"It's the lives that count"

What's wrong with psychiatry? A psychiatrist explains.

FSD: Sex for our pleasure or their profit?

FSD - "Female Sexual Dysfunction"

Challenging the Medicalization of Sex

WELCOME

The New View Campaign was formed in 2000 as a grassroots network to challenge the distorted and oversimplified messages about sexuality that the pharmaceutical industry relies on to sell its new drugs.

The pharmaceutical industry wants people to think that sexual problems are simple medical matters, and it offers drugs as expensive magic fixes. But sexual problems are complicated, sexuality is diverse, and no drug is without side effects.

The goal of the New View Campaign is to expose biased research and promotional methods that serve corporate profit rather than people's pleasure and satisfaction. The Campaign challenges all views that reduce sexual experience to genital biology and thereby ignore the many dimensions of real life.

The New View Campaign is devoted to education, activism, and empowerment. We invite you to benefit from the information on this website, and we invite your support and participation.

Link

Celebrities involved in mental illness activism toe the meds line

Bringchange2mind, an American mental illness/anti stigma charity, appears to offer no real information about the causes of mental disorders. The group's celebrity figureheads are Glenn Close and Ron Howard.
From its site:

"LEARN THE FACTS

One of the best ways you can help someone with mental illness is by understanding what it is – and what it isn’t. After all, myths about mental illnesses contribute to stigma, which often prevents those who are living with it from seeking help.

The fact is, a mental illness is a disorder of the brain – your body’s most important organ – And 1 in 6 adults suffers from brain-related illness including depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD and schizophrenia.

Like most diseases of the body, it has many causes – from genetics to other biological, environmental and social/cultural factors. And just as with most diseases, mental illnesses are no one’s fault. The unusual behaviors associated with some illnesses are symptoms of the disease – not the cause.

But most importantly, mental illnesses are treatable through medication and psychosocial therapies – allowing those who suffer from them the opportunity to lead full and productive lives."

Mr. Howard's dishonesty about mental illness we have dealt with here. John Nash, the subject of Howard's film A BEAUTIFUL MIND, recovered from schizophrenia without drugs.

When Miss Close LEARNS THE FACTS - that medications can disable and kill and that many of the people she is trying to help may in fact have acquired Bipolar Disorder and other disabilities like Tardive Dyskinesia as a result of taking antidepressants or other psychoactive medications - she is sure to be furious.

Bringchange2mind links to pro-meds government and charity sites. It doesn't raise any questions about the real causes of mental disorders and how to do physical tests to screen for schizophrenia or other disorders, and does not oppose the promotion of psychotropic meds for young children.

We wish Bringchange2mind would promote healing that does no harm. For example, this link has a collection of articles on fish oil and mental health.

Finally, Bringchange2mind states that "1 in 6 adults suffers from brain-related illness including depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD and schizophrenia."

Where did this figure come from?

The UN's WHO puts the frequency of schizophrenia at about 1 in 100. And WHO studies have indicated that Third World country patients can recover better and faster from schizophrenia without treatment than with Western-style intervention.

Bringchange2mind seems to be a screen for promotion of the Pharma status quo.

UPDATE: The UK has a similar initiative,
Time To Change.

Psych meds or exercise will not cure thyroid conditions, a copper overload, a Niacin deficiency. Real change will come when people can get proper diagnoses and the treatments they need - and get well.

Follow the money...

British Government Tries to Censor Bonkers Institute

A Fawlty Towers of embarassment!

For OpEdNews: Martha Rosenberg - Writer

"Your medicine is called Olanzapine. Pronounced 'o-lan-za-peen,'" says the lime green kids' brochure for the antipsychotic Zyprexa, published by Britain's National Health Service (NHS). "Many children, teenagers and young people need to take medicines prescribed by doctors to help them stay well and healthy," says the text amid cartoons of happy children skating, roller blading and playing soccer.

Similar brochures educate children about "ris-perry-done" (Risperdal), another antipsychotic and "ato-mox-e-teen" (Strattera), an ADHD drug. But when mental health advocate Ben Hansen tried to "educate" US children further by posting the brochures on his web site bonkersinstitute.org, he got a love letter from the NHS.

"I have been informed that you are using our leaflets on your web-site," wrote Deputy Chief Pharmacist with the Central and North West London NHS Trust Sue Eccles in an email this month. "Our objective is [sic] provide written materials to support the verbal counselling given by healthcare professionals -- they are not meant to stand alone as sources of information," says Eccles requesting that only the "front page and our contact details," be shown.

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The Bonkers Institute