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EleMental International Centre for Principles and Values of Recovery and Thriving Page 1

MISGUIDED THINKING

MENTAL HEALTH AT A CROSSROADS

"Take your medication!" is probably the most common refrain in today's mental health field. After all, medication has been the cornerstone of psychiatric treatment for decades, so much so that it is considered unethical to treat many conditions without it. Yet a new book by award- winning journalist Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, effectively shows just how misguided this thinking is.For most of the 30 years I have worked in mental health, I have been alarmed by my observations that most psychiatric treatments seem to produce more harm than good. I started off as a psychiatric orderly and assisted with electro-convulsive therapy, otherwise known as shock treatment. Most of the patients were middle aged women from the surrounding St. Louis suburbs but no one was immune. A 16-year-old boy was shocked because he was considered "pre-schizophrenic." An 85-year- old woman had a heart attack during the shock procedure and died hours later. Shock treatment reduced all to a vegetative state from which most recovered and some even improved. Tragically though, some never recovered and I developed an enduring skepticism of psychiatric treatment.After obtaining my master's degree, I went to work in the inner city of Memphis. Here I saw the ravages of not only racism and poverty, but of a mental health system that relied on medications as the primary form of treatment. I worked with clients who had such severe side- effects that they could hardly walk or talk, so tranquilized that they appeared zombie-like. Even so, their humanity and courage shined through and I was convinced that there was a better way.After moving to Eugene 20 years ago, I stumbled across Toxic Psychiatry by Harvard-educated psychiatrist Peter Breggin. Breggin's well researched book describes how medications and electroshock damage the brain. He convincingly demonstrates that the common belief that mental illnesses are "genetically caused brain diseases" or "chemical imbalances" is simply not supported by research.Fortunately, Eugene is home to David Oaks, an internationally known psychiatric survivor and activist. With his organization MindFreedom we reached out to other mental health workers and found that while almost all professionals, including the psychiatrists, were compassionate and caring, it was the younger, more idealistic workers who were most willing to question common psychiatric methods.The tide of history flowed against us, however, with pharmaceutical companies making billions from sales of psychiatric drugs. They pumped money into seductive advertising and sponsored research that was deeply flawed, focusing only on the short term. Our culture was flooded with Prozac, portrayed as a cutting-edge, feel-good pill for almost anyone. A new generation of antipsychotic medications promised to revolutionize the treatment of schizophrenia. These drugs were touted as safer and were increasingly given to children and the elderly. We who spoke out were dismissed as ignorant and my employment was threatened.But newspaper and research articles suggested that new anti-depressants were no more effective than the old ones, which were barely better than sugar pills. New antipsychotic medications were linked to weight gain, diabetes and cardio-vascular disease. We sounded the alarm after a surge of deaths in Lane County. A few years ago, research showed that mental health clients are dying 25 years earlier than the average person.Anatomy of an Epidemic promises to turn the tide. Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Whitaker shows in a solid and evidence based manner that while psychiatric medications can lead to marginal improvement in the short term, they tend to make people worse and more chronic over time. Moreover, these medications actually create the chemical imbalances they are said to correct and this makes it very difficult to quit taking them. This is why the number of those disabled by mental illness has tripled in the last two decades. Today's youth face a major hazard from psychiatric drugging.Whitaker examines historical and cross cultural evidence, long-term studies and brain chemistry to reach his conclusions, which are the same for antidepressant, anti-anxiety and antipsychotic medication. The pieces come together to create an undeniable picture: Psychiatric drugs are not an effective long-term treatment for most people.Whitaker has credibility because he has no personal ax to grind with psychiatry. He's a reporter who investigated when he saw something that did not add up and he found an immense deception. His book has the sparkle of truth and is essential reading for those concerned about mental health.We are fighting for the health, safety and happiness of those suffering from emotional problems. Just because we are right does not mean we will win. By Chuck Areford

Bullshit--Anti-Psychiatry and Anti-Medication Song

Dr. Mercola and Robert Whitaker Discuss Mental Health (part 7 of 7)

"Medication catches the disease in man superficially. Meditation gets hold of man from deep within"~ Osho

Page 2

extract from Richard Bentall

Surveying the history of psychiatry, the medical historian Edward Shorter remarked: "If there is one central intellectual reality at the end of the 20th century, it is that the biological approach to psychiatry – treating mental illness as a genetically influenced disorder of the brain chemistry – has been a smashing success."Far from being a success, there is compelling evidence that the biological approach has been a lamentable failure. Whereas last century saw dramatic improvements in the survival rates of patients suffering from heart diseases and cancer, so far as we can tell, outcomes for patients suffering from the severest forms of psychiatric disorder – the psychoses (disorders in which the patient experiences hallucinations or delusions, usually resulting in a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) – have hardly changed since the Victorian period. Poor countries without well-resourced psychiatric services seem to do at least as well as the developed world. Therefore, although the perception is often different, there is little evidence that modern psychiatric services have had a global, positive impact on mental health.At the beginning of the 21st century a new picture of severe mental illness is emerging, which shows that the genetically determined brain disease paradigm is not only ineffective but scientifically flawed. First, it seems that diagnoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder do not identify discrete conditions analogous to, say, appendicitis or tuberculosis. Patients with a mixture of bipolar and schizophrenia symptoms are at least as common as patients who fit one or other diagnosis. The concept of schizophrenia is so broad that two patients can share the diagnosis while having no symptoms in common.In the case of both types of symptoms, there appear to be many people whose experiences place them on the borderline between health and illness, so that we can think of a spectrum running from ordinariness, through eccentricity and creative thinking, to full-blown psychiatric disorder. Research has also shown that psychiatric diagnoses are poor predictors of response to treatment, giving little indication of which patients will respond to which drugs. They are therefore hardly more meaningful than star signs – another diagnostic system that is supposed to tell us something about ourselves and what will happen in the future, and which is widely embraced despite no evidence of its usefulness.When new methods of molecular genetics have been used to study psychiatric patients, no genes of major effect have been found. The latest evidence suggests that many genes – possibly thousands – each make a tiny contribution to vulnerability to psychiatric disorder, and that these effects are highly non-specific (the same genes are implicated in patients with different diagnoses).Some findings that were announced with enormous fanfare have not been replicated in subsequent studies. Much, for instance, has been made of the discovery of a variant of the 5-HTTLPR gene, which appears to make people liable to depression if they are exposed to unpleasant life events. A recently published analysis of the data available on this gene found no evidence that it directly causes depression, or that it makes people vulnerable to depression. However, it was found that negative life events had a direct impact on mood: as our mothers could have told us, bad things tend to make us miserable.This last observation is consistent with other evidence that life experiences shape even the most severe forms of mental illness. Migrants have at least a four times greater risk of psychosis than other groups, and this effect is most pronounced if they live in areas in which they are in a minority. Early separation from parents has also been shown to increase the risk of psychosis, as have growing up in an urban environment and chronic bullying.Many studies have also reported an association between trauma in early life and psychosis. These effects are large: one recent study estimated that individuals who had been sexually abused in childhood were 12 times more likely than others to suffer from serious mental illness, and another calculated that the population-attributable risk of a diagnosis of schizophrenia associated with an inner-city childhood was 15% (that is, there would be 15% fewer cases if we all grew up in the countryside). The risk associated with having a parent with the diagnosis is 7% (ie, there would be 7% fewer cases if patients stopped having children).These effects are understandable in the light of psychological research. For example, early trauma seems to disrupt the process by which we distinguish between our own thoughts and our perceptions, leading to a specific risk of hallucinations. Disruption of early relationships with caregivers, coupled with victimisation, create a tendency to mistrust others and to anticipate threats, leading to paranoid delusions.The cruel and ineffective treatments that characterised psychiatry in the mid-20th century – for instance, prefrontal leucotomy and insulin coma therapy – would not have been accepted had psychiatrists not been in thrall to the idea that mental illnesses are genetically determined brain diseases. Today, although mental health professionals are usually much more compassionate than in those dark times, psychiatric services continue to see their primary objective as ensuring that patients take their medication.Legislation has been introduced allowing doctors to coerce patients to take their drugs with threats of a return to hospital if they do not comply. Patients often find that their own understandings of their troubles are ignored. A study of psychiatrists in London found that, when patients asked questions about the meaning of their experiences, the doctors typically changed the subject.Meanwhile, research on the biology of severe mental illness continues to be prioritised over social and psychological research. Biological investigations into psychosis currently outnumber those on environmental factors by at least five to one, and are much more generously funded by the UK's Medical Research Council. To date, about 30 trials of cognitive therapy for psychosis have been completed; by comparison, in the period 2001-3, nearly 400 drug trials were published in the five leading American psychiatric journals. There is therefore an urgent need to develop a less drug-based, more person-centred approach to understanding and treating mental illness, which builds on the recent scientific findings and which takes the experiences of patients seriously.

http://bipolarblast.wordpress.com/

“…"Jesus Christ might simply have returned to his carpentry following the use of modern psychiatric treatments"”

William Sargant, British psychiatrist, 1974

Page 3

Mad in America

In Bob Whitaker's book, a thorough investigative review of all the evidence reveals . . . a marketing ploy.

This marketing ploy —based on misrepresenting the evidence— has been instrumental in converting the pharmaceutical industry from a tiny business into the third largest enterprise in the world (after the military/defense industry and the oil/energy industry)

www.madinamerica.com

Anatomy of an Epidemic

"If you’re taking psych meds or care about anyone

who is, order Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic right this minute. Better yet, hie thee to your local big box bookstore, buy it today, and start it tonight. You’ll want an emergency appointment with your shrink the next day.

I am prone to exaggeration, I suspect, but I’m not indulging that sin when I tell you that this is the most important book I’ve read about psych meds. Whitaker argues that, far from fixing “broken brains” or relieving symptoms, psych meds — antipsychotics, antianxiolytics, antidepressants, and mood stabilizers — cause the very illnesses that they purport to cure.

I don’t want to believe Whitaker. I want to plug my ears and hum, put out my eyes rather than read the words on the page. The evidence is irrefutable, though, and it’s pulled from a staggering variety of unimpeachable sources".

http://revoltandresignation.wordpress.com

"No longer do we seek to understand whole persons in their social contexts, Rather, we are there to realign our patients' neurotransmitters. The problem is that it is very difficult to have a relationship with a neurotransmitter, whatever its configuration."

Loren Mosher to the APA

Lorens resignation letter.doc

Loren Mosher A Critical Bibliography.doc

Hi Marion and MikeGood news regarding Sheryl since my last email …….We went to Holland and Barrett yesterday and Sheryl bought some vitamins and supplements to take alongside the Bach Rescue Remedy that you recommended. Sheryl took the first lot yesterday tea time and in the evening Sheryl gave a hearty chuckle when we were chatting about something humorous. It was great to see as I hadn’t seen her do that for many weeks! This morning she arose after 12 hours sleep which was less than yesterday and was wide awake all day. This was a big improvement on last week and before that when she was also struggling to stay awake in the afternoon. This afternoon when we were going into the car for the journey into town, Sheryl said how good it was to ‘feel’ the sunny day. She remarked on how flat she had been feeling on the Haloperidol what ever the weather was. Then in town she looked real happy and even cracked a joke and said how good she was feeling – fantastic! All afternoon Sheryl was like her usual happy cheerful self and I hugged her and told her how nice it was to have my daughter back again. In the car after visiting relations in Cardiff she even said that at that particular moment she felt elated. I told her what ever you do; do not tell your psychiatrist that! This lovely feel good feeling has continued into this evening and Sheryl feels so good to be feeling like her old self again. I feel so happy that Sheryl is feeling this way; it makes me feel pleased as I been so worried about her on this medication. I’m so glad she has taken the supplement route and not the Prozac Route as advised by the psychiatrist This is what Sheryl has been taking since yesterday ……. Bach Rescue Remedy – minimum 4 times a day; but probably double or more than that as she loves it!Omega 3 – Plant based from microalgae Schizochytrium sp (as Sheryl is vegetarian)High strength multivitamins and mineralsB complexNiacin (B3)Vitamin C – 1000mg time releaseMilk Thistle 175mg 3 x a daySt Johns Wort 3 x a dayGinseng & Ginko Biloba It has been my theory since 2006 that Sheryl’s episodes are caused by a nutritional deficiency when she is under severe stress. When under stress the body utilises more nutrients. I feel that at these times Sheryl’s body either struggles to access her reserves or they are depleted more quickly than they are replaced. This would explain why from 2006 to 2009 vitamin/supplement treatment worked to bring her out of an episode. Sadly this treatment as far as I’m aware is neither available nor recognised on the NHS. Certainly not recognised by psychiatrists and nurses at the hospital! I love the idea of sound healing on the Alternatives page of Elemental website and know how powerful EFT is as I use that in my Hypnotherapy practice. I know of someone who uses EmoTrance to help people with mental health problems and nearly enrolled on one of her courses last year. I am still considering it if she decides to do more as EmoTrance is a superb tool that I also use in my practice. This is a link to an explanation on the official website http://emotrance.com/what_is_emotrance.htm . I’m sure there are many more things that can also help. My limited experience has come to the conclusion that medication should be a last resort or only for short term emergencies. It may suit some people but then that should surely be their choice. I know what I’d prefer! Anyway have a great weekend. With loveLinda x

http://www.feelgooddynamics.com

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