IMPORTANT FACTS

1. German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin first defined �schizophrenia� as dementia praecox in the late 1800s. The term �schizophrenia� was coined in 1908 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler.

2. It was later discovered that Kraepelin�s schizophrenic patients suffered from a global medical disease called encephalitis lethargica (brain inflammation causing lethargy), which caused mental disturbance.

3. The DSMII admits, �Even if it had tried, the [APA] Committee could not establish agreement about what this disorder is; it could only agree on what to call it.�

4. The drugs prescribed for �schizophrenia� cause violent, manic behavior during both treatment and withdrawal.

5. Successful programs in the United States and Italy have proven that �schizophrenia� can be resolved without psychiatric drugs.

CHAPTER FOUR Harming the Vulnerable

While psychiatry seeps deeper into our everyday world through the spread of the DSM and psychotropic drugs, most people still consider that psychiatry�s main function is to treat patients with severe, life-threatening mental disorders.

Here, the psychiatrist deals with the �disease� first tagged as dementia praecox by Kraepelin in the late 1800s, then as �schizophrenia� by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1908.

Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey reports that Kraepelin �put the final medical seal on irrational behavior by naming it and categorizing it. Irrational behavior could now hold its head up in medical company for it had names. � His classificatory system continues to dominate psychiatry up to the present, not because it has proven of value � because it has been the ticket of admission for irrational behavior into medicine.�

However, Robert Whitaker reports the patients that Kraepelin diagnosed with dementia praecox were suffering from a medical disease, encephalitis lethargica [brain inflammation causing lethargy]: �These patients walked oddly and suffered from facial tics, muscle spasms, and sudden bouts of sleepiness. Their pupils reacted sluggishly to light. They also drooled, had difficulty swallowing, were chronically constipated, and were unable to complete willed physical acts.�

Psychiatry never reviewed Kraepelin�s material to see that schizophrenia was simply an undiagnosed and untreated physical problem. �Schizophrenia was a concept too vital to the profession�s claim of medical legitimacy. � The physical symptoms of the dis ease were quietly dropped. � What remained, as the foremost distinguishing features, were the mental symptoms: hallucinations, delusions, and bizarre thoughts,� says Whitaker.

Psychiatry remains committed to calling schizophrenia a mental disease despite, after a century of research, the complete absence of objective proof that schizophrenia exists as an actual disease or physical abnormality.

The neuroleptics or antipsychotics prescribed for the condition were first developed by the French to �numb the nervous system during surgery.� Psychiatrists learned very early on that neuroleptics cause Parkinsonian and encephalitis lethargica symptoms.

Tardive dyskinesia (tardive meaning �late� and dyskinesia, a permanent impairment of the power of voluntary movement of the lips, tongue, jaw, fingers, toes, and other body parts) appeared in 5% of patients within one year of neuroleptic treatment. Neuroleptic malignant syndrome, a potentially fatal toxic reaction where patients break into fevers and become confused, agitated, and extremely rigid, was also a known outcome risk. An estimated 100,000 Americans have died from it.

To counter negative publicity, articles placed in medical journals regularly exaggerated the benefits of the drugs and obscured their risks. Whitaker says that in the 1950s, what physicians and the general public learned about new drugs was tailored: �This molding of opinion, of course, played a critical role in the recasting of neuroleptics as safe, antischizophrenic drugs for the mentally ill.�

However, independent research outcomes were worrisome. In an eight-year-study, the WHO found that severely mentally disturbed patients in three economically disadvantaged countries whose treatment plans did not include a heavy reliance on drugs�India, Nigeria and Colombia�did dramatically better than their counterparts in the United States and four other developed countries. Indeed, after five years, �64% of the patients in the poor countries were asymptomatic and functioning well.� In contrast, only 18% of the patients in the prosperous countries were doing well. A second followup study using the same diagnostic criteria reached the same conclusion. Neuroleptics were clearly implicated in the significantly inferior western result.

Not until 1985 did the APA issue a warning letter to its members about the potentially lethal effects of the drugs, and then only after several highly publicized lawsuits that �found psychiatrists and their institutions negligent for failing to warn patients of this risk, with damages in one case topping $3 million.�

New �atypical� [not usual] drugs for schizophrenia were introduced in the 1990s, promising fewer side effects. However, one of these atypicals had already been tested in the 1960s and was found to have caused seizures, dense sedation, marked drooling, constipation, urinary incontinence, weight gain, respiratory arrest, heart attack and rare sudden death. When introduced into Europe in the 1970s, the drug was with drawn after it was also found to cause agranulo cytosis, a potentially fatal depletion of white blood cells, in up to 2% of patients.

In the film �A Beautiful Mind,� Nobel Prize winner John Nash is depicted as relying on psychiatry�s latest breakthrough drugs to prevent a relapse of his �schizophrenia.� This is Hollywood fiction, however, as Nash himself disputes the film�s portrayal of him taking �newer medications� at the time of his Nobel Prize award. Nash had not taken any psychiatric drugs for 24 years and had recovered naturally from his disturbed state.

Although omitted from psychiatry-sponsored history books, it is vital to know that numerous compassionate and workable medical programs for severely disturbed individuals have not relied on heavy drugging.

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