In 2003, Mickey Weinberg, LCSW did a marvelous and historical thing he gathered folks from all around the United States together to see if we could get some answers to some questions that needed to be asked. What these questions were about gives us part of your answer.
What this scientific body and body common wanted to know is this: Is Mental Illness a real biological/ neurological disease which needs treatment to make it go away? Or is it a made up label to increase the multi billion dollar industry in order to legally sell psychiatry's authority and their drugs?
Obviously these questions have not been answered and in saying this I have to look at what all I have done in the last three years to get the answers to these questions for the last three years and also at my own personal life experience and also professional experience. Then I have to ask:
Are institutions a way of getting those that may be unsightly or politically non correct in their thinking or behaviors out of the way of the so called progress? Those that may have choosen other paths then just a 40 hour work week? Those that might have gotten into some trouble and / or made some mistakes in life? Those that maybe would have been locked up in some jail someplace if they would have been found guilty in some constitutional court someplace and out of any real consequences for their behavior? Is justice always fair or is it dependent on economics?
Are Psychiatric drugs a way to numb up the pain that is being caused in our society without having to fix any of the real problems, or is it better to do something real about many of life's hard and complicated social ills and issues of human rights by doing some thing real to change things, to make things better or different so that some things can be prevented in the long run and some real needs can be met. Are drugs better for society and health or are drugs another cause of societal and health problems? I would have to say that there are other and better things that we should be doing, like prevention, education, and meeting peoples real needs so that they can learn to meet their own eventually.
The first letter in this series of exchanges that came first from the Department Of Health and Human Services from Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D. referred Fred Baughman, MD to psychiatric textbooks. This is interesting in the point that just in the last few months I have asked The National Library of Medicine to answer the questions and they referred me to a textbook and also to go through the 1,000 or more articles that they have and to adapt the answers however I see fit, and that really is possible.
Most Americans have no training at all in understanding this stuff and I am lucky to have what little understanding that I have to pick the facts out of it. I would also have access to others who would get them to people who would be able to lend their scientific credentials to picking it apart and explaining it to me. I can honestly say that since this has been available for three years no one has indeed written any scientific paper that could answer these questions in even one simple document, if you can find that for me I will have it looked at.
I have discussed this via email with the National President of the American Psychiatric Association APA, I have sent it to my local Kentucky Chapter, I have asked the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill and my mental health folks both at National and State levels for this information, I have given it to my legislators so they could ask for it. During the hunger strike itself these questions were asked to the United States Surgeon General. Within the last few months I have asked The National Institute of Mental Health for the answer to these questions and they referred me to NAMI and to their website, and they know this.
One of the big things that we wanted answered by this strike was this: Are these psychiatric conditions / diagnoses in fact scientific brain / neurological, disorders / diseases / chemical imbalances and is there any proof of this as a for sure thing or not? If not then why is half of our country being labeled like this in order to make "patients" of normal individuals and justify their treatment with drugs or "chemical balancers".
We as Americans have a right to question this because diagnoses is the first, and most important duty of every physician, and that means to (1) determine whether or not a physical abnormality is present, (2) to determine which abnormality / disease it is. Most people are easily confused and deceived when it comes to the language of medicine they don't know how to read it and many times they don't know how to understand it for what it is, how to determine if the research is indeed facts that have been fully decided and provable or if it is still in the speculation phase. Any honest and ethical physician would understand this if they had the time to look at the research for themselves and denounce what is being done. This is a systematic, organized effort by the people selling these treatments to deceive the American people regarding the fundamental issue of whether or not they are diseased / abnormal or disease-free / normal. A doctors responsibility to the public is that of excluding the presence of organic-disease or real disease. Knowing all of this, it is a betrayal for any physician to represent to patients, and to the public, that wholly subjective, psychiatric, constructs / conditions, are actual diseases of the brain or actual neurological diseases. The purpose of which being to make "patients" of normals. It can not be denied that this is what is going on in the US, on a massive scale.
This set of questions include seven specific request to provide reliable and validity based scientific evidence to be reviewed through scientific methods. It set out the fact that psychiatry has unprecedented authority to confine individuals to institutions and administer procedures involuntarily, including electro convulsive therapy or ECT electroshock.
This is a valid request since the APA, NAMI, and the OSG promote trust in the general population by leading it to believe there is reliable and valid evidence that meets the mainstream standards of science when this is not true. One commonly hears "major mental illnesses", "proven biological diseases of the brain" and "chemical imbalances" when these are not accurate to describe the true causes of our societies difficulties and pain that are being labeled and treated. At this point there is a campaign called Is it Real? All this does is eliminate any real assistance, choice, or solutions that could be given to solve these problems and allow for any real hope or change in things.
This power is a basic infringement on one's human rights and dignity. We have asked for scientific evidence based on the following standards: (1) measures used are relevant, valid and reliable (2) Subject populations are selected by a sample method that is free of bias (3)Confounding variables are controlled for and (4) Causation is distinguished from correlation. We have asked them for this information, to support their claims, to be in the form of cited material that could be found and understood.
These are the questions we want answered or we want it to be publicly admitted that these answers are not available:
1. Evidence that clearly establishes the validity of "schizophrenia" "depression" or other "major mental Illnesses" as biologically-based brain diseases.
2. Evidence for a physical diagnostic exam such as a scan or test of the brain, blood, urine, genes, etc that can reliably distinguish individuals with these diagnoses (prior to any treatment with psychiatric drugs), from individuals without these diagnoses.
3. Evidence for a base-line standard of a neurochemically balanced "normal" personality, against which a neurochemical "imbalance" can be measured and shown to be corrected by any pharmaceutical means.
4. Evidence that any psychotropic (psychiatric) drug can correct a "chemical imbalance" attributed to a psychiatric diagnoses, and is any thing more than a non-specific alterer of physiology just as any drug illlegally or legally taken would do.
5. Evidence that any psychotropic drug can reliably decrease the likelihood of violence or suicide, which the FDA has now said that the drug companies must put warning labels on these drugs.
6. Evidence that psychotropic drugs do not in fact increase the overall likelihood of violence and suicide, which they have been proven that they do especially in children.
7. Finally, that they reveal publicly evidence published in mainstream medical journals, but unreported in mainstream media, that links use of some psychiatric drugs to structural brain changes or brain damage over time.
Even now three years later, there has been no professional scientist to write any paper to answer these questions in professional or simple laymans terms that will or can answer these questions. After three years, if there were indeed any thing other then research evidence based on speculation they would have already had these in some form. That is a fact.
What they are doing instead is building data bases from those that say these drugs are helping them while they are actually meeting some real needs in other ways for these same people and calling it evidence based science, but it is not actually changing anything and it is making things worse. They are refusing to show the negative consequences of these treatments and medications and the addictions and abuses of them in our communities. The way that some people are getting involved in crimes and drugs because of them and going to jails and dying and causing other serious harm from these drugs to our society.
Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General (1999) states: "there is no definitive lesion, laboratory test, or abnormality in brain tissue"..."in light of how common symptoms of mental distress are and the lack of objective, physical symptoms"..."The precise causes...of mental disorders are not known"..."the fact is that any simple association or correlation cannot and does not by itself, mean causation"..."Few lesions of physiological abnormalities define the mental disorders, and for the most part their causes remain unknown". In the third edition of Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry (1999) we find: "Although reliable criteria have been constructed for many psychiatric disorders, validation of the diagnostic categories as specific entities has not been established"..."Most of these (genetic studies) have not found convincing evidence of an association". In Adreason and Black's (2001), Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry, we find...Much of the current investigative research in psychiatry is directed toward the goal of identifying the pathophysiology and etiology of major mental illness, but this goal has been achieved for only a few disorders. (Alzheimer's disease, multi-infarct dementia, Huntington's disease, and substance-induced syndromes such as amphetamine related psychosis or Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome)"..."In the absence of visible lesions and known pathogens"..."Many candidate regions (of the brain) have been explored (for schizophrenia) but none have been confirmed"...Such statements invalidate claims for specific, reliable biological causes or signs of "mental illnesses". In the judgment of the panel members, your reply fails to produce or cite any specific evidence of any specific pathophysiology underlying any "mental disorder". In the panel's view, the questions posed by the hunger strikers are serious and fair. If, as you state in your letter, "the answers to (the above) questions are widely available in the scientific literature, and have been for years", then it behooves your organization to make these answers and name their specific sources...promptly. The Scientific Panel wrote a letter to Bruce Spring, M.D. concerning how inaccurate and flawed the twin studies really are.
September 25, 2003 the APA made a statement to the press, it said...brain science has not advanced to the point where scientist or clinicians can point to readily discernible pathologic lesions or genetic abnormalities that...serve as reliable or predictive biomarkers of a...mental disorder or mental disorders as a group...no gross anatomical lesion such as a tumor may ever be found (nor) will likely be proven to represent disorders of...communication; or of disrupted neural circuitry...the conditions are defined by a variety of concepts. These include the distress experienced and reported by a person...the level of disability from population-based norms for cognitive processes, mood regulation, or other indices of thought, emotion, and behavior...In the months and years ahead, the APA, along with NAMI, the Nation's mental health research and clinical communities, and the public at large...will not be distracted and they have personally told me and our local media this, that they will refuse to stop drugging people and treating them against their will even if there is no medical science for it. What is significant about this is that if it was not so called prescribed treatment or medication but a street dealer was holding me against my will to push these same drugs on me they could go to jail for the same exact things. The peer pressure to do drugs rather then not do them is tremendous, in the mental health community the peer pressure is outrageous to do these drugs. As long as any of this is seen as a medical treatment even if there is no scientific evidence for it anyone that wants to can push this treatment through peer pressure because as they will tell you it makes them feel better and the courts can make a person take it. What is right about that?
All we ask is that anyone produce scientifically-valid evidence for these questions or that if they can not they publicly admit it to the media, the government officials and to the general public that they are unable to do so. Without evidence no basis exist to call emotional distress, disturbing behavior, or unusual thoughts or perceptions any mental illness or disorder. This negates the sufferer's distress as reaction, protest, or adaptation to his / her position in the world that they live in. A person is understood in terms of personal history and social circumstances. A disease is understood differently.
The choice of labels is of great consequence...blushing, an obviously physical reaction, is not biologically caused. Its effective cause is acute embarrassment. Biological processes make blushing possible, but they do not cause blushing. Psychiatric research is far from showing any reliable connections between mental disorders and biological measurement, much less the nature of any mental disorders on the other hand hypertension has yet to find the biological cause but it has developed a very reliable physical measurement for blood pressure.
Psychiatry is the sole medical specialty that treats only disorders with no biological markers. Hypertension is a symptom of physical disease because it can degenerate into physical diseases and even death. People diagnosed with mental illness or disorders often are physically healthy, unless their social circumstances or neglect interfere negatively with their condition they may live long lives and die of the same physical causes as other people. These chemical treatments in fact harm people and shorten their lives for them with other medical problems.
What I see from the following case is that no one has any right to push any kind of treatment on any one that does not want it just because they have a disability, nor deny them the care that they may want if it is what they actually want and it is available! Using medications simply to do mind control is just another form of institutionalization out in the community! Medicaid or other services or resources or recieving them is not dependent on the kind of treatment that someone is willing to recieve or not and it is discriminatory!
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES OLMSTEAD, COMMISSIONER, GEORGIA DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN RESOURES, et al. v. L. C., by zimring, guardian ad litem and next friend, et al.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
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No. 98—536. Argued April 21, 1999–Decided June 22, 1999
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In the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), Congress described the isolation and segregation of individuals with disabilities as a serious and pervasive form of discrimination. Title II of the ADA, which proscribes discrimination in the provision of public services, specifies, inter alia, that no qualified individual with a disability shall, “by reason of such disability,” be excluded from participation in, or be denied the benefits of, a public entity’s services, programs, or activities. §12132...
Respondents L. C. and E. W. are mentally retarded women; L. C. has also been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and E. W., with a personality disorder. Both women were voluntarily admitted to Georgia Regional Hospital at Atlanta (GRH), where they were confined for treatment in a psychiatric unit...The court rejected the State’s argument that inadequate funding, not discrimination against L. C. and E. W. “by reason of [their] disabilit[ies],” accounted for their retention at GRH...They Held: The judgment is affirmed in part and vacated in part, and the case is remanded. 138 F.3d 893,...
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I, II, and III—A, concluding that, under Title II of the ADA, States are required to place persons with mental disabilities in community settings rather than in institutions when the State’s treatment professionals have determined that community placement is appropriate, the transfer from institutional care to a less restrictive setting is not opposed by the affected individual, and the placement can be reasonably accommodated, taking into account the resources available to the State and the needs of others with mental disabilities. Pp. 11—18.
(b) Undue institutionalization qualifies as discrimination “by reason of … disability.” The Department of Justice has consistently advocated that it does...The ADA stepped up earlier efforts in the Developmentally Disabled Assistance and Bill of Rights Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to secure opportunities for people with developmental disabilities to enjoy the benefits of community living. The ADA both requires all public entities to refrain from discrimination, see §12132, and specifically identifies unjustified “segregation” of persons with disabilities as a “for[m] of discrimination,”...Dissimilar treatment correspondingly exists in this key respect: In order to receive needed medical services, persons with mental disabilities must, because of those disabilities, relinquish participation in community life they could enjoy given reasonable accommodations, while persons without mental disabilities can receive the medical services they need without similar sacrifice...Nor is there any federal requirement that community-based treatment be imposed on patients who do not desire it.
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The APA confirms, mental illnesses are defined by "a variety of concepts" so they must therefore explain how sociological concepts which easily define conditions such as poverty, discrimination, or war-substantiate the existence of "neurobiological disorders". Neuroscientist have not established any normal baseline quantity for any known neurotransmitters, nor have they shown any chemical imbalance to correlate with mental disorders diagnosed on unmedicated individuals. The APA simply states what is known, all mind and mood altering drugs have affects on the brain. This includes illegal mind and mood altering drugs, though no one suggest these drugs which are termed illegal correct chemical imbalances in the brain. In the absence of any scientific proof it is ethically and medically reprehensible for doctors to convey such messages to justify prescribing drugs or other psychiatric treatments.
The APA Statement provides no citations to any scientific literature. Associations devoted to research, and treatment of genuine diseases readily provide consumers with scientific references on the pathological basis of these diseases so with their annual budget being in the double digit millions or more they should be able to provide a one-page list of published scientific studies to support their claims.
The APA uses terms like "complex" to describe these diagnoses of mental and emotional crises yet this is completely at odds with the biological model that reduces the brain to a machine. Since the discovery of neurosyphllis nearly a century ago, this model has failed to explain the cause of a single mental disorder. Yet, this model dominates the mental health systems
The APA claims that money spent has greatly improved our ability to treat severe, frequently disabling mental illnesses and disorders effectively, however all the relevant indicators show the exact opposite. Increased rates of this, worsened relapse rates, and increased numbers of people on disability status characterize outcomes over the last 50 years. Might we then not intelligently conclude that the treatment is worsening the disorder. At best the treatment is not helping.
Researchers now recognize that the most popular psychiatric drugs, the SSRI antidepressants, rate only slightly better then placebos(sugar pills) and all negative research findings are commonly suppressed. Most adverse drug effects are massively under reported in psychiatric journals and to the Food and Drug Administration. Rather than acknowledge the lack of progress the APA dismisses its critics as denying the reality of suffering and impatience with the "pace of science".
A genuine science states hypothesis in ways that allow them to be proven true or false. Today, despite no (medical scientific evidence), the APA still continues to claim that emotional disorders are genuine neurobiological disorders because the APA is not an independent organization. At least one third or more of its operating budget comes from the drug industry. Drug companies dominate it.
On what basis does society justify the authority granted psychiatrists, as medical doctors, to force psychoactive drugs or ECT electroshock treatment upon unwilling individuals, or to incarcerate persons who may or may not have committed criminal acts? We urge members of the public, journalists, advocates, and officials reading this to ask for straightforward answers to our questions from the APA. We also ask Congress to investigate this mass deception.
Please make yourself aware of the possible side effects that the FDA has noted: Drug induced stuttering, Weight gain, Dizziness, Sleeplessness, Restlessness, Anxiety, Diabetes, Racing heart, Heart disorders, Suicide risk in children and adults, Increased risk of birth defects, White Blood Cell Disorders, Convulsions and Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, Life threatening inflammation of the Pancreas, Glaucoma, Synergistic and Anti synergistic affects, Dyskyntonia, Unnatural and dangerous serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, Prescribing wrongfully leaving a doctor open to malpractice, Sudden Deaths, Illegal sales on the street, Illegal creation of drugs, Illegal experimentation and addiction to drugs, Drug overdoses, Drug induced psychiatric symptoms and criminal activities caused by these drugs and the drug abuse.
The truth is that our mental health / psychiatric system is a multi billion dollar drug dealer and does not work to meet real needs. You can shut us out, you can lock us up, you can drug us up, you can burn our brains, will we go away? The answer is no! Some of us have had serious crimes committed against us by this system and some of the street dealers of these kinds of drugs. We will stand and tell the truth one way or another until we are heard, listened to, and honored for being on the opposite side of this corruption. We can not put bandaids on all the worlds problems any more, we must reconstruct the psycho-social-court systems and do some thing real, to help real people, with real problems.
To note the Scientific Panel consisted of: Fred Baughman (MD), Peter Breggin (MD), Mary Boyle (Ph.D), David Cohen (Ph.D), Ty Colbert (Ph.D), Pat Deegan (Ph.D), Albert Galves (Ph.D), Thomas Greening (Ph.D), David Jacobs (Ph.D), Jay Joseph (Ph.D), Jonathon Leo (Ph.D), Bruce Levine (Ph.D), Loren Mosher (MD), Stuart Shipko (MD) and others signed on to this as it progressed.