Mental and Behavioral Health, the DSM and YOU. Resources for Study from Outside the Box of Conventional Thought

I've seen many people who share the link to Dr Jeffrey Schaber's speech when accepting the 2006 Thomas Szasz Award comment "Best speech about mental health ever".  There is also a thought-provoking video of Dr. Szasz, who was the co-founder of the Citizen's Commission on Human Rights which I felt greatly helped understand what this organization is about. As we are currently in a time where the existing system of medicine is in a state of crumbling and is forseen will collapse and be replaced by something different that will become the 'convention', it's important to understand the overall schools of though that have significant influence on the course of things. Some people might not think about what political party their provider subscribes to -- what their personal philosophy is when it comes to the political system. The political system has a great deal of influence, obviously, over the state of affairs with medical, which affects the health and well-being of everyone. 

So I wanted to present both videos as suggestions for learning, and for those who can benefit from a readable version, type up some highlights from the videos and provide some guideposts of the minute marks if you were to wish to go to the video and tune into certain points. I made notes and have then typed them up, this might not be verbatim, I have somewhat arranged things differently for readability than the exact order he said them. So please go to the video and watch it for the exact -- this is simply allowing YOUsers to read things over and see if it's something they wish to invest in watching as much as anything. 

Dr Jeffrey Schaber, Psychologist and Professor at the American University, titled his speech The DSM for Mental Disorders: The Great Work of Fiction.  When I was in school, we became aware of the DSM, it was in it's third or fourth edition. The first copy I owned was of the III-R (Revised), which they prepared when they were doing the massive preparations for the fourth version. And then 'forever' went by and finally with MUCH controversy in the medical world (both consumers and providers) the DSM-V was published. I bought a copy, $150 at Barnes and Noble. And I think back to my OT classes on mental health and we were asked to use the DSM and take cases and come up with the diagnosis. NOT that OTs ever are the ones who do diagnosing, others with other degrees that go to similar programs in the medical education system do that. But for the sake of learning, we were required to do this. And I was actually quite good at it, just the way my brain works. So I entered the workforce doing what I have done and never really gave it much thought that this was all a created system of labeling that interconnects with BigPharma, BigInsurance, BigMedicine, and the Military-Industrial Complex. But I have now.

And I hope every provider does. I hope they study Agenda 21, and I am going to provide resources about that as well. The New World Order that President Bush talked about was laying the ground work for an executive order which was signed by the President, however, it was the next president, Bill Clinton, who was on the watch post as US President. Little information was circulated about it in the mainstream 'system' and so many have been woefully unaware. Codex is part of all of this too, and is a huge shift in the world of wellness products, services, etc. 

When I read over the DSM-V, I thought that it was astounding that there was now a descriptor of literally EVERY person I've ever known!  How handy, we now have 'labels' for EVERY behavior there is. Thata does make it more efficient to communicate with others! But these are not labels with no strings attached! Through these labels a person is 'diagnosed' and can therefore be 'treated' with the various things that the medical system's computers say can be billed for the code that is input by the provider when they use their insurance (or pay out of pocket) to get conventional mental health treatment. Hence the controversy that has grown over time about the DSM and the conventional system of medicine for mental health.

I want the YOUsers of Lumigrate to know about this, naturally, and do your homework and study on it so that YOU know where YOU want to 'fit in' with treating the 'mind'.  So this is what you'll find at the following link:

www.youtube.com/watch

Ladies and gentlement, it is a great honor to accept the award name for my friend and colleague, Thomas Szasz. As Thomas Szask wrote years ago: "The only true political virtue is abedience to authority and the only true political sin is independence."   Independence renders assistance useless, and that is what infuriates it so.  You've likely been deemed mentally ill for calling he "Emperor Called Psychiatry" has no clothes, not to mention "stupid" and "unscientific". This is what some colleagues have had occur. 

Psychiatrists had to invent their own book of disorders because pathologists would have nothing to do with them. It's called the DSM, a great work of fiction. (Laughter.. and applause).  Every disease is 'invented'. Every disease in pathology texts is 'discovered'. 

Mental illness refers to what something someone "does". Real disease refers to something a person "has".

It takes one person to have a real disease. It takes two people to have a mental illness.

In the psychology profession, when one of their own speaks out, it's considered especially sacriligious. What do we know is true, that the cult of psychology us is false? First that there is a known brain lesion causing mental illness. We cannot tell mental illness from brain images or bloodwork. 

If alone on an island, you could develop "cancer", but not "hyperactivity".

The controversy about psychology is not about science or medicine, it's about power. When psychology starts agreeing with you, you might reconsider your position.

Mental health diagnoses are used for 'social problems', especially when there is a disagreement. If the person doing the diagnosing is more powerful than the person getting the diagnosis, then there is trouble. The diagnosis is a 'weapon', a tool used against one another. This is not done with a real disease.

This about when people get angry with each other, listen to what they say.. "You're crazy, you're mentally ill." -- imagine they say "You have diabetes... you have Parkinsons". (more laughter)  

Imagine a judge saying "I sentence you to treatment for your cancer."  

In prison they do not deprive people of their freedom based upon how you think. In a mental institution, if you don't see things the way they want you to, you'll be punished longer if don't comply with treatment'. 

Consider how melanoma is a disease here as well as Northern India. If you have melanoma here, does it go away if you go to another country? No.  Take a holy man in one civilization who comes to Washington DC and is labeled as mentally ill. 

He brings his personal, family history to this discussion in a poignant way, citing the history in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, where his father was at the time 15.  He was send out of the country as he was a Jewish man. He had nightmares until he died, five years prior to this speech. 

"Dad, what were the people thinking in Germany back then when they paraded about ....." His father said that "Nobody took them seriously, nobody thought they could have the power they had ... 'we laughed at them.'"

"While we should laugh in the faces of psychology, know too that we must also take them seriously, especially when it comes to the harm they have done to people in the name of helping. For if we do not, history will repeat itself. We are building a resistance to the psychiatric Gastapo." ...referring to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights as he wraps up with: "That is why we are here tonight, and that is why we will be here tomorrow. Thank You"  (At the time his Internet presence was listed as The Truth About Psychiatry at MySpace.com.) 

CCHR Co-Founder Dr Thomas Szasz, Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, 

Psychiatry is a pseudoscience. 

What is disease: Spring fever is not a disease. It's a figure of speech. A metaphor, a little piece of poetry. 

This is where this under 5 minute video takes off if you wish to watch him speak: www.youtube.com/watch

School authorities tell a mother their son is sick and needs to be on drugs. How in the world is she to know that is simply a lie? How is she to recognize that what experts now call "ADHD" is simply not a disease? Such a mother is not an expert in the history of psychiatry. She does not know that psychiatrists have, for hundreds of years, used so-called diagnostic terms to stigmatize and control people. 

A few dramatic examples. Black slaves in the South ran away to freedom. It wasn't that they wanted to be free, they suffered from a disease called 'drapetomania'. Drapetes -- runaway slaves, and mania. I'm not making this up, this was a ligitimate diagnosis just like ADD. 

Women -- half the population, of course --- if they were foolish enough to rebel against domination by men, then they had a serious disease called "hysteria", which was due to their "wandering womb". These behaviors were not "disease". Nor is attention deficit disorder a disease. No behavior or misbehavior is a disease nor can be a disease. That's not what diseases are!  (Applause)

So, it doesn't matter how a child behaves, this is nothing to examine. If he is sick, there must be some objective science to it, which can be diagnosed by physicians and objective tests. That's why doctors take a lot of blood and X-rays. They don't want to hear how you "behave".  

When I went to medical school sixty years ago, there were only a handfull of six to seven mental diseases, now there are 300, and new ones are discovered every day. Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychotropic drug is poisoning, not treatment.

I have long maintained that the child psychologist is one of the most dangerous enemies, not only of children but of adults .. of all of us who care for the most precious and most vulnerable things in life, and those two things are children and liberty. 

How can parents protect their children from the "therapeutic state"? --- the alliance of government and psychiatry?

Get rid of the idea of the child misbhaving is having a mental illness and the so-called treatment can help. This is simply not so. Diseases are malfunctions of the human body. Typhoid fever is a disease, you know it -- you don't question it.  Spring fever ............ (laughter).  All you have to know is English. 

Now, so all mental disease is a metaphor. The task we set to combat is psyche coersion. It's an important one. It's a noble task, a task which our conscience commands that we do no less.