Are you crazy? Somebody wants you to be. (Living the outlaw life ).(mental disorders and diagnosis)
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This is just a brief note to all of the usenet groups to which the previous message has been cross-posted. Someone has been using my partial email address to make posts that are a) not from me, b) usually mean-spirited and c) childish. Just wanted to let you know since I have "thing" about writings and actions me that I haven’t written or done. Check out the alt.support.depression.manic group for some insight. I find the whole thing cheap on the part of the poster who is too scared to post in her own name. Kind of sad too. Anyway, thanks for reading this. Anna Creed, the real one – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – > hey maddie what is the name of that disgusting picture news group that you like so well? >To print: Select File and then Print from your browser’s menu. >This story was printed from FindArticles.com, located at http://www.findarticles.com. >Backwoods Home Magazine >May-June, 2002 >Are you crazy? Somebody wants you to be. (Living the outlaw life ).(mental disorders and >diagnosis) >Author/s: Claire Wolfe >According to a 1999 White House Conference on Mental Health, 13.7 million American >children–about one in five–have a "diagnosable mental illness." More cautious government >estimates say 9 to 13 percent of our children suffer "serious emotionally disturbance with >substantial functional impairment." (1) >The number of people being treated for clinical depression rose from 1.7 million in 1987 >to 6.3 million in 1997–and is still growing. Heavily promoted psychiatric drugs have >brought other emotional sufferers into the medical fold. >The Children’s Defense Fund says up to 75 percent of incarcerated juveniles are mentally >ill and in need of treatment. >The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notes that 51 million Americans–again, >roughly one in five–suffer mental disorders every year. >The number of abnormal mental conditions, as defined by the American Psychiatric >Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), has ballooned >from 112 in 1952 to 375 today. Some of our newly diagnosed problems include "oppositional >defiant disorder" (rebellion against authority), "caffeine use disorder" (too much coffee >drinking), and "feeding disorder of infancy or early childhood" (being a fussy eater). >Reality check. Are we really all that crazy? Is it possible that 20 percent of Americans >are mentally abnormal, diseased, and defective? >More to the point, is it a good idea to let governments, foundations, professional guilds, >and global pharmaceutical corporations persuade us that we are? >The big institutions pushing for broader definitions of emotional ills have a vested >interest in defining us as badly broken human beings–and persuading us to buy into that >definition, financially, medically, and politically. >Why this isn’t healthy >Mental disorder is a genuine problem. Nobody who’s watched a street person muttering to >himself and picking imaginary flies off his flesh can doubt that. Hundreds of thousands of >more normal-seeming people struggle daily against falling into an emotional abyss. Misery >exists. And some degree of this misery may truly fit the category of disease–that is, >having a demonstrable, biological cause. >But the trend toward defining uncomfortable feeling or behavior as "disease" and millions >of us as "sick" isn’t healthy. >* Sick people are, by definition, dependent people. They need doctors, drugs, caretakers, >programs, tax funds, etc.–unlike healthy people, who are self-reliant. >* Mentally ill people also enjoy diminished moral responsibility–which is a handy thing >if the alternative is facing and rectifying your bad deeds. Those who once claimed, "The >voices in my head made me do it," have now been joined by TV stars and world leaders who >claim, "I’m not a cold, callous womanizer; I’m a pitiable sex addict," and by executive >women who claim that mental illness "made" them shoplift designer goodies. >* The growing psychiatric "pharmacracy" (as Dr. Thomas Szasz calls it) means billions in >profits for pharmaceutical companies and an ever-burgeoning demand for tax-funded programs >to subsidize new drugs, surgeries, and other treatments. But it doesn’t necessarily mean >health for the sufferers, as we’ll see. >* When you accept being defined as sick or defective, you may feel a certain comfort >("Aha, so that’s what those awful feelings are"). But you also accept being defined as >less than competent. >* "Less than competent" means, in many cases, having fewer legal rights than criminals. In >Connecticut, your firearms may be confiscated if someone persuades a judge, on no hard >evidence, that there is "probable cause" to believe you might be dangerous. This law was >passed in response to a murder-suicide committed by a mentally ill man. In 1997, when >Illinois police showed up to haul rural homeowner Shirley Allen to a mental hospital based >on the complaints of Allen’s spurned relatives, they had no evidence, not even >circumstantial, that she was harmful to herself or anyone else. Yet, had the Internet not >brought watchdogs to her defense, Allen could have been charged up to $1,000 per day for >involuntary, long-term hospitalization and might have lost her home. >* "Less than competent" means you are a less credible human being–even after years of >propaganda about de-stigmatizing mental illness. If an authority figure abuses you, whose >claim is more likely to be believed, yours (demonstrably unreliable, due to your >"condition"), or that of the "healthy" policeman, doctor, corporation, or bureaucrat >against whom you’ve made your charge? In fact, if a psychiatrist says you’re sick and you >say you’re not, your claims of health are nearly always considered to be strong evidence >of your delusional state. The Soviet Union notoriously used diagnoses of "mental illness" >to defang its domestic opponents; after all, anyone who criticizes government must be >crazy and shouldn’t be taken seriously–an attitude that’s beginning to take hold in U.S. >politics, as well. >Disease is whatever we say it is today >Realizing that coffee guzzling, picky eating, and defiance of authority are among the >"serious functional impairments" the mental-health establishment is crying alarm about, >you might be tempted to think that the shrinks, not we, are the crazy ones. But there’s >method to their madness. Getting a condition listed in the DSM is the key to getting >insurance companies and government programs to fund its treatment. It’s the key to huge >sales for drug makers and a vast expansion of the market for both mental-health >professionals and health-care bureaucracies. >In a sense, there’s nothing new here. Diagnosis and treatment of mental problems have been >subject to whim since shamans first rattled gourds over the heads of lunatics. Despite >claims of scientific advances, that hasn’t changed. >We’ve all followed criminal trials in which dueling psychiatric "experts" state that the >defendant is or is not mentally ill, that the illness is or is not schizophrenia, >post-partum psychosis, or manic-depression with paranoid ideation, and that the individual >is or is not responsible for his own actions. >If you think this odd flexibility is a mere function of who’s paying the expert’s witness >fees, not so. Even within mental hospitals or private psychiatric practice, diagnosis >varies insanely. Schizophrenia, for instance, remains a popular diagnosis because it’s >basically "a nonspecific category which includes almost everything a human being can do, >think, or feel that is greatly disliked by other people or by the so-called schizophrenics >themselves." (2) One after another, attempts to produce a coherent medical definition of >the disease have fallen by the wayside. >Worse, treatment has been as arbitrary as diagnosis. Once, surgeons removed the "stone of >madness" from the heads of lunatics. In a more recent era, frontal lobotomies and >electroconvulsive therapy (shock treatments) became the answers. Even after it was obvious >that lobotomy "cured" people by turning them into zombies, unable to function in society >and unable in many cases to care for themselves, lobotomy remained a worldwide tool for >controlling unmanageable children and political opponents. (3) Homosexuality (officially a >mental illness until 1973) was, in the not-too-distant past, "cured" by castration. >Yet few professions possess as much self-certainty as psychiatry. Victims of quack >psychiatric cures often note the icy authority with which cruel, arbitrary, guesswork >treatments are imposed. Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is no outlandish >parody. >Medical miracles that aren’t >Today, in addition to psychosurgery, talk therapies, and the ominous return of >electro-shock, we have powerful psychiatric drugs. And many of them do appear to alleviate >depression, mood swings, delusion, panic attacks, and a variety of other conditions. >This, according to the health establishment and the media, proves that psychiatry has left >guesswork, shamanism, and Inquisitorial cruelty behind and come into its own as a science. >But not quite so. Many medical skeptics (including Dr.
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hey maddie what is the name of that disgusting picture news group that you like so well? – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – >To print: Select File and then Print from your browser’s menu. >This story was printed from FindArticles.com, located at http://www.findarticles.com. >Backwoods Home Magazine >May-June, 2002 >Are you crazy? Somebody wants you to be. (Living the outlaw life ).(mental disorders and >diagnosis) >Author/s: Claire Wolfe >According to a 1999 White House Conference on Mental Health, 13.7 million American >children–about one in five–have a "diagnosable mental illness." More cautious government >estimates say 9 to 13 percent of our children suffer "serious emotionally disturbance with >substantial functional impairment." (1) >The number of people being treated for clinical depression rose from 1.7 million in 1987 >to 6.3 million in 1997–and is still growing. Heavily promoted psychiatric drugs have >brought other emotional sufferers into the medical fold. >The Children’s Defense Fund says up to 75 percent of incarcerated juveniles are mentally >ill and in need of treatment. >The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notes that 51 million Americans–again, >roughly one in five–suffer mental disorders every year. >The number of abnormal mental conditions, as defined by the American Psychiatric >Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), has ballooned >from 112 in 1952 to 375 today. Some of our newly diagnosed problems include "oppositional >defiant disorder" (rebellion against authority), "caffeine use disorder" (too much coffee >drinking), and "feeding disorder of infancy or early childhood" (being a fussy eater). >Reality check. Are we really all that crazy? Is it possible that 20 percent of Americans >are mentally abnormal, diseased, and defective? >More to the point, is it a good idea to let governments, foundations, professional guilds, >and global pharmaceutical corporations persuade us that we are? >The big institutions pushing for broader definitions of emotional ills have a vested >interest in defining us as badly broken human beings–and persuading us to buy into that >definition, financially, medically, and politically. >Why this isn’t healthy >Mental disorder is a genuine problem. Nobody who’s watched a street person muttering to >himself and picking imaginary flies off his flesh can doubt that. Hundreds of thousands of >more normal-seeming people struggle daily against falling into an emotional abyss. Misery >exists. And some degree of this misery may truly fit the category of disease–that is, >having a demonstrable, biological cause. >But the trend toward defining uncomfortable feeling or behavior as "disease" and millions >of us as "sick" isn’t healthy. >* Sick people are, by definition, dependent people. They need doctors, drugs, caretakers, >programs, tax funds, etc.–unlike healthy people, who are self-reliant. >* Mentally ill people also enjoy diminished moral responsibility–which is a handy thing >if the alternative is facing and rectifying your bad deeds. Those who once claimed, "The >voices in my head made me do it," have now been joined by TV stars and world leaders who >claim, "I’m not a cold, callous womanizer; I’m a pitiable sex addict," and by executive >women who claim that mental illness "made" them shoplift designer goodies. >* The growing psychiatric "pharmacracy" (as Dr. Thomas Szasz calls it) means billions in >profits for pharmaceutical companies and an ever-burgeoning demand for tax-funded programs >to subsidize new drugs, surgeries, and other treatments. But it doesn’t necessarily mean >health for the sufferers, as we’ll see. >* When you accept being defined as sick or defective, you may feel a certain comfort >("Aha, so that’s what those awful feelings are"). But you also accept being defined as >less than competent. >* "Less than competent" means, in many cases, having fewer legal rights than criminals. In >Connecticut, your firearms may be confiscated if someone persuades a judge, on no hard >evidence, that there is "probable cause" to believe you might be dangerous. This law was >passed in response to a murder-suicide committed by a mentally ill man. In 1997, when >Illinois police showed up to haul rural homeowner Shirley Allen to a mental hospital based >on the complaints of Allen’s spurned relatives, they had no evidence, not even >circumstantial, that she was harmful to herself or anyone else. Yet, had the Internet not >brought watchdogs to her defense, Allen could have been charged up to $1,000 per day for >involuntary, long-term hospitalization and might have lost her home. >* "Less than competent" means you are a less credible human being–even after years of >propaganda about de-stigmatizing mental illness. If an authority figure abuses you, whose >claim is more likely to be believed, yours (demonstrably unreliable, due to your >"condition"), or that of the "healthy" policeman, doctor, corporation, or bureaucrat >against whom you’ve made your charge? In fact, if a psychiatrist says you’re sick and you >say you’re not, your claims of health are nearly always considered to be strong evidence >of your delusional state. The Soviet Union notoriously used diagnoses of "mental illness" >to defang its domestic opponents; after all, anyone who criticizes government must be >crazy and shouldn’t be taken seriously–an attitude that’s beginning to take hold in U.S. >politics, as well. >Disease is whatever we say it is today >Realizing that coffee guzzling, picky eating, and defiance of authority are among the >"serious functional impairments" the mental-health establishment is crying alarm about, >you might be tempted to think that the shrinks, not we, are the crazy ones. But there’s >method to their madness. Getting a condition listed in the DSM is the key to getting >insurance companies and government programs to fund its treatment. It’s the key to huge >sales for drug makers and a vast expansion of the market for both mental-health >professionals and health-care bureaucracies. >In a sense, there’s nothing new here. Diagnosis and treatment of mental problems have been >subject to whim since shamans first rattled gourds over the heads of lunatics. Despite >claims of scientific advances, that hasn’t changed. >We’ve all followed criminal trials in which dueling psychiatric "experts" state that the >defendant is or is not mentally ill, that the illness is or is not schizophrenia, >post-partum psychosis, or manic-depression with paranoid ideation, and that the individual >is or is not responsible for his own actions. >If you think this odd flexibility is a mere function of who’s paying the expert’s witness >fees, not so. Even within mental hospitals or private psychiatric practice, diagnosis >varies insanely. Schizophrenia, for instance, remains a popular diagnosis because it’s >basically "a nonspecific category which includes almost everything a human being can do, >think, or feel that is greatly disliked by other people or by the so-called schizophrenics >themselves." (2) One after another, attempts to produce a coherent medical definition of >the disease have fallen by the wayside. >Worse, treatment has been as arbitrary as diagnosis. Once, surgeons removed the "stone of >madness" from the heads of lunatics. In a more recent era, frontal lobotomies and >electroconvulsive therapy (shock treatments) became the answers. Even after it was obvious >that lobotomy "cured" people by turning them into zombies, unable to function in society >and unable in many cases to care for themselves, lobotomy remained a worldwide tool for >controlling unmanageable children and political opponents. (3) Homosexuality (officially a >mental illness until 1973) was, in the not-too-distant past, "cured" by castration. >Yet few professions possess as much self-certainty as psychiatry. Victims of quack >psychiatric cures often note the icy authority with which cruel, arbitrary, guesswork >treatments are imposed. Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is no outlandish >parody. >Medical miracles that aren’t >Today, in addition to psychosurgery, talk therapies, and the ominous return of >electro-shock, we have powerful psychiatric drugs. And many of them do appear to alleviate >depression, mood swings, delusion, panic attacks, and a variety of other conditions. >This, according to the health establishment and the media, proves that psychiatry has left >guesswork, shamanism, and Inquisitorial cruelty behind and come into its own as a science. >But not quite so. Many medical skeptics (including Dr. Thomas Szasz, perhaps the most >famous critic of the mental-health establishment, and Dr. Peter Breggin, who has written >extensively against the schoolroom drug, Ritalin), have pointed out that widely prescribed >psychiatric miracle drugs do little more than dull the senses and inhibit normal brain >function. At worst these drugs can cause crippling conditions like Parkinson’s disease or >tardive dyskenesia–"helping" victims by giving them real diseases that put them into >wheelchairs. In 1999, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher recommended a class of drugs >called neuroleptic (Thorazine, Haldol, Mellaril, etc.) as a treatment for >schizophrenia–even while acknowledging that those drugs cause permanent brain damage in >an estimated 40 percent of the people who take them. (4) >Even less powerful drugs can cause emotional disorders as bad as those they treat–jangled >nerves, hallucinations, lethargy, depression, memory loss, and paranoia. >In case after case, violent young criminals (like school-yard
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