Psychiatric Harm and its drug induced diseases

galway | rights and freedoms | opinion/analysis Friday November 17, 2006 14:36 by Sean shaunpleamonn at hotmail dot com

these 10 reasons point out the need for an alternative and genuine system of mental healing

Here are presented 10 REASONS WHY WE NEED A HOLISTIC AND CRITICAL APPROACH TO ‘MENTAL HEALTH’ PRACTICE

10 REASONS WHY WE NEED A HOLISTIC AND CRITICAL APPROACH TO ‘MENTAL HEALTH’ PRACTICE

1. Psychiatry focuses almost exclusively on biology. It sees severe mental distress or ‘mental illness’ as being primarily related to a brain chemical imbalance or brain pathology despite there being no physically objective medical tests or evidence of such pathology.

2. Psychiatric drugs especially the neuroleptics are neurotoxic and cause neurological diseases such as tardive dyskinesia and akathesia including neuroleptic malignant syndrome and parkinsonism. Psychiatric drugs can damage every system and organ in the body. Psychiatric drugs such as the so-called anti-depressants can in fact result in increased agitation and dangerous behavioural abnormalities in individuals. These very drugs can in fact induce pathological changes in a person's brain chemistry triggering violence, manic and psychotic episodes and suicide.

3. There are NO medical tests such as brain scans or blood tests which can prove the existence of even ONE of the so called mental illnesses.

4. People labelled mentally ill have serious problems or struggles in their lives; they are suffering emotional, life or even spiritual crises which cause them mental and emotional pain. This tragically gets termed by the psychiatric profession as ‘mental illness’ and leads to the prescription of debilitating and disabling drug ‘treatments’ which don’t address the root causes of a person’s suffering.

5. The psychiatric profession has the power to detain and drug people against their will and to administer electro convulsive ‘therapy’ (ECT) against a person’s wishes. Psychiatry’s relationship to law and social control is reflected in this. Doctors do not force people to accept treatment for a disease or illness. People who have not committed any crime or infringed upon the rights of another human being should not be subject to any infringement of their human rights or civil liberties yet psychiatrists frequently violate this. Understanding of the complexity of a person’s thinking and behaviour is needed and appropriate care given. Coercive psychiatry must be abolished.

6. Psychiatry is inextricably linked with the pharmaceutical industry and is in fact dominated by this industry. Prescribing Psychiatrists know that psychiatry and mental health are not synonymous and that there are many other ways in which to promote and maintain mental health. They will not part from their biological and drug based approach to the mind because they know that such change threatens their economic interest and professional prestige. Users of psychiatric services are made only tokenistic gestures and cosmetic changes which don’t threaten the status quo. The psycho pharmaceutical industry has consistently lied about and distorted the finding of drug trials and the efficacy of their drugs. The influence of the pharmaceutical industry on medicine calls into question its independence and damages public confidence and trust.

7. Holistic medicine, naturopathy, nutrition, exercise, good social support and lifestyle changes would be hugely beneficial and effective in ‘treating’ people who suffer severe mental and emotional distress. Psychiatry though perpetuates the belief that they are dealing with brain disorders and that psychotropic interventions are essential in ‘treating’ these brain disorders.

8. People labelled mentally ill are very often not violent. In fact such people have often suffered much violence and abuse in their lives, not least the assault of their bodies and minds with psychiatric vocabulary and drugs which delegitimise, demean and debilitate them and their experience. People therefore need support, empathy and genuine care. People who commit violent crime should be subject to the rule of law. If a person’s violent or threatening behaviour is believed to be related to a physical trauma or disease or prescription drug induced pathology then this is clearly to be taken into account and appropriate action taken to protect both the well being of the individual and others.

9. Psychiatry functions as ideology. There is an expectation of people to think, act and behave in certain ways. It represses the differences between real diseases and ‘mental illnesses’ because the former is caused by demonstrable biological abnormalities in the body while the latter have no demonstrable cause in the body and refer instead to speech, feelings and conduct in social contexts which may not reflect certain societal norms or codes.

10. Psychiatry’s history is a horror story: lobotomies, chemical induced diseases, incarceration, insulin shock and forced drugging. Psychiatrists were behind the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people during the Holocaust in Nazi Germany through the T-4 program. Psychiatry is a Western ethnocentric construct which has been and is guilty of racism and intolerance towards other cultures, identities and minority groups. It represents a very limited and deeply harmful way of understanding the mind and the beauty of human beings. Psychiatry as it is practiced is most certainly not about the ‘doctoring of the soul’.