by Susan Rosenthal
When you are sick or injured, you want to know what’s wrong and what can be done. You want a diagnosis. A correct diagnosis reveals what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment and what is the likely outcome. For example, a diagnosis of pneumonia indicates a serious lung infection that can usually be cured with antibiotics.
While medical diagnoses are based on science, psychiatric “diagnoses” are not at all scientific. They do not reveal what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment, and what is the likely outcome. Nor are they reliable. Different psychiatrists who examine the same patient typically offer different “diagnoses.” Moreover, psychiatric “diagnoses” move in and out of favor at different times.
Psychiatric “diagnosis” is actually a labeling process, where the patient’s symptoms are matched with a grouping of symptoms listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM). As we shall see, this psychiatric “bible” was developed and is maintained by financial and political interests.1
Sigmund Freud
Who decides what is normal or healthy and what is deviant or sick?
Before the 20th century, life stresses were generally seen as spiritual problems or physical illnesses, and people turned to religious advisors and physicians for help. Medical doctors treated “hysteria” and “nerves” as physical problems. Psychiatry was restricted to the treatment of severely disturbed people in asylums.2 The first classification of psychiatric disorders in the United States appeared in 1918 and contained 22 categories. All but one referred to various forms of insanity.
In 1901, Sigmund Freud revolutionized psychiatry by breaking down the barrier between mental illness and normal behavior. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,3 Freud argued that commonplace behaviors - slips of the tongue, what people find humorous, what they forget and the mistakes they make - indicate repressed sexual feelings that lurk beneath the surface of normal behavior.
By linking everyday behavior with mental illness, Freud and his followers released psychiatry from the asylum. Between 1917 and 1970, as psychiatrists cultivated clients with a broad range of problems, the number of psychiatrists practicing outside institutions swelled from eight percent to 66 percent.4
The social movements of the 1960’s opposed psychiatry’s focus on inner conflict and emphasized the social sources of sickness instead. Dr. Alvin Poussaint recalls the 1969 convention of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).
“After multiple racist killings during the civil rights movement, a group of black psychiatrists sought to have murderous bigotry based on race classified as a mental disorder. The APA’s officials rejected that recommendation, arguing that since so many Americans are racist, racism in this country is normative.”5
Growing the industry
In 1980, the APA overhauled the DSM. The Task Force established to create the new manual declared that any disorder could be included,
“If there is general agreement among clinicians, who would be expected to encounter the condition, that there are significant number of patients who have it and that its identification is important in the clinical work it is included in the classification.”6
In other words, the new DSM was not based on science, but on the need to maintain existing patients and include new ones who might seek help for any number of problems. A profitable and self-perpetuating industry was born. The more people could be encouraged to seek treatment, the more conditions could be entered into the DSM, and the more people could be encouraged to seek treatment for these new conditions.
By 1994, the DSM listed 400 distinct mental disorders covering a wide variety of behaviors in adults and children. Significantly, racism, homophobia (fear of homosexuality) and misogyny (hatred of women) have never been listed as mental disorders. In 1999, the chairperson of the APA’s Council on Psychiatry and the Law confirmed that racism “is not something that is designated as an illness that can be treated by mental health professionals.”7 Homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder until activists campaigned to have it removed.8
The women’s liberation movement condemned labeling symptoms of oppression as mental illnesses. In They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal, Paula Caplan explains,
“In a culture that scorns and demeans lesbians and gay men, it is hard to be completely comfortable with one’s homosexuality, and so the DSM-III authors were treating as a mental disorder what was often simply a perfectly comprehensible reaction to being mocked and oppressed.”9
Caplan describes efforts to prevent “Masochistic Personality Disorder” from being included in the DSM. This disorder assumes that women stay with abusive spouses because like to suffer, not because they lack the resources to leave. Despite protest, “Masochistic Personality Disorder” was added to the 1987 edition of the DSM, although it was later dropped.
The inclusion of “Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder” (PMDD) in the DSM also raised a protest. According to Caplan,
“The problem with PMDD is not the women who report premenstrual mood problems but the diagnosis of PMDD itself. Excellent research shows that these women are significantly more likely than other women to be in upsetting life situations, such as being battered or being mistreated at work. To label them mentally disordered - to send the message that their problems are individual, psychological ones - hides the real, external sources of their trouble.”10
As soon as PMDD was listed in the DSM, Eli Lilly repackaged its best-selling drug, Prozac, in a pink-pill format, renamed it Serafem, and promoted it as a treatment for PMDD. By creating Serafem, Lilly was able to extend its patent on the Prozac formula for another seven years.
A marketing gold mine
The DSM is a marketing gold mine for the drug industry. The FDA will approve a drug to treat a mental disorder only if that disorder is listed in the DSM. Therefore, each new listing is worth millions in potential drug sales. Most of the experts who construct the DSM have financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, and every new edition of the DSM contains more conditions than the previous one.
Once the DSM lists a new mental disorder, drugs for that disorder are heavily marketed for everyone who might fit the symptom checklist. (Doctors are also encouraged to prescribe these drugs for “off-label use,” which means to anyone they think might benefit.) Not surprisingly, the numbers of people “diagnosed” with a mental condition rise rapidly after a drug is approved to treat that condition.
In 2005, a major study announced that “About half of Americans will meet the criteria for a DSM-IV disorder sometime in their life…11 How is this possible? Has it become normal to be mentally ill, or has the definition of mental illness expanded beyond reason? Both could be true.
Capitalism damages people in many ways. It’s also true that the more people can be labeled as sick, the more profits can be made from selling them treatments. In Creating Mental Illness, Alan Horowitz warns,
“…a large proportion of behaviors that are currently regarded as mental illnesses are normal consequences of stressful social arrangements or forms of social deviance. Contrary to its general definition of mental disorder, the DSM and much research that follows from it considers all symptoms, whether internal or not, expected or not, deviant or not, as signs of disorder.”12
Most people know the difference between normal behavior (such as grief over the death of a loved one) and abnormal behavior that could indicate an internal disorder (such as prolonged grief for no apparent reason). However, the DSM does not consider what happens in people’s lives. With one exception (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), the DSM lists and categorizes symptoms outside of any social context. As a result, DSM-based surveys artificially increase the numbers of people suffering from mental disorders and, therefore, the market for drug treatments.
DSM-inflated rates of mental illness are typically accompanied by the warning that not enough people are getting treatment,13 which serves to further expand the market for drugs. The question of whether all these people are actually sick is never raised, nor is the question of whether their symptoms might be linked to physical illnesses.
Many physical diseases generate psychological symptoms. Researchers estimate that from 41 to 83 percent of people being treated for psychiatric disorders are actually suffering from misdiagnosed physical diseases like hyo- or hyper-thyroidism, heart disease, immune-system diseases, nervous system diseases (including multiple sclerosis) and cancer.14 Undiagnosed and untreated, these physical diseases can progress to cripple or kill. Furthermore, psychiatric drugs can worsen physical diseases, sometimes fatally. None of these “costs” are borne by the pharmaceutical industry - the most profitable industry in America.
Social control
Psychiatry has a long history of medicating the oppressed, including children, for social control.15
Schools force youngsters to sit still in closed rooms for long periods of time and force-feed them information that has no connection to their lives. Those who rebel are diagnosed with mental disorders (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, etc.) and forced to take mind-altering drugs. To preserve a crazy-making system, the healthy child must be made “crazy.”
Using DSM criteria, at least six million American children have been diagnosed with serious mental disorders, triple the number in the early 1990’s. The rate of boys aged 7 to 12 diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder more than doubled between 1995 and 2000 and continues to rise.
A 2007 survey of 8- to 15-year-olds discovered that nine percent met the DSM criteria for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The survey found that fewer than half of these children had been diagnosed or treated, “suggesting that some children with clinically significant inattention and hyperactivity may not be receiving optimal attention.” Noting that poor children were least likely to receive medication, the authors of the study recommend “further investigation and possible intervention.”16
Instead of addressing the oppressive social conditions that agitate children, psychiatry imposes conformity through medication. To force compliance with this oppressive system, access to insurance benefits, medical care and social services depends on “having a diagnosis.”
Most of the symptoms listed in the DSM describe human responses to deprivation and oppression (anxiety, agitation, aggression, depression) and the many ways that people try to manage unbearable pain (obsessions, compulsions, rage, addictions). Depression is strongly linked with poverty,17 and alleviating poverty can lift depression.18
The suffering of war veterans is labeled as a mental disorder (PTSD) instead of the inevitable consequence of war. These soldiers are sick because they have been violated. Their symptoms express their anguish and outrage at the barbarism they witnessed and perpetrated. What’s sick is sending good people into the hell of war.
Schizophrenia is designated as a mental illness that is assumed to be genetic. However, studies from several countries show that living in a city gives a person a higher probability of developing schizophrenia than having a family member with the disease. Moving from rural to urban centers increases the risk of developing schizophrenia, while moving in the other direction reduces the risk.19 City living is associated with increased stress and trauma, exposure to lead,20 infection,21 malnutrition,22 and racial discrimination23- all of which are linked with higher rates of schizophrenia.
Under capitalism, addressing the social sources of sickness is politically risky and unprofitable. So psychiatry extracts the individual from society, splits the brain from the body, severs the mind from the brain and drugs the brain.24
A sick society
Capitalism is a social system that requires the majority to have no control over their lives and to accept this as “normal.” Therefore, all reactions to inequality and deprivation are portrayed as signs of personal inadequacy, biological defect, mental illness - anything other than reasonable responses to unreasonable conditions.
During slavery days, experts argued that Black people were psychologically suited for a life of slavery, so there must be something wrong with those who rebelled.25 In 1851, the diagnosis of “drapetomania” (runaway fever) was developed to explain why slaves try to escape.26
Not much has changed. Today, exploitation and oppression are considered normal, and those who rebel in any way are considered to be sick or deviant and in need of “treatment” or punishment.
What’s the diagnosis for a sick society? We know what’s wrong. A few people accumulate wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. What’s the treatment? Capitalism must be replaced with a socialist society that generates health, not sickness. Who can deliver the medicine? The global working-class majority. What’s holding us back? Lack of organization.
I don’t expect this diagnosis to appear in the DSM anytime soon.
References
1 Kirk, S.S. & Kutchins, H. (1992). The selling of DSM: The rhetoric of science in psychiatry. New York: Aldine De Gruyter.
2. Horowitz, A.V. (2002). Creating mental illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
3. Freud, S. (1901/1991). The psychopathology of everyday life. New York: Penguin
4. Shorter, E. (1997). A history of psychiatry: From the era of the asylum to the age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
5. Poussaint, A.F. & Alexander, A. (2000). Lay my burden down: Suicide and the mental health crisis among African-Americans. Boston: Beacon Press, p.125.
6. Spitzer, R.L., Sheeney, M. & Endicott, J. (1977). DSM III: Guiding principles. In Psychiatric diagnosis, (Eds). Rakoff, V., Stancer, H. & Kedward, H. New York: Brunner Mazel.
7. Egan, T. (1999). Racist shootings test limits of health system and laws. New York Times, August 14, p.1.
8. “DSM and homosexuality: A cautionary tale.” in Kirk, S.A. & Kutchins, H. (1992). The selling of DSM: The rhetoric of science in psychiatry. New York: Aldine De Gruyter p 81-90
9. Caplan, P. (1995). They say you’re crazy: How the world’s most powerful psychiatrists decide who’s normal. New York: Addison-Wesley, pp.180-181.
10. Caplan, P.J. (2002). Expert decries diagnosis for pathologizing women. Journal of Addiction and Mental Health. September/October 2001, p.16.
11 Kessler, R.C. et. al. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry. Vol.62, No.6, pp.593-602.
12. Horowitz, A.V. (2002). Creating Mental Illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.37.
13. Talen, J. (2005). Survey says nearly half of all Americans will be affected by a mental illness, some before adulthood. Newsday, June 7.
14. Klonoff, E.A. & Landrine, H., 1997, Preventing misdiagnosis of women: A guide to physical disorders that have psychiatric symptoms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
15. Breggin, P.R. & Breggin, G. R. (1994). The war against children: How the drugs, programs, and theories of the psychiatric establishment are threatening America’s children with a medical ‘cure’ for violence. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
16. Froehlich T.E., et. al. (2007). Prevalence, recognition, and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in a national sample of US children. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Vol.161, pp.857-864.
17. Duenwald, M. (2003). More Americans Seeking Help for Depression. New York Times, June 18.
18. Costello, E.J., Compton, S.N., Keeler, G. & Angold, A.(2003). Relationships between poverty and psychopathology: a natural experiment. JAMA. Oct 15, Vol.290, No.15, pp.2023-9.
19.. Pedersen, C.B. & Mortensen, P.B. (2001). Evidence of a dose-response relationship between urbanicity during upbringing and schizophrenia risk. Arch Gen Psychiatry. Vol. 58, No. 11, pp.1039-46.
20. Calamai, P. (2004). Lead exposure in womb linked to schizophrenia. Risk also found if mother had flu: 1960’s U.S. data help unravel mystery. The Toronto Star, Feb. 15.
21. Opler, M.G.A. et al. (2004). Prenatal lead exposure, -aminolevulinic acid, and schizophrenia. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol.112, pp.548-552.
22. St Clair, D., Xu, M., Wang, P. Yu, Y., Fang, Y., Zhang, F. Zheng, X., Gu, N., Feng,G., Sham, P. & He, L. (2005). Rates of adult schizophrenia following prenatal exposure to the Chinese Famine of 1959-1961. JAMA. Vol.294, No. 5, pp.557-562.
23. Joan Arehart-Treichel, J. (2003). Is schizophrenia a downside of urban life? Psychiatric News (American Psychiatric Association) May 16, Vol.38, No.10, p.37.
24. Ross, C.A., & Pam, A., (1995). Pseudoscience in biological psychiatry: Blaming the body. New York: Wiley.
25. Poussaint, A.F. & Alexander, A. (2000). Lay my burden down: Suicide and the mental health crisis among African Americans. Boston: Beacon Press.
26. Cartwright, S. (1851). Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race. New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. May, p. 707.
July 11th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Nov. 16/06
My issue is Zyprexa which is only FDA approved for schizophrenia (.5-1% of pop) and some bipolar (2% pop) and then an even smaller percentage of these two groups. So how does Zyprexa get to be the 7th largest drug sale in the world?
Eli Lilly is in deep trouble for using their drug reps to ‘encourage’ doctors to write Zyprexa for non-FDA approved ‘off label’ uses.
The drug causes increased diabetes risk,and medicare picks up all the expensive fallout.There are now 7 states (and counting) going after Lilly for fraud and restitution.
July 11th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
December 31/06
Toxoplasma gondii, a parasitic protozoid, has been linked to schizophrenia and lower IQ - affecting the brain by forming cysts.
A recent study has revealed that toxoplasma infection may affect 20% of Americans and over half of all humans. This would make for an interesting study; simply take a blood test and correlate that with the psychiatric diagnosis. My guess is that the results would be stunning!
The link to the article is available here: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/parasite-makes-men-dumb-women-sexy/2006/12/26/1166895290973.html
July 13th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
July 6/08
I found this article on the true value of the DSM fascinating. It examined the issue of the modern treatment of mental illness completely, and I couldn’t argue with the author’s professionalism from a doctor’s standpoint.
However, the idea of socialism taking the place of a mental health establishment fueled by a desire for money instead of a scientific treatment of the patient lacks, as do many modern ideas, an exacting basis for thought. Understanding the world as you suggest, doctor, takes a method of analysis that is eminently rational, such as learning the true nature of cosmology. Until we grasp the infinite capacity of the human mind to make a leap of logic, and therefore really solve the riddles of existence, we will be trapped in the guess-work frame of the current scientific method.
I would like to say that I found your thoughts on the infinite nature of the human mind delightful and you should be commended on being closer to the mark in a truly clinical presentation!
July 24th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
May 19/2008
An excellent book relating to this is “Mad in America” by Robert Whitaker.
July 24th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
May 19/2008
Absolutely a masterpiece of synthesis. Congratulations, Doctor Rosenthal - from a man who discontinued Depakote (after 10 years) and Lamictal (after 6 months) three years ago, and at the age of sixty-six has never been in better mental health.
July 24th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
May 19/2008
Dr. Rosenthal has given us a powerful Marxist perspective on how a sick society called capitalism produces mental problems.
July 24th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
May 21/2008
A good book on the subject of society or individual in mental illness is Erich Fromm’s book “The Sane Society” (1955).
July 24th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
May 21/2008
Kurt Vonnegut’s son, Mark Vonnegut, wrote a very educational, enthralling book about his own schizophrenia. It’s called “The Eden Express.” I read it way back in ‘74 or ‘75, and to this day I am sometimes reminded of it.
August 18th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
This is a great analysis of the mental health situation. I have always asked the question:
“If you are well adjusted to an insane society - what are you?”
August 28th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
I appreciate and agree with your analysis of psychiatry and its uses (and look forward to the Q & A in response to your book on Unwelcome Guests); however, as much as I think the corporate-state capitalist system has become a global totalitarian structure, is socialism really the best alternative? Surely, there must be a polity that’s neither totalitarian, corporate, capitalist, socialist (national or international) where people can retain their sense of personal sovereignty and responsibility such that they have genuine power to choose in accordance with basic human nature, and that includes choosing to organize with others on behalf of their best interests; but without it being socialist. Isn’t the left perspective, old and new, very much tied to how we - humanity - came to be in the current predicaments?
August 29th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
Barb: the ideas in society are the ideas of the ruling class, which has successfully discredited the idea that ordinary people could ever run society collectively and democratically.
That is what socialism is, and why it is the only social arrangement that can solve our problems and meet our needs.
Our rulers confuse us with words and labels. Only actions reveal the truth. Any society that calls itself socialist, and yet denies people the right to decide the conditions of their work and their lives, is not socialist.
Socialism cannot be voted in, or imposed by minorities, or achieved by force. Socialism is what happens when the majority takes collective control of society. See POWER and Powerlessness for more details.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:41 pm
June 4, 2008
Dear Susan,
Congratulations on a lucid, comprehensive and critical article. I hope you won’t mind me submitting a public call for testimonials from parents and teachers who used to be part of the diagnosing machine, but have since enlightened themselves.
PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY
I am a sociologist firmly committed to the current anti-psychiatry movement seeking to expose ADHD, ADD, and most LDs, as fraudulent diseases.
Critics of the ADHD industry often site the ‘educator-parental-psychiatric-pharmaceutical complex’ as complicit in the drugging of normal, disease-free, children. Yet, parents and teachers participating in the diagnostic process for these so-called diseases have the very best of intentions and are misguided and misinformed by the pro-psychiatry/pro-pharmaceutical culture they live in.
A critical sociological perspective sees the present ‘epidemic’ levels of reporting mental disorder in children and youth to be a purely cultural shift. As we transfer from modernity to post-modernity the culture shifts away from whole-body interaction with nature, toward mind-only interaction with technology. Simply put, the new economy requires a workforce of docile bodies, immobile from the neck down but from the neck up, able to consume multiple images, monitor split screens and interact with several media at one time. Children either incapable or unwilling to comply based on nothing more than their unique character are deemed ill, disordered, diseased or otherwise. And the label is fraudulently substantiated with ‘evidence’ from biology, genetics and neurology.
This project seeks to feature the testimonials of parents and teachers who enlightened themselves and refused to reproduce the prevalent practice of labeling kids as ill because they either can not or will not conform to the needs of the new techno-economy. This is an invitation to parents and teachers who once willingly participated in diagnosing children with ADHD-like symptoms but now that they are aware of the problems of the industry, have chosen instead to embrace those childrens’ special gifts and spirited personalities.
If you, your child or your students have a story to tell, please send it to me at: mvardalos@laurentian.ca
Please ensure stories are no longer than 3 pages (single spaced) in an MSword attachment or in the text of the email. You may change the identity of the child if you wish.
DEADLINE: AUGUST 15th, 2008
Marianne Vardalos, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Laurentian University @Georgian
University Partnerships Centre
1 Georgian Drive
Barrie, Ontario Canada
L4M 3X9
mvardalos@laurentian.ca
October 12th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
I am thrilled to see this most important article by Dr. Susan Rosenthal. I offer my comments to add to our understanding of the fraud being perpetrated by the collusion of U.S. Psychiatry, Big Pharma and Big Government.
People go to doctors because they don’t feel well, and, yes, the first duty of the physician is that of diagnosis. However the first question posed by the duty to diagnose is: “Is there a physical abnormality, the same thing as a disease, yes or no?”
Not all persons with complaints-symptoms are subsequently found by examination or tests, to have an abnormality-disease. In fact, in most GP or internal medicine practices, as many at 40-50% are found to have no objective evidence of abnormality-disease. Those who are anxious, depressed, or sleepless have complaints but no disease. The diagnosis for this group (which includes all with psychiatric diagnoses) is “no evidence or disease” or NED. Sometimes they are called “no organic disease,” NOD. The persons in the NED/NOD categories, having been found to have no abnormality-disease are not medical patients and do not warrant medical or surgical treatments. Those found to have an abnormality-evidence of disease are then subjected to “differential diagnosis,” the second and final part of diagnosis, which asks: “Which disease?”
Not only are psychiatric diagnoses “not at all scientific,” they are anti-scientific-pseudoscientific-fraudulent, because those making such diagnoses are trained physicians who are knowingly calling subjective classifications abnormalities-diseases, while knowing perfectly well they are not. All physicians, even those who go into psychiatry (leaving organic, physical medicine behind) take a basic course in medicine which teaches them of all things normal (anatomy, chemistry, physiology) all things abnormal (pathology-disease) and how to tell the difference. Nowhere in psychiatry are there actual diseases, i.e., gross, microscopic or chemical abnormalities.
In his 1990 editorial “In Bed Together at the Market: Psychiatry and the Pharmaceutical Industry, psychiatrist-of-conscience, Matthew P Dumont, MD (Amer. J. Orthopsychiat. 60 (4), October, 1990:484-485) wrote: “Some years ago Nathan S Kline, one of the luminaries of psychopharmacology, wrote that ‘The contacts of psychiatry with the pharmaceutical industry have been so overwhelmingly beneficial that it would be well-nigh criminal to jeopardize them.’ As if one could! The profession should give up its coquettish claims to psychotherapy and social science and openly declare its identity as an arm of the drug industry. It need fear no indignant response from a federal government that defines private profit as its raison d’etre. Indeed, the May-June 1990 issue of the Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Administrations newsletter featured a front page announcement of its own ‘partnership to speed up and intensify the development of medications for addictive and mental disorders.”
For much of the 1800’s and first half ot the 1900’s neurology and psychiatry were combined as neuropsychiatry, with its clinicians practicing both, finding organic diseases in their role of neurologist and finding no evidence of disease, only subjective, emotional and behavioral problems in their other role, as psychiatrist.
In 1948 neurology and psychiatry were established by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology as separate specialties. Neurology is to deal with the diagnosis and treatment of physical diseases (abnormality = disease) of the brain, more specifically, with the central and peripheral nervous system, and muscle. Psychiatry, on the other hand, was to deal with the emotional and behavioral problems of physically normal persons—not with actual disease ( with feeling anxious, depressed, manic, panicky, “hyper,” etc.) Patients referred to psychiatrists are previously determined, by neurologists and other non-psychiatric physicians, to be free of organic disease.
The more psychiatry claims that its diagnoses are actual diseases, the more it seeks to link itself with neurology, to give the suggestion of organic, medical legitimacy to diagnoses that have none.
Psychiatrists do not examine or test for physical/organic diseases. Their claims that they diagnose “chemical imbalances” of the brain is fraudulent. In contrast, neurologists, and all non-psychiatric physicians, determine (1) whether or not organic disease is present, and, (2) if so, which one it is. The process of distinguishing which, of several diseases a patient may have is called “differential diagnosis”. When no organic disease is found, but emotional and behavioral complaints persist, the patient is referred to a psychiatrist or some other type of mental health professional.
In 1970 “hyperkinetic disorder (HKD)/ Minimal Brain Damage/Dysfunction (MBD) was first represented by psychiatry, in a Congressional hearing, chaired by Cornelius E. Gallagher, D-NJ, to be an actual disease. This made it fitting and acceptable to give truly-normal children drugs. Dr. Thomas C. Points, Deputy Assistant Secretary , Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW): “Hyperkinesis is recognized by the medical community as one of the more common behavior disorders of childhood which, when diagnosed by a competent physician or medical team, lends itself to safe and effective drug treatment.” A letter to the Honorable Cornelius E. Gallagher, Chairman of this, the Right to Privacy Inquiry, from the Honorable Elliot L. Richardson, Secretary HEW 11/03/70: “As you notice stimulant drug treatment of children with this disorder began in the late 1930’s and has been widely accepted as safe and effective by the medical community.” “We have no vested interest in the use of any one treatment modality and are continuing to look for the most effective treatments and treatment combinations for this disorder.” NIMH is currently supporting a number of studies which involves other drugs, attempting to compare their efficacy to the stimulant drugs which are presently considered the standard reference drugs for the treatment of Hyperkinesis.” Elliott L. Richardson, Secretary. Here we have the secretary of HEW touting for the pharmaceutical industry.
This is all-important, but can hardly be imagined by most unless it has happened to them or theirs. The “disease” labels become part of all official records, whether they are a child or adult, and those records follow them everywhere and assure they are known to one and all as “seriously mentally ill.”
But labels alone are not enough. They are drugged with chemicals that make them more or less physically dependent or addicted to the drug and more or less conspicuously abnormal and “seriously mentally ill” whereas, with the label alone there were no stigmata to see. This is why psychiatrists defy every urging that they diminish the dose. To do so means they give up control of the patient. The infamous case of Nate Tseglin of San Diego and Orange County, just stripped by his parents from the clutches of psychiatry is fresh in mind.
Despite the serious adverse effects of the especially-dangerous anti-psychotics, the psychiatrists of the psychiatric hospital where Nate was a “pay-point” did nothing but increase the doses of drugs. By doing so, they kept control of Nate, making him one more “pay-point” in the extended industry. When Nate’s nightmare began he had no discernible disease. He has since suffered from seizures and grotesque involuntary movements (dyskinesias)due only to psychiatric drugs. this drug-poisoning is the only real disease in psychiatry.
The following quote is from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) published in 2000, pages 88-89.
“There are no laboratory tests, neurological assessments, or attentional assessments that have been established as diagnostic in the clinical assessment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Tests that require effortful mental processing have been noted to be abnormal in groups of individuals with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder compared with peers, but these tests are not of demonstrated utility when one is trying to determine whether a particular individual has the disorder. It is not yet known what fundamental cognitive deficits are responsible for such group differences.”
With no evidence of an actual disease or abnormality (to be made normal), on April 10, 2001, the Frontline production “Medicating Kids” reported that 6 million US schoolchildren have ADHD. And, as we know, children diagnosed with depression, ADHD, or a combination of the two (dual diagnosis) almost all take Schedule II, controlled, stimulant medication, mostly Ritalin and amphetamine.
The clear, written intention of the APA to deceive and victimize the U.S. and the rest of the world (where they (with Big Pharma) vigorously export their scam) is found in the Introduction, xxi of the DSM IV under the definition of Mental Disorder. It reads:
“Although this volume is titled the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the term mental disorder unfortunately implies a distinction between “mental” disorders and “physical disorders that is a reductionistic anachronism of mind/body dualism. A compelling literature documents that there is much “physical” in “mental” disorders and much “mental” in “physical” disorders.”
The crux of the fraud is here: “A compelling literature documents that there is much “physical” in “mental” disorders and much “mental” in “physical” disorders,” without supplying a single citation-reference to a single proof that any one psychiatric “disorder” is real, i.e., a disorder/disease/physical abnormality.
Author: The ADHD Fraud—How Psychiatry Makes “Patients” of Normal Children