    Quote:

    spiritualemerg said:Meantime, I enjoyed reading your article related to the twin studies. I agree, that the idea that identical twins could share so many common elements is fascinating. However, the article doesn't include the back story and that's probably relevant in ways we cannot determine without that information.

    .




    Certainly, and there are much more detailed studies out there. I will probably go track some down for my own sake in the near future.


    --------------------
    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud *DELETED* [Re: Economist]
        #6896051 - 05/10/07 12:12 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Post deleted by Anonymous

    Reason for deletion: .


    Edited by Anonymous (06/11/17 11:58 AM)

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    OfflineSneezingPenis
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6896270 - 05/10/07 01:46 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Here is exactly what I am talking about.

    from Kickle's quote
    Quote:

    My article in the 1989 Behavioral and Brain Sciences shows that who we marry and who we choose as friends is also partly genetic. When the blood groups and heritabilities of friends and spouses are compared, we find that people chose partners who are genetically similar to themselves. The tendency for like to attract like is rooted in the genes.





    This is a (falsly) stated conclusion on correlation. This person is under the assumption that sexual affinity is evenely applied to all genetic groups from all other genetic groups.
    The fact that more people are attracted to genetically similar people as themselves doesnt prove that sexual attraction is genetic. Is it possible that your aesthetic appreciation is absorbed/learned/conditioned by your surroundings, and your surroundings are most likely people genetically similar to you.... like your brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles?

    here is some more beautiful, definitive information....
    Quote:

    Although the twins in the Minnesota Project lived separate lives, they shared many likes and dislikes. They often had the same hobbies and enjoyed the same music, food, and clothes. Their manners and gestures were often the same.




    I will go to any two schools in America and find you a thousand 8th graders who are not even remotely genetically linked who have the same hobbies, like the same music, and dress the same.
    Holy shit! who would have thought that a white girl from brooklyn and a black boy from texas would both like Jay-Z?
    My name is Ryan. I am in the 8th grade. I like playing soccer, listening to music, and hanging out with friends. I like pizza and macaroni cheese. My favorite band is Outkast.

    Very scientific. Im sold.

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6896421 - 05/10/07 02:58 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    I am not trying to insinuate that you yourself disagree with any of these points, but rather that some in this thread seem to have a grudge against psychiatry, that I simply can not understand.





    let me touch on some of the finer points of psychiatry and maybe you will understand a little better.

    1) until 2001 some psychiatrists labelled homosexuality as a mental disorder. It was removed from the DSM III-R in 1987 as a mental disorder.... but not in China until 2001.
    So here is just one crow the APA has had to eat. I often wonder how many homosexuals were drugged, detained and told that they were mentally ill during that time. Not only did they have to admit that they were dead wrong about it, it is also an admittance that their methods, classification, and even the procedure of classification of mental illness is inherently flawed.

    2) Convulsive therapy was introduced in 1934 by Hungarian neuropsychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna who, believing mistakenly that schizophrenia and epilepsy were antagonistic disorders, induced seizures with first camphor and then metrazol (cardiazol). Within three years metrazol convulsive therapy was being used worldwide.
    over 70 years ago, one dumbass who thought himself a practitioner of science, induced seizures in people and it catches on world-wide use in three years..... this turned into the more commonly known "shock-therapy" which has been shown to cause memory loss and brain damage.
    But, that is barbaric, right? no one does that anymore....... right?


    3)In the USA, ECT machines are manufactured by two companies, Somatics, which is owned by psychiatrists Richard Abrams and Conrad Swartz, and MECTA. The Food and Drug Administration has classified the devices used to administer ECT as Class III medical devices.[6] Class III is the highest-risk class of medical devices. The risks of ECT, according to the FDA, include brain damage and memory loss.[7] In the UK the market for ECT machines was long monopolised by Ectron Ltd, although in recent years some hospitals have started using American machines. Ectron Ltd was set up by psychiatrist Robert Russell, who together with a colleague from the Three Counties Asylum, Bedfordshire, invented the Page-Russell technique of intensive ECT.

    here is a little blurp about Mecta..

    Quote:

    In a stunning reversal, an article in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology in January 2007 by prominent researcher Harold Sackeim of Columbia University reveals that electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) causes permanent amnesia and permanent deficits in cognitive abilities, which affect individuals' ability to function.

    "This study provides the first evidence in a large, prospective sample that adverse cognitive effects can persist for an extended period, and that they characterize routine treatment with ECT in community settings," the study notes.

    For the past 25 years, ECT patients were told by Sackeim, the nation's top ECT researcher, that the controversial treatment doesn't cause permanent amnesia and, in fact, improves memory and increases intelligence. Psychologist Sackeim also taught a generation of ECT practitioners that permanent amnesia from ECT is so rare that it could not be studied. He asserted that most people who said the treatment erased years of memory were mentally ill and thus not credible.

    The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that more than 3 million people have received ECT over the past generation. "Those patients who reported permanent adverse effects on cognition have now had their experiences validated," said Linda Andre, head of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry, a national organization of ECT recipients.

    Since the mid-1980s, Sackeim worked as a consultant to the ECT device manufacturer Mecta Corp. He never revealed his financial interest in ECT to NIMH, as required by federal law, and, until 2002, did not reveal it to New York officials as required by state law. Neuropsychopharmacology has endured negative publicity over its failure to disclose financial conflicts of journal authors, resulting in the editor's resignation and a promise to disclose such conflicts in the future; yet there is no disclosure of Sackeim's long-term relationship with Mecta, nor did Sackeim disclose his financial conflict when his NIMH grant was renewed to 2009 at approximately $500,000 per year.

    The six-month study followed about 250 patients in New York City hospitals, an unusually large number; most ECT studies are based on 20 to 30 patients. Sackeim's previously published studies were short term, making it impossible to assess long-term effects. "However, in other contexts over the years -- court depositions, communications with mental health officials, and grant protocols -- Sackeim has claimed to follow up patients for as long as five years. This raises serious questions as to how long he has actually known of the existence and prevalence of permanent amnesia and why it wasn't revealed until now," Andre said.

    Besides finding that ECT routinely causes substantial and permanent amnesia, the study contradicts Sackeim's oft-published statements that ECT increases intelligence and that patients who report permanent adverse effects are mentally ill.

    "The study is a stunning self-repudiation of a 25-year career," Andre said.

    Committee for Truth in Psychiatry
    http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v32/n1/pdf/1301180a.pdf





    oh, and the other guy that makes shock machines....

    Quote:

    The majority of patients who receive ECT . . . are well satisfied with the results and are hardly motivated to influence public opinion on the subject - they are too busy getting on with their lives. . ." -- from Richard Abrams' "Electroconvulsive Therapy"

    When medical students learn about shock therapy, they turn to the only textbook on the subject: Electroconvulsive Therapy, published by Oxford University Press. Richard Abrams, a professor of psychiatry at the Chicago Medical School, writes that shock therapy is proven safe and effective for depression and other problems, even in children and the elderly.

    He advises that shock should be considered as the first treatment given, not as the last resort. He concludes with an attack on doctors who criticize shock treatment and attaches a form to have patients sign when they consent to shock therapy.

    But Abrams doesn't tell the medical students one thing: He owns Somatics Inc., one of the nation's two shock machine manufacturers.

    He didn't tell his publisher, either.

    "Wow," says Joan Bossert, executive editor of Oxford University Press. "I did not know that." She would have had him disclose that in the book's preface, she says. "I really wish he'd told us, but it doesn't take away from his expertise," she says. Neither did Abrams disclose his financial interest in the academic journal Psychiatric Clinics in September 1994, when he wrote an upbeat article on shock titled, "The Treatment That Will Not Die."

    In some recent articles, Abrams disclosed that he's a "director" of Somatics. But readers weren't told that he is also president and owns the company with shock researcher Conrad Swartz, a University of South Carolina psychiatry professor.

    Abrams says it's ridiculous to think his ownership of a shock machine company may create a conflict of interest. "Most advances in medical instruments and technology have come from practicing physicians putting (their) knowledge to work in building better equipment," he says. He says he thought Oxford University Press knew he owned Somatics. "The association is very well-known in the community," he says.

    In a 1991 deposition, Abrams said Somatics provided half his income.

    Abrams and Swartz started Somatics Inc., in Lake Bluff, Ill., in 1985. Somatics makes about half the USA's shock machines; MECTA Corp. of Lake Oswego, Ore., makes the rest.

    Abrams wouldn't reveal company revenues or profits, but the Somatics Thymatron shock machine is used in about 500 hospitals nationwide and costs approximately $10,000. "It's a very small industry," Swartz says. "The sales of these machines don't compare with the sales of any one drug." Swartz says Somatics' profits are comparable to having an additional psychiatry practice. (The average psychiatrist made $131,300 in 1993.)

    Swartz writes extensively on shock therapy, too, and also rarely discloses his Somatics ties.

    For example, when a doctor wrote in Convulsive Therapy, a medical journal, that doctors could save money using sports mouth guards during shock treatment, Swartz wrote a letter attacking the idea. He did not disclose that Somatics sells specially designed mouth guards for $23 a dozen.

    Abrams and Swartz should "absolutely, without a doubt, disclose their ownership in all their publications," says Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. They also should disclose it to patients on informed consent forms before shock treatment, Caplan says.

    "True informed consent is not what the doctor thinks you should know, it's what a reasonable patient might want to know," he says.

    Swartz calls this absurd.

    "It's a nonissue. Every doctor who does ECT makes money, just as every doctor who prescribes drugs does," he says. "Patients know . . . and don't particularly care." Swartz says Somatics was founded because MECTA wasn't listening to psychiatrists who do shock therapy.

    "I'm now able to improve machines. Who else can best advance ECT? Someone like me, who knows what they're doing," says Swartz, who has a Ph.D. in engineering as well as a medical degree. For his part, Abrams is the most quoted shock therapy researcher.

    The American Psychiatric Association's 1990 task force report on how to practice shock therapy cites him more than any other expert. His 340-page textbook is often the sole source of information about shock therapy in general medical books and articles read by doctors and patients.

    Abrams' textbook never mentions Somatics by name. But he describes new shock machine innovations found only on Somatics machines.

    For example, his textbook reports that a charge "delivered over four to eight seconds will optimize the risk-benefit ratio for ECT and provide maximal clinical efficacy with minimal cognitive consequences."

    Only one machine gives a four to eight second charge: the Somatics Thymatron DGx.

    And Abrams sells it.





    but these are isolated incidents...... right? surely a person could not say that every aspect of psychiatry is for financial gain.

    4) The first distributor of Methadone: Eli Lily
    here is a list of some people who have worked for the company:
    Eli Lilly has a global reputation for attracting global leaders in the fields of health policy, management, and scientific research. Prominent former Lilly employees include:

    Ernesto Bustamante, Peruvian scientist.
    Mitch Daniels, current Governor of Indiana, former Hudson Institute executive, and former Director of Office of Management and Budget for President George W. Bush.
    Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Prize-winning chemist.
    Michael Johns, former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst.
    Claude H Nash, CEO, ViroPharma.
    Peter Nicholas, co-founder of Boston Scientific.
    Randall L. Tobias, former United States Director of Foreign Assistance and Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), with the rank of Ambassador.
    Prominent Lilly board members have included:

    George Herbert Walker Bush, former President and Vice President of the United States of America.
    Martin Feldstein, economist, Harvard University.
    Kenneth Lay, former CEO, Enron (1986-2002).
    William Verity Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

    but what does that prove?

    look up zyprexa....
    Quote:

    According to a New York Times article published on December 17, 2006,[6] Eli Lilly has engaged in a decade-long effort to play down the health risks of Zyprexa, its best-selling medication for schizophrenia, according to hundreds of internal Lilly documents and e-mail messages among top company managers. These documents and e-mail messages were soon made publicly available as a location hidden Tor service[7], and then made available on the public Internet. Eli Lilly got a temporary restraining order from a US District Court signed on January 4, 2007 to stop the dissemination or downloading of Eli Lilly documents about Zyprexa, and this allowed them to get a few US-based websites to remove them; on January 8, 2007, Judge Jack B. Weinstein refused the Electronic Frontier Foundation's motion to stay his order[8]. The documents can now only be downloaded from public Internet sites outside the US.[9][10][11]These health risks include an increased risk for diabetes through Zyprexa's links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar. Zyprexa is Lilly’s top-selling drug, with sales of $4.2 billion last year.

    The documents, given to The New York Times by Jim Gottstein, a lawyer representing mentally ill patients, show that Lilly executives kept important information from doctors about Zyprexa’s links to obesity and its tendency to raise blood sugar — both known risk factors for diabetes. The Times of London also obtained copies of the documents and reported that as early as October 1998, Lilly considered the risk of drug-induced obesity to be a "top threat" to Zyprexa sales.[12] In another document, dated October 9, 2000, senior Lilly research physician Robert Baker noted that an academic advisory board he belonged to was "quite impressed by the magnitude of weight gain on olanzapine and implications for glucose."

    Lilly’s own published data, which it told its sales representatives to play down in conversations with doctors, has shown that 30 percent of patients taking Zyprexa gain 22 pounds or more after a year on the drug, and some patients have reported gaining 100 pounds or more. But Lilly was concerned that Zyprexa’s sales would be hurt if the company was more forthright about the fact that the drug might cause unmanageable weight gain or diabetes, according to the documents, which cover the period 1995 to 2004. In 2006, Lilly paid $700 million to settle 8,000 lawsuits from people who said they had developed diabetes or other diseases after taking Zyprexa. Thousands more suits are still pending.[13]

    Lilly told its sales representatives to suggest that doctors prescribe Zyprexa to older patients with symptoms of dementia. One document states "dementia should be first message" for primary care doctors, since they "do not treat bipolar" or schizophrenia, but "do treat dementia." Three months after its launch, the Zyprexa campaign, called 'Viva Zyprexa', led to 49,000 new prescriptions. In 2002, the company changed the name of the primary care campaign to 'Zyprexa Limitless' and began to focus on people with mild bipolar disorder who had previously been diagnosed as depressed -- even though Zyprexa has been approved only for the treatment of mania in bipolar disorder, not depression.[14]

    In 2002, British and Japanese regulatory agencies warned that Zyprexa may be linked to diabetes, but even after the FDA issued a similar warning in 2003, Lilly did not publicly disclose their own findings.

    Eli Lilly agreed on January 4, 2007 to pay up to $500 million to settle 18,000 lawsuits from people who claimed they developed diabetes or other diseases after taking Zyprexa. Including earlier settlements over Zyprexa, Lilly has now agreed to pay at least $1.2 billion to 28,500 people who claim they were injured by the drug. At least 1,200 suits are still pending, the company said. About 20 million people worldwide have taken Zyprexa since its introduction in 1996.[15]






    manufactured by Eli Lily. Maybe if I have more time I will go into more detail regarding the crimes of this pharm corp as well as Merck and others.

    5)DSM. Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses, a new analysis has found.

    Of the 170 experts in all who contributed to the manual that defines disorders from personality problems to drug addiction, more than half had such ties, including 100 percent of the experts who served on work groups on mood disorders and psychotic disorders
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902560.html
    here is the PDF.... http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PDF/DSM%20COI.PDF

    so the very people who are classifying mental disorders are the ones with financial ties to the companies that are making the "cures" for the mental disorders......

    not to mention that more than 50% of the people on the advisory panel regarding the hidden studies of Vioxx had financial ties to the company that makes Vioxx! I wish I could get a jury of my best friends too!.

    6) off-label usage.
    Off-label use is the practice of prescribing drugs for a purpose outside the scope of the drug's approved label, most often concerning the drug's indication. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires numerous clinical trials to prove a drug's safety and efficacy in treating a given disease or condition. If satisfied that the drug is safe and effective, the drug's manufacturer and the FDA agree on specific language describing dosage, route and other information to be included on the drug's label. More detail is included in the drug's package insert. However, once the FDA approves a drug for prescription use, they do not attempt to regulate the practice of medicine, and so the physician makes decisions based on her or his best judgment. It is entirely legal in the United States and in many other countries to use drugs off-label. Exceptions to this are certain controlled substances, such as opiates, which cannot be legally prescribed except for approved purposes (at least in the U.S.). In Australia, amphetamines are included in these drugs which cannot be prescribed off-label.

    whats wrong with that? its legal.... right?

    well, it is illegal for drug companies to promote and advertise their drugs for off label usage. But what seriously irks me is that doctors are not forced to tell patients that the drug they are prescribed is not reccommended for the intended use.
    Quote:

    The FDA admits that it lacks the authority to regulate the practice of medicine. Accordingly, the agency does not purport to control the practice of off-label prescribing by physicians



    http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/articles/bioethics/offlabel_11/

    although there have been many lawsuits involving every major pharmaceutical corporation regarding advertising off-label use to doctors, I dont think any have won.

    Off-label promotion undercuts the FDA's ability to ensure safety and efficacy.
    Off-label promotion removes incentives for manufacturers to conduct studies on safety and efficacy.
    Off-label promotion encourages manufacturers to seek FDA approval only for the narrowest, most-easy-to-support indications.


    I really could go on all day..... any maybe tommorrow I will fill another 20 pages of credible information regarding why psychiatry is quite possibly the most creul practice on the face of this earth.... but for now, just mull some of this over.
    I doubt many will even read more than a few paragraphs.

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6896556 - 05/10/07 05:32 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    I read it all, and appreciate your efforts putting it together.

    One thing that stands out for me is the attitude of Richard Abrams and Conrad Swartz.

    Quote:

    Abrams says it's ridiculous to think his ownership of a shock machine company may create a conflict of interest. "Most advances in medical instruments and technology have come from practicing physicians putting (their) knowledge to work in building better equipment," he says. He says he thought Oxford University Press knew he owned Somatics. "The association is very well-known in the community," he says.




    Quote:

    Swartz calls this absurd.

    "It's a nonissue. Every doctor who does ECT makes money, just as every doctor who prescribes drugs does," he says. "Patients know . . . and don't particularly care." Swartz says Somatics was founded because MECTA wasn't listening to psychiatrists who do shock therapy.

    "I'm now able to improve machines. Who else can best advance ECT? Someone like me, who knows what they're doing," says Swartz, who has a Ph.D. in engineering as well as a medical degree.




    Ah yes, the degrees. That is like having a "free trust" card. Wave that around and people will PROUDLY give you their trust no matter what flies out of your mouth.

    Ok, so maybe this guy is just just trying to help people, and if he makes money off his selling his little help boxes that's just his right. That's a possibility.

    Maybe I shouldn't be consider the possibility, based on what I've read, that there is a centuries old system in place to ensure that people capable of administering and profiting from such brutality make it to such positions of affect and influence - even though, when you look at history, it appears as though such a system does exist, and vast attempts have been made at wiping out its detractors and and those in opposition to it, and silencing those with knowledge against it.

    Nevertheless, I read their statements like this:
    They don't even need to hide their utter contempt for us. They have no qualms putting it right out in the open because they know they can get away with it. As Swartz said, "Patients know . . . and don't particularly care." .

    They'll freely admit that profiting from this ignorance, at the expense of patient's health, is no big deal, 2+2=4 kind of stuff.

    They know the psychological ins and outs of the society we've helped create. They know we survive and continue in this culture full of sick diversions because of our ability to be indifferent to all the detrimental aspects. Fed a steady diet of horror through war and the media we've been beaten down over the years. Slowly traumatised generation after generation, we have become tolerant of all manners of torture and crimes against humanity because it's too much for us to handle anymore.

    Our choice of indifference is a coping mechanism. They are banking on it.

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6897480 - 05/10/07 11:41 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    Here is exactly what I am talking about.

    from Kickle's quote
    Quote:

    My article in the 1989 Behavioral and Brain Sciences shows that who we marry and who we choose as friends is also partly genetic. When the blood groups and heritabilities of friends and spouses are compared, we find that people chose partners who are genetically similar to themselves. The tendency for like to attract like is rooted in the genes.





    This is a (falsly) stated conclusion on correlation. This person is under the assumption that sexual affinity is evenely applied to all genetic groups from all other genetic groups.
    The fact that more people are attracted to genetically similar people as themselves doesnt prove that sexual attraction is genetic. Is it possible that your aesthetic appreciation is absorbed/learned/conditioned by your surroundings, and your surroundings are most likely people genetically similar to you.... like your brothers, sisters, parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles?




    Like I said earlier, there are better articles out there. Certainly this wasn't the best example. I'm not arguing that there aren't other factors that could come in to play. As for the example you cited, I don't really know what the study was. However, at a glance, it would certainly appear you are correct in your stance. I'm not really interested in that, though, as it is merely distracting from the reason I posted the article.

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:here is some more beautiful, definitive information....
    Quote:

    Although the twins in the Minnesota Project lived separate lives, they shared many likes and dislikes. They often had the same hobbies and enjoyed the same music, food, and clothes. Their manners and gestures were often the same.




    I will go to any two schools in America and find you a thousand 8th graders who are not even remotely genetically linked who have the same hobbies, like the same music, and dress the same.
    Holy shit! who would have thought that a white girl from brooklyn and a black boy from texas would both like Jay-Z?
    My name is Ryan. I am in the 8th grade. I like playing soccer, listening to music, and hanging out with friends. I like pizza and macaroni cheese. My favorite band is Outkast.

    Very scientific. Im sold.




    I wouldn't expect anyone to be sold. But I also wouldn't expect anyone to discount it as nothing. I have a feeling that it was included in this because of the surrounding paragraphs. When singled out, certainly, it may not be convincing by itself. However, when you add in things such as

    Quote:

    One of these pairs, the "Jim twins," were adopted as infants by two different working- class families. But they marked their lives with a trail of similar names. Both named their childhood pet "Toy". Both married and divorced women named Linda and then married women named Betty. One twin named his son James Allen, the other named his son James Alan.




    It shows that the similarities went quite a bit beyond the over simplified examples of American culture that you gave. And again, this wasn't the most specific article, and actually seems rather vague on a lot of points. While this allows you to interject your own interpretation of what is meant by 'similarities', they did describe some of them.

    Sorry about the brief response, I will address your other post sometime today.


    --------------------
    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

    Edited by Kickle (05/10/07 01:12 PM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6898764 - 05/10/07 06:01 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Kickle: It certainly warrants looking in to, however, I myself will remain a skeptic until such a time. I urge all to push for it, as I feel you are, and encourage an open mind for anything to help. No matter how much we discuss such matters, I hold that we do not know enough to state one way or another at this point, though.

    I have to disagree with that point Kickle. The evidence from the WHO itself should be an eye-opener; the number of deaths being produced by the medication should be an eye-opener; the depth of involvement by big pharma should be an eye-opener but nothing happens. I think Mosher has a good grip on why that is...

      "These days, for the very first time, schizophrenia has become a source of enormous corporate profits. Schizophrenics were somewhat profitable ever since the mid-'50s, though nothing like today. The sales of the antipsychotic drugs were running about $600 million a year for years until the '90s, when the new atypical drugs arrived. Since then, the bill for antipsychotics has grown to more than $4 billion a year. That's a lot of money."

      Today Mosher calls himself "a lapsed psychiatrist" because he thinks the biological explanations of psychotic behavior embraced by so many of his colleagues resemble a religion more than they do a body of science. From his perspective as a heretic, he reflects, "We are all afraid of going crazy. And as long as we have someone out there who can sort of do that job for us, it's not our burden." He thinks it's comforting to believe schizophrenics act the way they do because their brains are diseased. Biological differences "make them different from us fundamentally," he says. "They're sort of a slightly different race than we are." Mosher thinks it's all "a way of carefully saying, 'These people are really different. And therefore we have the right to do whatever we goddamn please with them.' "



    Source: Still Crazy After All These Years

    See also:
  • Dr. Loren Mosher: Guidelines for Treatment of Psychosis
  • Dr. John Weir Perry: Mental Breakdown as Healing


    .


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    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/11/07 05:14 AM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
        #6900772 - 05/11/07 05:59 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    pB0t: I watched that ridiculous documentary where they did exactly that. I am not even going to address the claim that psychiatry is a worldwide conspiracy bent on world domination, responsible for both the Holocaust and 9/11 because it's absurd.

    Economist: Thanks pB0t, I almost wasted some of my life watching that. I simply cannot believe that such claims are made, and I agree with you that they are inherently absurd.




    I haven't seen the documentary either of you refer to; nor have I seen or read much in line with the idea that there is a conspiracy bent on world domination. However I'm not quite so ready to dismiss the idea as totally unplausible, because hysterical as it may sound, like fingers pointing to the moon I think the voices that speak in this vein are drawing our attention to something that stinks.

    The following post is lifted from a discussion that took place in the Religion and Spirituality forum, also related to psychiatry...

      Veritas: If anything, bipolar disorder is under-diagnosed, and needs to be considered more often when a patient presents with related symptoms.

      spiritual_emergency: That's a great idea. It's important to start early; very, very early. For example, according to psychiatry, even toddlers can suffer with bipolar disorder. What's more, esteemed world leaders think that more mental health screening needs to be done, and god knows, you cannot argue with that kind of wisdom. Especially, when it's padding the pockets of the rich while the young, poor and disadvantaged pay the price.

      Quote:

      The president's commission found that "despite their prevalence, mental disorders often go undiagnosed" and recommended comprehensive mental health screening for "consumers of all ages," including preschool children. According to the commission, "Each year, young children are expelled from preschools and childcare facilities for severely disruptive behaviours and emotional disorders." Schools, wrote the commission, are in a "key position" to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at the schools.

      The commission also recommended "Linkage [of screening] with treatment and supports" including "state-of-the-art treatments" using "specific medications for specific conditions." The commission commended the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) as a "model" medication treatment plan that "illustrates an evidence-based practice that results in better consumer outcomes."

      Source: Bush to Screen Population for Mental Illness




    Are you seeing any common themes between the current state of psychiatry, 9/11 and world domination?

    What are these voices saying? That Bush is part of an elite world order? If so, is that true? Maybe. Maybe not. What is true is that corporate values that elevate financial gain to the level of the sacred do not seem to meet the needs of humanity at large.

      A LEGAL "PERSON"
      In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal "person." Imbued with a "personality" of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the corporation's rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth but at what cost? The remorseless rationale of "externalities" (as Milton Friedman explains, the unintended consequences of a transaction between two parties on a third) is responsible for countless cases of illness, death, poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.

      THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES
      To assess the "personality" of the corporate "person," a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social "personality": it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a "psychopath."

      Source: The Corporation




    .


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    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/11/07 10:20 PM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6902340 - 05/11/07 02:26 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
    Ambrose Bierce

    Quote:

    FDA internally adopts "final rule" on pharmaceuticals


    Federal public "health" autocrats decide consumers cannot sue makers of FDA-approved drugs for damages

    WASHINGTON, D.C.— It is estimated that as many as 200,000 people die each year from adverse reactions to prescription drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and about 2.2 million people are injured each year by FDA-approved drugs. FDA-approved Vioxx alone may have killed as many as 60,000 people—more U.S. fatalities than the Vietnam War.

    On June 30, 2006, the FDA’s "final rule" regarding pharmaceutical drug liability claims went into effect. The FDA, which is now arguably the nation’s number one killer, has decided that consumers can no longer sue drug companies for the harm caused by any FDA-approved drug, even if the drug’s manufacturer intentionally misled the FDA by hiding or fabricating clinical trial data.

    In a move so shocking and transparent (and baseless in legal contemplation), the FDA is attempting to eliminate any responsibility whatsoever for the suffering and death caused by the deadly pharmaceutical drugs it approves for the marketplace.

    According to health advocate and author Mike Adams, "In the preamble of the FDA’s new ‘final rule’....the agency asserts that FDA approval of prescription drugs—and their implied safety—may no longer be second-guessed by consumers or organizations of any kind. The FDA’s stamp of approval, the agency claims, is an absolute declaration of safety of all such drugs, for any use whatsoever, including off-label use (the use of drugs on health conditions that were never tested in clinical trials)."

    In the last couple of years the corrupt collusion between the FDA, drug companies and the medical "research" they sponsor has been reported in the mainstream press. The highly-publicized Vioxx scandal and others indicate that the FDA and cronies in the private sector are beginning to lose their grip on their $multi-billion drug approval scam and, out of desperation, have approved their "final solution"—they will administratively hold back the flood of damages suits for as long as they can.

    Meanwhile, the FDA keeps approving drugs, doctors keep prescribing them, people keep taking them and America just gets sicker and sicker...





    http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20060710.htm

    Edited by psilocyberin (05/11/07 02:33 PM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6904339 - 05/11/07 10:26 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Very informative psilocyberin. Thanks for posting. One good turn deserves another... #9


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    Edited by spiritualemerg (05/12/07 02:34 AM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6904729 - 05/12/07 12:44 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    This is about..... my 10th thread so far where there has been very lengthy discussion on this topic.

    It is so odd that everytime I make those very long posts citing the crimes of psychiatry, the financial ties, the lack of science, the lack of FDA transparency, and the flaws of the DSM.... the opposers drop out of the discussion, only to appear a month or so later in a similar thread, spewing their rhetoric and insults.

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6904753 - 05/12/07 12:55 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    Quote:

    I am not trying to insinuate that you yourself disagree with any of these points, but rather that some in this thread seem to have a grudge against psychiatry, that I simply can not understand.





    let me touch on some of the finer points of psychiatry and maybe you will understand a little better.

    1) until 2001 some psychiatrists labelled homosexuality as a mental disorder. It was removed from the DSM III-R in 1987 as a mental disorder.... but not in China until 2001.
    So here is just one crow the APA has had to eat. I often wonder how many homosexuals were drugged, detained and told that they were mentally ill during that time. Not only did they have to admit that they were dead wrong about it, it is also an admittance that their methods, classification, and even the procedure of classification of mental illness is inherently flawed.




    First point, I do not understand. Why is this psychiatries fault exactly? If everything is a result of our culture, isn't this cultures fault? Or is psychiatry the only driving force of culture? Sure, there was a heavy stigma against homosexuals. Sure, it looks like psychiatry reflects that. Similarly, the court system was very unbalanced when racism was a pressing issue. The underlying problem wasn't the courts, but rather the racism itself.

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    2) Convulsive therapy was introduced in 1934 by Hungarian neuropsychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna who, believing mistakenly that schizophrenia and epilepsy were antagonistic disorders, induced seizures with first camphor and then metrazol (cardiazol). Within three years metrazol convulsive therapy was being used worldwide.
    over 70 years ago, one dumbass who thought himself a practitioner of science, induced seizures in people and it catches on world-wide use in three years..... this turned into the more commonly known "shock-therapy" which has been shown to cause memory loss and brain damage.
    But, that is barbaric, right? no one does that anymore....... right?





    Medical science also did some very bizarre things in order to try and cure diseases. Would you have resented these attempts to help? It's a learning process. I am very glad that we are trying to learn from it, but I still do not understand the hatred. This doesn't clarify it at all to me, as you single out only psychiatry, when they are not the only ones to have learned in less that humane ways.

    As for your third point, I feel that individual did some very immoral things. He knew better, and continued on. The actions of a few do not represent the whole. I can understand a distaste for the said person, but again, to generalize outward to all of psychiatry with this is a bit extreme to me.


    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:oh, and the other guy that makes shock machines....




    The most interesting aspect of this article to me, was that they didn't attack his information at all. The rest of it was the same stuff you've been saying all along. They make money. Really, come on now, if you expect me to distrust an individual, there has to be more than 'they make money'. While I agree, that on the informed consent, he should be required to list his involvment, I don't think it would make much difference. If his research is sound, and they are unable to find bad practice, I don't understand the problem.

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said: but these are isolated incidents...... right? surely a person could not say that every aspect of psychiatry is for financial gain.



    but what does that prove?

    look up zyprexa....




    Again, to me, you're pointing at problems with more than just psychiatry. Clearly, politics played a huge factor in this, and should share equal blame, no? And it of course goes far beyound politics as well. Money corrupts individuals. I don't understand why the focus isn't on this, instead of pointing the finger solely at psychiatry, which is merely a piece of the whole.


    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    5)DSM. Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses, a new analysis has found.

    Of the 170 experts in all who contributed to the manual that defines disorders from personality problems to drug addiction, more than half had such ties, including 100 percent of the experts who served on work groups on mood disorders and psychotic disorders
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902560.html
    here is the PDF.... http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PDF/DSM%20COI.PDF

    so the very people who are classifying mental disorders are the ones with financial ties to the companies that are making the "cures" for the mental disorders......




    Good article, although, when we talk about science, they are interjecting a LOT of speculation in the mix. They address something that was my concern - were they on the payroll before or after the writing of the DSM. The answer is, they do not know. There is no way for them to know, and as a result, there is no way for me to know, as well as you. Speculation is one thing, but assumptions are another.

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said: I wish I could get a jury of my best friends too!.




    Sigh. It is all too easy to say things like that. I think this is a part of our counter-culture.

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:6) off-label usage.




    The FDA does not equal psychiatry. And it spans far outside of psychiatry. Wasn't the original argument convincing me that psychiatry is the one to blame? Either way, I think it is a load of BS what the FDA does.



    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:I really could go on all day..... any maybe tommorrow I will fill another 20 pages of credible information regarding why psychiatry is quite possibly the most creul practice on the face of this earth.... but for now, just mull some of this over.




    Ok, but please keep it to psychiatry if that is the goal.


    --------------------
    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

    Edited by Kickle (05/12/07 01:05 AM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6904759 - 05/12/07 12:57 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    spiritualemerg said:
    Kickle: It certainly warrants looking in to, however, I myself will remain a skeptic until such a time. I urge all to push for it, as I feel you are, and encourage an open mind for anything to help. No matter how much we discuss such matters, I hold that we do not know enough to state one way or another at this point, though.

    I have to disagree with that point Kickle. The evidence from the WHO itself should be an eye-opener; the number of deaths being produced by the medication should be an eye-opener; the depth of involvement by big pharma should be an eye-opener but nothing happens.




    I think the evidence of who lends more credit to psychiatry than it takes away. It shows that those inside are also trying to fight the state things are in. I don't see them saying that psychiatry is invalid, but that it is quite out of control. Same with the rest, I don't see it invalidating the practice, but some serious reforms are in order.


    --------------------
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    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

    Edited by Kickle (05/12/07 01:06 AM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6904774 - 05/12/07 01:02 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    This is about..... my 10th thread so far where there has been very lengthy discussion on this topic.

    It is so odd that everytime I make those very long posts citing the crimes of psychiatry, the financial ties, the lack of science, the lack of FDA transparency, and the flaws of the DSM.... the opposers drop out of the discussion, only to appear a month or so later in a similar thread, spewing their rhetoric and insults.





    Why do you place those who oppose you into this general group? I have neither insulted you, dropped out of the conversation, or posted on any thread of yours about psychiatry before. It would be appreciated if you didn't try to belittle the "competition".


    --------------------
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    Edited by Kickle (05/12/07 01:03 AM)

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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud *DELETED* [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6904989 - 05/12/07 04:04 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Post deleted by Anonymous

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    Edited by Anonymous (06/11/17 11:45 AM)

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    OfflineSneezingPenis
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6905017 - 05/12/07 04:43 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    Kickle said:
    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    Quote:

    I am not trying to insinuate that you yourself disagree with any of these points, but rather that some in this thread seem to have a grudge against psychiatry, that I simply can not understand.





    let me touch on some of the finer points of psychiatry and maybe you will understand a little better.

    1) until 2001 some psychiatrists labelled homosexuality as a mental disorder. It was removed from the DSM III-R in 1987 as a mental disorder.... but not in China until 2001.
    So here is just one crow the APA has had to eat. I often wonder how many homosexuals were drugged, detained and told that they were mentally ill during that time. Not only did they have to admit that they were dead wrong about it, it is also an admittance that their methods, classification, and even the procedure of classification of mental illness is inherently flawed.




    First point, I do not understand. Why is this psychiatries fault exactly? If everything is a result of our culture, isn't this cultures fault? Or is psychiatry the only driving force of culture? Sure, there was a heavy stigma against homosexuals. Sure, it looks like psychiatry reflects that. Similarly, the court system was very unbalanced when racism was a pressing issue. The underlying problem wasn't the courts, but rather the racism itself.




    first, let me say thank you for actually responding. And I am sorry for lumping you in with the others. You are debating in a very civil way, and giving more than "that shit is just dumb d00d".

    why is this psychiatry's fault? because it promotes itself as a science... As a science it gains the trust of the people to hold itself in a transparent, unbiased organization devoted to the pursuit of knowledge through logic for the advancement of human kind. Society, is not a science, and as such, does not hold the trust of the people (meaning you vs "them")... and while homosexuals have been subjugated by the majority over the past years, they dont have a higher code of honor to live up to. Society is fickle, it is a frenzied and emotional mob that is swayed easily.... swayed easily, by the very organizations that we put complete trust into - scientists, doctors and airline pilots.
    The reason science gains so much trust, is because, when used properly, it transcends the bias that is human nature.

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    2) Convulsive therapy was introduced in 1934 by Hungarian neuropsychiatrist Ladislas J. Meduna who, believing mistakenly that schizophrenia and epilepsy were antagonistic disorders, induced seizures with first camphor and then metrazol (cardiazol). Within three years metrazol convulsive therapy was being used worldwide.
    over 70 years ago, one dumbass who thought himself a practitioner of science, induced seizures in people and it catches on world-wide use in three years..... this turned into the more commonly known "shock-therapy" which has been shown to cause memory loss and brain damage.
    But, that is barbaric, right? no one does that anymore....... right?





    Medical science also did some very bizarre things in order to try and cure diseases. Would you have resented these attempts to help? It's a learning process. I am very glad that we are trying to learn from it, but I still do not understand the hatred. This doesn't clarify it at all to me, as you single out only psychiatry, when they are not the only ones to have learned in less that humane ways.




    well.... there is one huge difference here.... medical science has a history of curing things. Can you think of one thing psychiatry has cured?
    First off, Psychiatry is barely regulated. It takes a lot for a psychiatrist to lose thier license when compared to a physician.
    Just like the link in the beginning of this thread, it talked about how people had to say "Yes you are right! your method worked, im cured" to get out of the grasp of psychiatry.
    They make their own rules. They have classified mental illness, as well as what positive progress is. This isnt so for the medical profession.
    If I have polio, it isnt a doctor making a personal judgement disguised as scientific diagnosis that decides whether or not I am sick, nor is it that same doctor giving his opinion on whether or not I am healthy again. The doctor will show me bloodwork, or some other tangible proof that I have polio, and later show me tangible proof that i have been cured.
    What is objective about Psychiatry?

    I have no problem with people dying in the name of objective scientific research. We can objectively look back and say "yeah, it was a huge mistake to drill holes in that guys head all because his nose was bleeding, when all he needed was to chew a leaf that made his blood thicker". We cant objectively look back and say " yeah it was a huge mistake to remove part of this guys brain, when all he really needed was a friend and a pat on the back."
    There is no science to human emotions, not in the classification of them, nor in the treatment of them. We cannot objectively classify what anger is. Is it punching something? is it grinding your teeth? is it yelling? is it plotting revenge?
    There will never be any true advancement in the field of Psychiatry, only regrets that lead to curbing acts deemed inhumane.


    Quote:

    As for your third point, I feel that individual did some very immoral things. He knew better, and continued on. The actions of a few do not represent the whole. I can understand a distaste for the said person, but again, to generalize outward to all of psychiatry with this is a bit extreme to me.




    Quote:

    Psychosurgery is a psychiatric practice which creates permanent and irreversible brain damage. It is a brain operation in which healthy brain tissue is intentionally mutilated or removed for the purpose of behavior control.

    After a few ill-fated attempts at the turn of the century, Portuguese neurosurgeon Egas Moniz pioneered this psychiatric nightmare in 1935 by stabbing a long, thin blade into the brains of his victims through holes drilled in their skulls. In ironic testimony to the results of his work, Moniz was shot and paralyzed by one of his lobotomy victims in 1939 and, in 1955, was beaten to death by another.

    Though Moniz is credited with the "discovery" of the technique, he was preceded by Gottlieb Burckhardt, the superintendent of a Swiss insane asylum, who was the first person in modern times to publish the results of psychosurgery experiments on humans.

    Unlike modern psychiatrists, Burckhardt was not restricted by a need to shroud his intentions in euphemistic terms like "therapy," and admitted his aim was that "the patient might be transformed from a disturbed to a quiet clement [insane person]." There was no inention to "help" the patient. The goal was only to eradicate the behavior which others found undesirable.

    To achieve this, he removed parts of the brain from six human subjects.

    Although one of them died, Burckhardt was not displeased with the results as several of those who lived apparently became easier to handle in the asylum wards which, rather than effecting a recovery of sanity, was his major purpose.

    Making docile patients and controllable people is largely the true goal of psychiatric methods. There is no attempt or intention to bring about sanity, happiness, causitiveness or repsonsiblity for the patient. This is obvious by a close study of it's history.

    One year after Moniz's 1935 experiment, an American psychiatrist, Walter Freeman, was using a variation whose main "advantage" was the rapidity with which a mind could be destroyed. By plunging an ice pick through the thin layer of bone at the back of the eye socket instead of through holes drilled in the skull, Freeman could achieve the same effect as Moniz in minutes.

    During his "career," he performed an estimated 3,500 or more lobotomies, fully aware of the destruction he was causing.

    Characterizing lobotomy as "mercy killing of the psyche", Freeman wrote, "patients …must sacrifice some of the virtue, of the driving force, creative spirit or soul." This is not surprising since modern psychiatric theories all but ignore and deny a creative spirit or soul, and more recently deny even the mind itself. Minimally, they completely ignore it in favor of manipulating behavior alone. What good could ever come from a field whose basic theories deny the very things which define man as separate from all other creatures - his mind, spirit and soul? His thoughts, feelings, emotions, hopes and dreams?

    Patricia Derian, during the 1940s a student nurse at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, described a typical lobotomy, performed in an amphitheater with witnessing doctors:

    "As each patient was brought in, Dr. Freeman would shout at him that he was going to do something that would make him feel a lot better. The patients had been given electroshock before they were brought in; that's probably why he yelled at them. The shock was the only medication they received, he gave them nothing for the pain, no anesthesia, no muscle relaxant.

    After the patient was placed on the table, Dr. Freeman would clap his hands and his two assistants would hold up an enormous piece of green felt the color of a pool table. That was the photographic backdrop. Dr. Freeman would direct the placement of lights so that each operation could be photographed, and he checked carefully to be sure that the cameraman was ready, that they had a good angle showing Dr. Freeman with his instrument, that there was no shadow to spoil the picture. His main interest during the entire series of lobotomies seemed to be on getting good photographic angles. He had each operation photographed with the icepick in place.

    When all was ready, he would plunge it in. I suppose that was part of his surgical technique, if there's a technique for such surgery. You probably have to plunge it in to break through the back of the eye socket. He lifted up the eyelid and slid the icepick-like instrument over the eyeball. Then he would stab it suddenly, check to be sure the pictures were being made, and move the pick from side to side to cut the brain."

    Notice what psychiatry does. It renames brutal procedures as "surgery", using "technique" and medical "instruments". The guy slammed an ice-pick into the brains of living human beings! That is the simple truth of it. All else is playing with words and meaning. Calling this a "cure" for anything is delusional.

    Scheflin and Opton in The Mind Manipulators state that 100,000 people received lobotomies between 1946-1955, with half of the operations occurring in the U.S.

    The lobotomy victim’s "sacrifice" was substantial. Psychiatrists Franz Alexander and Sheldon Selesnick noted that through psychosurgery:

    "an area essential to the human being - his personality - is forever destroyed".

    Technically, lobotomy refers to the surgical cutting of nerve connections between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain. The frontal lobes are unique to human beings and are the seat of the higher functions such as love, conern for others, empathy, self-insight, creativity, initiative, autonomy, rationality, abstract reasoning, judgment, future planning, foresight, will-power, determination and concentration. Without the frontal lobes it is impossible to be "human" in the fullest sense of the word; they are required for a civilized, effective, mature life. Depending on the amount of damage done, the effect can be partial or relatively complete. In a complete lobotomy, the patient becomes obviously demented with the deterioration of all higher mental functions.

    Lobotomist P. MacDonald Tow wrote in 1955:

    "Possibly the truest and most accurate way of describing the net effect on the total personality is to say that he is more simple; and being more simple he has rather less insight into his own performanace. The mental impairement is greater in the higher and more peculiarly human functions. Deprived of their autonomy, initiative, or willpower, their performance is considerably better in a structured situation". -Personality Changes Following Frontal Leukotomy

    Obviously, there is no concern for the individual's viewpoint, happiness, success or anything else. The only concern is whether they keep quiet and don't upset the extremely controlled environment of the mental hospitals where the surgeries were originally conducted. A mother said about her daughter, "She is with me in body but her soul is in some way lost. The deeper feelings, the tenderness, are gone. She is hard, somehow." A friend says, "I'm living now with another person. She is shallow in some ways."

    Modern psychosurgery sometimes attacks areas beneath the frontal lobes, in the emotion-regulating limbic region. The effects are the same with emotional blunting and a more controllable person. Methods employing electrodes to melt portions of the brain have similar effects with a "weakening of initiative and (the patient's) ability to structure his situation". Simply, people become more robotic after damage to their frontal lobes and limbic region. There is no way to hide the true purpose of this procedure. There never has been and never will be an attempt by psychiatry to help the person "solve" their problems to become a more responsible, attentive, productive and happy person. In fact, brain surgery of this type destroys all chances of ever honestly "helping" a person in the future with a more mentally-directed therapy. The only people who benefit are the surgeons, hospitals and staff who have an easier time handling the person. It's ALL a matter of control and profits.

    This barbaric practice is another example of the type of method experimented with and endorsed by psychiatry during it's sadistic development. Look at the results of their methods and don't listen to their PR and authoritarian verbiage. Remember, only 50 years ago an entire country of millions of people (Germany) were indoctrinated into and largely agreed with what was basically a psychiatric-based viewpoint which led to the destruction of over 6 million lives. Sadly, people will believe just about anything. Modern man is certainly not immune to this tendency, especially when psychiatry (as a belief system) has successfully infiltrated all the major colleges, goverment, and social services.

    Look into their past and current actions yourself. Learn the truth about their destructive history. Push past all the PR and authoritarian posturing. What sort of depraved logic takes the simple inhumanitarian facts of brain butchery and renames it "therapy", pretending to "help" and "assist" the patient? But this sort of logic IS psychiatry. The psychiatric "profession" then conducts further "research" by destroying different areas of the brain, in differing amounts, using various techniques, and tries to call this "science". It's a sham, which sadly, too many people fall for.

    Above all else, do not allow yourself or others to undergo any of their supposed "treatments" for any reason. Brain surgery is an obvious and overt crime against a human being. The practice involves the intentional destruction of sections of the human brain. Today's psychistrist continues along his familiar path of human pain and misery under the guise of "helping". Electric shock is obviously just as insidious as brain surgery, but psychiatric drugs are not so obvious and have been packaged and sold as the new "safe" solution to man's every problem. It is the same game, with the same wolves in sheep's clothing.

    Psychiatry's only and entire approach has been the application of force to a human being, whether this force be physical (involuntary commitment, straight jackets, restraints, abuse, torture, brain surgery), electrical (ECT, shock treatments), or biochemical (drugs). The aim is always to alter behavior, forcibly, with no appeal to the person themselves - their mind, thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, goals, intentions, responsibility or desires are ignored and even largely denied by modern psychiatric theories and methods.




    it isnt just one psychiatrist that did shock "treatments", nor was it just one person that shoved ice picks into peoples head to make them better.
    "Shit dude, did you hear about that psychiatrist in germany who is getting great results from highly psychotic patients?"
    "no, what are the results?"
    "well, they are vegetables, like they just drool on themselves now, but they arent psychotic anymore!"
    "Sweet, lets go get some ice picks".

    I am not faulting psychiatry because of the actions of one man, but rather the lack of restraint and objective research done before following the herd.
    "Did you hear about that Aussie who is curing young men of chronic masturbation?"
    "no, what is he doing?"
    "He cuts their fucking arms off! and it works! they arent jerking off anymore"
    "Sweet, lets go get some bone saws".


    Quote:

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:oh, and the other guy that makes shock machines....




    The most interesting aspect of this article to me, was that they didn't attack his information at all. The rest of it was the same stuff you've been saying all along. They make money. Really, come on now, if you expect me to distrust an individual, there has to be more than 'they make money'. While I agree, that on the informed consent, he should be required to list his involvment, I don't think it would make much difference. If his research is sound, and they are unable to find bad practice, I don't understand the problem.




    what research? you mean shocking people until they say "im feeling better now, please dont shock me anymore". Do you not see how entangled these "findings" are in the methods they use?
    there is no way to get real informed consent from a person loaded up with Thorazine, anything they sign is not a legally binding agreement. If they are "insane" in the first place, then they cannot give informed consent...
    Also, if Abrams so vehemently attacks another psychiatrist regarding saving some money on using sports mouth guards, because he in fact sells mouth guards along with the ECt machines, what other lengths has he gone to falsly promote his method and products?
    Would you be ok with your child getting Electroshock therapy after finding this information out? honestly?



    Quote:



    Again, to me, you're pointing at problems with more than just psychiatry. Clearly, politics played a huge factor in this, and should share equal blame, no? And it of course goes far beyound politics as well. Money corrupts individuals. I don't understand why the focus isn't on this, instead of pointing the finger solely at psychiatry, which is merely a piece of the whole.




    it is just politics when a company suppresses information that proves they were negligent in reporting harmful side-effects and death? This is a discussion about psychiatry, because I dont go on about the evils of republicans or the impact of vibrators on third world religions doesnt mean I am unfairly singling out Psychiatry.... nor does it make it "ok" for Psychiatry to do it, if everyone else is.


    Quote:

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    5)DSM. Every psychiatric expert involved in writing the standard diagnostic criteria for disorders such as depression and schizophrenia has had financial ties to drug companies that sell medications for those illnesses, a new analysis has found.

    Of the 170 experts in all who contributed to the manual that defines disorders from personality problems to drug addiction, more than half had such ties, including 100 percent of the experts who served on work groups on mood disorders and psychotic disorders
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/19/AR2006041902560.html
    here is the PDF.... http://www.tufts.edu/~skrimsky/PDF/DSM%20COI.PDF

    so the very people who are classifying mental disorders are the ones with financial ties to the companies that are making the "cures" for the mental disorders......




    Good article, although, when we talk about science, they are interjecting a LOT of speculation in the mix. They address something that was my concern - were they on the payroll before or after the writing of the DSM. The answer is, they do not know. There is no way for them to know, and as a result, there is no way for me to know, as well as you. Speculation is one thing, but assumptions are another.



    what does it matter if they were on the payroll, before or after? They still stood to make money based on their decision either way. You said it yourself, money corrupts.
    go back and look at the graphs as well. The areas that represent the interest of pharmaceutical companies, like anxiety (81%), mood disorders (100%),neuroleptics (87%) psychotic disorders (100%) have the highest percentages of all of them (except anxiety).
    Of those 4 categories, it covers the majority of products put out by big Pharma.

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    Invisiblespiritualemerg
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Anonymous #1]
        #6905027 - 05/12/07 04:59 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    pB0T: That being said. I hope anyone reading this who is having problems and thinking of going to a psychiatrist for help won't be scared off by this biased thread.

    Psychiatrists can operate independantly of the negative aspects of their profession, although it's difficult. I don't feel comfortable suggesting that whistleblowers should feel ashamed -- after all, there was a time when people were encouraged to seek out their local priest and that didn't always go so well. This scenario is not all that different for these days, in this culture, for better or worse, psychiatrists and psychologists have become our priests and shamans. Just as some bus drivers or school teachers are better at what they do than others, so too, some psychiatrists/psychologists are also more skilled.

    My own rule of thumb has been: if you can deal with what you're going through on your own, do that. If you can't, seek outside assistance from your family and friends. If that still won't do the trick, consider enlarging the scope of your peer group (i.e., local self-help groups; online peer support networks). If that still doesn't help, the services of a professional therapist, counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist may be appropriate. This article may help you to determine which profession will be most effective for you: How To Choose A Competent Counselor. In all cases, if you want to harm yourself or another, that's an indication that you may be in need of professional assistance.

    When it comes to the issue of medication, it's very much a personal decision. I firmly believe that all individuals are entitled to full disclosure of potential benefits and risks, because only they can determine if the benefits outweigh the risks. Aside from that, it's their choice.

    If the situation is one of psychosis I recommend that individuals seek out someone with a background in depth psychology or transpersonal psychology; a familiarity with trauma theory can also be helpful.


    .


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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6905760 - 05/12/07 12:27 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    why is this psychiatry's fault? because it promotes itself as a science... As a science it gains the trust of the people to hold itself in a transparent, unbiased organization devoted to the pursuit of knowledge through logic for the advancement of human kind. Society, is not a science, and as such, does not hold the trust of the people (meaning you vs "them")... and while homosexuals have been subjugated by the majority over the past years, they dont have a higher code of honor to live up to. Society is fickle, it is a frenzied and emotional mob that is swayed easily.... swayed easily, by the very organizations that we put complete trust into - scientists, doctors and airline pilots.
    The reason science gains so much trust, is because, when used properly, it transcends the bias that is human nature.





    I agree, society can be very easily swayed. I also believe that every science that exists has gone through its period in time where society had a pull on it. The world is flat, and if you disagree, you're going to jail. As we go further into history, and look at early medicine, it is similarly dysfunctional.

    http://dpsinfo.com/wb/medhistory.html

    Quote:

    The colonial and early federal periods marked the height of "heroic medicine," where purgings, bleedings, and high doses of toxic drugs like calomel constituted treatment for almost every condition. Since many diseases are self-limited, the "cures" may have killed more people than the diseases themselves. Between heroic medicine and a geographically very diverse population that demanded a high level of self-reliance, the public developed a very skeptical attitude towards regular doctors. In the early 19th century, the spirit of Jacksonian democracy was common across America, which further heightened the "do it yourself" attitude of many Americans. Irregular medical sects were popular worldwide in the 19th century, but they were particularly common in the United States. These sects, while they freely gave medical advice, emphasized the participant of the patient in his or her own treatment.




    and

    Quote:

    Another reaction against heroic medicine was homeopathy. It was started by a university-trained German doctor named Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann said that doctors were giving their patients too much medicine. He believed that tiny amounts of drugs should be diluted in water before being given to a patient and that practitioners should take very thorough medical histories of each patient.




    Quote:

    Quackery was basically a way to fool people into believing they were being cured while making money from them. Quackery had even been licensed in London, but it was completely ignored by the America government for hundreds of years. While some quackery did come from otherwise eminent physicians (Dr. William Hammond, one of the first neurologists in America, developed the theory of isopathy, in which animal extracts were used to treat a number of diseases from impotence to a weak heart.[8]), most of it was created by hucksters. Quackery could be deadly, since there was no regulation of what patent medicine could contain. Once the American Medical Association got started, it went after quacks and fought with the government over making the sale of quack medicine illegal. Eventually, with the banning of narcotics for non-prescription drugs, the impact of quack medicine was lessened.




    All of this is sounding very familiar to me. I guess I am hopeful about what psychiatry could become. I don't feel it is all worthless, and I feel that out of this something much more refined will be born. Psychiatry is very new, and all of the sciences at their birth went through some very unhealthy practices. It is unfortunate that history repeats itself, and in a time when we feel we should know it all, we don't. But I see trends that are not really new in psychiatry. I hope that they overcome the challenges facing them, and put a lot of this debate to rest. But how many years will it take before the tide changes? I can only hope that it isn't too many. As I said when responding to spiritual, the fact that those within psychiatry are questioning, is to me, the biggest hope. If those within start to make changes, it will happen sooner rather than later.


    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:
    well.... there is one huge difference here.... medical science has a history of curing things. Can you think of one thing psychiatry has cured?
    First off, Psychiatry is barely regulated. It takes a lot for a psychiatrist to lose thier license when compared to a physician.
    Just like the link in the beginning of this thread, it talked about how people had to say "Yes you are right! your method worked, im cured" to get out of the grasp of psychiatry.
    They make their own rules. They have classified mental illness, as well as what positive progress is. This isnt so for the medical profession.
    If I have polio, it isnt a doctor making a personal judgement disguised as scientific diagnosis that decides whether or not I am sick, nor is it that same doctor giving his opinion on whether or not I am healthy again. The doctor will show me bloodwork, or some other tangible proof that I have polio, and later show me tangible proof that i have been cured.
    What is objective about Psychiatry?

    I have no problem with people dying in the name of objective scientific research. We can objectively look back and say "yeah, it was a huge mistake to drill holes in that guys head all because his nose was bleeding, when all he needed was to chew a leaf that made his blood thicker". We cant objectively look back and say " yeah it was a huge mistake to remove part of this guys brain, when all he really needed was a friend and a pat on the back."
    There is no science to human emotions, not in the classification of them, nor in the treatment of them. We cannot objectively classify what anger is. Is it punching something? is it grinding your teeth? is it yelling? is it plotting revenge?
    There will never be any true advancement in the field of Psychiatry, only regrets that lead to curbing acts deemed inhumane.




    The start of medicine wasn't really 'curing' anything. The majority of the treatments were ineffective, and the patients either died as a result, or got better on their own. It hasn't been until recently that they have been able to get a grasp on it all. To me, if you're going to compare medicine and psychiatry, you better compare early medicine with psychiatry. They seem to be in a comparable stage to me. There are a lot of similarities.

    Psychiatry is trying to cure things, but, at this point is ineffective. Again, I must stress that psychiatry is new. It is tackeling the unknown. And we will never agree on what is possible, because you deny there being any sort of genetic link what so ever. It seems strange for me to think that, every part of our body has our genetics in it, including our brain, and yet, they don't play any factor in cognition.I think time will reveal a lot more on this, as techniques get refined.

    It could show you are 100% right, and if that's the case, psychiatry will have to shift drastically, or be blown out of the waters. Until then, though, neither of us really know which is true. If it is unprovable at this point, I'm willing to wait and see what turns up before I make my conclusions. As for there being no science to human emotions, perhaps you're right if you feel that science needs to be 100%, no exceptions to the rule kind of deal. To me, in psychology and psychiatry, if something can be measured, and replicated, it is doing its job scientifically. There is so much we don't know about emotions right now, that there will always be something that makes us go back and rethink the method of measure. But for a general scheme, it fits pretty good. To me, science is all about being falsifiable. Nothing is 100%, ever, and has the opportunity to be proven wrong at any point. It's flexible in that way, and ever changing and expanding. The ability to look at emotions objectively is a point that I don't think we would ever agree on. So I'll leave it at this.




    Quote:

    Psychosurgery is a psychiatric practice which creates permanent and irreversible brain damage. It is a brain operation in which healthy brain tissue is intentionally mutilated or removed for the purpose of behavior control.





    Beginning of the article. Seems to be a lot of bias. If they're going to publish an article, I'd rather they kept their personal beliefs of what psychosurgery is to themselves, and stick to facts.


    Quote:


    After a few ill-fated attempts at the turn of the century, Portuguese neurosurgeon Egas Moniz pioneered this psychiatric nightmare in 1935 by stabbing a long, thin blade into the brains of his victims through holes drilled in their skulls. In ironic testimony to the results of his work, Moniz was shot and paralyzed by one of his lobotomy victims in 1939 and, in 1955, was beaten to death by another.

    Though Moniz is credited with the "discovery" of the technique, he was preceded by Gottlieb Burckhardt, the superintendent of a Swiss insane asylum, who was the first person in modern times to publish the results of psychosurgery experiments on humans.

    Unlike modern psychiatrists, Burckhardt was not restricted by a need to shroud his intentions in euphemistic terms like "therapy," and admitted his aim was that "the patient might be transformed from a disturbed to a quiet clement [insane person]." There was no inention to "help" the patient. The goal was only to eradicate the behavior which others found undesirable.

    To achieve this, he removed parts of the brain from six human subjects.

    Although one of them died, Burckhardt was not displeased with the results as several of those who lived apparently became easier to handle in the asylum wards which, rather than effecting a recovery of sanity, was his major purpose.




    Ok, at least they picked quotes that support their side. Unfortunately, they only provided a quote for one person, and at that, interpreted his words for me. Gee, thanks, I couldn't have done that myself. It's so interesting to me, that in a discussion about control, they are trying to use their influence as an article writer to direct how I interpret things.

    p.s. this was just filler before the next piece which I will address

    Quote:


    Making docile patients and controllable people is largely the true goal of psychiatric methods. There is no attempt or intention to bring about sanity, happiness, causitiveness or repsonsiblity for the patient. This is obvious by a close study of it's history.




    I really dislike the assumptions and generalizations. They quoted one person, and suddenly, based on their interpretation of his words, this is the goal of ALL of psychiatry. Whoa... that seems a bit drastic.

    If you don't mind, I'm going to skip the rest and come back to it in another post. I have to find a book I own to give a more proper response.


    Quote:

    psilocyberin said:what research? you mean shocking people until they say "im feeling better now, please dont shock me anymore". Do you not see how entangled these "findings" are in the methods they use?
    there is no way to get real informed consent from a person loaded up with Thorazine, anything they sign is not a legally binding agreement. If they are "insane" in the first place, then they cannot give informed consent...
    Also, if Abrams so vehemently attacks another psychiatrist regarding saving some money on using sports mouth guards, because he in fact sells mouth guards along with the ECt machines, what other lengths has he gone to falsly promote his method and products?
    Would you be ok with your child getting Electroshock therapy after finding this information out? honestly?




    What research? Research on the effectiveness of ECT, as well as the side effects, I would assume. But that is an assumption, and I don't really know. I do know that in an article attacking his credibility, they did not attack any of his findings.

    From everything I know about ECT, it is more or less a last resort for major depression. Abrams seems to believe it shouldn't be a last resort, but that is his professional opinion (and possibly one influenced by money, but who really knows?) It still remains that it is a last resort all the same. Also, it's interesting you mentioned Thorazine, as it was used in medicine before psychiatry.

    As for whether I would let my child get ECT, that information wouldn't have effected my decision in any way. It would have been a no before, and it would have been a no after. The reasons aren't that the guy has financial ties, either.




    Quote:


    It is just politics when a company suppresses information that proves they were negligent in reporting harmful side-effects and death? This is a discussion about psychiatry, because I dont go on about the evils of republicans or the impact of vibrators on third world religions doesnt mean I am unfairly singling out Psychiatry.... nor does it make it "ok" for Psychiatry to do it, if everyone else is.




    My argument was quite simply, why such a grudge against psychiatry. The grudge seems to be against much more than simply psychiatry. It seems to be against society. I agree that it is a problem in psychiatry, I also believe it is a problem in politics, medicine, computer software, the court system, and any number of other things. Why not attack the underlying problems instead of those areas in which the problems lie. I can see reasons to do it the way you are, but I want to know your reasoning behind it.

    Quote:


    what does it matter if they were on the payroll, before or after? They still stood to make money based on their decision either way. You said it yourself, money corrupts.
    go back and look at the graphs as well. The areas that represent the interest of pharmaceutical companies, like anxiety (81%), mood disorders (100%),neuroleptics (87%) psychotic disorders (100%) have the highest percentages of all of them (except anxiety).
    Of those 4 categories, it covers the majority of products put out by big Pharma.




    Weren't you going on about correlation not being cause? Just because they received money, doesn't mean that money was the cause. To me it matters if they received the money before or after, because if they received it before, I would be more prone to believe it was a part of the cause. If they received it after, I would be less likely to believe that money was the cause of the decision, but rather the decision was the cause of the money. The decision being independent of the money, and the money being dependent on the decision.

    If this is the case, it would make sense that as a result of the decision, the money is going to come in. And that, to me, is why it is important.


    --------------------
    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

    Edited by Kickle (05/12/07 12:32 PM)

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    OfflineKickleM
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: SneezingPenis]
        #6906077 - 05/12/07 02:15 PM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Ok, this is in response to the lobotomy quote:

    In regards to Freeman, again, we’re talking about one person, who looks to be on an extreme end of the spectrum for such a topic. He sounds slightly disturbed with his obsession with photographing the icepick inside of the individual. This does not to me represent the psychiatric population. It represents one individual, inside of practice that was developed within psychiatry, and even this practice does not represent psychiatry to me. Perhaps I’m beginning to sound repetitive in this individual speech, but no matter how many individuals you address, it doesn’t represent psychiatry to me. There are so many psychiatrists who get nothing written about them, for the sole fact that they aren’t doing anything wrong. So taking one individual and saying ‘this is everyone’ doesn’t float for me.

    Quote:

    Notice what psychiatry does. It renames brutal procedures as "surgery", using "technique" and medical "instruments". The guy slammed an ice-pick into the brains of living human beings! That is the simple truth of it. All else is playing with words and meaning. Calling this a "cure" for anything is delusional.




    All surgery can be broken down in such a way. They are all procedures, and they all can be stated by their actions. Modern surgery involves lasers, and a lot of cutting, but to put it in those terms doesn’t change the fact that it is surgery. I’d argue that this author put a lot more word play in this small paragraph, than calling a medical procedure surgery ever will.

    Quote:

    Lobotomist P. MacDonald Tow wrote in 1955:

    "Possibly the truest and most accurate way of describing the net effect on the total personality is to say that he is more simple; and being more simple he has rather less insight into his own performanace. The mental impairement is greater in the higher and more peculiarly human functions. Deprived of their autonomy, initiative, or willpower, their performance is considerably better in a structured situation". -Personality Changes Following Frontal Leukotomy




    Note the date of P. MacDonald Tow’s writings. The very end of the lobotomy era.

    To say that psychiatry hasn’t evolved forth as knowledge has been gained, to me, is a lie. Lobotomy is a practice of the past. There are less harmful practices now, albeit at what cost? They are certainly more widespread and as a result the damage may actually be higher. But if given to the same amount of people, they are FAR less harmful, and as a result, are advancement.

    I have to ask why medicine is so much better in regards to pills. A person very much can avoid a majority of the sicknesses out there. A good diet, exercise, and sleep take care of a large percentage of illnesses. Yet a majority of people don’t bother, because there is a medicine to ease the suffering of their life choices. Antibiotics are overused, and the mutations that have the potential to occur could be devestating. Why is this so much better than alternative treatments?

    Quote:

    it isnt just one psychiatrist that did shock "treatments", nor was it just one person that shoved ice picks into peoples head to make them better.
    "Shit dude, did you hear about that psychiatrist in germany who is getting great results from highly psychotic patients?"
    "no, what are the results?"
    "well, they are vegetables, like they just drool on themselves now, but they arent psychotic anymore!"
    "Sweet, lets go get some ice picks".





    While it's true, it isn't just one psychiatrist doing these things, it is currently no psychiatrists performing labotomy. And while you're correct in saying that it was widespread in the time, I will post some of my own information about that when I return home. I have people waiting on me, so this will have to wait.

    Also, people weren't vegetables.


    --------------------
    Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
    Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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    OfflineSneezingPenis
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Kickle]
        #6908549 - 05/13/07 03:12 AM (16 years, 10 months ago)

    Quote:

    His name is Edgar and he is the product of one of the most bizarre and disturbing episodes in United States medical history: the years from 1936 to 1960 when between 40,000 and 50,000 Americans were subjected to brain operations -- often without their knowledge or permission -- in a popular crusade to cure, or at least render manageable, the nation's mental patients.

    Today, an estimated 200 to 500 lobotomies are performed annually by perhaps a dozen doctors in the United States. But the medical standards and legal restrictions of 1980 bear only small resemblance to those of the heyday of the lobotomists.




    While it is no longer an ice pick near the eye, it still goes on.



    Quote:

    Kickle said:
    I agree, society can be very easily swayed. I also believe that every science that exists has gone through its period in time where society had a pull on it. The world is flat, and if you disagree, you're going to jail. As we go further into history, and look at early medicine, it is similarly dysfunctional.



    there is only about a 40 year difference between the establishment of the AMA and the APA... IOW, before they were regulated and organized.
    Still, I would take a 1967 physician over this years psychiatrist.
    While Psychiatry, IMO, is akin to the travelling "tonic" salesman, it is in no way chronologically fair to compare these two eras to each other.

    Quote:

    The colonial and early federal periods marked the height of "heroic medicine," where purgings, bleedings, and high doses of toxic drugs like calomel constituted treatment for almost every condition. Since many diseases are self-limited, the "cures" may have killed more people than the diseases themselves. Between heroic medicine and a geographically very diverse population that demanded a high level of self-reliance, the public developed a very skeptical attitude towards regular doctors. In the early 19th century, the spirit of Jacksonian democracy was common across America, which further heightened the "do it yourself" attitude of many Americans. Irregular medical sects were popular worldwide in the 19th century, but they were particularly common in the United States. These sects, while they freely gave medical advice, emphasized the participant of the patient in his or her own treatment.



    Another reaction against heroic medicine was homeopathy. It was started by a university-trained German doctor named Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann said that doctors were giving their patients too much medicine. He believed that tiny amounts of drugs should be diluted in water before being given to a patient and that practitioners should take very thorough medical histories of each patient.




    Homeopathy isnt really life endangering. It is just speculation that someone who died because they didnt go the western medicine route and went the homeopathic route died because of that choice.
    Also, we can say that physical medicine has advanced itself, and society the entire time since the creation of the AMA.... I see no way in which we can say that about psychiatry and the APA... unless you count recognizing every ten years that what you are doing is inhumane and then going on to another inhumane ten year run.
    See, the life span of people has increased, we can give a lot of credit to modern medicine for that. Can we really say that society has become happier since psychiatry has been around? can you honestly say that there is less anxiety, paranoia, and depression?



    Quote:

    All of this is sounding very familiar to me. I guess I am hopeful about what psychiatry could become. I don't feel it is all worthless, and I feel that out of this something much more refined will be born. Psychiatry is very new, and all of the sciences at their birth went through some very unhealthy practices. It is unfortunate that history repeats itself, and in a time when we feel we should know it all, we don't. But I see trends that are not really new in psychiatry. I hope that they overcome the challenges facing them, and put a lot of this debate to rest. But how many years will it take before the tide changes? I can only hope that it isn't too many. As I said when responding to spiritual, the fact that those within psychiatry are questioning, is to me, the biggest hope. If those within start to make changes, it will happen sooner rather than later.



    Psychiatry isnt new. It has been around for a very long time.
    Quote:

    The first hospital wards for the mentally disturbed opened from the 8th century in the Middle East, notably at Baghdad Hospital under Rhazes, with the first dedicated asylums opening from the 15th Century in Egypt, Spain and then the rest of Europe, notoriously at Bedlam in England.




    -wiki


    Quote:


    The start of medicine wasn't really 'curing' anything. The majority of the treatments were ineffective, and the patients either died as a result, or got better on their own. It hasn't been until recently that they have been able to get a grasp on it all. To me, if you're going to compare medicine and psychiatry, you better compare early medicine with psychiatry. They seem to be in a comparable stage to me. There are a lot of similarities.

    Psychiatry is trying to cure things, but, at this point is ineffective. Again, I must stress that psychiatry is new. It is tackeling the unknown. And we will never agree on what is possible, because you deny there being any sort of genetic link what so ever. It seems strange for me to think that, every part of our body has our genetics in it, including our brain, and yet, they don't play any factor in cognition.I think time will reveal a lot more on this, as techniques get refined.



    refer to above statement.

    Quote:

    To me, in psychology and psychiatry, if something can be measured, and replicated, it is doing its job scientifically. There is so much we don't know about emotions right now, that there will always be something that makes us go back and rethink the method of measure. But for a general scheme, it fits pretty good. To me, science is all about being falsifiable. Nothing is 100%, ever, and has the opportunity to be proven wrong at any point. It's flexible in that way, and ever changing and expanding. The ability to look at emotions objectively is a point that I don't think we would ever agree on. So I'll leave it at this.




    We can objectively declare what is normal physical health, but we cannot objectively declare what normal mental health is..... IOW... sanity.
    Where do you pin down sanity? where does psychiatry pin down sanity? someone who is happy? is happiness objective? no.
    If you want to split hairs, then yeah, stabbing someone in the face with an icepick, or removing healthy brain tissue, and repeating enough to show that it changes them, is science.
    Just like I can cut the arms off boys, repeat it enough, and show that it drastically decreases how much they masturbate.... BAM... science!
    Science isnt just finding a problem, and then stopping that problem without respect to all the other problems you have created.
    Consider this: lets say you have an equation, and you are unable to solve it with your math skills, so you just scribble down a bunch of numbers and letters and call that your answer. Well, it is the answer, you have solved the problem, because now your new problem is deciphering that answer.
    That is what I feel the logic and basis of Psychiatry is.
    It isnt that it has to change a few things, or go through a paradigm shift, the entire theory of psychology and psychiatry is fundamentally flawed.




    Quote:

    Quote:

    Psychosurgery is a psychiatric practice which creates permanent and irreversible brain damage. It is a brain operation in which healthy brain tissue is intentionally mutilated or removed for the purpose of behavior control.





    Beginning of the article. Seems to be a lot of bias. If they're going to publish an article, I'd rather they kept their personal beliefs of what psychosurgery is to themselves, and stick to facts.




    yes, the article is biased, but what you quoted is fact. Psychosurgury is killing healthy brain tissue.... that is what it is.



    Quote:

    Quote:


    It is just politics when a company suppresses information that proves they were negligent in reporting harmful side-effects and death? This is a discussion about psychiatry, because I dont go on about the evils of republicans or the impact of vibrators on third world religions doesnt mean I am unfairly singling out Psychiatry.... nor does it make it "ok" for Psychiatry to do it, if everyone else is.




    My argument was quite simply, why such a grudge against psychiatry. The grudge seems to be against much more than simply psychiatry. It seems to be against society. I agree that it is a problem in psychiatry, I also believe it is a problem in politics, medicine, computer software, the court system, and any number of other things. Why not attack the underlying problems instead of those areas in which the problems lie. I can see reasons to do it the way you are, but I want to know your reasoning behind it.




    I agree that there are lots of problems with society. In some of my other threads where ADD/ADHD is discussed I go on about the idiotic stance that society takes regarding scholarly interest. We expect every kid to be equally intrigued by economics, even though economics was invented by man, it isnt a biologically fundamental experience like sex. Give a group of teenagers an economics book and a Hustler and see which one they all want to read.
    Also, I have no problem with someone sitting on a couch talking to someone about their problems. There is no danger there really, it is advice and you choose to take it or leave it, just like a medical doctor saying "stop smoking and drinking and jog a little".
    But when the psychiatric community starts having parents labelled as negligent for not putting their 8 year old on amphetamines, and having that child taken away by the state.... that is where it is no longer a practice.... it is fascism masked as science.
    Quote:


    what does it matter if they were on the payroll, before or after? They still stood to make money based on their decision either way. You said it yourself, money corrupts.
    go back and look at the graphs as well. The areas that represent the interest of pharmaceutical companies, like anxiety (81%), mood disorders (100%),neuroleptics (87%) psychotic disorders (100%) have the highest percentages of all of them (except anxiety).
    Of those 4 categories, it covers the majority of products put out by big Pharma.




    Quote:

    Weren't you going on about correlation not being cause? Just because they received money, doesn't mean that money was the cause. To me it matters if they received the money before or after, because if they received it before, I would be more prone to believe it was a part of the cause. If they received it after, I would be less likely to believe that money was the cause of the decision, but rather the decision was the cause of the money. The decision being independent of the money, and the money being dependent on the decision.

    If this is the case, it would make sense that as a result of the decision, the money is going to come in. And that, to me, is why it is important.



    correlation is enough to distrust an organization, not enough to put children on schedule 2 drugs.

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    Offlineanniepema
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud Thank you for the reference to the Washington Post Article [Re: spiritualemerg]
        #6935721 - 05/18/07 05:53 PM (16 years, 9 months ago)

    [url=http://autism-prevention.blogspot.com/]autism prevention [/url][url=http://how-old-is-too-old.blogspot.com/]Paternal age effect[/url]Psychiatry is a major racket and scam for those who are tied to the pharmaceutical industry. They all know the causes of autism and they changed its definition in 1994 to milk it for all the money and research jobs etc. they can get. Here is some information I have collected. Please pass it on because no one else but me has this info together.

    http://autism-prevention.blogspot.com/
    http://how-old-is-too-old.blogspot.com/

    http://ageofthefatherandhealthoffuture.blogspot.com/


    http://themalebiologicalclock.blogspot.com/
    http://absurdrealities.blogspot.com/

    http://fathersageandsinglegenedisorders.blogspot.com/

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/10/021018080014.htm

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    OfflineJTB22
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    Registered: 01/31/08
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    Re: Psychiatry the fraud [Re: Sterile]
        #7982847 - 02/05/08 02:06 PM (16 years, 1 month ago)

    Just saw a CCHR vid. I believe it.

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