IMPORTANT FACTS

1. In one study, 83% of people referred by clinics and social workers for psychiatric treatment had undiagnosed physical illnesses; in another, 42% of those diagnosed with �psychoses� were later found to be suffering from a medical illness.

2. According to medical experts, unwanted or overactive or �hyperactive� behavior has many sources ranging from, but not limited to, allergies, food additives, environmental toxins, improper sleep and certain medications.

3. A Journal of Pediatrics study showed that sucrose may cause a 10-times increase in adrenaline in children, resulting in �difficult concentrating, irritability, and anxiety.�

CHAPTER SIX Which Way to Go?

In a 2002 survey of physicians in three European countries and in the United States, 72% said qualities that best describe a good physician are compassion, caring, personable and good listening and communication skills. In this way, they felt they could help make their patients healthier and lead better lives.

When asked how to distinguish between a �mental disorder� and a physical illness, 65% said that physical examinations and clinical diagnostic testing should first rule out physical problems.

Psychiatrists rarely physically test and diagnose. A pre-packaged checklist of behaviors is consulted and the �diagnosis� is made. All that remains is to prescribe the psychoactive drug. Meanwhile, to combat the paucity of interest in psychiatry, the World Psychiatric Association has produced a �Core Curriculum in Psychiatry for Medical Students.� Its objective is to train all future physicians to identify and treat mental illness. The authors candidly state, �Since most students will not enter psychiatry, the acquisition of appropriate attitudes is of primary importance� and should be taught not just in psychiatry but all other subjects.

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 disease�being deceived in this way.�

David B. Stein, Ph.D., clinical psychologist and associate professor of psychology says, �Physicians are trained to heal. They really want to help. They often claim that they don�t have an alternative�that the only way to help these [ADHD, learning disordered] children is with drugs. Besides, parents and teachers are constantly at their throats for them to write prescriptions. They want their disruptive kids under control immediately. Some doctors dislike doing this; many wish for an alternative.�

With psychiatric diagnoses and treatments impacting more people�s lives through primary care medicine, the alternatives need to be emphasized. The following alternatives are derived from years of working with health professionals who are qualified to address such medical issues.

1) Check for the Underlying Physical Problem
The California Department of Mental Health Medical Evaluation Field Manual states: �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.�

In 1998, the Swedish Social Board cited several cases of disciplinary actions against psychiatrists, including one in which a patient was complaining of headaches, dizziness and staggering when he walked. The patient had complained of these symptoms to psychiatric personnel for five years before a medical check up revealed that he had a brain tumor.

Dr. Thomas Dorman says, ��please remember that the majority of people suffer from organic disease. Clinicians should first of all remember that emotional stress associated with a chronic illness or a painful condition can alter the patient�s temperament. In my practice I have run across countless people with chronic back pain who were labeled neurotic. A typical statement from these poor patients is �I thought I really was going crazy.�� Often, he said, the problem may have been �simply an undiagnosed ligament problem in the back.�

2) Help Without Mind-Altering Drugs
German psychiatrist Paul Runge says he�s helped more than 100 children without using psychiatric drugs. He has also helped reduce the dosages of drugs prescribed by other physicians.

Dr. L.M.J. Pelsser of the Research Center for Hyperactivity and ADHD in Middelburg, the Netherlands, found that 62% of children diagnosed with �ADHD� showed significant improvements in behavior as a result of a change in diet over a period of three weeks.

Dr. Mary Ann Block, who has helped thousands of children safely come off or stay off psychiatric drugs, says, �Many doctors don�t do physical exams before prescribing psychiatric drugs � [Children] see a doctor, but the doctor does not do a physical exam or look for any health or learning problems before giving the child an ADHD diagnosis and a prescription drug. This is not how I was taught to practice medicine. In my medical education, I was taught to do a complete history and physical exam. I was taught to consider something called a �differential diagnosis.� To do this, one must consider all possible underlying causes of the symptoms.� Dr. Block does allergy testing and develops dietary solutions to �behavioral� problems. She cites a Journal of Pediatrics (1995) study showing that sucrose may cause a 10-times increase in adrenaline, in children, resulting in �difficulty concentrating, irritability, and anxiety.�

The emphasis must be on workable medical testing and treatments that improve and strengthen individuals and can save the person from a lifetime of psychiatric abuse.

3) Psychotropic Drugs May Mask a Child�s Physical Problems
According to medical and educational experts, unwanted or overactive behavior comes from many sources ranging from, but not limited to, allergies, food additives, environmental toxins, improper sleep, certain medications, not knowing how to study, going past words not fully understood, and being bored with the curriculum because of exceptional intelligence or creative ability.

Psychiatrist Sydney Walker�s book The Hyperactivity Hoax records a variety of reasons for hyperactive behavior: �Children with early-stage brain tumors can develop symptoms of hyperactivity or poor attention. So can lead- or pesticide-poisoned children. So can children with early-onset diabetes, heart disease, worms, viral or bacterial infections, malnutrition, head injuries, genetic disorders, allergies, mercury or manganese exposure, petit mal seizures, and hundreds�yes, hundreds�of other minor, major, or even life-threatening medical problems. Yet all these children are labeled hyperactive or ADD.�

Prescribing psychotropic drugs for a disease that doesn�t exist, Dr. Walker noted, is a tragedy because �masking children�s symptoms merely allows their underlying disorders to continue and, in many cases, to become worse.�

Dr. Walker compared the phenomenon to a patient going to see a physician for a swollen leg and the doctor diagnoses it as a �lump,� gives him or her an aspirin and never determines if the lump is a tumor, an insect bite, or gangrene.

There are far too many workable alternatives to psychiatric drugging to list them all here. Psychiatry on the other hand, would prefer to say there are none and fight to keep it that way. That leaves a medical practitioner with a choice between fact and fiction, between cure and coercion, and between medicine and manipulation.

We have every respect for medicine practiced as medicine, in a spirit of honest, ethical endeavor, and with due consideration to primacy of the patient�s needs and health. However, we have every argument with the seduction and contamination of medicine by medical pretenders whose abject failures threaten to pervert not only the position, honor, humanity and value of medicine, but to wreck the lives of millions of patients who simply came to medicine for help.

Prescribing psychotropic drugs for a disease that doesn�t exist is a tragedy because, �Masking children�s symptoms merely allows their underlying disorders to continue and, in many cases, become worse.�
� Dr. Sydney Walker, author, The Hyperactivity Hoax , 1998

Next

Back to Contents