Comments by Lawrence Kelmenson, MD

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  • I am sorry that I offended so many people with my insensitivity. I realize that since I’ve never been through what so many of you have been through, I’m in no position to make assumptions about it. I appreciate your feedback. I erred in getting away from my main point, which is that getting upset (experiencing life struggles) has profitably been turned from a normal, unavoidable human experience into a “serious but treatable disease” by the ever-greedy, ever-expanding health care industry

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  • JanCarol:

    Thank you. But you misquoted me: I said “fake meds”, not “fake drugs” – of course antidepressants are drugs. Also, the fact that they can truly disrupt the body doesn’t imply they’re medications: If you ingest broken glass, you’ll disrupt your body, but broken glass isn’t medicine. And difficulty coming off antidepressants doesn’t prove that their benefits aren’t purely placebo: If someone stays on them due to their faith in needing them and faith that they benefited from them (placebo effect), then of course they’ll have faith that they’ll fall apart if they come off them, so they will fall apart (reverse placebo effect). And since antidepressants became the top selling drug class, their placebo effects must be incredibly strong, which suggests that their reverse placebo effects could expectably also be incredibly strong/dangerous.

    I agree that there can be some physical withdrawals for a week or two after coming off antidepressants. But when I hear people say that for many months, or years after, they struggle emotionally and blame it on “chronic antidepressant withdrawals”, I view this as further medicalizing life’s struggles, and thereby further strengthening biological psychiatry’s power by agreeing with its claim that sadness is caused by a chemical imbalance. And just as there’s no validating underlying physical exam, lab, or x-ray marker found in people with “depression”, there’s no validating underlying finding in “chronic antidepressant withdrawals” either, so both fail the “real disease” test. In my practice, I’ve gradually taken nearly all my clients off antidepressants without much difficulty, by first introducing them to Irving Kirsch’s work and discussing it in depth with them, which led to their losing faith in antidepressants and thus having minimal reverse placebo effect upon stopping them.

    Lawrence

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  • Fiachra:

    Thank you. As far as a loneliness pill, antidepressants have already been subtly marketed as a cure for it. In their commercials, you first see an isolated person, but then seemingly one day after starting antidepressants, loving friends and family are knocking down their door wanting to be with them. The implication is: If you take it, they will come. Come to think of it, all products advertised on tv seem to promise this (not just all the drug ads).

    Lawrence

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  • furies:

    My statements about hypothyroidism in the last paragraph do not question its existence, and they are not opinions; They are statistical facts, and I quoted their sources so that anybody could verify them. And the whole point of this blog is that people don’t need to depend on a doctor’s “expert knowledge”. They can instead rely on their own ability to think logically as I tried to demonstrate.

    Lawrence

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  • Rachel:

    In the past, the church did have absolute power/authority which it forcefully exercised over the populace, as psychiatry does now. And even now, there are places in the world where the state religious leaders are still the supreme authorities, setting the laws and powerfully enforcing them. So the similarities/parallels apply here as well.

    Lawrence

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  • Lockjaw:

    I think that “mental healthcare” abandoned Freud’s attempts to understand people, and replaced it with “miracle pills” for fake diseases, because it found that drug-dealing and fake news (telling people lies that they want to hear) brought in much more money than helping people face the truth about life’s struggles. It’s part of the overall “fake news sells” focus of our culture.

    Lawrence

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  • Oldhead:

    It can only succeed in its role as tool of social control because it successfully lures people to voluntarily come in, by giving them a new religion that doesn’t seem like a religion. And I don’t think all emotional distress is a consequence of societal oppression. For example, people unavoidably experience distress from losing loved ones and facing their own mortality.

    Lawrence

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  • The Rod of the Greek God Asclepius has only one snake and no wings, but is otherwise similar, and is sometimes also used as the symbol of medicine. Both symbols may have an earlier origin from ancient Egypt – possibly a pictograph of a treatment for guinea worm infestation that is still used today. There is also an ancient Egyptian symbol for eternal life called “Ankh”, which looks even more like the Christian Cross than the Caduceus.

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  • Fiachra:

    Thank you. Yes – In order to fit in to our culture, we must deny that there’s ever anything troubling us and say that everything is perfect in our lives no matter what’s going on…If we do admit to getting upset, we must say it’s due to “struggling with depression or bipolar disorder”, and just shut up and take our “chemical imbalance-correcting happy pills”.

    Lawrence

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  • Steve:

    Good question. So I’ll now clarify what I mean by “biological psychiatry”: I’m referring to the movement, not just by psychiatry but by our entire healthcare industry, media/entertainment industries, educational system, and government, to promote the idea that any/all unpleasant feelings, thoughts, and behaviors are “medically-treatable brain diseases” caused by “chemical imbalances” or “genetically-hardwired brain defects”. This movement, which began in the 1980s with the DSM-III’s acceptance, has been so “successful”, that nearly a fourth of Americans have been duped into voluntarily getting onto assembly lines to acquire harmful sedatives, placebos, and addictive pills for themselves or their kids. And as I said in my “Psychiatry’s Greatest Harm: Its Lies Have Poisoned Our Entire Culture” blog, nearly everyone now seems to have accepted the medical model’s lies/propaganda even if they don’t take its pills, since it’s malignantly/deeply infested our entire society. It’s like a religion that all Americans are indoctrinated into starting at birth.

    Of course I’m also against psychiatry’s forcefully removing thousands of people without a trial, locking/chaining them up, and inhumanely subjecting them to atrocities like lobotomy, shock ‘treatments’, forced injections, etc. as it’s been doing for hundreds of years. But my focus is on its ongoing modern rise in scope and power, which not only has led to huge epidemics here of overdosing, suicides, and mass shootings, but has also weakened America so much that it could lead to our ultimate downfall. We’re thus all threatened by this largely new/distinct phenomenon, which needs to be called something. Maybe “biological psychiatry” isn’t the best term to use, and I’m sorry if it wrongly suggests that I support reform rather than abolition of psychiatry. But it’s a succinct term which somewhat describes this specific phenomenon, and which people generally understand what is being conveyed.

    Lawrence

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  • kindredspirit:

    But as far as victims of violence and other situations where the cause is known to be environmental, psychiatry has already successfully duped the public into also viewing these as results of biological defects: It did so by arguing that since different people exposed to similar traumas are not equally affected by it, then being affected by it must be the result of an inherent genetic/biochemical weakness/vulnerability, rather than an understandable reaction to the trauma itself. So no stone has been unturned in the mental health field. Everyone is told to accept their chemical disease, and to be good patients who shut up, stop complaining, and take their pills.

    Lawrence

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  • Thank you for all the hard work you have done to discredit the foundation of all of biological psychiatry’s lies – the false/dangerous premise that our thoughts/feelings/behaviors are “genetically hardwired”, which tricks people into thinking they have no free will, and tricks parents into believing there’s no point in trying to raise their kids. This would all come crumbling down if everyone was made aware of your work.

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  • MadinCanada

    When I jokingly suggested replacing the term “mental illness” with “scam for accessing insurance cash”, I wasn’t referring to disability pensions. I was referring to the billions of dollars that the mental health industry collects by billing health insurers in the U.S., thanks to the DSM which was created to facilitate billing them. I’m sorry I did not make that clear.

    Lawrence

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  • Steve:

    I’m sorry I misunderstood you and put words in your mouth. I misinterpreted your statement above in which you said that {Even if people with ADHD had a difference in their brains, it wouldn’t mean there was anything wrong with them; after all, genetic diversity is the key to species survival}. I wrongly thought you were thereby suggesting that if certain types of brain processes were found in such people, it would imply that their personality styles were the result of genetically-predetermined brain processes.

    Lawrence

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  • Steve:

    I can’t believe that you presumed above that brain chemical differences would prove genetic causation. You’re making the very error of confusing correlation with causation that’s been the key to psychiatry’s duping America into accepting its false medical model. As I explained in “Would discovering the biology of ‘mental illness’ explain its cause?”, every unique thought/feeling/behavior must have its own unique brain-process correlate, which doesn’t cause it, but merely IS the thought, behavior, or feeling as viewed at the brain-process level. So even if you did find the necessarily-present brain-process correlate of a thought, feeling, or behavior, the question of why this thought/feeling/behavior occurred would still be unanswered.

    And researchers like Giovanni Fava actually bolstered psychiatry’s medical model of emotions, by encouraging everyone who previously took antidepressants to believe that whenever they get upset, it’s due to a drug-induced chemical imbalance. But Irving Kirsch proved that antidepressants’ chemical effects are purely incidental when it comes to their benefit; they only work via the placebo effect. So of course since these drugs don’t really work, their users will get demoralized whenever the placebo effect invariably fades. And of course if they spend years misguidedly looking to solve their troubles with pills rather than addressing their real-life troubles themselves, then their unaddressed real-life troubles will likely worsen over time. Think of the suckers who once bought snake-oil which was promised to miraculously make them very strong. These people likely became weaker in the long-term, not because of the snake-oil, but because they stopped exercising to build up their muscles, since they mistakenly thought the snake-oil would do that for them.

    The placebo effect, and the fading of the placebo effect, each must have their own chemical correlates, which perhaps Fava found. But again, finding something’s necessarily-present chemical correlate in no way explains its cause. All this does is trick yet more people into medicalizing life.

    Lawrence

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  • I would recommend replacing MIA’s science/research section with an opinions/ideas section. So instead of some pseudoscientific article like “Study shows exercise beneficial in the treatment of depression”, there could be an article: “I like hiking”, in which the writer talks about a challenging/beautiful hiking trail that he/she enjoys especially when feeling overwhelmed by pressures in their life. It would just be common sense, but at least it wouldn’t promote the myth that feelings are diseases that require treatment. It would instead encourage the de-medicalization of life.

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  • Steve:

    How can you do scientific research on an arbitrary concept that means different things to different people, and is being constantly changed over time, and thus cannot be objectively measured in any way? To suggest that any research can be done on such a pure value judgment suggests that it’s more than just an imagined concept but is an actual thing. So just by suggesting this, you’re giving legitimacy to a fantasy, just as MIA’s “scientific” articles about “mental illness” are. You have already accepted the false premise that’s the foundation upon which all of psychiatry’s lies and harms have been built. You might as well try to do “scientific research” on other concepts like “right” and “wrong” or “good” and “bad” while you’re at it.

    Lawrence

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  • I completely agree with this article. Since we’re dealing with purely arbitrary/subjective value judgments and perceptions, I would add that MIA shouldn’t have research or science departments; you can’t beat something by joining it – by doing so, you’re legitimizing it. And I offer that we devise a replacement term for “mental illness” which conveys why this concept was invented: perhaps “justification for sedation” or “medicalization of life” or “scam for accessing insurance cash”?

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  • Oldhead:

    Until the 1980s, my blog’s explanation of the types of psych drugs wouldn’t have been as needed, since my field used to admit that its drugs were mostly tranquilizers (barbiturates, valium, librium, haldol, thorazine, etc.), though it did play down the addictivenes of the barbs/benzos. Even its placebos (“antidepressants”), which were used rarely until the ’80s, used to have sedative effects, so were usually given at night to put people to sleep.

    It was only after the 1980 DSM’s popularity that it began claiming to have different drug classes that supposedly specifically “treated” “anxiety”, “psychosis”, “ADHD”, or “bipolar”. But all these new drugs were really just more sedatives. How could an “antipsychotic” drug, for example, differentiate thoughts based in reality from thoughts based in fantasy, then distinguish socially-conformist from socially-non-conformist fantasies, and then choose to only eliminate the socially-non-conformist fantasies? That would have to be a pretty smart pill.

    And then my field explained/excused the obvious sedation that came from these SHUT-UP pills as “unwanted side effects”. Yet the public was suckered into believing these lies, and duped into taking these tranquilizers and using them on their kids. That’s why this article needed to be written now.

    Lawrence

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  • djpurity666:

    I am sorry if I offended you, if I came across as prejudiced against religion. I respect how religion often is extremely helpful to people and society. To each his/her own, as far as I’m concerned. The words “delusion” and “psychosis” unfortunately convey a negative connotation, as a result of psychiatry’s creation of stigmas. I view delusionality, or faith, non-judgmentally, as an adaptive coping tool which we all turn to, just as much as rationality can be an adaptive coping tool. I chose to use the word “delusion” rather than “faith” to show how people labeled “delusional” are no different from people with faith in anything, except their faith is not in their society’s official dogmas. And as far as unity among billions of people spread out across the planet, I don’t see how that would ever have happened without organized religious faith/delusion.

    Lawrence

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  • Don:

    There is a huge difference between creative imagination and delusion. When you imagine something, you know it’s not real but are pretending/fantasizing what it would be like if it was, which may enable you to make it actually become a reality through some real life effort. But if you have a delusion, you’re already convinced that it is real. As far as reality, what I’m alluding to is how most people believe in “chemical imbalances” and “defective brain-hardwiring” or “God”, even though no evidence of these were ever found, and how people accept a diagnosis of a “brain disease” without any physical evidence on exam, lab, or x-ray. As far as mental constructs, or concepts, I wouldn’t classify them as realities, but as ideas that only exist in certain people’s imaginations. If you broaden “reality” to include them, then you open the door to endless broadening of reality to the point of it becoming meaningless.

    Lawrence

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  • Rossa:

    This doesn’t suggest that Scientology is not a religion; It’s only the mainstream (official), or status quo religion which supports psychiatry and which psychiatry supports, since psychiatry’s longtime role has always been to make sure that people only follow/submit to the official, status quo delusional system. Christianity has been the entrenched official/state delusion of Western society for nearly 2,000 years, and it’s doing whatever it can to still hang in there. New delusional systems like Scientology are threats to these authorities in power since they’re the upstart rebels looking to unseat them – to change the status quo. So of course Western authorities brand them as “crazy”, and vice versa. What’s interesting is how both psychiatry and Scientology invoke pseudoscience to trick followers into accepting their delusions.

    Lawrence

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  • Confucianism, being a non-God-based belief system, was able to survive Darwin fully-intact in Asia, which thus has not needed to turn to psychiatry to provide its submission/conformity-ensuring religion. Clearly it’s proving to be a better state religion than psychiatry, as evidenced by Asia being on its way up while the West appears on its way down (now that China has recovered from a 100-year period in which opium was the opium for its masses, thanks to the West). So maybe the way to safely avoid the upcoming zombie apocalypse is to move to Asia.

    As far as your belief system being radical/divisive, wasn’t the only role of psychiatry for its first 200 years to remove from society those members whose belief systems didn’t submissively conform to their society’s official one? I don’t think it’s just people being religious that’s the cement needed to form/sustain a society; apparently its people must all share the same religion.

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  • Paisleytoes:

    Antidepressant use is now high in the wealthy nations of Europe such as Norway, also. Japan and other Asian countries, in which Confucianism is still pervasive/strong, still emphasize personal responsibility, which likely explains why they aren’t embracing psychiatry’s medical model. As far as criticism of my logic, I accept that I made errors, and welcome your input. I did mention slick/heavy marketing as another factor, but others focus on this already and it by itself isn’t enough to explain things, so I chose to focus on a largely unacknowledged factor. Overlapping with my focus here is my view that psychiatry and its medical model has become a religious belief system for many in the West, which I discuss in another comment above. I would be curious to here your response to that comment.

    Lawrence

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  • kindredspirit and markps2:

    Here’s my theory of why psychiatry is being accepted/propagandized at every level/aspect of our society: I think that what most enabled man to succeed evolutionarily was his forming societies, and religion has always been the core that holds societies together. I believe that as a species we evolved a propensity toward fantasy (psychosis), so that individuals in a society could have complete irrational faith in their God and their religion’s leaders. This gives them the comfort that comes from believing they’re being taken care of, while at the same time ensuring conformity/submission within the society, and while also creating a highly privileged priest class that benefits from the riches/prestige/respect bestowed upon them. So everybody wins.

    But then Darwin came along and ruined all this. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Freud, the ultimate father-figure who began psychotherapy, became popular soon after Darwin disproved everything people had been told was true by their priests. Then the field which he started malignantly morphed into the religion of today: chemical imbalancism. Ironically, Freud himself derided the religion of his day in saying: ‘People cannot but see that this religion is not tenable, nevertheless try to defend it piece by piece in a series of pitiful rearguard actions”. You would think he was talking about today’s religion.

    I am sorry if this explanation alienated people more than I have already alienated them.

    Lawrence

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  • Someone Else and Rosalee:

    What’s really ominous is that it’s no longer just the “mental health” industry that’s doing the propagandizing. Our schools, media, entertainers, athletes, political groups, volunteer/community organizations, religious groups, leaders, etc. are all carrying the torch, pushing the idea that “mental health treatment” is a great thing and that more of it is desperately needed. It’s like a cancer that spreads/multiplies throughout the whole body, so that the only cells left are cancer cells. Or a zombie apocalypse in which each person infected by a zombie bite passes it on to many more people, until everyone turns zombie. Even here at MIA, many seem to be promoting faith in the idea that something’s “wrong” with you or your child that must be “cured” through their particular variant of “treatment”.

    Lawrence

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  • Alex:

    I believe that what makes us human is that we have the ability to create our own truths/realities and voluntarily choose our own life paths. So of course, depending upon each person’s situation, goals, priorities, coping styles, culture, etc., there will be much variation, and little unity, in what people consider the “right” message. I believe that psychiatry evolved as a way to forcefully restrict society’s members’ freedoms, such that they only pursue ways of thinking/living that conform to and uphold the society’s survival. There’s no place for it in a democratic society, and I think all of us here agree with this.

    But unfortunately, most Americans believe there is a need for psychiatry; every year it becomes more popular/powerful and thus causes more harm. How do we fight this together despite our many different viewpoints? MIA’s approach isn’t working. My thought in writing my articles was that we first need to understand why psychiatry became so successful of late in infiltrating our culture (why “mental health” is now on so many people’s minds), before we can figure out how to weaken it. So I wondered, is there something about post-1990 America that’s predisposing us to want to believe in its medical model? I don’t think it can all be attributed to orchestrated-propaganda, since the propaganda is being put out by just about every profession, field, organization, political group, media, etc. – So the question of why all these systems’ individuals (which is most of the individuals in America) are now so into it, remains unanswered.

    Maybe I didn’t go about trying to solve this mystery in the best way. But perhaps we can team up to figure out the answer, and once we do, then we should be able to develop a more effective strategy based on it.

    Lawrence

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  • Alex:

    I believe I have learned, as I have always tried to here at MIA, from readers’ responses to this article, including their opening up about the complex set of factors involved in each of their unique life stories. I need to be more alert to my tendency to broadly generalize and simplify in a way that is unfair to many. Thank you for sharing about yourself and for interacting with me.

    Lawrence

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  • Alex:

    Please accept my apologies for insulting you; I didn’t mean that the issues I bring up apply to everyone. We’re on the same side – we both want to stop the harm that psychiatry is doing to individuals and to our society. But isn’t it time to try some other way to tackle this problem? Clearly the approaches used in the last 10 years aren’t working, since psychiatry has greatly strengthened during this time. I think they’ve inadvertently helped psychiatry strengthen.

    Lawrence

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  • Steve:

    Why are you, and many others, only willing to accuse amorphous systems like Big Pharma, NAMI, or the APA of being liars/scammers, and unwilling to accuse individual doctors of this, just because they claim to believe in chemical imbalances? If they were lying about believing in chemical imbalances, would they admit to being liars? And why would they jeopardize their lucrative careers by admitting they know it’s a scam? On the one hand you acknowledge people are unwise to take what doctors say at face value, yet you are doing the same.

    Lawrence

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  • Steve:

    Maybe I have a jaded view of human nature due to some of my experiences as a psychiatrist in the past 20 or so years. There are the many parents looking for a doctor’s note with a diagnosis to take to their kids’ school that will lead to their schoolwork being greatly decreased, thereby making life easier for them and their parents. Many people have come to me who didn’t seem particularly distressed, yet were intent on convincing me of their “diagnosis” and reporting a list of “debilitating symptoms” right out of the DSM; then a couple of weeks later I received an application for disability in the mail from their disability lawyer. Each time I hear propaganda like “depression is a chronic disabling illness” I sense the subliminal tempting message being given: “If you accept our medical model of unpleasant emotions, we’ll grant you permanent disability benefits.”

    I’m not saying this applies to most psychiatric clients, just that psychiatry and responsibility relinquishment are strongly intertwined – People can be absolved for all sorts of behaviors, even criminal ones, if they have a psychiatric “diagnosis”. We will never reduce psychiatry’s popularity until we address these issues.

    Lawrence

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  • To all who disagree with me:

    I’m not denying the crucial role of heavy propaganda and marketing. I’m merely saying that these only succeed because they tell people what they want to hear (that they’re victims of involuntary illnesses, just like people with cancer or diabetes) and allow them to do what they want to do anyway (their diagnosis enables them to hand over all responsibility for dealing with their own troubles to doctors/science).

    I believe this puzzle piece is just as crucial to explaining psychiatry’s success. If openly acknowledged and brought to the public’s attention, it could be the key to bringing down psychiatry, as follows: If ex-clients took responsibility for their part in freely choosing to surrender their will to psychiatry for these reasons, it might strike a chord with others who identify with the understandable temptation to abdicate personal responsibility. Once fully aware of such motivations, they’ll likely realize it’s unwise to give in to them.

    Lawrence

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  • Dragonslayer:

    The role of psychiatry has always been to stifle free will: It denies its existence in saying people’s minds are controlled by involuntary illnesses. You also deny free will, by saying voluntary clients’ minds are controlled by psychiatry’s propaganda. So you are on the same side as psychiatry, and furthering its cause/power. I’m on the opposite side, since I see free will as determining human behavior: I believe propaganda only succeeds because it condones people doing what they really want to do anyway. I believe that people who turn their free will over to psychiatry knowingly choose to do so because it’s convenient for them in many ways, such as enabling them to evade responsibility. Why else would clients continue to see psychiatrists year after year if the whole scam wasn’t benefiting them somehow? They could have walked away at any time.

    Lawrence

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  • If psychiatry ever acknowledges/addresses this, it will predictably use it as an excuse to introduce yet more “medication assisted treatment” – in other words, to put yet more addictive drugs into the system, as doctors are doing now when prescribing the opioid Suboxone to “treat” opioid addiction. Besides, academic psychiatry can never be viewed as a potential source of valid research – everything it’s come out with has and will always be pure lies. Let’s not ask anything of such a field.

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  • The_cat:

    I think you’re right about the kids drugged for “ADHD” turning out to be today’s heroin overdosers. In my “Psychiatry’s 12 Step Program for Producing Heroin Addicts” article I cite a lot of data correlating these two events. And I don’t think it’s just their getting drugged; I think it’s also because their parents/schools stop raising them and expecting them to learn/mature, due to being falsely told that their normal childhood immaturity is a “permanent brain disease”. Then these kids grow up and “raise” their kids the same way since it’s all they know as normal.

    Lawrence

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  • The_cat:

    I’ll respond. Tens of millions of households (in America only) do have stashes of opioids lying around in case they’re needed for “survival”. That’s how millions of thrill-seeking kids got started on a path that has led to so many of them dying by the age of 24.

    Lawrence

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  • despondent:

    Yes, having the world’s reserve currency has enabled the U.S. to spend money recklessly, expanding its debts to astronomical levels without causing inflation, despite losing its manufacturing base. And our main lender is China, which has successfully turned the tables on us (Americans had also peddled opium to China in the 1800s):

    The same Chinese ports that were used to deliver opium to China in the 1800s, are not only now being used to ship us China’s manufactured goods that we depend on so much, but also to ship us Southeast Asian heroin (and recently fentanyl) since the 1960s. So China finally ended its opium epidemic in the 50s/60s through its government’s programs, since which it has thrived economically by taking over manufacturing, and turning the U.S. into a nation helplessly addicted to many of its things. We are the vulnerable ones now.

    And if you go back in history to the 1700s (before China became a nation of opium addicts), the trade balance had been markedly in favor of China at that time, since China had produced much fine porcelain, tea, and silks that were very desirable in England, while England had little to sell to China – until it colonized India and was thus able to grow/sell cheap opium.

    Lawrence

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  • Rachel777:

    When so many new “epidemics” of previously rare “illnesses” like FM, CPS, ADHD, Bipolar, Depression, GAD, panic disorder, etc.,etc. are constantly arising at the same time, isn’t it time to stop looking for separate causes for each, and to instead look for one common cultural change that caused them all? Isn’t it time to consider that they’re all a result of the medical industry’s increasingly succeeding at manipulating Americans into becoming its subservient zombies, just like Milner and Olds succeeded in doing to all their rats?

    Lawrence

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  • Surviving and Thriving:

    This blog is the opposite of dismissive – It’s an attempt to help people avoid the mistake of looking to doctors to help pain for which there’s no clear underlying treatable condition, since this will likely lead not only to their pain becoming more excruciating/incessant/long-lasting, but also to many complications, including possibly early death.

    Lawrence

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  • JanCarol:

    Yes, if there’s a treatable cause of pain, like an abscess or coronary artery blockage or broken bone, doctors can help. But if not, then the “management” they offer often turns out to be chronic addictive drugs and never-ending forays into the latest “miracle” injections, procedures, and surgeries, which all produce their own side effects and complications that must also be addressed. This often takes over the patient’s life, and becomes all that it’s about. And if they can’t work with all this happening, then the doctor is ready to put them out on disability so they can devote the time “needed” for their medical “management”. How convenient all this is for the doctor.

    Lawrence

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  • Yes, the U.S. is the world leader in obesity, which can exacerbate pain. But our obesity epidemic itself is likely partly a result of our 50-year love affair with quick-fix drugs for our many “newly discovered” diseases, many of which are addictive, most of which make people so comfortably numb that they’re unlikely to move around or do physical activities, and are more likely to sit around and eat instead. When I hurt my back, what fixed it and prevented it from returning was daily walking/jogging/exercising, which was tough at first but became easier over time. American doctors won’t help, since they don’t want your pain to get better in the long-term; they want you to become chronically ill and thus permanently dependent on them. So yes, our chronic pain epidemic isn’t just from our massive opioid dependence, but from our massive dependence on all of modern medicine’s “miracle pills”.

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  • Steve:

    Why is there such reluctance to bash doctors? Nearly all psychiatrists, pediatricians, pain management doctors, addiction medicine specialists, etc. are getting rich via permanently addicting clients, which they know is deceitful/harmful. They do it anyway since they know they can get away with it, because all the other doctors are doing it, and because people will view doctors as virtuous/honest caretakers no matter what they do. People seem to need to put doctors up on a pedestal, and to have religious-type faith that they would never do bad things since they’re more altruistic/caring/trustworthy than other humans. But they aren’t; they’re just regular people in the unusual position of being revered like gods who have been granted unlimited authority/privileges. It’s the public’s misplaced faith in them that’s enabling them to take advantage of the public. It’s time to let go of this delusion and face reality.

    Lawrence

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  • Auntie Psychiatry:

    Great youtube video. It shows how people can choose to buy into the idea of having a disabling CPS destiny (or any other newly ‘discovered” MTD) that rules their lives, or choose to instead let go of that identity and its drugs, and to regain control over their lives and their destiny. The video shows that to succeed, the support of others is vital, and that much struggling is required that’s worth the effort in the end.

    Lawrence

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  • Richard Lewis:

    I will respond now to your question, now that I have taken time to consider it. The medicalization of everyday life for profit is largely unique to post-1980 United States, even though capitalism has been present here, and in the rest of the world, for centuries. What is different about post-1980 U.S. is a unique combination of capitalism and socialism, that has enabled this. Yes, there are and have always been medical profiteers, but what enabled our huge, immensely harmful medical industrial complex to develop was the institution of two social programs, medicare and medicaid, which will pay for whatever is billed, no matter the cost, without any justifiable basis needed. Private insurers generally have to try to follow their lead as they’re able, but they’re not able to even remotely keep up with medicare/medicaid’s ever-rising lavish spending, which costs over a trillion dollars of federal money yearly. It uses up a far higher percentage of our GDP than any other country. It’s our nation’s biggest expense, and is largely responsible for our ballooning debt which is also harming our nation.

    As the medical industry caught on to the sky being the limit on how much can be extracted from these programs (such as by making up “medically treatable diseases” to trick people into getting permanently addicted to speed, opiates, or benzos), the amount of government money spent per medicare beneficiary rose about tenfold, inflation adjusted, from the amount spent during the first decade of its existence. Jackpot! So there’s my answer, Richard. If our health care and our health insurance sectors were both private, or if they were both socialized, I don’t think we’d be witnessing horrible actions such as greedy, drug-dealing doctors zombifying nearly the entire American population. It’s the combination of the two.

    Lawrence

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  • knowledgeispower:

    As your moniker implies, we first need to bring these truths to the American public, before the public will hold all of those who participated accountable. Until then, the rampant drug dealing that is the norm for my profession will continue, because of the power that they derive from having successfully duped the public with false knowledge.

    Lawrence

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  • Sylvain:

    Amazingly, there is such a law, and it’s been in effect since 1914: The Harrison Narcotics Act, which for a period of time was enforced by the jailing of long-term heroin-prescribing doctors (it was the most prescribed opiate at that time, and this law was passed partially to address a heroin epidemic that they caused). It did make doctors cautious about prescribing opiates long term for many years. But the Harrison Act only makes it illegal if not prescribed for actual medical treatment of real illness. So by making up CPS and other new diseases, doctors were able to circumvent this law, and by declaring addiction to also be an MTD, suboxone can also be legally given to known addicts even though it’s a known opioid, again cleverly circumventing this law.

    Lawrence

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  • r r:

    The whole point of my article is that daily opioids is not only the worse of two evils, there is nothing worse than it. That’s why so many people die who follow that path – the agony of their worsening withdrawals, and their loss of any ability to enjoy anything or get any relief except by steadily increasing their pill dosage, leads them there. The advice I give to people who are addicted to opioids, licitly (for “chronic pain”) or illicitly, is to start gradually detoxing as soon as possible, since the longer you wait, the tougher the detox. Then, after the hellish detox is over, you have to patiently endure several months of persistent withdrawals. But eventually they will start to abate, and eventually your body will learn again how to make its own endorphins, and you will finally start to feel better emotionally and physically than you have in years, and you will realize that most (but not all) of your emotional and physical incessant pain was caused by your opioid dependence rather than some newly-invented MTD, and what you are left with is tolerable.

    Lawrence

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  • out:

    I didn’t mean to judge the people who become addicted, I meant to judge my profession for making heroin-in-pill-form too easily available, knowingly dispensing it long enough to produce lifelong, at times fatal, addiction, and knowingly telling lies about it being “medically necessary” and safe if taken as prescribed. I believe that “clamping down on pain to prevent chronic pain developing” is an example of one of the lies my field has promulgated to the public to trick them; It’s actually the opposite – most pain is acute and spontaneously subsides as our body adapts to it, but this is prevented by chronic opioid dispensing since it shuts down our own endorphin production, and produces withdrawal pain that worsens over time and requires higher and higher doses to alleviate.

    And of course I’m not against brief opiates after surgery; that was normal medical practice for centuries. It is the post-1990 reckless 30 day supplies, often with refills, that I am saying are never called for, unless someone is terminally ill so it won’t matter if their dose has to be steadily raised whenever tolerance/withdrawals develop, eventually to lethal levels.

    Lawrence

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  • I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to attribute the epidemic largely to chronic opioid prescribing, since over 200 million opioid prescriptions have been filled yearly in the U.S. for the past 14 years (a tenfold increase in total opioids from 1990), accounting for 80 to 90% of the entire world’s opioid prescriptions, and we’re the only country with a chronic pain (or overdose) epidemic. Doesn’t it make sense to look for dramatic, rapid changes in a culture to explain dramatic, rapid events within that culture?

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  • Ben:

    I don’t think there’s as much money to be made in helping children become mature, independent adults, as there is in turning them into permanently helpless, disabled drug addicts who will come for “treatment” monthly for the rest of their lives. So I don’t think it will fly here in the U.S.

    Lawrence

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  • Marilyn:

    Great article. I agree with everything you say. But beyond a one-at-a-time strategy, how can we dissuade American parents from increasingly adopting psychiatry’s quick/easy, socially acceptable approach of drugging their kids into submission? Not only does the medical model allow them to evade any responsibility for creating or addressing their child’s issues, it also awards them victim status. They can even thereby evade their entire obligation to raise their kids, while receiving government financial assistance and “accommodations” that enable their kids to slide through school. It’s no wonder we’re losing our overall war.

    Lawrence

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  • We should be getting desperate here in the U.S., since pro-medical model propaganda is getting increasingly entrenched in our schools, government, scientific circles, media, and entertainment. Trillions of dollars have been spent on promoting/expanding the psychiatric system, which is drawing in an ever-rising percentage of our population – We’re losing the war, and “Brave New World” is quickly approaching.

    In World War II, we allied with the Soviet Union not because we approved of what was occurring there, but because we had to to defeat the Nazis. After 6 years, MIA has only 11,000 followers; Tom Cruise has hundreds of millions of fans, the overwhelming majority of whom aren’t Scientologists. If his doing a video interview here led to MIA having to fend off accusations of being connected to Scientology, it would be worth the trouble, since mixed publicity is much better than no publicity – It would greatly expand the audience hearing the truth about psychiatry.

    And everyone who reads MIA’s articles or views its mission statement/staff will see no evidence of Scientology (unlike CCHR’s website which cites co-founding by Scientology and Szasz). They’ll only see a diverse range of people from all walks of life and belief systems being welcomed to exercise free speech in true democratic fashion. So I ask – Are you really interested in stopping psychiatry from destroying our whole country, or are you content to just complain and chat about it with each other?

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  • Dragon Slayer:

    I think the Tom Cruise idea is brilliant. When he talked about psychiatry being a pseudoscience, the chemical imbalance theory being a scam, and psychiatrists being drug dealers such as giving speed to kids, it sounded right out of MIA. Unlike the Church of Scientology, Tom Cruise has had a huge fan base for many years. Associating with him would bring much attention to his/our cause, and could lead to his anti-psychiatry talk being taken more seriously, since MIA’s many rational/scientific/respectable articles would legitimize it and show that he’s not alone – many others agree with him.

    The media has successfully portrayed him as a buffoon and psychiatrists have labeled him as dangerous/ridiculous, in order to trick the public into not taking his “bizarre rants”, which are merely free/truthful speech, seriously. But I see him as intelligent, free-thinking, non-conformist, funny, spirited, spontaneous, emotional, and creative; these traits are precisely why we enjoy his movies so much. He’s the opposite of the boring zombies who psychiatry portrays as “normal”, and whom psychiatry is increasingly populating our society with. I think it is time to reach out to him. I couldn’t think of a better spokesperson for our cause.

    Lawrence

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  • Oldhead:

    We can’t compete with the incredibly massive, well-endowed, ubiquitous pro-psychiatry propaganda campaign on its own turf, as you are suggesting. MIA, despite all of its informative professionals, is not becoming mainstream anytime soon, and it sometimes itself publishes articles that promote psychiatry’s biomedical model. A venue such as youtube, on the other hand, if used successfully, can quickly reach/affect millions of viewers, and many are the very age range (teens) who we should be aiming to if we want to change society. And I don’t care if we have to be tacky in order to succeed.

    Lawrence

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  • Paula:

    Thank you for your response, information, and insights. I certainly did not mean to imply that Allen Frances really admitted how crucial his role was in the medicalization of Americans’ everyday lives. He had hoped to play an important role in the DSM-5 task force, so he clearly would have gladly continued to do so if given the opportunity. I am curious to hear from you whether the DSM task force members openly admitted, perhaps during informal get-togethers, that their goal was purely to find more and more ways to dupe the public into improving their fortune/power, or whether it was like I suggested in my article – that this was a trade secret that everyone knew but it was understood that you can never talk about it.

    Lawrence

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  • jclaude:

    Firstly, what I said to Rasellas about hallucinations was a response to a question posed in a previous article, and had nothing to do with this one. This article was only about all the newly invented, increasingly spreading “brain diseases” that started with the 1980 DSM, which I referred to in the article. Second, I want to clarify that tardive dyskinesias, a clearly horrible, incapacitating neurological syndrome of involuntary movements caused by “antipsychotic” drugs (chemical lobotomizers), is not what I was discussing in my response to Rasellas. It was tardive akithisias, something which is different and not so clear, as far as what it is and if it’s truly drug-induced.

    As far as my being offensive/dismissive in my response, I see it as completely opposite. I don’t view “mentally ill” people as different from “mentally healthy” people. I see us all as struggling to find ways to deal with the same unpleasant issues/experiences and the same needs, so we can all relate to each other. We’re all in the same boat. And I think all humans cope via “psychosis” – we all avoid reality and have “delusional” beliefs. The only difference is that some ways of habitually adapting are socially accepted and others aren’t. But I don’t judge. I don’t say that some coping styles are “better” than others – To each his own, as far as I am concerned. So trying to understand people in a way that isn’t pathologizing/dehumanizing, but is instead normalizing/humanizing, isn’t doing them a disservice at all. It’s being respectful, accepting, and connecting. I hope that Rasellas saw that this was my goal, even if we disagree somewhat with each other.

    Lawrence

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  • Rassellas.redux:

    I’m sorry I didn’t respond to you before. I try to answer all questions, but some slip by me (or was it unconsciously motivated?). I am glad you analyze/question me and think for yourself; I don’t think any authority figures can be trusted. For example, isn’t it possible that those who invented new, unverified, subjective “brain diseases” like “tardive akithisias” are riding the coattails of psychiatry by similarly telling people what they want to hear and condoning regression? Isn’t it possible that they’ve also used pseudoscience to successfully manipulate many, as a way to advance their own popularity? Maybe life was just tough before psych drugs and is still tough after. In any event, a theorist’s personal motivations, and the validity of their theory, are two separate issues.

    As far as how hallucinations help people cope, first of all: Hallucinogens were very popular in the ’60s/’70s, and are still used by many to escape reality and create a better one. We all hallucinate every night, and are often disappointed upon awakening and realizing it was just a wish-fulfilling dream. Don’t we all have fantasies we daydream about? Little kids often converse with imaginary friends and toys that they “bring to life”. Couldn’t adults who have no one to talk with, cope with loneliness by also imagining companions? Since imagined experiences often involve exciting, prominent figures like the FBI, God, etc., this suggests that hallucinations can provide a way to feel important and powerful. When they’re self-denigrating, it could be done to project unacceptable thoughts about oneself onto others who now become responsible for those thoughts. If people hear voices saying to kill someone, they similarly may be projecting their unacceptable urges onto others. You never hear of command auditory hallucinations saying to do community service!

    As far as my “psychiatrising”, I never pushed “diagnoses” or “mental health” on anyone. I always refuted the medical model and suggested that psychiatry’s labels and drugs are scams. The hospital I used to work in was more of a cushy retreat for people to get away from life’s stresses for awhile, until they could get back on their feet after going through a rough time in their life. It had no emergency room or forced commitment, and drugs were used sparingly. Staff was caring and always available to talk to, and there were many recreational/creative activities. I took my clients for long walks for sessions on its beautiful grounds. In my solo practice, I offer a place for clients to cope with feelings/issues by venting to an interested listener who treats them as equals with their own individual stories to tell. We often talk while going for a walk in the trails by my office. I don’t authoritatively tell them how to live life or proclaim myself to be an expert on anything. I may offer to try to interpret a dream now and then if they want. We seem to each enjoy the experience for what it is.

    Lawrence

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  • erin321:

    Thank you. I was concerned this post might provoke hostile responses from some MIA commentors. I like to think that it hasn’t because maybe it struck a chord with them. But maybe it’s just that people who disagree with my views stopped reading my posts. After all, I don’t offer any alluring/sellable products like a “better way to cope” or a path to mythical “mental wellness”. I just try to understand reality’s unavoidable struggles and the different ways people adapt to them. My sense is that people understandably often prefer fantasy, especially if society authorizes/approves it.

    Lawrence

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  • ablewriter:

    Good points. Please read my “Psychiatry’s 12 Step Program for Producing Heroin Addicts” article (and others) to see that I fully agree with them and previously discussed them. To keep my posts brief, I keep the focus narrow for each one, and thus omit other important factors which I don’t mean to minimize. And I will keep your feedback in mind about a more nuanced approach in future posts. Thanks.

    Lawrence

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  • bcharris:

    An amazing “accomplishment” of modern psychiatry is that it’s been able to switch the public’s perception of “mental illness” from something that’s the exact opposite of physical illness – emotions/experiences for which, by definition, there is no organic cause and which thus cannot be “medically treated”, into a type of physical illness which thus is “treatable” by medical means. Would you consider reading some excerpts/reviews of Bernay’s book “Propaganda” to open up your mind to the possibility that you have been “successfully” manipulated?

    Lawrence

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  • Physical activity is just one way of coping with life’s unavoidable disappointments. But thanks to the DSM, perceiving oneself as “suffering from depression” or “battling/having depression” is now another way to cope with them. This article is making a value judgment by saying one coping style is “healthier” than the other, and thereby supporting psychiatry’s medicalization of everyday life.

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  • ebl:

    I did not mean that medication for hypothyroidism is wrong for you. If lithium permanently damaged your thyroid gland, resulting in your inability to produce enough thyroid hormone, then of course you need it. I was referring to how lately tens of millions of Americans are being quickly put on synthroid based only on an abnormal thyroid hormone level, often without a clear workup and definitive discovery of some underlying source of permanent damage to their thyroid gland as was found for you. I also believe that the threshold for what’s considered hypothyroid was changed in 2002, resulting in more people being considered hypothyroid. But I am not an expert in this area.

    Lawrence

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  • Humanbeing:

    I am not putting all of the responsibility on psychiatry’s voluntary customers, just some of it. How are people supposed to resist psychiatric enslavement unless they are encouraged to acknowledge their free will, and to take responsibility for their own choices/lives? Promoting this is how we can defeat psychiatry.

    Lawrence

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  • I am a doctor, and I can tell you that doctors do know. They just like quick, easy, guaranteed monthly income. Psychiatry has never been about “treating illness”. It has always been about permanently managing society’s outliers. When it started to not have enough of these “patients”, it ventured into turning normal human experiences into “chronic mental illnesses”, and into dealing addictive drugs, in order to recoup its lost clientele.

    The success of this business formula has been copied by “pain management” doctors, who also knowingly deal addictive drugs that turn transient pain into chronic/worsening pain, in order to create the permanently dependent customers which are their bread and butter. And the “hypothyroidism” you referred to is a similar way to produce eternal clients. Although levothyroxine isn’t physically addictive, if taken for too long, it causes the thyroid gland to “forget” how to make its own thyroid hormone, leaving the person dependent upon outside thyroid hormone. That’s why, when I went to medical school, we were taught not to rush in and treat abnormal thyroid levels unless they were very abnormal at several different visits, and accompanied by clear symptoms. That’s why thyroid hormone went from being a rarely prescribed to the most commonly prescribed drug. Before it became #1, vicoden was the most commonly prescribed drug for about ten years. For much of the ’80s it was xanax, and in the ’70s it was valium.

    I also believe that many people (but not all) who go on benzodiazepines know they are physically addictive (just as many people who drink alcohol heavily know that it’s physically addictive), yet are willing to take the risk anyway. I don’t know the explanation for this, but it has something to do with American culture, since we lead the world in virtually every category of legal and illegal addictive drug use.

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