"Psychiatric diagnoses are less reliable than star signs"

'The psychologist Richard Bentall says that psychiatrists dish out drugs but ignore the value of good relationships

Ed Halliwell - The Times Online

Complain to your doctor about a mental health problem and you will probably leave the surgery with a prescription for drugs, despite increasing doubts about their effectiveness and fears about side-effects. The prevailing wisdom is that psychiatric disorders are genetically based brain diseases, biological abnormalities that can be controlled with medication. Every year, doctors in England dole out 31 million prescriptions for antidepressants alone.

It is a state of affairs that makes Richard Bentall furious. In 2004, Bentall, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Bangor, wrote Madness Explained, in which he argued that hearing voices, hallucinations and other symptoms of “severe” mental illness are just exaggerations of quirks experienced by us all. That won him the British Psychological Book Of The Year award. Now, in Doctoring The Mind: Why Psychiatric Treatments Fail, he criticises mental health services, and psychiatry in particular.

Doctoring the Mind paints a stark picture of a mental health system riddled with corruption and incompetence, in which shrinks live it up on pharmaceutical company cash while patients are disrespected, dehumanised and drugged to the eyeballs. Like the legendary “anti-psychiatrist” R.D. Laing before him, Bentall believes that people with mental health problems need understanding, support and respect. Unlike Laing, he offers evidence to back his claims, declaring himself a “rational anti-psychiatrist”.

“I am committed to the scientific world-view,” the 53-year-old says, his urgent voice rising above the rush-hour clatter of the station café in which we meet. “But the evidence doesn’t support the hardline biomedical view behind most psychiatric practice.” He takes a sip of coffee, then continues. “More alarmingly, the treatments based on it are not very effective. Outcomes for psychiatric disorders are no better than in the Victorian period.”'

Continues here.

Also see The Thud Experiment


The 29 medical causes of schizophrenia - infection, intoxication, deficiency or imbalance - are explained here.

Taking Down the Corporate Food System Is Simple

Taking Down the Corporate Food System Is Simple
By Joel Salatin, Public Affairs Books
Posted on June 20, 2009,
http://www.alternet.org/story/140477/

Excerpted by permission from "Declare Your Independence" by Joel Salatin, part of the book Food, Inc., available now from PublicAffairs. Copyright 2009.

Perhaps the most empowering concept in any paradigm-challenging movement is simply opting out. The opt-out strategy can humble the mightiest forces because it declares to one and all, "You do not control me."

The time has come for people who are ready to challenge the paradigm of factory-produced food and to return to a more natural, wholesome and sustainable way of eating (and living) to make that declaration to the powers that be, in business and government, that established the existing system and continue to prop it up. It's time to opt out and simply start eating better -- right here, right now.

Impractical? Idealistic? Utopian? Not really. As I'll explain, it's actually the most realistic and effective approach to transforming a system that is slowly but surely killing us.

What happened to food?
... snip...
The unprecedented variety of bar-coded packages in today's supermarket really does not mean that our generation enjoys better food options than our predecessors. These packages, by and large, having passed through the food-inspection fraternity, the industrial food fraternity and the lethargic cheap-food-purchasing consumer fraternity, represent an incredibly narrow choice.
Link

Author Joel Salatin at his farm

Cause of CFS/ME Found - Hydrogen sulphite

As with ulcers and Helicobactor pylori, an illness-causing culprit
in CFS can be bacteria that produce hydrogen sulphite - dangerous SOUR GAS - in the gut. Sour gas can weaken and kill and is much feared even by the strongest workers in industry.
Probiotics and Bismuth - in Pepto-Bismol - can help.
More at the excellent blog of Dana Herbert, food and health activist.

FDA Throws Lifeline to Antipsychotic Pushers

Image: Klimt, Mother and Child


Mothers' Act Looms as Drug Industry Scam

FDA Throws Lifeline to Antipsychotic Pushers

By EVELYN PRINGLE

"On June 11, 2009, FDA News reported that AstraZeneca’s Seroquel, Pfizer’s Geodon and Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa atypical antipsychotics "won an FDA advisory panel’s recommendations for approval to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in pediatric and adolescent patients."

"The FDA's expanded marketing approval process for antipsychotics, highly toxic drugs, is unaffected by evidence uncovered by the US Justice Department showing that the studies submitted by drug manufacturers were often flawed, if not fraudulent," says Vera Hassner Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, in a June 8, 2009 infomail alert.

"Rather than focus on protecting children's safety, FDA officials are doing their utmost to legitimize irresponsible, off-label prescribing of exceedingly toxic antipsychotics for children--thereby ensuring that far greater numbers of children will be victimized and die," according to Sharav.

A recent report by the consulting firm Decision Resources found antipsychotics makers spent $993,000,000 in 2006, to promote these drugs to doctors and patients, she reports. In 2008, at more than $14 billion, antipsychotic revenues topped all other classes of drugs in the US, even cholesterol and diabetes medications."

Link

P.A. Comments:
There are 29 known causes of schizophrenia, and most are easily corrected with elimination or supplementation - not antipsychotics. The sooner the public understands this, the better.
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/causesofschizophrenia.htm

Former drug rep: Pharma not in business of healing

With thanks to - http://www.myspace.com/psychtruth

Ex-Pharma Sales Reps Speaks Out - Pharma Not in Business of Health, Healing, Cures, Wellness.

Gwen Olsen spent fifteen years as a pharmaceutical sales rep working for such healthcare giants as Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Abbott Laboratories. She enjoyed a successful, fast-paced career until several conscious-altering experiences began awakening her to the dangers lurking in every American medicine cabinet. Her most poignant lessons, however, came as both victim and survivor of life-threatening adverse drug reactions. After leaving pharmaceutical sales in 2000, Gwen worked in the natural foods industry first as an Account Manager for Nature's Way, and then as a Regional Sales Manager for Gaia Herbs. She is currently a writer, speaker, and natural health consultant.

The United States health care system is killing Americans at an alarming rate, even though we spend over fifteen percent of the Gross National Product (GNP) on health care. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, our health care outcomes ranked only fifteenth among twenty-five industrialized nations worldwide. Adverse effects from prescription drugs have become the third-leading killer of Americans. Only heart disease and cancer claim more lives. We trust our doctors to inform us and our government to protect us from medical malfeasance that may put profits ahead of consumer health and safety. But the fine line walked by the FDA between the interests of the pharmaceutical manufacturers and the American public has continually been crossed. The result is the unleashing of an unprecedented number of lethal drugs on the U.S. market!

Gwen Olsen learned firsthand the danger that lurks in every American's medicine cabinet, working in the pharmaceutical industry. But her most poignant education would come as a victim and, ultimately, as a survivor.

Visit Gwen's Website at

http://www.gwenolsen.com/

Confessions of an Rx Drug Pusher
God's Call to Loving Arms

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Rx-...

This video was produced by Psychetruth

http://www.myspace.com/psychtruth
http://www.youtube.com/psychetruth

© Copyright 2008 Gwen Olsen. All Rights Reserved.

Lilly ‘Ghostwrote’ Articles to Market Drug, Files Say

From Bloomberg: Link

Lilly ‘Ghostwrote’ Articles to Market Drug, Files Say (Update2)

By Elizabeth Lopatto, Jef Feeley and Margaret Cronin Fisk

June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Eli Lilly & Co. officials wrote medical journal studies about the antipsychotic Zyprexa and then asked doctors to put their names on the articles, a practice called “ghostwriting,” according to unsealed company files.

Lilly employees also compiled a guide to hiring scientists to write favorable articles, complained to journal editors when publication was delayed and submitted rejected articles to other outlets, according to documents filed in drug-overpricing suits against the Indianapolis-based company, the largest manufacturer of psychiatric medicines.

Drugmakers’ use of ghostwriters has created “a huge body of medical literature that society can’t trust,” said Carl Elliott, a University of Minnesota bioethicist who has written about the practice. "

Also see this article.

Voices From the Street

From Canada, a collection of articles by and about activism in mental health and consumer-survivors of psychiatric treatment.

Voices From the Street is comprised of individuals who have had direct experience with homelessness, poverty, and/or mental health issues. The organization works to put a human face to homelessness and involves people with direct experience as leaders in a public education process.

Each spring, twelve to fourteen individuals are chosen to take part in a training program—three days a week over a four-month period. The curriculum includes workshops on developing a personal narrative, public speaking skills, conflict resolution, developing key messages, facilitation skills, and diversity training. Pat Capponi, a well-known author and activist on issues of poverty and mental health, is the lead facilitator. Akua Benjamin, a professor and specialist in diversity training from Ryerson University, and John Stapleton, an expert on policy issues, are among the many trainers who work with the participants. In addition to public-speaking skills, graduates of the program have an understanding of policy issues and the need for systemic change.

Link