Summary:

In this work I want to review the investigations of the Citizen Committee for Human Rights in Mental Health. It is this organization in the United States and other countries that has consistently brought to the attention of the general public the dangers of psychiatry which, by and large, are victims of a marriage between pharmaceutical companies and their paid distributors of lethal drugs, the psychiatrists This alliance has been based on greed for money, profit, and prestige, all in the name of a science that, as one of the leading authorities, called “nonsense.”

Introduction: a brief history

The history of psychiatry is littered with deaths; torture and misadventures that would make anyone in their right mind wonder why this black art has been allowed to continue for so long. Of course, the movement against psychiatry has been around for almost as long as the profession itself. How did all this start? You have to go back to the days of asylums that grew in the early 19th century, particularly in England and the United States. These places were nothing more than prisons for the insane, those souls who could not function within the norms of society that dictated how one should act and behave. The head of the asylums was a doctor, the first psychiatrist. This man caged the mentally ill in cells without heating, with little food but with rotten remains and to cure them of their madness they tortured them with floggings, burns, immersion in water and many other inhumane acts called treatment. The fall of the insane asylums began in England with York Retreat, a Quaker-run institute for the mentally ill that functioned very differently from the insane asylums that were government institutions. At the York retreat, inmates were given jobs to do, helped to keep rules simple, and rewarded for following them.

They received humane treatment that would lead them to God and sanity. While York’s withdrawal was somewhat successful, it was still based on control of the madmen. Later, with the passing of the years and the end of the 19th century, came the rise of the huge psychiatric hospitals. Psychiatry had new weapons to defeat the mentally ill, this time with brain surgeries called lobotomies, hydrotreating, fire hoses to spray patients with forced streams of water, swaddling with wet blankets, where patients would be bound with wet sheets in a bed unable to move for hours, insulin injections, to cause artificial brain seizures, and, of course, electrical convulsive therapy: electrocuting patients with electric shocks to numb their brains so they don’t remember why they were in trouble in the first place. As the 21st century arrived, the cost of these hospitals became so onerous for governments that they closed them down and instead introduced “community care” which ironically did not care at all and most of mental health patients became homeless and the new beggars on our streets. It was not until the early 1900s that Freud finally introduced his “talking cure,” a humane way of trying to understand the plight of the mentally disturbed and a way to give them an idea and a possible cure. Of course, he had to have money for this treatment as much as he does today.

Psychoanalysis is for those who can pay the price. As the century flourished, so did Freud’s theory, which would develop into many types of therapy—behaviorism, cognitive, transactional, and many more varieties of his original idea. In fact, without Freud there would be no modern psychology as we know it. Around 1960 a new ear for psychiatry emerged. All those barbaric treatments that never worked were about to be replaced, not by other kinds of institutions but by a chemical straitjacket coming from the pharmaceutical industry. Now drugs were the new form of treatment, suddenly the humble caretaker of the insane, and the psychiatrist could become a real doctor and prescribe psychotropic drugs to everyone. Thus began an era of drug sales, where new mental disorders were manufactured to sell more drugs. At the turn of the century, Krapelin invented a little book called the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Illness) in this book he provided lists of mental symptoms that, if added up in a person, lead to a label for his problem, such as depression, anxiety , mania, hysteria, homosexuality, immoral behavior and much more. As the years went by, the psychiatry profession kept adding to this book and inventing new labels for combining a medication to administer it.

Today we have the DSM IV version with the next almost complete one as number V. Over the years it has discovered all sorts of new ways to classify human emotions as mentally ill. Bipolar disorders, ADHD in children, PTSD for soldiers (WW1 war shock) and many others. While these labels may have some use and have been recognized as genuine problems for some people, now of course, according to psychiatry, we are all mentally ill, if not right now, then later in life. So they divide populations into existing drug customers and potential drug customers. Today, mental health is not a profession, not even a scientific medical branch, but simply a marketing arm of the pharmaceutical industry that pays millions of dollars annually to keep the myth of mental illness alive and expanding.

The evidence;

Here I would like to list some facts that speak for themselves.

• 100 million people worldwide take psychotropic drugs
• In addition to paralyzing dozens of people daily, every month psychiatric drugs kill some 3,000 people around the world.
• 70% of all psychiatric medications are prescribed by general practitioners.
• 374 mental disorders are listed; almost all without a single scientific proof to show that they really exist biologically.
• Psychiatric medications in 1966 were 44, but today they have increased to more than 180.
• The top five drugs make more money than half the nations in the world.
• Drugs generate more than a third of a billion dollars a year.
• 20 million children worldwide are prescribed psychiatric medications (9 million in the US alone). Most under 5 years for non-scientific problems.
• Every 75 seconds, someone is involuntarily committed to a mental institution in the US alone.
• Electric shock therapy is still used despite the fact that it causes memory loss and has few long-term benefits for patients. This is a direct abuse of human rights.

All of the above was investigated by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and endorsed worldwide by some of today’s most eminent psychiatrists and psychologists.

The long list above is just the tip of the psychiatric abuse saga. It is a profession based on money and more money. Most drugs on the market are only tested for less than eight weeks in clinical trials before receiving FDA approval by a panel of psychiatrists paid by the very drug companies they are supposed to regulate. Not a single drug on the market today is free from side effects, which of course are the real effects of taking dangerous drugs for often fictitious mental illnesses. You can’t solve a problem in life by masking it with drugs and hoping to feel better. The problem is still there, so you have to take the drugs for life so that you never think about your real problems. Of course, with the side effects of one drug, many others are prescribed, all to combat the effects of the others, which is why most people with a diagnosis of mental problems end up taking a cocktail of drugs for life. It’s amazing how much money people spend to get chemically anesthetized when a small proportion of that cost could be spent on seeing a counselor, psychologist, and therapist and actually treating their problems and never having to take a drug in the first place.

recommendations

Psychiatry disables, kills and creates drug addicts. Simple really when you add up the costs to society. Do they still have a place in modern medicine? Well, yes, they could focus on helping seriously disturbed people with understanding and kindness, even when they have to exert some control over that person for a short time. However, for the vast majority of patients taking psychotropic drugs, they could stop taking them tomorrow (or at least phase them out to minimize withdrawal effects) and start seeing a therapist. I would recommend a counselor who is knowledgeable in cognitive behavioral therapy for depression and anxiety, transactional analysis for parenting, communication skills, job stress, and many other everyday issues that require an understanding of practical skills. For personality problems related to anger, emotional turmoil, long-term unhappiness, and dysfunction, then perhaps a psychoanalyst is your choice. Most psychologists who treat patients in counseling are eclectic, meaning they borrow from many styles of theory and practice to use the most appropriate approach based on the needs of each client. The list is endless, but any therapy that helps you become stable, responsible for your own actions, and gives you insight into your options is far better than a life of drugs and unhappiness.

If you feel the urge, see a therapist today, find out how to get off prescription drugs, and start finding purpose in life again.

References:

Citizens Commission on Human Rights – 2009 – Psychiatric Violations of Human Rights
Making a Killing DVD – Exposing Pharmaceutical Company Links to Psychiatry

DSM-IV Statistical Manual of Mental Illness – Version 4

R. Gross (1996) – Psychology – Theory of Mind and Behavior – references to historical notes. Hodder and Stoughton Publications (Words 1622)