These screeds from these assorted shrinks and their associations only further reinforce my belief that med school grads take up psychiatry because they’re incapable of practicing general medicine, but need to deceive their patients into believing that they are real medicos nonetheless.
Correct there, John. The amphetamines were plugged for weight reduction from the early to the late 1960’s, as I recall.
You might also mention that long-term consumption of ADHD drugs also opens up the possibility of future opioid addiction, once the stimulant consumption has made the user dysperceptive and he/she finds out that narcotics are vaguely therapeutic for this altered (paranoid) states. That was how the earlier “speed” craze of the late 1960’s died out- the speedsters largely became junkies.
Why should our medicos know benzos are addictive? The detail people from the manufacturer aren’t going to tell practitioners that their companies are pushing addictive substances on them. The experimenter guys who publish sponsored journal articles aren’t going to tell anyone until patent protection ends for the drugs they’ve just reviewed. The sponsored journals aren’t going to tell anyone they’re pushing to. The only way you’d know, as a practitioner, is if you knew that all sedative-hypnotics are addictive by their very chemistry- and you’d draw heat if you publicly expressed this simple reality.
Anyone think Donald Trump will do what he says about drug prices? Anyone also think that the Great Lakes are inhabited by plesiosaurs surviving the Mesozoic epoch?
I don’t think rasselas.redux has any grasp of how much niacin is required (3g+/day) to have a therapeutic effect on illnesses of perception like the “schizophrenias”. His cereal chowhounds would have to eat 5-10 boxes of cereal/day to get remotely close to this level.
The problem is also that psychiatrists (if they aren’t in a hurry to go extinct) have to actually know enough neurology to at least be able to refer appropriate patients to the proper specialty.
An excellent piece that also demonstrates the difference between real medicine and psychiatric “medicine’s” pseudo-medical model.
He didn’t mention super nutrition, which uses diet and proper supplements to treat depression in pregnancy. More physicians should be aware that, towards the end of pregnancies, expectant mothers can become zinc deficient due to their rising serum copper levels just before birth. Proper treatment for depression from this late process involves the use of supplemental zinc and large doses of B6 to help with the zinc’s absorption.
Maybe also zinc, which the postpartum event suggests.
Well, it has a certain kind of meaning, if you know the argot. It actually says, “something’s going on and we don’t have the faintest idea what it is.”
If you’re going to be a spy, one thing you’ve got to realize is that you don’t want to blow your cover- you’ve probably experienced, many times, what happened when you did. The most important duty of spies is not to get caught, so they can send the information they’ve collected to their agencies.
Studies on “psychiatric” illnesses are frequently a waste of time, because the alleged diagnoses are simply descriptions of groups of behaviors that may or may not be linked. Within these “diagnostic” groups are individuals suffering from a heterogeneous bunch of conditions; it would be lucky to determine anything real about all the groups within such “diagnostic” categories.
Interesting enough, light therapy for psych patients has been around for about 40 years, but back then it was treated by the orthodox as a sort of equivalent to crystal gazing or having the witch doctor dancing around the fire, chanting and tossing mineral salts into the flames to get multi-colored flashes.
Another reason to be on nutrients instead of “meds”- no scripts to track you with.
Hardly. But they do keep you from getting too deteriorated. If you’re going to be a patient, better to be an orthomolecular patient, so you don’t have to worry about iatrogenic disease in the first place.
This ECT stuff is truly a sorry mess, even more so more so, because the average shrink doesn’t know how to prevent long-term memory loss for such treatments, even though the means (niacin in megadoses) has been around for 50+years. Unfortunately, it came from the guys who preferred using long-term niacin therapy instead of long-term drugging, which means we can be sure it will continue to be ignored or opposed by conventional shrinks, the same way these guys fail to prevent tardive dyskinesia by making sure their tranquilized patients are discouraged from using supplemental manganese and pharmaceutical manufacturers are discouraged from adding 2mg of manganese to their tablets containing antipsychotic drugs, doubtlessly because it’s only been around 30+ years and used and approved by the same mavericks.
There is some meaning in this gene study, though none of the reviewers openly caught what it was- that the psychiatric diagnostic system is flawed. Why are there five different diagnoses for one set of conditions? Doesn’t seem like diagnostic perfection to me.
Another item passed over by these alleged genetic researchers is the effect of diet on intelligence. I’m sure that these chaps like Burt, Jensen, Herrnstein, et. al., would find negligible effect from this, finding a junk food diet to be the equivalent of real food and proper supplementation.
Years ago, I came across literature discussing tardive dyskinesia as a result of manganese deficiency brought on by “antipsychotic” therapy. What you won’t enjoy is the realization that tardive dyskinesia can be prevented by adding 2mg Mn to every tablet used for such treatments.
Here’s one of the major enemies of psychiatry, as it’s known today, deserving serious attention by those on this site who’d like to eradicate it. Why go to a shrink to get your brain and mind numbed with drugs or ECT, when you can comfortably be on a diet proper for your biochemistry- using real biology to isolate “biological” (actually pharmacological) psychiatry?
That’s their problem, Steve.
Nobody ever said that tabloids have a grasp of anything resembling reality, particularly British ones. I bet they wouldn’t hesitate to put out something a third party would pay them to publish.
Well, the relationship between what you eat and your moods wasn’t discovered by psychiatrists at all, but in our time, came about initially through the late MD’s, Theron Randolph’s work. He was a pioneer allergist who began to explore “psychiatric” symptoms in his patients and found he could switch them on and off, by water fasting them until they weren’t symptomatic, and then testing them by having them consume foods one at a time, logging the ones they were reactive to. When he presented data to shrinks at a 1950’s APA event, the members greeted his presentation with an indifferent shrug, even though he had a 2,000 patient group he’d worked with.
They sure are. That’s why I suggested a trip to the neurologist instead of the shrink for her Man of God in an earlier post (a number of lines above this post), to get an idea of what you’re dealing with).
Well, Jesus was right when he said that the Kingdom of God is within you- it occupies a small space near the top of most people’s right temporal lobe, which is why you might want to take our man of God to a neurologist first, instead of a shrink, as there might be something physical affecting or irritating the activity going on in God’s suite. You’d better hope not- treatment may cut off access to God’s place, so our sufferer may be noncompliant for obvious reason, once he discovered he’s being cut off from God’s influence, as well as His world.
This is a little late to bring to the discussion, but I feel obliged to point out Hoffer and Osmond, renegades from British psychiatry, pointed out that simultaneous use of mega-B3 at 3g/day or more, prevents the long term memory loss that goes with these alleged treatments. Alas, I only knew one guy on vitamins, who’d had previous ECT, about 200 of them, before he started on B3 and other nutrients. His memory was intact, despite not getting B3 while he was getting zapped. He’d been chronically ill, so he was also taking 8g niacin per day, same quantity C, and high doses of the other B’s. He also did short therapeutic fasts once a month or so.
To the Social Identity Disorder sufferers given benzos, I’d say- if you’re really worried, buy some magnesium oxide tablets and pay for them by selling your prescription drugs. You’ll not only be more likely to feel better, but you’ll have enough money left over to treat yourself to dinner at a good restaurant, and maybe have enough to even take a date to dinner.
You’re dealing with the psychiatric version of the NRA, where the organization exists to enrich weapons manufacturers. In the case of organized psychiatry, the profession now exists to enrich drug manufacturers. As everyone knows, patients’ and children’s welfare take a back seat to the corporate bottom line; the patients can be crazy as bedbugs, while the kids can be permanently down range, as long as the money keeps rolling in.
That’s also why the cures for such activities involve increasing the problems that caused them in the first place- more guns in circulation with less oversight, in order to subdue wannabe shooters, and more similar drugs in order to end drug-induced craziness.
Yes, there are a number of things that can induce hyperactivity. I just picked lead, because it’s one of the most dangerous to health, sanity and intellect, where “treatment” with speed is most inappropriate, as it not only fails to solve the problem, but allows it to get worse.
That’s odd-getting legal status for a group that pushes speed to kids. I can’t conceive of how many years I’d do if I pushed speed to kids.
In all this flap about “ADHD”, I notice that NONE of the “scientismists” mentioned in the article have paid a lick of attention to a known major cause of these symptoms- subclinical lead intoxication, which frequently manifests itself by inducing hyperactive behavior in the afflicted. I hope this isn’t because of some unwritten law that forbids psychiatrists from using non-psychiatric drugs for any disease, so that d-Pen or calcium EDTA are no-no’s for use in hyperactive individuals, even if indicated by laboratory means like hair sampling or using d-Pen challenges (to see if lead is being excreted in urine).
You’re right. There’s no money or fame for proper treatment of these states. If you did treat them properly, you’d be likely to lose your license for using dangerous substances like B1, B3, B6, B12 and/or maybe desiccated thyroid (if you found signs of such disturbances- weight gain, sensitivity to cold, catatonic episodes). You definitely wouldn’t be invited to manufacturer sponsored conventions, even if you did keep your license (no more Florida conventions in mid January for you).
I don’t know, Frank. They may be getting 16+ hours of comatose sleep, per day.
I bet what the industry calls mixed depression is a mixture of classic depressive symptomology and perceptual distortions- a group you definitely don’t want to treat with standard antidepressants. The so-called antipsychotic treatments are an attempt to correct this by turning such patients into addicted (if risperidone is the father of this family of drugs) robots, incapable of any, much less serious, activity.
Well, the manufacturers of junk drugs need junk science to defend their practices.
I had outbursts for years, until I realized I had to give up caffeine completely. None of the various professionals I intermittently saw over the years were aware of this, and some of my worst times were when I avoided caffeine when I was feeling strange, but not otherwise. Now, if I’m asked about something related to someone else’s outbursts, I inquire about background information from their lives, to make sure something like this isn’t happening to them without their knowledge.
Maybe, if you found out he “knew” about being poisoned because the taste of his food had changed, and you realized his treatment might require therapeutic zinc in addition to whatever else you were going to do, inadequate zinc intake being a common cause of lack of or changes in taste for the worse (one of the reasons, Frank and Steve, I use the HOD test if I’ve got to have a patient- it asks about such things more quickly then I could in an interview).
This will be totally useless if the algorithms are tailored to our present “diagnostic” categories. Naturally, though, this is what we’re most likely to see.
Because, Lawrence, it was identified by allergists, not by shrinks. We both know that mere allergists don’t deserve serious mention in anything as tony and sophisticated as the DSM’s.
Julie- perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the work of the late Theron Randolph, MD, a gent you may not have heard about because he was an early allergist, not a shrink of some kind.
It was his contention, in the early 1950’s, that eating disorders came about because certain foods got the consumer buzzed when they ate them (think “psychiatric” symptoms). These foods could be identified in symptomatic individuals by water fasting them until they became symptom-free and then testing the patients’ favorite foods by reintroducing them one at a time, to see if the patients had “psychiatric” reactions to them; whereupon reactive foods could be eliminated or only consumed on a once in four day basis.
He presented his findings on 2000 patients at an APA conference, demonstrating reactions with selected patients and received an enormous ho hum from the assembled members, although orthomolecular practitioners took up his practices in the 1970’s (thereby assuring that orthodox psychiatry would never examine his data).
This is an intriguing issue, because the SSRI’s originally used for OCD-type stuff- obsessions and compulsions, for which they apparently worked, becoming used for depressions when some unknown figure deemed them potentially useful for said depressions, because common depressive symptoms were excessive ruminations and repetitive thoughts, which the unknown figure(s?) thought gave a reason to use the SSRI’s as antidepressants. Don’t forget that depressions were more common than OCD’s, thus providing a bigger market for manufacturers without having to develop new drugs.
Turtle. Your panic attacks are probably not of psychic origin. I was suggesting the magnesium salts to see if it were to keep you from getting any more anxious while seeking more competent assistance, than me. If we were face to face, I’d ask you assorted questions that would seem strange in a psychiatric interview, such as whether you’re frequently bothered by cramps (another sign of low Mg levels), since being pretty much unable to send samples to a lab, I’d have to make guarded inferences about what might be true, so I’d know what to deal with, particularly since Mg levels aren’t readily determined with the present lab tests.
Please, LK. There is no treatment for death. That’s why the troops build and inhabit bunkers, when they’re going to be in one place long enough. Since I was a grunt, but not a psychiatrist, I can’t say anything inspiring about dying- but I can speak about misunderstood conditions that masquerade as “mental” illnesses because I seem to know more about them than the run-of-the-mill shrink.
I should have also mentioned orthomolecular practitioners, the people you really want to see, but they may still have to conceal their methods in some regions, having been subject to persecution in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990’s.
Well, you can probably start by taking magnesium oxide,250mg. T.I.D., as the medical types say, while you look for a naturopathic or conventional practitioner experienced in dealing with these things. The magnesium salts are available at any drugstore. DON’T let anyone put you on benzos, as you can easily develop panic attacks during withdrawal.
That might do for now. I’ve got to duck back into the bunker before the incoming gets too close.
Panic attacks can come from differing sources, depending on the individual- things that can range from Mg deficiency to “cerebral allergies” (“psychiatric” reactions to foods and inhalants), to various malfunctionings of the adrenal system, to things like PTSD, where they get conditioned into you, to speak of several examples. To successfully treat them, you need to know their origins and the treatments for each of them (at least beyond psychiatric drugging, which is dangerous in unskilled hands).
The authors of this document should have a series of ECT, themselves, so they can set the example for the rest of us. Maybe the series should include a couple of bilateral ECT.
The idea has gradually come to me over the years of using niacinamide (in probably multigram, per day quantities) and magnesium salts, 750 mg./day, for withdrawing from benzos- the B3, because that version occupies the same neural receptor sites as benzos and the Mg. for additional relief from anxiety. I’ve withdrawn folks from alcohol using niacin (nicotinic acid) in their homes, but benzos have a much longer withdrawal period and I’m only a psychiatric version of medics in grunt units, devoid of office or clinic, so I’d like someone more respectable to consider this notion.
Yes- and carotid chokes are also sedating and calming.
Did this author chance to read anything by Temple Grandin? She seemed interested in literature produced by the autistic.
I can’t work in residential substance abuse facilities, because I won’t have second thoughts about using nutrient regimens to get the residents more functional, no matter what the facility’s guiding ideology is. I’ll help you with Oldhead, Streetphotobeing.
I like what Humphry Osmond did to the seclusion rooms when he became Superintendent of Weyburn Hospital, Saskatchewan, one of the worst mental hospitals in the world, at the time. He trashed the mattresses and turned the rooms into retreats, with the addition of furniture and decent lighting. Instead of giant fights to “seclude” patients, it sometimes became necessary to persuade patients to come back out onto the ward, so others could use the rooms.
There’s nothing particularly unusual about this. It’s been known for decades that the suicide rate for “schizophrenics” is 20x higher than for the population at large. I first saw it mentioned in a first edition of How to Live With Schizophrenia, written 50+ years ago, which I read 40+ years ago.
Now you know the meaning of corporate health care. The health care actually involves maintaining a healthy corporate balance sheet. Your own health is trivial; perhaps it’s better if the patients die quickly, leaving nobody around to question the value of their treatments.
Probably not, although there are a number of physical conditions that can induce depression in vulnerable individuals. Still, none of these conditions can be called a “disease of depression”, but only the specific ones that induce the depressed state deserve individual names. Depression, itself, is just a description of certain unpleasant mental states.
My favorite is #9, one surgeon performing simultaneous operations. This opens new pathways in surgery, where surgeons compete to do the most simultaneous operations, like chess masters competing to play the most simultaneous games at one session. The surgeons can strive to imitate grandmasters, doing 10, 20, or even maybe 50+ operations at once, as they vie for simultaneous operating supremacy.
This is also the time when your marginal high sugar low mineral childhood diet catches up to you. The high sugar intake helps you develop giant mood swings, while low mineral and vitamin levels ensure you’ll go through the day tense and nervous- and maybe start regularly using drugs to feel good.
Are the middle 1990’s the approximate time the SSRI’s came into big time use for depression? Although I think Prozac is mid-1980’s- not taking them, myself, I’m not sure.
Don’t hold your breath, Frank. At the present, you’re more likely to hear platitudes about States’ Rights and personal responsibility (“why should we be responsible for you when you haven’t been responsible for yourself, etc.”). You’ll be lucky if you don’t turn into a serial killer of politicians, using commonplace items found in hospitals as weapons.
I’m surprised the Conservative Movement isn’t actively supporting laws like this, since members believe life begins at conception and ends at birth. What better way to get parental confessions than by bashing your children’s heads in until they confessed to countless atrocities, the worst of which is disagreeing with Donald Trump?
The supplements are for when you have nutrient dependencies.
I know. That’s what the therapeutic trial is all about.
Remember your bell curve and the sailors- the guys at the other end of the curve from the semi-immune sailors will have an increased need for their ascorbate, particularly the guys whose teeth begin to loosen as the ship exits the harbor, before it even sets out upon the ocean waves. The orthomolecular guys refer to such things as vitamin dependencies- towards the end of his career, Abram Hoffer used to tell his “schizophrenic” patients they were suffering from vitamin dependent pellagra, instead of giving them a psychiatric diagnosis.
This is indeed a slippery subject, as the need for nutrients is on a bell curve, with “normal” being in the middle and the extremes being on the ends. Take the example of the 17th Century sailors- the guys who have the lowest ascorbate requirements will be the last to show the signs of scurvy, although all will get it if the voyage is something like crossing the Pacific in a galleon, a stately but slow vessel.
Sometimes it’s possible to eyeball potential problems through awareness of relationships, such as tardive dyskinesia, which suggests manganese deficiency. White flecks or spots in fingernails suggest zinc deficiency (and possibly B6 dependency) in psych patients- the old test for urinary pyrolles is indicated.
Sometimes a therapeutic trial can identify what’s going on, such as using magnesium and other nutrients for anxious individuals, in preference to benzos.
Steve- remember some of these “ADHD” kids have gotten that way by exposure to heavy metals. Although non-drug detoxifying measures exist, they tend not to work as fast as drugs such as D-pen, but they’re a lot safer (and you have to add mineral nutrients, anyway, when doing D-pen therapy, in order to prevent deficiencies in the trace minerals already present in your kids’ bodies).
I find it interesting that the extreme debunkers of psychiatry have the same attitude toward nutrient therapy as do medication-happy psychiatry extremists. I’m not surprised that neither groups have any personal experience either using nutrients, themselves, nor treating others and aren’t interested in finding out how such things work. Otherwise, they couldn’t be so sure of themselves.
Well, to address the diabetes problem, it might be necessary to reveal that “schizophrenics” don’t get diabetes at all (for practical purposes) when they aren’t medicated, which might also reveal (gasp!) that there might be some other beneficial physical effects that go along with this syndrome.
I’m not Scott, but I can help you with some of this, as I do know the some of the general rules about hallucinogen safety: (A!) you don’t give hallucinogens to those individuals with unstable perceptions (the pre-psychotics of the old literature); (B) you don’t give them to individuals with liver disease, particularly amphetamine related ones like mescaline (found in peyote) and what I call the MDA’s as there’s actually a whole family of them- MDMA came into existence when its MDA ancestor was declared illegal by the feds; and you don’t give hallucinogens to people who have or have had first order relatives with schizophrenia syndrome. The probability of bad and/or prolonged reactions to hallucinogens is high in the abovementioned folks.
I’d also like to see an addendum “dissing” those who’d use psych drugs to mask the results of biophysical stress, as well. There are two kinds of stress out there, Steve, and both may respond to proper nutrition-
in the case of biophysical stress, some unusual supplementation (for some individuals).
Well, he’d probably be aggrieved if you used niacinamide (goes to same receptor sites as benzos) instead of such drugs for anxiety, and even more so if you used B1 and/or B12 for depression.
This depends on what you think biological psychiatry is. The drugs alone method is pretty worthless, but nutritionally based bio-psych is far superior to its meds alone counterpart, both in fostering recovery and being without side effects. For example, I’ve taken 6 or more grams of B3/day for 40 years, and my chief side effects are total cholesterol @ 180 and HDL @ 80. Although some orthodox guy might see this as dangerous and try to get me on antipsychotics, I don’t even want to imagine what I’d be like, after 40 years of daily use of these drugs.
At last, someone in mainstream psychiatry actually realizes Christmas junk food is bad for your disposition and mental state, even if he only gives the proposition one line.
Are the inept workers looking for someone seeking relief from suicidality, to get it by strangling the worker on the spot? Or is this just some British idiosyncrasy like 4PM tea time?
The doctor knew nothing about anticholinergic hallucinogens, like the daturas- too powerful to be consumed internally (an unknown reality missed by hippie types) and fly amanita- if you’re dumb enough to trip on these, be smart enough to leave one uneaten cap on hand, so the ER doc has a sample when he calls poison control (before he turns you into a berserker with an antipsychotic drug injection).
You’re right, because our psychiatric types haven’t gotten beyond behavioral diagnoses, which leads to a kind of one size fits all treatment approach for multiple ailments that generate similar behaviors. Take “depression”. I can think of multiple causes for depressed moods, from nutrient deficiencies, to copper and heavy metal poisoning, to blood sugar irregularities, to food and chemical sensitivities, to thyroid problems, to certain food reactions. All tend to be treated with antidepressants by alleged medical psychiatrists, who don’t seem to be able to practice real medicine.
The same things happen with the “schizophrenias” and the “conduct disorders”, with the same miserable results, because nobody of influence has broached the idea that these are brought on by multiple conditions within alleged diagnostic groups.
No surprise here. Withdrawal from even the old-time sedative-hypnotics was always more difficult and dangerous than withdrawal from heroin. Being fat-soluble, the newer ones are more difficult than their older relatives, making it harder for your body to clear them, than their water-soluble ancestors.
But it’s a cheap thrill, allowing someone else’s hate to twist you into a pretzel. It also saves you from the danger of independent thought, a life-threatening activity in an authoritarian state.
Well put, littleturtle.
He missed the element- the Hierarchy of Stupidity- of the hierarchical authoritarian, where everyone must be (or at least seem) dumber than their superiors and smarter than their own flunkies. Such leaders are disasters to self and others, being incapable of self-correction and impervious to advice from others, particularly the rare capable individual who actually knows what’s going on.
Vitamin B3 also lowers the suicide rate in dysperceptive individuals, according to Hoffer and Osmond- and it isn’t a drug at all.
Sorry. That was North Nassau Mental Health Center
The staff of the Long Island Mental Health center refers to “schizophrenia” as Metabolic Dysperception. They’ve done so for about 50 years. They also use vitamins, diet and other nutrients to treat their patients, so I doubt if Big Time Psychiatry will pay any attention.
Deceptive, but you pass lie detector interviews.
I was thinking about how general symptom clusters get differentiated into distinct entities; e.g., “the fevers” being subdivided into individual diseases, like malaria, yellow jack, pneumonia and such. Psych diagnosis is back in “the fevers” stage, with generalized clusters of symptoms being taken as real entities unto themselves.
Schizophrenia isn’t a disease at all, but a syndrome, just like most other psychiatric diagnoses. Syndromes are just collections of signs and symptoms, not independent diseases unto themselves, and thus require personalized regimens instead of simple-minded prescriptions of (psych) drugs.
This is one reason why so much psychiatric research is flawed, because the researchers can’t bother to tease out the subgroups of particular syndromes in their studies, so only a fraction, if any, of the individuals in their treatment groups are actually receiving remotely proper treatments.
Re. multitasking. I think that the 19th Century’s Blind Tom Bethune was the classic multitasker, sitting at the piano, playing Yankee Doodle with one hand, the Fisher’s Hornpipe with the other, while singing Dixie.
Well, Frank, most of what gets rapped here as biological treatments, aren’t. They’re pharmacological, surgical, or somatic treatments of one sort or another.
Dr. B isn’t familiar with nutritional or orthomolecular therapy, like most psychiatrists (alas).
You’re probably right, survivor, although I prefer the notion that “schizophrenia” is one of psychiatry’s sacred wastebasket cows, accompanying “depression” and “ADHD” among the other herd members in the pasture.
Or when dysperceptive patients are misdiagnosed and get started on erroneous treatments that magnify side effects, but minimize the likelihood of therapeutic results.
I find it interesting that none of these important psychopharmacological medicos are aware that all drugs with hypnotic properties (e.g., barbiturates, benzos, sedatives and probably the old bromides of great grandpa’s day) are addictive, with an action similar to alcohol and alcohol withdrawal.
Or you can go orthomolecular, which will make you an Untouchable in the eyes of your orthodox colleagues and the Pharma reps you can then chase out of your office without feeling guilty. You’ll have to know more medicine and clinical nutrition than you probably know now, and be ready to receive the castoffs from orthodox shrinks’ patient loads. You may also expect exceptionally sophisticated patients, too; but they’ll become your friends once you demonstrate your therapeutic competence.
Another pseudo-diagnosis hits the streets. The only way I can immediately think of having shyness being diagnostically significant is if I enquired further and found you were shy, because you thought (knew?) others were constantly watching you or talking about you or laughing at you, which would suggest dysperceptions that I could treat, if I knew they were occurring.
It would depend on the subgroup you’re talking about. The first problem is that schizophrenia is a syndrome and not a disease unto itself, which is why much of this alleged research has such a close resemblance to humbug. Secondly, not being a single origin disease, the schizophrenias won’t all respond well to the same treatment, unlike, say, viruses, many of which will respond to megascorbate, the only differences being in the quantities you have to use to get a major response,
Initial proponents of this form of treatment were advocates of a clinical medical basis for their treatments, which is frequently confused by contributors here with the pseudo- or muddled medical model used by big time psychiatry.
Well, maybe it would be more inspirational if such pioneers would have electrodes inserted into their own brains. It’s a fundamental of leadership that you have to set the example for the flunkies, not getting them to do things because you’re afraid of them, yourself.
They can call for it, but they won’t get it. The point of pharmaceutical medicine is for the company to make money. They’re indifferent to your health, profit being the main reason new drugs are developed. If the new drug actually does work, all the better, but if it doesn’t, then damage control is needed to keep the gravy train rolling until the patent runs out.
There’s no problem if you’re not going to rely on psych drugs. Big-time health care is opposed to the therapeutic use of nutrients and diets- no big bucks to be made without patent security, the way there is with patentable chemical substances.
Maybe it’s time for our beloved Uncle Sam to legalize reefer, instead, and regulate it like alcohol instead of mindlessly chasing offenders. He does need bodies.
In a way, it’s too bad, because it might have been possible for us to get Mr. M committed to the proper institution and properly medicated.
These screeds from these assorted shrinks and their associations only further reinforce my belief that med school grads take up psychiatry because they’re incapable of practicing general medicine, but need to deceive their patients into believing that they are real medicos nonetheless.
Correct there, John. The amphetamines were plugged for weight reduction from the early to the late 1960’s, as I recall.
You might also mention that long-term consumption of ADHD drugs also opens up the possibility of future opioid addiction, once the stimulant consumption has made the user dysperceptive and he/she finds out that narcotics are vaguely therapeutic for this altered (paranoid) states. That was how the earlier “speed” craze of the late 1960’s died out- the speedsters largely became junkies.
Why should our medicos know benzos are addictive? The detail people from the manufacturer aren’t going to tell practitioners that their companies are pushing addictive substances on them. The experimenter guys who publish sponsored journal articles aren’t going to tell anyone until patent protection ends for the drugs they’ve just reviewed. The sponsored journals aren’t going to tell anyone they’re pushing to. The only way you’d know, as a practitioner, is if you knew that all sedative-hypnotics are addictive by their very chemistry- and you’d draw heat if you publicly expressed this simple reality.
Anyone think Donald Trump will do what he says about drug prices? Anyone also think that the Great Lakes are inhabited by plesiosaurs surviving the Mesozoic epoch?
I don’t think rasselas.redux has any grasp of how much niacin is required (3g+/day) to have a therapeutic effect on illnesses of perception like the “schizophrenias”. His cereal chowhounds would have to eat 5-10 boxes of cereal/day to get remotely close to this level.
The problem is also that psychiatrists (if they aren’t in a hurry to go extinct) have to actually know enough neurology to at least be able to refer appropriate patients to the proper specialty.
An excellent piece that also demonstrates the difference between real medicine and psychiatric “medicine’s” pseudo-medical model.
He didn’t mention super nutrition, which uses diet and proper supplements to treat depression in pregnancy. More physicians should be aware that, towards the end of pregnancies, expectant mothers can become zinc deficient due to their rising serum copper levels just before birth. Proper treatment for depression from this late process involves the use of supplemental zinc and large doses of B6 to help with the zinc’s absorption.
Maybe also zinc, which the postpartum event suggests.
Well, it has a certain kind of meaning, if you know the argot. It actually says, “something’s going on and we don’t have the faintest idea what it is.”
If you’re going to be a spy, one thing you’ve got to realize is that you don’t want to blow your cover- you’ve probably experienced, many times, what happened when you did. The most important duty of spies is not to get caught, so they can send the information they’ve collected to their agencies.
Studies on “psychiatric” illnesses are frequently a waste of time, because the alleged diagnoses are simply descriptions of groups of behaviors that may or may not be linked. Within these “diagnostic” groups are individuals suffering from a heterogeneous bunch of conditions; it would be lucky to determine anything real about all the groups within such “diagnostic” categories.
Interesting enough, light therapy for psych patients has been around for about 40 years, but back then it was treated by the orthodox as a sort of equivalent to crystal gazing or having the witch doctor dancing around the fire, chanting and tossing mineral salts into the flames to get multi-colored flashes.
Another reason to be on nutrients instead of “meds”- no scripts to track you with.
Hardly. But they do keep you from getting too deteriorated. If you’re going to be a patient, better to be an orthomolecular patient, so you don’t have to worry about iatrogenic disease in the first place.
This ECT stuff is truly a sorry mess, even more so more so, because the average shrink doesn’t know how to prevent long-term memory loss for such treatments, even though the means (niacin in megadoses) has been around for 50+years. Unfortunately, it came from the guys who preferred using long-term niacin therapy instead of long-term drugging, which means we can be sure it will continue to be ignored or opposed by conventional shrinks, the same way these guys fail to prevent tardive dyskinesia by making sure their tranquilized patients are discouraged from using supplemental manganese and pharmaceutical manufacturers are discouraged from adding 2mg of manganese to their tablets containing antipsychotic drugs, doubtlessly because it’s only been around 30+ years and used and approved by the same mavericks.
There is some meaning in this gene study, though none of the reviewers openly caught what it was- that the psychiatric diagnostic system is flawed. Why are there five different diagnoses for one set of conditions? Doesn’t seem like diagnostic perfection to me.
Another item passed over by these alleged genetic researchers is the effect of diet on intelligence. I’m sure that these chaps like Burt, Jensen, Herrnstein, et. al., would find negligible effect from this, finding a junk food diet to be the equivalent of real food and proper supplementation.
Years ago, I came across literature discussing tardive dyskinesia as a result of manganese deficiency brought on by “antipsychotic” therapy. What you won’t enjoy is the realization that tardive dyskinesia can be prevented by adding 2mg Mn to every tablet used for such treatments.
Here’s one of the major enemies of psychiatry, as it’s known today, deserving serious attention by those on this site who’d like to eradicate it. Why go to a shrink to get your brain and mind numbed with drugs or ECT, when you can comfortably be on a diet proper for your biochemistry- using real biology to isolate “biological” (actually pharmacological) psychiatry?
That’s their problem, Steve.
Nobody ever said that tabloids have a grasp of anything resembling reality, particularly British ones. I bet they wouldn’t hesitate to put out something a third party would pay them to publish.
Well, the relationship between what you eat and your moods wasn’t discovered by psychiatrists at all, but in our time, came about initially through the late MD’s, Theron Randolph’s work. He was a pioneer allergist who began to explore “psychiatric” symptoms in his patients and found he could switch them on and off, by water fasting them until they weren’t symptomatic, and then testing them by having them consume foods one at a time, logging the ones they were reactive to. When he presented data to shrinks at a 1950’s APA event, the members greeted his presentation with an indifferent shrug, even though he had a 2,000 patient group he’d worked with.
They sure are. That’s why I suggested a trip to the neurologist instead of the shrink for her Man of God in an earlier post (a number of lines above this post), to get an idea of what you’re dealing with).
Well, Jesus was right when he said that the Kingdom of God is within you- it occupies a small space near the top of most people’s right temporal lobe, which is why you might want to take our man of God to a neurologist first, instead of a shrink, as there might be something physical affecting or irritating the activity going on in God’s suite. You’d better hope not- treatment may cut off access to God’s place, so our sufferer may be noncompliant for obvious reason, once he discovered he’s being cut off from God’s influence, as well as His world.
This is a little late to bring to the discussion, but I feel obliged to point out Hoffer and Osmond, renegades from British psychiatry, pointed out that simultaneous use of mega-B3 at 3g/day or more, prevents the long term memory loss that goes with these alleged treatments. Alas, I only knew one guy on vitamins, who’d had previous ECT, about 200 of them, before he started on B3 and other nutrients. His memory was intact, despite not getting B3 while he was getting zapped. He’d been chronically ill, so he was also taking 8g niacin per day, same quantity C, and high doses of the other B’s. He also did short therapeutic fasts once a month or so.
To the Social Identity Disorder sufferers given benzos, I’d say- if you’re really worried, buy some magnesium oxide tablets and pay for them by selling your prescription drugs. You’ll not only be more likely to feel better, but you’ll have enough money left over to treat yourself to dinner at a good restaurant, and maybe have enough to even take a date to dinner.
You’re dealing with the psychiatric version of the NRA, where the organization exists to enrich weapons manufacturers. In the case of organized psychiatry, the profession now exists to enrich drug manufacturers. As everyone knows, patients’ and children’s welfare take a back seat to the corporate bottom line; the patients can be crazy as bedbugs, while the kids can be permanently down range, as long as the money keeps rolling in.
That’s also why the cures for such activities involve increasing the problems that caused them in the first place- more guns in circulation with less oversight, in order to subdue wannabe shooters, and more similar drugs in order to end drug-induced craziness.
Yes, there are a number of things that can induce hyperactivity. I just picked lead, because it’s one of the most dangerous to health, sanity and intellect, where “treatment” with speed is most inappropriate, as it not only fails to solve the problem, but allows it to get worse.
That’s odd-getting legal status for a group that pushes speed to kids. I can’t conceive of how many years I’d do if I pushed speed to kids.
In all this flap about “ADHD”, I notice that NONE of the “scientismists” mentioned in the article have paid a lick of attention to a known major cause of these symptoms- subclinical lead intoxication, which frequently manifests itself by inducing hyperactive behavior in the afflicted. I hope this isn’t because of some unwritten law that forbids psychiatrists from using non-psychiatric drugs for any disease, so that d-Pen or calcium EDTA are no-no’s for use in hyperactive individuals, even if indicated by laboratory means like hair sampling or using d-Pen challenges (to see if lead is being excreted in urine).
You’re right. There’s no money or fame for proper treatment of these states. If you did treat them properly, you’d be likely to lose your license for using dangerous substances like B1, B3, B6, B12 and/or maybe desiccated thyroid (if you found signs of such disturbances- weight gain, sensitivity to cold, catatonic episodes). You definitely wouldn’t be invited to manufacturer sponsored conventions, even if you did keep your license (no more Florida conventions in mid January for you).
I don’t know, Frank. They may be getting 16+ hours of comatose sleep, per day.
I bet what the industry calls mixed depression is a mixture of classic depressive symptomology and perceptual distortions- a group you definitely don’t want to treat with standard antidepressants. The so-called antipsychotic treatments are an attempt to correct this by turning such patients into addicted (if risperidone is the father of this family of drugs) robots, incapable of any, much less serious, activity.
Well, the manufacturers of junk drugs need junk science to defend their practices.
I had outbursts for years, until I realized I had to give up caffeine completely. None of the various professionals I intermittently saw over the years were aware of this, and some of my worst times were when I avoided caffeine when I was feeling strange, but not otherwise. Now, if I’m asked about something related to someone else’s outbursts, I inquire about background information from their lives, to make sure something like this isn’t happening to them without their knowledge.
Maybe, if you found out he “knew” about being poisoned because the taste of his food had changed, and you realized his treatment might require therapeutic zinc in addition to whatever else you were going to do, inadequate zinc intake being a common cause of lack of or changes in taste for the worse (one of the reasons, Frank and Steve, I use the HOD test if I’ve got to have a patient- it asks about such things more quickly then I could in an interview).
This will be totally useless if the algorithms are tailored to our present “diagnostic” categories. Naturally, though, this is what we’re most likely to see.
Because, Lawrence, it was identified by allergists, not by shrinks. We both know that mere allergists don’t deserve serious mention in anything as tony and sophisticated as the DSM’s.
Julie- perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the work of the late Theron Randolph, MD, a gent you may not have heard about because he was an early allergist, not a shrink of some kind.
It was his contention, in the early 1950’s, that eating disorders came about because certain foods got the consumer buzzed when they ate them (think “psychiatric” symptoms). These foods could be identified in symptomatic individuals by water fasting them until they became symptom-free and then testing the patients’ favorite foods by reintroducing them one at a time, to see if the patients had “psychiatric” reactions to them; whereupon reactive foods could be eliminated or only consumed on a once in four day basis.
He presented his findings on 2000 patients at an APA conference, demonstrating reactions with selected patients and received an enormous ho hum from the assembled members, although orthomolecular practitioners took up his practices in the 1970’s (thereby assuring that orthodox psychiatry would never examine his data).
This is an intriguing issue, because the SSRI’s originally used for OCD-type stuff- obsessions and compulsions, for which they apparently worked, becoming used for depressions when some unknown figure deemed them potentially useful for said depressions, because common depressive symptoms were excessive ruminations and repetitive thoughts, which the unknown figure(s?) thought gave a reason to use the SSRI’s as antidepressants. Don’t forget that depressions were more common than OCD’s, thus providing a bigger market for manufacturers without having to develop new drugs.
Turtle. Your panic attacks are probably not of psychic origin. I was suggesting the magnesium salts to see if it were to keep you from getting any more anxious while seeking more competent assistance, than me. If we were face to face, I’d ask you assorted questions that would seem strange in a psychiatric interview, such as whether you’re frequently bothered by cramps (another sign of low Mg levels), since being pretty much unable to send samples to a lab, I’d have to make guarded inferences about what might be true, so I’d know what to deal with, particularly since Mg levels aren’t readily determined with the present lab tests.
Please, LK. There is no treatment for death. That’s why the troops build and inhabit bunkers, when they’re going to be in one place long enough. Since I was a grunt, but not a psychiatrist, I can’t say anything inspiring about dying- but I can speak about misunderstood conditions that masquerade as “mental” illnesses because I seem to know more about them than the run-of-the-mill shrink.
I should have also mentioned orthomolecular practitioners, the people you really want to see, but they may still have to conceal their methods in some regions, having been subject to persecution in the Pacific Northwest in the 1990’s.
Well, you can probably start by taking magnesium oxide,250mg. T.I.D., as the medical types say, while you look for a naturopathic or conventional practitioner experienced in dealing with these things. The magnesium salts are available at any drugstore. DON’T let anyone put you on benzos, as you can easily develop panic attacks during withdrawal.
That might do for now. I’ve got to duck back into the bunker before the incoming gets too close.
Panic attacks can come from differing sources, depending on the individual- things that can range from Mg deficiency to “cerebral allergies” (“psychiatric” reactions to foods and inhalants), to various malfunctionings of the adrenal system, to things like PTSD, where they get conditioned into you, to speak of several examples. To successfully treat them, you need to know their origins and the treatments for each of them (at least beyond psychiatric drugging, which is dangerous in unskilled hands).
The authors of this document should have a series of ECT, themselves, so they can set the example for the rest of us. Maybe the series should include a couple of bilateral ECT.
The idea has gradually come to me over the years of using niacinamide (in probably multigram, per day quantities) and magnesium salts, 750 mg./day, for withdrawing from benzos- the B3, because that version occupies the same neural receptor sites as benzos and the Mg. for additional relief from anxiety. I’ve withdrawn folks from alcohol using niacin (nicotinic acid) in their homes, but benzos have a much longer withdrawal period and I’m only a psychiatric version of medics in grunt units, devoid of office or clinic, so I’d like someone more respectable to consider this notion.
Yes- and carotid chokes are also sedating and calming.
Did this author chance to read anything by Temple Grandin? She seemed interested in literature produced by the autistic.
I can’t work in residential substance abuse facilities, because I won’t have second thoughts about using nutrient regimens to get the residents more functional, no matter what the facility’s guiding ideology is. I’ll help you with Oldhead, Streetphotobeing.
I like what Humphry Osmond did to the seclusion rooms when he became Superintendent of Weyburn Hospital, Saskatchewan, one of the worst mental hospitals in the world, at the time. He trashed the mattresses and turned the rooms into retreats, with the addition of furniture and decent lighting. Instead of giant fights to “seclude” patients, it sometimes became necessary to persuade patients to come back out onto the ward, so others could use the rooms.
There’s nothing particularly unusual about this. It’s been known for decades that the suicide rate for “schizophrenics” is 20x higher than for the population at large. I first saw it mentioned in a first edition of How to Live With Schizophrenia, written 50+ years ago, which I read 40+ years ago.
Now you know the meaning of corporate health care. The health care actually involves maintaining a healthy corporate balance sheet. Your own health is trivial; perhaps it’s better if the patients die quickly, leaving nobody around to question the value of their treatments.
Probably not, although there are a number of physical conditions that can induce depression in vulnerable individuals. Still, none of these conditions can be called a “disease of depression”, but only the specific ones that induce the depressed state deserve individual names. Depression, itself, is just a description of certain unpleasant mental states.
My favorite is #9, one surgeon performing simultaneous operations. This opens new pathways in surgery, where surgeons compete to do the most simultaneous operations, like chess masters competing to play the most simultaneous games at one session. The surgeons can strive to imitate grandmasters, doing 10, 20, or even maybe 50+ operations at once, as they vie for simultaneous operating supremacy.
This is also the time when your marginal high sugar low mineral childhood diet catches up to you. The high sugar intake helps you develop giant mood swings, while low mineral and vitamin levels ensure you’ll go through the day tense and nervous- and maybe start regularly using drugs to feel good.
Are the middle 1990’s the approximate time the SSRI’s came into big time use for depression? Although I think Prozac is mid-1980’s- not taking them, myself, I’m not sure.
Don’t hold your breath, Frank. At the present, you’re more likely to hear platitudes about States’ Rights and personal responsibility (“why should we be responsible for you when you haven’t been responsible for yourself, etc.”). You’ll be lucky if you don’t turn into a serial killer of politicians, using commonplace items found in hospitals as weapons.
I’m surprised the Conservative Movement isn’t actively supporting laws like this, since members believe life begins at conception and ends at birth. What better way to get parental confessions than by bashing your children’s heads in until they confessed to countless atrocities, the worst of which is disagreeing with Donald Trump?
The supplements are for when you have nutrient dependencies.
I know. That’s what the therapeutic trial is all about.
Remember your bell curve and the sailors- the guys at the other end of the curve from the semi-immune sailors will have an increased need for their ascorbate, particularly the guys whose teeth begin to loosen as the ship exits the harbor, before it even sets out upon the ocean waves. The orthomolecular guys refer to such things as vitamin dependencies- towards the end of his career, Abram Hoffer used to tell his “schizophrenic” patients they were suffering from vitamin dependent pellagra, instead of giving them a psychiatric diagnosis.
This is indeed a slippery subject, as the need for nutrients is on a bell curve, with “normal” being in the middle and the extremes being on the ends. Take the example of the 17th Century sailors- the guys who have the lowest ascorbate requirements will be the last to show the signs of scurvy, although all will get it if the voyage is something like crossing the Pacific in a galleon, a stately but slow vessel.
Sometimes it’s possible to eyeball potential problems through awareness of relationships, such as tardive dyskinesia, which suggests manganese deficiency. White flecks or spots in fingernails suggest zinc deficiency (and possibly B6 dependency) in psych patients- the old test for urinary pyrolles is indicated.
Sometimes a therapeutic trial can identify what’s going on, such as using magnesium and other nutrients for anxious individuals, in preference to benzos.
Steve- remember some of these “ADHD” kids have gotten that way by exposure to heavy metals. Although non-drug detoxifying measures exist, they tend not to work as fast as drugs such as D-pen, but they’re a lot safer (and you have to add mineral nutrients, anyway, when doing D-pen therapy, in order to prevent deficiencies in the trace minerals already present in your kids’ bodies).
I find it interesting that the extreme debunkers of psychiatry have the same attitude toward nutrient therapy as do medication-happy psychiatry extremists. I’m not surprised that neither groups have any personal experience either using nutrients, themselves, nor treating others and aren’t interested in finding out how such things work. Otherwise, they couldn’t be so sure of themselves.
Well, to address the diabetes problem, it might be necessary to reveal that “schizophrenics” don’t get diabetes at all (for practical purposes) when they aren’t medicated, which might also reveal (gasp!) that there might be some other beneficial physical effects that go along with this syndrome.
I’m not Scott, but I can help you with some of this, as I do know the some of the general rules about hallucinogen safety: (A!) you don’t give hallucinogens to those individuals with unstable perceptions (the pre-psychotics of the old literature); (B) you don’t give them to individuals with liver disease, particularly amphetamine related ones like mescaline (found in peyote) and what I call the MDA’s as there’s actually a whole family of them- MDMA came into existence when its MDA ancestor was declared illegal by the feds; and you don’t give hallucinogens to people who have or have had first order relatives with schizophrenia syndrome. The probability of bad and/or prolonged reactions to hallucinogens is high in the abovementioned folks.
I’d also like to see an addendum “dissing” those who’d use psych drugs to mask the results of biophysical stress, as well. There are two kinds of stress out there, Steve, and both may respond to proper nutrition-
in the case of biophysical stress, some unusual supplementation (for some individuals).
Well, he’d probably be aggrieved if you used niacinamide (goes to same receptor sites as benzos) instead of such drugs for anxiety, and even more so if you used B1 and/or B12 for depression.
This depends on what you think biological psychiatry is. The drugs alone method is pretty worthless, but nutritionally based bio-psych is far superior to its meds alone counterpart, both in fostering recovery and being without side effects. For example, I’ve taken 6 or more grams of B3/day for 40 years, and my chief side effects are total cholesterol @ 180 and HDL @ 80. Although some orthodox guy might see this as dangerous and try to get me on antipsychotics, I don’t even want to imagine what I’d be like, after 40 years of daily use of these drugs.
At last, someone in mainstream psychiatry actually realizes Christmas junk food is bad for your disposition and mental state, even if he only gives the proposition one line.
Are the inept workers looking for someone seeking relief from suicidality, to get it by strangling the worker on the spot? Or is this just some British idiosyncrasy like 4PM tea time?
The doctor knew nothing about anticholinergic hallucinogens, like the daturas- too powerful to be consumed internally (an unknown reality missed by hippie types) and fly amanita- if you’re dumb enough to trip on these, be smart enough to leave one uneaten cap on hand, so the ER doc has a sample when he calls poison control (before he turns you into a berserker with an antipsychotic drug injection).
You’re right, because our psychiatric types haven’t gotten beyond behavioral diagnoses, which leads to a kind of one size fits all treatment approach for multiple ailments that generate similar behaviors. Take “depression”. I can think of multiple causes for depressed moods, from nutrient deficiencies, to copper and heavy metal poisoning, to blood sugar irregularities, to food and chemical sensitivities, to thyroid problems, to certain food reactions. All tend to be treated with antidepressants by alleged medical psychiatrists, who don’t seem to be able to practice real medicine.
The same things happen with the “schizophrenias” and the “conduct disorders”, with the same miserable results, because nobody of influence has broached the idea that these are brought on by multiple conditions within alleged diagnostic groups.
No surprise here. Withdrawal from even the old-time sedative-hypnotics was always more difficult and dangerous than withdrawal from heroin. Being fat-soluble, the newer ones are more difficult than their older relatives, making it harder for your body to clear them, than their water-soluble ancestors.
But it’s a cheap thrill, allowing someone else’s hate to twist you into a pretzel. It also saves you from the danger of independent thought, a life-threatening activity in an authoritarian state.
Well put, littleturtle.
He missed the element- the Hierarchy of Stupidity- of the hierarchical authoritarian, where everyone must be (or at least seem) dumber than their superiors and smarter than their own flunkies. Such leaders are disasters to self and others, being incapable of self-correction and impervious to advice from others, particularly the rare capable individual who actually knows what’s going on.
Vitamin B3 also lowers the suicide rate in dysperceptive individuals, according to Hoffer and Osmond- and it isn’t a drug at all.
Sorry. That was North Nassau Mental Health Center
The staff of the Long Island Mental Health center refers to “schizophrenia” as Metabolic Dysperception. They’ve done so for about 50 years. They also use vitamins, diet and other nutrients to treat their patients, so I doubt if Big Time Psychiatry will pay any attention.
Deceptive, but you pass lie detector interviews.
I was thinking about how general symptom clusters get differentiated into distinct entities; e.g., “the fevers” being subdivided into individual diseases, like malaria, yellow jack, pneumonia and such. Psych diagnosis is back in “the fevers” stage, with generalized clusters of symptoms being taken as real entities unto themselves.
Schizophrenia isn’t a disease at all, but a syndrome, just like most other psychiatric diagnoses. Syndromes are just collections of signs and symptoms, not independent diseases unto themselves, and thus require personalized regimens instead of simple-minded prescriptions of (psych) drugs.
This is one reason why so much psychiatric research is flawed, because the researchers can’t bother to tease out the subgroups of particular syndromes in their studies, so only a fraction, if any, of the individuals in their treatment groups are actually receiving remotely proper treatments.
Re. multitasking. I think that the 19th Century’s Blind Tom Bethune was the classic multitasker, sitting at the piano, playing Yankee Doodle with one hand, the Fisher’s Hornpipe with the other, while singing Dixie.
Well, Frank, most of what gets rapped here as biological treatments, aren’t. They’re pharmacological, surgical, or somatic treatments of one sort or another.
Dr. B isn’t familiar with nutritional or orthomolecular therapy, like most psychiatrists (alas).
You’re probably right, survivor, although I prefer the notion that “schizophrenia” is one of psychiatry’s sacred wastebasket cows, accompanying “depression” and “ADHD” among the other herd members in the pasture.
Or when dysperceptive patients are misdiagnosed and get started on erroneous treatments that magnify side effects, but minimize the likelihood of therapeutic results.
I find it interesting that none of these important psychopharmacological medicos are aware that all drugs with hypnotic properties (e.g., barbiturates, benzos, sedatives and probably the old bromides of great grandpa’s day) are addictive, with an action similar to alcohol and alcohol withdrawal.
Or you can go orthomolecular, which will make you an Untouchable in the eyes of your orthodox colleagues and the Pharma reps you can then chase out of your office without feeling guilty. You’ll have to know more medicine and clinical nutrition than you probably know now, and be ready to receive the castoffs from orthodox shrinks’ patient loads. You may also expect exceptionally sophisticated patients, too; but they’ll become your friends once you demonstrate your therapeutic competence.
Another pseudo-diagnosis hits the streets. The only way I can immediately think of having shyness being diagnostically significant is if I enquired further and found you were shy, because you thought (knew?) others were constantly watching you or talking about you or laughing at you, which would suggest dysperceptions that I could treat, if I knew they were occurring.
It would depend on the subgroup you’re talking about. The first problem is that schizophrenia is a syndrome and not a disease unto itself, which is why much of this alleged research has such a close resemblance to humbug. Secondly, not being a single origin disease, the schizophrenias won’t all respond well to the same treatment, unlike, say, viruses, many of which will respond to megascorbate, the only differences being in the quantities you have to use to get a major response,
Initial proponents of this form of treatment were advocates of a clinical medical basis for their treatments, which is frequently confused by contributors here with the pseudo- or muddled medical model used by big time psychiatry.
Well, maybe it would be more inspirational if such pioneers would have electrodes inserted into their own brains. It’s a fundamental of leadership that you have to set the example for the flunkies, not getting them to do things because you’re afraid of them, yourself.
They can call for it, but they won’t get it. The point of pharmaceutical medicine is for the company to make money. They’re indifferent to your health, profit being the main reason new drugs are developed. If the new drug actually does work, all the better, but if it doesn’t, then damage control is needed to keep the gravy train rolling until the patent runs out.
There’s no problem if you’re not going to rely on psych drugs. Big-time health care is opposed to the therapeutic use of nutrients and diets- no big bucks to be made without patent security, the way there is with patentable chemical substances.
Maybe it’s time for our beloved Uncle Sam to legalize reefer, instead, and regulate it like alcohol instead of mindlessly chasing offenders. He does need bodies.
In a way, it’s too bad, because it might have been possible for us to get Mr. M committed to the proper institution and properly medicated.