Prevention in Psychiatry
The recent article entitled “Prevention Becomes 4th Revolution in Psychiatry” and subtitled “Mental Health: Preventive” (by Lynn Simross, Sept. 17) should actually have read “Mental Health: Prevention of.”
By its own statistics, psychiatry does not work. Psychiatrists admit that mental illness has reached “epidemic proportions.” Small wonder for a “science” which has absolutely no basis in fact whatsoever, and relies upon the use of such barbaric practices as electric shock “therapy” and on brain-destroying chemicals to effect “cures” for diseases to which they cannot even name a cause. Yet they are so bold as to state that they don’t actually know what the results will be to any given “treatment,” still they continue blindly onward.
Not only is psychiatry unable to predict the future actions of a person to determine whether or not that person is dangerous, but people who have received treatment by psychiatrists have a higher incidence of violent behavior after their treatment than people with similar behavioral problems who remain untreated. Almost one for one, people accused of and/or convicted of violent crimes of a sensational nature, such as Charles Manson, John Hinckley Jr., Mark Chapman, and a host of other infamous examples, had recently been released from some mental health facility before their actions.
To a large degree, the increase in the number of people who are being diagnosed as mentally ill each year stems from an increase in the number of illnesses listed in each new edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” This is now in its third edition and is known as “DSM-III” in the psychiatric industry. Psychiatrists place a great deal of importance on this book because, if a mental illness is not listed in “DSM-III,” then insurance companies will not pay the bill. Since health care and insurance is a major growth industry, it can be seen that it is in psychiatry’s financial interest to climb on the bandwagon. One way to do this is to discover new diseases to treat for which insurance plans can then be profitably exploited.
It really frightens me to read such statements as that of Dr. Simon Wile: “I can see the day when the pediatrician and child psychiatrist will be making rounds together.”
PAUL DE SALABERRY
Los Angeles