For some reason, the standards for mental health practitioners are different from every other field of medicine. For instance, if your throat hurt, your doctor would probably take a culture from the back of your throat and tonsils to check for the presence of streptococcal bacteria. If you test positive for strep, he’d probably give you antibiotics to cure the illness. If you tested negative, he’d give you a different treatment plan.
Or, if your tooth ached, you might see a dentist, who would use diagnostic tools and visual inspection to discover the problem. Then, based on those tests, your dentist would offer a treatment plan to handle the problem permanently.
However, everything changes when you explore the techniques used by psychiatry for mental illness. For some reason, when one has a mental condition, psychiatrists and psychologists don’t seem to have any biological tests to perform.
In his book, The New Psychiatry, Columbia University psychiatry professor Jerrold S. Maxmen, M.D. states, “It is generally unrecognized that psychiatrists are the only medical specialists who treat disorders that, by definition, have no definitively known causes or cures.”
The reason for that might be best explained by psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D., in his book Toxic Psychiatry. He said, “There is no evidence that any of the common psychological or psychiatric disorders have a genetic or biological component.”
And according to Allen Frances, psychiatrist and the former task force chairman for DSM-IV (psychiatry’s universal manual, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), “There are no objective tests in psychiatry – no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.”
So, to sum it up, psychiatrists don’t know why people have mental problems, they can’t cure their patients, and they can’t test objectively for anything. However, they are given free range to prescribe heavy, mind-altering drugs to patients without any scientific basis to back it up.
This gross malpractice wouldn’t be tolerated in any other branch of medicine.
Let’s say you went to a doctor, complaining of a sore throat and he gave you lozenges and sent you home. If you had strep throat you might develop pneumonia, rheumatic fever, meningitis or a host of other debilitating illnesses. That doctor is clearly incompetent and you’d be well within your rights to sue him for malpractice.
Likewise, if you saw a dentist for a toothache and he failed to take an X-ray, but simply chose to extract a tooth in the vicinity of the pain, it’s probable that further complications would develop. The infection could in fact spread to the brain. There would be little doubt in anyone’s mind that this dentist was a bungling idiot whose license should be taken away.
In any other branch of the medical profession, a doctor who proposes a treatment without performing proper tests would be sued and have their license revoked. In some cases they might even be jailed if the malpractice was severe enough. The burning question is why aren’t psychiatrists held accountable for their gross misconduct?
Psychiatric incompetence and abuse needs to be reported, so that the doctors involved can be removed from practice. If you or someone you know has been a victim of psychiatric mishandling, please contact CCHR Florida or, if the abuse occurred outside of Florida, contact CCHR International. CCHR investigates these instances and can assist you in reporting criminal psychiatric practice.
You and others like you can make a difference!
Sources:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness/why-are-there-no-biological-tests-in-psychiatry/
http://www.antipsychiatry.org/exist.htm
http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/12-shocking-facts-psychiatric-drugs/
http://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/psychiatristsphysicians-on-lack-of-any-medicalscientific-tests/
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/17/nyregion/in-rare-case-doctor-faces-jail-time-for-negligence.html