Rethinking Diagnosis

51
409

Imagine that you got upset. Is it very remarkable that I can “diagnose” that you are upset? After all, you are clearly upset. What expert thing did I accomplish by agreeing with you that you were upset? Or imagine that you are angry. Is it very remarkable that I can “diagnose” that you are angry? After all, you are clearly angry. Have I added anything meaningful by saying “I diagnose that you are angry” instead of “You seem angry”?

“You look upset” is the simple, truthful thing to say and “I diagnose that you look upset” is a piece of self-serving chicanery. By adopting that circumlocution I’ve tried to turn an ordinary observation into a pseudo-scientific marvel. If this is the way I’m operating, I dearly hope that you won’t notice my little game.

By contrast, let’s say that you explain to me that you’ve been having hallucinations. You describe the look of your hallucination and you also describe to me your recent history, other physical symptoms, and so on. Taking that information together, I have a strong hunch that you’re suffering from early Parkinson’s. I then run tests to confirm or disconfirm my hypothesis. I didn’t “diagnose” your hallucination—you handed me that. I diagnosed your Parkinson’s.

Why do we have so much trouble understanding this difference: the difference between “diagnosing a symptom” and “diagnosing a cause”? The second is what medicine legitimately does. The first is what the mental health establishment illegitimately does. It is not real diagnosis for me to “diagnose you with an anxiety disorder” because you told me you were anxious. That is chicanery and not diagnosis.

You don’t diagnose symptoms. You diagnose causes. To diagnose a symptom is only to say, “Yes, I agree, you have a rash.” Everyone who looks at you knows that you have a rash! What we want to know is what sort of rash is it? What’s causing it? You observe the tumor and you diagnose the cancer. You observe the bump and you diagnose the concussion. You observe the fever and you diagnose the influenza. You don’t observe the anxiety and diagnose the anxiety. That is wrong.

You observe a symptom, you interpret a symptom, and you make use of a symptom as part of your efforts at diagnosis. But the symptom isn’t the diagnosis. You observe a symptom and then you diagnose a cause. You don’t observe anxiety and then diagnose anxiety. It isn’t okay to call this “diagnosing.” It isn’t okay to turn a report of anxiety into “an anxiety disorder” just by saying so. Yet this is what is done all the time nowadays.

The challenge for any contemporary psychotherapist who wants to retain an ability to “diagnose and treat” is simple to describe: give me an example of your updated diagnostic system. Tell me how you would test to confirm your diagnoses and how you would distinguish one cause or source of a problem from another cause or source of a problem. Give me your taxonomy—your naming system and your rationale for using it—and let’s hold it up to scrutiny. If you want to continue diagnosing, put up the names of your “mental disorders” and let’s look them over. And don’t forget to clearly indicate what you are counting as causes! If you don’t take causes into account, you still aren’t really diagnosing. You are merely inappropriately cataloguing.

I think that we will discover, if we are truthful and if we are acting in good faith, that it is impossible to retain the idea of “diagnosing” when it comes to human experiences. We should stop “diagnosing symptoms” right now, as that is a completely illegitimate enterprise that is annually adding millions of people, many of them children, to the rolls of the “mentally disordered.” This should stop today. But we should also let go of the idea that “diagnosing and treating” makes any sense in the context of human experience. It is this simple: we have adopted the wrong model. It is past time to discard it.

As to whether there is perhaps some way to retain the idea of “diagnosing,” let those who want it retained describe what their taxonomy might look like and let us see if we believe them. I don’t think we will believe them, because it is folly, and always will be folly, to “diagnose the human condition” when we have no way of knowing what counts as cause-and-effect in human affairs. Are we to “diagnose” personality differences, changed circumstances, stray and odd thoughts, and every single human thing, from war breaking out to a month of cloudy days? Such an enterprise makes no sense.

We do not know what caused Jim or Mary to become anxious, say; and while we can investigate their situations with them we can’t arrive at the sorts of conclusions that in medicine are called “diagnoses.” To announce that we can arrive at such conclusions or that such conclusions are warranted by our investigations is to lie. We can help Jim or Mary a lot—and we will help Jim or Mary a lot more if we stop “diagnosing” him and simply start helping him. That should be our rallying cry: “Lots of help and no more diagnosing!”

A doctor is not engaged in idle investigating. He is trying to succeed in his investigations. We do not think that a doctor has been successful who engages in one surgery after another to find out “what is wrong with us.” In that unfortunate set of circumstances, he has not reached a conclusion yet and so he can’t make a diagnosis. If there ever was a way to “diagnose” in human affairs—and there never will be—we would need to set the bar exactly that high: we would need to be successful in our investigations and we would need to be able to say, “This is clearly causing that.” That time can never come.

A diagnosis is a conclusion about cause and effect. “You need new spark plugs” is a conclusion about cause and effect. “You say you are anxious so I will say that you are anxious” is not a conclusion about cause and effect. It is a travesty. It is time for society, in the form of its legislators and watchdogs, to end this travesty. Millions upon millions of adults and children are receiving “diagnoses” that make no earthly sense. And these “diagnoses” stay with them forever. Mention that you are sad to the wrong person and you will carry a “clinical depression” label with you everywhere.

It is time we placed a moratorium on this illegitimate “diagnosing.” It is likewise time that we thought twice about encouraging any new system of “diagnosing” to replace the current mayhem. No new system will prove legitimate because we do not actually know what “causes” individual human experiences like sadness and anxiety. It is simply improper to turn human experiences, even of the most painful and the most unwanted sort, into “disorders.” Let us help with the pain; let us really help Jim and Mary. And let us leave “diagnosing” to car mechanics and their faulty carburetors and to medical doctors and their heart diseases and cancers.

* * * * *

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

***

Mad in America has made some changes to the commenting process. You no longer need to login or create an account on our site to comment. The only information needed is your name, email and comment text. Comments made with an account prior to this change will remain visible on the site.

51 COMMENTS

  1. This is the problem with “medicalizing” our emotional states.

    Anxiety is not a medical disorder. We react to stress with anxiety, and depression and psychosis.
    Sometimes there are physical causes, but unless you are absolutely sure of that, and I mean diabetes, normal hormone fluctuations, brain tumors, brain injuries, or substance use,more questions should be asked about the situation and the relationships the person is in.

    The quick and easy answer is chemical imbalance.
    The more difficult answers take time and concern.

    Report comment

    • Exactly. A mental illness is essentially either emotional distress or physical illness or a combination thereof. Physical illness shall be handled by the real doctors, the emotional distress needs time and other people’s support to heal.
      This is a great article, which highlights everything what is wrong with psychiatric illness. While in fact there are some physical illnesses that are “diagnosed” similarly like chronic fatigue syndrome, it is merely a temporary state in which doctors are trying to catalogue clusters of symptoms for which they don’t know a cause and which can well be different illnesses with various etiologies. Psychiatry has taken this approach and misused and travestied it. they are not interested in finding a cause of the “mental illness” they are only interested in expanding the catalogue of symptoms and even including as symptoms completely normal behaviours. It’s ridiculous and dangerous at the same time.

      Report comment

    • It’s true, however, that stress in the body/mind is a physical reality that our body/mind must adapt to. Cognition is embodied. That so many people are blissfully unaware of the emotions behind every scientific perspective or posit is evidence that Cartesian duality still reigns, which allows for such rank stupidity as most evolutionary psychology and its attempts to normalize patriarchy as if were a biological inevitability and contemporary psychiatry.

      Somehow, anger in men and jealously guarding one’s “expertise” no matter who is hurt by it is pure reason. Women are easily judged to be wanting due to their ‘innate inferiority and lack of reasoning’, and men who prey on them don’t need to bother asking a psychiatrist what is “wrong” with them, because they were born with permission to exercise power over the “weaker” sex and blame their victims.

      Most women could do themselves a big favor by not submitting to psychiatry and asking themselves what is wrong with the world around them instead of always judging themselves as falling short in their efforts to adhere to impossible demands and double binds.

      Psychiatry is the most feminist issue, aside from reproductive justice, that women in this country are facing. Labeling a woman with mental illness is about the most disempowering thing that could be done to her, other than denying us the vote or access to birth control. And it’s the hardest thing to rectify, because the whole field of psychiatry is devoted to keeping itself in power and is funded by BigPharma.

      Report comment

      • http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/genderwomen/en/
        If you ignore the blah blah about the under diagnosis of mental illness and other bullshit and read between the lines it basically says that psychiatry is labelling gender specific reactions to emotional and social stressors as mental illness and adding a personal bias on top of it. I think Jon Stewart has summed it best:
        http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/09yfp5/the-broads-must-be-crazy—belittled-women

        Report comment

        • I agree, psychiatry is still attacking women, according to my family’s medical records, so the religions can cover up sodomy of children. But I was told that what happened to my family is the “dirty little secret of the two original educated professions,” by a decent and ethical pastor. We really do seem to have a male chauvinist pig problem amongst even the females in the psychiatric profession. I think it’s time for the psychiatric profession to stop covering up sexual and other abuse of children with fictitious disorders, and address child abuse by putting the child abusers in jail instead.

          Report comment

          • Stopping the corporate religions from actively covering up sexual abuse of little children with psychiatric stigmatization would reduce disgust (what psychiatry calls “bipolar” in my case) of women.

            Psychiatry does nothing but stigmatize, with fictitious disorders, those who’ve been previously harmed by egregious injustices … but attacking and tranquilizing the harmed is not medical care. It’s disgusting and results in human rights violations. Does psychiatry do anything other than violate civil rights so the sodomists may maintain control?

            Report comment

      • I think there are outrages, subjectivity and messy thinking a-plenty in the current system to go around. Neither gender fares particularly well, either. I certainly agree that women quo women have had a long road explaining why distress and high sensitivity do not equal hysteria. Now, however, I see (and work in) a mental health system dominated by women. Sure men may hold many jobs as doctors, however my experience in a community mental health agency is that the rank and file therapists and counselors are overwhelmingly women. Not only women, but women of a certain economic class who have been fortunate enough to attend graduate school. I see a dearth of understanding and empathy for many of the troubled, angry and oppressed poor men we see here. Feminist thought about gender relations often clouds the ability of female counselors to validate the very real powerlessness and shame many men have today. An angry, drinking man who was repeatedly abused as a child is as worthy of empathy as a woman! It is not helpful to label one sufferer as a “batterer” and send him to a re-indoctrination group to correct assumed fallacies in his thinking, while offering his female counterpart (who can be equally prone to destructive behavior) a thoughtful referral to long-term trauma services. Men who have spent their lives making a living in physically-grueling jobs, only to see themselves downsized or dismissed, are going to have a lot of anger. As will men who truly believe their value and identity is linked to their ability to provide for their families. It is always a given that dangerous behavior needs to be addressed. That goes without saying. Labels, diagnoses, gendered-beliefs about violence, pat conclusions do not serve anyone well. While men may struggle more with anger in general than do women, let’s not fall into the easy conclusion that anger always equates with violence or oppression. We need no more black/white dichotomy with victims and bad guys. I have heard too many female mental health professionals bring their class-based bias to work with them -and then lay this at the feet of men who have lived difficult and struggling lives. For the system to clean up it’s act (if that ever happens!) we must take an honest look at all of the smug and obnoxious ways we fail to help people who need it…….

        Report comment

        • This is a really fair and astute comment, thank you.

          I’m not sure I agree, however, that men struggle with anger more than women; although I do agree that anger can express itself and manifest in a variety of ways, some of them being productive, fueling inspiration for change, while other ways of expressing anger are more sabotaging to the common goal.

          But during my journey through the system, I witnessed a lot of men being emasculated publically in group therapy settings by female therapists, rather brazenly, too. It was obvious they carried a lot of anger, especially toward men, and were paying it forward to men who were vulnerable. I found it to be a rather shameless display of power and completely counter-productive to healing anything. It was certainly unjust and betraying in every way.

          I remember one gentleman in a day treatment group I was in, complaining about violence in the public housing where he resided, and wanted to file a complaint, which he was nervous about doing. Her response to him was, “Take your meds and don’t make waves.” I actually complained about it, which of course was dismissed as ‘my issue’ or whatever. I never forgot that, and will probably be the ironic title of a book I write some day. I think it nails the attitude of the system spot on, in a nutshell.

          I think any level of duality undermines the causes of, both, human rights and social healing, because it will inevitably lead to more splitting, factionalizing, stigma, and marginalization–more of the same. To my mind, this is what is trying to heal. Male/female energies are integrative, no one dominates over the other. Cooperation among the two would be the (r)evolutionary challenge.

          Report comment

          • Thanks, Alex. Glad to know my comment was read a year after the article was written! I agree with your comment that women can carry a lot of anger, too. I think I included that comment (that anger is perhaps a bit more of an issue with men) as a ‘sop’ to the somewhat easy, mainstream thinking in the field! Let’s be frank – women can be and are just as angry as males.

            Your comment about witnessing emasculation of men by female therapists is, sadly, I am sure, spot on. The list of anecdotes I can recount from team discussions would be long, indeed. There was the social worker who was ready to jump to the conclusion that a man was “controlling” his wife because he had to take the family’s one car to work (rather than form the more sympathetic hypothesis that perhaps this low income family couldn’t afford another car – oh shocking – and the man needed to get to work because his income was critical for the household…..) There was another educated, female colleague who described a mother – who had defended the practice of slapping her difficult teen – as “spirited”, but then described the exact same behavior in a father as ominous. The self-same colleague later stated at a meeting that the political problems in the state were due to “too many men” being in charge…. Less egregious but still patronizing was the therapist who humorously referred to the exhausted, overwhelmed dad who would just “go to the garage” when she visited (as if needing to retreat was incomprehensible? Or perhaps retreating to work in the garage was the ‘joke’, instead of retreating to journal or garden…..)

            Thank you for naming it. We all carry scars from our own personal lives, no doubt. Unfortunately, women now will blindly countenance this process of acting-out our grudges, bad memories and ancient hurts on men who come to us for help. This is a sad example of what the Buddhists call “samsara”. If we fail to examine whether our own actions and impulses are meeting a basic standard of fairness and empathy for all…then we are indeed failing. Past victimization is never a justification for paying-it-forward. If we don’t begin to practice insight with ourselves, the profession can no longer express shock and dismay that people choose to go elsewhere for help.

            Report comment

  2. Very true. This is what Thomas Szasz referred to in his paper “the myth of mental illness”. He used the word “myth” to mean that the nosology of the body cannot be used for “problems of living” and doing so results in fake diseases that are “myths”.

    Let me offer you another analogy from the world of computers and that I have used at several places to attack psychiatry: hardware and software. I have repeated this argument many times in many places so it might be new for some people.

    I don’t know what operating system you use for your personal computer, but it is likely to be Windows or MacOS. In either case, one thing is the “software”, ie, the “instructions” that tell the computer what to do, which, with current computers, are executed at the rate of several billions per second, quite another the computer that runs those instructions. By “instructions” I do not mean just the instructions of the CPU but the general concept of a set of deterministic rules that tell the computer what to do in every interaction with users but also with peripherals (your printer, scanner, camera, etc). These “instructions” are a pure abstract concept that are usually expressed in some kind of computing language, but they remain an “idea”. But the instructions themselves and their expression in a given language are different things, just as the idea “I love chocolate” can be expressed in many different languages.

    If I give you a computer and it were possible for you to monitor the billions of switches that run “software” you are not going to “see” any of those abstractions. You will see a computer running the abstractions.

    Now, going back to your post. In computer science, and science in general, the distinction hardware vs software is perfectly understood. Nobody would call a software engineer to fix your broken hard disk, just as nobody would call a hardware engineer to fix a genuine software problem such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak . Surely, adding memory to the computer can provide temporary relief, but the right way to fix it is to reprogram the computer.

    In this analogy, psychiatrists are hardware engineers trying to fix software problems.

    When I say this, I am usually told that the analogy is too simplistic, which I concede but, the ways the analogy breaks make the case against psychiatry stronger, not weaker:

    – Computers do not have “free will”, we do. Whether this “free will” is real or an illusion is irrelevant. “Free will” is embedded in our laws and is a basic prerequisite for the establishment of civil society. So, while in theory it is perfectly possible to predict what a given computer will do in every case (the same inputs, no matter how large those inputs are, always result in the same output), in humans, the same inputs not only result in different results for different humans but also the same human at different times. This aspect of human nature is what makes endeavors like economics so unable to make good predictions.

    – In computers what a good “hardware” is can be perfectly defined. It’s equivalent in humans, “a good brain” can also be defined to a certain degree using only biological parameters. To a certain degree, what “good software” is can also be defined with metrics such as “how fast does the operating system boots” or “how many scientific computations does this computer do per second”. I say to a certain degree because there is no possible way to say whether the user interface of Windows is “better looking” than that of MacOS; it’s a matter of taste. In humans, because of our subjectivity, there is no real definition of “good software” (ie, “good mind”) or “normal software” (ie “normal mind”). The right way to deal with “abnormal minds” is the criminal justice system. And even then, at least in constitutional democracies that protect individual rights, there are issues the criminal system cannot criminalize, such as political speech. Again, psychiatry sells the lie that there is such a thing as a “normal mind” and that abnormal minds can be “fixed” through biological interventions.

    Report comment

    • That’s an awesome comment, I love the analogy. Actually it also highlights the real issues neuroscience has in studying the brain. For instance we have now a complete wiring circuit of an earth worm (which is equivalent to say of looking at the inner structure of the computer and how things are connected inside it), C. elegans, but that tells us close to nothing about what these connections actually do, which has to be elucidated by complex experiments, looking at the input and output and the transfer of signal within the network (which is equivalent to looking at the electrical signals travelling while the computer works). But even when we will have this experimental data in future it will still tell us nothing about the subjective experience the worm is going through. An example: we can see that neuron A activates neuron B in response to toxin and neuron B causes the worm to get away from it but we still don’t know what is the worm really “feels” – is it pain, is it bitterness is it anything at all but a simple reflex. Neurobiology is awfully complicated on the biological level and there are questions that it will probably never be able to answer. So neuroscience deals with the hardware but we don’t have science which deals with the “software”, what could be closest to it is psychology and philosophy.

      Report comment

      • Or religion! Do not forget that :).

        Yes, what you are saying is right. Even if one day neuroscience were to be able to describe in painstaking detail how our brain works in terms of brain circuitry, we would still know very little about our minds (ie, “our software”).

        A similar sentiment is echoed by skeptic Robert Burton in this talk that I encourage everybody to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnu0vE2E4-M .

        The struggle against psychiatry is actually pretty simple -philosophically speaking- once you understand what is at stake. It is about not letting clueless hardware doctors mess up with our complicated and unique minds/software.

        If somebody misbehaves, let the criminal justice system handle him/her. Do not sell the false notion that these doctors know something about “our minds” because they actually don’t.

        Report comment

        • I file religion under philosophy, because I personally think anything worthwhile in religions can be classified that way but it’s just my personal bias.
          You’re right that the psychiatry illegitimately takes on the responsibilities of the justice system without having to obey by constraints that were put on it like “innocent until proven guilty”. I don’t think there is any criminal case, even involving people with “mental disorders” whatever defined that cannot be properly tried in courts. I happen to know many lawyers personally, including judges, and they usually have a good idea about how to treat actions which were premeditated as compared to actions taken under emotional distress as opposed again to actions done in a psychotic state. They are also usually quite good (the good judges, there are unfortunately some stupid ones, as everywhere) at judging people’s personalities from evidence available to them and adjusting their judgement accordingly. The use of psychiatric “experts” is not only unnecessary, it’s often a pain in the neck I know that some judges avoid calling in psychiatrists because they don’t see how locking someone up in a psych ward as opposed to other sanctions could help, in fact it often just makes the situation worse.
          Psychiatry is also kid of criminalising a completely legal behaviour. You have a right to be annoying as long as you don’t commit a crime.

          Report comment

  3. Hi,

    Anxiety, Depression, Psychosis and Postpartum Depression certainly can be medical illnesses.

    This is not the province nor aim of currently ascendent psychiatry.

    Since the DSM nosology contains only syndromes – symptom clusters that have been described and named by an official committee – labels from the DSM are not diagnostic of any particular Medical illness. If a Medical explanation of the perceived Psychiatric symptoms should happen to actually be diagnosed, subsequent to a Psychiatric diagnosis, then in such a case the Psychiatric diagnosis is retroactively nulled as a Medical diagnosis has been found. This in their Psychiatric argot they term a mimic – a Medical mimic to a Psychiatric disorder.

    Being able to have officials select people based on behavior, word tests and Professional Opinion and then prescribe profitable sales items is a very simple system crafted by the opportunistic profiteers. There is no Medical model and they have no interest in underlying lesions. Label and drug is something they do it represents no philosophy, model or hypotheses.

    Of course postparum depression, delirium, delusions, anxiety and major depression can be biochemical and otherwise Medical as far as their central primary issue in one particular individuals case and anothers.

    That the Big Pharmaceutical version of “Psychiatry” mouths catch-phrases tells us nothing one way or the other on Medical matters.

    That we now know through the many disclosures in the last two decades they are just saying whatever they think will keep the money flowing does not mean that we must seek non-Medical Model non-reductionist Alternatives to Medical treatment.

    That is totally irrational.

    We should promote valid Medicine first and the alternatives offered by psychosocial theorists second. The idea here being, valid psychological and social help will work much better if the person’s individual health is addressed first or simultaneously.

    Stand Up.

    Dan Burdick Eugene Oregon USA

    ______________________________________________

    “What happens if busy psychiatrists label sick patients and prescribe medications before doing diagnostic work-ups? Do their patients get ‘quality’ care? “Some patients want to stop taking pills after they experience bad side effects. That might not be a realistic goal. Please do NOT try it without supervision. ”

    Robert Sealey, BSc

    http://www.mentalhealthrecovery.com/recovery-resources/articles.php?id=51
    _________________________________________________________

    Optimal Dosing for Schizophrenia
    Raymond J. Pataracchia, B.Sc., N.D.
    Naturopathic Medical Research Clinic
    http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/nutrients-schizophrenia.htm “The Optimal Neuroleptic Dose to Maintain Brain Structure Integrity

    Quote, “Brain structure loss is one of the biggest and most significant ‘side-effects’ of neuroleptic treatment. Maintaining brain structure is an important part of the nutritional protocol for schizophrenic pathology.2 The natural course of this disease and neuroleptic exposure are both associated with brain structure compromise.”

    FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE “These days we are hung up on labels and treating symptoms.” Vincent Bellonzi
    Alternative Health – Functional Medicine PSYCHETRUTH Video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeq6xRU2ASQ

    Nutritional Protection from the
    Damaging Effects of Psychiatric Drugs
    Charles Gant, M.D.
    http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/natural.htm
    “In my practice when I evaluate someone taking psych meds, I initially usually do not change any medication dosages and proceed to do the testing and then design treatments that make medications unnecessary. In the meantime I quickly focus on mitigating neuronal injury in two ways, antioxidants therapies and phospholipid/essential fatty acid therapies. The former is a no-brainer as oxidative stress, especially when toxic substances are in contact with cells, is always an issue. For instance, vitamin E is probably the most important and I immediately prescribe it in the dosage ranges of 800 IU to 1600 IU a day.”

    Abram Hoffer, M.D. The drug companies took over Psychiatry sometime between 1955 and 1967 because the tranquillizers were so profitable.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH1_v0zh_gk

    David Oaks alternatives to reductionist medical biological treatments
    https://www.google.com/#q=%22david+oaks%22++reductionist++medical++biological

    Review of book Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry 2007
    http://www.dbdouble.freeuk.com/Alternativesreview.htm

    Quote,”People may be devalued by psychiatry, not least because of the biologically reductionistic way in which mental illness may be perceived.”

    * * * Biochemical Psychiatry is not the same as the Drug Company Psychiatry
    and we should not confuse the two. * * *

    Orthomolecular Psychiatry PsycheTruth Videos
    Vincent Belonzi
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIqioywu9_0

    Abram Hoffer – Autobiography article he wrote at the end of his life. Explains the suppression of Biochemical Psychiatry, what occurred with the fraud of Task Force 7 i
    http://www.orthomolecular.org/history/hoffer/ahlife.pdf

    RED ICE Radio – Andrew Shepherd Saul, Ph.D. AUDIO (Abram Hoffer’s friend and coworker)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmTjcRf8j0I

    __________________________________

    Psychiatry Res. 2003 Dec 1;121(2):109-22.

    Decreased antioxidant enzymes and membrane essential polyunsaturated fatty acids in schizophrenic and bipolar mood disorder patients.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14656446
    “These data indicate that certain biochemical characteristics may be common to a spectrum of psychiatric disorders, and suggest supplementation of antioxidants and essential fatty acids might affect clinical outcome.”

    Schizophr Res. 2003 Aug 1;62(3):195-204.

    Supplementation with a combination of omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants (vitamins E and C) improves the outcome of schizophrenia.
    Arvindakshan M1, Ghate M, Ranjekar PK, Evans DR, Mahadik SP.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12837515
    The Essential Fatty Acid “levels returned to pretreatment levels after 4 months of supplementation washout.”

    “However, the clinical improvement was significantly retained. Future studies need be done in placebo-controlled trials and also with a comparison group supplemented with fatty acids alone in a larger number of patients, both chronic as well as never medicated, and for a longer duration of treatment while the dietary intake is monitored. This may establish the” Essential Fatty Acid supplementation a very effective treatment to improve the outcome for an extended period of time.

    Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry. 2001 Apr;25(3):463-93.

    Oxidative stress and role of antioxidant and omega-3 essential fatty acid supplementation in schizophrenia.
    Mahadik SP1, Evans D, Lal H.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11370992

    “7. Oxidative stress exists in schizophrenia based on altered antioxidant enzyme defense, increased lipid peroxidation and reduced levels of EPUFAs. The life style of schizophrenic patients is also prooxidative stress, i.e., heavy smoking, drinking, high caloric intake with no physical activity and treatment with pro-oxidant drugs. 8. The patients in developed countries show higher levels of lipid peroxidation and lower levels of membrane phospholipids as compared to patients in the developing countries. 9. Initial observations on the improved outcome of schizophrenia in patients supplemented with EPUFAs and antioxidants suggest the possible beneficial effects of dietary supplementation. 10. Since the oxidative stress exists at or before the onset of psychosis the use of antioxidants from the very onset of psychosis may reduce the oxidative injury and dramatically improve the outcome of illness.”

    FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE “These days we are hung up on labels and treating symptoms.”
    Alternative Health – Functional Medicine PSYCHETRUTH Video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeq6xRU2ASQ

    When treating a patient we strive to provide more than just rapid relief of your immediate symptoms. We focus on your overall health examining nutritional, metabolic, immune, hormonal, structural, and any toxicological factors in which you may be involved. Through a personal and comprehensive examination, we try to get to the source of your condition enabling you to restore your health. We also look at emotional and psychological factors as these create the background which shapes every aspect of your health and well-being.

    Daniel Burdick
    https://www.facebook.com/democracynow/posts/10202700637129354?stream_ref=10

    “When drug companies and Harvard Psychiatrists say the words “chemical imbalance” or “we are employing the Medical model” it is not because they care whatsoever about a model or chemical imbalance.”

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Natasha Campbell-McBride

    Video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp90DngfBwc

    McBride in this presentation given at the Weston Price Foundation
    confirms marijuana to in actual fact be an “environmental factor,” an important contributing factor, in people’s Medical and psychological troubles. This for very many people unfortunately leads to their then being put in a “diagnostic box” and given inadequate, potent drug treatment.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    ______________________________________________

    Gut Psychology Syndrome GAPS Talk by Natasha Campbell-McBride

    50:10

    “A precious time wasted when the child could have been treated”

    “Which means that those toxins had enough time to bombard the brain. and to cause organic damage in the brain.”

    “When we do scanning — there’s a very sophisticated scan called PET Scan — when we do PET Scan on severely autistic children of the age of 3 to 5, we find perfectly normal brain.”

    “These children are born with perfectly normal brains.”

    “But when we do the same scan

    “To reverse this is much harder.”

    “When these children grow up — GAPS doesn’t disappear, unless it hasn’t been treated.”

    “And, then they get to teenage years, and the young adulthood — and substance abuse is one of the venues these children usually take.”

    “You know that about ten years ago, British Government pronounced cannabis to be a less damaging substance — and so it became more available to our youngsters.”

    And Psychiatrists began ringing the bell, and they still ringing the bell, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference, that they seeing growing numbers of youngsters develop first episode of psychosis, after the first use of cannabis.”

    “These are GAPS children.”

    “I’m sure you all know teenagers who go to parties, smoke cannabis, and they’re fine.”

    “But these are GAPS children. They’re vulnerable.”

    “Cannabis can start a psychotic episode, in these children, and that then leads to diagnosis of schizophrenia, being sectioned, being put on very potent medication – and that’s a slippery slide – for the rest of your life.”

    “Once you get hooked on those medications, it is very difficult to get off those things.”

    ______________________________________________________

    Quickly DSM labeling as “one of those people” (pseudo, quasi or fake “diagnosis”) and patent drugging is a shortcut version of Medicine which may be defacto legally tolerated currently. In remembrance of those who have died from this ersatz scheme.

    Report comment

  4. ‘Schizophrenia’ becomes an illness and tranquillizers become treatment. Nobody recovers if they depend on tranquillizers, so ‘schizophrenia’ becomes a longterm illness, and the rule is that the person has to stay sick. This is pretend medicine.

    But if you investigate, most of the time the problem is about anxiety that’s gotten out of proportion. The type that can be dealt with or wound down gradually.

    Report comment

  5. Of course the mind and body work together. They are the same thing. But psychiatry separates the two by blaming the brain.
    If someone has a stomach ache, they might describe it as sharp pain, dull pain, severe pain or nausea.
    You ask what causes it, you take the time to find out if it is caused by something they ate, or an emotional upset.
    You don’t assume that they are “Aching Stomach Disorder” which is what psychiatry does, labels you and then gives you a drug to “shut down” your stomach for the rest of your life.

    Anxiety panic attacks can be stopped by deep breathing. It is much better than taking a drug and has no side effects. But you eventually must find out what is behind the anxiety, which is usually a situation and/or relationships, not a chemical deficiency.
    Psychiatry skips that step and goes right to the easy answer of prescribing a drug, putting off finding the cause of distress. Once the brain is drugged there is no motivation to deal with the original problem.
    People who take anxiety drugs become addicted and could never find out why they are anxious.

    I now think schizophrenia and psychosis are extreme anxiety states. Not that being in a state of constant fear and turmoil doesn’t change the brain in some way, I think it does.

    Psychiatry is so primitive, pretending to be sophisticated.

    Report comment

  6. I agree, DSM diagnoses need to be rethought. The DSM is a book that calls observed human emotions and behaviors “disorders.” And also lists the ADRs and withdrawal effects of the psychotropic drugs as the “serious disorders.” What an embarrassment psychiatrists are so “lacking in insight” and “mindless.”

    Report comment

        • According to my medical records, a psychologist described my dream query, my gut instincts, and real life concerns “psychosis,” based upon lies and gossip from alleged child abusers. But I was later handed over medical records by decent nurses, with proof that my real life concerns of the abuse of my child were medically likely.

          I’ve since been told, by decent pastors who were kind enough to read my chronologically written up medical records, that psychiatrists have been used for years by the medical and religious communities, to cover up their easily recognized iatrogenesis and pastoral sins.

          But there are theories of psychological thought, I’ve found, that do believe dreams are “psychosis.” And since I was dealing with a medical cover up of a “bad fix” on a broken bone and medical evidence of “concerns of child abuse,” my medical records claim my entire life is a “credible fictional story.”

          The crimes, I have medical evidence occurred, are not “fictional.” Psychiatry covers up crimes and sins for doctors and pastors.

          Report comment

  7. “Each of the mental disorders is conceptualized as a clinically significant behavioral or psychological syndrome.”

    Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
    http://sevencounties.org/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=8212&cn=18
    ________________________________________________________

    Hello,

    I am one of the millions who have had risperdal foisted on them for reasons of opportunistic profiteering.

    Within a couple of years after this I had read Toxic Psychiatry by Peter Breggin, M.D. and Orthomolecular Psychiatry edited by Linus Pauling and I saw Loren Mosher, M.D. and Robert Whitaker live at NARPA 2002!

    The aloof mysterious pretentious supercilious Psychiatrists of the Medical establishment also effectively interfered with my receiving (non-interfered with by their presence throught America) honest appropriate care and help for alcohol addiction and any life, psychological, neurological, physical or social problems I could have used valid assistance in.

    I saw them give a placid pregnant woman risperdal at this tme.

    At NARPA in 2002 Loren Mosher, M.D. was the first person I heard sound the alarm on Zyprexa causing metabolic damage. Not so safe and atypical after all (no surprise).

    He described the then incoming mounting reports that were still inconclusive but at that juncture in time becoming increasingly clear.

    He said words to that affect on stage before a large audience. Robert Whitaker was fantastic to hear on stage then as well.

    Loren: http://www.narpa.org/workshops02/pharma02.htm

    Here I have responded to some shtick today.

    Dan Burdick Eugene, Oregon USA
    ___________________

    This statement recently published is needlessly confusing:

    “If somebody’s position is that mental disorders don’t exist, then it’s unlikely that person is going to be interested in quality assurance.”

    The disorder categories named in the DSM manual are defined by observed behavioral or psychological symptoms. These categories are created by official committee panels. The DSM descriptive categories obviously exist and are billable.

    Equally known to us all is that these disorder names cannot represent any particular, single Medical illness as no Medical pathology is known to Medicine for any one of these descriptive syndrome categories and no Medical confirmatory test exists .

    DSM Psychiatric diagnoses are non Medical diagnoses as we all know. If there is a Medical diagnosis which is explanatory for the observed psychiatric symptoms then this precludes a Psychiatric diagnosis.

    Because the syndromes, the symptom clusters in the DSM nosology (the Psychiatric disorders) are assigned by the objective Professional Opinion of the clinician obviously people selected into these billable descriptive categories will be heterogeneous as to underlying Medical cause(s) and other causes that account for such selection.

    This is all well known to us all, and it is important not to confuse matters.

    A descriptive syndrome name has the potential of offering a starting place to developing appropriate individualized care. Unfortunately, on the other hand, as we know by now it can also be cleverly portrayed as somehow a single, definitive Medical diagnosis with the intent of increasing sales profit for lucrative, patented centrally acting drug products at the expense of comprehensive informed individual care.

    Daniel Burdick

    _______________________________________________________

    “The term “nosological classification” is often used in connection with medical classification systems, and the tendency is to equate it with “diagnosis” and “validity.” However, particularly in the case of psychiatry this is far from always being the case. ”

    Validity of nosological classification
    Petr Smolik, MD, PhD*
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181576/
    _______________________________________________________

    “One hundred percent of the members of the panels on ‘Mood Disorders’ and ‘Schizophrenia and Other Psychotic Disorders’ had financial ties to drug companies.”

    https://www.google.com/#q=percent+mood+other+psychotic+disorders+panels+lisa+cosgrove++Prozac+OR+Risperdal+OR+Sharav+OR+Whitaker

    _________________________________

    Finding Restorative Care for Mental Illness by Robert Sealey, BSc, CA

    “Why shortcut the practice guidelines of psychiatry which recommend testing and diagnosing before prescribing? Why mix meds without trying to identify the root cause(s) of brain symptoms?”
    http://www.mentalhealthrecovery.com/recovery-resources/articles.php?id=51

    _________________________________

    Finding the Medical Causes of Severe Mental Symptoms: The Extraordinary Walker Exam by Dan Stradford
    http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/stradford.htm

    _________________________________

    Behavior Analysis of Psychotic Disorders: Scientific Dead End or Casualty of the Mental Health Political Economy? Stephen E Wong 2006

    http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/bsi/article/view/365

    PSYCHIATRIC DIAGNOSES (Pg. 157)

    Psychiatric diagnoses are a cornerstone in psychiatry’s network of ideological, political, and economic control over mental health services. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) holds the copyright on and publishes the official diagnostic system, now in its sixth iteration as the DSM-IV-TR (APA, 2000). DSM diagnoses affect clients’ relationship with major social institutions by determining their legal status, eligibility for services, disability benefits, and supposedly appropriate treatments. For professional classifications that hold such great social and institutional significance, DSM diagnoses are peculiar in that the reliability and validity of many of its categories are unverified.

    Validity (Pg. 158)

    In addition to problems of reliability, the validity of DSM diagnoses is questionable because there is no “gold standard” of mental disorders to which DSM diagnoses can be compared and validated. DSM diagnoses are not based on any known pathophysiology or etiology, but rather are syndromes defined by the presence or absence of an arbitrary set of symptoms (Andreasen, Flaum, & Arndt, 1992). As described earlier, groups of experts, consisting mainly of psychiatrists, determine what constellation of symptoms constitutes a syndrome. The rapidly increasing number of diagnoses in successive versions of the DSM (Blashfield & Fuller, 1996) is one reflection of how these syndromes are socially constructed.

    Report comment

  8. This is the critically important issue. What a nightmare it has been to stumble into psychiatry’s illegitimate enterprise, to discover that health is not the objective of today’s psychiatric treatment and that there is virtually no help to exit or find alternatives to the use of neuroleptics.

    Report comment

  9. My anger was diagnosed as “bipolar mixed” after I drank myself sick over stress in my life at that time and went to the E.R for detoxification because the drink wasn’t working and it was time to cut it out, I knew that. Sucks cause drinking wasn’t a problem before exposure to psych meds but that’s another story.

    “Bipolar mixed” sounds real scientific right ? No I was pissed off about being taken as a psychiatric prisoner including that locked van ride to the next hospital with that A-hole who wouldn’t stop for cigarettes or even speak to me, then after a long long wait still unable to smoke with my freedom gone and feeling anxiety hell I was strip searched forced nakedness and told to squat and cough or “things could get rough” then after finally settling down a bit and getting a nights rest the very worst part comes: I get told I must take enough neuroleptics for my “illness” to knock out a horse or I will be given “injectable form” which means getting needle raped against my will.

    Not getting angry over mistreatment like that should be considered a mental illness. I should have just detoxed myself and walked it off instead of walking into that month long nightmare.

    It was bad cause not only had I survived years dependent on and got off Clonopin and endured Zyprexa withdrawal hell and “Remeron” I had read the truth about psychiatry and found myself being coerced to take part in it again, I drank to much screwed up but no thanks.

    I don’t have all the awnsers but I know from what happened to me after taking those pills and what I saw the times I was subjected to “help” inpatient, psychiatry is an expensive abusive waste of time that does more harm than good overall. The world would be better without its existance becuase there are way way to many clueless incompetent and/or uncaring reckless idiots with script pads out there ruining peoples lives .

    Report comment

    • P.S “Dual Diagnosis” has to be the biggest scam ever, giving people drugs that ruin the ability to feel natural highs from life only creates more of a need and desire for alcohol and get high drugs.

      I don’t hear many people say ” I got sober thanks to these drugs that ruined my sex drive and made me an unmotivated flat zombie all day”.

      Report comment

      • Yeah, because exchanging one type of harmful addictive drug with another type of even more harmful and addictive drug makes all the difference, right?
        I remember talking to a guy in a hospital, he was a teen, about 16-17yrs old and ended there for marihuana possession, which is for most people relatively harmful. Because he complained to the staff that he couldn’t sleep (he was placed in a room with 7 other people) they decided that the best way to deal with this problem is to give him heavy duty sleeping pills. He was a grass smoking teen and he was scared of the drugs they gave him. I remember him telling me that “the doctors here are more crazy than their patients”. Couldn’t agree more.

        Report comment

        • Wow, that’s brilliant. Exchanging marijuana use for highly addictive sleeping pills, because we’re worried about possible substance abuse and addiction???? Definitely got some people on the wrong side of the crazy/healthy line in THAT facility!

          —- Steve

          Report comment

          • Otto Wagner Spital in Vienna, Austria. They had scandal after scandal within the last 10yrs (patient dying in restraints, ex-staff members accusations of abuse and neglect which I can totally confirm 5yrs later, etc.). They also have a good long Nazi history and a more recent case of a number of kids dying from neglect in the 80s. This hospital is like an asylum from a crazy psychiatrist horror movie, which is common knowledge and nobody does anything about it.
            So yeah, there is something seriously wrong with this facility.

            Report comment

    • I totally sympathise with you Copy_cat. I was never strip searched, I think I’d have really murdered someone over that but I experience such awesome treatment like having a male shrink enter a toilet while I had my pants down or having my bag searched. I’m not even mentioning such awesome forms of “treatment” like 4-points and forcible injections because I dared to refuse a physical examination in front of the whole hospital. The fact that I have never reacted with physical violence and really hurt anyone is just a proof of how reasonable I in fact was (not that I did not want to rip their eyes off for doing it to me at the time but I was quite aware that this wouldn’t be seen as a totally understandable emotional reaction to being abused but a sign of deteriorating mental illness). Psychiatry is just a way to cover up abuse, either outside or within the system. I have absolutely zero respect for people who think that this is acceptable. Either they are sadistic psychopaths or they are simply morons who have no idea about the basic human psychology works. Either way they should be nowhere near emotionally distressed people.

      Report comment

      • “Psychiatry is just a way to cover up abuse” is so true. I noticed that when in a “group,” and have medical evidence I was drugged based upon a list of lies and gossip from the people who sexually abused my child. Psychiatry exists to torture people who’ve been harmed or victimized, and to cover up the crimes of those who pretend they have the moral authority or intelligence to be in control.

        Report comment

  10. Feeling very down and defeated at the time because of what was happening in my life, I talked to a psychiatrist about it, and he absolutely insisted I was really angry. Now…I was sad, confused, fearful, and grieving as a result of what was happening in my life, but to be honest I simply didn’t have the energy or self at that point to be angry. Even when I am solidly well, anger isn’t high on my emotional responses list…at times I’d like it to be higher.
    Anyway…I got weeks of him telling me how angry I was, and I did eventually quietly and politely inform him that I was getting a bit annoyed at being told I was angry when I wasn’t. “See, you are angry!”, said my insightful, highly trained and highly paid psychiatrist, and promptly gave me a “borderline features” diagnosis on that single criterion and (non) event which he had actively pushed me towards for weeks.
    An illuminating insight, indeed…..but only in retrospect.

    Report comment

    • Well, mine was similarly “insightful”. He was trying to find some evidence of childhood abuse by my family, which I told him over and over I’ve never experienced. Finally, I found one thing that was slightly traumatic for me when I was very small and was related to my stay in a hospital and not to my family (reason why I am scared of blood taking and injections to this day). He dismissed it out of hand (apparently the medical system can do no wrong) and insisted that I should think more about my family. I got rather angry at that and told him that I had a very loving and caring family. At that point he said: “well, then your family must have loved you too much and they have spoiled you and that’s where your problems come from”. WTF??? I never talked to this idiot again…

      Report comment

    • My favorite was I told my pdoc I sometimes heard the phone ring and he put in my medical records I was having “auditory hallucinations” (because of this added “psychotic”). He put this in my open med chart when I was hospitalized for Pancreatitis and the staff doctors had a field day with it. I got my records to review and saw this, OMG, what in the world”” Auditory Hallucinations?? I brought this up to him and said I told you I heard the phone ring when I was half a sleep after taking my night time drugs. I was dreaming. Dreaming, not hallucinating. He said, oh, sorry.

      Report comment

  11. Since I am so outraged by the latest bipolar fad fraud, I’ve done much research on it and continue to do so. Thus, I couldn’t avoid finding the greatest bipolar fad fraud disease mongerer in the world seeking to stigmatize everyone on the planet with the vicious, pernicious bipolar degradation ritual, the one and only greatest Wizard of Bipolar Disorder, Nassir Ghaemi! He ahs made a huge contribution to making bipolar the latest “sacred symbol” of psychiatry that is much improved since anyone and everyone can be targeted unlike with the former sacred symbol of schizophrenia. If you google over diagnosis of bipolar disorder, you will find tons of articles with special emphasis on Dr. Mark Zimmerman’s Brown study showing at least half of those he and his colleagues interviewed who had gotten the bogus bipolar stigma did not have it per DSM IV standards. Since we all know the DSM has been declared totally invalid with all stigmas like bipolar lacking any science or evidence or 100% fraud per Dr. Fred Baughman, Neurologist, we also know that all of the bipolar stigmas examined by Dr. Zimmerman were bogus as are all DSM stigmas. Tons of other articles expose this fraudulent epidemic of bipolar with that perpetrated against children thanks to Joseph Biederman of Harvard considered the worst of these millions of medical crimes against humanity.

    Anyway, I have found to my horror that Nassir Ghaemi is a self proclaimed bipolar expert who makes his bread and butter by constantly writing bogus books, text books and articles pushing the worst Big Pharma fraud about bipolar while constantly lying that bipolar is totally genetic and heritable when there is not a shred of proof to back up these typical fraudulent claims of biopsychiatry as exposed by Dr. Jay Joseph and many famous geneticists at MIA and elsewhere. I was also horrified to find out that Ghaemi was in charge of the so called “mood disorders” group of the DSM 5 with all the members including Ghaemi having huge drug company ties. Ghaemi has promoted every Big Pharma and other lie in the book to ensure that anyone visiting a psychiatrist will qualify for a bipolar stigma. He has created numerous categories of bipolar including bipolar III for those who had bad or manic reactions to SSRI’s, kiddie cocaine or other drugs whereby DSM IV forbade such a fraud of adding insult to iatrogenic injury by pretending the drug reaction listed in Physician’s Desk Reference and other sources simply unmasks the so called patient’s bipolar, a known Big Pharma ploy of always blame the victim’s “mental illness” for any deadly drug reactions or when the toxic drugs don’t work. In his bipolar megalomania, Ghaemi commits another outrage when he claims that anyone previously diagnosed with PTSD, depression, anxiety or even the insult stigma of borderline for abused women with complex PTSD should be diagnosed as bipolar. The reason is that Ghaemi claims that just because you experience horrific life events if you react in any extreme emotional way, this also shows your bipolar disorder. His expansion of bipolar IV to VI and on eliminates the requirement to have a manic or hypomanic episode so anything except total robotic behavior can and will be used to slap a bipolar stigma on one and all to keep those Big Pharma billions up for the latest lethal drugs on patent. Obviously, the psychopaths of biopsychiatry who cannot love or care for anyone but themselves, but rather, only exist to exploit and wield power over others, this vile profession is outlawing normal humans rights to having any normal feelings either. Anyway, I hope you get the point. As Dr. David Healy exposes, Ghaemi uses every fraudulent Big Pharma ploy to expand, expand, expand the horrific bipolar horror assault on humanity by blaming the victims’ so called bipolar or mental illness for everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink. He further shows his total lack of any conscience or ethics when he pronounces that just because drugs that he prescribes like lithium and so called mood stabilizers can be deadly and cause organ and other lethal brain/body damage , if one is diagnosed bipolar, psychiatrists should not hesitate to force these poisons on the victims of this horrific fraudulent assault on their humanity, health, right to informed consent and all the other monstrous actions of Ghaemi that some experts call “aberrant self promotion.” There is an enlightening exchange between Dr. Allen Frances and Ghaemi in Psychology Today whereby Frances seeks to minimize the damage done by the bipolar epidemic he helped create while Ghaemi fights for maximum expansion of this deadly fraud epidemic from cradle to grave with the pretense of promoting science for his many false claims and fight for the constant bipolar expansion agenda that Dr. Joel Paris, Psychiatrist, calls bipolar imperialisim with Dr. Joanna Moncrieff seconding that assessment.

    Anyway, I could go on about how literally ill I become whenever I have the misfortune to be exposed to Ghaemi’s deadly agenda showing that he obviously does not have one spec of empathy or conscience about the evil he is promoting, but instead I will post a link to the brilliant, funny, insightful web site of The Last Psychiatrist, whereby he exposes the total outrageous fraud and pernicious agenda of Nassir Ghaemi:

    http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/04/experts_weigh_in_on_bipolar_di.html

    It’s nice to see such brave souls in psychiatry willing to call a spade a spade expecially when that spade is literally putting millions of people in early graves with the spade of bogus biopsychiatry.

    Report comment

    • “because you experience horrific life events if you react in any extreme emotional way, this also shows your bipolar disorder”
      …or borderline, or anxiety disorder etc. – it really doesn’t matter which disorder label they stick on you, they anyway use the same drugs for everything. You could summarise the whole DSM as “I don’t like who you are” and treatment by “I’m going to abuse you into submission”.

      “anything except total robotic behavior can and will be used to slap a bipolar stigma ”
      “Obviously, the psychopaths of biopsychiatry (…), this vile profession is outlawing normal humans rights to having any normal feelings either.”
      I couldn’t have put it better. They are either criminally stupid and delusional or they are total psychopaths.

      Report comment

      • Hi B,

        Thanks for your support. Based on the “us vs them” blog it appears we have some similarities in our backgrounds.

        I was just reading an article about eating disorder treatment and now the psychos of biopsychiatry are claiming that these women with eating disorders most likely have bipolar and/or borderline personality disorder due to their impulsive eating. They don’t admit that most of the processed food is toxic and made to be deliberately addictive since the food industry has the same psycho eithics as the mental death profession. So, warning: beware of the Trojan horse of seeking “treatment” for an eating disorder only to be fraudulently stigmatized as bipolar or borderline with Ghaemi wanting to put any signs of life in his bogus bipolar imperialism with him King. How ironic if these poor women get neuroleptics for bogus bipolar only to gain 100 pounds from these toxic drugs and further blamed and scapegoated for their “eating disorder.” They are screening for these bogus disorders with the same tool, which proves that both Dr. Judith Herman and Dr. Carole Warshaw were right by exposing that abused women suffering from complex PSTD are fraudulently stigmatized with the insult borderline personality disorder more in the past and bipolar disorder more recently. Most if not all of the current bogus bipolar stigma are trauma symptoms used to lie and deny any abuse/bullying/mobbing and blame/stigmatize the victims. Dr. Raggins who posted on MIA let the cat out of the bag by admitting that the mental health center he administers “diagnoses” rape victims with bipolar disorder!! Also, there are many articles on the web citing the outrage that women who report getting raped in the military are routinely stigmatized as bipolar to punish, discredit, silence, ostracize and destroy them for speaking out or daring to demand any justice from the old boy network.

        So, regardless of what the great Wizard of bipolar Ghaemi claims, all of these bogus stigmas mostly used against women are evil, fraudulent attempts to aid and abet the abuser users in power who exploit, rape, abuse and destroy women with impunity. Of course, this can happen to men too, but women are the main targets along with other minorities.

        Report comment

        • I think bipolar is preferable no since borderline is an indication for talk therapy more than drugs. If you switch the “diagnosis” to bipolar you can drug them up to their nostrils.
          All my problems started when I moved to a new city and started a toxic relationship with a guy who first did everything to isolate me from everyone (I was mobbed at work by people whom I just met – I have no proof of it but I believe that it was mainly due to my ex) and then pose as the only nice guy around. I was in that sick relationship for over 4 yrs and at the end I got super paranoid (with good reasons as I was lied to on a daily basis) and endured psychological and at times physical abuse. Of course, when it came to it it was he who acted like a hurt victim of a crazy woman and he basically turn me over to psychiatry to get rid of me when he found a new GF/victim to play with. Of course none of the shrinks ever noticed anything wrong with him, it was basically other people – my friends and co-workers who told me that he’s a scumbag and he was doing/saying things behind my back to smear me.
          If he had his way I’d be locked up and drugged in the psych ward forever.

          Report comment

    • “Concerns of abuse” of one’s child, with medical evidence, is “bipolar” today. But, thankfully, not to the oral surgeons, just some of the unethical PCPs, and most the psychiatrists, but concerns of improprieties only occur after they’ve attempted to murder you with ungodly major adverse drug interactions 15 times, and failed.

      What a joke the “bipolar” diagnosis, thus all of the mainstream medical community who is advocating it as a real “disease,” has become. Gosh, maybe scientifically “lacking in validity” diagnoses aren’t beneficial to most within humanity after all?

      But they are a really good way for pastors to cover up sodomy of children and get the highest child suicide rate in the nation in their local high school.

      Report comment

  12. Well written, Donna. Thanks for speaking out against Nassir Ghaemi, M.D.

    Here in Nassir and his fellows assess 158 bipolar patients given lucrative patented “atypical antipsychotic” (dopamine 2 receptor antagonist) drugs for one month.

    Adjunctive risperidone, olanzapine and quetiapine for the treatment of hospitalized patients with bipolar I disorder: a retrospective study.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16631294

    What I find notable is that in one month there are diagnosed “extra-pyramidal symptoms” caused by risperidone and the other so-called “atypicals.” (Not so “atypical” after all, are they?)

    “The frequency of the extrapyramidal symptom-related side effects were higher in the risperidone-treated group than in the olanzapine and quetiapine-treated group. ”

    When you wrote Nassir Ghaemi I was expecting to see “Joseph Biederman, M.D.” instead.

    It is notable that Boston Children’s Hospital, in the current Justina Pelletier case, is being portrayed on one side, with Tufts portrayed on the other.

    Also notable: no mention is being made of psychiatric drugs, the fraudulent and harmful nature of psychiatric drugs, nor of any particular specific psychiatric drugs given to Justina.

    Boston Children’s Hospital is affiliated with Harvard, and Harvard’s pediatric Psychiatric department Professors Joseph Biederman, M.D. and Janet Wozniak, M.D., who legitimatized not only “detecting” “Bipolar” in children and toddlers but also giving children and toddlers prescriptions for patented Psychiatric drugs as their treatment. (They were not promoting early preventative intervention with diet, nutrient supplementation, biochemical testing and psychosocial measures. Instead – if they get a label, then, that is what they are, and so, drugs are sold.)

    Tufts and Harvard were seen in the light of the Rebbeca Riley case as equal partners in the targeting of young children as a sales niche for pharma.

    What psychiatric drugs have they inflicted on Joanna and why is “Parents Rights” mentioned while this is left unaddressed in this case?

    While Dr. Joseph Biederman is famous, thanks to Senator Grassley, for promising his drug company favorable for them results from a Scientific Clinical Research Study which had not even been done yet, Dr. Joseph Biederman is also well known in some circle for his fraudulent Peer Journal published study of Hypericum.

    It is not only non Medical Alternatives (such as Psychotherapy and Open Dialogue) which is blockaded by counterintelligence actions by the NIMH, APA Neuropsychopharmaceutical version of Psychiatry.

    Dan Burdick Eugene, Oregon USA

    Joseph Biederman:

    1) Flawed St. John’s Wort Study on ADHD Failed to Use Active Form of Herbal Extract Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/023430_St_Johns_Wort_junk_science.html

    “There are at least four major flaws with this study”
    Ed Zimney, MD
    Read more : http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/zimney-health-and-medical-news-you-can-use/does-st-johns-wort-help-adhd

    2) Senatorial Investigation discloses that In communication with his drug company foremost Harvard Professor of Pediatric Psychiatry Dr. Joseph Biederman assured postive for the company reports from a clinical scientific study which hadn’t even been done yet.
    Learn more: https://www.google.com/#q=Biederman+promised
    ____________________________________________

    Joseph Biederman, M.D. and other Leading Psychiatrists at Harvard
    Fail To Reveal $3.2 Million Pay

    “The enormous influence wielded by Dr. Biederman and his Harvard colleagues who have been conducting dubious industry-sponsored drug experiments on young children demonstrates that the Harvard mantle bestows a veneer of credibility even for medically unsupportable, radical use of toxic drugs in young children.”

    “…although many of Dr. Biederman’s studies are small and often financed by drug makers, his work helped to fuel a controversial 40-fold increase from 1994 to 2003 in the diagnosis of pediatric bipolar disorder and a rapid rise in the use of antipsychotic medicines in children.”

    Learn more: http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?id=2681#newspost

    Report comment

  13. Thanks for your support Dan.

    You seem quite well versed in the bipolar/biopsychiatry fad fraud yourself. Actually, Biederman is one of Ghaemi’s heroes and mentors since Ghaemi has said he sees nothing wrong with what Biederman did in creating the child ADHD and bipolar epidemics and/or taking drug company money he forgot to report at the same time he obtained government grants while promising J&J positive studies on lethal neuroleptic drugs in advance before the studies were done. Given this type of example of Biederman, one can see why the younger turks like Ghaemi would be miffed at having the same fraud committed by him questioned, exposed and causing outrage as more and more people have caught on the truth about TOXIC PSYCHIATRY (by Dr. Peter Breggin).

    Dr. David Healy has done a great job exposing how the fad fraud bipolar epidemic was created to push the latest lethal drugs on patent in his great book, Mania.

    Here are some great articles by Dr. Healy on bipolar disease mongering:

    http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0030185

    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/200904/bipolar-disorder-and-its-biomythology-interview-david-healy

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1518689/

    Report comment

    • When you check out the very intelligent and truthful articles cited above about so called bipolar and the book, Mania, by Dr. David Healy, he exposes how and why this vile, predatory junk science epidemic was created like many others including anxiety, depression, social phobia and even ADHD to push the latest lethal drugs on patent when psychiatry sold out to Big Pharma. This was to give the very false impression these Wizards of Oz were real medical doctors by prescribing lethal drugs with phony names like antipsychotics implying that these poisons were magic bullets for the bogus “mental illnesses” the psychopaths/malignant narcissists at the top with huge conflicts of interest made up and voted in by committee.

      As you can see, while Dr. Healy and others becoming very concerned about how corrupt medicine has become with so much bogus disease mongering with bipolar the poster child for it, the current Wizard of Bipolar is right there to try to counter Dr. Healy’s great articles at Psychology Today and elsewhere to push his Big Pharma fraud infomercials to further his despicable bipolar agenda on everyone on the planet.

      It’s really sickening how Nassir Ghaemi never misses an opportunity to push his fraudulent, dishonest Big Pharma/APA informercials about the latest fraud fad epidemic of bipolar created by the APA/Big Pharma Cartel with the pretense that this junk sicnece he is pushing with many drug company ties is the same as what used to be the very rare phenomenon of manic depressive illness with causes unknown from which most people recovered after one episode to live normal lives. Bob Whitaker has exposed the massive disability and destroyed lives with the horrific bogus bipolar agenda of those like Nassir Ghaemi using this fraudulent, invented voted in stigma to justify his sordid career of preying on the normal human problems, crises, suffering and loss typical of human beings to profit from their suffering and destroy their lives. What is most despicable is the shock, horror and retraumatization of trauma survivors seeking help through such “doctors,” the “legal system” and others only to find they have been hijacked by psychopaths and malignant narcissists there to aid and abet their fellow abusers but to silence, discredit, stigmatize, ostracize and destroy the victims with impunity just like Stalinist Russia and all such fascist countries.

      Report comment

  14. The Last Psychiatrist provides the real horrific and typical reasons and agenda for the push for massive expansion of bogus bipolar stigmas while waving good-bye to depression stigmas by Nassir Ghaemi I described above:

    http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/04/farewell_depression.html

    Just as Dr. David Healy described in his great book, Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder, Ghaemi and his cohorts are exploiting the bogus agenda that has allowed horrible, brain/body neuroleptic drugs to be called “mood stabilizers” as one of many of the biopsychiatry/Big Pharma cartel’s many fad, fraud epidemics to push the latest lethal drugs on patent by creating and/or expanding life destroying stigmas with the latest bipolar fad fraud now that the SSRI’s and other drugs are becoming generic/off patent/much less profitable. So, as the Last Psychiatrist exposes this is the despicable reason behind Ghaemi and his cohorts trying to eliminate depression and other DSM stigmas that call for drugs off patent with one of the worst deadly crimes against humanity ever: the horrible life destroying bipolar disorder stigma that is so “inclusive” it is used to “diagnose” serial killers like Gary Sampson and rape/abuse/trauma victims alike. Typical of biopsychiatry as Dr. Thomas Szasz has exposed, the serial killers, mostly men, are excused due to their so called bipolar with the insanity defense while raped, abused women and children are vilified and punished severely for their bogus bipolar stigmas to aid and abet the abusers in power.

    Anyway, despite Ghaemi’s and his cohorts’ pretense of concern about “mental health,” this ever expanding bipolar imperialism is all about pushing some of the worst if not the worst and most deadly/toxic neuroleptics on as many as this nefarious group can prey on with this lethal combination of one of the worst, degrading, life destroying, fraudulent stigmas ever in order to push some of the most toxic drugs on the planet with the Big Pharma invented name of so called “mood stabilizers” as also exposed in Dr. Healy’s book, Mania.

    The Last Psychiatrist truly nails the fraudulent science or lack thereof and the despicable agenda behind the never ending expansion of the bipolar fad fraud from literally cradle to grave with the interval much shorter thanks to those like Ghaemi and Company!

    Report comment

  15. Toxic neuroleptics is right. Good ole Seroquel blew out my pancreas and put me in ICU for a long stay. My caring psychiatrist never did the needed lab work (to monitor cholesterol and sugar levels) when on Seroquel. If a psychiatrist wants to keep pretending he’s physician than do the lab work. Neuroleptics are dangerous and today are given out way too freely off label.

    It’s not just the drugs it’s the bogus excuse for listening to us during the ridiculous Fifteen Minute Med Checks and having us come in like a revolving door. I never felt better on the drugs, never and got lost in the back roads of psychiatry. Thank goodness I got off the psych merry go round and have been drug free for many years. Some where out there in my medical records are my mentally ill diagnosis and this scares me. I feel like Hester wearing a scarlet letter.

    Report comment

LEAVE A REPLY