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IMPORTANT
FACTS
1. Houston psychiatrist
Theodore Pearlman says of the DSM-IV , �There are too many diagnoses
without any objective basis or biological support.�
2. Harvard University
Medical School�s Dr. Joseph Glenmullen states, �[T]he current DSM
are � cursory, superficial menus of symptoms. � Any attempt to help patients
understand themselves and to effect real change is lost in the rush to
diagnose and medicate them.�
3. Despite their
lack of scientific validity, the DSM/ICD are used heavily as
diagnostic tools, not only for individual treatment but also for child
custody battles, court testimony, education and more.
4. When legislators
�think about mental health, they think about schizophrenia,� says Karen
Ignagni, President, American Association of Health Plans. �I don�t think
they are aware of � terms used � which could increase costs for conditions
that are not supported by the scientific research.�
CHAPTER
TWO: Harmful Psychiatric Labeling
Psychiatrists proclaim
a worldwide epidemic of mental health problems and urge massive funding
increases as the only solution. But, before we commit more millions, do
we know enough about the �crisis?� To answer this, it is first nec- essary
to understand more about psychiatry and its Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist
and member of the Royal College of Physicians of the United Kingdom and Canada,
wrote in 2002: �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 pseudoscientific aura. The perpetrators
are, of course, feeding at the public trough.�
In 1995, psychologist Jeffrey
A. Schaler said: �The notion of scientific validity, though not an act, is related
to fraud. Validity refers to the extent to which something represents or measures
what it purports to represent or measure. When diagnostic measures do not represent
what they purport to represent, we say that the measures lack validity. If a
business transaction or trade rested on such a lack of validity, we might say
that the lack of validity was instrumental in a commitment of fraud. The Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) published by the American Psychiatric Association
� is notorious for low scientific validity.�
With the DSM
under attack from all sides, governments must be warned that they cannot rely
on the statistics derived from the DSM or ICD for mental
health funding decisions. Funds are appropriated for a general �mental health
crisis� that does not factually exist, but is fabricated by psychiatry to perpetuate
their bloated budgets.
Funding is thus diverted
from workable programs that can resolve the social problems psychiatry
has failed to solve.
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