PSYCHIATRY, AN INDUSTRY OF DEATH (and a current crowd delusion)
C. Norman Shealy, M.D., Ph.D.
I was recently interviewed for a documentary on the sins of the PharmacoMafia and shortly thereafter received a DVD and supplement with the above title in caps from the producers, The Citizens Commission for Human Rights, www.cchr.org . Thomas Szasz, one of my heroes, is one of the founders of this organization. Szasz is one of the exceptions in the fields of psychiatry although there are obviously others. Unfortunately, the psychiatry establishment as a whole is not that different from what I experienced in medical school. Indeed, the worst course of my entire undergraduate and medical school curriculum at Duke University was psychiatry. On the final exam I answered the most stupid question “list 5 characteristics of a good psychiatrist” with Crazy as Hell 5 times!? The chairman later said to our class: “There are some people who do not like people; they should stay and teach!”
The DVD includes interviews with over 150 health professionals, attorneys, educators and other experts with “historical and modern-day footage of psychiatry’s barbaric treatments, as well as interviews with victims of psychiatry’s brutalities ranging from electroshock therapy as well as commitment, political torture, psychosurgery and the devastating effects of psychotropic drugs.”
The Puritans drowned those who did not follow their rigid concepts of normal behavior. No less a notable than Benjamin Rush taught bloodletting, brutal restraints, blistering of body parts, partial drowning? and shock treatment of dropping “mental” patients into ice baths. That was the “standard” of the 1700’s to late 1800’s.The English psychologist Francis Galton in 1883 introduced the concept of Eugenics, funded by America’s wealthiest families and leading to forced sterilization of “criminals, lunatics and idiots.” Ernst Rudin and Alfred Ploets, German psychiatrists, became leading proponents of purging society of unfit stock. Alfred Hoche, German psychiatrist, formed the ideological underpinnings of Hitler’s justification for the holocaust. Concomitant with this, American psychiatrist Walter Freeman initiated the brutal ice pick frontal lobotomy, a procedure slightly refined but still done at the Massachusetts General Hospital during my neurosurgery residence 1958-63, even for chronic pain. And during my medical school training psychiatric patients were subjected to almost equally brutal insulin and electric shock therapy.
British psychiatrist J.R. Rees in 1940 began the push for government control of “mental health.”??? And G. Brock Chisholm pushed the elimination of morality. In 1952, in order to encourage medical insurance coverage of mental disorders, American psychiatrists compiled a large list of behavioral disorders, the list of which grows each decade. In 1954, Thorazine ? became the anti-psychotic drug of choice, followed by numerous other chemical lobotomy drugs that never cure but sometimes “control” psychotics. Shortly after that, antidepressant drugs became the darling of psychiatrists and many general physicians. By 1987, Prozac? became the King of antidepressants, only to be replaced by a score of other equally minimally effective drugs—the best are 42% effective with a 25% complication rate. Indeed, I have seen thousands of depressed patients still taking one to 4 antidepressant drugs, with no relief!? Today antidepressants are the second leading category of drug prescribed!? Of course, statins, at least as harmful as most antidepressants, are the top dog.
Meanwhile, psychiatry went through the ridiculous Freudian psychoanalysis phase and a few offshoots, not one of which was ever proven to be scientifically effective!? While it is true that behavioral and humanistic approaches appear to be useful and usually non-damaging, the vast majority of modern psychiatrists use only drug after drug with little or no true therapy. Now they have invaded our schools and homes with flagrant promotion of Ritalin? and antidepressants for up to one-third of children! The elimination of morality by early psychiatrists has led to a significant moral dilemma!? Of all the medical specialists, those with the least spiritual foundation seem to be psychiatry and oncology (but that is another story). A vast majority of individuals with behavioral and “mental” disorders have a spiritual existential crisis. The treatment that will be of the greatest benefit is spiritual counseling or direction.
For depression, see also:
Anxiety, Depression and Joy as well as Depression—The World’s Best Treatment Program.