Psychiatry

Psychiatry is the branch of medicine concerned with the study and treatment of mental illness, emotional disturbance, and abnormal behavior. Psychiatrists are medical doctors, who are also qualified in the field of psychology, which is the claimed to be "the scientific study of the human mind and its functions, especially those affecting behavior in a given context." In fact, much of what are called "disorders," which mental health professionals claim to treat, have absolutely no basis in medical research based on the scientific method.

The term "psychiatry" was first coined by the German physician Johann Christian Reil in 1808 and literally means the 'medical treatment of the soul' (psych- "soul" from Ancient Greek psykhē "soul"; -iatry "medical treatment" from Gk. iātrikos "medical" from iāsthai "to heal").

Quote from Allen Francis, the lead editor of the DSM-IV

“[T]here is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.”

Problems with definitions

What is "normal" and what is "abnormal"

Real doctors can tell you what is "normal" and what is "abnormal" about the human body. Human bodies have been very carefully studied, and what is normal and abnormal has been confirmed by following the scientific method.

But psychiatrists and psychologist define human thoughts (the "mind") and human behavior as being "normal" or "abnormal" not based on real science or on experimentation, but simply by definition.

They define whatever behavior or thought processes they choose as being "normal" (based on their moral judgements) and then condemn anyone whom they (falsely) call "abnormal" to being "treated" for an "illness" or a "disorder" that is not even proven to exist.

In other words, they themselves define large numbers of people as being in need of "treatment", people who can then only be treated (very profitably, we might add) by the psychiatrists and psychologists themselves!

What is an "illness"?

What is a physical illness? When a person is physically ill, he goes to a doctor. The doctor runs standardized medical tests to determine what the problem is. It may be an infection (which can usually be treated with antibiotics) or it may be an injury (which perhaps can be treated with surgery, or just left alone to cure itself) or it may be a "malfunction" of an organ, which, again, may or may not benefit from surgery or drug therapy.

All of the above involve standardized tests, which have been proven to work. They are based on tests which have been confirmed by many clinicians to be reliable tests. There is very little "guesswork" involved (usually). Either the doctor already knows how to treat the problem, or he just enters the symptoms into a computer program (if the illness is unusual), and the computer program suggests what the diagnosis probably is, and what treatment should be. It is all very scientific.

What is a mental illness?

A "mental illness" is a problem not with the body but with the mind. Just what is "the mind"? Nobody really knows. Philosophers have been arguing about what "the mind" is for thousands of years.

How about according to the current state of knowledge? Can you perform an autopsy on "a mind" after a person's death? No. Can you use x-rays on "a mind"? No. Can "a mind" be measured in a laboratory, for example, to compare two person's "minds" and discover which person's "mind" is larger, smaller, lighter, heavier, etc? No.

Science does know that a "mind" is something that results from having a brain. When a person dies, he no longer has "a mind". But weighing a person just before death and just after death discovers that there is no difference in weight! "A mind" doesn't weigh anything at all.

Doctors have figured out some things about the brain. If the brain is physically damaged, there are certain symptoms -- again, symptoms that are well-established, that have been carefully studied and confirmed by other medical doctors in carefully done clinical experiments. If one part of the brain is damaged, a person goes blind. If another part is damaged, the person becomes deaf. There is no question about these symptoms. They are facts.

But if "a mind" is ill, how can "the illness" be diagnosed? It cannot be diagnosed in the usual way that doctors diagnose illnesses. In fact, if one goes to ten different medical doctors with a certain physical complaint, then almost always the diagnosis from the ten different medical doctors will be absolutely identical. This is not surprising, because the medical doctors are basing their diagnosis on scientific experiments that have been confirmed and are not in any way in doubt.

On the other hand, if one goes to ten different psychiatrists with a "mental complaint" you are likely to get ten different diagnosis! This should seem very strange to a rational person. If the psychiatrists actually know what they are doing, and their "diagnosis" are based on confirmed medical science, then they all should come up with the same diagnosis almost all of the time!

But they don't! So what, then, is a "mental illness"? A "mental illness" is what a small group of psychiatrists have voted to be "a mental illness. In fact, the number of so-called "mental illnesses" listed in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual written by the American Psychiatric Association [which, by the way, contains no statistics] have grown tremendously since the DSM-I was first published in 1952, described 11 categories of mental disorders, while the current DSM -- DSM-5 -- now has 15 chapters and thousands and thousands of diagnosis for "mental disorders". In fact, just about everyone in the world has some kind of "mental disorder," according to the psychiatrists!

A regular medical doctor diagnoses things about the body that are "abnormal". This can be fairly easily done, because enough is known about "the normal" human body for him to do so. There are few if any differences between a "normal" body in one culture, and a "normal" body in another.

But when it comes to the mind we find that there is not much agreement about what is a "normal" mind and what is an "abnormal" mind. In fact, what can be "normal behavior" typical of a "normal mind" in one society can be abnormal behavior typical of an "abnormal mind" in another!

Criticisms of Psychiatry

The psychiatric profession purports to be the sole arbiter on the subject of mental health and and "diseases" of the mind. The facts, however, demonstrate otherwise:

• 1. PSYCHIATRIC "DISORDERS" ARE NOT MEDICAL DISEASES.

In medicine, strict criteria exist for calling a condition a disease: a predictable group of symptoms and the cause of the symptoms or an understanding of their physiology (function) must be proven and established. Chills and fever are symptoms. Malaria and typhoid are diseases. Diseases are proven to exist by objective evidence and physical tests. Yet, no mental "diseases" have ever been proven to medically exist.

• 2. PSYCHIATRISTS DEAL EXCLUSIVELY WITH MENTAL "DISORDERS," NOT PROVEN DISEASES.

While mainstream physical medicine treats diseases, psychiatry can only deal with "disorders." In the absence of a known cause or physiology, a group of symptoms seen in many different patients is called a disorder or syndrome. Harvard Medical School's Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., says that in psychiatry, "all of its diagnoses are merely syndromes [or disorders], clusters of symptoms presumed to be related, not diseases." As Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus, observes, "There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases."

• 3. PSYCHIATRY HAS NEVER ESTABLISHED THE CAUSE OF ANY "MENTAL DISORDERS."

Leading psychiatric agencies such as the World Psychiatric Association and the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health admit that psychiatrists do not know the causes or cures for any mental disorder or what their "treatments" specifically do to the patient. They have only theories and conflicting opinions about their diagnoses and methods, and are lacking any scientific basis for these. As a past president of the World Psychiatric Association stated, "The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the future, the mentally ill have to learn to live with their illness."

• 4. THE THEORY THAT MENTAL DISORDERS DERIVE FROM A "CHEMICAL IMBALANCE" IN THE BRAIN IS UNPROVEN OPINION, NOT FACT

One prevailing psychiatric theory (key to psychotropic drug sales) is that mental disorders result from a chemical imbalance in the brain. As with its other theories, there is no biological or other evidence to prove this. Representative of a large group of medical and biochemistry experts, Elliot Valenstein, Ph.D., author of Blaming the Brain says: "[T]here are no tests available for assessing the chemical status of a living person's brain.

• 5. THE BRAIN IS NOT THE REAL CAUSE OF LIFE'S PROBLEMS.

People do experience problems and upsets in life that may result in mental troubles, sometimes very serious. But to represent that these troubles are caused by incurable "brain diseases" that can only be alleviated with dangerous pills is dishonest, harmful and often deadly. Such drugs are often more potent than a narcotic and capable of driving one to violence or suicide. They mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future.

Psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies

Psychiatrists, being medical doctors, can prescribe hundreds of different drugs which are claimed to "be effective" in "treating" "mental illnesses". Where in the past, a psychiatrist would have to spend an hour (really, just 50 minutes) with a "patient" to justify billing the patient, today a psychiatrist can write dozens of prescription in an hour, and charge the usual one-hour minimum fee for writing each prescription. This provides a tremendous incentive to the psychiatrist to prescribe more medication. Also, this means that psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical companies have a potential "conflict of interest" (if their interests should be "at arms length" from each other).

Efficacy of pharmaceutical drugs for treating "mental illnesses"

The efficacy (effectiveness) of the various drugs prescribed by psychiatrists have been questioned.

• The studies of the pharmaceutical companies done on their drugs before being approved usually have not been open to peer review by other scientists.

• It is more common than not that a psychiatrist will prescribe a series of medications to a single patient, looking for "one that seems to work". This is a "hit-and-miss" method of treatment, one which is almost never used in standard medical treatment for physical illnesses.

• Oftentimes there are very serious side-effects to these drugs. Many suicides among young people (including children) have been attributed to "side-effects" of the drugs prescribed to them. Warnings have been placed on many drugs about these potentially lethal side-effects.

• Comparison studies have indicated that it may be the placebo effect which brings about any "cures".

• Because we are talking about the "state of a person's mind," when the patient reports positive benefits from the drug treatment, there is absolutely no way to objectively determine whether the "benefits" are real, or only imagined by the patient.

This above list is not complete, but it covers many of the main criticisms.

Psychiatry and BoyLovers

The American Psychiatric Association has decreed that:

"children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults"

And condemns any such action by an adult:

• "An adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act which never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behavior."

Psychiatrists, who are supposed to be medical doctors (not criminologists or moralists) have passed sentence on BoyLovers, and have labeled them as being guilty of "criminal" as well as "immoral" acts! They (falsely) claim that intergenerational sexual activity can "never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behavior," despite the fact that throughout history such relationships have been considered "normal" and "socially acceptable" in many societies.

• American Psychological Association (June 9, 1999). "APA Letter to the Honorable Rep. DeLay (R-Tx)". Press release. Archived from the original on October 10, 1999.

It is the psychiatrists who have medicalized the question of human sexual behavior. What previously had been ethical questions regarding "right" and "wrong" human sexual behavior, dealt with by religious teachings, have now become medical problems dealt with by "doctors".

Psychiatrists often are involved in the trials of BoyLovers (by serving as "expert witnesses"), and in the decisions regarding "Civil Commitment" as "sexual predators" to confinement in mental hospitals after the prison sentence of the BoyLover has been been served. Until the BoyLover is no longer "a threat to society" he can be held prisoner in a mental hospital.

For many BoyLovers, this has meant a life sentence in a mental hospital.

See also

• Psychopathia Sexualis, Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study) by 19th-century psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing - the "inventor" of most current "sexual disorders"
• The exact chapter from his above book, in which he creates "pedophilia" as a "psychological perversion":

Psychopathia Sexualis Ch. V part 6

• The DSM: Psychiatry's Deadliest Scam (film)
• Psychiatry: An Industry of Death (film)
• The Drugging Of Our Children (film)
• Whores of the Court (book)
• Sex positive vs sex negative cultures
• Therapy for pedophilia/pedophiles
• Psychobabble
• List of derogatory terminology directed at boylovers
• Iatrogenesis
• Pseudoscience
• Learned Helplessness
• American Psychiatric Association
• B4U-ACT
• Chemical castration
• mental health professional
• What if Astrologers took over the government? (Short essay)

External links

• Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness
• Making It All Up: The behavioral sciences scandal
• Psychiatry at Wikipedia