Posted by mindevolution on January 23, 2007, at 17:32:19 [reposted on January 26, 2007, at 23:07:03 | original URL]
In reply to Re: Does Mental Illness Exist? Feedback Requested!, posted by leo33 on January 19, 2007, at 17:43:40
>To just say it doesn't exist because they can't figure it out is shortsighted.
They are not saying it doesn't exist, just that they cannot diagnose it scientifically nor cure it.
what's worse is when a healthy individual is told they have a mental disease, even if they are not enduring any suffering. the disease he is told he has is voted on every year and so is fictional and could even be removed the following year, there are no medical tests to confirm his disease exists, he feels fine, and yet he has his freedom removed and he is treated with high doses of drugs or ect or surgery which maims or potentially even kills him without being offered less damaging alternatives.
why? usually it is because "he is a danger to society". how? he is healthy individual free from suffering who has committed no crime. does he get a fair trial, where he is presumed sane and evidence has to be brought to prove his illness? no. are there safeguards in the current system to stop an innocent sane person from being unnecessarily held and treated against their will? no. are there any effective limits on how long any person can be held and treated? no.
in this case it is the job of a psychiatrist to take away an innocent man's freedom and subject him to brain damaging treatments, effectively acting as jailer, torturer or sometimes even executioner, on behalf and the say so of one or maybe two other members of the public who only have to provide verbal evidence which in itself could be complete fabrication.
how many innocent people have been maimed or killed by a system that has been in existence for centuries, and has accelerated considerably since the introduction of the antipsychotics and other mental health medications? the rates of people diagnosed mentally ill has grown exponentially inline with the growth of DSM illnesses invented especially since the 1950s. Could it be worse than the holocaust?
Do you think that the existence of mental illness in the context of the current legal/medical structure corrupts the concept of an individual's right to freedom/life that is supposedly the basis of a democratic society?
on the other hand, if we deny the existence of mental illness, many people's potentially life threatening suffering would be invalidated and left untreated.
I prefer not to argue against the concept of mental illness, but to argue for reform to the current implementation of the mental health care system so that people suffering with mental illness are not denied treatment and care, and innocent healthy people accused of illness by other members of the population are not incarcerated, tortured or killed needlessly. In the same way that we developed a just system for dealing with people accused of criminal acts, so too we need a medically sound and just system capable of dealing with people accused of having mental illness.
> Does diabetes exist, hight blood pressure, demetia, alzheimers?without doubt, but these conditions do not corrupt an individual's right to freedom or indeed life itself.
> Law does not understand mental illness as it only looks at behavior, but mental illness effects behavior.
Medical science does not understand mental illness either.
> But I do understand the argument put forth in that article.
glad to hear it, but do you really?
>Personally I think most of the psychiatrists that were quoted in it should have their license pulled since they admit they have been committing fraud in treating something they say does not exist.
they didn't say it didn't exist, but indicated its cause and cure were unknown to medical science:
"We really do not know what causes any psychiatric illness" Columbia University psychiatry professor Jack M. Gorman, M.D.
"It is generally unrecognized that psychiatrists are the only medical specialists who treat disorders that, by definition, have no definitively known causes or cures." Jerrold S. Maxmen, M.D
it would be untrue to suggest that we know the causes and cures for mental illness; any doctors that suggest otherwise should have their licences revoked. psychiatric medicine and treatment cannot cure, only potentially relieve suffering. the entire medical speciality of psychiatry is no more able to cure its patients than a cold remedy can cure your cold. to suggest otherwise is medical and scientific fraud. psychiatry will always be this way unless it gets redefined.
So we know that psychiatric medicine's only use is to potentially mask the symptoms of someone suffering from mental illness. So what happens if a person is not suffering? if an individual is not suffering, and that is a subjective thing known only to the individual concerned as it cannot be identified objectively, then the application of any treatment in such a circumstance is fraudulent in nature. how can treatment only capable of masking the suffering of an individual, mask suffering not being experienced by the individual?
that said it happens to millions upon millions of patients against their will everyday all over the globe. it is the most widespread fraudulent application of medicine known to man. worse still is the treatments are known to be second only to cancer treatments in toxicity and cause significant brain damage, reduce life expectancy, and death.
me
poster:mindevolution
thread:726938
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20061123/msgs/726938.html