The Black Vault

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/s ... 530830.htm

In 1961 maverick psychiatrist and libertarian Professor Thomas Szasz published his controversial and influential epic, The Myth of Mental Illness. In it he argued that mental illness is a fiction and a medical metaphor. Half a century later he maintains we live in a therapeutic state—a 'pharmacracy' where psychiatry is synonymous with coercion. On the eve of his 89th birthday he joins Natasha Mitchell in conversation over two weeks about his contentious legacy.







http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/s ... 544843.htm

Controversial psychiatrist Professor Thomas Szasz wrote The Myth of Mental Illness in 1961. Nearly 50 years later, on the eve of his 89th birthday, he continues to both ignite and inspire -- as the huge number of comments on the All in the Mind blog indicates after our extended interview with him. This week, two psychiatrists respond to their profession's most vigilant critic.

I don't know, this guy may be right.

What did people do before the invention of "psychology"? It is a modern pseudo-science. The categories they create for mental "illness" are based on subjective observation. In some ways they use the scientific model, like when they're testing new drugs. But, for the most part, psychology is based on opinion, just like politics.

In an industry where a drug is created to "cure" a new "condition" like shyness (and there really is a new drug for shyness)...well, I have to say I really don't trust them.

The more I research nutrition and health the more I'm beginning to believe that most modern "conditions" can be fixed by eating right, exercising and getting enough natural vitamin D from the sun. This also applies to physical ailments.

We know that aspartame causes manic depression, the shakes, headaches, etc. The list is huge. We know that if you give kids sugar they become hyper, so parents send their kids to school with a bowl of high fructose genetically modified corn syrup called cereal, then they're surprised when the kid's teacher labels them adhd.

The drug companies have increased profits so much in the last 30 years that they spend more money on advertising than research.

I saw another article earlier today talking about a contemporary of Freud and how he thought that the nose somehow related to genitalia. Here is a quote:

In 1897, for example, German physician Wilhelm Fliess published a treatise called “The Relations Between the Nose and the Female Sexual Organs from the Aspect of Biology.” In it, Fliess expanded on an idea he’d been developing for some time, the “nasogenital reflex.”

Perhaps with the bias of his field — he was what we would now call an ear, nose and throat specialist — Fliess argued that the nose was intimately connected to our genitals and that problems with one could manifest as problems in the other. He identified a region inside the nasal cavity, a bony projection called the nasal inferior turbinate, as being especially influential.

He described a set of symptoms like headaches, aches and pains, breathing difficulties, disordered mood and difficult menstruation in women matching the 28-day female cycle (men had a 23-day cycle, he said), and argued that these symptoms often began in the nose. The result could be a full-on neurosis.

Fliess and his friend Sigmund Freud decided that one could treat the neurosis by huffing cocaine. Freud did so and it seemed to work. Voila! You could treat a genital problem — and the mental illness those problems create — by treating the nose. So Freud had Fliess operate on a woman named Emma Eckstein. Fliess removed Emma’s turbinate bone, but left a wad of gauze behind which created an infection. When the gauze was finally removed, she nearly bled to death. The episode left her disfigured for life.

Shrinks used to give people lobotomies to "cure" them.

When it comes to depression, a certain amount is natural. Without that emotion, we'd have no art. Who is another to judge how much depression or any other emotion is natural or "normal"?

Anybody else ever see the movie by Kids in the Hall, "Brain Candy"?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116768/

It is a humorous look at the way depression and big-pharma work in today's world.

I don´t think it´s a myth, although I think that many people are faking it, specially those accused of murder and such stupid things.

I don't know. But, when I read a stat over 20 years ago, that said that manic depression and schizophrenia where confused with one another 72% of the time, I really have to ask, what other industry can the "professionals" be wrong more than right and still hold a job? Let alone still be considered "experts"?

If, in my job, I screwed up 72% of the time, I'd be fired. Yet, shrinks, who are wrong more often than they're right, not only have jobs but are "trusted"????

There is no logic in psychology. Freud was a drug addict, didn't understand the Oedipus trilogy, and tried to apply his own personal issues onto other humans. This is where "psychology" came from.

Read the original post with an open mind, then research the history of psychology, then research how much the drug dealers make to "fix" these pseudo-"illnesses".

This is a very complex issue, of course.

Nesaie wrote:In an industry where a drug is created to "cure" a new "condition" like shyness (and there really is a new drug for shyness)...well, I have to say I really don't trust them.

Last year, there were some articles claiming that antidepressant drug manufacturers withheld some data from the FDA.

link

In published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but by a modest margin, concludes the new report, which appears Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Previous research had found a similar bias toward reporting positive results for a variety of medications; and many researchers have questioned the reported effectiveness of antidepressants. But the new analysis, reviewing data from 74 trials involving 12 drugs, is the most thorough to date. And it documents a large difference: while 94 percent of the positive studies found their way into print, just 14 percent of those with disappointing or uncertain results did.

...

One issue I'm interested in is the granting of legal powers to people in various roles to commit someone involuntarily to a hospital. I'm not sure where to begin on that; it alone is a complex issue.

Dark-Samus wrote:I don´t think it´s a myth, although I think that many people are faking it, specially those accused of murder and such stupid things.

That's certainly one hot-button issue when it comes to the intersection of psychology and law. I'm reminded of a movie with Ed Norton where he faked a dual personality to get off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primal_Fear_(film)

In the final scene of the film, Vail visits Aaron to tell him this news. Aaron says he recalls nothing of what happened in the courtroom, having again "lost time." However, as Vail is leaving, Aaron asks him to "tell Ms. Venable I hope her neck is okay", which is not something that Aaron should have been able to remember if he had "lost time."

When Vail points this out, Stampler reveals that he had been pretending to be insane the whole time. Stampler further claims to have murdered the archbishop, as well as his girlfriend, Linda, whom Rushman also molested. Stunned and disillusioned, Vail walks out of the courtroom, with Roy taunting him from the cell.

at1with0 wrote: This is a very complex issue, of course.

Nesaie wrote:In an industry where a drug is created to "cure" a new "condition" like shyness (and there really is a new drug for shyness)...well, I have to say I really don't trust them.

Last year, there were some articles claiming that antidepressant drug manufacturers withheld some data from the FDA.

link

In published trials, about 60 percent of people taking the drugs report significant relief from depression, compared with roughly 40 percent of those on placebo pills. But when the less positive, unpublished trials are included, the advantage shrinks: the drugs outperform placebos, but by a modest margin, concludes the new report, which appears Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Previous research had found a similar bias toward reporting positive results for a variety of medications; and many researchers have questioned the reported effectiveness of antidepressants. But the new analysis, reviewing data from 74 trials involving 12 drugs, is the most thorough to date. And it documents a large difference: while 94 percent of the positive studies found their way into print, just 14 percent of those with disappointing or uncertain results did.

Yeah, I was reading about that back then too. One study I read about, I forget the pill, but it was an "anti"-depressant. The study they conducted never used anybody who was depressed. They only used completely "normal" people. After taking the drugs, a couple of them committed suicide, I believe 10 or so felt "clinically" depressed. So, basically what this study showed was that "anti"-depressants created depression. The way the drug study was marketed was totally different. They turned it into a "good thing".

Next time you read about a new study or drug, try to research the actual study. Take a look at the methodology used...oh that crap ain't scientific one bit. Their "research" is so flawed a kid could see it.

at1with0 wrote:One issue I'm interested in is the granting of legal powers to people in various roles to commit someone involuntarily to a hospital. I'm not sure where to begin on that; it alone is a complex issue.

That one I have no idea. It would depend on the state.

That movie that came out years ago about the actress who was locked up and got a lobotomy was based on a true story and happened in Washington.

When my mother voluntarily went to Catholic services for depression (read catholic guilt for getting pregnant and having a child at 19) they put her in the mental ward. One story she told me about while she was in there is that she woke up strapped down to a gurney. She doesn't remember anything about how she got there. When she told me that story she said that it was probably due to some experimental drug they were trying at the time. It was 1959 and MKULTRA was in full swing with the help of catholic "services".

How legal is it for people to drug "intervention" on adults and force them to inhouse "recovery" places? It sounds like a similar situation, maybe with similar laws?

There is little doubt that mental illness is real, but to what point? The problem is mental illness is always the excuse for bad behavior in our liberal thinking mindset. Little Johnny didn;t just murder 4 people, Little Johnny was abused and couldn't help himself. Everything from brain cancer to a hangnail is now considered a disease nowadays. The medical profession contiinues to cash in on naming everything simple a disease, and mental health in the last decades has done the same thing. Every compulsion from eating, drinking, or cleaning the house, is now a disease, and therefore any resulting problems all get blamed on the disease. In the legal world, every case plays on the sympathy of juries to escuse poor Little Johnny for his murder spree, and blame it on circumstances beyond his control. Everyone in prison is mentally ill for sure, they are all just victims and shouldn;t be punished for it. Every drunk on the road killing someone, its just the disease. Where does this all end and begin? Obvioulsy the capacity to know right from wrong when it comes to a legal defence for behavior gone bad. That is where mental illness has taken our legal system, and we wonder why so many sit waiting for 20 years for executions. They lawyers are appealing on grounds of mental capacity, Little Johnny was not in control of himself.

In the non-criminal world mental illness is used over and over as an excuse. The arenas are abuse, neglect, job performance, personal habits, drinking and overeating, smoking, phobias, and just about anything the doctors can call a disease, to bill you and insurance companies for. Granted, there is basis for the root of all behavior, and it probably all stems from childhood and upbringing, so are we to believe the generation of our parents were all a bunch of nuts, who did this to all of us? Maybe so in a sence, because in earlier generations people were not encouraged to talk about "feelings" for some reason. But this is 2009, and we all spill our guts about feelings, so why is mental health such a big thing? Everyone one from Oprah to Barbara Walters has a confession to make, or book to sell "telling it all". The "big excuse" is now a popular money maker, how Oprah was abused or how Barbara slept with someone.

Give it a break, we all had something in our past growing up, and didn;t end up killing 4 people or driving thru someone drunk as a skunk. That isn't an excuse for the unexcusable, and our legal system should not reward it. The medical system should not exploit it. We should not use it day to day, as the excuse for bad decisions. We all still have the capacity to reason and make decisons of right and wrong, unless true insanity is a factor. What was more insane than the worst serial killers in history, and they were determained to still have mental capacity of right and wrong. John Wayne Gacy, Jeffery Dalmer, Richard Ramerez!

Give it a break, we all had something in our past growing up, and didn;t end up killing 4 people or driving thru someone drunk as a skunk. That isn't an excuse for the unexcusable, and our legal system should not reward it.

Exactly, I`m tired of the systems around the world rewarding these celebrities when they confess about their wrongs in a book or whatever.
Making everyone know about their wrongs is just a false statement just to gain more money.
Everyone who is looking to be known for bigger or lesser reasons ultimately only wants attention and is totally ignorant to right or wrong.