Move over outdated chemical imbalance theory, now it is claimed that genetic misregulation underlies psychiatric disease, and that psychiatric drugs themselves can fix the genetic misregulation problem. “Anti-psychotics and mood stabilizing agents are capable of promoting epigenetic modifications associated with an active transcriptional state at disease-relevant loci, suggesting new molecular mechanisms of anti-psychotic efficacy” says the just released report by the Toronto-based Krembil Epigenetics Laboratory.
The report entitled- “Epigenetics of Major Psychoses: Progress, Problems and Perspectives”- was supported by the Canadian Institute for Health and the National Institutes of Health. It represents the cutting edge science on the brain, genetics, and so-called psychiatric disease.
To me this report heralds an Orwellian prophecy of hugely ominous proportions. Anti-psychotic and mood altering agents are being cheerfully seen as acceptable gene modifying substances that reverse the genetic misregulation that is boldly claimed to underlie so-called schizophrenia and bi-polar.
This is the new model. No more unproveable, debunked chemical imbalance theory of causation. Now we read – “Rapidly growing evidence shows that epigenetic regulation underlies normal cognition, and that cognition dysfunction occurs upon epigenetic misregulation.”
And – “Several psychiatric medications have been shown to produce epigenetic changes in the brain … the therapeutic actions of current medications for psychiatric disorders may occur via epigentic mechanisms.”
Epigenetics, is the study of modifications that occur in our DNA that cause certain genes to be suppressed. This report says that healthy genetic functioning or expression underlies normal cognitive functioning, and that genetic misregulation underlies psychiatric disease.
That in itself is a game changing model of human emotional suffering and madness if it is true. It tightens the science that says that all causation of human experience is caused by genetically determined neurological and biological forces and processes of normality vs. disease.
But to then assert that the psychiatric medications already in use can remedy all that, by altering us and changing how our genes work, is really breathtaking in its reach and possible consequences. The moral imperative to hesitate and deeply ponder how genetic science impacts people, has been a much proclaimed safeguard in the field of genetics. That requisite moral imperative seems to have been skipped over in this zeal to applaud anti-psychotic medication use as a ready way to modify genetic expression. Won’t all prescriptions for anti-psychotic medications have to include an informed consent now, about their genetic modifying effects? Most people I know don’t like to eat genetically modified produce. I wouldn’t be surprised if many people will be against their prescribed psychiatric drugs effecting their genetic functioning.
In this one landmark article, these researchers are claiming to have found the cause, and in psychiatric medications, the probable genetically modifying treatment for so-called schizophrenia and bi-polar. Should we doubt that every other DSM diagnosis will also be found to have such epigenetic underpinnings soon?
Maybe now the decades long, holy grail quest for a single gene causation of so-called schizophrenia, by the believers in the bio-psychiatry medical model, will come to an end.
Bob Whitaker’s recent courageous blog and video here on Mad In America, traces the thread of eugenics in our history right up to the present, in his blog- “The Taint Of Eugenics In NIMH-Funded Research Today.” It looks like our Canadian neighbors may have beat our own NIMH in boldly declaring the new era of the interface of psychiatry with epigenetics.
Will this new era also seek to separate those perceived as normal humans from those believed to be genetically abnormal? Will pathologizing eyes care to look deeper and ask questions about human rights?
Does anyone deserve to have their brain and gene functioning altered, perhaps permanently by psychiatric medications?
Instead of celebrating this research, I grieve for the millions who were not offered a viable alternative to such medications and who still are not.
Embarrassingly naked, biopsychiatry is still wandering around looking for new clothes.
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The new clothes biological psychiatry is trying on are called Trans-humanism. Come up to speed on it here.
http://vimeo.com/40806881
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Thanks Subvet 416, I’ve been able to watch about 20 minutes of the video so far, and will respond here when I’m able to watch it all. It is very interesting so far.
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Psychiatry may have found the perfect new era brand of Emperor’s new clothes this time Altostrata. This Canadian epigenetics research laboratory group says-“Epigenics can be thought of as a “third wave” of psychiatric research, the first two being traditional genetics and environmental studies.” and- “drugs which target the epigenetic machinery can restore normal gene activity.”
A couple of questions that come to mind are- is this true? and- if so, will people want their “genetic machinery” tampered with?
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Ehhhh….they always say their discovery is the next new thing.
Still, another worrisome attempt by biopsychiatry to make everyone “normal.”
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What if psychiatry threw a world wide, “For Normals Only Party!”..and nobody came?
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That’s the problem. They have to be force committed to attend such a party, otherwise no one would show up.
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Not even psychiatrists!
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You’re making too much sense doc. I think your epigentics are acting up again. Get this guy some Seroquel immediately.
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Thanks Scott, someone please help me be normal again!(-:
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These are absurd claims by desparate people. Of course they will be taken seriously.
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Yes Pliny, Thank you. A great many will be hoodwinked again.
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Michael, you told us what they are claiming. But what kind of BS research are they reporting on?
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Ted, please Google the research article title I gave above that was just published by the Krembil Epigenetic laboratory–“Epigenetics of Major Psychosis: Progress, Problems and Perspectives” and you can read the extensive research they cite to support their claims.
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Additionally Ted, the article just appeared in the May 23, 2012 edition of the prestigious- “Trends in Genetics” journal that has been in operation since 1985.
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It’s no surprise that antipsychotics affect us genetically. If they can cause increased risk of pituitary tumors and cause young boys to lactate, they are certainly impacting our genetic material.
I actually find this to be rather horrifying. I am one who, based on logical appraisal of the situation as I understand it, somewhat believes that there are neurophysical underpinnings in some forms of disorder. Wait…deep breath…I’m not a scientist in the formal sense. Not at all. Research, to me, means thinking about something for a minute or two, maybe glancing at a wikipedia page. I have very poor organization skills. I become overwhelmed by paper. At lot of the time, I only 1/2 know what I’m talking about and the rest is conjecture.
All that being said, I am fairly good at reasoning things out and being resourceful with the information that is available. The role of neurodivergence in human experience is one topic that I have thought a lot about. First and foremost, I can only really say anything about my own neurological experience.
I know that my brain is different.
What I don’t know is if I could possibly articulate how outrageously disgusting it is that the medical/pharmaceutical complex has decided that there is something wrong with a brain such as the very fine brain that I have. That is an absolute travesty.
Do they really want to erase people like me? Do they want us to not feel anything, to not say anything, to not challenge anything or notice anything?
If they’ve figured out what gene it is that makes the likes of me experience the world in the way I do, then they have likely figured out that it is associated with distinct and profound experiences that often challenge the status quo worldview/consensus reality in seeking truth and trying to accomplish some great thing in the world. That, I suspect, is what they are trying to “cure.”
Hasn’t the human species always relied on neurodivergent analysts with sensory processing atypicalities and unique attunement to pattern and nuance to inform them of what it is to be human?
Meaning that if there is such a gene, I’d be willing to put money on the possibility that every poet, philosopher, saint, prophet and holy spirited child ever born on this planet was expressing a trait they never wanted, never asked for, but received in the form of dangerous gifts.* The best of the world’s history was written by people who meet diagnostic criteria for a Severe and Persistent Mental Illness. How is that possible?
If such a gene exists, it is at the core of what makes us human and we’d be wise not to tamper with it.
I found a picture of a great-great uncle of mine and I noticed that he looked like me. I read his letters and I looked at his drawings and I realized that he is the relative I feel the closest kinship to, though he died 50 years before I was born.
“Hmmmm,” I thought, “I wonder if he’d been born a hundred years later if he’d be called ‘bipolar’ or ‘schizophrenic’ for trying to free innocent people whom his father – a judge – had jailed? I wonder if he’d be involuntarily committed after he ran away to try to join the circus? I wonder if he’d still want to be an architect?”
Probably.
Some of us just like to think about how things are put together, what fits and what doesn’t, what shapes can be made, what works and what doesn’t, what is right and what is wrong.
For someone who tends to extrapolate to the furthest possible extent, I can say with some authority that the world would be a hellish place if we didn’t have the genes we have.
They cannot genetically modify humans. That seems to me to be blasphemous.
*www.theicarusproject.net
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What you have written here is wonderful and important Faith. Thank you. I feel the same way. The numinous human spirit and soul can’t be reduced down and explained away by breaking us down into being just embodied bio-symptoms of some underlying disease. In fact, individual deviance from the norm is the necessary creative diversity which actually insures a species to evolve and survive and flourish. Why does that fundamental fact get forgotten by these genetic scientists?
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Thanks, Michael. I have no idea how that “fundamental fact” gets so forgotten. It’s very concerning that it does, particularly by people who are reputed to be “smart scientists.” Eek. That does not bode well for any of us.
You know, I have really been going ’round and ’round lately with the concept of ‘neurodivergence’ and how the idea relates to the bio-medical model.
The idea of “mental illness” as a myth is very appealing. Obviously, it is a flawed construction, logically and ethically.
This is not to say, however, that disordered experiences do not exist. As someone who literally had a very difficult time staying alive in the midst of some prolonged periods of profound distress, I do feel that my experience of humanity does have a propensity to become disordered.
I am not one who “was a little blue” and got duped into taking this and taking that. I certainly was told to take this and take that and I certainly was, in many ways, duped.
However, my entry into psychiatry was the result of some very real concerns my confused and ill-informed family had about me. They got duped, too. They were, I believe ,trying to help me, because I was clearly in pain. They were “listening to the professionals.”
Unfortunately, in 23 years of psychiatric treatment, I did not get the help I needed. In fact, with “treatment” my experience of disorder became more painful and more confusing and the stigmatized persona it bestowed upon me did little to help me to develop into a functioning and self-directed adult. This seems to be a common trajectory.
Psychiatry significantly impaired what was best and strongest about me and denied me any real insight into who I am and how my brain/heart/mind actually work. Psychiatry did not help me to learn to understand or manage my experience and invalidated many of the factors that were primary forces in my disordered states, such as atypical cognitive/ emotional processing, sensitivity, stress and trauma.
Thus, while it is important to not put any stock into diminishing perspectives that reduce us to little more than our “imbalanced chemicals,” I think that it is vital that we recognize and honor the very real states of disorder that some people do seem to experience. In that, we can then begin to identify what works and what doesn’t in helping people to learn how to navigate their experience in ways that support the vitality of our strengths, whatever we identify them as being.
It wasn’t until I learned how my brain works that I developed the skills I needed to manage my modes of experience more effectively. For a long time, I felt that I was left with two equally useless choices in thinking about what to think about myself…1) You have a mental illness, or 2) Just pretend you’re fine.
I was not fine. I did need help. However, the help that I needed was not to be had. I needed someone to help me to understand that not everybody felt things with the intensity that I did. I needed someone to help me to learn how to self-soothe and regulate my emotions. I needed someone to give me opportunities to discover my unique skills and talents. I needed someone to tell me that it made perfect sense to be sad about the world and hurt by the things that happen in it. I needed someone to tell me that I would be okay, that I was okay – that I just had a special sort of brain that led me to experience things in ways that might sometimes be hard, and that people might not always understand. I needed someone to tell me that the world is full of people who had run gauntlets within their lives and lived to tell about it, paint pictures about it, write songs and stories about it.
I did not need to be put in a room with a locked door, or be forced to have shots that made me drool, or have any nurses roll their eyes at me when I wanted to call my mom, or be expected to take so much medication that I couldn’t even sign my name. Those things were not remotely helpful. In fact, there was a great deal of clear malfeasance in much of my psychiatric treatment. This, also, is not uncommon.
The notion that neurodivergence = “problem to be solved” is a very dangerous notion, both for the neurodivergent and for the world that loses the important perspectives that can be offered by those who see/think/feel things differently.
Example: I would not be writing any of what I have written lately if I were still on antipsychotics, as my cognitive function was impaired by the drugs. I could not read and could not write without great effort and I did not really care about anything.
I care about a great deal in the world and, you know what, I’m finally learning to love myself.
So, take that, Medical Model!
🙂
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How deceptively simple is it Faith to know that when we get what we need we are being helped. What we really need. What we say we need- or a person who cares with their open heart can extend an offering of what we need based on knowing us very well. There is nothing like getting what we need when we need it.
What you needed should have been there for you. What I needed should have been there for me, so I didn’t have to spend 15 years of my youth wandering at times homeless and strung out, as I tried to believe I had a place in the world after spending my season of madness so very far away from what I came back to.
I’m glad you love yourself. That finally and always was the key. It’s almost a miracle to be able to do that after all the shaming looks and shunning cold shoulders we have endured. I wrote a strange little poem about that love that I say to myself to ward off the blues and un-requited loves and cold shoulders that still come my way-
Faith, see your openness is helping me be vulnerable here for the world to see. And that is a big way we help ourselves and each other- being vulnerable about our personal stories-
here’s the poem-
There’s a love that doesn’t wait to be claimed, received.
There’s a love that doesn’t wait and long to be returned.
There’s a humble love that just is, is.
A humble flame that just burns, burns.
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Well thought out and well writen. I like your different brain!
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Thank you Stephen.
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🙂
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I don’t think epigenetics will have a significant impact on mental health anytime soon. More precisely, like any low-level biological approach, it will only be applicable to mental health after it has proved its usefulness on much easier targets like learning to play the piano, how to become a great chess player, the acquisition of new languages, and permanently “unlearning” how to bike.
When psychiatrists will be able to demonstrate a drug for those easier skills (that can replace the current tedious methods of lengthy learning by practice in an adequate environment), then, and only then, I will believe they can provide a drug that automatically create the mental health skills required for good mental health (and maybe also a drug that allows to unlearn unhealthy cognitive processes).
Does anybody anymore think of the mind-soul/brain-body following the dualism school of thought? I should admit I have long taken as a given that our mind and our soul emerges from biology, and the incredibly complex configuration and dynamics of the neuronal network of the brain. This amazingly complex network is able to represent the totality of human thoughts, experience, system of beliefs and consciousness. But neither epigenetics or chemistry has the specificity to address a particular set of automatic cognitive processes in the billions of billions of neuronal connections, without significantly affecting something else (side effects).
The point is that we already know ways to change the working of the brain, for instance, one article among many:
“How Psychotherapy Changes the Brain” : http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1926705
Touch, sounds, images are changing the brain in measurable ways, I am sure they are changing the epigenetics dynamics too. Let’s say humankind invented powerful ways to change the biology of brain (both chemistry and epigenetics), and they named them “language/books/movies/dialogue/life”. Would you use them? Or would you be afraid by such powerful ways of modifying your brain? Would you be afraid they might be used for nefarious purposes?
Both drugs and words can modify the brain, but right now words are to drugs what a scalpel is to a chainsaw, and I don’t expect a reversal soon. Which one do you prefer for your surgery?
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Stanley when I read this research, it tells me that we are about to hear in every psych ward and clinic the newest psychiatic talking points. Now the latest daily dogma that replaces the chemical imbalance hoax justification for meds, will say that psych drugs address madness and depression at the epigenetic level. The drugs work by modifying the brain to address the underlying genetic misregulation. That is what is clearly stated in this published article from last week. It is the new wave.
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Thanks for your answer. I appreciate your insight about the new wave coming to psychiatry. My understanding is that your focus was on the ethical issues related to that new wave. While epigenetics might cure many illnesses, my point was that epigenetics applied to most mental illnesses looks more like a dangerous pseudo-science, rather than a dangerous science.
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I appreciate your important point Stanley.
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I agree, but they’ve always been muttering “genetics” when they haven’t been muttering “chemical imbalance.”
One can always hear in these studies some guff that doctors will be telling their patients to manipulate them to take psychiatric medications.
What about the “blood test” nonsense that came out this spring?
I also agree with Stanley, it’s pseudoscience rather than science — but since when has psychiatry excluded pseudoscience from serious consideration?
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As I understand it Altostrata, because of the human genome project, epigenetics has now become the new frontier in genetics. Yes, for decades the psychiatric research on genetics has been pointed to- but they still haven’t found the gene or genes responsible for so-called schizophrenia or any form of so-called mental illness. It looks like now they won’t have to.
Because epigenetics lets psychiatry say that right here and now, we can show you that the pathological, psychiatric disease’s genetic expression is being changed at the molecular level by using psych meds to re-regulate what we claim is an epigenetic misregulation.
What they see through their electron microscopes or whatever way they say they can measure it, they are claiming they can know when there is genetic misregulation and can also demonstrate that psych meds fix it. These claims present a hugely different challenge to us, than did the bogus chemical imbalance dogma that had no scientific evidence to support it.
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I agree; nothing but pseudoscience once again. We’ve refuted their chemical imbalance stupidity so that had to take a different tack and walla, “now we can change your genes and bring about normalcy, through the use of our wonderful drugs!” If it wasn’t so scary I’d laugh about it all. How long has it taken us to make a dent in the chemical imbalance stupidity? I wonder how long it will take to get rid of this flim-flammery. The sad thing is how many people will “bite” on this and accept it hook, line, and sinker because they’d rather ingest some chemical than struggle to deal with life with both its ups and its downs.
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Yes Stephen, this self proclaimed “new wave” of psychiatry using epigenetic theory to continue it’s dominance of the mental health field may take allot of effort to refute.
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“I should admit I have long taken as a given that our mind and our soul emerges from biology… ”
Actually, they don’t. The mind is not limited to or housed in the brain and the soul exists before incarnation. Consciousness exists, not dependent on a human body.
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Mjk, thanks for reminding me the nature of the soul is an open question. We might not share the same view of its nature and its interaction with the brain/body, but I hope we both agree that in any case, it is better shaped and nurtured through arts, spirituality and dialogue rather than through drugs.
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” …but I hope we both agree that in any case, it is better shaped and nurtured through arts, spirituality and dialogue rather than through drugs.”
I continually assert that Psyche is not a disease or disorder and must not be treated as such. I like to ask people to identify as many states of Psyche as they can. Most famous state of Psyche: psychotic / psychosis.
Is Psyche presumed to be absent and non-existent when it isn’t psychotic? If psychotic is ill, does anyone know what a healthy Psyche look like?
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Exactly. You and Joseph Campbell, the great authority on myth, would agree if he were alive today. Funny how so many people equate the mind with just the brain. Perhaps what we are dealing with in what is referred to as “mental illness” is a difficulty of the mind, and not the brain at all. Hindus and Buddhists refer to the consciousness that you refer to as the universal and immortal Transcendant Energy Consciousness.
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Psychiatrists need to read more philosophy instead of their pseudoscience papers like the one referred to in this post. They might actually begin to have some insight into what they’re dealing with. However, doctors in general don’t seem to be broadly educated nor broadly read.
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Yes, words can modify the brain! I’d just like to add that for some people, healing words or healing conversations alone might not always be sufficient. As suggested, there are also healing environments, healing companionship, healing touch, healing sensations, healing movement, healing exercise, and more. I think there’s a lot to the mind – body – environment interaction, and a lot of distressed people can probably benefit from various multi-modal offerings.
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Yes Philroy, the healing and comforting effects of touch and somatic awareness can greatly help us when we are in distress, and are very important for our daily health too.
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I happened to have something shared that regards these kinds of (!?!?!?)
From an article:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515070437.htm
“Schizophrenia is a relatively widespread psychiatric disease, affecting about 1 percent of the population, often with devastating impact. People with schizophrenia can have difficulty thinking logically and telling the difference between real and unreal experiences, and may engage in bizarre behavior.”
It’s too much to presume that they would look at what already heals and solves these problems, when it isn’t medications; because they aren’t doing this at all and go on in a disarray of clinical disorder about clinical disorders concerning everything they can come up with except looking at their own clinical disorder (which if seen as a disease would make their “clinical” behavior all subject to their own disorder).
“He stressed that a score indicating a higher risk of schizophrenia “doesn’t determine your destiny. It just means that your neuronal connectivity is different, which could make you more creative, or more prone to illness.”
It’s not even considered that creativity is a necessary element of any surviving culture, society or species. And that removing the very genes they are labeling as being “dangerous” because they might cause “schizophrenia” would have caused the human condition to completely have ceased ages ago.
And here:
“An Indiana University-led research team, along with a group of national and international collaborators, has identified and prioritized a comprehensive group of genes most associated with schizophrenia that together can generate a score indicating whether an individual is at higher or lower risk of developing the disease.”
Just changing a few words: “schizophrenia” is replaced with “starvation” and “developing the disease” is replaced with “dying of hunger,” you end up with the following.
An Indiana University-led research team, along with a group of national and international collaborators, has identified and prioritized a comprehensive group of genes most associated with starvation that together can generate a score indicating whether an individual is at higher or lower risk of dying of hunger
This would implicate that all brown skinned people have a genetic flaw that causes a disease called dying of hunger.
If you please folks…. “SCIENCE!”
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Nijinsky, Thank you. Your words remind me of Bob Whitaker’s first book title- “Mad In America, Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill.”
The science still is bad, so is the medicine. As a result, the treatment of the so-called mentally ill has only gotten worse.
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No my friend, they are just scientifically confirming the results of Schizophrenia. A “normal” symptom of the brain that medication can not (and will not) cure. The evolution of Spirit that claims its identity at any age, through any race or gender, by any means, no matter what century.
Heard of the saying, “The schizophrenic is drowning in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight?” Joseph Campbell once observed how the cause and nature of schizophrenia, even today, is not well understood. Neither, for that matter, are states of mystical enlightenment, though I suspect that people have been experiencing both for a very long time. And when you really look at it, they share an awful lot of similarities.
Both see visions, experience altered perceptions of space and time, and with the loss of ego and self-boundaries, both experience a heightened state of awareness, a transpersonal ecstasy, that seems to accompany one’s communion with the divine. This state of enlightenment, of being closer to God or infused with some higher Spirit, occurs in almost all cultures.
The revelations retained from such states are the basis for quite a few religions, including some of the major ones. Mystical states and psychotic states, then, are sometimes indistinguishable from one another. I’m aware of this from first-hand experience. Could it be that saints are crazy?
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Thank you for your thought provoking comment Imogene.
Our culture has medicated away allot of visionary experience that could have helped transform the one experiencing it, and brought needed new symbolic material into the mainstream community.
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The saints would certainly be labeled as “crazy” today. They weren’t received well by the hierarchy of the Church but was always well accepted by the common people.
I myself an Native American. All of the Plains dwelling tribes in America had a ceremony for moving into adulthood known as the “vision quest.” Male teenagers were taken to remote spots, left alone for four days and night, during which time they ate nothing, drank very little water, and didn’t sleep. At some point in that time their “spirit guide” came to them and told them what they would need to know to live a productive adult life within the tribe. This was one of the most important ceremonies for us of the Plains tribes and it was carried out for perhaps thousands of years, and it brought strength and unity to our communities and tribes. It gave each person a sense of his place in the world and in the community. Women had similar rites. Today, psychiatrists would call this pshchosis and schizophrenia. This was one of the things that immediately tipped me off to the fact that psychiatrists don’t know a damned thing that they’re always talking about.
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Great sharing Stephen, thank you. Our culture is so often blind to the mysteries of the sacred and nature. Psychiatry reduces the beauty of our human nature down to a soulless shell of what is our rightful birthright.
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Michael,
Be careful that:
1) Efficacy in a scientific publication of that kind do not mean therapeutic but the capacity of a drug (be it a street drug, alcohol or a “Big Pharma” drug) to produce an alteration in a studied biological target.
And at least the side-effects of neuroleptics of any generation are not imaginary-for those side effects you need an efficacy of neuroleptics.
2) Efficacy in epigenetic per se is not incompatible with the monaminergic theory -a theory I am not fond of.
Epigenetic is coming to the rescue of the absence of “The gene of schizophrenia” “The gene of autism” etc…
3) Life traumas and living conditions both in the womb and after seem to be heavily at work with epigenetic.
NB: I think we need to be careful not to borrow from Big Pharma what Dr David Healy call the marketing of fear and we should welcome well done studies in epigenetic.
This do not mean that one has not to weight the quality of the findings and of the discussion of the findings.
NB: I live in France where some psychoanalysts are still accusing mothers of causing autism. They are “packing” children in cold wet sheets etc:
See for example, BBC News – France’s autism treatment ‘shame’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17583123
Some creationists and intelligent design people are attacking science. Some sects are making money on psychological suffering .
So keep in mind that attacking science and progress in knowledge per se is dangerous for vulnerable people
But by all means keep alert and critical of findings and premature conclusions.
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Thank you Ivana. It’s good to hear your perspective from France. This research I’m sharing has made a premature finding that the current crop of anti-psychotic and mood stabilizing psychiatric meds- “Are capable of promoting epigenetic modifications…suggesting new molecular mechanisms of anti-psychotic efficacy.” Not since the debunked chemical imbalance theory of causation of depression that said SSRI’s rebalance the brain, has such a bold claim been made.
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Michael,
Thank you for your kindness in answering me with an open mind;
I agree that any claim might be premature about the consequences of the findings that publication is about and the findings have to be replicated to be considered knowledge.
*Still , it is important to be fair -or to know your ennemies at least and -since I had been trained as a psychopharmacologist in my youth in Paris and even 6 months in Oxford (GB) – i felt like leting you know that efficacy at the molecular level action of neuroleptics just means that it does something not that it is curative at all.
Indeed, it is hardly surprising that being responsable for so many side-effects at the clinical level neuroleptics have an efficacy at a molecular level.
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Ivana’s thoughts remind me of that lyric from The Who “we won’t get fooled again!” Or will we? I think Michael is just warning us of a potential new narrative that those inclined to reductionistic tendencies may try to use to replace the debunked chemical imbalance narrative. I appreciate you exposing this tripe! Do people still eat tripe?
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David, I’m sure this new epigenetic causation theory will be used by a great many psychiatrists who have egg on their faces from years of preaching the debunked chemical imbalance causation dogma. The fact that psych meds are proclaimed to be therapeutic for gene misregulation will be seized on by the drug companies as a huge gift to help restore their tarnished reputations as fraudulent sellers of dangerous drugs,
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When they used the word therapeutic to describe the med effect, then I saw the intent was to support meds as a clinical intervention for abnormal gene expression Ivana.
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Michael,
The fact is that we shall have to agree to agree and not to disagree on that danger;
What I tried to convey is that you can answer: no big deal that neuroleptics have epigenetic efficacy since those drugs have so many side effects but it doesn’t mean that you have found more that the molecular mechanism of a side effect.
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I hear you Ivana. But they use the word “therapeutic” to describe what happens, which means they see the psych drugs as a primary clinical intervention to effect genetic re-regulatuion..
I agree with you that what is really happening at the molecular level when psych drugs are introduced is unknown, and to claim it is therapeutic is grossly premature. Doing that feels more in line with the turf issue politics of the bio-medical model of psychiatry, where every research finding is looked at to support that vision.
In that light, it begs the question that epigenetics aside- are psych drugs doing anything therapeutic at all at the molecular level?. Have they ever really been therapeutic? We know they supress and numb emotional experience and shorten life and have other damaging effects.
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These two things aren’t inter-related. Creationism has NOTHING to do with what they are doing to “mentally ill” people. Stopping this behavior will never inhibit science, in fact it would point out scientific thought.
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And pointing out the ALARMIST behavior that psychiatry is into, turning cause and effect around, making chemical imbalances that never existed before saying they are healing chemical imbalances: as if we are supposed to believe this is treating something; this has nothing to do with Autistic children getting the help they would need or not. In fact, to actually be scientific would help them get the help they need!
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I agree Nijinsky.
I have never been one to take the approach- “I’d better not speak up or things will get worse.”
If things get worse because I share my emotional truth then I will deal with that. But being passive out of fear of reprisal is not healthy, in fact being a silent victim, is itself the worst possible outcome.
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While it was once believed that mothers caused autism, note that schizophrenia had also been blamed on “schizophrenogenic” mothers. The big biological reductionism in psychiatry was, in part, a backlash (and over-correction) away from the previous Freudian parent-blaming. But the pendulum is now swinging back again, as the biological psychiatry arguments are being shot down, and childhood (and other) trauma are again being considered as potential risk factors for “schizophrenia”. I don’t think we want to swing all the way back to “schizophrenogenic mothers”, but the role of environment and overwhelm got lost along the way.
I’ve also read from autistic adults who think that the mainstream behaviorist treatments for autism have their own big problems, basically trying to train any visible *appearance* of autism out of the person, but not helping them find ways to actually cope internally with an unusual nervous system. (For a good counterpoint, look up the paper “Toward a Behavior of Reciprocity” and related writings by autism researcher Morton Ann Gernsbacher.) While wrapping autistic children in cold wet sheets is very likely a bad idea, there are lots of autism-spectrum children and adults who crave and are comforted by body pressure and other uncommon sensory sensations. (Look up Temple Grandin’s “squeeze machine” as just one example.) There may be less intrusive ways of helping to meet people’s unique nervous system needs.
Some sensory modalities are similarly being tried with stressed-out (non-autistic) people in a few psychiatric hospitals, by occupational therapists. Not withstanding all the problems with psych hospitals in general, I personally connect very much with exploring individualized sensory and body-mind comforting interactions for those who are drawn to it.
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Weighted blankets and jackets and sweat shirts with inflatable inside (a little pump in
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Weighted blankets to help sleep and jackets and sweat shirts with inflatable inside ( with a little pump inside a pocket to put the pressure on ) in order to put relaxing deep pressure to help some autistic persons are available in England in hospital and private homes but some French psychoanalysts dare to tell that it is packing in cold sheet with inquisiitve eyes looking at the child or risperidone regimen for the autistic child who self-arm or harm others.
I call that ignorance and bigotry. This written, I have to add that the psychoanalysts are a very diverse lot around the world and even in France.
Please do not forget that, sadly enough, even inspirational talks by psychotherapists can be dangerous and that, sadly, it is not enough to stand against big pharma drugs to do good.
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Wow.
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Since I had also been led to believe that efficacy in medicine meant a desirable or positive effect, I looked up the definition and here it is:
Medicine
In medicine, efficacy indicates the capacity for beneficial change (or therapeutic effect) of a given intervention (e.g. a drug, medical device, surgical procedure, or a public health intervention). If efficacy is established, an intervention is likely to be at least as good as other available interventions, to which it will have been compared. Comparisons of this type are typically made in ‘explanatory’ randomized controlled trials, whereas ‘pragmatic’ trials are used to establish the effectiveness of an intervention.
When talking in terms of efficacy vs. effectiveness, effectiveness relates to how well a treatment works in the practice of medicine, as opposed to efficacy, which measures how well treatment works in clinical trials or laboratory studies.
[edit] Pharmacology
Main article: Intrinsic activity
In pharmacology, efficacy (Emax) refers to the maximum response achievable from a drug.[1] Intrinsic activity is a relative term that describes a drug’s efficacy relative to a drug with the highest observed efficacy. Effectiveness refers to the ability of a drug to produce a beneficial effect. A distinction is made between ‘method’ effectiveness which describes the effect achievable if the drug was taken as prescribed and ‘use’ effectiveness which is the effect obtained under typical use circumstances when adherence is not 100%. The widely used intention to treat method of analysing clinical trials provides estimates of ‘use’ effectiveness which are typically biased compared with ‘method’ effectiveness.
It does appear that efficacy refers to beneficial effects of drugs or treatments in clinical studies at least, which is what I always thought.
Other definitions of efficacy point to a beneficial effect.
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Thank you again Donna. The article in “Trends in Genetics” that was the basis for my blog post, uses the words efficacy and therapeutic to describe the effects of psych drugs in reregulating the underlying epigenetic mechanism of psychiatric disease.
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My understanding of epigenetics is that the change is heritable for a few generations. So are these scientists failing to point out that if a young person takes antipsychotics, his or her children (even if they have kids years later) and grandchildren and great grandchildren and so on, will also have their gene expressions changed, due to modified epigentic switching? My understanding was that in fruit flies, epigenetic changes persist for up to 5 generations. Haven’t kept up on this, only vaguely familiar with epigenetics, and not sure about how the language in this field of research goes.
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Rabbit in the yard, I did not see the kind of ethical questions being raised in this comprehensive research article, about the heritable epigenetic effects you raise that could be created by the psych meds that they matter of factly say change gene expression in a therapeutic way.
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Interesting point but I don’t think it even crossed their minds because they’re not that well educated or well read. It’s truly frightening how narrow their education really is. I did some guest teaching for the School of Health Related Sciences, specifically in Nuclear Medicine, which isn’t medical students on their way to becoming doctors, but they are students in the medical system. It was appalling what these supposedly educated people didn’t koiw about. What’s most important is that I don’t think that they really care. All they really care about is buttressing up the crumbling walls of psychiatry and making sure that the drug companies can still sell their toxic drugs.
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I’m afraid it didn’t cross their minds either Stephen.
This situation reminds me of the gold standard Scripps Institute research this year that mad Bob Whitaker become amazed at what it left out. The research was on DNA in post mortem brains of so-called schizophrenics. The researchers were excited that their results showed DNA abnormalities which they said may show why schizophrenia happens. But they had not included the decades long effects of anti-psychotic meds on the brains. That wasn’t part of the research design. The psychiatric dogma that meds are never the cause of brain abnormality apparently blinded them.
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typo correction for above– “that made Bob Whitaker..”
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I liked “mad Bob Whitaker” better.
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I did too Marianne.(-:
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” …post mortem brains of so-called schizophrenics. The researchers were excited that their results showed DNA abnormalities… ”
This reminded me of Young Frankenstein, the brain in the jar marked “abnormal” but he read it as “Abby Normal”.
Sort of a good reminder that maybe certain things ought to be considered off-limits in “science”.
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Michael, aren’t there also studies on epigenetics that show genes can mutate in response to environmental and social interactions as well?
If so, wouldn’t it make sense to work with emotional, social and environmental factors (including the food and other substances we ingest) that promote the body’s natural capacities for healing and resilience without life-shortening side effects?
There are wiser minds than mine in this discussion. Would love to hear more about other findings in epigenetics. Seems to me this is one more fancy way of saying there is a mind-body connection, which most of us acknowledge. I, too, am concerned that this new field scientific inquiry is clouded in enough mystery that it will be misused and poorly understood by providers and patients alike.
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I agree with what you say Jennifer. Why the seeming unqualified endorsement of psych meds as a clinical intervention to re-regulate assumed genetic misregulation? Those same meds have huge, proven adverse and life shortening effects as well. As R.D. Laing said-“Those are not psych drug side effects- those are the effects!”
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Messing with genes to correct one condition might very well have unintended disastrous consequences overall.
I believe we call those adverse effects!
(By the way, not only antipsychotics and “mood stabilizers” cause changes at the molecular level. Antidepressants and sedatives do as well; they should not be considered more lightweight or less pernicious drugs.)
Toxins also cause epigenetic changes, these are not limited to pharmaceutical compounds.
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Very good points Altostrata. All psych drugs are powerful agents that can have adverse epigenetc effects. The awful effects listed on the product warnings don’t need an epigenetic warning too, to identify them as potentially harmful. They are not Chamomile tea!
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Jennifer,
Just to let you know , epidemiologists might have interesting things to show the world some day about epigenetic and environment:
“The European Psychiatric Association (EPA) section Epidemiology together with the European Network of Schizophrenia Networks for the Study of Gene-environment Interactions (EU-GEI) proudly present their 2012 joint conference on the envirome and mental health.
The relationship between mental ill health and the environment is extremely topical. With the novel concept of “extended mind” – the notion that the mind is not “in” the brain but rather is a reflection of the causal interaction between cerebral representations and the environment – epidemiology urgently needs to devise novel ways to study onset of ill health from the environmental mind perspective. In addition, even though molecular genetic studies of psychiatric phenotypes have remained remarkably inconclusive, much of the genetic contribution to mental ill health and resilience may exert powerful effects through the environment. Furthermore, the effects of the environment on psychological mechanisms, the epigenome and brain structure and function can now be studied and brought together by interested epidemiologists. “epidemiology urgently needs to devise novel ways to study onset of ill health from the environmental mind perspective.
” http://www.epa-epidemiology2012.eu/
NB: and please remember that epigenetic is also what permit you to possess different organs when -broadly speaking and ignoring mosaics- your DNA is the same in every cell of your body except your reproductive cells.
It is handy for you that epigenetic allow you to produce blood cells inside your bones and hair on your scalp and not the reverse just to take an example.
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Thank you for this important information Ivana.
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Unfortunately, when psychiatry examines genes interacting with the environment as they already claim to do in an absurd sense, they say that any outrageous traumatic or stress breakdown producing life crisis resulting in a very normal reaction to abnormal events with a trauma response is a mere trigger setting off the victim’s so called genetic mental illness genes of fad fraud bipolar, ADHD and other bogus stigmas to push lethal drugs and invalidate the victim to rob them of any justice or empathy.
Since they know people are on to them about ignoring environmental causes real experts know cause the emotional distress or trauma falsely stimatized as mental illness when it should be called emotional injury or trauma injury, I’ve noted in recent “studies” psychiatrists are claiming various mental illnesses are brought on or made worse by stress. Such typical gas lighting, crazy making blaming the victim lies passed off as science to aid and abett abuses by the power elite are quite vile in my opinion. Plus, the victim is portrayed as not only “mentally ill,” but also as having an ABNORMAL overreaction to stress or trauma or cowardly in combat! Again, the neverending circular reasoning and lies to cover up the other lies in psychiatry are a real sight to behold. Any protests by the victims about psychiatry falsely defining their reality by denying it and stigmatizing it as “mental illness” is met with new lies to counter the old lies once the victims see through them and try to expose them. I know this sounds crazy because it is crazy; psychiatry is crazy and psychopathic/narcissistic!
So, I won’t hold my breath that any similar research won’t be the same wolf in updated sheep’s clothing to harm more and more people with bogus junk science to justify life destroying stigmas and poison drugs.
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Thank you again Donna. For readers interested in more writing in the spirit of what you just wrote, I suggest my MIA blog post- “I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness, Do You?”
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“epidemiology urgently needs to devise novel ways to study onset of ill health from the environmental mind perspective.”
Culture shock.
Send your building inspectors to rich communities; interview the people at random.
Send your building inspectors to condemned communities; interview the people at random.
Or, just watch “Demolition Man” (dystopian future) and pay attention to the SEWER PEOPLE.
A dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian.
Brief introduction to “Demolition Man”:
Doctor Cocteau is the leader of this perfect society in which anything unhealthy or immoral is banned, and criminals are frozen whilst rehabilitated for their crimes, resulting in a population of submissive and somewhat fruity people. The city is blissful, crime free and completely under Cocteau’s control. Except, that is, for the city underground. Led by ruffian, Edgar Friendly, a large group of people live in the sewers away from the clutches of Cocteau, scavenging for scraps of food and graffitiing the city walls. According to Cocteau, they are the last criminal element in the city.
If you’re born into a toxic environment, you’ll be sickened. If you’re born into something much cleaner and healthier by comparison, you’re more likely to thrive and reflect your environment.
“he’s a product of his environment” was a popular phrase that I grew up with.
“study” the onset of ill, as it relates to the environment which produces it? That’s already been done:
http://youtu.be/IsoOjxaHgmA
Link ID: an Angel, screaming her head off.
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Thamk you again mjk for your powerful message.
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I love this quote by Laing! So true.
Medication or Drug. Only your physician can tell the difference.
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Everything causes epigenetic changes. All “epigenetic” means is: how one gene is expressed affects how other genes are expressed. My breakfast, my relationship with my dog, my use of alcohol, my argument with my stepdaughter, a massage – everything we do causes epigenetic changes. The fact that psych meds cause epigenetic changes means nothing and was not, probably, the point of the article.
Epigenetics does not mean heritable, permanent DNA change in the vast majority of cases as the headline insinuates.
This blog post and the resulting commentary might be a bit alarmist and not really reflect accurate science. I have the article on order from my research librarian friend so I can actually read it and then I’ll let you know. If Micheal has the article right now, he can add a PDF link to this post using the “upload media” button to save the rest of us this speculation. Or a link to a free full text version.
It doesn’t really matter that psychosis (and med usage) is linked to epigenetic changes – what matters is that bad life situations cause mental health symptoms, not the other way around. Psychosis is a normal human (AND biological) (AND epigenetic) reaction to abnormal events. Psychosis is a protective mechanism when the brain is overloaded, and happens AFTER being overwhelmed, not the other way around.
http://wellnesswordworks.com/emotional-distress-causes-psychosis/
It think this is pretty close to what Ivana Fulli was saying and I also agree that if we start being really alarmist and inaccurate in how we report or discuss science we stand to lose a lot of credibility.
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Please read the article Corinna. Why would you say I am being alarmist and innacurate until you read the article?
The quotes I took from it clearly say that psych meds are seen to cause a “therapuetic” effect to re-regulate a genetic misregulation. That- “Anti-psychotics and mood stabilizing agents are capable of promoting epigenetic modifications associted with an active transcriptional state at disease-related loci suggestiing new molecular mechanisms of anti-psychotic efficacy.”
In other words they modify the brain in crucial and unique ways that other epigenetic factors do not. They are prescribed chemical substances designed to effect the brain to reduce psychiatric symptoms of neuro-biological brain disorders.
They are talking about a cinically efficacious drug intervention. One that is intentionally being done at the level of gene expression.
As a therapist/provider for 35 years with my own lived experience of madness, let me be clear about my concerns. Psychiatry claiming that there is a scientifically identified mechanism of epigenetic misregulation underlying so-calle mental illness is monumental. To then also claim that current psychiatric meds are therapeuticaly efficacious in re-regulating that underlying misregulation, will become the justification for such meds to be used as primary clinical interventions for the forseeable future. If this doesn’t sound like bad news, I don’t know what would.
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Further more, the people doing all of this “observation” that their “medications” are creating a “healing effect” have already statistically created an epidemic rather than healing. Their treatments already correlate with a loss of recovery, more relapses. And now we are to believe that they are steering epigenetic changes, as if what they see as changes and/or healing would be any different then what they have already accomplished.
The only thing that would be “ALARMIST” would be acting like we lose anything when we see it for what it is and has been!
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Thank you Nijinsky. You have very clearly and succinctly described the situation. I see it the same way.
I don’t believe I am irresponsibly crying fire in a crowded theater that is not on fire. It has been tragically on fire for too long, claiming many victims, and a new added fuel has just been introduced that will keep it burning if we don’t act to stop it.
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I read your blog post which to me looked like it lacked real knowledge of genetics. So post a link or a PDF of the research article so we can have a real dialogue. I don’t have a subscription to Science Direct and I’m not paying the $39.95 one day access fee. Or just email me your PDF. But citing your sources is always helpful to move forward in dialogue.
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I’m not saying I disagree with anything you said in your post, but just the fact that it’s newsworthy. Psych meds causing epigenetic changes isn’t any more newsworthy than the level of air conditioning in my house causing epigenetic changes. Or my raspberries getting ripe in my garden causing epigenetic changes when I pick them.
I think you are making a big deal out of nothing and people are just ranting our usual rants without really looking at the science. But I won’t know for sure till without looking at the science myself.
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Corinna, it was reported on May 23, 2012 in “Trends in Genetics”, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, that psych meds are causing therapeutic epigenetic changes. I believe that finding is a rationale for their use as a primary psychiatric clinical intervention. The above article I cite also says that genetic misregulation underlies both normal and abnornmal cognitive functioning, and that psych meds can restore normal epigenetic functioning and regulation.
Aren’t we consumer/survivors with lived experience concerned about how psychiatry justifies the use of psych meds? For years the chemical imbalance theory was used as a justification for medicating us.
My blog post is about alerting people that a new rationale for using psych meds is emerging- and if, as the article says, that it is true that psych meds are used to therapeutically effect precise “disease-relevant loci” in the brain, then the psych meds are indeed- “promoting epigenetic modifications.”
I welcome all the natural and non harmful, non-toxic and positive epigentic modifications that occur in my brain and body. But I am concerned about psych drugs targeting specific psychiatric “disease-relevant loci” in my brain to effect epigenetic change that is intended to return me to “normal cognitive functioning.”
The pathologizing of human emotional suffering and madness by psychiatry has left me with zero trust in how “normal” is decided by them and their DSM.
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Michael, it’s not your task to start having to wade through distracting mumbo jumbo to satisfy someone (Corinna) that a misapplication of genetics has anything to do with genetics, or should even be included with it; And if it would then Monsanto is saving the world (along with psychiatric Pharma), which it isn’t and they aren’t. And this isn’t genetics to begin with, unless genetics is a form of evolutionary disruption.
In another blog, when an asylum in Vermont was wiped out by a hurricane, Corrine announced that the creator had done this on purpose, or something to that extent. I’m sure there are people who would use the same argument saying it was a statement about mentally ill people and righteous eugenics. BOTH sides believing they have justice on their side!
Somehow, I think that God is an energy that can change people’s hearts rather than he’s causing selective natural disasters.
And then she makes a statement about people “ranting our usual rants” without looking at the science…
There’s no “science” here to look at. If blah blah blah politician has found a means to point out that people who don’t vote for them and thus have an alleged genetic flaw behave differently when put on “medications,” what does this say about the “science” that’s going on!? What does this say about the bias of the psychiatric profession?
If Corrina wants to sort through all of that. FINE. This doesn’t mean that it’s appropriate to use the personal attack calling us ranters because we know better, or that we’re not looking at “the science,” when, if we were truly interested in genetics, we would interest ourselves in genetics, not this clinical disorder….
And Corinna actually tries to insinuate that the kind of damage psychiatric drugs can cause with their supposed “epigenetics” is as little newsworthy as the “epigenetics” of a massage. This is trying to obfuscate two VERY DIFFERENT things, as if they are comparable and both can be dismissed. Which makes it clear she’s not talking about “epigenetics” or what the article says, to begin with!
“Epigenetics does not mean heritable, permanent DNA change in the vast majority of cases as the headline insinuates.” Corrina says. Well that’s interesting, since The article didn’t at all bring up anything heritable except that they are trying to change how our genes work. I think someone else brought up that it could seep through to things that are heritable. Further more, what does vast majority have to do with it? I think that psychiatric drugs causing ANY heritable changes would be enough cause for concern, that STILL leaves it inappropriate to be bundled up with things like massages and arguments with your daughter….
And to bring up psychosis saying it causes “epigenetic” changes and then bundling it up with the same kind of epigenetic changes that psychiatric drugs cause; and then saying it’s not newsworthy!?
“It doesn’t really matter that psychosis (and med usage) is linked to epigenetic changes – what matters is that bad life situations cause mental health symptoms, not the other way around. Psychosis is a normal human (AND biological) (AND epigenetic) reaction to abnormal events. Psychosis is a protective mechanism when the brain is overloaded, and happens AFTER being overwhelmed, not the other way around.”
CLEARLY there are two very different things bundled together in order to dismiss one of them which in itself is highly dangerous. “epigenetic” changes caused by “meds” is something VERY different than that caused by “psychosis.”!
And this difference IS newsworthy!
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I don’t see my “psychosis” as a response to a bad life situation. In fact it contradicts such judgments of good and bad and goes beyond fear into what creation is. For me that doesn’t depend on some “creator” that is in charge of selective natural disasters in order to maintain “harmony”. It means that the human essence is from forever, and that it can’t be destroyed at any moment in time or space; and that our fear in trying to defend something that can’t be defended is in collusion with causing all of the things we are trying to defend ourselves from. This letting go of fear that occurs in “psychosis” this actual manifestation of the ghosts that one can let go of and move beyond trying to defend things that you don’t know you’re causing yourself; this really for me doesn’t include judging any life situations as being “bad.” Then I would be….
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I really don’t care what the article is about. what I do care is that these quacks have come up with one more approach to save their dear toxic drugs to create more havoc and heartache for people. These flim-flam artists are trying to save their “snakeoil” treatments in any way that they can. this is what botheres me about all of this. And I believe it’s truly something to get worked up about and rave and rant about! I think it even merits a little frothering at the mouth and gnashing of teeth! Whether the drugs do this or not is not th eimportant point that I think he’s trying to make here. I think he’s pointing out that they’re taking another tack to bolster the use of their drugs and the American public is going to take to it like a duck to water. I think it is of vital importance to point this out!
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Yes Stephen Boren, I am concerned that the American public is going to believe this latest rationale for using psych drugs. As it is, the majotity of Americans believe a chemical imbalance is the cause of so-called mental illness. That untrue “scientific” dogma was successfully spread by psychistry too.
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And why is “different” assumed to be “misregulated?” Isn’t epigenetics the body’s approach to modifying its response to the environment? Why do we assume that the body’s choice to express certain genes and to suppress others is necessarily a “misregulation?” Maybe the body knows something that we don’t.
Difference is not disease. The human species (as any species) survives based on genetic diversity and the ability to adapt. As we learn from overuse of plant monocultures, too narrow of a genetic range leads to extinction.
Viva le difference!
— Steve
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I totally agree Steve!
Who gets to say what is “genetic misregulation?”
Oh, turns out it is the same folks who have tried and still try to re-regulate our brains with lobotomy, ECT, and forced medications.
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Ha! Great response. I hope Corinna will get a copy of the article and re-post. I find her perspective valuable.
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Steve,
As I wrote to Jennifer above, epigenetic is nature ‘s way to make different cells with -broadly speaking- the same chromosomes and DNA in every cells of your body except your reproductive cells (and your red blood cells).
Epigenetic makes one bit of DNA be silent or active -and idem for RNA as it seems.It makes different types of cells in your body “look and act different” -so to speak.
Actually to my mind- and it will be my last comment on that post since I do not want to make myself looking as a “science bigot” or a damned psychiatrist – the problem with many studies in genetics and epigenetics is the thinking and wording of introductions and conclusions but some discoveries are really amazing.
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Damn, you beat me to it, I was going to make that point. I love how that paragraph casually interweaves the two discrepant elements of ideology and science. Maybe it would be wise to concentrate all research on finding a disease before trying to prove whether or not there is a genetic aetiology.
Thomas Szasz once said that the rule in the human kingdom is defined or be defined. The powerful defines what is mental illness and what isn’t, and now they are defining our genes as misregulated. They are not happy controlling just our behaviours and experiences of the world, now they have enlargened the scope of their despotism to accommodate their will to regulate our genes as well. How gratifying an endeavour this must be for the smug gits.
This seems to me like another example of how psychiatric ideology abuses science, mixing the two discrepant elements, and calling it science.
I almost barfed at the point where the writer said ‘a rapidly growing body of evidence…’. That’s just weasel wording. What evidence, and can it be shown to be more than the usual psychiatric eisegesis, seeing in the evidence what you want to see, and saying it is scientific fact, which has become one of the rituals of the profession.
That’s like when people say things like, ‘the evidence is truly mountainous’ (one of the staples of the discourse of modern supporters of gentic-mythology relating to so-called mental illnesses). Or when people say, ‘recent research shows…’. To these people I would say please stop using science as a hiding place for your despotism. Arse candles.
Of course, our genes probably do play a huge part in who we are, yet that doesn’t change the fact that mental illnesses are merely verbal constructs, without empirical validation, so all this genetic research can achieve is only knowledge that our personality traits can be traced to genes, not that there is a genetic causation for mental illnesses, a belief that presupposes the existence of metaphysical illnesses, even though illnesses and diseases are what happens to physical bodies. ‘Mental illnesses’ are different ways of being and experiencing stigmatised by dominant society in an environement that isn’t prepossessed in favour of certain people and their mode of experiencing and expressing, yet that doesn’t stop them from blaming our genes.
The tacit assertion is that the complementary modes of experiencing and expressing of dominant society, long since consecrated through psychiatric mythology as ‘healthy’ and ‘normal’, is the result of proper regulation. Their ethnocentrism? The result of proper regulation. Their habitual mendacity? The result of proper regulation. Their delusions and abuses of language (as opposed to the delusions and abuses of language supposedly pathognomonic for ‘schizophrenia’)? The result of proper regulation.
This is not about genetic science, but about what is diagnosed, purely by fiat and without evidentiary support, as healthy and unhealthy, normal and abnormal.
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Wow, A Howells, thank you very much. I hope everyone will read what you just wrote above. You have so clearly stated what I have been struggling to articulate in this blog and in my comments.
Isn’t the essence of what we are discussing and what you just wrote, that because psychiatry has the means and will to subvert research, wrap itself in ‘science’ for the purpose of expanding and legitimizing it’s model of pathologizing human behavior, that first and foremost we should not be drawn into an endless examination of the research content, but always remember this is a naked politcal process?
Political, in that psychiatry is incredibly powerful, is cynically backed by drug comapnies- is a social institution that through it’s theory and practice seeks to sustain itself, via dominating the mental health service provisiosn to enormous numbers of people.
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“I almost barfed at the point where the writer said ‘a rapidly growing body of evidence…’.”
I did too and a great post!
I feel like I am watching a drug commercial when I read about claims of a ‘breakthrough’ or a ‘revolution’ in the treatment of ‘mental illnesses’, backed by a ‘growing body of evidence’. It is almost funny if it was not so sad and tragic.
All the while psychiatry has a stranglehold over millions of people.
I am so sick and tired of it really.
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Yes delo, it is a world wide tragedy of human suffering that the medical modlel of bi-psychiatry controls mental health services. Their relentless attempts to justify doing that are evident here in this examlpe of claiming epigenetic causatiion and psych drug efficacy.
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Everything that the “Mental Health System” has done is to prove that the healing comes from thought itself, not from any medical intervention. With all of their drugs and “treatments” and brain washing techniques to get people to believe marketed propaganda; this is all they have accomplished, when you look at their results. And that is that they are making things worse, and they don’t want to see it; and it’s their basic tenet that it’s biological that is the excuse for all of this.
At one point, when you are trying to make a fence, you have to figure out that something actually MADE the fence. Sticking needles in it, diagnosing it as having a mental disease, giving it shock therapy, stuffing it full of pills; giving it therapy to make it believe it has a disease, needs treatment and will be better off fitting into the society which needs it to believe there’s something wrong with it because sticking it full of needles, giving it pills, treating it with shock therapy should be causing it to make itself: Because the source is supposed to be “organic” rather than thought. Doing pushups every day, starting a let’s-get-the-fence-to-reproduce-itself group, introducing bills into congress and having a bake sale to raise money isn’t going to get the fence to believe it needs to reproduce itself either. In fact, one would logically think the fence would walk away from all of this, but it has as little the ability to do this, as those incarcerated in an asylum, who are receiving treatment which is less effective that what the fence is assaulted with trying to get it to reproduce itself.
IDEOLOGY is NOT science.
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Thank you Nijinsky. Your strong words will help those still trapped in the ideological gulag that is the psychiatric medical model system. I heard on the news that again in Russia, dissident journalists face psychiatric examination if they go too far with criticism of the ever more oppressive political regime.
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Now that “chemical imbalance’ is dead, there are frequent attempts at post-hoc rationalization of how psychiatric drugs are of benefit.
There are various camps: the neurogenesis camp, the “disordered brain circuits” camp, the behavioral genetics camp. Some day there will be the “cosmic rays” camp.
Every time I see one of those brain scans, I get upset. They’re so bogus! It’s like reading tea leaves! That these scans get any kind of respectful reception by psychiatry shows just how stupid the field is.
As for behavioral genetics, it’s pretty much a failure. See The Crumbling Pillars of Behavioral Genetics http://www.criticalpsychiatry.net/?p=624
This doesn’t keep researchers from proposing studies and getting funding, though. Heck, there are still studies being published supporting the “chemical imbalance” theory.
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Sorry, I have to bud in here. It’s just I see a lot of references to Tarot Card Readings and Reading Tea leaves in regards to what psychiatrists or the mental health system does. There are people who have gotten a lot out of both: reading tea leaves and tarot cards. There are also religions that tried to out law both.
Reading brain scans, the way psychiatry goes on about it, is bogus; but someone simply reading tea leaves or doing tarot for their own diversion isn’t necessarily bogus at all.
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I get real help from a Tarot reading or the Runes Nijinsky! Psychiatry could learn allot from those ancient forms of divination like the I-Ching that taps into the mystery of our existence. But most mental health providers aren’t even interested in our night dreams anymore.
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Thanks again Altostrata for the wise words and link!!
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DNA activation is part of spiritual awakening. No honest person can deny that decades of change has been occurring, in every way. We are transforming.
2008 was the year of the magnetic pole shift. Lots of people are looking forward, thinking it hasn’t happened yet – but it already did. And east coasters are noticing that this year, some trees are blooming in fall colors. Amazing.
http://thetahealing.com/thetahealing-dna-activation.html
This woman’s work is really interesting. She claims to have performed true miraculous healings. Eh, what else can anyone expect from a GOD worshiping Humanitarian.
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Corinna West said:
“Psych meds causing epigenetic changes isn’t any more newsworthy than the level of air conditioning in my house causing epigenetic changes.”
Seriously? with all due respect, the chemicals in psychiatric medications altering ones genes is massive news compared to the temperature inside your home.
The implications are astounding, considering children are being rx’ed these drugs, who are growing! incredible.
I believe Cornwall has brought attention to a very complex and important topic that the general public needs to begin to research themselves, and become aware.
Whether it’s brain shrinkage or change of genes these kinds of things are ridiculous to accept as OK considering this is the standard protocol treatment in America for mental illness.
It’s time to question everything!
Thank you Dr. Cornwall!
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You are welcome Stephany. I agree that we must question everything that effects us and our children.
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If someone wants details and information why not contact the study author?
http://www.pharmtox.utoronto.ca/faculty/directory/petronis.htm
Art Petronis, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor, Pharmacology
Senior Scientist and Head, The Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
General Area of Research: Epigenetics of Complex Non-Mendelian Disease (Schizophrenia, Diabetes,
and Crohn’s disease); Pharmacoepigenetics
Epigenetics and Non-Mendelian Disease: From Etiological Mechanisms to New Therapeutic
——–
http://www.camh.net/research/scientific_Staff_profiles/bio_detail.php?cuserID=69
Dr. Art Petronis
Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
250 College Street
Toronto, Ontario M5T 1R8
(416) 535-8501 ext. 4880
[email protected]
Dr. Arturas Petronis is a Senior Scientist in the Neuroscience Department and Head of the Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory. He is an Associate Professor with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.
Search again?
Areas of Research
Dr. Petronis has launched a comprehensive epigenetics research program in the Krembil family Epigenetics Laboratory. This section is developing new techniques and tools to search the entire genome for gene modifications that have been identified as epigenetic risk factors. These factors are believed to play a role in the manifestation of psychiatric and other illnesses, in addition to genetic and environmental influences. Epigenetics research shows that regulation of gene activity is critically important for normal functioning of the genome. The technology may help to identify the causes of complex diseases such as schizophrenia, diabetes, and cancer, and open new avenues for developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.
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Thanks very much Stephany for this information. I haven’t been able to get a link on this blog post to the article this group just published that I based this blog post on.
The MIA editor will try and do that later today if possible. The section just above on their areas of research, confirms that they are working on identifying the epigenetc risk factors that underly so-called psychiatric illnesses- “To identify the causes of complex diseases such as schizophrenia.”
This is what they call the “third wave” of psychiatic genetic research. They are not looking for a single gene that causes so-called schizophrenia. They are saying they have already identified epigenetic misregulation that underlies the disease.-“Rapidly growing evidence shows that epigenetic regulation underlies normal cognition, and that cognitive dysfunction occurs upoun epigenetic misregulation.”
And- “These studies show that anti-psychotics and mood stabilizing agents are capable of promoting epigenetic modifications…suggesting new molecular mechanisms of anti-psychotic efficacy.” and- “the therapeutic actions of current medications for psychiatric diorders may occur via epigenetic mechanisms.”
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What it sounds like is that people are in an environment where they are starting to experience that the “normal cognition” isn’t working for them. If left alone they will learn to let go of trying to be normal, and find out what their brain, their mind, really is doing. Put them on “medications,” and this is disrupted; although people who aren’t put on medications do better. It’s all about “normal,” not about functioning.
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I have been running across lots of warnings/information that current genetics research does not allow doctors to find out much about one’s risk of illness for the most part yet. There was a whole PBS special on this that explained that though one or two seemingly related genes might be found as indicators for a certain illness, there are most likely over 160 more related genes that have not been found that will be far more influential along with the known two genes in determining if one really is at risk or not. Also, environmental factors play a huge role in illnesses too. Some illnesses like Downe Syndrome can be predicted because they involve only one gene. Even the NIMH admits that no genetic combinations have yet been found or proven to cause mental illness. Yet, the same article continues to make the outrageous claim the bogus fad fraud bipolar stigma “runs in families,” implying it is genetic with them even providing the odds if family members “have” it. Given that this bogus stigma has been fraudulently used for murderers and abuse victims alike, such claims are outrageous to say the least. Also, it is well known that if a parent has been fraudulently misdiagnosed with bipolar, their child will be so misdiagnosed too though the problem for both is often domestic violence induced trauma per Dr. Carole Warshaw, psychiatrist, which she admits psychiatry refuses to acknowledge with its sole focus on symptoms and no acknowledgement whatever of one’s environment.
Anyway, here is an article from TIME clearly stating in laymen’s terms that the state of genetics at this time tell doctors very little if anything about risk of illness, which exposes the usual fraud of psychiatry falsely claiming their bogus VOTED in stigmas by the old boy network in bed with BIG PHARMA are genetic or anything but the usual junk science they pass off as real science to push the latest toxic drugs and treatments on patent for greed, power and status as the medical doctors the pretend to be.
http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/25/why-genetic-tests-dont-help-doctors-predict-your-risk-of-disease/
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Thanks Donna for your informative comment and the link.
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“bogus fad fraud bipolar stigma “runs in families,” implying it is genetic with them even providing the odds if family members “have” it. ”
A meta-analysis was recently conducted in London to evaluate the role
of hereditary factors in developing the drinking habit. The researchers
looked for the association of a specific gene called “Autism Susceptibility
Candidate 2 (AUTS2) Gene” with alcoholism. In addition, they looked for
the same gene in specific parts of the brain, especially the frontal lobe
that is involved in the craving for alcohol. To assess this, they obtained
brain tissues after the postmortem examination. They found that there
was a significant association between the expression of the AUTS2 gene
and alcohol consumption.
— Genetic Association Study to Identify Role of AUTS2 Gene in the Regulation of
Alcohol Consumption, PNAS Early Edition, 2011, Gunter Schumann; Lachlan J Coin
King’s College, & Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom
There certainly is genetic inheritance. However, I think it is the implications of the judgments placed on the conditions that endanger people.
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There are many experts who disagree that alcoholism and other family traits are genetic. See Dr. Stanton Peele’s THE TRUTH ABOUT ADDICTION AND RECOVERY and books like HEAVY DRINKING that show that alcohol abuse and similar behaviors are based on family, cultural and environmental infuences rather than genetics and like smoking, most people quit on their own. The fact that alcohol, nicotine and junk food can be addictive in themselves for anyone who uses them to excess is a factor receiving much focus by many doctors and other experts today. And even if one has one or two genes (with many more related ones not found yet per the Time article I cited here) that MAY influence alcohol abuse, obesity or diabetes, environmental factors such as personal health habits are far more influential since genes are not destiny.
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Also, related genes do not prove causation! See Time and NIMH articles I cited.
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I don’t see any correlation here. If you look at any group of people, you will eventually find some sort of gene pool or something they have in common. Everyone who “drinks” also has a gene for a mouth, pretty much; for example. When you look at a more specific group of people — which seems to maybe have been going on here although I don’t know — since it was done in London, there will be some sort of pool going on because they are from the same location; and this then is called the drive to drink gene.
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It SERIOUSLY approaches the kind of mumbo jumbo that everyone who drinks has a mouth and so the mouth gene causes excessive alcohol use. I don’t see these people taking any look at all at what they are doing when they mess around with genetics, epigenetics, chemical imbalances or behavioral programming. They are fixated on one thing and that’s all they see, regardless that the whole structure is falling down around them, while they try to take over something they have no ability to deal with.
Yes, if you stopped people’s mouths from working, you would have a correlation with less excessive drinking — possibly — but what else comes with this!?
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Personally, I have no problem identifying genes that cause me to be more prone to certain dispositions, behaviors or other growth and development patterns. I have hazel green eyes and diastema (dental gap) – both are said to be genetic mutations. Socially, a dental gap isn’t very inviting – and having “genetic mutation” in my mind isn’t so favorable. Also, social judgments exist with diastema, such as “liar” and “lust”. Should I seek “treatment”, to avoid social punishment and rejection for my fatal facial flaw?
I think it is the *implications of the judgments* placed on the conditions that endanger people. The genes themselves are NOT threatening. Even if a gene could “prove” the state and nature of my psyche, yeah? SO? It’s what you choose to do with the information that matters. Want to try to use it against me somehow? Good luck with that.
My granddaughter was born with CdLS – there’s genetic information about that syndrome, right? So what’s the problem then? It’s what you CHOOSE to do with information that truly matters.
http://www.cdlsusa.org/research/genetic-information.htm
In physical conditions, it’s so much easier to accept genetic evidence. When it’s “mental” (invisible, displayed behaviorally), genetic information becomes more easily subject to judgment. The CdLS or down syndrome person is protected; the schizo or psycho are socially endangered. Why? Because *stigma* are so deeply engrained.
Some people were socially relieved when “bi-polar” was deemed to be a “gift”. What if schizophrenia was one day revealed to be a rare, genuine genetic form of genius? People would be lining up to take that test.
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Bipolar as defined and drugged by the mental “health” profession is anything but a gift as Bob Whitaker exposes in ANATOMY OF AN EPIDEMIC, but rather a life destroyed by a stigma and lifelong drugging that can lead to early death by about 25 years as one gets more and more ill from psyhiatric poisoning if one is unable to escape this monstrosity.
Also, the so called gift, creativity, artistic or genius claim for some people like Van Gogh retroactively and fraudulently misdiagnosed with the new fad fraud bipolar stigma invented to push the latest lethal drugs on patent, was a BIG PHARMA ad ploy to sucker people to take online BIG PHARMA questionaire tests to see if they had bipolar and consult their doctors for “medications” since the whole population could qualify as bipolar at given times.
You are absolutely right that it is the STIGMA that is the problem and not any genetic diversity or emotional distress!!! And despite psychiatry’s and others’ hypocrisy of running anti-stigma campaigns, the very purpose of psychiatry is to stigmatize, invalidate, discredit, disempower and disable anyone who challenges the power elite or annoys them in any way for social control in the guise of medicine!! The only solution is to try to avoid them like the plague they are and only show one’s humanity underground since it is stigmatized and destroyed by the psychopaths in power. See books WITHOUT CONSCIENCE and POLITICAL PONEROLOGY!
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Here is a “fact” sheet from NIMH admitting that too little is known about genetics to be able to predict “mental illness.” I must say that given Bob Whitaker has written about the NIMH current focus on eugenics, it is obvious this is their ultimate goal. The relationship between Dr. Charles Insel, head of NIMH, and Dr. Charles Nemeroff, both paid shills of BIG PHARMA with Dr. Nemeroff recently exposed by Congress, indicates that BIG PHARMA will continue to play a huge role regardless of any actual science as usual. Such articles from NIMH usually make me want to scream due to their false claims about mainstream psychiatry, but at least this article admits the evidence of genes for so called “mental illness” has not been found yet. Note the focus on using family history to predict if one will have bipolar. Yes, given that psychiatry has had a history of fraud for the past hundred plus years and has been exposed for bogus bipolar genetics twin research by Dr. Peter Breggin in TOXIC PSYCHIATRY and others including Dr. Jay Joseph, the fact they keep repeating these lies should come as no surprise expecially when this coincides with recent increased focus on genome research to make the ongoing lies and fraud appear more credible.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/looking-at-my-genes-what-can-they-tell-me/index.shtml
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Article explains why basing public policy on brain scans and very flawed related research is ridiculous
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/27/brain-scans-flaws-vaughan-bell
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Thank you again Donna!
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Michael,
I want to make sure you know how much I appreciate your sharing this latest information about psychiatry’s abuse of genetics to push its horrific agenda. The sad thing is that the truth or facts are irrelevant when BIG PHARMA billions can dictate what information is presented to brainwash the public/doctors for the latest human rights abuses of those stigmatized as “mentally ill.” For those like you and me who have been reading books like TOXIC PSYCHIATRY and other information for many years and watching the trends of mainstream psychiatry, such articles as the one you share here are truly sickening in their implications.
Many so called mental health experts blithely make the claim that bipolar and/or schizophrenia are genetic based on old twin studies exposed as fraudulent or just because they heard it repeated enough times. As you know, this and the chemical imbalance are assumed to be facts once all are brainwashed by the psychiatry/BIG PHARMA/government plutocracy.
Anyway, I more than feel and hear your alarm bell upon seeing this article. Also, the claims of neuroleptics being theraputic even going so far as protecting the brain in the past are similar to the claims made here. To promote the lie that these brain/body destroying drugs repair, cure anything or are in any way therapeutic is outrageous in my opinion.
I don’t pretend to be a science expert. Do you believe the articles I cited about the use of genetics in predicting illness are related enough to the article on epigenetics that you cite?
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My personal favourite was when researchers claimed that the electricity that they put into some people’s brains can somehow discriminate between good brain cells and bad brain cells, miraculously missing the good ones and decimating the bad! Haha
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Yes, A Howells that one stands out as an example of tortured logic so wrong that a child would see the apparent contradiction at once.
A very young Peter Breggin asked his chief of psychiatry how ECT works to relieve depression and was told- “The Electricity kills the bad brain cells that cause depresssion.” That’s when Peter knew he was destined to be a foe of stupidity masquerading as medicine and science.
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Good one!! I laughed at this ECT claim you cited, but I should cry over this monstrosity!!
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Donna you are doing a wonderful service in sharing your wise words and articles to help us see what psychiatry does and why. Thank you for all you do.
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Did you see that movie about Jung Cornwall (A Dangerous Method)?
I thought your next blog might have been a review. This post has certainly gotten good responses. Way to be vigilant!
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Thanks Pliny, yes I did see it and was very impacted by it. Did you see it? If so, what did you think of it?That is a very good idea to do a blog review on it. Thank you. I watched it with my friend Sascha Dubrul of The Icarus Project who is a blogger here too. When we came out of the theater we both at once were struck by how brief a time it has been since Freud and Jung began this revolution we are part of now. We both had the sense that it is hubris to think that we can know in 2012 the depth of the mystery of huamn emotion, mind, soul and spirit. I also want to write a blog here on dreams- it’s like we have forgotten that they are so much a part of our psyche and souls expression.
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Yes, just saw it last night and was intrigued. Some of your previous posts demonstrate your expertise in this area and I was curious of your perspective and would love to read a review if you do one. I tease about Jung, Dionysusian Mysteries, etc. because it’s just such a foreign way of conceptualizing for me. The point I take from Jung is we are very very complicated. Jung doesn’t strike me as a reductionist, but Freud more so (reducing everyting to sexual desires). I recently read Szaszs’ Myth of Mental Illnness and if you just read the first few chapters about Freud and the “context” that existed at that time, you can really see how things started to get wildly off tract (ie when we started to call malingering real disease). Prost!
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Yes Pliny, dogmatism isn’t new to psychiatry. Freud triggered his heir apparent Jung deciding to go his own separate way, when he demanded that Jung quit his exploration of the spiritual and mythic dimensions of the psyche.
Jung reports in his autobiography that he knew he must go his own way, in the moment he heard Freud say- – “My dear Jung, you must promise me that you will raise psychoanalytic theory as a bulwark against the black tide of mud of occultism!”
I wonder how they both would feel about the bio-psychiatry of today? When I first started in the field 35 years ago, all the psychiatrists I knew spent allot of their time seeing people in therapy.
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Epigenetics research in psychiatry is nowhere near the point where it can be translated into being APPLIED through the use of biological treatments in clinical practice. It’s not surprising to me that there are those who are attempting to justify the continued use of inefficacious teratogens—there are nefarious interests which have been well served by the bio-maniacal provision of ‘treatment.’ Postulating a genetic inferiority is present in those with a psychiatric diagnosis is a hypothesis in search of a definitive CLUE that is yet to be found.
What I don’t get is how in the hell the belief in a hypothesis has been used to justify stripping people of their basic Human Rights as a matter of course.
Historically, psychiatric treatment in the biomedical paradigm of psychiatric care which has been implemented intentionally through social service programs ‘to benefit all of society.’ These programs have historically sought to control every aspect of life for those given a diagnosis. The best interests of the patient have not traditionally been a consideration—I would argue that the way in which many publicly funded ‘mental health’ and ‘social service’ programs (including research that is used by these programs) are structured and implemented in ways that purposely deny basic civil rights, creating a separation from society and in effect socially controlling those given a psychiatric diagnosis—this also includes taking responsibility away from family members without due process and without cause is very telling.
A psychiatric diagnosis means that a person’s autonomy and liberty are automatically at risk or already diminished; this risk is extended to one’s family members, whether formally diagnosed or not. Individual civil rights protections and parental and family rights are diminished or stripped from the individual and/or family altogether. In this respect, bio-medical psychiatry is not serving the best interests of the patient or the family; yet claims to be medically treating individuals for the good of society…
The failure of the biomedical paradigm is a natural consequence of the primary concern being a belief in the biological basis for the diagnosis; and the discriminatory judgement that diagnosis means having a genetic inferiority that society must be protected against. Psychiatry started with a belief based on eugenics and used propaganda to sell bias, fear, and bigotry to claim an individual can be ‘medically treated’ for the good of society. The best interests of the patient were never a primary concern. Obviously this is not science, or medicine in the Hippocratic tradition…
It would be helpful to link to the work cited in your posts Michael 🙂
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Thank you again Becky for your clear vision that helps us see the forest from the trees.
The values of the hippocratic tradition have long been abandoned by psychiatry, whose human rights abuses continue and whose shame of embracing eugenics in it’s history is still not acknowledged.
I’m working with the MIA website staff to supply the link to the “Trends In Genetics” article that this blog was based on,
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Gosh human rights do no harm? Are you on the right website?
No noisy people allowed who don” t support ECT!!! Send for Kermit the censor!!!! Who owns this website and who makes the rules? Where does the funding come from? Who chooses the bloggers? Why is there no one here who opposes labelling and “peer counselling” and the disability lifestyle ? Why is there such a stultifying lack of diversity other than the ECT king?
If someone is too noisy and is blocked is he allowed back with a note from a peer counsellor that he has been drugged into docility?
Will I be blocked for posting loudly?
I honor everyone who was dragged into ECT screaming.
Why are you part of this?
i’m off topic call kermit but softly no loud people allowed
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The problem with peer counseling is that they are quiet and they encourage docility so they can get more grants for their programs. And besides making the currently politically correct label the center of their identity and career they have to suck up to whoever is next in line over them and come to identify and emulate them in an attempt to be “professional” . What a joke. Are you esalen dudes still running around without any pants? I always read your posts with my eyes closed.
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How many peer counselors have you dealt with? I am a peer worker. I agree that some peer workers are docile and quiet and cooperative with the system. However, there are many more of us who are not any of these things. I work in the state hospital were I was once a patient. I was noncompliant as a patient and have not become any more so since joining the staff, some of which I know to be abusive from personal experience. Thre is not a day that goes by that I don’t put the feet of these particular people to the fire. I don’t really care whether I’m loved or hated by those I work alongside with, my job is to scream as loudly as I can tht the emperor is naked as hell and what are we going to do about it. My former supervisor was one of the docile and quiet peer workers that you refer to. She is no longer head of the department nor is she working here at this time. We are not all compliant litte twits cowering in our shoes when the high and mighty psychiatrists go by. The hospital is beginning to put them in their place and they’re squealling like pigs but we’re moving on to bring about a new paradime of care at this hospital. Be careful not to make such general statements about en entire group of people, after all, this is what has always been done to us by society.
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The satire is going to go over everyone’s heads.
I disagree with you about peer counseling, it can be very effective.
Last time I saw Michael, he was fully clothed but still radiated an extraordinary caringness. I have no doubt whatsoever that in crisis, personal attention from him would be healing.
Unfortunately, there’s not enough of Michael to go around.
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effective? you mean at silencing people and making them more like you? no thanks
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Dr D lightfall never said that peer counseling was “never” effective. He began with “the problem with peer counseling…” Since when is stating that there is a problem with something a sign that someone believes it never works?
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I do find this more than peculiar that someone can have a whole blog about having put a bucket over her head in reference to why she was ever fooled by psychiatry, believe this is some universal example of the human condition she’s sharing with people who actually were inflicted with what they got because she had a bucket over her head (and then are supposed to ameliorate this great philosophy she’s bringing forth) and when they don’t go for this she believes no one got it and has to work harder on it. But other people have their comments removed (!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?)
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Thank you Altostrata, i appreciate your support. I hope everyone knows about your tirelsss work helping countless people deal with the harmfull effects of medications. It is a tremendous service you provide that i know comes straight from your caring heart.
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Becky, Very well written, informative article that clarifies many issues survivors and loved ones face very well. Thank you.
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Thank you Donna
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Full disclosure Who’s funding this place?
Why is it so awful when the shrinks are funded by big pharm when this site doesn’t disclose its biases? The disabled rights/labelling movement contributes as much to the rise in drugging and disabling as the APA!
Who is Kermit and why is he removing posts?
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I agree completely with you on this one. In the state where I live there is a constant and ongoing attempt to convince people in the system to think of themselves as disabled. This is a load of hogwash; we are only disabled if we think of ourselves as disabled. The messages come from everywhere to accept the fact that you have a disability. You obviously don’t buy into it and neither do I, but a lot of people seem to want to do so.
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Who is Kermit? who funds this site? Kermit is the moderator, and why do you assume the site is funded by anything/anyone other than Whitaker?
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Look at the big blue bar at the topic of the page. Click on About Us and Contact.
Kermit is the site manager.
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Kermit is on a first name basis with Snuffleupagus. He’s independently wealthy and fabulously generous with his time and talents. If he removed a post it must not have conformed to the following:
-Keep comments civil.
-Refrain from personal attacks.
-Honor differing viewpoints.
-Remain relevant to the conversation at hand.
The appeal process is as follows: click this link: http://www.psychiatry.org/ ask for the “manager on duty”
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Oh Boy, Oh Boy, Boy! A new buzz word epigenetics! After science was able to realize the promise of understanding genetics, all the amazing cures that were brought forth from understanding the mysteries of the double helix: cures for cystic fibrosis, for the lame, for the mentally ill, for those with muscular disorders, for cancer, for ALS, for arthritis, for heart disease. Oh Yes! They’re all their. It was time to move onto new frontiers, epigenetics. Oh my! Just think of all the new cures for disease this will bring about and with no great pomp and fanfare we so modestly announce “Epigenetics of Major Psychoses: Progress, Problems and Perspectives”.
My Oh, My! You’re crazy if don’t believe our work. We’ve outlined your insanity, as you can clearly see. Your histones are deacetylated, your ribosomes defunct, your totally mis-methylated, your nucleosomes unwound, and lets not forget your chromatin now unbound. Does all of this make sense? Well if not, your an epigenetic mystery, 3.3 billion years of evolution couldn’t make you right, but my 5 years of lab work can quickly set you straight. Just take this pill, you’ll feel better soon. I can already see your histones shouting with joy. Your cystosines stretching their arms to a new and less methylated day. And one day, just maybe, if you take it long enough, your chromatin will be more tightly bound.
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Bravo! you nailed it LookAround- thank you.
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Though I have posted this book review about PSEUDOSCIENCE IN BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY elsewhere, I think it is appropriate for the topic here as well since it does such a great job exposing the neverending twisted, dishonest claims of mainstream psychiatry that their bogus DSM stigmas are genetic or valid in any way.
http://www.antipsychiatry.org/br-pibp.htm
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Thank you again Donna for giving us needed information!
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Hi Donna,
I read the first three sentences of the link you supplied. I don’t have to read anything more.
—
Psyche, by definition, means SPIRIT.
psy·che
n.
1. The spirit or soul.
from Latin, from Greek psukhē breath, soul; related to Greek psukhein to breathe (to BREATHE?!)
psyche – the immaterial (IMMATERIAL?) part of a person; the actuating cause (CAUSE?) of an individual life
soul
ghost – the visible disembodied soul of a dead person
spirit – the vital principle or animating force within living things
This dictionary is a liar.
But wait. Things are about to get whacky interesting.
psy·che
n.
1. The spirit or soul.
2. PSYCHIATRY The mind functioning as the center of thought, emotion, and behavior and consciously or unconsciously adjusting or mediating the body’s responses to the social and physical environment.
The Body’s Responses to the Social and Physical Environment.
This dictionary MUST be lying!
Oh, good. Now I’ve found it – the “REAL” truth. Whew!
psy·chi·a·try
n.
The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental and emotional disorders.
Ah. Now THAT makes sense.
Listen, when your “brain” people meet up with my “mind” people to scientifically and genetically prove that my SPIRIT is as ACTIVE and ALIVE and JUST as REAL as my brain is …
I’m suddenly struck stone faced here.
sigh…
(that’s my spirit (breath), acting out again).
sigh…
Peace?
(definitions provided by one of my favorite Bibles: thefreedictionary.com)
John 4:24
New Living Translation
For God is Spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.
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What if suffering in people comes actually from the desire to be or to become “normal”?
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““Rapidly growing evidence shows that epigenetic regulation underlies normal cognition, and that cognition dysfunction occurs upon epigenetic misregulation.””
I did a google for “GMO psych drug”. This article is #5 of About 35,400,000 results
What’s Hot on MIA this week (with 130 comments) is ssri-discontinuation-is-even-more-problematic-than-acknowledged – Playing the Odds: Antidepressant ‘Withdrawal’ and the Problem of Informed Consent
http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/08/ssri-discontinuation-is-even-more-problematic-than-acknowledged
GMO’s
And people say they have a cognition problem that they didn’t have before. Is it that, once you start taking certain GMO’s you’d need to continue taking them to support and maintain the modification?
I honestly don’t care if I “embarrass” others by my obvious lack of education and training (and whatever else – social skills, lol). I’m not embarrassed – I always think out loud. I cannot not.
Edit:
“RW: You’re right, it creates customers for the drugs, and hopefully lifelong customers. That’s what they’re told, aren’t they? They’re told they are going to be on these drugs for life. And next thing they know, they’re on two or three or four drugs. It’s brilliant from the capitalist point of view. It does serve some social-control function. But you take a kid, and you turn them into a customer, and hopefully a lifelong customer. It’s brilliant.”
http://www.naturalnews.com/011353_bad_medicine_psychiatric_drug.html
GMO’s!
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