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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