The liars who lie about psychiatry
by Jon Rappoport
October 14, 2014
NoMoreFakeNews.com
“The Reality Manufacturing Company not only turns out the past, present, and future for mass consumption. It explains why things are the way they are. It appoints itself the master of attributing causes, the king of cause and effect.” (The Magician Awakes, Jon Rappoport)
I’m posting this piece to derail the notion that “the authorities” know what causes things.
In the Ebola hysteria, millions of people blithely accept the notion that the “cases and the deaths” are caused by the Ebola virus.
“What else could it be? The authorities must be right.”
Here is an analogy that is far more shocking dangerous, and long-lived than Ebola.
Psychiatry.
If psychiatrists are experts on the human mind, mice can pilot oil tankers across the ocean.
An open secret has been slowly bleeding out into public consciousness for the past ten years.
THERE ARE NO DEFINITIVE LABORATORY TESTS FOR ANY SO-CALLED MENTAL DISORDER.
And along with that:
ALL SO-CALLED MENTAL DISORDERS ARE CONCOCTED, NAMED, LABELED, DESCRIBED, AND CATEGORIZED by a committee of psychiatrists, from menus of human behaviors.
Their findings are published in periodically updated editions of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), printed by the American Psychiatric Association.
For years, even psychiatrists have been blowing the whistle on this hazy crazy process of “research.”
Of course, pharmaceutical companies, who manufacture highly toxic drugs to treat every one of these “disorders,” are leading the charge to invent more and more mental-health categories, so they can sell more drugs and make more money.
But we have a mind-boggling twist. Under the radar, one of the great psychiatric stars, who has been out in front in inventing mental disorders, went public. He blew the whistle on himself and his colleagues. And for several years, almost no one noticed.
His name is Dr. Allen Frances, and he made VERY interesting statements to Gary Greenberg, author of a Wired article: “Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness.” (Dec.27, 2010).
Major media never picked up on the interview in any serious way. It never became a scandal.
Dr. Allen Frances is the man who, in 1994, headed up the project to write the latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the DSM-IV. This tome defines and labels and describes every official mental disorder. The DSM-IV eventually listed 297 of them.
In an April 19, 1994, New York Times piece, “Scientist At Work,” Daniel Goleman called Frances “Perhaps the most powerful psychiatrist in America at the moment…”
Well, sure. If you’re sculpting the entire canon of diagnosable mental disorders for your colleagues, for insurers, for the government, for Pharma (who will sell the drugs matched up to the 297 DSM-IV diagnoses), you’re right up there in the pantheon.
Long after the DSM-IV had been put into print, Dr. Frances talked to Wired’s Greenberg and said the following:
“There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.”
BANG.
That’s on the order of the designer of the Hindenburg, looking at the burned rubble on the ground, remarking, “Well, I knew there would be a problem.”
After a suitable pause, Dr. Frances remarked to Greenberg, “These concepts [of distinct mental disorders] are virtually impossible to define precisely with bright lines at the borders.”
Frances might have been referring to the fact that his baby, the DSM-IV, had rearranged earlier definitions of ADHD and Bipolar to permit many MORE diagnoses, leading to a vast acceleration of drug-dosing with highly powerful and toxic compounds.
Finally, at the end of the Wired interview, Frances flew off into a bizarre fantasy:
“Diagnosis [as spelled out in the DSM-IV] is part of the magic…you know those medieval maps? In the places where they didn’t know what was going on, they wrote ‘Dragons live here’…we have a dragon’s world here. But you wouldn’t want to be without the map.”
Translation: Patients need hope for the healing of their troubles; so even if we psychiatrists are shooting blanks and pretending to know one kind of mental disorder from another, even if we’re inventing these mental-disorder definitions based on no biological or chemical diagnostic tests—it’s a good thing, because patients will then believe and have hope; they’ll believe it because psychiatrists place a name on their problems…
Needless to say, this has nothing to do with science.
If I were an editor at one of the big national newspapers, and one of my reporters walked in and told me, “The most powerful psychiatrist in America just said the DSM is sheer b.s. but it’s still important,” I think I’d make room on the front page.
If the reporter then added, “This shrink was in charge of creating the DSM-IV,” I’d clear more room above the fold.
If the reporter went on to explain that the whole profession of psychiatry would collapse overnight if the DSM was discredited, I’d call for a special section of the paper to be printed.
I’d tell the reporter to get ready to pound on this story day after day for months. I’d tell him to track down all the implications of Dr. Frances’ statements.
I’d open a bottle of champagne to toast the soon-to-be-soaring sales of my newspaper.
And then, of course, the next day I’d be fired.
Because there are powerful multi-billion-dollar interests at stake, and those people don’t like their deepest secrets exposed in the press.
And as I walked out of my job, I’d see a bevy of blank-eyed pharmaceutical executives marching into the office of the paper’s publisher, ready to read the riot act to him.
Dr. Frances’ work on the DSM-IV allowed for MORE toxic drugs to be prescribed, because the definition of Bipolar was expanded to include more people.
Adverse effects of Valproate (given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:
acute, life-threatening, and even fatal liver toxicity;
life-threatening inflammation of the pancreas;
brain damage.
Adverse effects of Lithium (also given for a Bipolar diagnosis) include:
intercranial pressure leading to blindness;
peripheral circulatory collapse;
stupor and coma.
Adverse effects of Risperdal (given for “Bipolar” and “irritability stemming from autism”) include:
serious impairment of cognitive function;
fainting;
restless muscles in neck or face, tremors (may be indicative of motor brain damage).
Dr. Frances’ label-juggling act also permitted the definition of ADHD to expand, thereby opening the door for greater and greater use of toxic Ritalin (and other similar compounds) as the treatment of choice.
So what about Ritalin?
In 1986, The International Journal of the Addictions published a most important literature review by Richard Scarnati. It was called “An Outline of Hazardous Side Effects of Ritalin (Methylphenidate)” [v.21(7), pp. 837-841].
Scarnati listed a large number of adverse affects of Ritalin and cited published journal articles which reported each of these symptoms.
For every one of the following (selected and quoted verbatim) Ritalin effects, there is at least one confirming source in the medical literature:
Paranoid delusions
Paranoid psychosis
Hypomanic and manic symptoms, amphetamine-like psychosis
Activation of psychotic symptoms
Toxic psychosis
Visual hallucinations
Auditory hallucinations
Can surpass LSD in producing bizarre experiences
Effects pathological thought processes
Extreme withdrawal
Terrified affect
Started screaming
Aggressiveness
Insomnia
Since Ritalin is considered an amphetamine-type drug, expect amphetamine-like effects
Psychic dependence
High-abuse potential DEA Schedule II Drug
Decreased REM sleep
When used with antidepressants one may see dangerous reactions including hypertension, seizures and hypothermia
Convulsions
Brain damage may be seen with amphetamine abuse.
A recent survey revealed that a high percentage of children diagnosed with bipolar had first received a diagnosis of ADHD. This is informative, because Ritalin and other speed-type drugs are given to kids who are slapped with the ADHD label. Speed, sooner or later, produces a crash. This is easy to call “clinical depression.”
Then comes Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft. These drugs can produce temporary highs, followed by more crashes. The psychiatrist notices the up and down pattern—and then produces a new diagnosis of Bipolar (manic-depression) and prescribes other drugs, including Valproate and Lithium.
In the US alone, there are at least 300,000 cases of motor brain damage incurred by people who have been prescribed so-called anti-psychotic drugs (aka “major tranquilizers”). Risperdal (mentioned above as a drug given to people diagnosed with Bipolar) is one of those major tranquilizers. (source: Toxic Psychiatry, Dr. Peter Breggin, St. Martin’s Press, 1991)
This psychiatric drug plague is accelerating across the land.
Where are the mainstream reporters and editors and newspapers and TV anchors who should be breaking this story and mercilessly hammering on it week after week? They are in harness.
And Dr. Frances is somehow let off the hook. He’s admitted in print that the whole basis of his profession is throwing darts at labels on a wall, and implies the “effort” is rather heroic—when, in fact, the effort leads to more and more poisonous drugs being dispensed to adults and children, to say nothing of the effect of being diagnosed with “a mental disorder.”
I’m not talking about “the mental-disease stigma,” the removal of which is one of Hillary Clinton’s missions in life. No, I’m talking about MOVING A HUMAN INTO THE SYSTEM, the medical apparatus, where the essence of the game is trapping that person to harvest his money, his time, his energy, and of course his health—as one new diagnosis follows on another, and one new toxic treatment after another is undertaken, from cradle to grave.
The result is a severely debilitated human being (if he survives), whose major claim to fame is his list of diseases and disorders.
Thank you, Dr. Frances.
Here is a smoking-gun statement made by another prominent mental-health expert, on an episode of PBS’ Frontline series. The episode was: “Does ADHD Exist?”
PBS FRONTLINE INTERVIEWER: Skeptics say that there’s no biological marker—that it [ADHD] is the one condition out there where there is no blood test, and that no one knows what causes it.
BARKLEY (Dr. Russell Barkley, clinical professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston): That’s tremendously naïve, and it shows a great deal of illiteracy about science and about the mental health professions. A disorder doesn’t have to have a blood test to be valid. If that were the case, all mental disorders would be invalid… There is no lab test for any mental disorder right now in our science. That doesn’t make them invalid. [Emphasis added]
Without intending to, Dr. Barkley blows an ear-shattering whistle on his own profession.
So let’s take Dr. Barkley to school. Medical science, and disease-research in particular, rests on the notion that you can make a diagnosis backed up by lab tests. If you can’t produce lab tests, you’re spinning fantasies.
These fantasies might be hopeful, they might be “educated guesses,” they might be launched from traditional centers of learning, they might be backed up by billions of dollars of grant money…but they’re still fantasies.
If I said the moon was made of green cheese, even if I were a Harvard professor, sooner or later someone would ask me to produce a sample of moon rock to be tested for “cheese qualities.” I might begin to feel nervous, I might want to tap dance around the issue, but I would have to submit the rock to a lab.
Dr. Barkley is essentially saying, “There is no lab test for any mental disorder. But if a test were the standard of proof, we wouldn’t have science at all, and that would mean our whole profession rests on nothing—and that is absurd, so therefore a test doesn’t matter.”
That logic is no logic at all. Barkley is proving the case against himself. He just doesn’t want to admit it.
Close to 50 years ago, psychiatry was dying out as a profession. Fewer and fewer people wanted to see a psychiatrist for help, for talk therapy. All sorts of new therapies were popping up. The competition was leaving medical psychiatry in the dust.
As Dr. Peter Breggin describes, in his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, a deal was struck. Drug companies would bankroll psychiatry and rescue it. These companies would pour money into professional conferences, journals, research. In return, they wanted “science” that would promote mental disease as a biological/chemical fact, a gateway into the drugs. Everyone would win—except the patient.
So the studies were rolled out, and the list of mental disorders expanded. The FDA was in on the deal as well, as evidenced by their drug “safety” approvals, in the face of the obvious damage these drugs were doing.
So this is how we arrived at where we are. This was the plan, and it worked.
Under the cover story, it was all fraud all the time. Without much of a stretch, you could say psychiatry has been the most widespread profiling operation in the history of the human race. Its goal has been to bring humans everywhere into its system. It hardly matters which label a person is painted with, as long as it adds up to a diagnosis and a prescription of drugs.
300 so-called mental disorders caused by…what? No lab evidence. No diagnostic tests. No blood tests, saliva tests, brain scans, genetic assays. No nothing.
But psychiatrists continue to assert they are the masters of causation. They know what’s behind “mental disorders.” They’re in charge.
What about the generalized “chemical imbalance” hypothesis stating that all mental disorders stem from such imbalances in the brain?
Dr. Ronald Pies, the editor-in-chief emeritus of the Psychiatric Times, laid that hypothesis to rest in the July 11, 2011, issue of the Times (“Psychiatry’s New Brain-Mind and the Legend of the ‘Chemical Imbalance’”) with this staggering admission:
“In truth, the ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend — never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.”
Boom.
Dead.
The point is, for decades the whole basis of psychiatric drug research, drug prescription, and drug sales has been: “we’re correcting a chemical imbalance in the brain.”
The problem was, researchers had never established a normal baseline for chemical balance. So they were shooting in the dark. Worse, they were faking a theory. Pretending they knew something when they didn’t.
In his 2011 piece in Psychiatric Times, Dr. Pies tries to cover his colleagues in the psychiatric profession with this fatuous remark:
“In the past 30 years, I don’t believe I have ever heard a knowledgeable, well-trained psychiatrist make such a preposterous claim [about chemical imbalance in the brain], except perhaps to mock it…the ‘chemical imbalance’ image has been vigorously promoted by some pharmaceutical companies, often to the detriment of our patients’ understanding.”
Absurd. First of all, many psychiatrists have explained and do explain to their patients that the drugs are there to correct a chemical imbalance.
And second, if all well-trained psychiatrists have known, all along, that the chemical-imbalance theory is a fraud…
…then why on earth have they been prescribing tons of drugs to their patients…
…since those drugs are developed on the false premise that they correct an imbalance?
Here’s what’s happening. The honchos of psychiatry are seeing the handwriting on the wall. Their game has been exposed. They’re taking heavy flack on many fronts.
The chemical imbalance theory is a fake. There are no defining physical tests for any of the 300 so-called mental disorders. All diagnoses are based on arbitrary clusters or menus of human behavior. The drugs are harmful, dangerous, toxic. Some of them induce violence. Suicide, homicide. Some of the drugs cause brain damage.
Psychiatry is a pseudo-pseudo science.
So the shrinks have to move into another model, another con, another fraud. And they’re looking for one.
For example, genes plus “psycho-social factors.” A mish-mash of more unproven science.
“New breakthrough research on the functioning of the brain is paying dividends and holds great promise…” Professional gibberish.
Meanwhile, the business model demands drugs for sale.
So even though the chemical-imbalance nonsense has been discredited, it will continue on as a dead man walking, a zombie.
Big Pharma isn’t going to back off. Trillions of dollars are at stake.
You can be sure major Pharma players are meeting behind closed doors with leaders of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). The mafia is making a house call.
They are reminding the APA that they have a deal. No cancellation allowed.
“You guys promoted the chemical-imbalance theory. That was the arrangement. So keep promoting it. We don’t care how many lies you have to tell. Don’t try to develop a conscience all of a sudden. This is business.”
The mafia doesn’t like it when people try to interrupt business.
Two questions always pop up when I write a critique of psychiatry. The first one is: psychiatric researchers are doing a massive amount of work studying brain function. They do have tests.
Yes, experimental tests. But NONE of those tests are contained in the DSM, the psychiatric bible, as the basis of the definition of ANY mental disorder. If the tests were conclusive, they would be heralded in the DSM. They aren’t.
The second question is: if all these mental disorders are fiction, why are so many people saddled with problems? Why are some people off the rails? Why are they crazy?
The list of potential answers is very long. A real practitioner would focus on one patient at a time and try to discover what has affected him to such a marked degree. For example:
Severe nutritional deficiency. Toxic dyes and colors in processed food. Ingestion of pesticides and herbicides. Profound sensitivities to certain foods. The ingestion of toxic pharmaceuticals. Life-altering damage as a result of vaccines. Exposure to environmental chemicals. Heavy physical and emotional abuse in the home or at school. Battlefield stress and trauma (also present in certain neighborhoods). Prior head injury. Chronic infection. Alcohol and street drugs. Debilitating poverty.
Other items could be added.
So…in this “Ebola crisis,” when the authorities—without relevant or reliable diagnostic tests—try to pin the cause as a virus, there is no reason to accept their assessment. No reason.
The announcement of a cause in any purported crisis should be the first occasion for doubt and independent investigation.
It’s a virus. It’s a chemical imbalance. It’s brain chemistry. It’s a mental disorder.
Spin, spin, spin, spin.
In the case of Ebola, if you want to understand precisely why the “science” is full of holes, and why people are dying, you can find a number of my articles at nomorefakenews.com. (click here for full access to all of my “Ebolagate” articles).
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
