A TRAGIC HISTORY Early Brutal Methods

Historically, psychiatric treatment has included flogging, chaining patients to the wall or restraining them in a wall camisole or straitjacket. Other methods included surprising patients with a sudden drop into cold water, detaining them there for some time while pouring water frequently on the head to produce fear and a �refrigerant� effect. An ovary compressor used to subdue hysterical women or locking people up in various devices such as a cagelike bed also resulted in the person being cowed and tamed.

Since its earliest days, psychiatry�s methods have been brutally invasive, using different applications of force to physically and mentally overwhelm already disturbed individuals. As far back as the 1700s, those in charge of asylums insisted that their practices were the only �workable methods.� However, these methods never cured, they merely restrained and subdued.

Psychiatric practices that excise healthy brain tissue, cause irreversible brain damage and destroy basic social skills are claimed to be �workable.� They include 1) psychosurgery, 2) electroshock, 3) insulin shock therapy, and 4) Metrazol shock.

Today little has changed. Psychiatrists� �modern� treatments are still human rights abuses, and yet they continue to insist that their methods are superior. Failing to understand the cause of or achieve a cure for mental trauma they routinely harm troubled individuals.

The latest psychiatric drugs are marketed as a panacea for all sorts of mental disorders for young and old, although they have been linked to the development of akathisia, seizures, sexual dysfunction, stuttering, tics, hearing loss, manic episodes, paranoid reactions, and intense suicidal ideation, according to the Annals of Pharmacology.
Today, through heavy marketing of its diagnoses and drugs, psychiatry no longer fights to emulate and gain acceptance from medicine; it has become an integral part of it.

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