Fwd: [SSRI-Research] A FAST FOR FREEDOM IN MENTAL HEALTH - By RFD Editor, Nicholas Regush

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[sSRI-Research] A FAST FOR FREEDOM IN MENTAL HEALTH - By RFD Editor,

Nicholas Regush

 

August 21, 2003

 

SECOND OPINION

 

A FAST FOR FREEDOM IN MENTAL HEALTH

 

A hunger strike challenges international domination by

biopsychiatry and the forced drugging of patients

 

By RFD Editor, Nicholas Regush

 

http://www.redflagsweekly.com/extra/2003_aug21.html

 

Day Five. He's still fasting. But David Oaks sounds anything but

weak on the telephone. His spirits are high and he is

determined to carry through on his call for freedom in mental

health. He's one of six former psychiatric patients who are on a

hunger strike at a church in Pasadena, California. They are

challenging the basis of biological psychiatry — that " emotional

and mental problems are primarily a biologically-based brain

disease. " And they are demanding that groups such as the

American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the National Alliance

for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) and the Office of the Surgeon General of

the United States provide scientific evidence for their acceptance

of a biopsychiatric approach that primarily involves drugging

patients and neglecting viable non-drug options.

 

Oaks is the director of MindFreedom, a group which has been

highly vocal in its opposition to forced drugging of many

thousands of psychiatric patients in the U.S. The group, which is

organizing the " Fast For Freedom In Mental Health, " says that

psychiatrists, among other things:

 

*Incarcerate citizens who have committed crimes against neither

persons nor property

*Impose diagnostic labels on people that stigmatize and defame

them

* Induce neurological damage by force and coercion with

powerful psychotropic drugs

*Stimulate violence and suicide with drugs promoted as able to

control these activities

 

Quite a list. So the hunger strikers are hoping to draw attention to

these professional behavioral patterns and to emphasize the

need to move away from an increasingly coercive infrastructure

of drug treatment to one that offers patients a clear therapeutic

choice.

 

Of course, psychiatry is tied by an umbilical cord made of

greenbacks to the drug industry. Its journals and many of its

practitioners have long sold out to fame and fortune promised by

the drug merchants. Sure, some people benefit from drug

therapy, but in recent years, there has been such an enormous

upturn of drugging that this has disqualified psychiatry as a

medical endeavor. It's become, by and large, a mobster on a

rampage. It's easier to watch the violence on the Sopranos.

 

What can Oaks and his colleagues achieve by this hunger

strike? A lot, if they get wide media attention. It doesn't take a

genius to figure out that modern psychiatry runs on the fuel of

superstition and ignorance. MindFreedom is asking for scientific

evidence that, for example:

 

*Clearly establishes the validity of schizophrenia, depression or

" other major illnesses " as biologically-based brain diseases.

*Clearly establishes that a scan or test of the brain, blood, urine,

genes, etc can reliably distinguish individuals with the above

diagnoses — prior to treatment with psychiatric drugs — from

individuals without the diagnoses.

*Clearly establishes a base-line standard of a

neurochemically-balanced " normal " personality, against which a

neurochemical " imbalance " can be measured and corrected by

pharmaceutical means.

 

And so on. You get the picture. MindFreedom has put together a

panel of its own experts to review any of the answers provided by

anyone from the APA, NAMI and the Office of the Surgeon

General of the United States.

 

Rather than provide MindFreedom with an intelligent response to

their questions, here, for example, is, in part, how Dr. James H.

Scully, Jr., the APA Medical Director, responded a few days ago:

 

" The answers to your questions are widely available in the

scientific literature, and have been for years. I suggest you begin

your review with Surgeon General David Satcher's report, " Mental

Health: A Report of the Surgeon General. " In addition, I

recommend the Introductory Textbook of Psychiatry (3rd edition),

edited by Andreasen and Black. This is a `user-friendly' textbook

for persons just being introduced to the field of psychiatry. "

 

Arrogance replaces intellect. Not a very smart move by Dr. Scully.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

 

For more information about the hunger strike, go to:

 

http://www.MIND FREEDOM.org