I’m part way through reading ‘Psychiatry Under the Influence’ by Rob Whitaker, and it’s shocking reading. In a nutshell, the book sets out how from the 1980s on, when the American Psychiatric Association (APA) decided to pursue a ‘disease’ model for mental illness, they basically jumped into bed with Big Pharma to ‘create’ discrete mental illnesses that Big Pharma could ‘cure’ with their latest on-patent pill.
Psychiatry eagerly embraced the ‘disease’ model for mental illness - you know, all that stuff that tells people their brains are ‘broken’, and that they have a chemical imbalance - for two main reasons: money and power. ONLY psychiatrists can prescribe psychiatric drugs, while ‘talk therapy’ can be done (often much better and much cheaper) by any number of counselors, coaches, social workers and I don’t know who else.
Psychiatry was steadily being run out of business by all these alternative avenues to healing mental and emotional difficulties before 1980, and the APA knew that something had to be done, fast, to prevent its members from losing their incomes. Enter: the disease model of mental illness.
The whole DSM III was redrawn along pseudo-scientific lines, to back-up the false premise that mental illnesses could be broken down into discrete ‘diseases of the brain’, which could ONLY be treated by the psychiatrist’s prescription of the right little pill.
But right from the start, the disease model had precious little science backing it up. What it had - in spades, thanks to all the funding of studies and clinical trials and ‘information sessions’ by Big Pharma - was a huge number of psychiatrists getting paid big bucks to talk up the ‘disease’ model of the brain, and to completely twist the research around that showed that psychiatric meds didn’t work better than placebo - and often, caused even more problems to patients, particularly over the longer term.
These money-hungry psychiatrists really couldn’t lose: Big Pharma was paying them money to conduct (bent) research into the disease model of mental illness that would (falsely) show how psychiatric drugs were the only way to ‘cure’ these problems - which would lead to millions of people showing up at psychiatry’s door, to get their wonder cure pills.
Who cares that there was no science, or evidence, backing up all the claims of a ‘chemical imbalance’ causing everyone’s mental illnesses?! Who cares that the pills didn’t work and were often trailing destruction in their wake, including increased risk of suicide, increased risk of serious brain damage like tardive dyskinesia, physical illnesses, weight gain and a bunch of other things that could and did seriously compromise the patients’ quality of life?!
There was money to be made - huge money - in convincing more and more people that their brains were ‘broken’, and that psychiatry and Big Pharma were the only way to fix the problem.
That’s why with each new edition of the DSM, hundreds of new mental ‘diseases’ have been added to the list, because each new ‘disease’ requires a new pill to cure it. But you should know: there is hardly any science, precious little evidence, to prove any of these new ‘diseases’.
While proudly trumpeting it’s pseudo-scientific basis to anyone who dares to question the ‘disease’ model of mental illness, the APA and psychiatry continues to move the goal-posts and to create new illnesses out of thin air, that have precisely zero research to back them up. Even worse, the vast majority of the people sitting on the DSM committees that draw up the criteria for all these new ‘diseases’ are also on the payroll of Big Pharma.
The self-same people who are ‘creating’ new mental illnesses with the APA are then being paid enormous sums to run clinical trials of pills that are going to ‘cure’ them - and man, are they going to make sure people know that the pills are the only way to go, even if it means falsifying and doctoring the so-called ‘evidence’ to prove it.
And the result of all this is utter confusion and misery.
More and more people are now being convinced by the marketing initiatives jointly undertaken by the APA and Big Pharma that they are mentally ill, have broken brains and require pills in order just to function as normal, happy human beings, in what must be one of the biggest quackery operations ever known.
At the same time, as the number of ‘diagnoses’ continues to mushroom - with hundreds more being added to each new iteration of the DSM - even the professionals have no idea what ‘disease’ most of their patients have, resulting in one person often being given 6 diagnoses for one problem - and a pill to go with each one.
And then to top it all off, the pills don’t even work for the ‘disease’ they are supposedly meant to be curing, and often leave the person taking them addicted, anxious and in a deteriorating state of physical and mental health.
But who cares about all that, because the psychiatrists and Big Pharma are continuing to rake in the cash!!!!
Modern psychiatry is completely and utterly corrupt.
When God is out of the picture (as it is with the medical profession generally, and psychiatry in particular) the worst unethical abuses and immoral activity can flourish so easily. All mental illnesses are rooted in the soul, and affected by the emotional environment a person finds themselves in.
If they are in a loving, nurturing and caring environment, they thrive mentally. If they aren’t - they’ll often experience any number of mental issues and emotional problems. Things like proper nutrition, adequate sleep and enough exercise also have a part to play in staying healthy, body, mind and soul.
But you won’t hear about any of that from most psychiatrists these days, who are so invested in the completely false ‘disease’ model of mental illness in order to pay their mortgages and keep the punters rolling through their doors.
Sigh.
When is the corruption going to end? When are people going to wake up to what’s really going on with modern medicine and psychiatry? When are we going to put God back into our healthcare picture, instead of relying on little pills to get us through life?
Who knows. But it can’t happen soon enough.
Psychiatry eagerly embraced the ‘disease’ model for mental illness - you know, all that stuff that tells people their brains are ‘broken’, and that they have a chemical imbalance - for two main reasons: money and power. ONLY psychiatrists can prescribe psychiatric drugs, while ‘talk therapy’ can be done (often much better and much cheaper) by any number of counselors, coaches, social workers and I don’t know who else.
Psychiatry was steadily being run out of business by all these alternative avenues to healing mental and emotional difficulties before 1980, and the APA knew that something had to be done, fast, to prevent its members from losing their incomes. Enter: the disease model of mental illness.
The whole DSM III was redrawn along pseudo-scientific lines, to back-up the false premise that mental illnesses could be broken down into discrete ‘diseases of the brain’, which could ONLY be treated by the psychiatrist’s prescription of the right little pill.
But right from the start, the disease model had precious little science backing it up. What it had - in spades, thanks to all the funding of studies and clinical trials and ‘information sessions’ by Big Pharma - was a huge number of psychiatrists getting paid big bucks to talk up the ‘disease’ model of the brain, and to completely twist the research around that showed that psychiatric meds didn’t work better than placebo - and often, caused even more problems to patients, particularly over the longer term.
These money-hungry psychiatrists really couldn’t lose: Big Pharma was paying them money to conduct (bent) research into the disease model of mental illness that would (falsely) show how psychiatric drugs were the only way to ‘cure’ these problems - which would lead to millions of people showing up at psychiatry’s door, to get their wonder cure pills.
Who cares that there was no science, or evidence, backing up all the claims of a ‘chemical imbalance’ causing everyone’s mental illnesses?! Who cares that the pills didn’t work and were often trailing destruction in their wake, including increased risk of suicide, increased risk of serious brain damage like tardive dyskinesia, physical illnesses, weight gain and a bunch of other things that could and did seriously compromise the patients’ quality of life?!
There was money to be made - huge money - in convincing more and more people that their brains were ‘broken’, and that psychiatry and Big Pharma were the only way to fix the problem.
That’s why with each new edition of the DSM, hundreds of new mental ‘diseases’ have been added to the list, because each new ‘disease’ requires a new pill to cure it. But you should know: there is hardly any science, precious little evidence, to prove any of these new ‘diseases’.
While proudly trumpeting it’s pseudo-scientific basis to anyone who dares to question the ‘disease’ model of mental illness, the APA and psychiatry continues to move the goal-posts and to create new illnesses out of thin air, that have precisely zero research to back them up. Even worse, the vast majority of the people sitting on the DSM committees that draw up the criteria for all these new ‘diseases’ are also on the payroll of Big Pharma.
The self-same people who are ‘creating’ new mental illnesses with the APA are then being paid enormous sums to run clinical trials of pills that are going to ‘cure’ them - and man, are they going to make sure people know that the pills are the only way to go, even if it means falsifying and doctoring the so-called ‘evidence’ to prove it.
And the result of all this is utter confusion and misery.
More and more people are now being convinced by the marketing initiatives jointly undertaken by the APA and Big Pharma that they are mentally ill, have broken brains and require pills in order just to function as normal, happy human beings, in what must be one of the biggest quackery operations ever known.
At the same time, as the number of ‘diagnoses’ continues to mushroom - with hundreds more being added to each new iteration of the DSM - even the professionals have no idea what ‘disease’ most of their patients have, resulting in one person often being given 6 diagnoses for one problem - and a pill to go with each one.
And then to top it all off, the pills don’t even work for the ‘disease’ they are supposedly meant to be curing, and often leave the person taking them addicted, anxious and in a deteriorating state of physical and mental health.
But who cares about all that, because the psychiatrists and Big Pharma are continuing to rake in the cash!!!!
Modern psychiatry is completely and utterly corrupt.
When God is out of the picture (as it is with the medical profession generally, and psychiatry in particular) the worst unethical abuses and immoral activity can flourish so easily. All mental illnesses are rooted in the soul, and affected by the emotional environment a person finds themselves in.
If they are in a loving, nurturing and caring environment, they thrive mentally. If they aren’t - they’ll often experience any number of mental issues and emotional problems. Things like proper nutrition, adequate sleep and enough exercise also have a part to play in staying healthy, body, mind and soul.
But you won’t hear about any of that from most psychiatrists these days, who are so invested in the completely false ‘disease’ model of mental illness in order to pay their mortgages and keep the punters rolling through their doors.
Sigh.
When is the corruption going to end? When are people going to wake up to what’s really going on with modern medicine and psychiatry? When are we going to put God back into our healthcare picture, instead of relying on little pills to get us through life?
Who knows. But it can’t happen soon enough.
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