PSYCHIATRY INSISTS MENTAL “DISEASES” ARE AS REAL AS CANCER - by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD, Fellow, American Academy of Neurology

by Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD,

Fellow, American Academy of Neurology

10/01/03 (892 words)

In a recent article entitled “Causes of Death in a Population Treated for Serious Mental Illness” the authors wrote: ” This … mortality linkage study describes the prevalence of specific fatal disease and injury conditions in an adult population with serious mental illness. In fact, not a single psychiatric disorder is an actual disease (disease = abnormality; no abnormality = normal = no disease) with a physical abnormality by which to diagnose it. This typifies the fraud of calling all psychiatric conditions “diseases.” The only physical complications of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment are those of treatments: drugs, ECT, and psychosurgery. Unlike all other risk vs. benefit analysis in medicine, there is never an actual disease on the “risk” side of the equation in psychiatry; the only physical risk accrues from the drugs, ECT, psychosurgery.
Challenged to prove mental disorders are real diseases like diabetes and cancer, on September 26, 2003, the AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION (APA) released a “STATEMENT ON DIAGNOSIS AND TREAT MENT OF MENTAL DISORDERS.”

Having begun, in 1970, to tell the nation psychiatric conditions are actual diseases, what proof do they offer?

APA: ” It is unfortunate that in the face of this remarkable scientific and clinical progress, a small number of individuals and groups persist in questioning the reality and clinical legitimacy of disorders that affect the mind, brain, and behavior. One recent challenge contended that the lack of a diagnostic laboratory test capable of confirming the presence of a mental disorder constituted evidence that these disorders are not medically valid conditions.

By “disorder” psychiatry (APA) means disease. This is what they tell their patients and the public. This is the “big lie!” It is not the lack of a test, it is the lack of an abnormality for which to test, that leads to the conclusion that no disease exists.

APA: “… the American Psychiatric Association (APA) respects the right of individuals to express their impatience with the pace of science…”

We are not expressing “impatience with the pace of science” we are asking for proof of disease in patients you diagnose with disorders/diseases.

APA: Research has shown that serious neurobiological disorders such as schizophrenia reveal reproducible abnormalities of brain structure and function.

Why does APA never show us the proof in the scientific literature? Instead, in DSM-IV you write: ” A compelling literature documents that there is much “physical” in “mental” disorders and much “mental” in “physical” disorders.” In Basic Nomenclature Issues of DSM-V you write: “DSM has never contained a detailed definition that is useful as a criterion for deciding what is, or is not, a mental disorder.” But you tell every patient they are diseases.

.APA: “…mental disorders will likely be proven to represent disorders of intercellular communication; or of disrupted neural circuitry.”

Saying “will likely be proven” is a confession that none have been proven.

APA: In 1970, the Nobel Prize was awarded to Julius Axelrod, Ph.D., of the National Institute of Mental Health, for his discovery of how anti-depressant medications regulate the availability of neurotransmitters…”

More fundamental still, not a single psychiatric condition has been proved to be a disease. No abnormality has been proved to treat, to make normal.

APA: “In the absence of one or more biological markers for mental disorders, these conditions are defined by a variety of concepts.

But there is no way to define a disease except by a physical/biological abnormality/marker-another confession there is no such thing as a psychiatric disease.

APA: “…mental disorders may well be shown to be emergent properties of multiple systems that have gone subtly awry.

Saying “…mental disorders may well be shown to be…” they confess once again that no such thing as a psychiatric disorder/disease exists.

APA: “The lack of a laboratory-based diagnostic test for mental disorders does not diminish the irrefutable evidence that mental and behavioral disorders exact devastating emotional and financial tolls on individuals, families, communities, and our Nation.
They offer as “irrefutable evidence” not a confirming physical abnormality as in the rest of medicine, but their “devastating emotional and financial tolls on individuals, families, communities, and our Nation.”
APA: “And the landmark Global Burden of Disease study… found mental disorders, including suicide, to rank second in societal burden, behind only cardiovascular conditions…”

Here, because “mental disorders” gained someone’s classification in a “diseases” they ask that we accept “mental disorders” as diseases.

APA: “…the APA…will not be distracted by those who would deny that serious mental disorders are real medical conditions that can be diagnosed accurately and treated effectively.

The APA pledges to diagnose “serious mental disorders” as “real medical conditions that can be diagnosed accurately and treated effectively” just as though they were.

The APA’s DSM has grown from 112 mental disorders in its initial, 1952 edition to 163 in the 1968, DSM-II, to 224 in the 1980, DSM-III , 253 in the 1987, DSM-III-R and, 374 in the 1994, DSM-IV.

In 1970, by market strategy, not science, psychiatry, the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government began calling mental disorders, “diseases” and coercing their “diagnosis” through the Nation’s public schools. Two hundred thousand were labeled and drugged. Today 10 million-20 percent, of the nation’s schoolchildren are labeled and drugged-a heinous crime, a national disgrace.