Eric. It just hit me a few minutes after my post. You’d tell the inquisitors you ate the candle because the guy who broached the issue bet you $5 you wouldn’t eat it, and you’re surprised he brought it up at your hearing. Now, if the staff finds this an issue, you can reveal it was one of your scurvy MAD buddies who suggested it, proving it by sending the Men of Psychiatry here to find out for themselves. Best of all, if the accuser denies the Tale of the Candle was real, his argument for keeping you around is gone.
Eric. Maybe, when the junior shrink brought up this item about the candle, you should have told the panel that you ate it, and launch into some spiel about why, bringing up some imaginary incident in which you induce your accuser to supply imaginary details of the nonexistent incident, “helping” him remember the imaginary details. Remember- an imaginary incident needs a preposterous explanation and who better to supply it than our man of mental health?
It is a blind alley, but these “authorities” have to take it in their search for the alleged miracle drug that is not only the Magic Treatment for the supposed discovery, but also the Magic Creator of Fame and Fortune for themselves.
A good piece, illustrating how delusions come to be, in this case, as an attempt to explain the reasons behind the appearance of certain audios and their proliferation.
The next question to be answered is whether this increased screen time is a cause, or result of internalized misery- are you on line because you’re miserable, or is being constantly on line making you miserable?
A crude way to estimate (“guesstimate?”) this is with the old (quantitative) Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic test. You probably won’t see one of these in the UK, because Hoffer was a Canadian, one of those folks who seem to be regarded as ignorant hillbillies by the highly educated in the UK. The old Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation once made a booklet form of this test, so that schizophrenic Foundation members could check themselves out if they felt themselves possibly becoming “strange” again, so they could adjust or resume their vitamins. It was also used to screen alcoholic candidates for psychedelic therapy, which isn’t recommended for those with greatly disturbed perceptions, that class of individuals not responsive to such treatments.
The kind of authority based on knowledge and ability was called “sapiential authority” by Humphry Osmond way back, while he was getting endless grief for his role in creating megavitamin therapy.
Of course exercising’s omitted from treatments for depression. Providers don’t make any money from it, unlike antidepressants, which have to be taken for life, being addictive, thereby providing manufacturers with an opportunity for lifetime income from multitudes of users desperate to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
Remember, folks. The original Bedlam was a British institution- this hospital is carrying on the tradition, minus the painters who depicted it (except for the ones, like Richard Dadd, who were actually patients there).
I don’t know that much about antipsychotic drugs causing mental disorders, but they certainly cause neurological disorders like tardive dyskinesia. This misdirected causation would be more likely with the alleged antidepressants, which are used to tinker with the chemicals involved with moods- plenty of room to go astray there, particularly with careless and/or feckless prescribing.
Does that mean that gaining 100 pounds in a few months is actually a sign of recovery?
I’m waiting for some authority to proclaim that pellagra’s a life-long genetic illness. Or that depression from beriberi or scurvy proves that they’re life-long genetic illnesses. Or that dysperceptions caused by mercury poisoning are part of a life-long genetic illness.
This discussion wouldn’t be happening if shrinks used truly quantitative diagnostic techniques instead of just looking at a few common perceptual and/or mood symptoms and signs. Then I wouldn’t have to risk going to jail because I felt obliged to deal therapeutically with some inept professional’s failure.
Very good, Steve. Depression isn’t an independent entity unto itself, so the idea’s to find its instigators for depressed individuals in order to treat their conditions appropriately.
Am I a hermit in the psychological wilderness because I support the proper use of select nutrients for certain depressive states where appropriate selective features present themselves? Such contributing things as overconsumption of various stimulants (B1), presence of diverse perceptual distortions (B3 and/or B6+zinc), “bipolar” symptoms (B12), suicidal ideation (B1 and/or B12), alcohol abuse (B3 in niacin form, maybe accompanied by glutamine) frequently aren’t dealt with successfully by psychotherapy or antidepressants alone, but can be ameliorated by non-drug means directed by proper questioning and/or a few tests that can properly direct therapeutic interventions (a term I don’t really like).
You’re probably right, as you can’t get tardive dyskinesia if you aren’t on psych drugs.
With these brilliant instructions, I’m ready to go! Where are the patients? Let me at em! I’ll have them nodding robots in no time! When do I get to go to the pharma-sponsored seminars?
This flap does provide some evidence for the idea expressed in the late Abram Hoffer’s radio interview, in which he said that transporting the world’s psychiatrists to Mars would be the best way to improve mental health on earth. It also provides evidence that the medical model big-time psychiatry says it’s following is contaminated by a moral position held by churches, in which they state that they alone are capable of evaluating morality (Osmond’s moral model par excellence).
An expensive way to do nothing, as the results of these antipsychotic drug treatments are no better than absolutely no treatment whatsoever.
And what kind of activity compels you to be off doing self care? Water fasting? Tai chi? Distance running? Or is this some kind of secret activity, like the way Jesus told us to squirrel ourselves away when praying?
So much for the belief in the genetic inferiority of schizophrenics. The MIA readers who are diagnosed schizophrenics might be amused to know that unmedicated schizophrenics don’t get cancer, at least if the late Abram Hoffer’s figure of 4 of his 5,000 schizophrenic patients having cancer is true. But then he invariably used mega ascorbate in his treatment regimens (he and Linus Pauling were buddies).
I was prone to outbursts, losing friends and jobs until I gave up caffeine. I’m no sweetheart but I’m not bursting into fury these days.
Well, even though the kids are a mess and their parents are miserable, the doctor gets to schmooze with agents of the largest pharmaceutical companies in winter seminars in the subtropical regions of this continent, enjoying the sun while company reps misinform him about benevolent new miracle drugs (with plenty of time for recreation) that the company is pushing.
Kids may indeed have a physical problem where they spend all their time in frantic pointless activity. It’s called lead poisoning. Few GP’s or shrinks will look for it, even though doing thorough backgrounds and/or a hair sample aren’t complicated activities which don’t take an Einstein to execute. Synthetic food colors can also sometimes induce hyperactivity, but it’s apparently unpatriotic to badmouth the all American kiddie diet, while allergy fasting is definitely subversive to our way of life.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with notions of chemical imbalances having an effect on mental states, but not the way the industry proclaims them and feeds patients patentable drugs to allegedly correct them.
Well, we won’t have to worry for long, because we’ll soon be extinct, if the gent theorizing that glyphosate in the environment is why our insect pollinators are dying off in droves is correct. How will the last chemical industry CEO get a tombstone that memorializes the fortune he made manufacturing it, if no stonemasons and sculptors are left to make and carve it?
Easy to deduce what social justice means to psychologists. It means they’ll all get raises without having to do any more work.
I suspect it depends on what the chemical fixes are. Methamphetamine doesn’t have a good reputation (at least for most of us), given that it was Hitler’s favorite drug (his “doctor” shot him up with it every day, until the producer’s factory was bombed near the end of the war and the “unmedicated” Fuhrer collapsed). Downers don’t have what it takes, either (picture the president on the nod during a global crisis, though that might not be so bad with our present one). Doesn’t look like a bright future for presidential stoners.
As a fugitive from Mental Health, I’m in no position to adequately discuss these peer movement controversies, lest the peers and their employers find me a Secret Agent for the Blues and take action to protect their communities from people like me. I’m already self exiled from the substance abuse community, so I may just have to keep my evil secrets to myself, lest I be shunned by my other contemporaries.
This sounds like an opportunity for you recovered orthomolecular patients living near a med school, as you’re likely better informed about clinical nutrition than the students AND the teaching staff at these institutions. This provides an opportunity to secretly treat such individuals for appropriate rewards, while providing appropriate references for those caregivers with addiction problems themselves, who were sobered through the use of orthomolecular means.
After reading these accounts, I wonder if niacin shows any benefit in antipsychotic withdrawal. I’d stopped taking it after being hospitalized for temper outbursts (actually caffeine caused), when I thought staff might be outraged if they caught me. I started B3 again secretly upon returning from a Christmas pass and was taking it when I gave up the stelazine cold turkey a few weeks after being discharged, experiencing no problems. But then I’d only been on the antipsychotic a couple of months before I quit, so I’m not sure, even though I know it’s possible to withdraw from alcohol in a short time (2 days plus or minus) using mega niacin (not niacinamide), having overseen a couple of such withdrawals.
Rachel. All Dr. M. knew about your alleged medication was what the pharma company rep told him. It’s after the fact, but you should know that the data from company reps is the medico’s knowledge source for the drugs the rep is selling. (Many years ago I knew a Sandoz rep, whose company car was always packed with samples.)
To a degree, it is. I’ve been taking mega B3 for nearly 50 years and I still read stuff about the peril of consuming more than 20mg/day, thereby learning that I must be in the throes of chronic liver disease that could wipe me out in weeks. I also learn that I still must be hallucinating. Maybe I’m a dumpster diver and don’t notice it because I’m so seriously deluded.
Mercury, binra. It was used in blocking the felt hats of the 19th Century. The mad hatters were mad because they were exposed to mercury by contact.
Hardly, considering that a politically motivated change in the water supply caused it to be contaminated with lead. The poohbahs in Lansing, the capital, were irate at the thought of having to provide uncontaminated drinking water for the populace, so months went by with the city having a contaminated water source, while politicians declaimed their tired message of individual responsibility for governmental bungling- maybe they expected all the citizens to make home distillation units so Lansing could remain blissfully inert, instead of dealing with the problem, itself.
I knew this guy’s treatment was probably abysmal, which Dr. Shipko’s PS confirms, as does reading the black box stuff on Nardil. Plenty of opportunity for psychiatric fumbling, given that the newer antidepressants and the old MAOI can’t be taken simultaneously. But then the guys managing this “treatment” would become crazed with fear or fury if anyone suggested giving the patient 1mg. shots of B12 at intervals.
A critical part- but let’s see what Dr. Furman has to say.
This, of course, is humbug, as it contaminates medicine with sociology. You can’t solve social problems with medicine, which has no business getting the populace stoned out in order to meet social goals, as it corrupts medicine as well as society. This is one thing MIA misses, because the medical model the contributors attack isn’t medical at all, but a grandiose attempt to create a scientifically approved society; hence, you have Nazi shrinks gassing their patients instead of actually practicing medicine, and the present AMA and APA sucking up to drug companies and not paying attention to their patients’ needs (no winter trips to balmy isles without the prerequisite kissing of pharmaceutical behind).
Right now, I’m thinking of ketamine as more or less the same as PCP during its salad days during the early/middle 1970’s, a time featuring numerous delirious characters wandering around (under the influence of PCP) and creating spectacular scenes in hospital emergency rooms after the duty residents shot them up with antipsychotics (BIG mistake!) and got their establishments trashed as a consequence.
It might be, if “schizophrenia” were an entity unto itself, instead of a description of certain kinds of behavior or experiences; but alas, this isn’t so. Therapeutic fasting wasn’t discovered by a psychiatrist, but an allergist named Theron Randolph, back in the 1950’s, who presented his data on 2,000 patients at an APA conference- and was greeted by a ho hum by the psychiatric community. Psychiatric response to vitamin therapy has been to have articles in psychiatric journals warning how dangerous this was, particularly B3 therapy (I must have a liver the size of a basketball from taking B3 for 40+ years, that I don’t notice).
A trivial study, as it’s been known for decades that stimulants can induce hallucinations. Did someone actually believe this wouldn’t be the case with Ritalin? Or did the drug companies believe Ritalin wouldn’t do so, as it isn’t an amphetamine?
Make sure you pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain.
It may take some work, but it’s still possible.
Rachel777. Think of yourself as a spy for coherence. You’re already showing promise, as it doesn’t matter being different as long as nobody on the street notices, while you carefully build your network.
Exercise can be a snap if you find a way to do as a routine where you don’t have to drop what you’re doing to go to the track or the pool or the gym. Can you cycle to the store or to your appointments? Have you got enough time for tai chi before you go about your day ( I pick that because it doesn’t involve violent movement)? Notice that routine activities are a part of your “non-program” instead of separate activities where everything has to stop for you to perform exercises.
If you don’t take any guff from your shrink, you have a personality disorder. If you aren’t compliant with your alleged treatment, you have a personality disorder. If the shrink doesn’t like you, you have a personality disorder. If you don’t “improve” after your alleged treatment, you have a personality disorder. It doesn’t take an Einstein to grasp the essential nature of personality disorders.
Well, if you knew about altered perceptions inducing certain kinds of behaviors, you might not have been so confused by Ann’s actions, but then you’d likely lose some of the feelings you had toward her. Rest in peace, Ann.
Hi Michelle. My first exposure to the use of manganese for TD was in a piece by a Richard Kunin, MD, in an edition of the Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry (now the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine) back in the early 1980’s, in which he described his initial work with Mn. Now in his middle 80’s, Kunin’s still around. He has a web site in which he lists the many conditions he treats, and tardive dyskinesia is one of them.
Anafranil? I never heard of its use as an antidepressant, even though it’s one of the tricyclics. Sounds like irresponsible prescribing to me if you weren’t filling your time with obsessive activities and rituals- stuff the Germans called “zwang”.
The psych folks banned you taking vitamins because nutrients are bad for them, not you. They’d have to learn new techniques, new approaches and that their attempted persecution of the late A. Hoffer, et. al. was riddled with ignorance. They’d also have to trust patient reports and become bereft of drug company perks like “conferences” at warm weather resorts during the winter because they didn’t prescribe enough of their “angel’s” drugs.
They also rob you of manganese, which may result in tardive dyskinesia and akathisia, the reason so many people on antipsychotics have problems with involuntary movements.
Long ago, in Michigan, a Gertrude Black, MD regularly used mega B1 when treating suicidal ideation on a schedule of a 500mg initial dose, plus 100mg every hour thereafter until the ideation faded (I’d also suspect a long-term maintenance follow up). Naturally, her patients never told their local shrinks (this was back in the days when doctors could go to jail for using vitamins in large doses in their practices).
It also saves the significant people in one’s life of having to face the dangers of thought.
You’re not dealing with biological psychiatry, but with pharmacological psychiatry. The earliest guys to promote a biological approach to psychiatry, Hoffer and Osmond, knew about the existence of chlorpromazine and primitive antidepressants, the MAOI drugs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which make our SSRI’s look almost benevolent by contrast), but continued their work with B3/C therapy anyway. It was Osmond who reformed procedures at the old Weyburn Hospital, one of the worst in the world in those days, turning the old “seclusion rooms” into refuges by adding furniture and proper lighting, among other things. Both of them were also interested in psychedelic therapy for alcoholics, which our DEA has spent years of great effort to delegitimize.
5 to 20mg./day stelazine. This was before the days of the atypicals. Even on the 5mg. dose I still slept the 15 hours. On the 20mg. I was never really awake, which is why I went to the 5mg. size. I could now be awake 9 hours/day once I did so, which is why I ditched the zine and stuck with the B3/C regimen that most shrinks despise.
If they actually looked at the data, they’d likely find disturbing items about nutrient therapies (such as psychotic patients on niacin having a much lower suicide rate than those who weren’t) that might actually force them to think about the subject and endanger their careers and their standing with professional organizations and drug company sales reps.
I wonder how many of these subjects were on antipsychotics? That alone would flaw the studies, as vigorous activity doesn’t seem too likely for someone sleeping 12+ hours a day (I slept 15 hours/day when I was on them).
Apparently, these professionals didn’t bother themselves with the 50 year old Hoffer/Osmond (HOD) Diagnostic, which is quantitative and inquires directly about experiences. Maybe this is because it’s inconsistent with initial diagnoses, but more consistent with final diagnoses than the initial diagnoses are- humiliating to the professional diagnostician, who prides himself on his diagnostic skill. That, and the fact of both Hoffer and Osmond being advocates of the use of megavitamin B3 as a primary treatment for schizophrenia in lieu of psychiatric drugs, puts their test into the world of crystal gazing and evil sorcery, instead of modern organized psychiatry.
I notice we’re dealing with scientism, rather than real science. Scientism is a kind of religion that worships allegedly scientific discoveries, using “science” as a kind of Godly figure passing down revelations from Heaven to the unwashed herd of mere mortals. Real science is an unknown world to the “scientismists”.
Even more interesting is the psychiatric fury that arises when treatments for such conditions arise that are actually effective, such as dietary/nutrient based actions that use no pharmaceutical agents. The practitioners of such methods are regarded as agents of the Devil, dedicated to restoring medieval superstitions, in addition to condemning such valuable drugs as antidepressants.
I’ll pass. Eating at all at McDonald’s is an adventure in poor eating.
Perhaps, Rasselax.redux, it’s time for supplementation of some kind. Are there any orthomolecular practitioners in your neighborhood? A “face to face” is liable to be necessary, so the practitioner knows what to look and test for. You may be asked questions that seem strange, but actually have a purpose. Tell the practitioner a former madman sent you.
I think I’ll wait on the olanzapine. The only reason I might want to use it, is if I wanted to twitch, march or wander and weigh 300 pounds (I now weigh 175). Since most shrinks would have cows if they found I use mega B3 and C, I think I’ll avoid them, too.
I remember this stuff. This is a drug that promotes fugues and a kind of false awareness in which you do all sorts of things while actually asleep. I always wanted to go to a doctor’s office, saying I needed a scrip because I was driving cross-country to the Pacific coast, and gradually, in our conversation, leaking to the Man of Medicine that I wanted the drug because I planned on driving across the country while asleep.
should you decide to have another child, I’d still suggest zinc and B6 for your last month of pregnancy and your first 6 months or so of motherhood- zinc should you begin to get white spots in your nails and B6 to help metabolize the zinc. The white spots may indicate the presence of high serum copper (cause of depression and likely perceptual distortions), while the B6 facilitates dreaming- no dream memory, not enough, and wild, technicolor dreams, too much- as well as helping control the distortions.
The headache about mental health and violence is exacerbated by the few that do occur because the afflicted individual acts out some spectacular delusion and straight people use this to conjure up delusions of their own- being that all of us are concealing spectacular delusions that repeatedly urge us to act them out.
20 years ago, the mavens at Harvard Medical School would have laughed at the idea probiotics would have any value as a treatment for ANY psychiatric disorder. This alone is a big step for them.
Thereabouts.
I don’t know about this, Francesca. With all those “meds”, I’d be afraid to strike a match, if we were in the same room- fearing detonation if I did.
I prefer to be an escapee, having been told many years ago by a psychologist that I was a fugitive from Mental Health.
We might disagree on a number of things, but not this. I’m afraid we’ll have to endure this nonsense until we consistently have to endure repeat disasters from this pseudo-science.
Naturally, use of corrective diets and magnesium salts will NEVER be recognized as a proper treatment for childhood anxiety as none of the big-time providers can make tons of money thereby.
Famine is also a way to introduce nutrient dependencies in susceptible individuals, such as to B1 and B3, leading to a need of persistently increased quantities of the appropriate nutrients in order to avoid deficiency symptoms, which frequently include depression.
Well, one of the first things wrong with this guy’s anti-Semitic work is that there is no white race, because there are no and never were any living white people. The people we think of as white are actually pink, because of the capillaries in their skins, and because of Europeans’ having subcutaneous melanin compounds, formed by exposure to sunlight. The closest thing we have to white people are albinos, the highest ethnic percentage of which are sub Saharan Africans, who lack these chemicals, being albinos.
Gaming disorder? This is ridiculous. This is one of many addictions that induce similar behavior, no matter what the substance or activity. Seeing if there might be certain physiological constants behind such activities could be useful, but having miscellaneous diagnoses for a single activity is worthless.
Nasty as it sounds, Steve, think mass produced psychiatry to get mass produced fees.
One thing is that drug experiences tend to be bad when drug users are secretly given hallucinogens, so they don’t know what’s going on, in the same way “real” psychotics aren’t aware what’s going on when they begin to suffer perceptual distortions and disturbances.
Sounds like you’re a victim of psychiatric guesswork and wastebasket diagnosing, psychoses providing the biggest wastebasket.
Fairly effective, but such treatments require continuous maintaining and attention to diet, particularly if some foods get you buzzed when you cheat on your diet.
Rossa. The reason that pellagra was so common in the Old South was dietary. Poor Southerners, in those days, lived on a diet of corn dodgers and fatback (in lieu of meat). Corn contains an enzyme that neutralizes niacin.
Yes. My early adventures in underground psychiatry yielded enough evidence to respect these chaps’ notions. Although I wouldn’t suggest you do one of these, I did a couple of alcohol withdrawals and a physical withdrawal from heroin (though my smack user didn’t have a heavy habit), in addition to more conventional uses on psych treatment failures. Since I couldn’t, I didn’t use drugs.
Tardive dyskinesia could likely be made a curiosity if manufacturers of psych drugs added 2mg. of manganese to every “antipsychotic” or maybe SSRI tablet they manufactured. Whether this actually made psych drugs more effective therapeutically is another story, but it would likely make them less damaging than they presently are.
No- what you might consider a vitamin dependency, a situation where so-called normal levels of a vitamin are inadequate to maintain one’s functioning. Think of ability to effectively use a nutrient effectively and efficiently as a bell curve with most people in the middle of the curve. At one extreme, you have individuals who can get by on a junk food diet because they can function with very low nutrient levels, while at the other end, you have individuals who need very high levels of the same nutrient in order to function at all, such as vitamin dependent rickets, where an individual needs hundreds more units of vitamin D than most people to maintain his/her bone health. The same thing also exists with the B vitamins, which are necessary for mental functioning.
They can be both. You’re not going to solve life problems if you’re constantly addled by stressors (or easily become so). Besides, unlike the conventional shrink, you have the means to find specific things with biological testing for things like heavy metal and copper poisoning, excessive changes in blood sugar, overlooked neurological ailments. When one knows these things, psych drugging becomes much less necessary. The problem is in finding a reputable practitioner, as alternative medicine’s an attractive profession for humbugs.
Not all of us. In the years prior to his dropping out of psychiatry, Abram Hoffer used to tell his “schizophrenic” patients they actually suffered from a form of vitamin-resistant pellagra (he was one of the founders of megavitamin therapy), which he was going to treat accordingly.
Ketamine is no more a psychedelic substance than PCP was.
That should have been “by increasing that substance to neutralize the anesthetic.”
Not when they’re on the verge of behavior normally thought of as psychotic, such as being bombarded by suicidal notions. These anesthetic drugs’ greatest suicide prevention value likely comes when your patient/client is so paralyzed he’s/she’s been turned into a vegetable incapable of movement, much less thought.
That’s right, oldhead. Ketamine’s action is similar to the anesthetic, PCP (phencyclidine- I hope this is correct spelling). PCP was responsible for instigating a number of incidents of delirium that would get worse if the individual was treated with antipsychotic drugs to bring them out of the experience. I experimented with using glutamine for that purpose, with some success on several individuals, using 1g plus at a pop. The rationale for this may be that PCP antagonizes GABA, which the glutamine, being a part of the GABA molecule, might have counteracted be increasing that substance to neutralize the anesthetic. Would ketamine respond to this as well?
The next question is- what is going to be taught about mental health? This is a subject rife with humbug about mental health, as many of the standard diagnoses are filled with humbug elements concerning causes and treatments, while many of the most effective treatments are shunned by the mental health “community”, and recovered individuals castigated by professionals as delusional for believing themselves to be well.
Maybe you could also mention that it didn’t take long for the real patients to find out about Rosenhan’s faux patients. They were aware of the difference, though they didn’t know why the fakes were hanging out on their ward- but they offered reasonable conjectures.
Maybe if the doctor took olanzapine himself, it would add the weight to his arguments that it would add to his physique. What do you think, streetphotobeing?
Hi Steve. Maybe “misprescription” is the term you seek, as leapers not only don’t work, but also mask the existence of real sanity threatening sources of hyperactivity, such as lead poisoning.
Akathisia is probably as treatable as dyskinesia. Alas, it isn’t treatable with drugs but likely with manganese salts, which no orthodox shrink will touch with a ten-foot pole.
No, but those are the arguments they believe and would to have you believe.
Frank. Don’t let Fox News read your item, or you’ll be deluged with more platitudes about the Magic of the Marketplace and how these crippling psych drugs are just an intermediate step to the creation of the Philosopher’s Drug, the universal cure-all. Maybe you’ll even get an item about not consuming dangerous nutrients, because the Philosopher’s Drug will cure all medical problems, even insanity (but not the companies’ need for a patent monopoly).
There will be no reforms in pharmaceutical practices in the US. In my mind’s ear, I can already hear the conservative pundits roar about how medicine’s real goal is to enrich manufacturers and other upper level providers (not to benefit the health of those who aren’t billionaires). This will be topped off with the usual conservative platitudes about citizen responsibility. That this is so your health care providers can be totally irresponsible, gaining enormous profits at your expense, will not be mentioned (except for more platitudes about how profits going into the pockets of investors and executives will automatically lead to miraculous advances in human health- the greater the profit, the more benefits will automatically accumulate without thought or effort on anyone’s part).
I occasionally like to needle the eugenically inclined, by listing the positive aspects of schizophrenia, many of which are shared by close relatives; e.g., resistance to viruses, increased tolerance of wound shock, resistance to histamine, giving immunity to allergies, partial immunity to cancer (when unmedicated), slower aging, resistance to diabetes, resistance to pain (double edged). I haven’t used this as an opportunity to ask if these qualities should be eliminated to increase our genetic excellence, particularly because first order relatives of this “inferior” population have the benefits of these genetic qualities without being psychotic- perhaps they should be sequestered too, so as not to spread them throughout the population. (Read Hoffer and Osmond if you think I’m making this up).
And with that inspiring model, TED talks take up the cause of psychiatric pseudoscience, while ignoring the real science behind Ms. Rucklidge’s work.
Eric. It just hit me a few minutes after my post. You’d tell the inquisitors you ate the candle because the guy who broached the issue bet you $5 you wouldn’t eat it, and you’re surprised he brought it up at your hearing. Now, if the staff finds this an issue, you can reveal it was one of your scurvy MAD buddies who suggested it, proving it by sending the Men of Psychiatry here to find out for themselves. Best of all, if the accuser denies the Tale of the Candle was real, his argument for keeping you around is gone.
Eric. Maybe, when the junior shrink brought up this item about the candle, you should have told the panel that you ate it, and launch into some spiel about why, bringing up some imaginary incident in which you induce your accuser to supply imaginary details of the nonexistent incident, “helping” him remember the imaginary details. Remember- an imaginary incident needs a preposterous explanation and who better to supply it than our man of mental health?
It is a blind alley, but these “authorities” have to take it in their search for the alleged miracle drug that is not only the Magic Treatment for the supposed discovery, but also the Magic Creator of Fame and Fortune for themselves.
A good piece, illustrating how delusions come to be, in this case, as an attempt to explain the reasons behind the appearance of certain audios and their proliferation.
The next question to be answered is whether this increased screen time is a cause, or result of internalized misery- are you on line because you’re miserable, or is being constantly on line making you miserable?
A crude way to estimate (“guesstimate?”) this is with the old (quantitative) Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic test. You probably won’t see one of these in the UK, because Hoffer was a Canadian, one of those folks who seem to be regarded as ignorant hillbillies by the highly educated in the UK. The old Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation once made a booklet form of this test, so that schizophrenic Foundation members could check themselves out if they felt themselves possibly becoming “strange” again, so they could adjust or resume their vitamins. It was also used to screen alcoholic candidates for psychedelic therapy, which isn’t recommended for those with greatly disturbed perceptions, that class of individuals not responsive to such treatments.
The kind of authority based on knowledge and ability was called “sapiential authority” by Humphry Osmond way back, while he was getting endless grief for his role in creating megavitamin therapy.
Of course exercising’s omitted from treatments for depression. Providers don’t make any money from it, unlike antidepressants, which have to be taken for life, being addictive, thereby providing manufacturers with an opportunity for lifetime income from multitudes of users desperate to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
Remember, folks. The original Bedlam was a British institution- this hospital is carrying on the tradition, minus the painters who depicted it (except for the ones, like Richard Dadd, who were actually patients there).
I don’t know that much about antipsychotic drugs causing mental disorders, but they certainly cause neurological disorders like tardive dyskinesia. This misdirected causation would be more likely with the alleged antidepressants, which are used to tinker with the chemicals involved with moods- plenty of room to go astray there, particularly with careless and/or feckless prescribing.
Does that mean that gaining 100 pounds in a few months is actually a sign of recovery?
I’m waiting for some authority to proclaim that pellagra’s a life-long genetic illness. Or that depression from beriberi or scurvy proves that they’re life-long genetic illnesses. Or that dysperceptions caused by mercury poisoning are part of a life-long genetic illness.
This discussion wouldn’t be happening if shrinks used truly quantitative diagnostic techniques instead of just looking at a few common perceptual and/or mood symptoms and signs. Then I wouldn’t have to risk going to jail because I felt obliged to deal therapeutically with some inept professional’s failure.
Very good, Steve. Depression isn’t an independent entity unto itself, so the idea’s to find its instigators for depressed individuals in order to treat their conditions appropriately.
Am I a hermit in the psychological wilderness because I support the proper use of select nutrients for certain depressive states where appropriate selective features present themselves? Such contributing things as overconsumption of various stimulants (B1), presence of diverse perceptual distortions (B3 and/or B6+zinc), “bipolar” symptoms (B12), suicidal ideation (B1 and/or B12), alcohol abuse (B3 in niacin form, maybe accompanied by glutamine) frequently aren’t dealt with successfully by psychotherapy or antidepressants alone, but can be ameliorated by non-drug means directed by proper questioning and/or a few tests that can properly direct therapeutic interventions (a term I don’t really like).
You’re probably right, as you can’t get tardive dyskinesia if you aren’t on psych drugs.
With these brilliant instructions, I’m ready to go! Where are the patients? Let me at em! I’ll have them nodding robots in no time! When do I get to go to the pharma-sponsored seminars?
This flap does provide some evidence for the idea expressed in the late Abram Hoffer’s radio interview, in which he said that transporting the world’s psychiatrists to Mars would be the best way to improve mental health on earth. It also provides evidence that the medical model big-time psychiatry says it’s following is contaminated by a moral position held by churches, in which they state that they alone are capable of evaluating morality (Osmond’s moral model par excellence).
An expensive way to do nothing, as the results of these antipsychotic drug treatments are no better than absolutely no treatment whatsoever.
And what kind of activity compels you to be off doing self care? Water fasting? Tai chi? Distance running? Or is this some kind of secret activity, like the way Jesus told us to squirrel ourselves away when praying?
So much for the belief in the genetic inferiority of schizophrenics. The MIA readers who are diagnosed schizophrenics might be amused to know that unmedicated schizophrenics don’t get cancer, at least if the late Abram Hoffer’s figure of 4 of his 5,000 schizophrenic patients having cancer is true. But then he invariably used mega ascorbate in his treatment regimens (he and Linus Pauling were buddies).
I was prone to outbursts, losing friends and jobs until I gave up caffeine. I’m no sweetheart but I’m not bursting into fury these days.
Well, even though the kids are a mess and their parents are miserable, the doctor gets to schmooze with agents of the largest pharmaceutical companies in winter seminars in the subtropical regions of this continent, enjoying the sun while company reps misinform him about benevolent new miracle drugs (with plenty of time for recreation) that the company is pushing.
Kids may indeed have a physical problem where they spend all their time in frantic pointless activity. It’s called lead poisoning. Few GP’s or shrinks will look for it, even though doing thorough backgrounds and/or a hair sample aren’t complicated activities which don’t take an Einstein to execute. Synthetic food colors can also sometimes induce hyperactivity, but it’s apparently unpatriotic to badmouth the all American kiddie diet, while allergy fasting is definitely subversive to our way of life.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with notions of chemical imbalances having an effect on mental states, but not the way the industry proclaims them and feeds patients patentable drugs to allegedly correct them.
Well, we won’t have to worry for long, because we’ll soon be extinct, if the gent theorizing that glyphosate in the environment is why our insect pollinators are dying off in droves is correct. How will the last chemical industry CEO get a tombstone that memorializes the fortune he made manufacturing it, if no stonemasons and sculptors are left to make and carve it?
Easy to deduce what social justice means to psychologists. It means they’ll all get raises without having to do any more work.
I suspect it depends on what the chemical fixes are. Methamphetamine doesn’t have a good reputation (at least for most of us), given that it was Hitler’s favorite drug (his “doctor” shot him up with it every day, until the producer’s factory was bombed near the end of the war and the “unmedicated” Fuhrer collapsed). Downers don’t have what it takes, either (picture the president on the nod during a global crisis, though that might not be so bad with our present one). Doesn’t look like a bright future for presidential stoners.
As a fugitive from Mental Health, I’m in no position to adequately discuss these peer movement controversies, lest the peers and their employers find me a Secret Agent for the Blues and take action to protect their communities from people like me. I’m already self exiled from the substance abuse community, so I may just have to keep my evil secrets to myself, lest I be shunned by my other contemporaries.
This sounds like an opportunity for you recovered orthomolecular patients living near a med school, as you’re likely better informed about clinical nutrition than the students AND the teaching staff at these institutions. This provides an opportunity to secretly treat such individuals for appropriate rewards, while providing appropriate references for those caregivers with addiction problems themselves, who were sobered through the use of orthomolecular means.
After reading these accounts, I wonder if niacin shows any benefit in antipsychotic withdrawal. I’d stopped taking it after being hospitalized for temper outbursts (actually caffeine caused), when I thought staff might be outraged if they caught me. I started B3 again secretly upon returning from a Christmas pass and was taking it when I gave up the stelazine cold turkey a few weeks after being discharged, experiencing no problems. But then I’d only been on the antipsychotic a couple of months before I quit, so I’m not sure, even though I know it’s possible to withdraw from alcohol in a short time (2 days plus or minus) using mega niacin (not niacinamide), having overseen a couple of such withdrawals.
Rachel. All Dr. M. knew about your alleged medication was what the pharma company rep told him. It’s after the fact, but you should know that the data from company reps is the medico’s knowledge source for the drugs the rep is selling. (Many years ago I knew a Sandoz rep, whose company car was always packed with samples.)
To a degree, it is. I’ve been taking mega B3 for nearly 50 years and I still read stuff about the peril of consuming more than 20mg/day, thereby learning that I must be in the throes of chronic liver disease that could wipe me out in weeks. I also learn that I still must be hallucinating. Maybe I’m a dumpster diver and don’t notice it because I’m so seriously deluded.
Mercury, binra. It was used in blocking the felt hats of the 19th Century. The mad hatters were mad because they were exposed to mercury by contact.
Hardly, considering that a politically motivated change in the water supply caused it to be contaminated with lead. The poohbahs in Lansing, the capital, were irate at the thought of having to provide uncontaminated drinking water for the populace, so months went by with the city having a contaminated water source, while politicians declaimed their tired message of individual responsibility for governmental bungling- maybe they expected all the citizens to make home distillation units so Lansing could remain blissfully inert, instead of dealing with the problem, itself.
I knew this guy’s treatment was probably abysmal, which Dr. Shipko’s PS confirms, as does reading the black box stuff on Nardil. Plenty of opportunity for psychiatric fumbling, given that the newer antidepressants and the old MAOI can’t be taken simultaneously. But then the guys managing this “treatment” would become crazed with fear or fury if anyone suggested giving the patient 1mg. shots of B12 at intervals.
A critical part- but let’s see what Dr. Furman has to say.
This, of course, is humbug, as it contaminates medicine with sociology. You can’t solve social problems with medicine, which has no business getting the populace stoned out in order to meet social goals, as it corrupts medicine as well as society. This is one thing MIA misses, because the medical model the contributors attack isn’t medical at all, but a grandiose attempt to create a scientifically approved society; hence, you have Nazi shrinks gassing their patients instead of actually practicing medicine, and the present AMA and APA sucking up to drug companies and not paying attention to their patients’ needs (no winter trips to balmy isles without the prerequisite kissing of pharmaceutical behind).
Right now, I’m thinking of ketamine as more or less the same as PCP during its salad days during the early/middle 1970’s, a time featuring numerous delirious characters wandering around (under the influence of PCP) and creating spectacular scenes in hospital emergency rooms after the duty residents shot them up with antipsychotics (BIG mistake!) and got their establishments trashed as a consequence.
It might be, if “schizophrenia” were an entity unto itself, instead of a description of certain kinds of behavior or experiences; but alas, this isn’t so. Therapeutic fasting wasn’t discovered by a psychiatrist, but an allergist named Theron Randolph, back in the 1950’s, who presented his data on 2,000 patients at an APA conference- and was greeted by a ho hum by the psychiatric community. Psychiatric response to vitamin therapy has been to have articles in psychiatric journals warning how dangerous this was, particularly B3 therapy (I must have a liver the size of a basketball from taking B3 for 40+ years, that I don’t notice).
A trivial study, as it’s been known for decades that stimulants can induce hallucinations. Did someone actually believe this wouldn’t be the case with Ritalin? Or did the drug companies believe Ritalin wouldn’t do so, as it isn’t an amphetamine?
Make sure you pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain.
It may take some work, but it’s still possible.
Rachel777. Think of yourself as a spy for coherence. You’re already showing promise, as it doesn’t matter being different as long as nobody on the street notices, while you carefully build your network.
Exercise can be a snap if you find a way to do as a routine where you don’t have to drop what you’re doing to go to the track or the pool or the gym. Can you cycle to the store or to your appointments? Have you got enough time for tai chi before you go about your day ( I pick that because it doesn’t involve violent movement)? Notice that routine activities are a part of your “non-program” instead of separate activities where everything has to stop for you to perform exercises.
If you don’t take any guff from your shrink, you have a personality disorder. If you aren’t compliant with your alleged treatment, you have a personality disorder. If the shrink doesn’t like you, you have a personality disorder. If you don’t “improve” after your alleged treatment, you have a personality disorder. It doesn’t take an Einstein to grasp the essential nature of personality disorders.
Well, if you knew about altered perceptions inducing certain kinds of behaviors, you might not have been so confused by Ann’s actions, but then you’d likely lose some of the feelings you had toward her. Rest in peace, Ann.
Hi Michelle. My first exposure to the use of manganese for TD was in a piece by a Richard Kunin, MD, in an edition of the Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry (now the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine) back in the early 1980’s, in which he described his initial work with Mn. Now in his middle 80’s, Kunin’s still around. He has a web site in which he lists the many conditions he treats, and tardive dyskinesia is one of them.
Anafranil? I never heard of its use as an antidepressant, even though it’s one of the tricyclics. Sounds like irresponsible prescribing to me if you weren’t filling your time with obsessive activities and rituals- stuff the Germans called “zwang”.
The psych folks banned you taking vitamins because nutrients are bad for them, not you. They’d have to learn new techniques, new approaches and that their attempted persecution of the late A. Hoffer, et. al. was riddled with ignorance. They’d also have to trust patient reports and become bereft of drug company perks like “conferences” at warm weather resorts during the winter because they didn’t prescribe enough of their “angel’s” drugs.
They also rob you of manganese, which may result in tardive dyskinesia and akathisia, the reason so many people on antipsychotics have problems with involuntary movements.
Long ago, in Michigan, a Gertrude Black, MD regularly used mega B1 when treating suicidal ideation on a schedule of a 500mg initial dose, plus 100mg every hour thereafter until the ideation faded (I’d also suspect a long-term maintenance follow up). Naturally, her patients never told their local shrinks (this was back in the days when doctors could go to jail for using vitamins in large doses in their practices).
Supplemental magnesium probably wouldn’t hurt, either.
It also saves the significant people in one’s life of having to face the dangers of thought.
You’re not dealing with biological psychiatry, but with pharmacological psychiatry. The earliest guys to promote a biological approach to psychiatry, Hoffer and Osmond, knew about the existence of chlorpromazine and primitive antidepressants, the MAOI drugs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which make our SSRI’s look almost benevolent by contrast), but continued their work with B3/C therapy anyway. It was Osmond who reformed procedures at the old Weyburn Hospital, one of the worst in the world in those days, turning the old “seclusion rooms” into refuges by adding furniture and proper lighting, among other things. Both of them were also interested in psychedelic therapy for alcoholics, which our DEA has spent years of great effort to delegitimize.
5 to 20mg./day stelazine. This was before the days of the atypicals. Even on the 5mg. dose I still slept the 15 hours. On the 20mg. I was never really awake, which is why I went to the 5mg. size. I could now be awake 9 hours/day once I did so, which is why I ditched the zine and stuck with the B3/C regimen that most shrinks despise.
If they actually looked at the data, they’d likely find disturbing items about nutrient therapies (such as psychotic patients on niacin having a much lower suicide rate than those who weren’t) that might actually force them to think about the subject and endanger their careers and their standing with professional organizations and drug company sales reps.
I wonder how many of these subjects were on antipsychotics? That alone would flaw the studies, as vigorous activity doesn’t seem too likely for someone sleeping 12+ hours a day (I slept 15 hours/day when I was on them).
Apparently, these professionals didn’t bother themselves with the 50 year old Hoffer/Osmond (HOD) Diagnostic, which is quantitative and inquires directly about experiences. Maybe this is because it’s inconsistent with initial diagnoses, but more consistent with final diagnoses than the initial diagnoses are- humiliating to the professional diagnostician, who prides himself on his diagnostic skill. That, and the fact of both Hoffer and Osmond being advocates of the use of megavitamin B3 as a primary treatment for schizophrenia in lieu of psychiatric drugs, puts their test into the world of crystal gazing and evil sorcery, instead of modern organized psychiatry.
I notice we’re dealing with scientism, rather than real science. Scientism is a kind of religion that worships allegedly scientific discoveries, using “science” as a kind of Godly figure passing down revelations from Heaven to the unwashed herd of mere mortals. Real science is an unknown world to the “scientismists”.
Even more interesting is the psychiatric fury that arises when treatments for such conditions arise that are actually effective, such as dietary/nutrient based actions that use no pharmaceutical agents. The practitioners of such methods are regarded as agents of the Devil, dedicated to restoring medieval superstitions, in addition to condemning such valuable drugs as antidepressants.
I’ll pass. Eating at all at McDonald’s is an adventure in poor eating.
Perhaps, Rasselax.redux, it’s time for supplementation of some kind. Are there any orthomolecular practitioners in your neighborhood? A “face to face” is liable to be necessary, so the practitioner knows what to look and test for. You may be asked questions that seem strange, but actually have a purpose. Tell the practitioner a former madman sent you.
I think I’ll wait on the olanzapine. The only reason I might want to use it, is if I wanted to twitch, march or wander and weigh 300 pounds (I now weigh 175). Since most shrinks would have cows if they found I use mega B3 and C, I think I’ll avoid them, too.
I remember this stuff. This is a drug that promotes fugues and a kind of false awareness in which you do all sorts of things while actually asleep. I always wanted to go to a doctor’s office, saying I needed a scrip because I was driving cross-country to the Pacific coast, and gradually, in our conversation, leaking to the Man of Medicine that I wanted the drug because I planned on driving across the country while asleep.
should you decide to have another child, I’d still suggest zinc and B6 for your last month of pregnancy and your first 6 months or so of motherhood- zinc should you begin to get white spots in your nails and B6 to help metabolize the zinc. The white spots may indicate the presence of high serum copper (cause of depression and likely perceptual distortions), while the B6 facilitates dreaming- no dream memory, not enough, and wild, technicolor dreams, too much- as well as helping control the distortions.
The headache about mental health and violence is exacerbated by the few that do occur because the afflicted individual acts out some spectacular delusion and straight people use this to conjure up delusions of their own- being that all of us are concealing spectacular delusions that repeatedly urge us to act them out.
20 years ago, the mavens at Harvard Medical School would have laughed at the idea probiotics would have any value as a treatment for ANY psychiatric disorder. This alone is a big step for them.
Thereabouts.
I don’t know about this, Francesca. With all those “meds”, I’d be afraid to strike a match, if we were in the same room- fearing detonation if I did.
I prefer to be an escapee, having been told many years ago by a psychologist that I was a fugitive from Mental Health.
We might disagree on a number of things, but not this. I’m afraid we’ll have to endure this nonsense until we consistently have to endure repeat disasters from this pseudo-science.
Naturally, use of corrective diets and magnesium salts will NEVER be recognized as a proper treatment for childhood anxiety as none of the big-time providers can make tons of money thereby.
Famine is also a way to introduce nutrient dependencies in susceptible individuals, such as to B1 and B3, leading to a need of persistently increased quantities of the appropriate nutrients in order to avoid deficiency symptoms, which frequently include depression.
Well, one of the first things wrong with this guy’s anti-Semitic work is that there is no white race, because there are no and never were any living white people. The people we think of as white are actually pink, because of the capillaries in their skins, and because of Europeans’ having subcutaneous melanin compounds, formed by exposure to sunlight. The closest thing we have to white people are albinos, the highest ethnic percentage of which are sub Saharan Africans, who lack these chemicals, being albinos.
Gaming disorder? This is ridiculous. This is one of many addictions that induce similar behavior, no matter what the substance or activity. Seeing if there might be certain physiological constants behind such activities could be useful, but having miscellaneous diagnoses for a single activity is worthless.
Nasty as it sounds, Steve, think mass produced psychiatry to get mass produced fees.
One thing is that drug experiences tend to be bad when drug users are secretly given hallucinogens, so they don’t know what’s going on, in the same way “real” psychotics aren’t aware what’s going on when they begin to suffer perceptual distortions and disturbances.
Sounds like you’re a victim of psychiatric guesswork and wastebasket diagnosing, psychoses providing the biggest wastebasket.
Fairly effective, but such treatments require continuous maintaining and attention to diet, particularly if some foods get you buzzed when you cheat on your diet.
Rossa. The reason that pellagra was so common in the Old South was dietary. Poor Southerners, in those days, lived on a diet of corn dodgers and fatback (in lieu of meat). Corn contains an enzyme that neutralizes niacin.
Yes. My early adventures in underground psychiatry yielded enough evidence to respect these chaps’ notions. Although I wouldn’t suggest you do one of these, I did a couple of alcohol withdrawals and a physical withdrawal from heroin (though my smack user didn’t have a heavy habit), in addition to more conventional uses on psych treatment failures. Since I couldn’t, I didn’t use drugs.
Tardive dyskinesia could likely be made a curiosity if manufacturers of psych drugs added 2mg. of manganese to every “antipsychotic” or maybe SSRI tablet they manufactured. Whether this actually made psych drugs more effective therapeutically is another story, but it would likely make them less damaging than they presently are.
No- what you might consider a vitamin dependency, a situation where so-called normal levels of a vitamin are inadequate to maintain one’s functioning. Think of ability to effectively use a nutrient effectively and efficiently as a bell curve with most people in the middle of the curve. At one extreme, you have individuals who can get by on a junk food diet because they can function with very low nutrient levels, while at the other end, you have individuals who need very high levels of the same nutrient in order to function at all, such as vitamin dependent rickets, where an individual needs hundreds more units of vitamin D than most people to maintain his/her bone health. The same thing also exists with the B vitamins, which are necessary for mental functioning.
They can be both. You’re not going to solve life problems if you’re constantly addled by stressors (or easily become so). Besides, unlike the conventional shrink, you have the means to find specific things with biological testing for things like heavy metal and copper poisoning, excessive changes in blood sugar, overlooked neurological ailments. When one knows these things, psych drugging becomes much less necessary. The problem is in finding a reputable practitioner, as alternative medicine’s an attractive profession for humbugs.
Not all of us. In the years prior to his dropping out of psychiatry, Abram Hoffer used to tell his “schizophrenic” patients they actually suffered from a form of vitamin-resistant pellagra (he was one of the founders of megavitamin therapy), which he was going to treat accordingly.
Ketamine is no more a psychedelic substance than PCP was.
That should have been “by increasing that substance to neutralize the anesthetic.”
Not when they’re on the verge of behavior normally thought of as psychotic, such as being bombarded by suicidal notions. These anesthetic drugs’ greatest suicide prevention value likely comes when your patient/client is so paralyzed he’s/she’s been turned into a vegetable incapable of movement, much less thought.
That’s right, oldhead. Ketamine’s action is similar to the anesthetic, PCP (phencyclidine- I hope this is correct spelling). PCP was responsible for instigating a number of incidents of delirium that would get worse if the individual was treated with antipsychotic drugs to bring them out of the experience. I experimented with using glutamine for that purpose, with some success on several individuals, using 1g plus at a pop. The rationale for this may be that PCP antagonizes GABA, which the glutamine, being a part of the GABA molecule, might have counteracted be increasing that substance to neutralize the anesthetic. Would ketamine respond to this as well?
The next question is- what is going to be taught about mental health? This is a subject rife with humbug about mental health, as many of the standard diagnoses are filled with humbug elements concerning causes and treatments, while many of the most effective treatments are shunned by the mental health “community”, and recovered individuals castigated by professionals as delusional for believing themselves to be well.
Maybe you could also mention that it didn’t take long for the real patients to find out about Rosenhan’s faux patients. They were aware of the difference, though they didn’t know why the fakes were hanging out on their ward- but they offered reasonable conjectures.
Maybe if the doctor took olanzapine himself, it would add the weight to his arguments that it would add to his physique. What do you think, streetphotobeing?
Hi Steve. Maybe “misprescription” is the term you seek, as leapers not only don’t work, but also mask the existence of real sanity threatening sources of hyperactivity, such as lead poisoning.
Akathisia is probably as treatable as dyskinesia. Alas, it isn’t treatable with drugs but likely with manganese salts, which no orthodox shrink will touch with a ten-foot pole.
No, but those are the arguments they believe and would to have you believe.
Frank. Don’t let Fox News read your item, or you’ll be deluged with more platitudes about the Magic of the Marketplace and how these crippling psych drugs are just an intermediate step to the creation of the Philosopher’s Drug, the universal cure-all. Maybe you’ll even get an item about not consuming dangerous nutrients, because the Philosopher’s Drug will cure all medical problems, even insanity (but not the companies’ need for a patent monopoly).
There will be no reforms in pharmaceutical practices in the US. In my mind’s ear, I can already hear the conservative pundits roar about how medicine’s real goal is to enrich manufacturers and other upper level providers (not to benefit the health of those who aren’t billionaires). This will be topped off with the usual conservative platitudes about citizen responsibility. That this is so your health care providers can be totally irresponsible, gaining enormous profits at your expense, will not be mentioned (except for more platitudes about how profits going into the pockets of investors and executives will automatically lead to miraculous advances in human health- the greater the profit, the more benefits will automatically accumulate without thought or effort on anyone’s part).
I occasionally like to needle the eugenically inclined, by listing the positive aspects of schizophrenia, many of which are shared by close relatives; e.g., resistance to viruses, increased tolerance of wound shock, resistance to histamine, giving immunity to allergies, partial immunity to cancer (when unmedicated), slower aging, resistance to diabetes, resistance to pain (double edged). I haven’t used this as an opportunity to ask if these qualities should be eliminated to increase our genetic excellence, particularly because first order relatives of this “inferior” population have the benefits of these genetic qualities without being psychotic- perhaps they should be sequestered too, so as not to spread them throughout the population. (Read Hoffer and Osmond if you think I’m making this up).
And with that inspiring model, TED talks take up the cause of psychiatric pseudoscience, while ignoring the real science behind Ms. Rucklidge’s work.