Psychiatric power is rooted in politics,
in the LAWS based on skewed evidence from
Big Pharma of the medicinal effects of drug
“treatments” which have later been shown to have
little or no value.
There is absolutely no evidence that
“mental disorders” are CAUSED by “chemical
imbalances” in the brain. There are no
biomarkers for DSM “diagnoses”.
The serotonin hypothesis of depression was
refuted years ago.
The dopamine hypothesis of psychosis is more nuanced,
since there appears to be a correlation between
psychosis and high dopamine.
It is a basic fact that correlation is not causation.
High dopamine may well affect salience and cognition
but there is NO evidence to show that the primary
cause of psychosis is a permanently dysfunctional
dopamine system.
Instead, the most recent models of the
dopamine hypothesis of psychosis show the picture
is one of dopamine expression being the
Final Common Pathway of a cascade of neurochemical
events triggered by a wide range of social,
environmental and psychological stressors:
childhood trauma, poverty,loss, grief, shock,
stress, drug abuse, torture, warfare etc.
In other words, the most sensible explanation
is that TRAUMA causes psychosis, triggering
unusual activity and the release of dopamine.
This is NOT a “permanent imbalance”.
The primary cause of mental distress is not
found in biological and genetic determinism,
but in the specific social and environmental
conditions of human life.
The so-called “antipsychotic” drugs which affect
dopamine receptors in neural synapses in the brain
and many other neural receptors as well,
are simply chemical straitjackets and cure nothing,
despite minor changes in psychological scoresheets
attributed to a sedating action.
Long-term drug treatments have metabolic effects
which are at the least debilitating,
and at the worst lethal.
There is no scientific justification for the
forced and coerced involuntary drug treatment
which is currently sanctioned and mandated by law
for any person detained by the system.
Institutional psychiatry has shown no sign of
reforming itself despite the weight of evidence.
Legislators must step up to the mark.
The laws have to be changed.
Forced drugging is a harmful violation
of medical ethics and basic human rights.
Where are the scientifically enlightened
politicians brave enough to tackle this?
Oldhead
I agree that it was a great turning point
for the peace movement when the Vietnam
veterans came out against the war.
I’ve heard that was when the tide of
American public opinion finally
decided that the war should stop.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And they threw their purple hearts
back against the face of military
authority, in a blaze of publicity,
on the crest of a great mass movement
of protest of global dimensions.
And Jimmy Hendrix nailed it when
he played The Star Spangled Banner.
And a young girl placed a flower
in the rifle of a soldier guarding
the Pentagon.
And a child ran down the road,
naked, burning from napalm.
The attack on what Peter Gotsche has
described as Deadly Psychiatry and
Organized Crime is multi-faceted.
The arguments of activist survivors
have been greatly assisted by those
critical psychiatrists and
psychologists who have publicly
stated what is wrong with the
disease model and current practice,
backed up by rigorous science.
They are valuable educators.
The quasi-religious dogmas of
“mainstream” psychiatry are being
steadily eroded and cannot stand
the light of scrutiny. Reform of
attitudes toward ‘diagnoses’ and
drug ‘treatment’ can open the door
to further advances toward
abolishing the horrors of forced
incarceration and forced drugging.
This is a reason why survivors
should encourage criticism from
within psychiatry rather than
advocating withdrawal of these
honest men and women from their
sadly-corrupted profession.
That seems to be a description of the attitude of the American Psychiatric Association.
But it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the analysis advanced by Joanna Moncrieff, who has done as much as anybody to show that the drugs are not cures and the side-effects are terrible.
The problems of experiencing “madness” have been described at great length on this website over several years. Are you denying that these problems exist? And since they do exist, and since it is evident that the disease model of “mental illness” has been broken, and that institutional psychiatry causes massive harm and suffering, wouldn’t you want to support the idea that we, as a society, should look for ways to heal these problems without medicalising them?
Isn’t that the core of what this website is about?
Sometimes the most effective critics, with the most influence, come from within the profession.
Dear Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry ,
You said in a previous post:
” I did not imply that Szasz did not recognize
that people have “problems in living,” or that
they do not exhibit behaviors that “bother or
disturb people.” ”
Joanna has said:
” I want to think about how we, as a society,
might approach these problems without
medicalising them.”
Seems reasonable to me.
Combinations of childhood trauma,poverty,discrimination,loss,stress,drugs,
and shock produce biochemical cascades leading to psychosis.
The psychiatric myth is that the root cause of psychosis is a life-long
incurable dopamine dysfunction which requires life-long drug treatment.
The truth is that people can and do recover from psychosis without drugs.
The lived experience of psychosis suggests that for a time some brain functions are inhibited while others are activated, leading to delusions,
hyperactivity and loss of judgement. It seems possible that this is an
evolutionary adaptive reaction to enable change within destructive
environments by searching for alternative solutions.
Our brains are wired to test hypotheses against reality, to try out
various “delusions” and discard them in favour of reality.
The psychiatric paradigm is broken. The disease model has crumbled.
The favourite song of me and my friends has always been
“SOLIDARITY FOREVER”
I wish I could go to your film festival, but its a long way from Melbourne, Australia.
Perhaps later we could arrange to get a package of films thru some appropriate local organization probably yet to be formed.
The intelligent debate on this website is truly inspiring and I recommend it to my close friends.
Congratulations to all of you.
My new mantra is BAN PSYCHO-DESTRUCTIVE DRUGS
See ya in heaven
psych-iatry means healing wounded souls
you can’t heal the human psyche
without understanding it
along the way
I would like to donate but was unable to do so from Australia. The blue button system doesn’t accept my card number, and the orange Paypal page only allows input of American states even when my country is specified. Groan. Anyway, keep up your brilliantly encouraging and motivating compassion.
I discovered that fire is correlated with smoke.
Therefore smoke causes the fire?
Replace fire with brain shrinkage and smoke with relapse duration.
Now brain shrinkage is correlated with relapse duration.
Therefore relapses cause brain shrinkage?
Or is it the other way around?
I looked closely at Andreasen’s paper.
The authors found a “relationship” between
loss of brain volume and duration of relapses.
What I found quite startling was the continual
insistence that this should almost certainly
be interpreted as meaning that relapses cause
brain shrinkage.
Even the most amateur of scientists knows that
correlation does not imply causation.
Why didn’t the authors further explore the
equally valid hypothesis that brain shrinkage
worsens the severity of symptoms and duration
of relapses ?
Frank, you are quite right.
Psychiatric power is rooted in politics,
in the LAWS based on skewed evidence from
Big Pharma of the medicinal effects of drug
“treatments” which have later been shown to have
little or no value.
There is absolutely no evidence that
“mental disorders” are CAUSED by “chemical
imbalances” in the brain. There are no
biomarkers for DSM “diagnoses”.
The serotonin hypothesis of depression was
refuted years ago.
The dopamine hypothesis of psychosis is more nuanced,
since there appears to be a correlation between
psychosis and high dopamine.
It is a basic fact that correlation is not causation.
High dopamine may well affect salience and cognition
but there is NO evidence to show that the primary
cause of psychosis is a permanently dysfunctional
dopamine system.
Instead, the most recent models of the
dopamine hypothesis of psychosis show the picture
is one of dopamine expression being the
Final Common Pathway of a cascade of neurochemical
events triggered by a wide range of social,
environmental and psychological stressors:
childhood trauma, poverty,loss, grief, shock,
stress, drug abuse, torture, warfare etc.
In other words, the most sensible explanation
is that TRAUMA causes psychosis, triggering
unusual activity and the release of dopamine.
This is NOT a “permanent imbalance”.
The primary cause of mental distress is not
found in biological and genetic determinism,
but in the specific social and environmental
conditions of human life.
The so-called “antipsychotic” drugs which affect
dopamine receptors in neural synapses in the brain
and many other neural receptors as well,
are simply chemical straitjackets and cure nothing,
despite minor changes in psychological scoresheets
attributed to a sedating action.
Long-term drug treatments have metabolic effects
which are at the least debilitating,
and at the worst lethal.
There is no scientific justification for the
forced and coerced involuntary drug treatment
which is currently sanctioned and mandated by law
for any person detained by the system.
Institutional psychiatry has shown no sign of
reforming itself despite the weight of evidence.
Legislators must step up to the mark.
The laws have to be changed.
Forced drugging is a harmful violation
of medical ethics and basic human rights.
Where are the scientifically enlightened
politicians brave enough to tackle this?
Oldhead
I agree that it was a great turning point
for the peace movement when the Vietnam
veterans came out against the war.
I’ve heard that was when the tide of
American public opinion finally
decided that the war should stop.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And they threw their purple hearts
back against the face of military
authority, in a blaze of publicity,
on the crest of a great mass movement
of protest of global dimensions.
And Jimmy Hendrix nailed it when
he played The Star Spangled Banner.
And a young girl placed a flower
in the rifle of a soldier guarding
the Pentagon.
And a child ran down the road,
naked, burning from napalm.
The attack on what Peter Gotsche has
described as Deadly Psychiatry and
Organized Crime is multi-faceted.
The arguments of activist survivors
have been greatly assisted by those
critical psychiatrists and
psychologists who have publicly
stated what is wrong with the
disease model and current practice,
backed up by rigorous science.
They are valuable educators.
The quasi-religious dogmas of
“mainstream” psychiatry are being
steadily eroded and cannot stand
the light of scrutiny. Reform of
attitudes toward ‘diagnoses’ and
drug ‘treatment’ can open the door
to further advances toward
abolishing the horrors of forced
incarceration and forced drugging.
This is a reason why survivors
should encourage criticism from
within psychiatry rather than
advocating withdrawal of these
honest men and women from their
sadly-corrupted profession.
That seems to be a description of the attitude of the American Psychiatric Association.
But it bears no resemblance whatsoever to the analysis advanced by Joanna Moncrieff, who has done as much as anybody to show that the drugs are not cures and the side-effects are terrible.
The problems of experiencing “madness” have been described at great length on this website over several years. Are you denying that these problems exist? And since they do exist, and since it is evident that the disease model of “mental illness” has been broken, and that institutional psychiatry causes massive harm and suffering, wouldn’t you want to support the idea that we, as a society, should look for ways to heal these problems without medicalising them?
Isn’t that the core of what this website is about?
Sometimes the most effective critics, with the most influence, come from within the profession.
Dear Slaying_the_Dragon_of_Psychiatry ,
You said in a previous post:
” I did not imply that Szasz did not recognize
that people have “problems in living,” or that
they do not exhibit behaviors that “bother or
disturb people.” ”
Joanna has said:
” I want to think about how we, as a society,
might approach these problems without
medicalising them.”
Seems reasonable to me.
Combinations of childhood trauma,poverty,discrimination,loss,stress,drugs,
and shock produce biochemical cascades leading to psychosis.
The psychiatric myth is that the root cause of psychosis is a life-long
incurable dopamine dysfunction which requires life-long drug treatment.
The truth is that people can and do recover from psychosis without drugs.
The lived experience of psychosis suggests that for a time some brain functions are inhibited while others are activated, leading to delusions,
hyperactivity and loss of judgement. It seems possible that this is an
evolutionary adaptive reaction to enable change within destructive
environments by searching for alternative solutions.
Our brains are wired to test hypotheses against reality, to try out
various “delusions” and discard them in favour of reality.
The psychiatric paradigm is broken. The disease model has crumbled.
The favourite song of me and my friends has always been
“SOLIDARITY FOREVER”
I wish I could go to your film festival, but its a long way from Melbourne, Australia.
Perhaps later we could arrange to get a package of films thru some appropriate local organization probably yet to be formed.
The intelligent debate on this website is truly inspiring and I recommend it to my close friends.
Congratulations to all of you.
My new mantra is BAN PSYCHO-DESTRUCTIVE DRUGS
See ya in heaven
psych-iatry means healing wounded souls
you can’t heal the human psyche
without understanding it
along the way
I would like to donate but was unable to do so from Australia. The blue button system doesn’t accept my card number, and the orange Paypal page only allows input of American states even when my country is specified. Groan. Anyway, keep up your brilliantly encouraging and motivating compassion.
I discovered that fire is correlated with smoke.
Therefore smoke causes the fire?
Replace fire with brain shrinkage and smoke with relapse duration.
Now brain shrinkage is correlated with relapse duration.
Therefore relapses cause brain shrinkage?
Or is it the other way around?
I looked closely at Andreasen’s paper.
The authors found a “relationship” between
loss of brain volume and duration of relapses.
What I found quite startling was the continual
insistence that this should almost certainly
be interpreted as meaning that relapses cause
brain shrinkage.
Even the most amateur of scientists knows that
correlation does not imply causation.
Why didn’t the authors further explore the
equally valid hypothesis that brain shrinkage
worsens the severity of symptoms and duration
of relapses ?