25 reasons to ban psychiatry, lets add to the list

25 GOOD REASONS WHY PSYCHIATRY MUST BE ABOLISHED
by Don Weitz

www.antipsychiatry.org/25reason.htm

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.

A note from the author:This statement is a slightly revised version of the original written in Spring 1998. Feel free to add and publish your own reasons. I am a psychiatric survivor and antipsychiatry activist who has been involved in the psychiatric survivor liberation movment for 24 years. I am also co-editor of "Shrink Resistant: The Struggle Against Psychiatry in Canada" (1988), host-producer of the antipsychiatry program "Shrinkrap" on CKLN radio (88.1 FM) in Toronto, member of People Against Coercive Treatment (P.A.C.T.), and member of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP).]

PLEASE SNOWBALL, COPY AND PUBLISH THIS STATEMENT INCLUDING THE NOTE. NO COPYRIGHT OR PERMISSION REQUIRED.

26.Your mental health provider is supposed to provide clients with accurate mental health information.

Instead, many mental health professionals routinely provide clients, their families, the media and even elected officials with misinformation that can increase reliance on prescribed psychiatric drugs.

This misinformation discourages people from believing they can learn to help themselves overcome problems. These myths increase passivity, hopelessness and the risk of suicide.

- http://www.mindfreedom.org/truth/truth-flyer-text/

27. Reactions to medications are called new disorders leading to more labels and medications (Ex: manic reactions to antidepressants/stimulants called symptoms of bipolar).

28. Psychiatry’s “treatments” often don’t work. Even the industry shills will admit to that; however, all logic stops there. They will then continue to preach compliance with the same ineffective course of action despite the fact that, the evidence from the past 50 years has shown that the treatments have actually worsened long-term outcomes. There is an epidemic of psychiatric disability. How can this be, if the treatments are so much better that they were in the past? You are better off having a “psychotic” episode in Nigeria than in the U.S. Why? Because third-world countries have better recovery rates for so-called “schizophrenia” than the United States and other industrialized nations that keep their psychiatric patients “maintained” on the drugs. In the United States, one “psychotic” episode will almost always land you in psychiatric wasteland for the rest of your life. It is psychiatry itself that created the “chronicity” in so-called “mental illness”.

http://bipolarbabbling.wordpress.com/

29. Scapegoating , "Mental illness" becomes the "biologically based scapegoat" for the results of childhood trama and abuse.It is known that some people suffering from mental disorders but especially their families prefer a diagnosis of “physical disease” because it does not convey the stigma and blame commonly associated with “psychological problems”.

-Just google "correlation between child abuse and mental illness" or simply spend some time in any kind of group therapy for substance abuse and/or people with "mental problems" and listen to the stories.

30.Victim blaming, victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment are held entirely or partially responsible for the transgressions committed against them (regardless of whether the victim actually had any responsibility for the incident).

A. The victim was overpowered and psych-pharma raped (force medicated) due to so called "lack of insight" and/or had "rapid speech" when refusing the lobotamy pills and listing the logical reasons for doing so.

31. There drugs make people cold.

"A new theory suggests that SSRI antidepressants may also subtly alter the fundamental chemistry of love and romance, snuffing the first sparks between two people otherwise destined to become lovers, and preventing couples from bonding.

There’s every reason to think SSRIs blunt your ability to fall and stay in love," said Helen Fisher, a Rutgers University biological anthropologist who has pioneered the modern science of love. "

Read it all http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/ ... pressants/

32. Drugging children

The public mental health system is creating a huge class of chronic mental patients through forcing them to take ineffective, yet extremely harmful drugs.

Currently, due to the massive growth in psychiatric drugging of children and youth and the current targeting of them for even more psychiatric drugging, PsychRights has made attacking this problem a priority. Children are virtually always forced to take these drugs because it is the adults in their lives who are making the decision. This is an unfolding national tragedy of immense proportions.

http://psychrights.org/index.htm

And also GENERATION RX is a powerful and chilling eye-opener about the pharmaceutical manufacturers and their regulatory watchdogs at the FDA. Miller investigates and asked the questions of whether we have forced millions of children onto pharmaceutical drugs for commercial rather than scientific reasons.

GENERATION RX is a film about families who confronted horror and found nowhere to turn for help - and how scores of children have been caught in the vortex of mind-bending drugs at the earliest stages of their growth and development. GENERATION RX may help parents decide whether the perceived benefits of these medications outweigh the serious risks to children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eo-XiOSWvKs