IMPORTANT FACTS
1. In psychiatry, all
its diagnoses are called �disorders� because none of them are established medical
diseases.
2. Decided on by a vote
of American Psychiatric Association members, mental �disorders� are based on
opinion, not science.
3. Norman Sartorius,
former president of the World Psychiatric Association, has declared: �The time
when psychiatrists considered they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the
future the mentally ill will have to learn to live with their illness.�
4. Dr. Rex Cowdry, director
of the National Institute of Mental Health, admitted to the U.S. Congress that
psychiatrists do not know the causes of any mental illness, nor do they have
�methods of �curing� these illnesses yet.�
CHAPTER
THREE Diagnostic Fraud
In medicine, strict criteria exist for calling a condition a disease. In addition
to a predictable group of symptoms, the cause of the symptoms or some understanding
of their physiology (functions) must be established. Malaria is a disease caused
by a parasite that is transmitted from an infected to an uninfected individual
by the bite of a particular mosquito. Its symptoms include periodic chills and
fever.
In the absence of a known cause or physiology, a group of symptoms, presumed
to be related, is called a disorder. �In psychiatry, all of its diagnoses are
called disorders because none of them are established diseases,� says Dr. Joseph
Glenmullen of Harvard Medical School. In fact, psychiatry has never advanced
beyond theory, conjecture and opinion.
Dr. Rex Cowdry, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH),
testified before the U.S. Congress in 1995, saying: �Over five decades, research
supported and conducted by NIMH has defined the core symptoms of the severe
mental illnesses ....� However, �we do not know the causes. We don�t
have the methods of �curing� these illnesses yet.� [Emphasis added]
The definitions of these �core symptoms� constitute the American Psychiatric
Association�s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)
and its companion, the International Classifications of Diseases (ICD)
mental disorders section. Decided upon by a vote of American Psychiatric Association
members,
psychiatry and psychology�s �disorders� are not based on science.
Professor Herb Kutchins from the California State University, Sacramento, and
Stuart A. Kirk from the State University of New York-Albany, authors of Making
Us Crazy, state, �There are indeed many illusions about DSM and very
strong needs among its developers to believe that their dreams of scientific
excellence and utility have come true, that is, that its diagnostic criteria
have bolstered the validity, reliability and accuracy of diagnoses used by mental
health clinicians.� The bitter medicine is that DSM has unsuccessfully
attempted to medicalize too many human troubles.
As Dr. Thomas Dorman, an internist and member of the Royal College of Physicians
of the United Kingdom and of Canada, wrote, �In short, the whole business of
creating psychiatric categories of �disease,� 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.�
However, the �bitter medicine� is much more than just the failure of the DSM
and psychiatrists are much more than just frauds living high at the public�s
expense. The harsh reality is that in their hands, these �diagnostic� manuals
have been used to decide someone�s fate, often leading to brutal assault and
death.
The harsh reality is that thousands die or are physically and mentally disabled
each year because of psychiatry�s unscientific and fraudulent diagnoses.
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