Hmmm… …mistranslation heh?
I wonder how many lives have been lost for lack of cross checking translations?
The state of mental health – It's nuts!
Here is a series of quotes I came across today whilst checking my emails. I particularly like the very first one. Incidentally here is a link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allen-frances/whats-normal-whats-not_b_2992949.html to a very recent article by Allen Frances whose candor is very refreshing. This is very worthwhile reading if you have any interest at all in the current state of the field of mental health.
Please read on…
“There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” “there is no definition of a mental disorder.” “It’s bull—. I mean, you just can’t define it.” — Allen Frances, Psychiatrist and former DSM-IV Task Force Chairman
“In reality, psychiatric diagnosing is a kind of spiritual profiling that can destroy lives and frequently does.” — Peter Breggin, Psychiatrist
“…modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness…Patients [have] been diagnosed with ‘chemical imbalances’ despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and…there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.” — Dr. David Kaiser, Psychiatrist
“There’s no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, ‘I have a biochemical imbalance,’ I say, ‘Show me your lab tests.’ There are no lab tests. So what’s the biochemical imbalance?” — Dr. Ron Leifer, Psychiatrist
“Virtually anyone at any given time can meet the criteria for bipolar disorder or ADHD. Anyone. And the problem is everyone diagnosed with even one of these ‘illnesses’ triggers the pill dispenser.” — Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, Psychiatrist
“No behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That’s not what diseases are. Diseases are malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain. Typhoid fever is a disease. Spring fever is not a disease; it is a figure of speech, a metaphoric disease. All mental diseases are metaphoric diseases, misrepresented as real diseases and mistaken for real diseases.” — Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
“It has occurred to me with forcible irony that psychiatry has quite literally lost its mind, and along with it the minds of the patients they are presumably suppose to care for.”— David Kaiser, Psychiatrist
“DSM-IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document… DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making bestseller—its major failings notwithstanding.”— Loren Mosher, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
“All psychiatrists have in common that when they are caught on camera or on microphone, they cower and admit that there are no such things as chemical imbalances/diseases, or examinations or tests for them. What they do in practice, lying in every instance, abrogating [revoking] the informed consent right of every patient and poisoning them in the name of ‘treatment’ is nothing short of criminal.”— Dr Fred Baughman Jr., Pediatric Neurologist
“Psychiatry makes unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin…This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naïve and perhaps delusional.” — Dr. David Kaiser, psychiatrist
“In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.”— Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist and member of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK
“I believe, until the public and psychiatry itself see that DSM labels are not only useless as medical ‘diagnoses’ but also have the potential to do great harm—particularly when they are used as means to deny individual freedoms, or as weapons by psychiatrists acting as hired guns for the legal system.” — Dr. Sydney Walker III, psychiatrist
“The way things get into the DSM is not based on blood test or brain scan or physical findings. It’s based on descriptions of behavior. And that’s what the whole psychiatry system is.”— Dr. Colin Ross, psychiatrist
“No biochemical, neurological, or genetic markers have been found for Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Depression, Schizophrenia, anxiety, compulsive alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, gambling or any other so-called mental illness, disease, or disorder.” — Bruce Levine, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion
“Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV [and ICD-10] are terms arrived at through peer consensus.”— Tana Dineen Ph.D., psychologist
“It’s not science. It’s politics and economics. That’s what psychiatry is: politics and economics. Behavior control, it is not science, it is not medicine.”— Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
The question is not whether people present with what appear to be psychological problems, but more, what can we do to help them. That said, there are alternatives and here is a link to those http://www.ncrm.nl/What_is_the_Alternative_to_Psychotropic_Drugs_White_Paper[1].pdf . I feel it does us a great disservice to point out the flaws with another practice if we do not at the same time offer up some workable solutions.
Let’s spread the word far and wide and bring some common sense back to the field of mental health.
Please feel free to pass this email along to anyone you think would appreciate the information.
Help Another Be Happier
This is such a simple and relatively easy goal that we can all aspire to accomplish on a daily basis. And oh, if we did, what a world it would be!
“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try.” -Roger Ebert
Starve The System
Easy Recipe: Carrot Pumpkin Spice Muffins
Sugar and sweetener free – these look great.
http://balancedbites.com/2012/10/easy-recipe-carrot-pumpkin-spice-muffins.html
LANDFILL HARMONIC: Inspiring dreams one note at a time!
The world sends us garbage. We send back music. – Favio Chavez
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/405192963/landfill-harmonic-inspiring-dreams-one-note-at-a-t
No Future For Cyprus With Trioka
Cyprus Parliament President Says “No Future” Under Troika, Calls For “Iceland” Solution
Zero Hedge April 1, 2013
Just last week Yiannakis Omirou, Cypriot House of Representatives President, was calling for the nation to accept it is “time for responsibility” as they progressed towards a final solution; and yet today, as Cyprus’ Famagusta reports, he believes the ‘Troika-imposed’ responsibility will, “turn Cyprus into a colony of the worst possible type.” His ‘Icelandic’ solution is to “leave the Troika and EMS behind,” to ensure “national independence, national sovereignty, moral integrity, and economic independence.” He may have a point; judging from the chart below of the Troika’s poster-child Greece, relative to Iceland, things are not going so well. As Omirou ominously concludes, “if we remain bound by the Troika and the memorandum Cyprus’ destiny is already foretold and there will be no future.”
Via Famagusta Gazette,
There is no other alternative but to free Cyprus from the bonds of the troika and the memorandum, House of Representatives President Yiannakis Omirou has said.
Omirou also expressed his conviction that no Attorney General would dream of not following through with the results of an investigation led by an independent committee to apportion blame on those responsible for bringing the country’s economy and banking sector near collapse.
Omirou talked about the troika demands, which according to him will multiply and will turn Cyprus to a colony of the worst possible type and warned “I would like to send a message to the Cyprus people that there is no other way, there is no alternative apart from freeing (the country) from the troika’s and the memorandum’s bonds”.
He noted that certainly, “this road will demand sacrifices”, adding that “by leaving the troika and the EMS behind us, we will ensure our national independence, our national sovereignty, our moral integrity and our economic independence”.
“If we remain bound by the Troika and the memorandum Cyprus’ destiny is already foretold and there will be no future”, he pointed out.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-31/cyprus-parliament-president-says-no-future-under-troika-calls-iceland-solution
Real Democracy Australia posted on Facebook about Finland using crowd sourcing to create laws.
This is what I commented:
You know, I was thinking a while ago about the undue influence that corporate vested interest have over our government and wondering what it would take to create a system that would allow all citizens to be genuinely involved in the passing or vetoing of laws.
Currently in Australia we have a three tier system of government – local council, state government and federal government. The bigger the group, the less power an individual feels he has to influence the group and the outcome of group deliberations.
I am aware that trial by jury stood for centuries as the last bastion against tyranny and wondered if a system could not be created whereby the society were modelled around decisions being made by groups of twelve men\women at the bottom level who elected one of their number as a representative to vote in a council of twelve representatives. That representative was bound to vote only as directed by the lower tier he represented.
In theory you could have an unlimited number of tiers, all electing a representative to present their vote at the next higher tier.
Low level decisions that affected only one suburb or neighbourhood could be voted on at the second or third level tier.
National level decisions would filter from the bottom to the top level.
In this fashion no political party machine could stand on one platform then renege on their platform promises. There would be no professional politicians able to spend other people’s money with no accountability or responsibility. All power would reside ultimately in the hands of the aggregated decisions of individuals.
This is an idea. It would take fleshing out to be workable but with today’s high speed comm lines it could be made to work, even if fiercely resisted at first by those who stood to lose most by its introduction.
Education System Irrelevant?
True education is becoming more relevant and desirable than it ever was. Teaching people to read, write, add, subtract, think, evaluate data, tell truth from lies, recognise propaganda, see past it to identify vested interests, be able to tell whom to trust and whom to shun, predict consequences of actions, know what to eat and what not to eat for optimal health, to know what is one’s basic purpose and become skilled in the techniques of producing products on that line, know what is ethical and what is not.
That would be a true education that raised one’s ability to survive.
The school system should never be mislabelled an education. Hell, 80% of high school grads in NYC can’t read, write or add up! That’s not an education! That’s a perversion of the school system to destructive ends!
The Education System Is A Filter
This was interesting to me as many of my friends and clients were filtered out of the mainstream system, by either the system or themselves, such that they no longer slavishly follow “authority”. As a priority they choose to do what is best for their body, their family, groups, other life forms and the environment rather than what makes them the most money.