Psychiatrists & Psychologists: There Are No Medical/Scientific Tests For Any Mental Disorder
Read ‘Psychiatric Disorders: The Facts Behind the Billion Dollar Marketing Campaign’ here
“There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” “there is no definition of a mental disorder.” “It’s bull—. I mean, you just can’t define it.” — Allen Frances, Psychiatrist and former DSM-IV Task Force Chairman
“Despite more than two hundred years of intensive research, no commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorders have proven to be either genetic or biological in origin, including schizophrenia, major depression, manic-depressive disorder, the various anxiety disorders, and childhood disorders such as attention-deficit hyperactivity. At present there are no known biochemical imbalances in the brain of typical psychiatric patients—until they are given psychiatric drugs.” — Peter Breggin, Psychiatrist
While “there has been no shortage of alleged biochemical explanations for psychiatric conditions…not one has been proven. Quite the contrary. In every instance where such an imbalance was thought to have been found, it was later proven false.” — Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist
“The theories are held on to not only because there is nothing else to take their place, but also because they are useful in promoting drug treatment.” — Dr. Elliott Valenstein Ph.D., author of Blaming the Brain
“There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases. If such a test were developed … then the condition would cease to be a mental illness and would be classified, instead, as a symptom of a bodily disease.” — Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, New York University Medical School, Syracuse
“We do not have an independent, valid test for ADHD, and there are no data to indicate ADHD is due to a brain malfunction.” — Final statement of the panel from the National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference on ADHD
“The way things get into the DSM is not based on blood test or brain scan or physical findings. It’s based on descriptions of behavior. And that’s what the whole psychiatry system is.” — Dr Colin Ross, Psychiatrist
“Psychiatry has never been driven by science. They have no biological or genetic basis for these illnesses and the National Institutes of Mental Health are totally committed to the pharmacological line. … There is a great deal of scientific evidence that stimulants cause brain damage with long-term use, yet there is no evidence that these mental illnesses, such as ADHD, exist.” — Peter Breggin, Psychiatrist
“No claim for a gene for a psychiatric condition has stood the test of time, in spite of popular misinformation.” — Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist
“In reality, psychiatric diagnosing is a kind of spiritual profiling that can destroy lives and frequently does.” — Peter Breggin, Psychiatrist
“…modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness…Patients [have] been diagnosed with ‘chemical imbalances’ despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and…there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.” — Dr. David Kaiser, Psychiatrist
“There’s no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, ‘I have a biochemical imbalance,’ I say, ‘Show me your lab tests.’ There are no lab tests. So what’s the biochemical imbalance?” — Dr. Ron Leifer, Psychiatrist
“Virtually anyone at any given time can meet the criteria for bipolar disorder or ADHD. Anyone. And the problem is everyone diagnosed with even one of these ‘illnesses’ triggers the pill dispenser.” — Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, Psychiatrist
“No behavior or misbehavior is a disease or can be a disease. That’s not what diseases are. Diseases are malfunctions of the human body, of the heart, the liver, the kidney, the brain. Typhoid fever is a disease. Spring fever is not a disease; it is a figure of speech, a metaphoric disease. All mental diseases are metaphoric diseases, misrepresented as real diseases and mistaken for real diseases.” — Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
“It has occurred to me with forcible irony that psychiatry has quite literally lost its mind, and along with it the minds of the patients they are presumably suppose to care for.”— David Kaiser, Psychiatrist
“DSM-IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document… DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making bestseller—its major failings notwithstanding.”— Loren Mosher, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry
“All psychiatrists have in common that when they are caught on camera or on microphone, they cower and admit that there are no such things as chemical imbalances/diseases, or examinations or tests for them. What they do in practice, lying in every instance, abrogating [revoking] the informed consent right of every patient and poisoning them in the name of ‘treatment’ is nothing short of criminal.”— Dr. Fred Baughman Jr., Pediatric Neurologist
“Psychiatry makes unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin…This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naïve and perhaps delusional.” — Dr. David Kaiser, psychiatrist
“In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ‘disease,’ formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.”— Dr. Thomas Dorman, internist and member of the Royal College of Physicians of the UK
“I believe, until the public and psychiatry itself see that DSM labels are not only useless as medical ‘diagnoses’ but also have the potential to do great harm—particularly when they are used as means to deny individual freedoms, or as weapons by psychiatrists acting as hired guns for the legal system.” — Dr. Sydney Walker III, psychiatrist
“The way things get into the DSM is not based on blood test or brain scan or physical findings. It’s based on descriptions of behavior. And that’s what the whole psychiatry system is.”— Dr. Colin Ross, psychiatrist
“No biochemical, neurological, or genetic markers have been found for Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Depression, Schizophrenia, anxiety, compulsive alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, gambling or any other so-called mental illness, disease, or disorder.” — Bruce Levine, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Commonsense Rebellion
“Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV [and ICD-10] are terms arrived at through peer consensus.”— Tana Dineen Ph.D., psychologist
“It’s not science. It’s politics and economics. That’s what psychiatry is: politics and economics. Behavior control, it is not science, it is not medicine.”— Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus
Click image to read more from CCHR Co-Founder, Dr. Thomas Szasz
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We have biofeedback and MRI to diagnose disorders. They are on the brink of more sure fire tests as well. Haven’t panic attacks always been obvious? Your heart is racing, your hands are shaking. You could have always measured heart rate- then in the absence of biological cause you have a diagnosis, panic attack. Recurrent panic attacks in the face of stimuli, boom and we have panic disorder or PTSD. It’s a process of elimination. Rule out physical problem, and you can diagnose a mental one. The after effects of stress are very real as well.
The brain is strikingly complex as is human emotion, consciousness, qualia, ect. But sure enough they will get to the bottom of it and figure it out biologically. Don’t jump the gun and say all disorders are fake when you yourself can’t even say that you understand the brain.
Now I understand why all is this is happening to me:
“In order to gain a full and deep understanding of the patient, psychiatrists must also delve into the patient’s “world view”—her way of “being in the world.” The phenomenologists therefore focus on the structure and contents of the patient’s conscious experience.5,6 For example, does he or she invariably experience the world as a hostile and threatening place? Are all her relationships perceived as threats to her autonomy? And how do the patient’s spiritual concerns and beliefs shape his world-view?7 From the psychodynamic perspective, as Dr James Knoll observes, what are the wishes, fantasies, experiences, fears, and desires that shape the patient’s conscious and unconscious life? (written communication, March 26, 2013). Such depth-psychology is unlikely to be captured in either a categorical or a dimensional “diagnosis” of the patient. Deeper understanding demands that we enter into the patient’s way of “being in the world.””
Diagnosis and its Discontents: The DSM Debate Continues
By Ronald W. Pies, MD | 29 maart 2013
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blog/pies/content/article/10168/2135248?p_p_id=EXT_4&p_p_action=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-2&p_p_col_count=1&_EXT_4_struts_action=%2Farticles_display%2Fview_article&_EXT_4_showComments=true&_EXT_4_curCommentPage=2
Suppose – e.g., because of your political opinions – you are spied on by the secret services, and that they (with the collaboration of a psychiatrist) start an action to push your buttons.
They follow you everywhere you go. They dig into your background, dig up some dirt about you, and they will keep the closest possible tabs on what you’re doing.
There would be no harm committed, only “psychological abuse”, which however,you can’t prove. Because hard evidence is lacking – making prosecution impossible – the abusers get away with it. As spiders they enmesh you as their prey in a web that is a Catch-22: Nobody will believe you that you a a victim.
I can imagine that such a victim, because of the intense emotional experiences, may overreact and even develop a kind of psychotic state.
Probably he would be considered paranoid by the local police.
The psychiatrist could judge that the person just imagines that he is spied on, and that because of his emotional state, must be brought to a mental brought to hospital.
Overt tyrants don’t need to employ psychiatry as a weapon, but establishing a dictatorship that pretends whether to be a republic or constitutional monarchy requires a stealthy way of silencing opponents and discrediting dissidents. What better way than to be labeled mentally ill?
In 1974, neurophysiologist and political activist, Vladimir Bukovsky and the incarcerated psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman wrote “A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissenters,” in which they provided potential future victims of political psychiatry with instructions on how to behave during inquest in order to avoid being diagnosed as mentally sick.
He wrote:
Не утверждайте категорически о слежке за вами, преследованиях, подслушиваниях, провокациях и т.п. [Don't complain about being spied on, or about harassment, eavesdropping, provocations, etc.] This mean that one must endure the psychological abuse.
But this causes stress. And the result of stress is a strain on the nervous system, and these create the physical effects of the situation over time: Hypertension; Insomnia Irritable; Ischemic Heart Disease; Psychoneuroses….
I think what you published mаde a lot
of sense. However, think on thiѕ, suppose you were
to crеate a κillеr heaԁline?
I mеаn, I don’t want to tell you how to run your website, however suppose you added a title that makes people desire more? I mean Psychiatrists, MDs & Psychologists—No Medical Test Exists for Any
Psychiatric practices result in murder, deprivation of liberty, forced drugging with chemical compounds, death, premature death, destroys people lives, health, rights, destroys families and society. Psychiatry ought to be abolished, on account of the millions of deaths since its inception before the turn of the 18th century leading up to modern times. It ought to be abolished for the sake of the health and well-being of the human population, especially children. Thats my advocation, based on study and research of the topic over the past 8 months, and as an experienced Health and Physical Education Teacher, with a Master of Education (Leadership and Management).
The following is the scenario of an individual in “distress” seeking
relief and his final conclusion about Psychiatry:
1- I am in distress: they say that psychiatry have a remedy, so I
start taking the “prescribed” medication.
2- I experience various undesirable side effects, more than any
concrete benefit. I conclude “Psychiatry is not smart enough to cure my condition”.
3- I discover, after an active research, that DSM’s are just
intended to monger disease to profit drug makers. They would even list “shyness” as a pathology only with the intent to “medicalize”
for profit.
4- I am inclined to believe that their irresponsible greed of money
as well as pretended authority, both in themselves are an antisocial
and pathological behavior. Considering then the cost of one single
daily pill of Zyprexa is about $100.00, and that I spend 1/10 of
that for food daily, I conclude that, not only the psychiatric
establishment together with the drug makers are to be considered
psychopaths (for their greed, self assigned “authority”,
Shamelessness) these features are to be considered in their DSMs as
criteria to lable and condemn them from any pursuits they have.
This, in turn, yields to a clear demonstration of their individual
and concerted criminal behavior, bordering with conspiracy.
“Ask your doctor if XYZ is good for you. For free samples call….”.
Not only the “M.D.”s are acting as sales persons for drugs and the
clinics/pharmacies as “factory outlets”, the drug makers are asking
the gullible TV viewer to act as their sales rep. too.
5- (take from 2- above) Not that they are “not smart enough”, they
are maliciously knavish, harming both the health AND the finances of
SOCIETY (principally for gain – THIS IS A PSYCHOPATHIC BEHAVIOR -
not contemplated in their DSM). Most “psychiatrists” are to be forcibly put on their own psychotropic medications, since by any of their own DSM diagnostic “bible” they are to be patented as chronically diseased “psychopaths” and, legally, outright criminals.
What a choice they have made to become “psychiatrists”, in order to make a living, in such a shameless way.
Where does the M.D.’s Hippocrates’s oath fit in all this?
John
Excellent post John,
I feel the same way. Trouble is, we are in the minority. For every person that tells me how psychiatry and pills have ruined their lives… I meet someone that tells me how wonderful medication is… or I meet someone that tells me their sibling needs medication or they are out of control. Thus… the need to be in control or conform. That is why society accepts society… but having been misdiagnosed for the past 3 years and having numerous side effects, I know we have to do something to change this.
Let me know if you are aware of any ways to get the word out… I have written my own story on a few websites, but I’d love to figure out how to do this in a more meaningful way.
Jeff
There are absolutely no medical or physical tests in psychiatry to diagnose mental disorders and the only way to diagnose or differentially diagnose mental disorders is by using standardized psychological tests. Schizophrenia is not a medical or physical condition and hence can never be detected by medical parameters. Psychiatry is misleading the ignorant public, health authorities even physicians and even Honorable courts regarding matters related to mental disorders. in Psychiatry there is no diagnosis but only LABELING.The term Schizophrenia is a psychological label affixed to the people with distortions in behavior and has nothing to do with disease.Psychiatry is spreading lies to the world around and damaging people with pseudo diagnosis.Brain abnormality is not the cause of Schizophrenia as it is popularly misinformed to the general public by the Psychiatrists.STOP PSYCHIATRY spreading HIMALAYAN LIES and cheat the ignorant public.
[...] For decades, psychiatrists and Pharma have spouted lines to the press and public amounting to, “researchers now believe” they have medical evidence of schizophrenia as a physical/biological abnormality, or “new evidence suggests” evidence of schizophrenia as a real disease. But despite millions of dollars in research funds and countless tales of “belief” —no evidence to support the theory. One of the most common tricks employed by the Psycho/Pharmaceutical industry to mislead the public, legislators and the press, is to take X-rays or brain images of people who have been long-term users of antipsychotic drugs (known to cause brain atrophy/shrinkage) and then claim people with schizophrenia have smaller brains. They’ve spouted similar studies on kids with ADHD having smaller brains, but the bottom line to that study was that the kids with smaller brains, were…smaller kids. These are just a few of the many PR spins employed by Psycho/Pharma to try and maintain the “belief” in psychiatry, in their credibility as a science. As evidenced by the recent statement of psychiatrist Allen Frances, former DSM- IV Task Force Chairman, this belief is falling apart even within their own ranks, “There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” —Allen Frances (And Frances isn’t the only psychiatrist exposing the fraud of the biological brain disease model; click here for more.) [...]
Much, perhaps all, neurological dysfunction occurs as a result of systemic inflammatory disease. The problem is that Medicine does not yet have adequate tests for measuring sub-clinical systemic inflammation.
During the last decade, I and my research colleagues have proposed a pathogenesis of systemic inflammatory disease based on a systemic response to the Metagenomc Microbiota we all accumulate during life. Here is a recent summary:
http://AutoimmunityResearch.org/preprints/AR-Proal-Metagenome.pdf
Based on that understanding we have been able to reverse systemic inflammatory diseases, and the result has been that Neurological dysfunction suffered by those patients, including obsession (OCD), bipolar disorders, and even irrational anger and insomnia have disappeared along with the systemic inflammation.
It is important to start looking at the whole body for the cause of disease or dysfunction, and forget the irrational concept of a “blood brain barrier” somehow making the brain a different biological subsystem. Such a barrier does not exist – the cells of which it is composed are permeable to pathogens, and a host of body metabolites and pharmaceutical drugs.
Ithink everyone needs to quit being whiners and take responsibility for their actions. The reason we even have a proffession like this is because people are constantly trying to find scape goats for things they have done, and what better way to do it in a society that magic doesn’t exist in? You make up a new type of “magic” aka psychology. That way you can just say I am not right today, I don’t feel right today, something isn’t right with my mind today; like ou are possessed or something and no one can do anything about it and it is genetic it is “NOT MY FAULT”, its just the way I am. That is right it is just the way you are. And YOU can Change the way that YOU are. You don’t like something you are doing doesn’t make you feel right? DON’T DO IT!!! It is no ones fault but your own. Plain and simple. Take responsibility for yourself and the things you do. You aren’t sick you are different. You think different and see things different, and so does everyone else. There is NOTHING WRONG with this it is HUMAN. Just be prepared for the consequences when you make a poor choice. People should embrace their differences and others it is the ONLY way we will ever be free and live in any kind of peace.
My son has been receiving psychiatric treatment for the last 3 years.During that time, under an Involuntary Treatment Order, he has been forced to have Respiradone injections which, in effect, is a chemical labotomy causing him to be unable to function normally and barely able to get off his bed. Depression, of course, takes over!
Had he been treated by a psychologist who would have discovered the CAUSE of his drug use I am convinced he would have recovered three years ago. Psychiatrists treat the SYMPTOMS using dangerous drugs which have severe side affects includinhg suicide, but do not concern themselves with the CAUSE!
It is unbelievable that, in this day and age, young people (and people in general) are put under INVOLUNTARY “treament” orders and FORCED to receive injections of dangerous, extremely harmful drugs that impair their mental and physical abilities to the point that they make them, as you wrote, unable to function normally. This is not treatment. It is, indeed, criminal. I am very sorry this is happennig to your son and to you. Can you get him out of that terrible situation?
“that they make them, …, unable to function normally” Because you really think someone with schizophrenia is able to “function normally”? Please, define “normal”. Without drugs, a schizophrenic patient, will have depressive symptoms as well. That’s a inherent part of it, because of the self-isolation, seeking less inputs because not able to handle with the important flux of disturbing thoughts.
I’m just saying, society doesn’t want “these” people, – and we are all part of this society – and society/relatives send them to “helpers” because they have such [self-] destructive behaviours and these relatives feel discouraged in front of a battle they can’t win, because they are overwhelmed… Now tell me, what should we do? Should we say “Let them become homeless, live under bridges, be the “consumers-society” disturbing outsiders no one [wants to] cares about, let them lose all their relatives, friends, supportive”? Because they may not need drugs, but what they sure need, is compassion, is someone who cares about them, even then, when all the others, and society, you too maybe, don’t anymore… THIS is what I know about Psychiatry, day in, day out. Not doing ALL right, sure not, – Do you? – but for the most of us working in this field, trying to be here for these people, and not looking away… Like society does.
parents are responsible for the balanced emotional health of the child in their care. if a “problem” arises with the kid, the parents need to hauled in and explain THEIR upbringing to a counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist; wherever they want to send their offspring, in the first place to get to the bottom of why the child, adolescent is considered the one w/ a malfunction.
My poor mother was put on psychiatric drugs when she became depressed due to the breakup of her marriage. She soon became very addicted to them. When she developed side effects they were treated as new symptoms and more drugs were prescribed. My mother became like a junkie in her own home and this continued for 25 years due to the incompetance of psychiatrists.Earlier this year my mother collapsed on the floor and they sectioned her. I have fought for months to get her taken off drugs and to be allowed to live in her own home. Psychiatry has ruined my mothers life , she has been left with an irreversable condition called tardive dyskinesia making her very shakey . If psychiatry was abollished the world would be a better place.At the age of 80 my mother has started to feel alive again since coming off psychiatric drugs. They are very dangerous.
I completely agree with the article and its observations. I have known several cases of people who have been so called “diagnosed” who were just going through a bad phases in life and needed a patient ear and some cheering up. But the psychiatrists pronounce them to have mental illness without any tests or providing an reports or giving any medical explanation.
These diagnoses were done in a matter of few minutes; a doctor takes more time to test a case of simple viral fever. The next step is inevitably prescribing drugs which is supposed to be forever. As the there is no cure for these fabricated ailments “of coure not”. Patients who stopped the medication were reprimanded or scared into believing that there will be a relapse. What relapse there was no ailment to start with.
When questioned about their methods they usually either say something very abstract and meaningless or try and use jargon to confuse patients, some of them go to the extent of calling the patient paranoid for asking for proof or verification. I am sure the few cases I know of are the tip of the iceberg of this fraudulent profession. I am happy that now people are voicing their concern and asking for explanations beyond psycho babble.
I am really happy that some truth is out there to all the add mith
These truths should be on the front page of every newspaper and shouted from every rooftop and legislative capitol. This would expose the REAL imminent and disastrous factor about the national health plans being considered. If all mental health mandates were eliminated from the picture–as they properly SHOULD be eliminated, since they’re not based on real science–we might actually be able to afford to include in these health plans all the things people really do need, to survive any and all physical illnesses. Mental health “parity” [equal dollar amounts of coverage] will suck this country dry of resources in a heartbeat.
25.Okt.09
Psychiatry is indeed a strange “science”. But then: the human soul is very complex, and disturbances of this soul lead to nearly all the crimes that are being committed daily in this world of ours.
Peter Sommer