IMPORTANT FACTS

1. Psychiatry has never cured anything. Instead, as a consequence of its extensive use of dangerous antipsychotic drugs, it has created most of the mental ill health that now cries out desperately for cures.

2. Medical studies show that for many patients, what appear to be mental problems are actually caused by an undiagnosed physical illness or condition. This does not mean a “chemical imbalance” or a “brain-based disease,” but a real physical condition with real pathology that can be addressed by a competent medical doctor.

3. A study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that several diseases closely mimic schizophrenia, including drug-induced psychosis, complete with delusions of persecution and hallucinations.

4. A thorough physical exam of a patient, “Mrs. J,” who was diagnosed as schizophrenic after she began hearing voices in her head, discovered she was not properly metabolizing the glucose that the brain needs for energy. Once treated, she recovered and showed no lingering trace of her former mental state.

5. Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus, advises, “All criminal behavior should be controlled by means of the criminal law, from the administration of which psychiatrists ought to be excluded.”

CHAPTER FOUR Improving Mental Health

If someone ran amok in the street, grabbing citizens because he disapproved of their behavior, locking them up and torturing them with mind-altering drugs or electricity, there would be a public outcry. The perpetrator would be charged with assault and mayhem and incarcerated for many years.

But because the perpetrator is a psychiatrist and the brutal acts he commits are obscured with terms such as “mental health care” or the patient’s “right to treatment,” the systemic social and mental crippling of millions of people each year is ignored. The innocent patient is locked up; the perpetrator of abuse is allowed to roam free to repeat his crimes.

When any psychiatrist has full legal power to cause a person’s involuntary physical detention by force (kidnapping), to subject him to physical pain and mental stress (torture) that leaves him permanently mentally damaged (cruel and unusual punishment), all without proving that he has committed a crime (due process of law, trial by jury) then, by definition, a totalitarian state exists.

In his book, Psychiatric Slavery , Dr. Szasz wrote, “When people do not know ‘what else’ to do with, say, a lethargic, withdrawn adolescent, a petty criminal, an exhibitionist, or a difficult grandparent—our society tells them, in effect, to put the ‘offender’ in a mental hospital. To overcome this, we shall have to create an increasing number of humane and rational alternatives to involuntary mental hospitalization. Old-age homes, workshops, temporary homes for indigent persons whose family ties have been disintegrated, progressive prison communities—these and many other facilities will be needed to assume the tasks now entrusted to mental hospitals.”

Proper medical screening by non- psychiatric diagnostic specialists is a vital preliminary step in mapping the road to recovery for any mentally disturbed individual. Medical studies have shown time and again that for many patients, what appear to be mental problems are actually caused by an undiagnosed physical illness or condition. This does not mean a “chemical imbalance” or a “brain-based disease,” but a real physical condition with real pathology that can be addressed by a competent medical doctor.

Ordinary medical problems can affect behavior and outlook. Former psychiatrist William H. Philpott, now a specialist in nutritional brain allergies, reports, “Symptoms resulting from vitamin B12 deficiencies range from poor concentration to stuporous depression, severe agitation and hallucinations. Evidence showed that certain nutrients could stop neurotic and psychotic reactions and that the results could be immediate.” It is vital that mental health facilities have a full complement of diagnostic equipment and compe- tent medical (non-psychiatric) doctors. As for the dangerous person who is violent, he or she must be dealt with independent of psychiatrists. Dr. Szasz says, “To be sure some peo-
ple are dangerous.” But “dangerousness is not sup- posed to be an abstract psychological condition attributed to a person; instead, it is supposed to be an inference drawn from the fact that a person has committed a violent act that is illegal, has been charged with it, tried for it, and found guilty of it. In which case, he should be punished, not ‘treated’— in a jail, not in a hospital.” If a person commits a dangerous offense then criminal statutes exist to address this. Szasz states further: “All criminal behavior should be controlled by means of the criminal law, from the administration of which psychiatrists ought to be excluded.”

There is no mystery about the increase in gratuitous violence, criminality, youth suicides, armies of homeless wandering our cities and numerous other negative mental health indices in communities today. But they are not an expanding mental illness problem demanding more community mental health “treatments.” Rather they represent an expanding mental health problem createdby psychiatrists and their treatments.

Psychiatry has never cured anything. Instead, and as a direct consequence of its extensive use of dangerous antipsychotic drugs, it has created most of the mental ill health that now cries out desperately for cures.

The bottom line, as Dr. Szasz points out, is that “… psychiatrists have been largely responsible for creating the problems they have ostensibly tried to solve.” They are, therefore, the last people to whom we should turn to solve the problem of our homeless, of violence and of community mental health in general.

Next

Back to Contents