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Psychiatric Madness
by Michael Langston
   
    

People labeled as "mentally ill" have, over the ages, been subjected
to horrific mistreatment. We've all heard the stories about deplorable
conditions that once existed in state-run mental institutions, for
example, sordid tales of restraint and abuse that seem totally at odds
with our American ideals of freedom and compassion. We know this
already. We've seen Jack Nicholson in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST.
But there is more to this story that needs to be told. Much, much
more.

Robert Whitaker's MAD IN AMERICA, A HISTORY OF THE ENDURING
MISTREATMENT OF THE MENTALLY ILL, the book upon which this article is
based, is essential reading for anyone seeking an understanding of
madness, both the purported "madness" of those receiving "treatment"
and the far greater madness of those prescribing such treatment, but
who are in reality inflicting MIStreatment instead.

Perhaps the most disturbing revelation contained in the book is that
this unconscionable mistreatment of the mentally ill endures, even to
this day, in an altered form, making modern-day "mental health
professionals" essentially no different from their abusive
counterparts in the unenlightened past.

Barbaric Treatments of the Eighteenth Century

Mad-doctors have a long, ignoble tradition of mistreating their
patients in the guise of "treating" them. In eighteenth-century
England, when Thomas Jefferson was writing about human rights and
equality across the sea in the Declaration of Independence,
mad-doctors were busy providing "help" to their patients. Since
insanity was regarded as a loss of reason and was therefore a descent
into the brutish state of an animal, human beings were cruelly treated
as animals: as wild and unruly horses, for example, that had to be
tamed and effectively "broken."

Such treatments were based on terrorizing and physically weakening the
mentally deranged patients to such an extent that their symptoms of
mental illness were no longer manifested. They were made too weak and
too fearful to rant and rave, and then declared "cured" by their
self-congratulating caretakers.

Some of the methods used by these eighteenth-century doctors appear to
have been inspired by their distinguished colleagues in the
Inquisition. Lunatics, like heretics, were mercilessly tormented.
Victims were confined in small, filthy cells, chained, beaten,
starved, bled, blistered, sickened, given surprise baths in frigid
water, and even drowned and later revived. They were nauseated by
potions and made deathly sick. They were dizzied and disoriented by
spinning in swinging chairs and so terrified and robbed of all their
strength and energy that they were rendered quite mute and thus deemed
to be "cured" of their purported madness. But only someone who was
himself a madman could fail to appreciate that the mentally troubled
were ultimately made worse by such abominable atrocities.

One prominent doctor who failed to see the light was the American
physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin
Rush. Although he proclaimed to favor the humane and compassionate
treatment of the mentally ill, he was first and foremost a man of
"science" who embraced the so-called "scientific" practices of his
peers in Europe.

Rush, thinking like a modern-day biological psychiatrist, concocted
his own pet theory about the origin of madness and added new
variations to the existing grab bag of lunatic treatments. He believed
that the cause of mental illness could be attributed not to a
"biochemical" imbalance, as some contemporary theorists conjecture,
but instead to a simple defect in blood circulation to the brain, a
"circulatory" imbalance. Manic patients had too much blood flowing to
the brain, for example, whereas depressed patients had too little.

So Rush devised methods to "correct" this "imbalance." Manic
individuals, with too much blood circulation to the brain, were
relieved of their "excess" blood by the practice of copious and often
life-threatening bloodletting. Blisters, he advocated, should be
raised on the ankles, and not on the scalp, as this would have the
desired effect of drawing the offending blood away from the overheated
head. Similarly, caustics should be applied to the back of the neck
with the wound kept open for months at a time to provide "permanent
discharge" for the overheated brain.

A depressed individual, on the other hand, with too little blood
flowing to the brain, should be strapped to a rapidly spinning board
with the feet at the center of the board's rotation and the head
pointing outward to draw needed blood circulation to the depressed
patient's head. And if these "advanced" techniques proved ineffectual,
the "tranquilizer chair," a device invented by Rush to keep the
patient-sufferer totally immobile for hours, or even days, could be
employed to provide further "correction" of this circulatory
"imbalance." This "scientific" medical marvel even featured a feces
pot underneath as standard equipment, which indicates how long
"patients" were restrained in this torturous contraption and how
grossly uncomfortable an experience it must have been!

Rush also harbored crackpot notions regarding the efficacy of mercury
compounds in the treatment of various diseases and frequently
prescribed these toxic "calomel" potions for his unfortunate
patient-victims. One very illustrious casualty of Rush's reckless
assault on humanity was none other than George Washington, who very
likely died from being bled by Rush while being treated for an illness
from which he otherwise might have recovered.

This was the best that establishment medicine had to offer in the late
1700s: Benjamin Rush, regarded by many as the Founding Father of
American medicine, but whose practices, quite clearly, were the
quintessence of quackery. All this would be laughable if it were not
so tragic, but there is an extremely important lesson to be learned
here, and it is this:

Establishment medicine and the "quackery" that it so often rails
against are, quite often, one and the same. Obviously, in Rush's time
at least, "advanced, scientific" orthodox medicine was itself a
bastion of the worst type of quackery, the type that does harm and
even kills. What does this tell us about medicine today? Could it not
likewise be prone to similar error? The time is long overdue for
modern orthodox medicine to take a good, hard look at its own sordid
history.

Clearly, medical treatment for the mentally ill in the late 1700s was
an insane travesty, a shameful disgrace to the "healing" profession.
The Hippocratic principle of "first do no harm" seemed to be operating
exactly in reverse. Even though mad-doctors themselves were so
hopelessly out of touch with reality that they failed to see how they
were harming their patients, some of their more enlightened
contemporaries were not so blind to the patently obvious.

A More Enlightened Form of Treatment Emerges

Around this time, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Quakers
in York, England and the French physician Philippe Pinel independently
conceived and implemented a new form of treatment for the mentally
ill, which Pinel called "moral treatment." Whereas the immoral
treatment of the insane by insane medical doctors had been based on
the belief that the mentally ill were little more than devolved,
brutish beasts and that they consequently deserved to be treated as
such, moral treatment was founded on very different assumptions. The
mentally ill were regarded, not as defective, animal-like creatures
needing aggressive forms of physical treatment, but as human beings,
basically no different from anyone else, who had become overwhelmed
with the shocks and disappointments of life and had retreated into a
world of despair and delusion.

Such "brethren" should be treated with respect and compassion and
deserve a safe and nurturing environment within which the forces of
nature can bring about their healing. Proponents of moral treatment,
unlike their mad-doctor counterparts, had no arrogant,
self-aggrandizing delusions that they could, through their own petty
actions, somehow impose a "cure" on their patients. Instead they
perceived themselves as merely "assisting" nature, which is the true
and ultimate physician and healer. Some patients might never fully
recover, but at least their lives could be made more tolerable.

Patients were provided with adequate food and pleasant surroundings,
and at all times were treated with gentleness and kindness. Restraints
were only used as a last resort on the most unruly of patients.
Various activities such as reading, gardening, and playing games were
encouraged and made available. Guest lecturers were invited and social
events were held where it was difficult to distinguish the dressed-up
patients from the guests and officials of the institution. In every
way possible, patients were treated as rational human beings who
possessed the ability to control their thoughts and behavior, which
they usually did in this more humane setting. And all this could be
managed by lay individuals without the need for the "expertise" of
doctors.

This more enlightened method of dealing with madness produced results
that have yet to be equaled, even in our own time with our supposedly
more advanced "antipsychotic" drug therapies. Overall, more than half
of the patients so treated in progressive nineteenth-century asylums
either fully recovered or improved to the extent that they could be
discharged from the hospital and go on with their lives. Those who had
been ill for only a short time fared even better, and most of these
(70-80 percent) eventually made a complete recovery, with most never
relapsing into their former state of madness and without ever needing
any further treatment.

How vastly different from what patients are being told today: that to
avoid having a relapse, they must stay in perpetual treatment and
remain on their "antipsychotic medication" like a diabetic taking
insulin for the rest of their lives. It's true that drug-treated
schizophrenics do tend to relapse at a very high rate when they are
suddenly withdrawn from their addictive medicines. But what if they
were not drugged and debilitated with such brain-disabling potions in
the first place and treated instead like their more fortunate
compatriots in the nineteenth-century asylums? What if they were
provided a really safe refuge, which is what the word "asylum" is
supposed to mean, a place where they could experience nature's true
healing, instead of having their health further undermined by
outrageous chemical assaults? It seems reasonable that they might also
experience similar good results, like their drug-free predecessors,
and likewise transcend the need for psychiatric "services" altogether.

Indeed, the age of moral treatment was the Golden Age in the treatment
of madness, a period of time that has much to teach us. But as with
the ephemeral radiance of ancient Greek civilization, it was destined
to be replaced by a much darker era.

The Rise of Eugenics

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, as small, private asylums
employing moral treatment methods increasingly gave way to much larger
state-operated mental institutions run once again by medical doctors,
the old, harsh ways of dealing with madness came back with a vengeance
as a plague on humanity. Another sinister attitude toward the insane
was brewing among the "intelligentsia" and the elite of society, a new
justification for the persecution of the helpless: the discredited
"science" of racial purification known as "eugenics."

The goal of eugenics was to "improve" the human race in the same
manner that an animal breeder might breed faster racehorses: by
selectively encouraging the propagation of "elite" individuals while
preventing the reproduction of those deemed "unfit." Complex traits
such as criminality and mental illness, which actually are caused by a
variety of factors, were simplistically assumed to be genetically
transmissible, in as simple and straightforward a manner as children
inheriting blue eyes from their parents. The mentally ill were thus
seen as a threat to society since they "inevitably" pass on this
hereditary "defect," this "recessive gene for mental illness," to
their children, thereby contaminating the race with defective "germ
plasm."

But it was eugenics itself which posed the real danger. Because of
vast hordes of academically prolific eugenicists rapidly breeding such
aberrant fallacies and contaminating society with their defective
IDEAS, the mentally ill, in the first decades of the twentieth
century, were once again relegated to a subhuman status, just as they
had been in the eighteenth century. They were now referred to, not as
"brutes" and "wild beasts," but as "social wastage," "poisonous
slime," and "malignant biological growths on society" that shouldn't
be coddled with ineffective nostrums but needed instead to be
"surgically removed." This sort of twisted, irrational, and
mean-spirited thinking profoundly influenced Adolf Hitler, who
mercilessly exterminated many thousands of mental patients before
unleashing the terror of World War II.

America as well, also heavily indoctrinated in eugenics ideology,
waged its own daring blitzkrieg on society's misfits. Eugenic policies
that culminated in Hitler and the Nazis were implemented originally
right here in America. The state of California, for example, was
forcibly sterilizing mental "defectives" long before it was practiced
in Nazi Germany. Eugenicist "thinkers" at prestigious American
universities, calling, in some instances, for such extreme measures as
the Nazi-like extermination of criminals and the insane, influenced
the thinking of Adolf Hitler and convinced the American public and
state legislatures as well.

Although the mentally ill were never actually killed in America as
they were in Nazi Germany by the tens of thousands, "treatments" were
developed that were tantamount to murder and laws were enacted that
restricted their freedom and made their lives totally miserable. In
1933, the year Hitler came to power, the mentally ill were already
prohibited from marrying in every state in the United States. They
were routinely rounded up and shipped off to detention facilities that
more closely resembled concentration camps than hospitals, where they
were herded naked like cattle, very often forcibly sterilized, and
subjected to horrific experimental procedures so appalling and
destructive in nature that they rivaled those of the Nazi doctors
prosecuted for their crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg Trials.

But instead of earning a trip to the gallows, one such perpetrator of
"crimes against humanity" was awarded instead the Nobel Prize. This
was indeed the heyday of madness.

Barbaric Treatments of the Early Twentieth Century

In the early decades of the twentieth century, a new Dark Age had
finally dawned, and the mentally ill were once again treated much as
they had been two hundred years earlier: with new variations on old,
familiar themes of abuse and foul treatment. Rush's tranquilizer
chair, in which tormented patients were strapped immobile for hours
and even days on end, was replaced with various forms of
"hydrotherapy." Patients were kept immersed in "continuous baths" for
days, weeks, or even months at a time. Other even less fortunate
victims were given the fearsome "wet pack" treatment, which patients
found excruciatingly uncomfortable. They were wrapped tightly in
sheets soaked in cold or hot water so that they were able to move only
their head, fingers, and toes. As the sheet dried and shrank around
the sufferer, trapping the body heat and exerting a vice-like grip, it
produced a nearly intolerable sensation of burning up and suffocation.
Imagine being bound in this damnable condition, wallowing in one's own
urine and excrement, for hours, and possibly even for days at a time.

Only a madman could fail to perceive that the essence of this
"treatment" was indeed restraint, yet lunatic mad-doctors denied the
obvious. Harboring quack notions of the necessity of "conserving the
body temperature," such doctors regarded this vile form of torture as
a benign sort of "therapy." Perhaps this "therapy" should have been
used on such doctors to provide a cure for their own insanity!

In addition to "hydrotherapy," which at the time was used quite
extensively in psychiatry, other experimental, somatic "therapies"
were also thought up by insane mad-doctors and tried out with impunity
on their guinea-pig patients. Toxic chemical agents, reminiscent of
the calomel used in the time of Benjamin Rush, were often
administered: everything from sheep thyroid and horse serum to
arsenic, cadmium, and other toxic metals. Gynecological surgeries
performed on women for the purpose of "curing" their insanity included
hysterectomies, ovariectomies, and mutilating clitoridectomies.
Perhaps these doctors should have also been given a hearty dose of
their own bitter medicine!

One notable doctor whose name shall live "forever in infamy" was Henry
Cotton, superintendent of the Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey.
Like Benjamin Rush over a hundred years earlier, Cotton also harbored
unique ideas regarding the somatic origin of mental illness. Instead
of an "imbalance" in the quantity of blood circulating to the brain,
Cotton considered localized bacterial infection to be the root cause
of his patients' madness.

He first attempted to remedy this problem by the simple extraction of
"infected" teeth. When he failed to get the results he had hoped for
by making his insane patients toothless as well, he proceeded to
extract their "infected" tonsils, and when this also proved
ineffectual, Cotton moved on to more vital organs, which he also
theorized to be "foci" of infection. The colon, gall bladder, uterus,
and ovaries, in addition to other perfectly healthy and essential body
parts, were frequent targets of his mutilating excisions.

Cotton claimed to have achieved impressive results: a cure rate of 85
percent over a four year period. But when the hospital board grew
increasingly suspicious and decided to launch its own investigation,
Cotton's claims were found to be entirely fraudulent. Nearly 43
percent of this esteemed surgeon's patients receiving his so-called
"thorough" treatment had actually died as a result!

This is reprehensible enough as it is already, but this sordid affair
gets even worse. Rather than exposing their profession to public
embarrassment by revealing the harm that Cotton had done, the medical
authorities covered it up, and allowed Cotton to continue extracting
teeth at the Trenton State Hospital for another twenty long years!
When he finally died in 1933, he was eulogized as a physician who had
amassed "an extraordinary record of achievement."

Other "extraordinary achievements" of early twentieth-century
mad-doctors included putting patients to sleep for days or weeks with
sleep-inducing barbiturates, deliberately infecting the mentally ill
with malaria, and inducing high fever by hot baths and other
experimental means. When they weren't busy experimenting with heating
up their patients, they busied themselves instead with cooling them
down: placing their subjects in ice-packed cabinets where many such
victims died from hypothermia.

"Deep sleep therapy," "fever therapy," "refrigeration therapy." It
seems that mad-doctors were unable to make up their minds as to which
was therapeutic: sleep, heat, or its opposite, cold! But as crazy and
as misguided as these mad experiments were, they were relatively
benign compared to the horrors to follow.

The Assault on the Brain

Till this point in time, the abuses endured by the mentally ill were
primarily assaults on the physical body. Aside from the negative
influence exerted by the physical sickening and the psychological
terror evoked by such practices, the mind itself was left relatively
unscathed. The essence of one's being, the mind, the spirit, the soul
of the person, despite all these sordid medical atrocities, remained
basically intact and escaped unharmed. But beginning in the 1930s,
contemporaneous with Hitler's rise to power, psychiatrists discovered
that they could more effectively control their patients' thoughts and
behavior if they bypassed the body and directly attacked the brain
itself. Four new "therapies," touted in medical journals and the
popular press as modern-day "miracles," arrived on the scene:
insulin-coma therapy, metrazol convulsive therapy, electroshock
therapy, and prefrontal lobotomy.

But "therapy" was decidedly not what these procedures had in common.
All four treatments "worked" and produced their apparent "cures" in an
identical manner: by inflicting severe trauma, and often irreversible
damage, to the regions of the brain thought to give rise to insanity,
the "higher" brain regions that also allow us to think and wherein lie
the consciousness and our capacity to be human.

Patients so treated were reduced to a infantile state of confusion and
imbecility, their brains so traumatized that they were left barely
functioning. After they awakened from treatment, if such could truly
be called an awakening, their previous manifestations of mental
illness would often seem to be "miraculously cured," but they could
scarcely think, feel, or even remember, having lost in the bargain
their true selves as well. Only a fool could fail to appreciate that
the loss of one's soul is too great a price for a remission of
symptoms, but the asylum psychiatrists of the 1930s, like the Nazis in
Germany who euthanized insane patients, were indeed such a pack of
murderous fools!

Fools perhaps, but murderers as well? Consider this. In the movie
mentioned earlier, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, Jack Nicholson's
character is returned in the middle of the night to the psychiatric
ward after having undergone a lobotomy. His friend, who is at first
ecstatic to see him, goes over to his bed where he is greeted with
only a vacant stare. Realizing what has happened, he then smothers and
kills his lobotomized friend by forcibly holding a pillow over his
expressionless face. But who in this scene was the actual murderer?
The "Indian chief" friend who held down the pillow or the criminally
insane doctor who performed the lobotomy?

Insulin Coma Therapy

Insulin coma, the first of these murderous new "therapies" to be
devised by psychiatrists, involved giving patients repeated injections
of the hormone insulin in such massive quantities as to induce
unconsciousness. The injected insulin had the effect of removing
glucose from the blood, the essential fuel required by the brain. In
this glucose-deprived and starved condition, brain cells die, much as
they do when they are deprived of oxygen.

The psychiatrists who employed this "bedside miracle," as it was
foolishly described in READERS DIGEST, were well aware of its
mechanism of action and discussed it quite openly in their medical
literature. They knew full well that it induced severe pathology
similar in nature to massive head trauma. Yet Manfred Sakel, who
originated the procedure, rationalized its use by a preposterous pet
theory.

According to Sakel, the comas "selectively" killed those brain cells
that were "already diseased," allowing the "healthy" cells to "again
become active." This, of course, is totally out of accord with the
obvious facts, since glucose deprivation destroys "healthy" cells as
well. All brain cells require glucose for their functioning. Indeed,
the underlying notion that there are "diseased" cells in the brain
that somehow correlate with mental illness was itself a mere
pseudoscientific fantasy bearing absolutely no resemblance to any kind
of "science." But what can one expect from a pseudoscience like
psychiatry?

After nearly twenty long years of nightmarish experimentation
involving thousands of subjects from all over the world, psychiatrists
belatedly admitted, in the 1950s, the "possibility that insulin
therapy may have retarded or prevented recovery" in the long-term
results experienced by their patients. Possibility indeed! Although
this treatment certainly worked "wonders" in the short term by
suppressing symptoms and bolstering psychiatrists' over-inflated egos,
the results for the patients in the long term were dismal. One study
revealed that only 6 percent of these brain-damaged patients remained
"recovered" three years after treatment. This is in contrast to the
70-80 percent who might have recovered if they had been treated in an
asylum in the nineteenth century. Psychiatry had indeed regressed in
this century and psychiatrists were making their patients worse, not
better!

Metrazol Convulsive Therapy

The second of their abominable, brain-damaging "therapies," introduced
shortly after insulin-shock treatment, was a hideous procedure
euphemistically termed "metrazol convulsive therapy," which involved
inducing multiple epileptic-like seizures with the synthetic compound
metrazol. These chemically-induced seizures were incredibly violent,
frequently resulting in broken bones, torn muscles, and loosened and
cracked teeth, in addition to brain trauma and a "waste of neurons" in
the cerebral cortex.

Moreover, the procedure was excruciatingly painful, amounting
essentially to a form of chemical torture. Patients, some of whom had
braved the perils of military combat, would cower in terror at the
prospect of an injection, and having once been injected, they would
invariably resist any further treatments. But their protests didn't
matter. Patients were forcibly given repeated injections, twenty,
thirty, or forty or more. Imagine the stress of being repeatedly
tormented in such a hideously gruesome and despicable a manner in a
place that was supposed to provide "asylum" for these people. It's
scarcely any wonder that the prospects for recovery of
metrazol-treated patients were so hopelessly bleak, even worse than
for those who had been treated with insulin. Never was there evidence
of any long-term benefit.

Psychiatrists were too "elated" with the immediate effects of metrazol
to concern themselves with what really mattered. Just as with insulin,
psychiatrists had received a much-need ego boost by achieving what to
them was a "therapeutic victory." Again they succeeded in radically
altering the thoughts and behavior of their mentally ill patients,
something that they had been unable to accomplish with previous
methods.

Immediately after treatment, patients tended to behave in a more
"acceptable" manner. They were friendlier, more "accessible," more
cooperative with their doctors, and much easier to manage, which
psychiatrists interpreted as a sign of "improvement." The fact that
such patients were so dazed and disoriented and so intellectually
compromised that they would often masturbate and play with their own
feces seemed not to alter their new "improved" status, at least not in
the minds of their imbecile psychiatrists. Though imbecile patients
were regarded by imbecile psychiatrists as "miraculously cured" and
seen as "recovered," once again it is obvious to any sane being that
these patients were made worse by such dastardly treatment!

Thankfully, insulin-coma therapy and metrazol convulsive therapy,
after many thousands were maimed in these monstrous experiments, were
eventually phased out and are no longer in use. Perhaps psychiatrists,
despite their stupidity, finally realized that their patients were not
getting better. Or (and this is a far more likely explanation) they
simply found a better alternative: yet another type of brain-damaging
"therapeutic measure" that also "worked" to produce "therapeutic
successes," one that was quicker, easier, cheaper, more reliable, and
therefore more convenient for psychiatrists to administer.

Electroconvulsive Therapy

Electroshock therapy, also known as ECT or electroconvulsive therapy,
invented by an Italian psychiatrist in 1938, induced its seizures by
means of electricity, seizures that were as intensely violent and
physically devastating as those induced by an injection of metrazol.
But broken bones were the least of the patient's worries.
Psychiatrists often administered paralyzing agents to prevent this
type of bodily damage, but the actual intent of this fiendish
procedure was to CREATE such damage in the human brain! Electrodes
were placed on both sides of the head, and an electric current, strong
enough to kill were it to go through the heart, was passed through the
delicate regions of the cerebral cortex, causing "acute injury to the
nerve cells," resulting in confusion, disorientation, memory loss, and
an impairment in intellectual and cognitive function.

How such a grotesque state of mental debilitation could ever be seen
as a desirable outcome is a mystery that defies all human
understanding, yet such was the GOAL of these insane pseudo-doctors.
The phraseology they used to describe their dark purposes makes clear
their intent in no uncertain terms: to "knock out the brain," to
"reduce the higher activities," to "impair the memory," and to reach
"the proper degree of therapeutic confusion," as if imbecility and
confusion are traits to be desired! It's enough to arouse one's
absolute contempt!

One such case that was utterly despicable was that of a
seventeen-year-old girl named Jonika Upton, who was committed to a
sanatorium in Albuquerque, New Mexico on January 18, 1959 by members
of her family who disapproved of her behavior. She had run off to
California with an "artist" boyfriend, had previously had a boyfriend
they thought was "homosexual," had developed "peculiar speech
mannerisms," and often "walked about carrying Proust under her arm,"
which for some reason or other her family found disturbing.

Her parents may have been disturbed by her "defiant" behavior, but
where in this description is anything to indicate that she was
mentally disturbed in any way whatsoever? One would have to conclude,
based on this account of her history, that she was a perfectly normal
and sane young woman who was simply embroiled in a family conflict.

But her doctor, suffering from a profound lack of insight and what
some might consider a case of insanity, deemed her a candidate for
electroshock instead and initiated a series of interminable
treatments, which ultimately totaled sixty-two in number. Over the
course of the next three months, as her mental condition precipitously
deteriorated, her doctor complained that she wasn't deteriorating
enough! In his twisted, warped, and insane way of thinking, black was
white and deterioration was "improvement." She wasn't "nearly as
foggy" as he might have wished. Although there was "considerable
confusion" and "dilapidation" of thought, "under this type of
treatment a patient usually shows a great deal more fogging and
general confusion." Fogging, confusion, and mental dilapidation were
seen by this madman as the desired ends of treatment!

Finally at the end of April, this previously normal and healthy young
woman, who on the date of her admission had been alert and vibrant,
was finally seen as sufficiently "confused" and mentally "dilapidated"
to satisfy her doctors. She was now quite incontinent, walked around
naked, and couldn't even remember if her father was living. Shortly
thereafter, she was discharged from the "hospital" and didn't seem to
recognize her own foolish parents. The memory of her boyfriend had
been effectively erased. Indeed it was true, as her doctor boasted on
the day of her release, that "she showed marked changes in her
thinking and feeling." But whether those "changes" were truly for the
better didn't seem to matter to this schizoid profession. Psychiatry
could now claim another "therapeutic victory" at the expense of having
ruined a young woman's life.

Electroshock Therapy in Our Own Modern World

It's widely assumed that psychiatry came to its senses, that this
shocking relic of a bygone era was eventually relegated to the shelf
of a museum, and that it's no longer used by modern practitioners. But
medical websites of the twenty-first century still tout this savagery
as a "safe" and "effective" treatment. Clicking a link to the WebMD
website is like being transported to an alternate universe, a place
where truth is mysteriously absent. In this "other reality," the world
of psychiatry as it's presented to the public, the door to the shock
room is invitingly left open with the "big, bad wolf" of shock
treatment lying stealthily under the covers.

In this fairy-tale world of WebMD, shock treatment is portrayed as
something quite harmless, like Little Red Riding Hood's sweet, loving
grandmother. Nowhere is there any mention of its true mode of action:
that it suppresses patients' symptoms by damaging their brains.
Instead, prospective patients are told quite the opposite: that the
seizure induced by an ECT treatment "causes brain chemicals to be
released, helping the brain function better," and that "studies have
shown that ECT is safe, and there is no evidence that ECT causes harm
to the brain." So here, in the alternate reality of WebMD, ECT, the
harmless-sounding name for the big, bad shock treatment, is safe,
causes no harm to the brain, and in fact, causes the brain to function
even better? Only in the fairy-tale land of health-care answers, the
parallel universe of WebMD!

Can they really expect us to believe such Mickey-Mouse hogwash when in
the real-life world, "lower cognitive functioning," "extended memory
loss," "restriction in intuition and imagination and inventiveness,"
and other such descriptions of the harmful effects of shock treatment
have been published extensively in the psychiatric literature and
discussed openly among psychiatrists for the last sixty years? It
boggles the mind how they could think we're that stupid.

The intense electric current applied to the head in this vile and
utterly contemptible procedure, strong enough to kill were it to pass
through the heart, is falsely described here as "small electrical
pulses." The violent seizure induced by this strong electric current,
intense enough to break bones in an unanesthetized patient, is
misleadingly characterized as "a brief and mild convulsion" resembling
something as benign as a bodily "tremor." But this is only because of
the drugs that are administered which act to suppress the true
intensity of the seizure. And the reason many people are afraid of
electroconvulsive therapy, so goes the story, "is probably because of
lack of understanding about how the procedure works," as if there's no
valid REASON to be fearful.

Perhaps in the Looney-Tunes world of WebMD where falsehood masquerades
as "reliable information," shock treatment is harmless and "safe," as
advertised. But in the real-life world that we all must return to,
this ghastly assault on the essence of our being is indeed a threat
that we all should fear, even as we might fear death itself. Even the
name electroconvulsive "therapy" is itself an outrageous and damnable
lie. This sorry excuse for a "therapeutic modality" is, in fact, quite
the opposite of therapy, since it leads not to healing but to the
worsening of patients; it leads not to enlightening but to the
extinguishing of light. It is a disgrace that this dark relic of the
1940s is still shamelessly promoted in our own modern age!

Prefrontal and Transorbital Lobotomy

It would be hard to imagine a procedure more horrible than shock
treatment's devastating attack on the integrity of the brain, but in
the 1940s a grotesque assault even more damaging than electroshock was
praised in the media as an "advanced" medical marvel.

Invented in 1935 by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, psychosurgery,
also known as prefrontal lobotomy, involved surgically disabling the
frontal lobes of the brain. Holes were drilled in various locations on
the skull into which instruments were inserted that severed nerve
fibers, effectively disconnecting this entire brain region. A
variation on this technique that was later developed was a simplified
version that even psychiatrists could perform. Invented in 1946 by
American neurologist Walter Freeman, a "transorbital" lobotomy
involved hammering a device resembling an ice pick into the bony
socket just above the eye ball and swishing it around inside the brain
to destroy vital tissue. The patient, conveniently knocked out by
electroshock, reportedly didn't "feel a thing."

The results of this surgery were nothing less than "striking,"
according to the surgeons who performed the procedure and according to
articles in the popular press that publicized their "accomplishments."
Patients whose condition had previously been "hopeless" were given a
new lease on life by this "surgery of the soul," praised in THE NEW
YORK TIMES as "another shining example of therapeutic courage."
Anxiety, depression, delusions, hallucinations, and other
manifestations of severe mental illness that were present in patients
before the operation were miraculously "cured" in lobotomized
patients, whom doctors would proudly proclaim as "recovered."

But something else had been lost in this bargain with the devil, not
just mere symptoms of mental illness. In return for a remission of
their symptoms of madness, such patients had forfeited their very
souls.

As Whitaker points out in his perceptive analysis, this was not
surgery OF the soul; this was a surgery that REMOVED the soul.
Lobotomized patients in the first few weeks following surgery would
lie motionless in their beds like "wax dummies," in a state of total
indifference to the world around them, "completely out of touch" with
their surrounding environment. They would need to be pulled out of
bed, as otherwise they might not rise at all, even for the purpose of
going to the toilet. To avoid getting bedsores, nurses would have to
incessantly turn them.

When they finally did stir from their beds, which might as well have
been coffins, they might "vomit into their soup plates and start
eating out of the plate again," defecate into waste baskets thinking
they were toilets, or behave in shameless and unusual ways consistent
with the absence of higher brain function. They would be given
coloring books and crayons and would be brought dolls and teddy bears
to keep their simple minds occupied in their "surgically induced
childhood."

Some never progressed any further in their recovery and had to remain
institutionalized, as a ghastly crop of grotesque human vegetables,
but most were eventually able to return to their families, though none
ever truly or fully recovered. Many functioned at the level of a
"household pet," and even those who experienced the very best outcomes
were now only shadows of who they once were, empty shells who had been
cracked open and whose souls had departed.

Their doctors had "mercifully" put them out of their misery in a
ghoulish experiment that was tantamount to murder. While the Nazis
were thoroughly exterminating mad patients, Americans were engaging in
PARTIAL euthanasia.

Considering the ghastly effects of this diabolical surgery,
unacceptable consequences that should be obvious to anyone, results
that in fact could be seen as murder, it's difficult to understand how
any sane person could view this operation in a favorable light. Yet
psychiatrists and surgeons and their friends in the media continued to
sing lobotomy's praises, a procedure that could be likened to "curing"
arthritis by chopping off fingers! Like the lunatic din from the back
ward of an asylum, lobotomy advocates could be heard shouting
accolades:

"The intervention is harmless. None of the patients became worse after
the operation."

They can now "think better." Outcomes are "nothing less than
miraculous."

"It can be stated categorically that if this procedure is ineffectual
in helping the patient it will do no harm; the patient may not be
improved, but he will not be made worse."

This "delicate brain operation" is "the most advanced type of
treatment that is now available," and "every step of progress in this
rapidly growing field is marked by a deep sense of primary obligation
to the patient, and a profound respect for the human brain."

The SATURDAY EVENING POST joined this mad chorus by comparing lobotomy
surgeons to master watch makers, who "at just the right marks" were
"inserting tools very carefully to avoid touching little wheels that
might be injured" in the brain.

The practitioners of prefrontal and transorbital lobotomy were in fact
bungling FOOLS who knew nothing about brain function, savages and
barbarians from the darkest of eras, whose only "abilities" were to
inflict harm on their patients, and who could more accurately be
likened to apes wielding scalpels than to anything remotely resembling
physicians. And, judging from their delusional blabbering regarding
the "harmless" effects of this partial euthanasia, they should have
been locked up themselves right alongside their patients and had ice
picks gouged "harmlessly" into their OWN eye sockets! But when Egas
Moniz, who pioneered this procedure, and whose name might as well have
been Josef Mengele, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949, he was
praised instead by the NEW YORK TIMES as one who'd invented a
"sensational operation."

The soul of psychiatry had long since departed, if it could be said to
have ever had one at all. Those who fail to learn the lessons of
history are doomed forever to repeat its failures.

Antipsychotic Drug Treatment Emerges

Following World War II and the lessons it taught us, America stood at
a crossroads in the treatment of the mentally ill. The Nazis had been
defeated, eugenics was now a discredited "science" because of its
intimate ties with Hitler and the Nazis, the horrific conditions
inside America's own "detention camps" for mental "defectives" were
being exposed in the media, and America began to rethink its care of
the insane.

Although this was the perfect opportunity for a renaissance in mental
health care, a return to the more enlightened principles of Pinel and
the York Quakers, no modern-day equivalent of "moral treatment"
appeared. Instead, a new Dark Age was once again dawning in the
enduring mistreatment of America's mentally ill, a time hailed by some
as our "advanced" modern era.

Our own "modern" age in the treatment of madness can be said to have
dawned in May of 1954 when Smith, Kline & French introduced Thorazine
into the American market, the first of psychiatry's so-called
"antipsychotic" medications. Although presently perceived as something
quite different from the brain-damaging therapeutics that immediately
preceded it, this was not how chlorpromazine (the generic name for
Thorazine) was seen in the 1950s. In an uncharacteristic expression of
psychiatric honesty, it was seen as a possible "pharmacological
SUBSTITUTE for lobotomy," not as a treatment that was radically
different. Indeed, its effects were eerily similar to lobotomy, making
it ideally suited to the control and management of potentially unruly
patients in the confines of an institution.

Neuroleptics, as these drugs were originally termed before they were
promoted as "antipsychotics," interfere in an essential function of
the brain, the transmission of nerve impulses by means of the
neurotransmitter, dopamine. By binding to dopamine "receptor sites" so
that the dopamine itself can't bind as it's supposed to, nerve
impulses are partially blocked by the drug, creating a condition of
biochemical imbalance resulting in a diverse array of drug-induced
pathologies.

It is important to note that there is absolutely no scientific
evidence of dopamine abnormality in psychotic patients prior to
treatment with neuroleptic drugs. Their brains, in this regard, are
perfectly normal, as has been shown repeatedly in scientific studies.
The assertion that so-called "antipsychotic" medications somehow
restore normal function in a malfunctioning brain by "correcting" some
sort of mythical "biochemical imbalance" can only be characterized as
a bald-faced LIE propagated by drug companies to promote further drug
sales (which is all they're ever really concerned with). In fact,
exactly the opposite is happening in patients whose brains are
chemically assaulted. Neuroleptic drugs actually CREATE biochemical
imbalance by blocking the normal action of dopamine and thwarting the
normal transmission of nerve impulses. Though the average moron should
be able to grasp this, apparently psychiatrists find the concept too
difficult.

The pathological disruption in dopamine activity induced by these
mislabeled "antischizophrenic" agents assaults NORMAL brain function
in three vital areas:

1) The ability of drugged patients to initiate body movements is
dramatically impeded, making these drugs ideally suited for use in
psychiatry as "chemical restraints."

2) The capability of drugged patients to experience emotion is
severely curtailed or totally obliterated, resulting in more docile
and more easily "managed" patients who are more to the liking of
psychiatrists and staff.

3) As is the case with electroshock and the other brain-damaging
atrocities, the capacity of drugged patients to control their own
destiny by being able to reason clearly and to think for themselves is
similarly compromised by this drug mode of "therapy," which impairs
intellectual and cognitive function.

Clearly, calling drugs such as these "antipsychotic" or
"antischizophrenic," as though they specifically target a patient's
psychosis, grossly misrepresents their true mode of action.
Neuroleptics "work" to suppress psychosis by suppressing our mental
processes in general.

Early investigators observed such a hodgepodge of adverse reactions to
chlorpromazine that it is difficult to understand how such a blatantly
DANGEROUS substance could ever be considered appropriate for long-term
use, even in the sickest and most desperate of patients. In addition
to producing "an effect similar to frontal lobotomy" with "completely
immobile" and "waxlike" patients who "couldn't care less" lying
"quietly in bed," doctors also observed distressing PHYSICAL symptoms
as well. Although the drug didn't seem to have any specific
antipsychotic properties, it did often induce Parkinson's disease
symptoms and the symptoms of viral lethargic encephalitis.

Yet THIS was the toxin that was eventually made over as the new
"wonder drug" for the treatment of psychosis, a drug comparable to
penicillin for infection and "insulin for diabetes" that would
initiate a "revolution in psychiatry" and enable schizophrenic
patients to "lead relatively normal lives and not be confined to
institutions." But how could one lead even the SEMBLANCE of a "normal
life" in the pathetic stupor brought on by this drug? Anyone with even
an iota of sanity can see that this "veritable medicinal lobotomy" is
entirely unacceptable as a means of "helping" even the most severely
afflicted! Perhaps the drug should be administered to its advocates to
test its "antipsychotic" properties on their own brand of madness!

Adverse Effects of Neuroleptic Drugs

Over time, as more and more patients were recklessly placed on these
drugs for long-term treatment like "insulin for diabetes," other
adverse effects that weren't immediately apparent in the short term
began to crop up in alarming frequency.

Probably the most serious and well known of these adverse reactions to
neuroleptics is a drug-induced neurological disorder known as tardive
dyskinesia, or TD for short. Patients so afflicted exhibit abnormal
spasmodic body movements, such as an uncontrollable jerking of the
arms and torso and a rhythmic forward and backward motion of the
tongue. What makes TD so insidious is that it tends to be permanent,
persisting even after the drug is discontinued. Also, the extremely
high incidence of TD in drug-treated patients can only be described as
shocking and frightening: something on the order of an additional five
percent risk for each year of treatment, which translates to a fifty
percent risk over a ten-year period. Victims are often so mentally
impaired by their drug use that they frequently don't realize that
there's anything wrong with them.

As if the high risk of being stricken with the crippling and
embarrassing ailment of tardive dyskinesia weren't enough already to
make patients want to fly over this cuckoo's nest, neuroleptic drug
use entails other perils as well. Akathisia, a profound and
intolerable restlessness and anxiety, which especially afflicts users
of more potent neuroleptics such as Haldol and Prolixin, is a
potential cause of both suicide and violence. Studies have shown that
arrest rates of patients, in relation to rates for the rest of
society, have INCREASED since the introduction of neuroleptics. Prior
to 1955, before such drug use, discharged mental patients were
arrested for crimes at no higher rate than the general population.

It is important to understand that violence can be initiated in two
separate ways by neuroleptic drug use: either as a direct result of
taking the drug or by experiencing the effects of drug withdrawal. Too
often when someone commits a bizarre act of violence after terminating
a course of psychiatric drug treatment, the withdrawal effects of the
drug are not considered and the violence is blamed on the patient's
untreated "illness," when it's the drug itself which is truly to
blame. Such was the case with Andrea Yates, the mother in Houston who
killed her five children while suffering from the effects of
withdrawal from Haldol, the insidious agent the Soviets used to
torment political prisoners in psychiatric "hospitals."

Take time to reflect a bit on this madness: The very SAME drug that
was once used to torture and to control Soviet dissidents in
psychiatric prisons is now routinely administered like "insulin for
diabetes" to "help" ailing patients such as Andrea Yates! In Russia,
this "psychiatric chamber of horrors," as it was perceived at the time
by most Americans, was a "horrifying" conversion of "human beings into
vegetables," a form of "spiritual murder," and a "variation on the gas
chamber." But HERE in the good old USA, as an alleged form of
"medically sound treatment," these SAME "antipsychotic" drugs "are
among the safest group of drugs known." Given this mind-set of
doublethink and hypocrisy and our insane public policy of doling out
drugs like psychiatric candy, chilling atrocities like the Houston
child murders should come as no surprise. They are the inevitable
result of our own stupidity, the frightening consequence of giving
free rein to evil, and the final catastrophe of a society gone mad.

In addition to the risk of being turned into a cripple and being
influenced to commit heinous criminal acts, neuroleptic drug use
entails yet another serious danger: death itself as the ultimate side
effect! Neuroleptic malignant syndrome, which can affect as many as
one percent of patients and can therefore be classified by the FDA as
"frequent," is a fatal toxic reaction that, like tardive dyskinesia,
is too often lost in the Thorazine shuffle. This is in addition to the
high risk of developing Parkinson's symptoms and degenerative symptoms
resembling viral encephalitis. Only a delusional and degenerate
profession could so poison its patients and see it as "help."

Further evidence of psychiatry's callous disregard for its patients
can be seen in its failure to respond to these new drug-induced
disorders. For an interminable time after it was first discovered and
to a certain extent even up to the present, it was as though TD simply
didn't exist. Psychiatrists and doctors simply went about their
business of recklessly prescribing high doses of neuroleptics without
so much as even mentioning to patients the extremely high likelihood
of tardive dyskinesia.

With billions of dollars of drug money to consider, pharmaceutical
companies and their friends in psychiatry were concerned with far more
important matters than anything so trivial as the welfare of patients.

Unethical Medical Experiments

Along with the pursuit of billions in drug money, one other similarly
"noble" endeavor often took precedence over the well-being of
patients: unconscionable medical experimentation that placed the
interests of "science" above the rights of human subjects. Though
supposedly outlawed following the Nuremberg Trials where seven Nazi
doctors were sentenced to death on the gallows, such fiendish
experimentation continued in America.

One outrageous type of psychiatric research that was performed a great
deal in the 1950s was the disturbing practice of psychosis "modeling,"
as practiced by the infamous Dr. Paul Hoch. Patients were administered
psychedelic drugs such as LSD and mescaline to produce a type of
"experimental" psychosis, thus "magnifying the schizophrenic
structures in schizophrenic patients," and triggering full-blown
psychotic episodes in patients who previously "did not display many
signs of schizophrenic thinking." Electroshock and lobotomy were also
tested in relation to these chemically-induced psychoses, making these
experiments even more egregious.

Imagine the terror that could be evoked in already troubled patients
by clandestinely drugging them with psychedelic agents, and try to
imagine the abject horror of a Nazi-like regimen of experimental
lobotomy! It boggles the mind how an American "doctor" could openly
engage in such criminal debauchery, yet at an APA convention in 1950,
this Mengele clone, Dr. Paul Hoch, was enthusiastically congratulated,
and following his death in 1964, he was fondly remembered as a
"compassionate physician."

At the cost of human sacrifice and inestimable suffering, Dr. Hoch had
bequeathed to the world an amazing discovery: Virtually all human
subjects, whether or not they were originally crazy, and in spite of
such "treatments" as electroshock and lobotomy, could be successfully
"freaked out" by a hit of "acid."

Another sordid line of psychiatric research began in the early 1970s
and continued unabated until almost the turn of this century. Such
taxpayer-funded "symptom-exacerbation" studies, as these sickening
experiments were quite aptly named, involved administering
amphetamines and other toxic agents for the express purpose of
intensifying or precipitating psychosis. Patients were intentionally
made WORSE in such studies so that their mental "pathology" could be
more effectively investigated. Perhaps the mental pathology of those
designing such research projects, and so egregiously violating their
oath as physicians, might also be considered as worthy of study!

Patients were typically misled by these "doctors" and deceptively
lured into becoming study participants in a fiasco that made a mockery
of "informed consent." Patients were never truly informed of anything,
for who in their right mind would "sign up for suffering" if the truth
were fairly and thoroughly disclosed? Not even mental patients are as
crazy as that, so psychiatric researchers resorted to subterfuge.

When Shalmah Prince, who had been taking lithium for manic-depressive
illness since 1981, went to the emergency room of University Hospital
in Cincinnati in early 1983, she was desperately seeking help for her
condition, yet help was decidedly NOT what she received. She had felt
herself becoming increasingly edgy and wanted to avoid another manic
episode at all costs.

But instead of testing her blood level of lithium and possibly
increasing her dose of the drug, "doctors" at the hospital deceptively
enrolled her in a study that required her to be abruptly WITHDRAWN
from lithium and then later be given a dopamine-releasing drug in its
place, an experimental regimen that would almost certainly CAUSE the
severe manic episode she wanted to avoid.

This is, in fact, exactly what happened. Though she had been well
groomed, alert, and had been thinking fairly clearly when she first
arrived at the hospital, after a few days of "treatment," her
condition deteriorated to such an extent that she had to be placed in
leather restraints. It was only many years later that she learned what
had actually happened to her in this fiendish experiment, something
that she would have NEVER agreed to had she been honestly dealt with
and told the whole truth. Her "doctors" had never intended to help
her; their real intent was to make her worse.

Not one single advance ever resulted from this demonstrably unethical
psychiatric practice, and it was thankfully discontinued when it was
eventually made public, like a loathsome vampire fleeing from
sunlight.

Methylphenidate Enhances Psychosis

One of the chemical agents that was used in psychiatric research to
"exacerbate" symptoms in susceptible patients is extremely intriguing,
considering its other major use in psychiatry. Of all the various
agents tested for the purpose of "symptom exacerbation,"
methylphenidate was tops, according to one study, causing an
astounding doubling in symptom severity. In another study of seventy
first-episode patients, methylphenidate caused 59 percent of them to
become "much worse" or "very much worse" and greatly lengthened the
time it took for them to recover. When methylphenidate, in another of
these studies, was injected into patients who were partially
recovered, it caused a "moderate" or "marked deterioration" in most of
them, causing researchers to definitively conclude that
"methylphenidate can activate otherwise dormant psychotic symptoms."

Another 1987 study revealed how methylphenidate injections provoked
psychotic episodes of "frightening intensity." Fifteen minutes after
an infusion, one patient shouted, "It's coming at me again - like
getting out of control - it's stronger than I am," as he slammed his
fists into the bed and table and warned his doctors not to touch him,
lest he might become assaultive.

Psychotic episodes of "frightening intensity." That, indeed, is a
fitting description of recent events in our nation's history, bizarre
outbreaks of senseless violence that are now taking place like never
before. On December 1, 1997, fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal opened
fire on students at a high-school prayer meeting in West Paducah,
Kentucky. Three teen-age girls were killed, and five other students
were seriously wounded. On March 24, 1998 in Jonesboro, Arkansas,
thirteen-year-old Mitchell Johnson and an eleven-year-old accomplice
shot fifteen people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding
ten others. On May 20, 1999, T.J. Solomon, a fifteen-year-old student
in Conyers, Georgia shot and wounded six of his classmates. All three
of the shooters are believed to have been taking methylphenidate at
the time of the shootings, the same chemical agent used to provoke and
exacerbate psychotic symptoms in psychiatric research studies.

How in heaven's name did these kids obtain methylphenidate? Did they
break into a psychiatric research facility and steal this dangerous
substance that "can activate otherwise dormant psychotic symptoms" and
use it in the manner of an illegal drug? No, they were PRESCRIBED this
potent psychosis-provoking agent by their "well-meaning" psychiatrist
or family doctor like millions of other school-age children in our
country who obediently take their daily dose of Ritalin.
Methylphenidate and Ritalin are one and the same!

What a deceitful gang of unprincipled scoundrels! To use this
admittedly "frightening" agent in psychiatric studies to "provoke" and
"exacerbate" psychotic symptoms in hundreds of improperly informed
research subjects is highly unethical, to say the least. But to turn
around and prescribe this exact same substance under a different name
to millions of totally defenseless CHILDREN (and to claim that
methylphenidate, as Ritalin, is "safe") is an offense that can only be
described as CRIMINAL in nature, and is something that our society
must not tolerate! It is time that the charlatans prescribing this
poison are held accountable for these acts of terror!

Manufacturing Madness by Making Patients Worse

It is also high time that these psychiatric criminals and their
drug-dealing accomplices in the pharmaceutical industry are held
accountable for yet another crime against humanity: that of making
"schizophrenic" patients worse, not better (actually MANUFACTURING
chronic illness!), by unnecessarily placing patients who might
otherwise recover on toxic neuroleptics that make them "patients for
life." If psychiatrists and drug companies are engaging in the
nefarious practice of pushing harmful, addictive substances and
profiting handsomely from the suffering that such substances are
causing, how do they really differ from criminals and drug dealers?
Irrefutable evidence exists that psychiatric patients fare better
WITHOUT neuroleptic drug "treatment," yet psychiatrists and
pharmaceutical companies ignore such evidence and continue to push
these dangerous drugs.

Patients who "might otherwise recover" from their illness? Is this a
fair description of "schizophrenic" patients? Most psychiatrists would
disagree with this assessment and would regard "schizophrenics" as
highly unlikely to recover. It is important to understand that
psychiatry's pessimistic attitude toward so-called "schizophrenia"
may, in fact, be entirely unjustified and that the diagnosis itself is
scientifically questionable. It is also important to recall the
outstanding recovery rates of drug-free patients treated in early
nineteenth-century "moral treatment" asylums, which would seem to
justify an attitude of optimism. So where did this attitude of
PESSIMISM originate?

Psychiatry's pessimistic attitude toward "schizophrenic" patients, the
belief that there is little chance for them to recover, can be traced
to the work of Emil Kraepelin, a German psychiatrist of the late
nineteenth century. After examining case histories for more than a
decade, Kraepelin was able to differentiate psychotic patients into
two distinct groups: those with "manic-depressive illness" who were
emotionally disturbed and who had a good chance to recover, and those
with "dementia praecox" (premature dementia) who were emotionally
apathetic and who would likely deteriorate into an end-stage dementia.
The term "schizophrenia" was later put forward as a substitute for the
older term "dementia praecox."

But WHY were these patients experiencing such bleak outcomes, which
were so totally at odds with the recoveries of others? And why did
they exhibit peculiar physical symptoms in addition to their mental
and emotional problems, symptoms reminiscent of Parkinsonism? Could it
be that these original "schizophrenic" patients, those that were
tagged by Kraepelin with such pessimistic outlooks, were afflicted
instead with a totally different disorder, one that was entirely
PHYSICAL in origin and unknown until the early twentieth century?

A reexamination of Kraepelin's observations in light of modern-day
medical knowledge suggests this scenario as a likely explanation: His
"schizophrenic" patients who tended not to recover, upon whom this
attitude of pessimism was based, were infected with the encephalitis
lethargica virus and this was the reason their outlooks were bleak.
Perhaps true "schizophrenics," those not infected with the
encephalitis virus and whose problems are purely mental in nature,
have a far greater chance of complete recovery and should be assigned
a much more optimistic prognosis. Perhaps they should even be EXPECTED
to recover and should not be automatically placed on the usual
"antipsychotics," which might, in fact, IMPEDE their recovery.

The Soteria House Study

In the early 1970s, Loren Mosher, director of the Center for
Schizophrenia Studies at the NIMH, set out to find an answer to this
question: Would treating acutely psychotic patients in a drug-free
environment and in a way that emphasized empathy and compassion be as
effective as treating them with standard neuroleptics? Mosher obtained
funding for his study and in 1971 established Soteria House in Santa
Clara, California which provided accommodations for six "residents" at
a time.

There, acutely ill "schizophrenic" patients, who might otherwise be
restrained and drugged in a psychiatric hospital, would be given food
and shelter and be cared for in a kind and compassionate manner by a
respectful and caring non-professional staff, in a mode of treatment
that was essentially identical to the "moral treatment" of the early
nineteenth century. They would be seen as "residents," not
second-class "patients," and would be treated at all times with
dignity and respect. Most importantly, they would NOT be exposed to
the "antipsychotics" that were the standard fare of conventional
therapy.

When the results of the experiment were finally tallied, not only was
it found that Soteria House treatment was "as effective as"
conventional neuroleptics in the treatment of acutely psychotic
individuals, it was also determined to be significantly MORE
effective, producing patient outcomes that were decidedly BETTER. But
when this striking success was reported by Mosher to the committee of
psychiatrists overseeing the project, they denied that the positive
results were "compelling" and criticized the study for having "serious
flaws." Mosher was replaced with another investigator, one who would
agree to obediently "work with" the committee, and was essentially
accused of being scientifically dishonest for rediscovering a truth
that was heretical to psychiatry: that common and ordinary
NON-professionals (and without using drugs!) can achieve better
results than highly paid psychiatrists.

Psychiatry Pushes Fraudulent Science

It's ironic that these same "academic" psychiatrists, who are so
piously concerned about the "credibility" of studies, use flawed
studies of their own to support the merits of neuroleptics. In 1995,
Patricia Gilbert and her colleagues at the University of California at
San Diego concluded from a review of sixty-six such studies that "the
efficacy of these medications in reducing the risk of psychotic
relapse has been well documented," a conclusion diametrically opposed
to the results of the Soteria House study (and many other such studies
as well), which clearly show that the use of neuroleptics INCREASES
the risk of psychotic relapse. A careful look at the design of these
studies reveals the obvious reason for the contradicting results.

The pro-drug studies were flawed and misleading for the simple reason
that drug-free patients weren't even studied! Incredibly, there was NO
comparison whatsoever of the outcomes of drugged and drug-free
patients in any of these grossly misleading studies. The study
protocols required that patients who were ALREADY taking neuroleptics
be divided into two separate cohorts. One group would continue taking
the drugs and the other group would be suddenly taken off the drugs.

As one might expect, the drug-withdrawn group (like heroin addicts
experiencing drug withdrawal) exhibited a significantly higher rate of
psychotic relapse compared to those who were maintained on the drugs.
But as it turns out (and as it was never addressed in ANY of these
studies), drug-FREE patients, those who have never been exposed to
neuroleptics in the first place, have the lowest incidence of relapse
of all.

Yes indeed, the efficacy of these drugs IS "well documented" in
alleviating the withdrawal effects caused by the drugs themselves, in
the same way that the efficacy of heroin is "well documented" in
reducing the suffering of heroin addicts. This is the sort of
fraudulent "science" that psychiatry is pushing on a gullible public,
while doing everything possible to ignore and discredit scientifically
credible data that doesn't fit their agenda.

The World Health Organization Study

Perhaps the most egregious and amazing example of psychiatry's
propensity for ignoring the truth, while pursuing its own self-serving
agenda, can be seen in its response (or LACK of response) to a
landmark study conducted by the World Health Organization in the 1970s
and 1980s. This truly astounding study proved beyond a shadow of a
doubt that an overwhelming majority of "schizophrenic" patients can
indeed COMPLETELY recover, and that the major risk factor for having a
POOR recovery is living in one of the richer nations, and receiving
so-called modern psychiatric "care."

The WHO researchers were able to determine that almost 64 percent
(that's nearly two thirds!) of "schizophrenic" patients living in the
impoverished nations of India, Nigeria, and Colombia were completely
recovered at the end of five years. In contrast, almost the exact same
percentage (nearly 65 percent) of "schizophrenic" patients in the USA
and other developed countries were faring POORLY at the end of the
same five year period, with only a scant 18 percent who were
asymptomatic and functioning well.

What possibly could account for this mind-boggling paradox (as if the
solution to this puzzle is not already obvious)? Patients in rich
countries were faring quite poorly, while patients in poor countries
had lives that were richer. WHO investigators set out to discover the
"elusive" cause of this amazing disparity.

After a painstaking analysis of the study data, the dumbfounded
researchers finally concluded that for UNKNOWN reasons "schizophrenic"
patients in developed nations typically failed to "attain or maintain
a complete remission of symptoms," whereas patients in poor countries
generally recovered, not really explaining the reason for the
difference.

Perhaps they simply lacked the courage to humble themselves and face
the truth, the obvious answer that should be clear to anyone: The only
variable that could account for this difference was in the type of
medical care these patients received, with the so-called "advanced"
type of care provided in the richer countries producing outcomes that
were decidedly WORSE. In the developed nations experiencing such
dismal outcomes, 61 percent of "schizophrenic" patients were being
maintained on the usual "antipsychotics," whereas in the third-world
countries, where most patients recovered, only 16 percent were kept on
these drugs.

Here was credible, irrefutable SCIENTIFIC evidence that psychiatrists
were making their patients worse, not better, and here also was
psychiatry's golden opportunity to right this wrong, to set the record
straight, and to provide a measure of new HOPE to its patients by
swallowing its pride and admitting the truth:

"Schizophrenia is not a biological condition, requiring antipsychotic
medication like insulin for diabetes that patients must stay on for
the rest of their lives. It isn't a case of being hopelessly
defective. It is, in most cases, a transient illness from which
patients can hope to COMPLETELY recover!"

Imagine what good news this would have been to these patients and how
this message of hope could have helped them recover! But alas, such
words of hope were never once spoken by any of our "compassionate" and
"caring" psychiatrists (except perhaps by Peter Breggin), and in 1998,
more patients than ever were having their lives utterly ruined by
being placed on disease-CAUSING neuroleptic drugs. An astounding 92
percent of American "schizophrenics" were BEING MADE hopelessly
defective for the rest of their lives!

Psychiatry Itself Is Truly Crazy

How is it possible to be any more crazy? Here we have a "healing"
profession that is callously HARMING unsuspecting patients.
Psychiatrists appear to be even more demented than criminally insane
lunatics locked up in asylums.

When one finally realizes the awful truth of the matter, that there is
no real intent within this unscrupulous profession to provide TRUE
help for any of its patients and that mad-doctors are in business,
first and foremost, to help THEMSELVES, even at the expense of HARMING
their patients, then and only then can this whole insane travesty of
enduring mistreatment begin to make sense and take on an aura of
sanity. It's not so much that mad-doctors are mad; it's more a case of
criminal avarice. It's as if they're saying in their clandestine
meetings:

"Let's keep ourselves in positions of power and keep those billions in
drug money flowing, in spite of the fact that we might be harming our
patients. Let's spin a false web of lies and deceit and convince
ourselves and our foolish patients that our "wonder" drugs really ARE
helping (we'll just ignore all the studies that show exactly the
opposite). Let's put our heads in the sand and go into denial; maybe
we can just make the truth go away. And so what if we're making our
patients a little sicker? Were making ourselves a whole lot richer!"

It's far more likely that this is what they're TACITLY saying, since
words such as these are too shameful to utter. It's enough to make
one's blood utterly boil with contempt and revulsion when the truth is
revealed about this despicable profession! How is it possible to
provide true help to patients if the providers have no concept of what
true help entails? Help is definitely NOT churning out drug-impaired
zombies or causing irreparable brain damage with jolts of electricity.

So what if there might be a lessening of symptoms? Is it worth it if
there's also a lessening of intelligence, creativity, insight, and
understanding? Is it worth it if there's also a destruction of memory
or an impairment of the ability of a person to function? Is it worth
it to forfeit the very essence of our being, to toss away everything
that's exalted and noble, and sacrifice our identity and our personal
uniqueness? Selling one's SOUL for a remission of symptoms is an
unacceptable bargain with the devil himself! It's like cutting off
fingers to relieve arthritis or chopping off heads to "cure" migraine
headaches.

Freeing Ourselves from These Criminal Madmen

Patients would have to be TRULY psychotic to have anything to do with
this psychiatric racket! But too often, unfortunately, there isn't a
choice since psychiatric atrocities are FORCED upon patients.

With the long criminal record of abuse and foul treatment that is so
well documented in MAD IN AMERICA, what can we expect in the future
but more of the same? The continuing abuses of these psychopathic
criminals read like a list of the offenses of King George: They have
made false claims about the merits of new drugs. They've conducted
fraudulent studies in which research subjects have died. And they've
prescribed neuroleptics for healthy teenagers and two-year-olds. How
is it possible to sink any lower? And that's just a few of their
intolerable acts of crime. Pushing "antidepressants" such as Paxil and
Prozac would require a whole other article to adequately describe.

As Robert Whitaker explains in the final chapter of his magnificent
expose, "There will be no rethinking of the merits of a form of care
that is bringing profits to so many. Indeed, it is hard to be
optimistic that the future will bring any break with the past."

Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are forever destined to
relive its horrors.

But we don't have to tolerate what is clearly intolerable. There IS an
alternative to this psychiatric tyranny that has brought misery and
suffering to so many millions. We don't have to submit to
brain-damaging shock treatments and have our minds turned to mush with
disabling chemicals. We can learn from this history and return once
again to a "moral" form of treatment, as practiced by Pinel and the
York Quakers, and successfully revived in the Soteria House
experiment. Let's rise up and proclaim a revolution in mental health
care and overthrow the oppressive "regime" of psychiatry by
establishing a patients' "Declaration of Independence." Let's reaffirm
the great and self-evident truth that OUR SOUL IS SACRED and that any
assault on our brain by psychiatry is also an assault on our very
soul.

   
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