Library of Congress mp3s
Posted on:: November 21st, 2004
Thanks to Michael Shook, here are some MP3 versions of my talk to the Library of Congress on Monday:
Speech (15MB)
Q&A (19MB)
The whole shebang (39MB)
The Quicktime movie of it is here in the unlikely event that you think seeing me will improve your experience of it. Or maybe C-SPAN’s Real version of it will work for you.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Mental Health Industry Facts
Every 75 seconds, someone is involuntarily committed into a mental institution in the U.S. alone, where they can be restrained, electroshocked and drugged against their will. These victims have committed no criminal offense, are denied due process, and yet are imprisoned — often for years.
More than 100,000 patients die each year in psychiatric institutions around the world.
According to a 2004 study by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, “People are being institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals unlawfully, and on the most diverse grounds. Not only did punitive psychiatry exist during the Soviet period, and not only does it exist today, unfortunately there are no grounds to hope that it will disappear in the foreseeable future.â€
Psychiatrists continue to use electroshock and drugs to torture political dissidents. These are precisely the same devices and means psychiatrists’ use on patients as “therapy.â€
With electroshock, psychiatrists send as much as 460 volts of electricity searing through the brain. Three-quarters of these shock victims are women — most are elderly.
Studies show that between 10 and 25 percent of psychiatrists has sex with patients. One of every 20 of these victims could be a minor.
20 million children worldwide are on psychiatric drugs, which have been acknowledged by international drug regulatory agencies to cause suicide, hostility, violence, mania and drug dependence, stroke and sudden death.
According to a United Nations report, many of the 250,000 children forced into armed combat by revolutionaries and terrorists are drugged with amphetamines and tranquilizers to enable them to “go on murderous binges for days.†In Western countries those same drugs may be forced onto children as “treatment.â€
Physical restraint of psychiatric patients is commonplace. At least 150 restraint deaths occur each year in U.S. psychiatric facilities alone. Many of the victims are children, some as young as 6 years old. Few, if any of those responsible are ever criminally prosecuted.
A review of acts of violence in U.S. schools between 1998 and 2006 revealed that 38% of children and teens responsible for these crimes were taking psychiatric drugs. The relationship of psychiatric drugs in the remaining school shootings has not been publicly disclosed or the student’s records are sealed.
Today, $2 trillion (€1.57 trillion) is spent worldwide on mental health, $100 billion (€78.7 billion) in the United States, but with no workable methods of helping people, psychiatrists promote an ever-increasing rate of “mental illness†to solicit more government appropriations.
Psychiatrists’ recent claim is that 50% of the American population suffers a mental illness during their lifetime that experts say means they are “medicalizing unhappiness.â€
Mental Health Industry Facts
Between 10% and 25% of mental health practitioners sexually abuse their patients.
To cover up their crime, psychiatrists have used drugs or electroshock in an effort to eliminate the patient’s memory of the rape.
It is estimated that every year 100 psychologists lose their licenses for sexual misconduct, yet the American Psychological Association expels only 10 members a year for this offense.
In a British study of therapist-patient sexual contact among psychologists, 25% reported having treated a patient who had been sexually involved with another therapist.
A 2001 study reported that 1 out of 20 clients who had been sexually abused by their therapist was a minor, the average age being 7 for girls and 12 for boys. The youngest child was three.
Courts have recognized that a patient’s apparent “consent†to sexual relations with a therapist cannot be used as a defense because of the vulnerable state of the patient and the serious betrayal of trust by the therapist.
The Hippocratic Oath, named after a physician who practiced around the fifth century B.C., and which all psychiatrists swear to follow, prohibits sex between doctors and patients.
As of 2006, there have been more than 25 statutes enacted to address the increasing number of sex crimes committed by psychiatrists and psychologists in the United States, Australia (Victoria), Germany, Sweden and Israel.
Patients are often provoked to justify placing them in restraints, resulting in higher insurance reimbursements—at least $1,000 a day.
Thousands of patients each year are subjected to “four-point restraints†after being subjected to known violence-inducing drugs.
Patients can become so exhausted fighting against restraint, they can suffer cardiac and respiratory collapse. Many have died, some as young as 6.
There were at least 45 child deaths between 2000-2004 attributed to antipsychotic drugs (tranquilizers) in the United States alone and potentially 35,000 child deaths from all psychiatric drugs.
Studies show psychiatrists and psychologists do not make more accurate clinical judgments than laypersons. A U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Arizona to limit the use of the insanity defense did so, in part, because any layperson could just as feasibly give an opinion about “insanity†as a psychiatrist or psychologist.
Mental Health Industry Facts
Surveys of nurses have determined dissatisfaction because of the poor quality of care in facilities where they work having deteriorated in recent years. Too often patient care has been compromised for the sake of profit—drugging the patient is less costly than paying for adequate nursing.
Indeed, it is estimated that with sufficient number of nurses, more than 6,700 patient deaths in hospitals could be avoided each year.
Many nursing and medical school students have visited CCHR’s “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death†Museum viewing its 14 documentaries now available in a DVD of the same name. A common denominator among students seeing these is their concern over the increasing reliance upon psychotropic drugs in hospital settings and the damaging effects they have observed in patients prescribed them.
During the last decade, over 25,000 lawsuits have been pending in the United States against pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists arising out of deaths and injuries caused by several classes of psychiatric drugs. The Courts of every state have been inundated with litigation involving the harms caused by psychiatric drugs.
In a national survey of psychiatrists, the results of which were published in Psychiatric Times, Dr. Sander Breiner, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University determined that 40% of psychiatrists are sued for malpractice during the course of their career.
A survey of 531 psychiatrists determined that 25% had chosen the field of psychiatry because of their own psychiatric problems or treatment. Psychiatrists have higher rates of alcohol abuse and abuse of both prescription and other drugs.
The British Medical Journal has pointed to the disproportionate number of suicides among psychiatrists. In another study, 56% of those in the suicide group had prescribed a psychoactive drug for themselves and 42% had been seeing a mental health professional at the time of their self-inflicted death.
A study of Medicaid and Medicare insurance fraud in the U.S. over a 20 year period, showed psychiatry to have the worst track record of all medical disciplines.
The largest health care fraud suit in U.S. history was in mental health, with over $1.1 billion paid out in civil penalties and criminal fines to government, insurance agencies and patients.
Between 10% and 25% of psychiatrists admit to sexually abusing their patients. A U.S. national study of therapist-client sex involving minors revealed that 1 out of 20 victims of therapist sexual assault were minors.
We realize that the majority of physicians and nurses work hard to ensure their patients receive the best quality care. Today, however, they are compromised because of the destructive influence of unsupportable psychiatric diagnoses and drugs in general medicine. As many nursing and medical students report, while they can rely upon scientific instruments and tests to confirm physical illnesses, the same cannot be said of psychiatric disorders.
Mental Health Industry Facts
In 1995, Dr. Rex Cowdry, then director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), testified before a U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, saying: “[W]e do not know the causes [of any mental disorder]. We don’t have the methods of ‘curing’ these illnesses yet.†This state of affairs hasn’t changed since.
In February 2006, when the Journal of Abnormal Psychology celebrated its 100 years of publication, a journal editor, Tim Baker, professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, said that psychology had yet to provide a standard definition of what is normal or abnormal behavior, stating: “To what extent is abnormal behavior something that is merely unusual. To that extent does it have to be problematic in terms of having harmful consequences to the individual or to people around the individual? It’s a somewhat fuzzy concept.â€
Mental Health Industry Facts
The U.S. loses approximately $100 million (€78.7 million) to healthcare fraud, with a large percentage of this due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.
One of the largest health care fraud suits in U.S. history was in mental health, yet it is the smallest sector within health care.
A study of U.S. Medicaid and Medicare insurance fraud, especially in New York, over a 20-year period, showed psychiatry to have the worst track record of all medical disciplines.
Germany reports roughly $1 billion (€787,835) in the healthcare system is defrauded each year.
In Australia, health care fraud and patient over-servicing has cost taxpayers up to $330 million (€259 million) a year.
Today, $2 trillion (€1.57 trillion) is spent worldwide on mental health, $100 billion (€78.7 billion) in the United States, but with no workable methods of helping people, psychiatrists promote an ever-increasing rate of “mental illness†to solicit more government appropriations
Government mandates in the United States requiring insurance companies to cover mental health treatment at the same rate as for medical conditions such as cancer and heart disease, are driving up health insurance premiums and, subsequently, the number of uninsured.
Were psychiatry effective, the rate of people suffering from mental illness would decrease and so would the number of mental disorders in its diagnostic manual. Yet the number of disorders has increased more than 200% since 1952, when the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders was first published.
A review of acts of violence in U.S. schools since 1998 reveals that 38% of children and teens responsible for these crimes were taking psychiatric drugs. The relationship of psychiatric drugs in the remaining school shootings has not been publicly disclosed or the student’s records are sealed.
Despite a public warning from the FDA that stimulants can cause psychosis, hallucinations, heart attacks and death, nearly $30 billion of Special Education funds in the United States are spent on children diagnosed as “learning disordered,†who typically are prescribed psychiatric drugs. Moreover, a federally-funded-study found that 80% of those children simply had never been taught properly to read.
Numerous medical and educational experts have been critical of the fact that there is no medical test to substantiate that “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder†(ADHD) or any learning disorder as a neurobiological or physical disability. In September 2005, the Oregon Health & Science University’s Evidence-Based Practice Center published a report, “Drug Class Review on Pharmacologic Treatments for ADHD,†which had reviewed 2,287 studies—virtually every study ever conducted on ADHD drugs—and determined that there were no trials showing the long-term effectiveness of these drugs on academic performance.
Millions of children and adolescents are also taking antidepressants that British, Australian, European and U.S. drug regulatory agencies have warned can cause psychosis, aggression, hallucinations, and suicide.
There were at least 45 child deaths between 2000-2004 attributed to antipsychotic drugs (tranquilizers) in the United States alone and potentially 35,000 child deaths from all psychiatric drugs
Another threat to schools is proposals to screen students for “mental illness,†using such fraudulent programs such as TeenScreen. Lawsuits have already been filed against school officials. Educators are not informed that there is no science behind any psychiatric diagnosis, especially those attributed to children’s behavioral or learning problems.
Mental Health Industry Facts
Mental Health patients are not informed of alternatives to psychiatric drugs, electroshock and other harmful practices. In doing so, psychiatrists violate patients’ informed consent rights on a daily basis.
In a survey of legislators in 1989, the vast majority felt that other professionals such as chiropractors, nutritionists, holistic practitioners, and allergists could be utilized to solve some of these same problems that psychiatrists treat.
A 1991 Gallup poll found that 90 percent of patients regard their chiropractic care as effective and that approximately 80 percent consider the treatment costs reasonable. Compare this to a recent study revealing that the effectiveness of psychiatric treatment is less than 1%.
In a survey of physicians in three European countries and in the United States, 72% said qualities that best describe a good physician are compassion, caring, personable and good listening and communication skills. In this way, they felt they could help make their patients healthier and lead better lives.
In a national survey of psychiatrists about their “fantasies†and malpractice, the results of which were published in Psychiatric Times in 2001, Dr. Sander Breiner, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University found that psychiatrists’ number one fantasy was “…I will be able to ‘cure’ the patient.†The second ranking fantasy was “The patient wants to know what his or her problem is.â€
Dr. Sander Breiner also determined that 40% of psychiatrists are sued for malpractice during the course of their career.
Many nursing and medical school students have visited CCHR’s “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death†Museum viewing its 14 documentaries now available in a DVD of the same name: Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Documentary. A common denominator among students seeing these is a concern over the increasing reliance upon psychotropic drugs in hospital settings and the damaging effects they have observed in patients prescribed them.
During the last decade, over 25,000 lawsuits have been pending in the United States against pharmaceutical companies and psychiatrists arising out of deaths and injuries caused by several classes of psychiatric drugs. The Courts of every state have been inundated with litigation involving the damage caused by psychiatric drugs.
A survey of 531 psychiatrists determined that 25% had chosen the field of psychiatry because of their own psychiatric problems or treatment. Psychiatrists have higher rates of alcohol abuse and abuse of both prescription and other drugs.
The British Medical Journal has pointed to the disproportionate number of suicides among psychiatrists. In another study, 56% of those in the suicide group had prescribed a psychoactive drug for themselves and 42% had been seeing a mental health professional at the time of their self-inflicted death.
A study of Medicaid and Medicare insurance fraud in the U.S. over a 20 year period, showed psychiatry to have the worst track record of all medical disciplines.
The largest health care fraud suit in U.S. history was in mental health, with over $1.1 billion paid out in civil penalties and criminal fines to government, insurance agencies and patients.
Between 10% and 25% of psychiatrists admit to sexually abusing their patients. A U.S. national study of therapist-client sex involving minors revealed that 1 out of 20 victims of therapist sexual assault were minors.
are sealed.
Mental Health Industry Facts
Today, $2 trillion (€1.57 trillion) is spent worldwide on mental health, $100 billion (€78.7 billion) in the United States, but with no workable methods of helping people, psychiatrists promote an ever-increasing rate of “mental illness†to solicit more government appropriations.
Government mandates in the United States requiring insurance companies to cover mental health treatment at the same rate as for medical conditions such as cancer and heart disease, are driving up health insurance premiums and, subsequently, the number of uninsured.
A review of acts of violence in U.S. schools since 1998 reveals that 38% of children and teens responsible for these crimes were taking psychiatric drugs. The relationship of psychiatric drugs in the remaining school shootings has not been publicly disclosed or the student’s records are sealed.
Despite a public warning from the FDA that stimulants can cause psychosis, hallucinations, heart attacks and death, nearly $30 billion of Special Education funds in the United States are spent on children diagnosed as “learning disordered,†who typically are prescribed psychiatric drugs. Moreover, a federally-funded-study found that 80% of those children simply had never been taught properly to read.
Numerous medical and educational experts have been critical of the fact that there is no medical test to substantiate that “Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder†(ADHD) or any learning disorder as a neurobiological or physical disability. In September 2005, the Oregon Health & Science University’s Evidence-Based Practice Center published a report, “Drug Class Review on Pharmacologic Treatments for ADHD,†which had reviewed 2,287 studies—virtually every study ever conducted on ADHD drugs—and determined that there were no trials showing the long-term effectiveness of these drugs on academic performance.
Millions of children and adolescents are also taking antidepressants that British, Australian, European and U.S. drug regulatory agencies have warned can cause psychosis, aggression, hallucinations, and suicide.
There were at least 45 child deaths between 2000-2004 attributed to antipsychotic drugs (tranquilizers) in the United States alone and potentially 35,000 child deaths from all psychiatric drugs.
Another threat to schools is proposals to screen students for “mental illness,†using such fraudulent programs such as TeenScreen. Lawsuits have already been filed against school officials. Educators are not informed that there is no science behind any psychiatric diagnosis, especially those attributed to children’s behavioral or learning problems.
A U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing Arizona to limit the use of the insanity defense did so, in part, because any layperson could just as feasibly give an opinion about “insanity†as a psychiatrist or psychologist.
Studies show psychiatrists and psychologists do not make more accurate clinical judgments than laypersons.
25 GOOD REASONS WHY PSYCHIATRY MUST BE ABOLISHED
1. Because psychiatrists frequently cause harm, permanent disabilities, death – death of the body-mind-spirit.
2. Because psychiatrists frequently violate the Hippocratic Oath which orders all physicians “First Do No Harm.”
3. Because psychiatrists patronize and disempower people, especially their patients.
4. Because psychiatry is not a medical science.
5. Because psychiatry is quackery, a pseudo-science which lacks independent diagnostic tests, testable hypotheses, and cures for “schizophrenia” and all other types of alleged “mental illness” or “mental disorder”.
6. Because psychiatrists can not accurately and reliably predict dangerousness, violence, or any other type of human behaviour, yet make such claims as “expert witnesses”, and with the media promote the “dangerous mental patient” myth/stereotype.
7. Because psychiatrists have caused a worldwide epidemic of brain damage by promoting and prescribing brain-disabling treatments such as the neuroleptics, antidepressants, electroconvulsive brainwashing (electroshock), and psychosurgery (lobotomy).
8. Because psychiatrists manufacture hundreds of “mental disorders” classified in its bible called “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (a modern witch-hunting manual); such “mental disorders” and “symptoms” are in fact negative, class-and-culturally-biased moral judgments for dissident ways of coping with personal problems and alternative ways of perceiving, interpreting or being in the world.
9. Because psychiatrists, blinded by their medical model bias, fraudulently pathologize and label people’s serious life or existential crises as “symptoms” of “mental illness” or “mental disorder” such as “schizophrenia”,”bipolar affective disorder”, and “personality disorder”.
10. Because psychiatrists compound this fraud by falsely claiming, without scientific proof, that these “mental disorders” are caused by a “biochemical imbalance” in the brain, genetic factors or “genetic predispositions”, despite the fact that there are no genetic factors in “mental illness”.
11. Because psychiatrists frequently misinform their patients, families and the public by claiming that brain-disabling procedures such as the neurotoxins (e.g.,”antipsychotic medication” and “antidepressasnts”), electroconvulsive brainwashing (electroconvulsive therapy/”ECT”), psychosurgery (lobotomy) and other behaviour modification-mind control procedures are “safe, effective and lifesaving”. The exact opposite is tragically true.
12. Because psychiatrists routinely deceive or lie to patients, prisoners, their families, and the public.
13. Because psychiatrists routinely and willfully violate the medical-ethical principle of “informed consent” by misinforming or not informing their patients about the numerous toxic, disabling and frequently permanent effects of the neuroleptics such as memory loss, tardive dyskinesia, tardive psychosis, parkinsonism, dementia (all signs of brain damage), and death.
14. Because psychiatrists routinely threaten, intimidate or coerce many patients – particularly women, children, the elderly, and prisoners – into consenting to health-threatening/brain-damaging “treatment” such as the antidepressants, neuroleptics, electroconvulsive brainwashing, and hi-risk experiments.
15. Because psychiatrists frequently fail to fully inform psychiatric inmates and prisoners about existing safe and humane, non-medical alternatives in the community such as survivor-controlled crisis centres, drop-ins, self-help or advocacy groups, diet, massage, wholistic medicine, affordable supportive housing, and jobs.
16. Because psychiatrists are sexist in frequently stereotyping women in crisis as “hysterical” or “over-emotional”, blaming women whenever they voice real complaints and assertively express their feelings and emotions, prescribing massive doses of tranquilizers and antidrepressants to disproportionately large numbers of women, and in sexually assaulting women in their offices and institutions.
17. Because psychiatrists, particularly white male psychiatrists, are homophobic – the American Psychiatric Association (APA) once labelled homosexuality as a “mental illness” or “mental disorder” – and have used forced electroshock on lesbians, trying to coerce them into adopting a heterosexual life style.
18. Because psychiatrists are ageist in prescribing tranquilizers, antidepressants (“medication”) and electroconvulsive brainwashing for disproportionately large numbers of elderly people – a form of elder abuse.
19. Because psychiatrists are racist in disproportionately incarcerating and drugging people of African descent, aboringal people, other people of colour and labelling them “psychotic” or “schizophrenic”.
20. Because psychiatrists routinely violate people’s civil rights, human rights and constitutional rights such as imprisoning innocent people without court trial or public hearing (“involuntary commitment”), and subjecting them to cruel and unusual punishments or tortures such as forced drugging, electroconvulsive brainwashing, psychosurgery, solitary confinement, “chemical restraints”, and 4-point or 5-point restraints.
21. Because psychiatrists masterminded the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people including disabled children, the elderly and psychiatric patients during The Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and “selected” hundreds of thousands of concentration camp prisoners for death (“T-4 euthanasia” program) – historical facts still missing in psychiatric textbooks and histories.
22. Because psychiatrists have willingly participated in and administered mind-control experiments in the United States and Canada since the early 1950s – its chief targets have been poor patients, women, dissidents and prisoners.
23. Because psychiatry, particularly institutional-biological psychiatry, is based on the 3 Fs: Fear, Fraud,and Force.
24. Because psychiatry is a form of social control or punishment – not treatment.
25. Because psychiatry, particularly institutional-biological psychiatry, is fascist – a direct threat to democracy, human rights and life.