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.
\nPlease read on…
\n\u201cThere 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.\u201d \u201cthere is no definition of a mental disorder.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s bull\u2014. I mean, you just can\u2019t define it.\u201d \u2014 Allen Frances, Psychiatrist and former DSM-IV Task Force Chairman
\n\u201cIn reality, psychiatric diagnosing is a kind of spiritual profiling that can destroy lives and frequently does.\u201d \u2014 Peter Breggin, Psychiatrist
\n\u201c\u2026modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic\/biologic cause of any single mental illness\u2026Patients [have] been diagnosed with \u2018chemical imbalances\u2019 despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and\u2026there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.\u201d \u2014 Dr. David Kaiser, Psychiatrist
\n\u201cThere\u2019s no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, \u2018I have a biochemical imbalance,\u2019 I say, \u2018Show me your lab tests.\u2019 There are no lab tests. So what\u2019s the biochemical imbalance?\u201d \u2014 Dr. Ron Leifer, Psychiatrist
\n\u201cVirtually 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 \u2018illnesses\u2019 triggers the pill dispenser.\u201d \u2014 Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, Psychiatrist
\n\u201cNo behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That\u2019s 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.\u201d \u2014 Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
\n\u201cIt 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.\u201d\u2014 David Kaiser, Psychiatrist
\n\u201cDSM-IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document\u2026 DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making bestseller\u2014its major failings notwithstanding.\u201d\u2014 Loren Mosher, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
\n\u201cAll 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 \u2018treatment\u2019 is nothing short of criminal.\u201d\u2014 Dr Fred Baughman Jr., Pediatric Neurologist
\n\u201cPsychiatry 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\u2026This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention na\u00efve and perhaps delusional.\u201d \u2014 Dr. David Kaiser, psychiatrist
\n\u201cIn short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of \u2018disease,\u2019 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.\u201d\u2014 Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist and member of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK
\n\u201cI believe, until the public and psychiatry itself see that DSM labels are not only useless as medical \u2018diagnoses\u2019 but also have the potential to do great harm\u2014particularly when they are used as means to deny individual freedoms, or as weapons by psychiatrists acting as hired guns for the legal system.\u201d \u2014 Dr. Sydney Walker III, psychiatrist
\n\u201cThe way things get into the DSM is not based on blood test or brain scan or physical findings. It\u2019s based on descriptions of behavior. And that\u2019s what the whole psychiatry system is.\u201d\u2014 Dr. Colin Ross, psychiatrist
\n\u201cNo 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.\u201d \u2014 Bruce Levine, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion
\n\u201cUnlike 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.\u201d\u2014 Tana Dineen Ph.D., psychologist
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not science. It\u2019s politics and economics. That\u2019s what psychiatry is: politics and economics. Behavior control, it is not science, it is not medicine.\u201d\u2014 Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
\nThe 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.
\nLet\u2019s spread the word far and wide and bring some common sense back to the field of mental health.
\nPlease feel free to pass this email along to anyone you think would appreciate the information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … <\/p>\n