IMPORTANT FACTS

1. Mental health would be the outcome of effective mental healing.

2. While medical cures exist for physical illness, no psychiatric cures exist for mental disorders.

3. It is a matter of sound medical fact that undiagnosed physical illness or injury can trigger emotional difficulties.

4. Several studies show that those diagnosed with “mental illness” were actually suffering from a
physical condition.

5. The true resolution of many mental difficulties begins with a thorough physical examination by a competent medical—not psychiatric—doctor.

CHAPTER THREE Achieving Real Mental Health

John Nash makes it clear that he willed his own recovery. Why invent a fictitious Hollywood ending to his life story when the truth—that he was able to recover from his “demons” without drugs—is much more inspiring?

Psychiatrists promote mental health as being of equal priority to physical health. To continue this analogy, just as physical health would be the outcome of effective physical healing, so would mental health have to be the outcome of effective mental healing.

Consider the following basic criteria for the creation of mental health:

1. Effective mental healing technology and treatments which improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society, by restoring individuals to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well-being.

2. Highly trained, ethical practitioners who are committed primarily to the well-being of their patient and patients’ families, and who can and do deliver what they promise.

3. Mental healing delivered in a calm atmosphere characterized by tolerance, safety, security and respect for people’s needs and rights.

From individuals to governments, far too many people assume that this is the nature of mental healing today. The harsh reality, however, is that the analogy between physical and mental healing breaks down when contrasting the results of physical healing to the results of what passes for mental treatment today, under the influence of psychiatry. In simple terms, while medical cures exist, psychiatric ones don’t.

Under the management of psychiatry today, there is no mental healing. Logically this means that psychiatry achieves no improvement in mental health.

It is vital to know that numerous compassionate and workable medical programs for severely disturbed individuals exist that do not rely on psychiatric treatment. Dr. Loren Mosher’s Soteria House project and Dr. Giorgio Antonucci’s program in Italy (covered later in this publication) achieved much greater success than psychiatry’s dehumanization and chronic drugging. These alternative programs also came at a much lower cost. They and a number of other similar programs still operating are testimony to the existence of both genuine answers and hope for the seriously troubled.

It is a matter of sound medical fact that undiagnosed physical illness or injury can trigger emotional difficulties. Dr. William Crook, in his book Detecting Your Hidden Allergies, says those bothered by irritability, depression, hyperactivity, fatigue and anxiety need an immediate full medical physical examination and a complete test for food allergies that could cause precisely those mental changes in a person.

One study concluded that 83% of people referred by clinics and social workers for psychiatric treatment had undiagnosed physical illnesses; in another study, 42% of those diagnosed with “psychoses” were later found to be suffering from a medical illness, and in a further study, 48% of those diagnosed by psychiatrists for mental treatment had an undiagnosed physical condition.

Several diseases closely mimic schizophrenia, fooling both patient and doctor. Dr. A. A. Reid lists 21 such conditions, beginning with an increasingly common one, “the temporary psychosis brought on by amphetamine drugs.” Dr. Reid explains that drug-induced psychosis is complete with delusions of persecution and hallucinations, and “is often indistinguishable from an acute or paranoid schizophrenic illness.”

“Mrs. J,” diagnosed as schizophrenic after she began hearing voices in her head, had deteriorated to the point where she stopped talking and could not bathe, eat or go to the toilet without help. A thorough physical exam determined she was not properly metabolizing the glucose that the brain needs for energy. Once treated, she dramatically changed. She completely recovered and shows no lingering trace of her former mental state.

Fifty-one year old Anne Gates, a mother of five, was prescribed antidepressants for bipolar disorder after experiencing recurrent emotional struggles. She had suicidal thoughts. However, her decelerating men-strual cycle was never medically explored and, as was established with a competent physical examination, she really suffered from menopause and needed estrogen. Hypoglycemia (abnormal decrease in blood sugar), allergies, caffeine sensitivity, thyroid problems, vitamin B deficiencies and excessive copper in the body can also cause manifestations of “bipolar disorder.”

Dr. Thomas Dorman says, “…[P]lease remember that the majority of people suffer from organic disease. Clinicians should, first of all, remember emotional stress associated with a chronic illness or a painful condition can alter the patient’s temperament. ”

In a wish list for mental health reform, Mad in America author Robert Whitaker stated, “At the top of this wish list, though, would be a simple plea for honesty. Stop telling those diagnosed with schizophrenia that they suffer from too much dopamine or serotonin activity and that the drugs put these brain chemicals back into ‘balance.’ That whole spiel is a form of medical fraud, and it is impossible to imagine any other group of patients— ill, say, with cancer or cardiovascular dis- ease—being deceived in this way.”

The true resolution of many mental difficulties begins, not with a checklist of symptoms, but with ensuring that a competent, non-psychiatric physician completes a thorough physical examination.

Mental healing treatments should be gauged on how they improve and strengthen individuals, their responsibility and their spiritual well-being—without relying upon powerful and addictive drugs.

Treatment that heals should be delivered in a calm atmosphere characterized by tolerance, safety, security and respect for people’s rights. A workable and humane mental health system is what the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is working toward.

“[P]lease remember that the majority of people suffer from organic disease. Clinicians should, first of all, remember emotional stress associated with a chronic illness or a painful condition can alter the patient’s temperament.”
— Thomas Dorman, M.D. Fellow, Royal College of Physicians United Kingdom and Canada

”Mental health professionals working within a mental health system have a professional and a legal obligation to recognize the presence of physical disease in their patients … physical diseases may cause a patient’s mental disorder [or] may worsen a mental disorder ....”
— California Department of Mental Health Medical Evaluation Field Manual, 1991

In the movie, A Beautiful Mind, about Nobel Prize winner John Nash, the primary reason for his recovery from “schizophrenia” was ignored—his refusal to continue taking psychiatric drugs. Nash hadn’t taken psychiatric drugs in 24 years and recovered naturally from his disturbed state.

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