The APA Is a Fraudulent Enterprise

I will be traveling from Alaska to attend the protest of the American Psychiatric Association in New York, because psychiatry is a morally and scientifically bankrupt enterprise that causes great harm and must be held accountable.

Here is my speech at last year’s protest in San Francisco:

A towering figure in our movement is missing today.  David Oaks, one of the greatest leaders in our fight for human rights in mental health for over 35 years is not able to be with us.  Last December, David had a tragic accident that has paralyzed him from the neck down.  Since then David has continued to exhibit the great courage and determination that he has his whole life.  While he was hoping to be able to make it today, that has proven impossible. We wish David the absolute best.  And we look forward to seeing him at future events for his continued inspiration.
 

It was just about ten years ago that David and 4 other psychiatric survivors from MindFreedom International, held the Fast for Freedom in Mental Health.  As a result, the American Psychiatric Association was forced to admit it had no scientific evidence that the brains of people diagnosed with mental illness are any different than the rest of the population.  The American Psychiatric Association basically said, “after a hundred years of trying to find biological explanations of mental illness we haven’t found anything, but we are sure we will if we keep looking.”

In other words, the American Psychiatric Association has admitted there are no proven chemical imbalances, no genetic causes, no known brain differences that cause what gets diagnosed as mental illness.

This has not stopped the American Psychiatric Association from pretending there are, though.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

At its meeting this week,  the American Psychiatric Association is releasing the  5th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as DSM-5.  It is really just the Book of Insults.

A couple of weeks ago the National Institute of Mental Health abandoned using the DSM because it lacks validity.  It lacks validity.  That is what we have been saying for decades.  But our observations were rejected because we have been labeled mentally ill with the Book of Insults.

The DSM has officially been declared invalid.

This will not stop the American Psychiatric Association, in the pursuit of riches, from using it to push its largely ineffective and harmful drugs.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

Most of the drugs given to treat people diagnosed with mental illness are no better than a sugar pill and they cause great harm.

The second generation of neuroleptics, such as Abilify, Risperdal, Seroquel and Zyprexa are effective for few and harmful to all.  Contrary to drug company hype, they are not more effective than first generation neuroleptics, such as Thorazine, and Haldol.  They are, however, far more harmful.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

The United Nations has said that locking people up for being diagnosed as mentally ill and drugging them against their will can constitute torture.

Aided and abetted by the American Psychiatric Association’s Book of Insults, psychiatrists tell lies in court to force hundreds of thousands of people a year to endure this torture.  Lying in court is called perjury.  Does anyone care?  We care!  The public should care too.  Moral psychiatrists should too.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

Proven alternative, non-drug approaches—non-American Psychiatric Association approaches—can achieve recovery rates of 80%.  The American Psychiatric Association’s approach only allows 5 to 20% of people recover.  And these are mostly people like myself who have managed to escape the American Psychiatric Association’s net.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

The stimulants used to treat so called Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—ADHD — and the so-called antidepressants,   have dramatically increased the rate of people diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and changed it from a diagnosis that most people recover from to one that hardly anyone does.  Especially, if one takes the American Psychiatric Association’s drugs.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

Largely as a result of the American Psychiatric Association’s duping most people and the courts that people need to take and stay on these drugs, the disability rate of people diagnosed with serious mental illness has increased 6-fold on a percentage basis since the introduction of the supposed miracle drug Thorazine in 1954.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

Largely due to the use of the drugs promoted by the American Psychiatric Association, the life expectancy of people diagnosed with serious mental illness in the public mental health system  is 25 years less than the general population.  Literally millions of people’s lives are being shortened by 25 years on average.  Many are killed outright.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

Even Children under the age of 1 are given the most powerful and harmful drugs.  Drugs developed for adults experiencing what is labeled psychosis.  You tell me what a psychotic infant looks like.  We used to have another name for it.  Colic.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Book of Insults was used to label hundreds of thousands of children with Bi-Polar Disorder and given these drugs.

The American Psychiatric Association is a Fraudulent Enterprise.

Aided and abetted by the American Psychiatric Association, millions of children’s lives are being ruined by psychiatric drugs.  Poor children on Medicaid are particularly vulnerable — and God help those in Foster Care.

The American Psychiatric Association must be held accountable for its crimes.

Aided and abetted by the American Psychiatric Association, psychiatrists defraud their willing patients and the public by lying to them about the causes of what it labels mental illness.

The American Psychiatric Association defrauds its willing patients and the public when it says all people diagnosed with serious mental illness can hope for is a diminished life of drugged oblivion.

The American Psychiatric Association aids and abets torture when its Book of Insults is used to lock people up and drug them against their will.

The American Psychiatric Association is a shill for Big Pharma.

We call on the American Psychiatric Association to stop selling out to Big Pharma.

We call on the American Psychiatric Association to start telling the truth.

We call on the American Psychiatric Association to abandon its ineffective, harmful practices.

We call on psychiatrists to abandon force.  What gives them the right to lock up people who have committed no crimes and drug them against their will?

We call on ethical psychiatrists and the American public to confront together the horrors of torture, and the infringements of those civil liberties that define us as Americans. Join us in demanding honest, helpful, humane, and non-coercive support for people experiencing emotional distress and extreme states. Human Rights in Healthcare is the right of every American.