Archive for the ‘Biology of BPD’ Category
Study Claims Impaired Social Functioning Lingers After BPD Symptoms Remit
It is very important to remember that study results are just that – results based on the sujbects studies and results can be skewed, manipulated, and misinterpreted. Even if somewhat accurate and I think to be more sure of what they claim they need much wider numbers of study subjects, what a study finds does not necessarily make it so in everyone’s experience. If you haven’t been studied how do you know if you would have fit the conclusions of any give study.
What is first troubling to me about this study is that the term “remit” is used. What is meant by that? If you have Borderline Personality Disorder, they still don’t want to tell you what getting well really is and means. “Remit”, in my opinion, is some next-t0-meaningless term. There are more people writing books and some professionals, albeit in vague language talking about recovery from BPD being much more possible now. Yet they continue to use a word like “remit”. I know myself, I recovered from Borderline Personality Disorder in 1995 and it had nothing to do with remission. I also don’t agree that I had “lingering social functioning”. What do they even mean by that. I think there is a distinction to be made here between what they, Gunderson et al, mean by “remit” versus what I know and mean recovery actually is having achieved it and lived it all these years.
From the study: “Symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD) often remit over a 10-year period, but patients continue to experience severe and persistent impairment in social functioning.
That was the finding from a follow-up of patients with BPD in the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study, a report of which appears in the August Archives of General Psychiatry. The analysis found that the 10-year course of BPD is characterized by high rates of remission, low rates of relapse, but severe impairment in social functioning.
The report extends and confirms previous reports about the long-term course of BPD, which have suggested that therapies for the disorder tend to work well for the most acute symptoms—such as self-harm and emotional dysregulation—but do little to address impairments in social functioning.”
Firstly, I take issue with the idea that BPD symptoms just remit. As if they just get better without treatment. If some traits or symptoms can get somewhat better for some people over time without the process and work of therapy and/or BPD Coaching with someone like myself, then I can see that other issues would remain because the underlying unfinished and unhealed and unaddressed childhood woundedness of abandonment that results from insecure bonding, unmet needs, and/or neglect, abuse, and trauma, and that causes emotional arrested development would remain untouched and would still be actively in play. So, this remission sounds rather surface. Also, in my over 10+ years as a BPD Coach it has not been my experience that people with BPD report to me that as they get older they experience any such remission. In fact, quite the opposite. BPD, left unaddressed and untreated usually worsens for those diagnosed with it as they get older. I have, and have had, many clients with BPD well into their 40′s, 50′s, 60′s and beyond that report getting worse – not better. Where’s the remission? I hope they aren’t basing this notion of remission on the “biology of BPD” because as many professionals also argue, not just my personal opinion, BPD has but a biological component but is not a biological disorder or a brain disorder. It is a psychological disorder born out of early childhood woundedness and therefore there can be no miracle of aging that shifts biology enough to “remit” the symptoms of BPD without treatment and/or coaching. It doesn’t make sense.
So they claim that the “report extends and confirms previous reports about the long-term course of BPD…” If one is give adequate and competent knowledgeable and comprehensive treatment (and this can be received via my BPD Coaching in and of itself or in tandem with therapy as well) to people with Borderline Personality Disorder it will help them make tremendous strides and shifts in much more than “acute symptoms – such as self-harm and emotional dysregulation” which equally means increasing awareness, shifting, changing, and healing in social functioning and relating to one self and to others.
Is it just me, or do you notice how little sense many of these studies actually make. Where’s the actual proof in the pudding? There really isn’t any because of the nature of and often biased agenda of most studies in the first place. There is no there, there. Publishing this study, in my estimation, like so many others, seems to be an attempt at justifying psychiatry and at maintaining its ever-growing (biopsychiatry) strangle-hold on the hopes of those with BPD that they can actually recover.
I do not find, from my own recovery experience, or the recovery process of my clients, that what this study says is accurate at all. It doesn’t connect the dots. It isn’t logically cogent. One point does not logically follow or fit with the next point and the fact that it begins with the idea of BPD as something that will remit in time, versus the reality that BPD can be recovered from with the expert and effective BPD Coaching like I offer and/or competent therapy with a therapist that is an expert in BPD and that believes you can get well wreaks of Big Pharma’s behind most studies agenda. It seems to send out a truly unproven conclusion – BPD will remit in 10 years – and also it seems to simply ignore what recovery from BPD really is, means, and entails.
I can assure you that in my 16 years of having been recovered from BPD, a) It has nothing to do with remission b) underlying aspects of BPD do not exist in my life and this can be proven and has been substantiated in my case right down to the biological level and I certainly have not contined post-recovery to experience “impaired social functioning”. This type of “science” which really isn’t definitive at all continues to be churned out by professionals as justification for what? Do they know what they are really doing? Can they even begin to contemplate a recovery model for BPD when it seems they are too interested in Big Pharma money? Psychiatric drugs aren’t helping people with BPD find a way to have symptoms remit or helping them recover – quite the opposite they are holding them hostage to biospychiatry and intense on-going pain and suffering that is the result of Big Pharma and its biopsychiatrists working in tandem to hold people with BPD hostage to BPD – not help them recover.
More of us that have recovered, we are the experts in what that means and how it is achieved – NOT the professionals who either have never had BPD or the ones who still have it and don’t even get treated or recover themselves.
Beware of money-making political footballs in mental health and don’t believe every (or really any) study that you read. They are self-serving documents by professionals and for professionals. They do not have the best interests or the actual reality, and hope for recovery of those with BPD at heart or in mind.
By the way the professsionals that disagree wtih the biology ie – “brain disorder” biopsychiatry notion of BPD and there are many, such as Dr. John Breeding, Dr. Niall McLaren and Dr. Dan L. Edmunds to name a few, have a very difficult time often just getting their work published. The professional journals don’t publish them because they are not truly really scientific. Science requires scrutiny, evidence, to be tested and re-tested in ways that replicate similar evidence. By denying those professionals that diagree with many of these studies and the geneisis of them even having the opportunity to question and debate the science of or methodology for these studies one can only conclude that these studies are being insolated from the regular avenues of real science because they won’t be able to be replicated or proven upon scrutiny and because they are in fact pseudo-science to begin with. They are simply not reliable or provable.
It is so important to remember that psychiatry knows much less than it lets on. Stop just trusting a psychiatrist because he is one. What does it mean in this Big Pharma psychiatric medication pushing world? What can it possibly mean beyond the control psychiatrists seek to have over the masses to market their medication to and make money from? It is not a system or a profession that truly has the humanity, and the actual getting well of those with Borderline Personality Disorder at the heart of its agenda. In fact, is that even a part of that profession’s agenda? They perpetuate the negative and continue to refuse to explain or map out recovery or even lend it credibility by continually firing out these “studies”. Studies are just not proven science. At best they are theories floated out there with power, lack of ethics, and often hidden agendas attached.
© A.J. Mahari, December 4, 2011 – All rights (except quotes from study) reserved.
Source of Study: Psychiatric News | October 07, 2011
Volume 46 Number 19 page 19-25
© American Psychiatric Association
Clinical and Research News
Written by Mark Moran
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NAMI Reveals Pharma Funding
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) until recently was reluctant to reveal the source of its funding. But thanks to Sen. Grassley we now can learn NAMI?s sources for Major Foundation and Corporate Support, which you can find here. I downloaded the list of ?funders? for 2009. Fortunately, unlike pharmaceutical companies who have revealed monies paid to physicians (see, for example, ?Transparency Vs. Translucency in Reporting Physician Payments?), NAMI?s numbers are easy to copy into Excel spreadsheets and analyze.
by John Mack Pharma Marketing BlogIn 2009, NAMI received 84 payments over $5,000 from different sources. Payments total $4,737,610.00 of which $3,836,750.00 (81%) came from major pharmaceutical companies. The following pie chart shows how the $3,836,750.00 was divided among major pharma funders (click on the chart for an enlarged view).
The biggest pharma funder in 2009 was AstraZenca (AZ), which donated $1,255,000.00. Recall that AZ is forced to pay about 400X that amount ($520 million) to resolve allegations that it illegally marketed the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel for uses not approved as safe and effective by the Food and Drug Administration (see HHS press release here). I guess you might say AZ got a large NEGATIVE ROI for its NAMI investment!
Lilly was next on the list having donated $750,500.00 to NAMI in 2009. Recall that Lilly markets Cymbalta and that it recently received a warning letter from the FDA about misleading a Cymablta print ad ? ie, re: ?omission of risk information.? Cymbalta is indicated for treatment of depression among many other things these days (see ?The Cymbalta Buzz Machine is at Full Throttle!?).
The third biggest NAMI pharma ?funder? for 2009 was BMS, which donated $506,250.00. Recall that BMS markets the drug Abilify for bipolar disorder. Some time ago, Andy Behrman ? BMS?s patient spokesperson for Abilify ? went on a campaign against the very product he endorsed for money (see ?Andy Behrman, Now an Anti-BMS Spokesperson, Says ?Ask Your Doctor If Abilify is Wrong for You??).
It?s a crazy, crazy world out there in the marketing of mental illness drugs!
Source: Office of Medical and Scientific Justice
Borderline Personality Disorder In Men ? The Myth of High/Low Functioning in BPD ? BPD is not a Brain Disorder
Borderline Personality Disorder may still be diagnosed more in women than men. What does this mean? It is unlikely that fewer men have Borderline Personality Disorder. It is likely that the numbers aren?t as skewed as many believe, or as stereotypes and stigma forward. There is a bias among most who diagnosed mental illness. Many men who may in fact have BPD can end up being diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) instead. I have many clients who are men with Borderline Personality Disorder. What is often over-looked is that young children have needs. Needs that must be addressed sufficiently in order for psychologically and spiritually healthy emotional development regardless of gender.
I also think it is high time that we seriously start to do away with labels like ?high functioning borderline? and ?low functioning borderline?. The internet is replete with what is actually the very inaccurate and not at all meaningful labels everywhere, of late, it seems. Ask yourself, what do these sub-labels, if you will, actually mean? How do they help anyone? These labels have their origin with an author who is not a mental health professional. These labels have not been introduced by responsible mental health professionals.
The label of Borderline Personality Disorder, in fact, of ?personality disorder? of any kind has long been debated by those in the anti-psychiatry movement which is made up largely of people who now, in growing numbers, oppose what is known as biopsychiatry and the erroneous forwarding of mental illness generally, and Borderline Personality Disorder, specifically, as ?brain disease? or ?brain disorders?. There is no independent, reliable, scientifically proven or known ?brain disease? for mental illness at all. Studies that are put out by media, some professionals and then quoted by some book authors are not proven and are largely funded by pharmaceutical companies looking to make money off of and by disempowering the mentally ill.
- The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
- From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD ? Getting In Touch With Your Inner Child
- BPD and Abandonment
- Finding Hope From the Polarized Reality of BPD
- Preparing For Recovery From BPD
- Emotion Dysregulation in BPD
- Rage Addiction in Borderline Personality Disorder
Audio Programs ? A.J. Mahari
Whether you are a man or a woman diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, the reality is that you are not character flawed. You are not broken beyond repair, and, you cannot be cured or find recovery by taking dangerous psychiatric medications. Biopsychiatry?s forwarding of these dangerous medications as treatment for Borderline Personality Disorder disempowers those with BPD ? male and female.
As a BPD and Mental Health Coach, and as someone who recovered from BPD 15 years ago, I know that medications are not the answer. No one is held prisioner to BPD by his or her brain ? no one! I recovered and I was not on psychiatric medication. At best there is a combination of some neurobiological issues and environment ? early childhood experiences and perception that set the stage for the arrested psychological, emotional, and spiritual development of those who go on to be diagnosed with BPD. The brain and the mind are not one in the same.
There are many ways to learn how to empower yourself. Take back your own power to find healing, recovery, and wellness. This is what I help my BPD and mental health coaching clients do each and every day. Be careful what you believe. If you think that because the pharmaceutical companies, mainly in the United States, foward the notion of what is really pseudo science, not proven science at all, that BPD is a ?brain thing? please do some more research. Please listen to three professionals that I?ve interviewed on my Psyche Whisperer Radio Show Dr. Niall McLaren, M.D., Dr. John Breeding, Ph.D. and Dr. Dan L. Edmunds founder of the International Center for Humane Psychiatry.
Many people that I coach who have Borderline Personality Disorder, just like the many clients I coach who are loved ones of someone with BPD or partners or ex-partners of someone with BPD, the challenges for all have more in common than more that is wholly different. The challenges of those diagnosed with BPD, male or female, do not include having a ?brain disorder? or ?brain disease?. People who forward this inaccurate information do so to cash in on the disempowering of human beings who look to them for help. Educate yourself about this.
- Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES packaged together with or without audio.
- Non Borderlines ? You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
- A.J.?s Audio Program The Shame of Abandonment in BPD
- A.J.?s Audio Programs For Borderlines and Non Borderlines
Life Coaches, BPD and Mental Health Coaches, forwarding the agenda of biopsychiatry are not doing so to truly serve you. You risk being disempowered by these people, whether they are well-meaning or not. In my life coaching practice and philosophy the focus in on empowering the client, and not on forwarding the agenda of any mental health professional or association. Life coaching, BPD and Mental Health Coaching, in my philososphy and practice is not about the methods and means employed by mental health professionals and has nothing to do with the agenda and money-making machine of psychiatry today ? most of which ascribes to biopsychiatry.
Men with Borderline Personality Disorder, like their female counterparts also diagnosed with Borderline Personality are individuals who often have successful careers but great difficulty in interpersonal relationships. There are many ways of being in this world and the black and white definitions that so many use to denote mental illness from mental health are also faulty and self-serving.
There are different levels of functioning in both genders and for many with BPD their are more obstacles to succeeding in work as well as interpersonal relating. There is nothing about this, however, that need be or that can even scientifically (in any proven way) be ascribed to the biology of your brain. Choose to empower yourself and educate yourself about the role of the money-making machine known as Big Pharma and the funding of studies that are being misrepresented as proven science and all of which conclude that men or women with BPD should be medicated and often heavily medicated with dangerous drugs that they don?t give you full disclosure about. It is these drugs that cause chemical imbalances in the brain, not the diagnosis or presense of the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder in your life.
Whether you are male of female recovery is possible. That recovery will hinge upon you educating yourself and freeing yourself from the misinformation of organizations like Nami in the United States who are over 56% funded by Big Pharma. Big Pharma and psychiatric drugs mean big money for many mental health organizations ? claiming to advocate for those they claim to serve. Big pharma means big money for many psychiatrists who practice from the model of biopsychiatry.
Some say there are positives to having Borderline Personality Disorder. I don?t agree. I think that people who are diagnosed with BPD, again whether male or female, have many positive qualities, talents, and passions, not everything about you needs to be attributed, one way or another, to Borderline Personality Disorder. In fact, I would challenge you to re-think how much you relate most things in your life good or bad as having some relation to what it means to have been diagnosed with BPD.
And, I?ll add, are people with BPD really ?too sensitive?? I don?t think so. I think that sensitivity is an individual thing. So is temperament. Psychiatry with the diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder labels you, stigmatizes you, de-humanizes and pathologizes your experience in life, and your feelings and to what end? To convince you that you are so ?flawed? and (many still say) beyond help that you need drugs for the rest of your life. NO, you don?t. And that way of treating you is abusive. It is not help. It is not support. It does not contain compassion. It does not recognize you or care at all about who you or what you have experienced in your life.
In my BPD and Mental health Coaching caring about you, having compassion for you, validating your experiences and/or perceptions - your ways of thinking about those experiences, is at the center of the process of the journey of working together to help you to learn skills that will create wellness, enhance the quality of your life and set you squarely on the road to recovery.
? A.J. Mahari, September 26, 2010 ? All rights reserved.
Need Some Help? How to Choose a Counselor
Are you needing some professional help or guidance? Are you feeling stressed out? Perhaps you have been diagnosed with a mental illness and what does that mean?
Before you assume you know or that the diagnosing psychiatrist knows or has your best interests in mind in an ethical way you will benefit from reading this essay by Dr. John Breeding who is a psychologist in practice in Texas.
Biopsychiatry, fronting for the pharmaceutical industry is marketing pseudo-science to you under the guise of it being treatment. Under the guise of being ?treatment? that will help you. Before you get caught up in the medication nightmare of biopsychiatry do your homework and research what?s really going on behind the marketing message of ?studies? that are ?proving? things claimed without actually having proven anything. Advocate for yourself and for your rights as a mental health consumer. Too many people believe the first thing they hear that they think they need and that they think will help them get better, feel better, find their way to wellness. The reality is that, more often than not, that first message you hear may well be the big marketing machine of big pharma that has biopsychiatry as its main advocate and messenger. Marketing, advocates, and messengers that are well paid by pharmaceutical companies. Many mental health professionals, mainly, psychiatrists - biopsychiatrists are not only well-paid in various ways by pharmaceutical companies raising questions about their lack of ethics but they are also paid spokespeople for one or in many cases multiple drug manufactures.
? A.J. Mahari, August 16, 2010 ? All rights reserved.
READ Dr. Breeding?s Essay ?
Psychiatric Oppression of Biopsychiatry – Interview with Dr. John Breeding Ph.D.
Are you normal? Do the concepts of Mental Health and Mental Illness serve any purpose other than to divide people arbitrarily and cause people shame that alienates them from themselves? Does psychiatry today, and more specifically biopsychiatry even believe that anyone is or can be normal? What is normal? Many argue that biopsychiatry – the direction the psychiatric profession is taking in defining mental illlness as “brain disorder” or “brain disease” and then seeking to treat it with all kinds of medications, many that do way more harm than good, is predicated on labeling almost everyone with something which calls into question just what disordered means.
Dr. John Breeding Ph.D. was my guest on The Psyche Whisperer Radio Show, Wednesday August 4th, live at 3pm EST. You can now listen to the archived interview here. Dr. Breeding talked about, among other things, psychiatric oppression and what mental health consumers really do need to know and think more about when it comes to what mental illness is and how it can be most effectively treated and coped with if it even is what it is thought by so many people to be. What are the implications of biopsychiatry for people given the label and diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder?
LISTEN HERE
? The Psyche Whisperer Radio Show & A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.
What’s Wrong with Psychiatry’s Biology/Medication Approach to Mental Illness?
Dr. Niall (Jock) McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist, author and theoretician. His work opposes the mainstream view in psychiatry to the extent that he argues modern psychiatry has no scientific basis whatsoever. However, he insists that he is not ?anti-psychiatry,? but a committed scientist following his duty of criticizing the prevailing models in his field in order to improve it. He is the author of the two books, Humanizing Madness and Humanizing Psychiatry. In Humanizing Psychiatry he examines Restriction the Scope of Biological Psychiatry, Resolving the Mind-Body Problem for Psychiatry, Applying the Biocognitive Model to Psychiatry.
In his book, Humanizing Madness: Psychiatry and the Cognitive Neurosciences, he offers a critique of the place of biopsychosocialism in psychiatry as well as examining, among many other important information, the categorical system of diagnosis when it comes to personality disorders. Dr. McLaren speaks of what he terms a theory of mind when refuting the claim led by many in psychiatry and neurology in the United States that mental illness is an organically generated brain disorder.
Dr. McLaren provides evidence in this book that the major theory in psychiatry are so flawed as to be beyond salvation. McLaren proposes Interactive dualism as a partial solution to the mind-brain problem for psychiatry in a paper by that title. Too many people are only hearing one loud beat of a drum – a drum that largely beats to the drum of pharmaceutical companies and prescription medication sales. Could this be why many in psychiatry today seek to reduce mental illness to a “brain disorder” or “brain disease”? What’s wrong with psychiatry? Is it helpful to view mental illness as having an entirely biological cause? Does that make sense to you? For more information on Dr. McLaren and his books please visit the show?s blog at psychewhisperer.com
From Psychobabble to Biobabble – Dr. Andrew Scull on “A Psychiatric Revolution”
The rise in the prescribing of medication by many in the psychiatric profession has turned psychobabble: “writing or talk using jargon from psychiatry or psychotherapy” (dictionary.com) into biobabble: “knee-jerk biological determinism” (Kathleen H. Dockett, G. Rita Dudley-Grant, and C. Peter Bankart – authors of the book, Psychology and Buddhism: From Individual to Global Community (International and Cultural Psychology)
- Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES or 3 Non Borderline Ebooks packaged together with audio.
- Purchase A.J. Mahari’s 5 “Core Wound of Abandonment” in BPD series ebooks
- Non Borderlines – You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together without audio or 6 ebooks bundled together with 2 audio programs 6 ebooks packaged together with 2 audio programs
- Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari’s 3 “Core Wound of Abandonment” series ebooks or Mahari’s 3 “Core Wound of Abandonment” series ebooks with From False Self To Authentic Self In BPD – The Inner Chid Audio Program
The labelling of many mental illnesses as “brain diseases” in the last 10 or so years has led to what many professionals are countering now as pseudo-science – an ideology that isn’t anymore supported, proven, or documented than older ideologies that maintain that much of mental illness has more to do with emotional/psychological and psychosocial elements of human experience than anything biological and literally physically brain-based or genetic.
? A.J. Mahari, April 15, 2010
Mental Illness and The Brain – What’s Wrong with Psychiatry?
Mental Illness and The Brain – What's Wrong with Psychiatry? Mental illness - is it biological or isn't? What do you think? I guess I'm a rebel at heart, someone who thinks outside of the box. I know in my own experience, having recovered 15 years from Borderline Personality Disorder, that along the way, on my journey, I had a psychiatrist tell me I wouldn't get better until they developed some pill – I didn't believe him. He wasn't correct. I fired him on the spot after that comment. That was 1987. That was before this notion now forwarded that everything mental illness is a "brain disorder". Professional in psychiatry are speaking out against the "status quo" of mental illness as a "brain disorder".
This point of view of mine, born out of my own experience with and recovery from BPD is definately not the popular thinking these days. However, it is important for me to continue to get this message out and to have people really think about this. Too many people are just believing that mental illness, generally, and Borderline Personality Disorder, specifically are "brain disorders". When one is not a psychiatrist it can feel like one does not have the right to say this. I'm over that now. This has to be challenged and I am very glad to see there are more professionals doing just that. This makes my forwarding my opinion and experience more credible in the face of what is an ever-proliferating blind acceptance, it seems to me, of BPD and mental illness being accepted as "brain disorders". There is a difference between realizing a role of biology in BPD and calling it a "brain disorder".
Please also reference my Blog Post from December 2009 Biopsychiatry ? Pharma Funded Scam ? NAMI?
This psychiatric forwarding of mental illness as a "brain disorder" is where the money is. It has behind it pharmaceutical companies who no doubt fund the studies that come back with the "brain disease" so-called proof. It just seems to me that the trail between the money-grab of the pharmaceutical companies and these studies isn't a very long one. Then, there are the psychiatrists on this gravey train for financial gain. All I can say is that if I needed therapy today I would not let any of these "biological – brain disease" believing psychiatrists anywhere near me. This was also the decision I made in 1987.
In the case of Borderline Personality Disorder, it is important to keep an open mind, in my opinion, only in so far as that there is likely a biological component that is mixed with the psychological one. Having said that, I do not believe it is a major factor. And, there is now plenty of literature, books etc., out there about the fact that the brain has more plasticity then was thought. This means that the biological aspect of BPD is not a hinderance to recovery. And, I'll stress here again, I recovered and was NEVER on any psychiatric medication.
Each person needs to make up his or her own mind about what he or she thinks about this. I just think it's important that I take a stand on this, as unpopular as that is in the Mental Health community at large and the BPD Community more specifically. I applaud Dr. McLaren for his video and the other professionals quoted below. As I see it, we are all very fortunate when professionals break rank with agenda-driven rhetoric that really can be seen as an abuse of the power and trust of the profession of psychiatry on the part of those who forward the mental illness = "brain disorder". If you have BPD and are on the meds or have taken the meds, you likely know first-hand they aren't the answer. I've yet to hear from anyone with BPD who felt they recovered or were cured by these meds. Having said, that, please, if you are on medication, please do not stop taking it without consulting your doctor. If your doctor believes this all-biological argument you might want to think about finding a doctor with an open mind.
Dr. Niall McLaren, an Australian practicing psychiatrist for 22 years, explains what is wrong with the psychiatric profession: That it cannot/will not take criticism, for fear the entire model of biological psychiatry will unravel. That there is no science to psychiatric diagnoses, no brain based diseases. And that psychiatry only pushes mental disorders as biological disease in order to convince people to take psychiatric drugs, causing a host of dangerous side effects.
Please also reference my Blog Post from December 2009 Biopsychiatry ? Pharma Funded Scam ? NAMI?
Psychiatrists, Physicians & Psychologists on the lack of medical/scientific test to verify mental disorders as a ?disease? or medical condition
??modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness?Patients [have] been diagnosed with ?chemical imbalances? despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and?there is no real conception of what a correct chemical balance would look like.?
?There?s no biological imbalance. When people come to me and they say, ?I have a biochemical imbalance,? I say, ?Show me your lab tests.? There are no lab tests. So what?s the biochemical imbalance??
?DSM-IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document? DSM-IV has become a bible and a money making bestseller?its major failings notwithstanding.?
?All psychiatrists have in common that when they are caught on camera or on microphone, they cower and admit that there are no such things as chemical imbalances/diseases, or examinations or tests for them. What they do in practice, lying in every instance, abrogating [revoking] the informed consent right of every patient and poisoning them in the name of ?treatment? is nothing short of criminal.?
?Psychiatry makes unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin?This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention na?ve and perhaps delusional.?
?In short, the whole business of creating psychiatric categories of ?disease,? formalizing them with consensus, and subsequently ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is nothing but an extended racket furnishing psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura. The perpetrators are, of course, feeding at the public trough.?
Royal College of Physicians of the UK
?I believe, until the public and psychiatry itself see that DSM labels are not only useless as medical ?diagnoses? but also have the potential to do great harm?particularly when they are used as means to deny individual freedoms, or as weapons by psychiatrists acting as hired guns for the legal system.?
?The way things get into the DSM is not based on blood test or brain scan or physical findings. It?s based on descriptions of behavior. And that?s what the whole psychiatry system is.?
?No biochemical, neurological, or genetic markers have been found for Attention Deficit Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Depression, Schizophrenia, anxiety, compulsive alcohol and drug abuse, overeating, gambling or any other so-called mental illness, disease, or disorder.?
author of Commonsense Rebellion
?Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV [and ICD-10] are terms arrived at through peer consensus.?
Source of above quotes: http://3.ly/4kp
? A.J. Mahari, March 28, 2010 – Except for the above quotes and video copyright of the above individuals.
Biopsychiatry – Pharma Funded Scam – NAMI?
Biopsychiatry is all the rage these days isn’t it? How have mental illnesses, like Borderline Personality Disorder, and so many others, suddenly become pathologized beyond belief with a new stigma – “brain disorder” – the message that implies the need for pharmaceuticals. A message that the National Association of Mental Health (NAMI) in the United States has forwarded. As if drugs are, or will someday be, the “cure”. As if drugs are the answer. Says who? Who do you believe?
The pharmaceutical industry influence on the psychiatric profession has been growing for sometime now. Is it a scam? Who is it designed to serve, really? In many ways this is a new stigma forwarded by drug companies out to make money. Conventional messages of organizations that mental illness is somehow this deep brain structure issue, brain disorder thing, suddenly, that requires drug treatment many believe to be the direct result of studies that have been funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
“Studies have shown that medical students and residents are susceptible to undue influence from pharmaceutical companies due to the companies involvement in medical school programs.” (Wikipedia)
“Antidepressants have been shown to have only a minimal effect, over that of a placebo, on patients. In an essay on advertisements for anti-depressants published in PLoS Medicine, social work academic Jeffrey Lacasse and neuroanatomist Jonathan Leo state that, despite this, the chemical imbalance theory is promoted by the medical industry as an explanation to depression and that their medicines correct the chemical imbalance. They also state that there is some evidence that both patients and professionals are influenced by the advertisements and patients may get prescribed medicines when other interventions are more suitable. In a further article they state that chemical imbalance has also been cited in media as an important cause of depression despite a lack of scientific literature that shows this causality.” (Wikipedia)
I found a video quite by accident. (Ah, but I am a believer that there really are no “accidents”) I believe, however, that it is certainly worth watching. If nothing else, Dr. John Breeding, makes some very interesting points about what he calls, “Big Pharma Front Groups, NAMI? Psychiatry Mental Health” Consumers need to really think more about the influence of pharmaceutical companies and the funding they provide to some major mental health and other advocacy organizations whose messages may well be tailored to suit these funding sources.
In the case of NAMI for example, I know that is where I first read online about Borderline Personality Disorder being categorized and described as a “brain disorder”. As I’ve always maintained, based upon my own experience, as someone who recovered from BPD – and by the way I was NOT EVER on any psychiatric medication – despite there being some neurobiological aspects to BPD – there is also the reality that BPD has a large part of its etiology in the nurture half of the equation. The nurture versus nature – the psychological/environmental versus biology – debate is a well-entrenched one. There are many professionals on both sides of the argument. It seems that most professionals associated with NAMI, in the United States, who according to the information provided by Dr. Breeding in the above video, only disclosed its funding when it was forced to and received over 50% of its funding from the pharmaceutical industry, are on the nature side of the debate citing studies that are also likely “pharma funded”.
Other organizations and perhaps what little media coverage BPD garners are following NAMI’s lead – or are being mislead? Next thing you know, brand new stigma – Borderline Personality Disordered individuals end up feeling hopeless or helpless thinking that they cannot change or recover unless and until that magical pill (biggest scam of all) is discovered because they are being told that this disorder has its roots in abornmal brain structure and/or function.
How can NAMI justify this? How can they claim to be a leading national association of mental health (in the United States) and do such disservice to their members? Just as with the other example Dr. Breeding cites about the Freedom From Fear organization actually being a perveyor of fear, something that seems largely a part of American society and culture – just reference Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” documentary where he gives an in depth explanation of the fear-mongering that is prevelant in so many areas of American society and media – witness the 24/7 cable news networks, that after all, need something to fill all that air time with.
People who are put in helpless and fearful positions or mindsets by those in government, media, or mental health, who are charged with authority, responsibility, and the well-being of those they are supposed to serve, can suffer untold and perhaps even unmeasurable confusion, distrust, and harm.
Sadly, perhaps even tragically for so many people, so many mental health consumers, the more the pharmaceutical industry flexes its powerful and far-reaching money-making muscles the more distorted the information that they need really becomes. The more they are likely to be told they need drugs to treat what is “wrong” with them. The more drugs they are given, the less actual therapy that is delivered. The more the message of mental illness being biological is put forth, the less people are actually helped and the more powerless they actually become.
The search for therapy is best conducted in areas of the mental health profession that do not prescribe drugs. I was most helped in my own recovery from BPD by social workers, a couple of psychiatric nurses, and psychologists. In fact, all I did with any contact I had with psychiatrists was refuse all of their attempts to get me to take medication. Medication that I knew was not the answer then for me. Medication that I don’t think is the (overall) answer for people now.
The pharmaceutical industry is victimizing mental health consumers and there are middle-”men” in the mix. Some psychiatrists. NAMI? The media? The pharmaceutical industry is disempowering the unsuspecting mental health consumer. Mental health consumers need to empower themselves with as much information as they can and certainly not rely only on the biopsychiatry that is dominating a lot of psychiatric practice in recent years (particularly in the United States).
On Biological Psychiatry “I want to provide the basic information necessary to understand the misguided beliefs, and subsequent harmful practices of psychiatry today. As there are millions of homeless people in this country, and as “mental illness” is purported to be a major cause of homelessness, I will focus on how psychiatry treats homeless people. Know, however, that the principles apply to everyone. Our mental health system today is almost entirely guided by a very specific belief system, called biological psychiatry (biopsychiatry). Therefore, The assumptions of biopsychiatry have had an enormous impact on modern life. Modeled after the practice of medicine, biopsychiatry has all the trappings of language that we associate with scientific medicine. Biopsychiatry has the language, but not the science. To understand psychiatry today, it is necessary to be very clear that it is not about medicine; it is really about social control. The basic assumptions of biopsychiatry are as follows:- Adjustment to society is good.
- Failure to adjust is the result of “mental illness.”
- “Mental illness” (Depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc.) is a medical disease.
- “Mental illness” is the result of biological and/or genetic defects.
- “Mental illness” is chronic, progressive, and basically incurable.
- “Mental illness” can (and must) be controlled primarily by drugs; secondarily, and for really severe “mental illness,” by electroshock.
- People with “mental illness” are irrational, and unable to make responsible decisions for themselves; therefore, coercion is necessary and justified.
For a fuller exposition of these seven assumptions, please see my books, The Wildest Colts Make the Best Horses, and The Necessity of Madness and Unproductivity: Psychiatric Oppression or Human Transformation. For now it is sufficient to recognize that these false beliefs provide the rationale for a coercive “final solution,” a logically inevitable expression of a dangerous and distorted worldview. Psychiatry supports and defends the power structure, values, practices and appearances of the status quo; it looks at the world and selects out “defective” individuals for “treatment.” Source: Dr. John Breeding — My Views on Psychiatry and “Mental Illness”
You can read more on what Dr. Breeding refers to as psychiatric oppression on his website at: wildestcolts.com
? A.J. Mahari, December 19, 2009 – All rights reserved except for what is ? Wikipedia and Dr. John Breeding
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