MORE ON "HEARING VOICES" TO REFUTE THE LIES OF PSYCHIATRY REGARDING "MENTAL ILLNESS"
by Justice Lover

If you tell a shrink that you hear voices he would immediately label you "mentally ill" (most likely "schizophrenic") ,and follow with the next label "psychotic" which would "require medication", meaning one or more of the Antipsychotics poisons, and if you refuse then a CTO would be issued to have you locked up and forced to take the "medication". If you continue to refuse then "ECT" (electric shocks) would be administered to you, and if you still resist then "psycho-surgery" would be performed on your skull to open it and to butcher your brain. This is in a nutshell the gist of the entire psychiatric dogma and practice put together.

It is obvious then that psychiatry is not only a fraud, but much worse - a barbaric and arbitrary torture of innocent people which is legalised and protected by state laws. Hence the importance of telling the full truth so as to warn the public. The following information is serving this need.


Hearing voices is experienced by a great many people, without becoming ill
(exerpts from the June 1st, 2008 issue of the newsletter by Peter Myers, peter.myers@mailstar.net )

Hearing Voices Movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_Voices_Movement

Hearing Voices Movement is a philosophical trend in how people who hear voices are viewed. It was begun by Marius Romme, a professor of Social psychiatry at the University of Limburg in Maastricht, the Netherlands and Sandra Escher, a science journalist, who began this work after being challenged by a voice hearer as to why they could not accept the reality of her voice hearing experience. They advocate an approach of using techniques employed by those who have successfully coped with their voices. This can include acceptance and negotiation with the voices.

The movement

The Hearing Voices movement can be said to have been established in 1987, by Professor Marius Romme, a social psychiatrist and Sandra Escher, a science journalist, both from the Netherlands, with the formation of an organisation for voice hearers and others interested in this phenomenon, entitled Stichting Weerklank (Foundation Resonance). In 1988 an organisation was also established in England, with the active support of Marius Romme (James, 2001) entitled The Hearing Voices Network. In the following years, further networks have been established in other European countries including Italy, Finland (1995), Wales, Scotland, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, Germany (1998), Norway & Denmark; and also in other parts of the world including Japan (1996), Israel, New Zealand, Australia and most recently the USA (2006).

In 1997 a meeting of voice hearers and mental health workers was held in Maastricht, Netherlands to discuss developing the further promotion and research into the issue of voice hearing. The meeting decided to create a formal organisational structure to provide administrative and co-ordinating support to the wide variety of initiatives in the different involved countries. The new network was called INTERVOICE (The International Network for Training, Education and Research into Hearing voices).

INTERVOICE holds annual steering group meetings, encourages and supports exchanges and visits between member countries and the translation and publication of books and other literature on the subject of hearing voices. In 2006 INTERVOICE set up a website and in 2007 was incorporated as a not for profit company under UK law. The president of INTERVOICE is Professor Marius Romme.

INTERVOICE is supported by people who hear voices, relative and friends and mental health professionals including nurses, psychiatrists and psychologists. INTERVOICE members assert that the most important factor in the success of their approach is the importance placed on the personal engagement of the people involved, meaning that all participants are considered an expert of their own experience. They see each other first as people, secondly as equal partners and thirdly as all having different but mutually valuable expertise to offer. This can either be through direct experience of hearing voices or having worked with voice hearers (and/or wanting to).

INTERVOICE is critical of psychiatry in relation to the way the profession generally understands and treats people who hear voices and holds that their research has led them to the position that schizophrenia is an unscientific and unhelpful hypothesis which should be abandoned, (Romme, 2006).

The Hearing Voices movement regards itself as being a post-psychiatric, (Bracken, 2005 and Stastny/Peter Lehmann, 2007) organisation, positioning itself outside of the mental health world in recognition that voices, in their view, are an aspect of human differentness, rather than a mental health problem and that, as with homosexuality (also regarded by psychiatry in recent times as an illness), one of the main issues is about human rights. Therefore by changing the way society perceives the experience, they believe, psychiatry, as it did with homosexuality, will follow.

The Hearing Voices movement is also seeking more holistic health solutions to problematic and overwhelming voices that cause mental distress then what it regards as the generally reductionist, disease based model offered by mainstream psychiatry. Based on their research they hold the opinion that many people successfully live with their voices and that in themselves voices are not the problem. For this reason they are prepared to accept a range of explanations offered by people who hear voices including spiritual ones and assert that recovery (see recovery model) from overwhelming voices can be achieved by seeking to understand the meaning of the voices to the voice hearer.

A detailed and neutral account of the significance of the Hearing Voice Movement entitled "Can You Live With the Voices in Your Head?" was published in the New York Times Magazine in 2007, the author Daniel B. Smith noted that the movements "brief against psychiatry can be boiled down to two core positions. The first is that many more people hear voices, and hear many more kinds of voices, than is usually assumed. The second is that auditory hallucination — or “voice-hearing,” H.V.N.’s more neutral preference — should be thought of not as a pathological phenomenon in need of eradication but as a meaningful, interpretable experience, intimately linked to a hearer’s life story and, more commonly than not, to unresolved personal traumas."

Movement history

Baker (2000) in OpenMind in an overview of the challenging new research and practise initiatives, developing across Europe, charts the progress made from a view of voice hearing as bizarre and dangerous towards a recognition of voices as real, meaningful, and related to peoples' lives. This recognises that the experience can be overwhelming and deeply distressing, but also, that the attempt to understand their meaning can be part of a solution.

Leudar and Thomas

In a recent book, Leudar and Thomas (2000): voices of reason, voices of insanity, review almost 3,000 years of voice-hearing history, including that of Socrates, Schreber, and Janet's patient 'Marcelle', amongst others, to show how we have moved the experience from a socially valued context to a pathologised and denigrated one. Foucault has argued that this process can generally arise when a minority perspective is at variance with dominant social norms and beliefs.

Romme and Escher

The work of Romme and Escher (1989, 90, 91, 92, '94, '97, '98, '99) provides a much needed theoretical framework for these new initiatives, and provides much of the impetus for the self-help movement in recent years. They demonstrate:

1.Not everyone who hears voices becomes a patient. Over a third of 400 voice hearers in Holland had not had any contact with Psychiatric services. These people either described themselves as being able to cope with their voices and/or described their voices as life enhancing. ...

5.70% of voice hearers reported that their voices had begun after a severe traumatic or intensely emotional event, such as an accident, divorce or bereavement, sexual or physical abuse, love affairs, or pregnancy. In a recent study, Romme et al (1998) found that the onset of voice hearing amongst a 'patient' group was preceded by either a traumatic event or an event that activated the memory of an earlier trauma. There was a high association with abuse. These findings are being substantiated further in an on-going study with voice hearing amongst children (Escher, 2001)

6.Some people who hear voices, regardless of being able to cope with this or not, may have a burning need to construct a personal understanding for their experiences and to talk to others about it without being 'written off' as mad.

7.A long-term developmental process of psychological adjustment was identified by surveying the considerable range of experience and the negotiation methods that people reported

Romme, (1991, '98) has developed this appoach with several studies showing that hearing voices can be associated with memories of emotionally 'undigested' events, usually connected with key relationships.

Romme et al, (1999) find that these important connections can be addressed using CBT and self-help methods.

Romme describes a 3 phase model of recovery.

Startling. Initial confusion; emotional chaos, fear, helplessness and psychological turmoil.

Organization. The need to find meaning, arrive at some understanding and acceptance. The development of ways of coping and accommodating voices in everyday living. This task may take months or years and is marked by the attempt to enter into active negotiation with the voice(s).

Stabilisation. The establishment of equilibrium, and accommodation, with the voice(s), and the consequent re-empowerment of the person.

Alternative to medical model

The Hearing Voices movement reflects significant disenchantment with the medical model, and the practises of Mental Health services through much of the Western World. ...

Romme and Escher (2000) have developed a method they call "Making sense of voices" to explore the problems in the life of the voice hearer that lie at the roots of the hearing voices experience. This approach was adopted as a consequence of the results of the studies they carried out, that they claimed, showed that to hearing voices, in it self, is not a symptom of an illness, but in most people is a reaction to severe traumatic experiences that made the person powerless, and are in effect, a kind of survival strategy. ...

Summary

The position of the hearing voices movement can be summarised as follows:

Hearing voice is in itself not a sign of mental illness
Hearing voices is experienced by a great many people, without becoming ill.
Hearing voices is related to problems in life history.
To recover from the distress caused, the person has to learn to cope with their voices and the original problems that lie at the root of the experience ...

(3) Intervoice - The international community for hearing voices

http://www.intervoiceonline.org

The international community for hearing voices

The INTERVOICE Network: Information on national initiatives

Working across the world to spread positive and hopeful messages about the experience of hearing voices

If you hear voices (aka auditory hallucinations); if you know someone who does; if you work with people who hear voices; if you want to know about more about this experience. Then this site is for you. ...

Welcome to our site

A message from Professor Marius Romme, MD, PhD, President of INTERVOICE

We are people who hear voices, family members, friends, mental health workers, activists, and concerned citizens.
Find out how we work together here

Did youKnow?

* Studies have found that between four and 10 per cent of people across the world hear voices.

* Between 70 and 90 cent of people who hear voices do so following traumatic events.

* Voices can be male, female, without gender, child, adult, human or non-human.

* People may hear one voice or many. Some people report hearing hundreds, although in almost all reported cases, one dominates above the others.

* Voices can be experienced in the head, in the ears, outside the head, in some other part of the body, or in the environment.

* Voices often reflect important aspects of the hearer's emotional state - emotions that are often unexpressed by the hearer.

Talking to Voices

"Many people who hear challenging voices have found that a turning point in learning to cope with this experience has been finding different ways of talking with and understanding their voices. Learning to understand the motives of your voices and different ways of talking with them can help the relationship to change between the voice hearer and the voices...."

Click on the title above to read the highly recommended article by Dirk Corstens, Eleanor Longden and Rufus May about the methods used by Rufus May in "The Doctor who Hears Voices" shown on UK TV on the 21st April 2008. Over a million people watched it when it was broadcast and thousands of people are now down loading from several Internet sites. It has provoked a strong response from viewers. Many people have been inspired by the film, others more attached to a medical approach to distress have been outraged, read Rufus Mays' reflections on making the film here

Also

We talked about the voices ... Eleanor Longden, a voice hearer, describes her experience of talking to her voices in the UK mass circulation newspaper The Daily Mail, 07/02/2008
I discovered that if I engaged with the voices, they became less frequent. I also learnt to challenge the more threatening voice, refusing to do what it told me and telling myself it was no more than a symbol of my own externalised anger. .. One by one the voices gradually disappeared, until I was only occasionally hearing one... Three years on, I am healthy, happy and perfectly stable.

Talking to Voices DVD: Professor Marius Romme
See Marius Romme explaining the theoretical basis for voice dialoguing, then with the help of a voice hearer demonstrates the voice dialoguing technique. buy your own copy here ...

Angels and Demons

broadcast on ABC in Australia on the 7th April 2008

This well regarded documentary made by Andrew Denton as part of the "Enough Rope" series considers what it is like to hear voices.
You can watch it here
and read the programme transcript here

Well known people who heard voices: Past and Present


http://voices.schublade.org/2006/12/3/examples-of-well-known-people-who-heard-voices

The international community for hearing voices

Page last updated 03/08/2007

Here are some examples of famous people who acknowledged they heard voices, if you know of any more people we could add to this list please let us know.

WILLIAM BLAKE

William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, visionary, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. From a young age, William Blake claimed to have seen visions. The earliest instance occurred at the age of about eight or ten in Peckham Rye, London, when he reported seeing a tree filled with angels "bespangling every bough like stars." According to Blake's Victorian biographer Gilchrist, he returned home to report his vision, but only escaped being thrashed by his father through the intervention of his mother. Though all the evidence suggests that his parents were largely supportive, his mother seems to have been especially so, and several of Blake's early drawings and poems decorated the walls of her chamber.

On another occasion, Blake watched haymakers at work, and thought he saw angelic figures walking among them. In later life, his wife Catherine would recall the time he saw God's head "put to the window". The vision, Catherine reminded her husband, "Set you ascreaming."[25]

Blake claimed to experience visions throughout his life. They were often associated with beautiful religious themes and imagery, and therefore may have inspired him further with spiritual works and pursuits. Certainly, religious concepts and imagery figure centrally in Blake's works. God and Christianity constituted the intellectual center of his writings, from which he drew inspiration. In addition, Blake believed that he was personally instructed and encouraged by Archangels to create his artistic works, which he claimed were actively read and enjoyed by those same Archangels.

In a letter to William Hayley, dated May 6, 1800, Blake writes:

"I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago I lost a brother, and with his spirit I converse daily and hourly in the spirit, and see him in my remembrance, in the region of my imagination. I hear his advice, and even now write from his dictate."


PHILIP K. DICK

Philip K Dick was a science fiction writer, who died in 1982. Eight of his stories have been adapted into films to date, including "Blade Runner", "Total Recall" and "Minority Report".

"In earlier interviews you have described your encounter, in 1974, with "a transcendentally rational mind." Does this "tutelary spirit" continue to guide you?

Dick: It hasn't spoken a word to me since I wrote The Divine Invasion. The voice is identified as Ruah, which is the Old Testament word for the Spirit of God. It speaks in a feminine voice and tends to express statements regarding the messianic expectation. It guided me for a while. It has spoken to me sporadically since I was in high school. I expect that if a crisis arises it will say something again. It's very economical in what it says. It limits itself to a few very terse, sucinct sentences. I only hear the voice of the spirit when I'm falling asleep or waking up. I have to be very receptive to hear it. It sounds as though it's coming from millions of miles away."

Philip K. Dick's Final Interview, June 1982, [source: Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 3, June 1982

Click here for "The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick"

CHARLES DICKENS

The experiences of Charles Dickens were widely publicised by the author himself. He used to tell the tale with relish about becoming so involved with his characters that they actually spoke to him, the best known being the disgusting old ‘nurse’ from his novel Martin Chuzzlewit, Mrs Gamp who, he said, would tell him dirty stories in church during Sunday service and make him laugh out loud.

SIGMUND FREUD

Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis wrote, “During the days when I was living alone in a foreign city….I quite often heard my name suddenly called by an unmistakable and beloved voice….”

MAHATMA GANDHI

Mahatma Gandhi, the man who almost single handedly achieved Indian independence from Britain, relied on an “inner voice” for guidance. Toward the end of his life the voice said, “You are on the right track, move neither to your left, nor right, but keep to the straight and narrow.”

ANTHONY HOPKINS

In 1993, in an interview in the News of the World, the Hollywood actor Anthony Hopkins made a remarkable admission, he claimed he heard strange voices in his head, "I've always had a little voice in my head, particularly when I was younger and less assured", he said. "While onstage, during classical theatre the voice would suddenly say, "Oh, you think you can do Shakespeare, do you?" and he added; "Recently, I was being interviewed on television and the voice inside my head said to me, "Who the hell do you think you are. You're just an actor, what the hell do you know about anything". Anthony Hopkins locates the root of his voice hearing experience in the insecurity he felt as a child, he says "I've always had a little voice in my head pulling me down, particularly when I was younger and less grounded...My school days were not always happy and I wanted to get away from Wales and be someone else. I was stupid at school, I just didn't know what was going on. I thought I was on Mars, I didn't know what they were talking about." Many voice hearers share this description of the trigger for the voice experience and a recent survey showed that Hopkins is by no means alone. Social circumstances are related to the onset of the voices and examples of this include unbearable living situations, recent or childhood traumas, conflicts between the ideal and reality of people’s lives and the person's overall emotional development.

JOHN FRUSCIANTE from the Red Hot Chili Peppers

“I had just so many mental problems. It wasn't until I was 28 that my brain actually felt like a spacious place. When I was 18, 19, 22, my brain was just clogged all the time - non-stop voices. I couldn't figure out what was going on. There was a lot of confusion inside me, this flood of voices, often contradicting each other, often telling me stuff that would happen in the future, and then it would happen, voices insulting me, telling me what to do.”

SAINT IGNATIUS (Íñigo) LOYOLA

Caption: "Having sought divine help from the Blessed Virgin he spoke with God and saw the infant Jesus in Mary's arms. All this pleasantly energized him."

Íñigo was born at the castle of Loyola, in the municipality of Azpeitia, 16 miles southwest of Donostia/San Sebastian in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa, Spain. The youngest of 13 children, Ignatius was only seven years old when his mother died.

In 1517, Íñigo took service in the army, defending the small town of Pamplona against the recently expelled Navarrese monarchy. Highly outnumbered, the Spaniards wanted to surrender, but Ignatius persuaded them to fight on. One leg wounded, the other broken by a cannonball, Ignatius was returned to his castle by the Navarrese.

Ignatius was recuperating from the battle injury when he had the first of his visions, and a nervous breakdown. His emotional condition, combined with the fictitious stories of the Catholic saints whose lives he studied, resulted in a series of mystical visions, conversations and other encounters with God, Jesus and Mary.

JOHN FORBES NASH

On October 11, 1994, John Forbes Nash, Jr. won the Nobel Prize for pioneering work in game theory. Nash was 66 and, for most of his adult life he'd lived with the diagnoseis of paranoid schizophrenia.

Nash began his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1948 - when he was just 20. While he was still only 21, he wrote a 27-page doctoral dissertation on game theory - the mathematics of competition.Nash put a whole new face on competition, and he drew the attention of theoretical economists. They turned game theory into a tool. This young genius brought the field to fruition.

He went on to MIT and for eight years dazzled the mathematical world. He worked in economics. He even invented the game of Hex, marketed by Parker Brothers. He married in 1957. New York Times writer Silvia Nasar tells how "Fortune magazine singled him out in July 1958 as America's brilliant young star of the 'new mathematics.'"

Nash engaged in sporadic same-sex relationships throughout his life, despite having married a woman. As a graduate student, in his circle,his homosexuality was mostly accepted,or at least tolerated. However, upon graduation, homosexuality was less accepted in the McCarthy era government department in which he worked; he was fired from the job after being arrested for "indecent acts" in a men's room at a public park. As an adult,Nash was involved in a serious relationship with a man, which may have contributed to his hesitancy to marry Alicia.

He began hearing voices. He'd once astonished mathematicians with his unlikely results. Now his results stopped making sense, and the dividing line wasn't clear at first. He began looking for secret messages in numbers. He disappeared for days. He could, in Nasar's words, "no longer sort and interpret sensations or reason or feel the full range of emotions."

Throughout his years at Princeton (1945-1949) he believed he had a roommate while records show he lived by himself. He became paranoid and was committed into the McLean Hospital, April-May 1959, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and mild depression with low self-esteem. After a problematic stay in Paris and Geneva, Nash returned to Princeton in 1960. He remained in and out of mental hospitals until 1970, being given insulin shock therapy and antipsychotic medications, usually as a result of being committed rather than by his choice.

From 1970, by his choice, he never took antipsychotic medication again. According to his biographer Sylvia Nasar, he recovered gradually with the passage of time. Encouraged by his wife Alicia, Nash worked in a communitarian setting where his eccentricities were accepted.

Nash's "hallucinations" were exclusively auditory, and not both visual and auditory as shown in the film "A Beautiful Mind". The film also has Nash saying at the time of his Nobel acceptance speech in 1994 "I take the newer medications", when in fact Nash didn't take any medication from 1970 onwards.

Interview with John Nash on his experience of hearing voices

SAINT JOAN

In the preface to Bernard Shaw's play, saint Joan (page 13 14, Penguin Edition) he says of her voices: "Joan's voices and visions have played many tricks with her reputation. They have been held to prove that she was mad, a liar and impostor, a sorceress (she was burned for this), and finally a saint. They do not prove any of these things; but the variety of the conclusions reached show how little our matter of fact historians know about other people's minds, or even about their own. There are people in the world whose imagination is so vivid that when they have an idea it comes to them as audible voice, sometimes uttered by a visual figure......The inspirations and intuitions and unconsciously reasoned conclusions of genius sometimes assume similar illusions. Socrates, Luther, Swedenbourg, Blake saw visions and heard voices just as Saint Francis and saint Joan did.... On the subject of the eleventh horn of the beast seen by the prophet Daniel he was more fantastic than Joan.... Her policy was also quite sound: nobody disputes that the relief of Orleans, followed by the coronation at Rheims of the Dauphin as a counterblow to the suspicions then current of his legitimacy and consequently of his title, were military and political masterpieces that saved France. They might have been planned by Napoleon or any other illusion proof genius. They came to Joan as an instruction from her Counsel, as she called her visionary saints; but she was none the less an able leader of men for imagining her ideas in this way".

JOSHUA SLOCUM

Joshua Slocum became the first person to circumnavigate the world single handed in 1898 aboard a boat called Spray. He claimed to have been aided by the ghost of Christopher Columbus's helmsman, who guided him safely through storms and bouts of illness.

AIDEN SHINGLER

Aiden is an artist and is also diagnosed as a schizophrenic. He calls himself a schizophrenic artist, one of his pieces of work made up of four crucifixes stamped in indelible ink with his hand and foot prints and on one crucifix, the nails have been replaced with syringes. Aiden says of the work that it "... is about the time I was forcibly injected with neuroleptic drugs. I'd heard a voice within saying I had been chosen and I could feel a halo around my head. This image is representative of the crucifixion of the Christ within me by the clinicians. Instead of the halo there is now a wreath of white flowers."Spingler was hospitalised twenty years ago the first time he experienced visions and voices until his family insisted on his release and since that time he has had eight sustained periods of altered consciousness, lasting from one to six months. He does not regard them as frightening, rather he says of them "there's a wonderful sense of freedom, a great expansion of mind, clarity of thought. Colour becomes so heightened. All the senses do...". He does not regard schizophrenia if it has to be called that as an illness, instead he sees it as a condition, a more colourful way of seeing things. When his doctors told him he was disconnected he told them they should be so lucky, that he was making new, wonderful, poetic connections. Aiden now experiences his episodes of altered consciousness as gentler and less exhausting. Yet for him these epiphanies, the visions and voices are just as inspiring.

ROBERT SCHUMANN

Robert Alexander Schumann (June 8, 1810 – July 29, 1856) was a German composer and pianist. He was one of the most famous Romantic composers of the nineteenth century, as well as a famous music critic. An intellectual as well as an aesthete, his music reflects the deeply personal nature of Romanticism. Introspective and often whimsical, his early music was an attempt to break with the tradition of classical forms and structure which he thought too restrictive. Little understood in his lifetime, much of his music is now regarded as daringly original in harmony, rhythm and form. He stands in the front rank of German Romantics.

Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’s mad fictional musician Kappelmeister Kreisler, Schumann’s “Kreisleriana” was one of many musical works written at the urging of the inner voices that alternatively plagued and blessed him throughout much of his life. As long as his mind remained whole enough to organize what he was “hearing,” these voices brought some of his finest work to him, sometimes fully realized and orchestrated. When his mental state began to disintegrate, however, the ghostly music brought him terrible suffering. His wife, the pianist Clara Schumann, described a tortuous night :

“The night of Friday, the 17th, we had not been long in bed when Robert got up and wrote out a theme that, he said, the angels had sung to him; after doing that, he went back to bed and hallucinated all night long, his eyes open and looking to heaven; he was firmly convinced that angels were hovering over him and disclosing the most wondrous revelations, all expressed in glorious music: they extended us their welcome, and we would both be joined with them before the year was past...Morning came and with it a dreadful change! The angel voices had turned into the voices of demons with horrible music; they told him he was a sinner and they planned to cast him into Hades, in short, his condition increased literally into one of nervous convulsions; he shrieked in pain (as he told me later, it took the form of tigers and hyenas tearing at him and trying to grab him) and the two doctors, who fortunately came in good time, were hardly able to hold him. I’ll never forget this moment, I was suffering the very agonies of torture with him. After about half an hour, he was less agitated and said friendlier voices could now be heard giving him encouragement...”

SOCRATES

Socrates' reliance on what the Greeks called his "daemonic sign", an averting (????????????) inner voice that Socrates heard only when he was about to make a mistake. It was this sign that prevented Socrates from entering into politics. In the Phaedrus, we are told Socrates considered this to be a form of "divine madness", the sort of insanity that is a gift from the gods and gives us poetry, mysticism, love, and even philosophy itself. Alternately, the sign is often taken to be what we would call "intuition"; however, Socrates' characterization of the phenomenon as "daemonic" suggests that its origin is divine, mysterious, and independent of his own thoughts.

An Islamic Scholar, Mirza Tahir Ahmad, argues that Socrates experienced what can be called a prophetic revelation. He writes in his book, Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth, that "Socrates seems to have a very personalized and intense relationship with the Supreme Being. His very personality is built on the pattern of the messengers of God.

DORIS STOKES

The late Doris Stokes, the renowned English medium heard the voice of what she regarded as her spirit guide, the guide was called Ramonov, a Tibetan monk. At first she didn't know where he came from until whilst watching a travel film on BBC television, she said "It was all about the Table people. Ramonov said "That's where I come from. Tibet." She first heard the voice of her deceased father when she was 13 years old when she herself met a medium. She always understood her experience to be a spiritual one and became a best selling writer, regularly appeared on TV and had a sell out show at the London Palladium.

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688 – 1772) was a Swedish scientist, philosopher, Christian mystic and theologian. Swedenborg had a prolific career as an inventor and scientist. At the age of fifty-six he entered into a spiritual phase, in which he experienced dreams and visions. This culminated in a spiritual awakening, where he claimed he was appointed by the Lord to write a heavenly doctrine to reform Christianity. He claimed that the Lord had opened his eyes, so that from then on he could freely visit heaven and hell, and talk with angels, demons, and other spirits. For the remaining 28 years of his life, he wrote and published 18 theological works, of which the best known was Heaven and Hell (1758) [4], and several unpublished theological works.

Around 1744 he began having strange dreams. Swedenborg carried a travel journal with him on most of his travels, and did so on this journey. The whereabouts of the diary were long unknown, but it was discovered in the Royal Library in the 1850s and published in 1859 as Drömboken, or Journal of Dreams. It provides a first-hand account of the events of the crisis.

He experienced many different dreams and visions, some greatly pleasurable, others highly disturbing. The experiences continued as he travelled to London to continue the publication of Regnum animale. This cathartic process continued for six months. It has been compared to the Catholic concept of Purgatory. Analyses of the diary have concluded that what Swedenborg was recording in his Journal of Dreams was a battle between the love of his self, and the love of God. [26]

In the last entry of the journal from October 26-27 1744, Swedenborg appears to be clear as to which path to follow. He felt he should drop his current project, and write a new book about the worship of God. He soon began working on De cultu et amore Dei, or The Worship and Love of God. It was never fully completed, but Swedenborg still had it published in London in June 1745.

One explanation why the work was never finished is given in a well known and often referenced story. In April 1745, Swedenborg was dining in a private room at a tavern in London. By the end of the meal, a darkness fell upon his eyes, and the room shifted character. Suddenly he saw a person sitting at a corner of the room, telling Swedenborg: "Do not eat too much!". Swedenborg, scared, hurried home. Later that night, the same man appeared in his dreams. The man told Swedenborg that He was the Lord, that He had appointed Swedenborg to reveal the spiritual meaning of the Bible, and that He would guide Swedenborg in what to write. The same night, the spiritual world was opened to Swedenborg.[

TERESA of AVILA

1515 - 1582, Birthplace: Avila, Spain

Teresa of Avila was a nun who reformed the order of the Carmelites, an ascetic who had mystical visions and communications from God. Charismatic and controversial, she founded monasteries throughout Spain, and is known by works that include her autobiography and The Way of Perfection. She was beatified in 1614 and canonized in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV, and in 1970 was made a Doctor of the Church.

ZOE WANNAMAKER

Zoe Wannamaker, the successful English actress talked about her voice hearing on the radio programme "Desert Island Discs" (BBC, Radio 4), she said: "It's like a little person sitting on your shoulder saying "No that's wrong. Don't do this. Don't do that...It's got in the way when I was working, because my concentration would be tripped by this voice in the back of my head. You think you're concentrating, but the voices were also saying "your not concentrating". I know it sounds like Joan of Arc, but it was a sort of chatter that would be going on while I was on stage." When asked if the voices had gone she said "They come back occasionally and have a good chat."

http://www.naturalnews.com/023334.html

The ADHD Scam and the Mass Drugging of Schoolchildren

ADHD "researchers" have engaged in yet another round of fraud by claiming brain scans show the brains of children diagnosed with ADHD are smaller and lesser developed. So what's the fraud? As it turns out, all the children tested were on mind-altering ADHD drugs, so the only thing these researchers have really proven is that ADHD drugs stunt the development of children's brains.

The Drugs Don't Work

It was a team of American scientists researching what is called the "Multi-Modal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD" -- MTA for short. They found that the drugs are useless over long-term. The drugs used to treat ADHD such as Ritalin and Concerta are useless. They have no benefits whatsoever after three years and even though they may show some short-term benefits depending on who is watching, and depending on their judgment of the child's behavior, the truth is there is no long-term benefit whatsoever. But here's the most important part.

They found that these drugs stunt the growth of children. "They were not growing as much as other children in terms of both their height and their weight," said the report's co-author, Prof. William Pelham from the University of Buffalo. "I think we exaggerated the beneficial impact of medication in the first study," he added in reference to a study they did a few years ago where they declared that these drugs were helping children.

"We had thought that children medicated longer would have better outcomes. That did not happen to be the case. The children had a substantial decrease in their growth rate," he continued. The second point was that there were no benefits to children taking these drugs whatsoever.

ADHD Drugs Stunt Brain Growth in Children

What they did not say in the results of this study is that the same drugs also stunt the growth of the children's brains. Now this is my assessment of the situation, having studied this issue for several years and knowing that this drug is stunting the development of the children. It is very reasonable to conclude that it also stunts the growth of their brains and guess what? This new study actually proves it, because these MRI brain scans of children's brains that found that these brains were three years behind schedule in development.

80% of the children who were looked at with those MRI scans were on ADHD medications. That's right. All that study did was prove that medication stunts the growth of children's brains. Amazing is it not?

How lousy the science has become out there in the world of ADHD when they are trying to push these drugs on to parents, children and school administrators. They come up with anything. They actually take a bunch of healthy children, they invent a fictitious disease, then they come up with a chemical called "Speed" -- it used to be called speed when it was sold on the street as a street drug. They give it to the children.

It harms the children, stunts their growth, and causes their brains to develop more slowly. Then they stick these children under an MRI machine, run some brain scans, and announce to the world that oh my goodness ADHD children have smaller brains that are behind schedule. How amazing is that? It doesn't take a genius to figure out what is really going on here.

This science is so bad. I remember when I was taking a science course in college one of the first lessons we had was how to interpret statistics and how to watch out for correlations that might not be causations or how to make sure that you do not have mistakes in reaching conclusions with your data. This is a classic mistake.

These drugs are causing the slow brain development. All the MRI scans are doing is proving that the drugs are harming the children. Notice they did not take children who were not on the drugs, put them under an MRI machine, and scan their brains. You know why? Because their brains would be normal. They had to take children who were doped up on speed and put them under the machines in order to get these results.

In addition, notice that they did not do this study before children started being dosed with the drugs. They did not say 20 years ago: "Oh, wow! Suddenly children are having this so-called disease 'ADHD.'" Let's stick them under a machine and see if there is anything wrong with their brains. They did not do that because if they had they would have found there was no difference.

The True Cause of ADHD

Nothing is wrong with these children other than probably their diet, a little too much refined sugar and too many food additives. In fact, that reminds me of the Southampton Study in the UK that showed that additives cause hyperactivity in children within an hour after consumption. That's right -- food additives, especially the artificial colors. Made from coal tar derivatives and synthetic chemicals, you feed these to children and guess what? Within an hour you get hyperactive behavior.

Is there anything wrong with these children's brains? No, there is something wrong with these children's parents, who probably keep feeding him or her chemical food additives. There is probably something wrong with the school administrators who keep dishing out school lunches that contain food items made with toxic chemicals. Maybe those people should have their brains scanned.

As long as we are talking about brain scans, and talking about retarded neuron development I think the only people in this whole study who probably have brains that are behind schedule are the researchers who announced these conclusions.

These people have stunted brain development. There is no question about it because how on earth could they not have realized that the only thing they did with these MRI scans was prove that these drugs stunt neural development in children? How could they not have considered that? They must be on crack or maybe, in this case, amphetamines because that is what they are giving to the children.

Maybe these researchers are really ADHD children who were treated with these drugs, then they grew up with stunted brains and now they have gotten involved in the research. They have drawn these conclusions and made these announcements and, of course, the editors at places like National Public Radio were probably on the same drugs because they ran this story as if it was fact.

They did not question it one bit. No one out there in the mainstream media questioned this. They did not say, "Gee, could it be that the medication caused the stunted growth in the brains of these children? Could that be?" No, they did not question it at all. No skepticism anymore when it comes to psychiatry or Big Pharma and you know why, of course, because they have an agenda to push.

They have to keep pushing these drugs onto more children. They have to keep those parents in a state of fear. That's how they sell more drugs. They have to keep people believing in this fictitious disease. That's the only way they are going to make money. This is an industry that makes money by exploiting the bodies of children, and the evidence is very clear.

Even the NIH is now saying that these drugs stunt the growth of children. That is a scientific fact announced by a mainstream medical research organization. This is not fringe science. This is not alternative medicine. This is not conjecture on the part of some person who has an axe to grind with psychiatry. This is mainstream medicine announcing that this stuff stunts the growth of children. How could it not stunt the growth of their brains?

Why the Mainstream Media Cannot be Trusted

When I was listening to a report on this issue on National Public Radio just the other day, a woman called into the show and she asked a very good question. She said: "I am an adult who has been diagnosed with ADHD, is my brain also stunted in its growth?" Do you know what the reply was?

They had a doctor on that show. One of the doctors that does news reporting for National Public Radio -- kind of the in-house idiot there, who has no training in nutrition, does not understand a thing about health but knows all the disease names and all the chemical names. Do you know what this doctor told that woman?

He said, "Well, researchers are not sure but they suspect that your brain may be behind in its development too and that eventually your brain will catch up and then you will be fine but right now if you have been diagnosed with Adult ADHD your brain growth maybe a little behind schedule."

That is what he said to this woman. I am thinking are you kidding me? Is this person really saying this on the air? You have to be a complete idiot to come up with that.

The research said that ADHD is a disease where children lag behind a few years in developing their brains, and if you read the research they said the brain cortex of children reaches peak thickness at an average of 10.5 years for ADHD children compared with age 7.5 years in normal children.

This person was talking to a woman who is probably in her 40's and he is saying even in your 40's you are probably still a few years behind. Are you kidding me? Where does he come up with any evidence for this -- nowhere, he pulled it out of his hat. He just made that up right there on the air -- just made it up.

He had no evidence whatsoever -- not even any logic behind it and no reason to say that other than the fact that in order to keep up the illusion that this disease has something to do with slow brain development, they had to make an excuse to say "Oh, why are they diagnosing adults with this disease?"

They had to come up with a reason -- another fictitious reason and this was all they could come up with. This doctor on the radio on the spot, this was all he could think of. Oh, well your brain must be behind too.

They are reaching deep aren't they? What will they come up with next? It's like catching a politician in a lie and that politician has to keep the lie going. The lie gets more and more outrageous every time he tells it to a different group in a different city when he is touring around trying to get elected.

The Pharmaceutical Credo: Sell, Sell, Sell

This is what the ADHD industry is like. It is as if they have to carry on this outrageous lie, and they cannot really tell the truth because then the whole house of cards would collapse and everybody would realize this is all one giant fraud.

They cannot tell the truth so they have to keep coming up with new lies to try to market this to more people. First, it was just a children's disorder. Then the drug companies realized they could sell this same speed drug to adults. I mean think about it. Children are only a small part of the total market.

What if we could convince adults that they too have ADHD then we could sell this drug to them also? They came up with a test. That's right -- a paper test to try to convince adults that they had ADHD.

You know what this paper test is made of? It's a few questions like: Do you feel like you are juggling too many things in your day? Do you have too much on your mind or too many projects that you cannot finish? Do you feel like the stresses of modern life are distracting you? Do you have trouble finishing projects or trouble concentrating on your work? These are the kinds of questions they ask.

Well it turns out that virtually everyone has ADHD according to those questions. This is what they used to diagnose adults. See there is no test. There is no blood test. There is no body chemistry test. There is no MRI scan. There is nothing physically wrong and nothing chemically wrong. They just take a test and it turns out that 80% of American adults who take this test end up diagnosed with ADHD -- that is 80% or four or five adults that walk into this room and answer these questions gets slapped with a label. You are ADHD.

What a quick quack diagnosis, is it not? Drag a bunch of adults into a room, tell them they have a disease, and then give them a drug. That is what this industry is all about.

Now they have to back this up and they have to say, "Well, gee, adults must have slow brain development too." They cannot think of any other reason to justify their fictitious disease so they are just dragging the stuff out of nowhere -- out of absolutely nowhere.

'Treatment' as a Marketing Term

Even Dr. Phillip Shaw who is the head researcher on this study at the NIH, said in a quote published on Reuters: "What I would not take away from this study is just sit and wait three years and your child will be okay," he said.

In other words, he is saying that even though his own research shows that the brain development of these children is three years behind, your children will not just grow out of it. He is saying, in fact, they need to be treated with chemicals -- or he is implying that.

He says, "We know ADHD is a real problem for children and their families and the schools and it does need treatment." Now treatment is the word that this industry uses for marketing. When they say "treatment" what they mean is get out your wallet. When they say too many children are going untreated, what they mean is not enough children have bought our drugs -- not enough parents have given in. Not enough prescriptions have been written.

When they say that more children need treatment that is what they mean. They need to sell more drugs. They have managed to change the language. They have managed to phrase all of this so that their marketing campaigns sound like compassionate public health campaigns. Oh, we care about these children so much that we have to sell them our over-priced monopoly prescription drugs that used to be sold as street drugs and would, in fact, get you arrested for a felony if you sold them to a child.

That is how they bypass those signs in front of the schools that say this is a drug-free school zone. They go right over that sign. They jump that fence, get into the administrator's office, get into the heads of the teachers, counselors, get them to start prescribing drugs or pushing them onto those children. Then they come up with this self-reinforcing MRI scan to say that there is a difference in brain development.

Well, of course there is. These children have been on speed. You take a bunch of crack babies and you put them in the same MRI machine, you are going to see something wrong with their brains too. Make no mistake about it. You take a bunch of heroin junkies, you put them in that machine, same thing. You are going to get some strange looking results.

It does not mean that they had some disease that was treated with heroin or crack and that the disease caused the brain problem. No, it means that the drugs they were taking were the most likely cause of these problems.

Flawed Children or Flawed System?

Let us get back to the doctor with the study -- the Multi-Modal Treatment Study of Children. The report's co-author I mentioned earlier is Professor William Pelham at the University of Buffalo. He is the one who found out that these drugs do not help children at all in the long run. He says, "In the short run, medication will help the child behave better. In the long run, it will not and that information should be made very clear to parents."

Dr. Tim Kendall, of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (the person who is working on some new guidelines about ADHD for the NHS) says, "A generous understanding would be to say that doctors have reached the point where they do not know what else to offer."

He says, "I hope we will be able to make recommendations that will give people a comprehensive approach to treatment…" there is that word "treatment" again. He continues, "and that will advise about what teachers might be able to do within the classroom when they are trying to deal with children who have difficult problems of this kind. I think the important thing is we have a comprehensive approach that does not focus on just one type of treatment."

Good for him to dare to say that we have to have a comprehensive approach. Well I have a solution for you that is comprehensive. How about nutrition? How about we stop poisoning our children with processed foods and chemical additives in those foods? How about we stop poisoning the brains of our children by dosing them up on speed? There's an idea for you.

We could cure children of this so-called behavioral disorder by doing two things -- making the children healthy and making education a lot more interesting. These children do not have attention deficit problems. You set those young boys down in front of a Wii or an X-box or a Playstation and they can pay attention for about 12 hours straight. They do not even pee or eat.

They sit there in front of that machine on that TV and they can focus and master a game. You go out and find a game called "Guitar Hero," put a 13-year-old boy in front of that game and you got the whole weekend done. Their whole weekend is focused on that one game and that child will master that game with hand/eye coordination.

That child will be a genius in that game by the end of the weekend. He goes back to school on Monday bored out of his mind. Why? Education is pretty darn boring the way it is done today in most schools. I know there are exceptions and my hat is off to those teachers who make learning fun. I had a few of those in my educational experience, but largely most of them were boring as heck.

History is reduced to just a series of names and dates to memorize and regurgitate onto paper so that you can be called smart and to say that you know history because you have memorized a bunch of stuff. Are you kidding me? That is not an education, and that is not interesting. No wonder these children cannot pay attention.

Education needs to be experiential. These children learn in a multitude of ways. It is not just auditory through a lecture or it is not just visual through a book. These children need to learn hands-on. They need to learn in a 3D space. They need to be able to move their bodies as they learn.

That is why "Guitar Hero" works, friends -- because they are moving. They are jamming out on these video game guitars -- the mind/body connection is solid. They are focused. They are learning. They master that game. We need to make public education more fun like that. I mean let's face it.

ADHD Drugs are a Crime Against Children

This is really about the Ritalin game, this is about making students easier for teachers to handle. It is about society not being willing to handle the energy of young children and instead of letting these children express that creative energy in a variety of ways and giving them a useful outlet for that energy, they want to turn our children into zombies.

You would think with a drug called "speed" that it would actually make them more hyperactive, right, but no it has the opposite effect. It is called "speed" but it makes them mellow. You can ask any ex-junkie who used to take that drug and they will tell you the same thing. Now, I remember when I was in the third grade, we had a baseball star come in and give a lecture about being hooked on drugs. He played for the Kansas City Royals.

He had been busted taking drugs. Part of his sentence was community service. He had to go into the schools all over town and talk to the children about how terrible an experience it was being hooked on drugs. He came in and he told us how he was hallucinating, what these drugs did to him, his sleep habits, and how they harmed his life and his health. I was really impacted by that speech but today guess what? You might as well have drug reps going into the schools telling children how good speed is for them.

That is what is going on. The drug reps go in and talk to the administrators, talk to the counselors, they brainwash those people, and then those people talk to the children and say you need these drugs. In one generation, we have gone from telling children "Just Say No to Drugs" to "Just take this pill and then you will be healthy" -- one generation.

Now, we have a new generation of children who are being raised on speed. Worse yet they have been given a label -- a label of a disease. They have been told that they are abnormal. Why? Because they have a whole lot of energy, because they can probably do 50 things at once. It is quite a skill. I have mastered it as an adult personally.

I can do 50 things at once and I do not have any disease. I have incredible creativity. I have fantastic mental focus. I can read a book a day if I want to. I can photo-read ten books a day, and learn multiple languages as an adult much better than I ever could as a child. If I were to walk into any of the psychiatric centers, they would diagnose me with ADHD no question about it. Why? Because I am doing many things at once. It fits their pattern. That is what these children are doing. They can do many things at once.

You say they cannot calm down. Of course they can't. They are too excited to be alive. They have stuff to do, stuff to learn, stuff to touch, hear, feel, taste, experience, stuff to categorize in those brains. Those brains are working and if you take them off those junk food additives those brains will work even better.

We have to start looking at the gem of what is in these children's heads. That brain is a gift and that brain needs to be cultivated, not shut down with drugs. This is a disgrace to the next generation what we are doing to our children. This is disgusting. In fact, I have often described it as a crime against humanity.

That is what I really believe it is. I believe to be a type of chemical castration to these young children that we are damaging their brains and now the MRI scans prove it, we are damaging their brains. We are stunting their growth. We are creating a generation of mutants because we are putting them all on speed. The industry has said, "Well we are not treating enough of them." They have said, "There are children still out there that do not have treatment. We must treat them all."

How the Drug Game Works

I read an article recently where the estimates were that only one-third of the children who have ADHD are currently "receiving treatment." The implication in this article was that they needed to put three times as many children on these drugs as there are now.

Think about that -- that would put the number at well over 10 million children in the United States being put on speed. A nation of drugged children -- stunted growth and what other side effects might we learn about this in the years ahead?

Nobody knows -- the researchers certainly don't know. This is all one giant experiment using our children as guinea pigs. This is a giant marketing experiment designed to generate profits, to scare people into believing in a fictitious disease, to label children with a fictitious disease name that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives. Make them a victim of a system of medicine that has no purpose other than to extract profits from bodies.

ADHD will not be the only label they will get. No way, perhaps the side effects of these drugs will cause liver damage and then they will get another disease name -- liver disease. Then after liver damage is in place for a long period, they will have toxicity in their blood and that might cause heart disease. It might cause sleep disorders. It might cause depression and guess what? Big Pharma has a drug to treat all of those too.

What are the odds? Just imagine a lifetime of popping pills. One side effect after another and it all starts with a fictitious diagnosis based on nothing but the opinion of a psychiatrist who has most likely been bribed by the drug companies himself or herself.

Try to find a psychiatrist practicing today who is not taking money from Big Pharma. Just try to find one. Try to find a decision-maker at the FDA who is not financially involved with the pharmaceutical industry. The situation is so bad that the FDA recently announced they were going to limit the amount of bribery allowed by the panel members who make the safety decisions for the FDA.

You see before there was no limit to the amount of bribery allowed. The FDA believed two things. They believed (1) that there should be no limit and (2) that none of this should be made public. In other words, no one needed to actually declare any conflict of interest nor declare how much money he or she had been receiving from pharmaceutical companies.

These are the people sitting on the boards making the decisions for the FDA about which drugs to approve or reject. Of course, all the high profit drugs were approved. Well, now the FDA has decided to clean up its act a little bit and limit the amount of bribery to $50,000 a year per person sitting on the panel. How is that for integrity? This is an agency so corrupt, so steeped in dishonest practices that it believes integrity means limiting bribery to $50,000 a year per person sitting on these panels These are the people making the decisions on drugs like Ritalin.

The Grand Experiment

Here is another fact you probably do not know: Most drugs that are prescribed to children have never been tested for either safety or effectiveness in children.

Anti-depressants, for example, are commonly prescribed to children. There are millions of children in this country who are on anti-depressant drugs -- SSRI's they are called -- Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. They are the ones that have been linked to suicides, to violent behavior, violent thoughts. Many of these have been banned for use in children in other countries including the UK, but here in the United States it is perfectly okay to prescribe them on children even though they have never been tested on children -- never! Not one shred of evidence that they are safe on children -- not one.

This whole system of medicine that the FDA claims is the "Gold Standard of Medicine" -- this whole system is a sham. There is no real evidence behind most of what goes on and the evidence that you do see? A lot of it has just been fudged. It has been fraudulently created in order to achieve some level of cover so that the corrupt officials who have been bribed making decisions at the FDA can go ahead and put their rubber stamp on that drug. They can then approve it and release it into the marketplace.

That is when the grand experiment really begins. That is when we start seeing what happens when you unleash this drug onto a population that has never really been tested for? We are just now starting to learn the answers to that question. One of the answers that we just learned is that these drugs for ADHD stunt the growth of children. We know that now. What else might happen?

Might it cause them to be unable to reproduce down the road? What if it stunts the growth of sperm development, as these children become men? What if it interrupts the development or the release of eggs in the ovaries? What if it causes reproductive problems? What if we are, in fact, creating a generation of children who cannot reproduce?

We do not even know if that is the case or not. We will not know for many more years because this is a grand experiment. No one knows. No one can tell you what is safe. No one can tell you that the scenario I just described cannot happen because they do not know. It has never been tested.

Psychiatric drugs only have to be tested for a few weeks -- sometimes as little as six weeks before they are released onto the public and can be prescribed for a lifetime. That is right. This is true. You can Google this and find it yourself. The FDA has rules about this and the rules state that psychiatric drugs -- even those for schizophrenia -- only need to be tested for a few weeks and then they can be released to the public and prescribed for years or decades.

How do they know that these drugs are safe for use over a period of years or decades? They do not know. No one knows. If you allow your child to be put on these drugs then you are giving up your power and you are in a sense playing the role of a servant to this industry. You are giving up your money. You are compromising the health and safety of your child.

Diet Affects Behavior

You may say "Well, my child has behavioral problems, he is difficult in school," or "The teacher has told me that I should put him on Ritalin. What do I do?" It is very simple -- change the child's diet. Take all the processed foods out of his diet. Take away the food additives -- the artificial colors, artificial flavors and processed sugars. Take all that out and fill his diet with wholesome foods -- fresh produce, super food nutrients.

Emerald Balance has another product made for children called "X-Balance." It is chocolate flavored. Children love it. It is loaded with super foods. You can blend it up into some chocolate milk or some kind of super food drink. Give your child one of those every day. It will change his life.

Symptoms of ADHD will vanish usually within just a couple of weeks once you change their diet. This is not difficult stuff. Take the Aspartame out of their diets. Stop feeding them soda and diet soda. Put wholesome foods and nutrition back into their diets and they will change. They will do better in school and they will resist infection. They will be far less likely to ever be diagnosed with diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. You will in fact be creating a very positive future for that child by changing their nutrition today.

That is how you eliminate so-called behavioral disorders for the most part -- 80% success rate with a couple of weeks just by changing what they eat. It's very simple. This is not complicated. Here is why.

Food as Fuel

The brain is a physical organ. The brain needs blood, it needs oxygen, and it needs blood sugar to operate. In fact, the brain uses up a whole lot of oxygen and blood sugar. The brain burns up some calories. It is that big CPU on top of those shoulders.

The body invests some real resources in keeping that brain active because, of course, the brain is our main advantage. That is why our species has flourished -- at least by some measures. We have at least been able to populate the planet. We have not really taken care of it but we have been very successful at spreading and we did that because our brains worked better than the other animals -- the other mammals on this planet with which we were competing. The brain takes a lot of energy, many resources. Well the brain runs on what is in your blood.

The blood is pumping fuel to your brain and the blood is removing metabolic waste materials from the cells in your brain, right? The brain is a physical organ and that means whatever is in your blood is affecting the functioning of your brain. It makes sense, right? You drive up to a gas station to put fuel in your car. You have three grades of fuel to choose from.

You have your regular, your premium and your super premium. The difference between those grades of fuel is performance. You put in a higher-octane fuel you are going to get more mileage per gallon out of that car because there is just more energy in that fuel. Well you would not drive up to a gas station that had budget fuel for your car.

Budget fuel is 50% water and 50% gas. Would you put that in your car's gas tank and then expect to drive away and have great performance out of your car even if that gas were say half the price of all the other gas? Of course not, no one would do that but what do we do with our children?

We feed them junk food -- cheap processed junk food that lacks the nutrients the brain needs to operate at a high performance. It is like putting water in your gas tank and then expecting the car to work correctly. It will not work that well.

How to Feed Your Brain

You have to feed the brain the nutrients that it needs. It needs essential fatty acids. It needs DHA. It needs Omega 3 oils, vitamins, minerals, and all of these plant-based phytonutrients from things like berries and micro-algae such as spirulina and chlorella. All of these super foods -- even cacao. The brain needs these nutrients if you want it to run at high performance. It only makes sense. Do you want a child's brain to work correctly? Feed the brain right.

That means getting the right nutrients into the blood, and you know the human body has a very cool system for getting the right nutrients into the blood. It is called "digestion." It is called eating it or drinking it. Get that stuff down your throat -- all that good nutritional stuff, high-density super foods and guess what? The digestive system will take those nutrients.

It will pull them out of those foods. It will put them into the blood stream, and then the heart will pump that blood right to the brain. The brain will absorb that and whoa, wham. The brain is working. Suddenly it is working right.

This is not rocket science to figure out. This is kind of common sense. Common sense that is completely missed by the whole system of organized medicine today -- psychiatry has no clue about the link between nutrition and brain health. They imagine it does not even exist.

They think that all behavioral disorders are a result of some kind of brain chemical imbalance that has to be corrected with an artificial, synthetic chemical put into the body. It's ridiculous! Your brain has everything it needs to operate perfectly and so does the brain of every child born in this country.

It has everything it needs to operate perfectly -- barring, of course, some bizarre birth defect where they were born without half a brain or something. That is the rare exception. Maybe one in a million -- everybody else has everything they need. They just need to feed that brain correctly. Give it the nutrients that it needs and stop poisoning the brain. Stop poisoning it with toxic food additives that you find in manufactured foods. Stop poisoning it with all the toxic chemicals that you find in personal care products today.

Stop poisoning it with environmental chemicals. That is the key. You want to keep the brain healthy. You want to see it work. Give it the nutrients it needs. Stop poisoning it with toxic chemicals and for goodness sake give it some water. You know the brain is at least 75% water. Many of these children are just dehydrated. That is why they cannot think because the brain does not have the liquid in there. It needs the water. The neurons will not work right without the water.

ADHD and the Standard American Diet

Instead of drinking water, they are chugging down processed juices, sodas, sugary drinks -- stuff like Ensure and Slimfast -- and those infant formulas that are made with about 50% sugar, and I am not exaggerating. I saw one that is 42.6% corn syrup solids plus 10.5% sugar. You put that together that is over 52% refined sweetener. This is a baby formula sold at Wal-Mart and it is half sugar. That is unbelievable.

This is what parents are feeding their children too. They are guzzling down the Gatorade. It is sugar water with artificial colors and some salt in it. That is what Gatorade mostly is.

Why are we feeding our kids this stuff? Girl Scout cookies contain partially hydrogenated oil, which contains trans fatty acids that promote heart disease. Read the labels on this stuff folks; you will be shocked to find out what is in it. Once you do, you will know then the real reason why children might have some behaviors that someone could interpret as a disease.

Their diets are messed up. Their nutrients are atrocious. They are not getting enough water and they certainly are not getting right nutrition. If you turn that around -- you turn around the health of these children.

What they definitely do not need is speed. They definitely do not need amphetamine drugs on top of their malnourished state. You take a child that is dehydrated, that is suffering from numerous nutritional deficiencies and then you feed that child amphetamines of course you are going to see stunted development of their brain on an MRI scan.

Of course, why would you expect anything else? You would have to be insane to expect anything else. Of course, it is going to harm those children. Why has it come to this in this nation? Do you ever wonder that? How did it get to the point where our children are now guinea pigs being drugged up instead of being fed correctly?

Why is it that these companies are pushing infant formula made with sugar but they denounce breast milk? Why is that sunlight is being discredited? It is these companies that sell sunscreen want you to coat your children with sunscreen chemicals rather than to allow them to have decent exposure to the sunlight? Sunlight, which would generate vitamin D and improve brain function, improves immune function, prevent cancer, improve blood glucose metabolism to help prevent obesity and prevent Type II diabetes and so on.

Selling Out the American People for Profit

Why has it come to this? There is one answer to all of this. It is the common thread that runs through everything I have said here and that is the profit motive of corporations. These corporations are out of control and they are behind all of this. They are the drug companies and the food companies and sometimes it is the same company.

They want to exploit the bodies of your children just to make money. That is all there is to it. They don't care who dies, who is harmed. They don;t care about ethics. They don't care about the environment. They don't care what happens when these drugs are eliminated from the body, get flushed downstream, and enter the aquatic ecosystems of our planet. They don't care about that. They don't even think about that. They are not concerned.

They do not care about any of the impacts of what they do as long as they can keep people alive long enough to make sure they keep buying their drugs and that is it. They will market these drugs to anyone -- infants, children, adults, senior citizens. They will market them to people who do not need them.

They'll even just invent diseases and market those diseases and they will buy off anybody they need to buy off. They'll buy off the psychiatrists. They'll buy off FDA officials. They'll buy off the media with advertising money.

They will pay money to anybody they have to pay to get this message out and get this propaganda cemented in the minds of the American consumer. Once that happens they know they can push these drugs for at least a generation before someone will finally catch up with them and expose this whole sham for what it really is. You see Big Pharma is a lot as Big Tobacco used to be.

They are selling a product they know harms people. They are distorting all the science to try to cover it up. They are buying off everybody to keep this gimmick going for as long as they can. They're buying off the lawmakers. They're buying off the regulators. They're buying off the media. They're buying off scientists and the ones they cannot buy off they intimidate. We have documented numerous cases of that kind of intimidation of scientists on our website, www.NaturalNews.com. That is where I encourage you to go to learn more about this issue.

False Media vs. Independent Media

Stay informed, stay empowered, and stay skeptical. Do not believe what you hear in the mainstream media. It is all influenced by this corporate agenda because the media takes money from these companies.

How do you think they pay their bills and their salaries? They take money from pharmaceutical companies who are pushing these drugs onto children. You cannot trust their information. You can only now trust information from independent sources. That is it.

Sources like the Environmental Working Group Online or the Organic Consumers Association or sites like www.NaturalNews.com. That's where you can get information that you can trust because I have nothing to sell you here other than ideas, I do not sell nutritional supplements. I do not make any money on nutritional supplements. I do not sell drugs.

The only thing I sell is information. You can buy books on my website. You can buy audio programs if you want, but guess what? Those same audio programs are also available free. The only thing I have to offer you are ideas and information and I hope you have enjoyed this information. I hope you found value in it. I feel passionate about this.

I think what is going on in America today is a crime against our children and I hope that the justice department will round up a bunch of law enforcement officers and march into the offices of these drug companies and start making arrests. These people should be tried for their crimes against the children of this country.

There should be a massive public hearing and a prosecution attempt against the CEO's of these drug companies and the corrupt officials at the FDA and the people in psychiatry who are committing these crimes or allowing them to happen. These people should all be held accountable for their actions in harming our children. We do not even know what the final cost of this is going to be down the road.

If these drugs stunt the growth of these children right now and cause their brains to develop more slowly than normal children what will be the long-term consequences here? We do not even know. Maybe some day we will find out.

Maybe some day there will be prosecutions, maybe even convictions against some of these people but first we have to have the will to move in that direction as a society. We have to stand up and say what is going on today is wrong -- that turning the bodies of these young children into chemical profit centers is morally wrong, ethically wrong. It is wrong in terms of health policy. It is wrong in so many ways that even this hour is not enough to talk about them all. We have to be willing to do that in society.

I have a six CD course available at www.TruthPublishing.com that is very reasonably priced for these Health Ranger reports because I want to give you the opportunity to listen to these in your car while you are commuting or while you are driving your children to the naturopath. I hope that you are not driving your child to a conventional medical doctor or a psychiatrist. As you are taking them to a naturopathic doctor, you can listen to these programs in your car. You can find those at www.TruthPublishing.com.

Parents Must Protect Their Own Children

I hope you agree with most of what you have read here and I hope you remain skeptical with everything that you read. I hope you check this out. Go to Google. Start Googling this information. Teach yourself the truth about this issue. Find out the truth.

Do not just get your information from some doctor who has been taking money from the drug companies and certainly do not get your information from the mainstream media because they are taking money from drug companies left and right.

No one in their right mind trusts the FDA anymore except, of course, the drug companies because the FDA is doing their bidding. So remain skeptical, remain informed and please do everything in your power to protect your children from these dangerous drugs and these evil corporations.

Protect your children. That is the best way that you can thank me for putting forth this effort to get you this information and to keep www.NaturalNews.com going is to just protect your children. Help me make a difference. Spread this information around.

I do not want to see more children stunted in their growth and harmed by these dangerous drugs and in fact, I would like to see this whole industry overturned. This whole sham of psychiatric medicine should come crumbling down real soon now. It can only do so if people like you -- intelligent consumers like you continue to stay informed and continue to voice your concerns.

Speak out! Take a stand! Do not be rolled over by these dangerous corporations -- these powerful entities who seem to be in control in society today.

They will not last much longer. Trust me because the truth is coming out about these issues and as this truth comes out that house of cards is going to come falling down. Stand up, voice your truth, and protect the health of your children.

This article is a transcript of Health Ranger Report #7, entitled The ADHD Scam and the Mass Drugging of Schoolchildren, which is available free of charge as an MP3 download at: http://www.naturalnews.com/Index-Podcasts.html

PETER BREGGIN

IS THERE ONE SINGLE SHRINK ANYWHERE THAT CAN BE TRUSTED ? REBECCA MERHAV'S KNOCK BACKS, AND HER FATHER'S ON HER BEHALF PROVIDE A NEGATIVE REPLY !

by Justice Lover

The so called "good psychiatrists", namely, those who claim to oppose the psychiatric atrocities, and have been honest enough to expose psychiatric deceptions and the subservience to Big Pharma, are only 90% honest. Therefore, no shrink can be fully trusted.

Take, for example, the top of the 90% honest shrinks : Dr. Thomas Szasz and Dr. Breggin. The first established the CCHR which is an arm of the Church of Scientology, and consequently subordinated to its diktat. Also, as is well known, Szasz has been for many years a tenured Professor of psychiatry, until his retirement, and consequently obliged to train new shrinks who would perpetrate the same psychiatric atrocities which he has exposed and condemned ! He refused to offer any help when Rebecca's father appealed to him, neither did the CCHR of which he still is the head !

Breggin too did not reply to any of the many appeals for his help emailed to him by Rebecca's father. Instead, he has been busy extending his influence on other shrinks. He has been busy making plenty of money too out of people's trust in him, as is correctly pointed out in the brief article below.

Rebecca's father failed to get the support of the knaves who run the organisations which claim to represent the interests of survivors of psychiatry, their members. Could it be that the 90% honest shrinks are behind that refusal too ? Or is it perhaps the long arm of Big Pharma that bought them over ?

A lawyer on behalf of the local shrinks has threatened by a letter to take both civil and criminal actions against Rebecca's father if he won't stop complaining against the 30 years of psychiatric torture of his daughter ! The letter also demnands that he should stop "inciting" other people to
protest her compulsory torture !

Here is the article by Dr. Dan Edmunds :

http://danledmunds.blogspot.com/2008/05/peter-breggin.html

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

PETER BREGGIN

I was recently asked by colleagues about my thoughts in regards to Peter Breggin. While some of his books have opened the door to discussions about humane psychiatry, I have a number of issues with Breggin.

First, he is out of touch. His clients have been the rich and elite who can afford his extravagant fees. He does not truly know the issues of disadvantaged children because he does not see them in his practice. In a phone conversation with Breggin where I asked him to simply see a foster child once to help with withdrawal from stimulants, he asked for $500 before he would do anything.

Second, Breggin is intellectually dishonest and profits highly for being a critic. Much like the biopsychiatrists he claims to oppose, he will distort information if he is paid the right fee.
I do not believe this is the way the cause for a humane psychiatr should be. We should not turn any way who need help and we must always be persons of ethics and principle.

Dan L. Edmunds,Ed.D.
www.humanepsychiatry.info

MORE ON THE "HEARING VOICES" PROP OF THE PSYCHIATRIC DOGMA

by Justice lover

There are many groups and internet sites run by people who "hear voices" and consider it a helpful phenomenon. See for example this international

organisation : The international community for hearing voices, http://www.intervoiceonline.org/ where I

found the following quotation :

Many voices can be unthreatening and even positive.
“It’s wrong to turn this into a shameful problem that people either feel they have to deny or to take medication to suppress.”
Professor Marius Romme

Yet according to the psychiatric dogma "hearing voices" is an auditory hallucination which is the main sign of of "the mental illness schizophrenia". Bearing in mind that the entire theory of mental illness is the figment of the shrinks' imagination
(delusions ?) , as it has no scientific basis whatsoever, surely that "hearing voices" prop of the psychiatric dogma is one of the many lies of psychiatry.

However, the Antipsychotic drugs, which the shrinks force their victim-patients to take, are themselves the cause for all kinds of bad hallucinations, yet they keep denying that, as they continue to prescribe the poisons under the cover of "medications for treatment" to avail themselves of Big Pharma bribes, and to suppress their victims' resistance.

The following articles on the subject by a survivor of psychiatry point out further the fraud of psychiatry, and the scandalous legitimacy and power accorded by the state to this fascist quackery.

---

Hearing Voices and Creativity

The voices I hear and perceive, are female voices, and some of them are positive, educative, friendly, and supportive. I'm glad that I hear these voices, because they are very much a part of my true nature, they improve my knowledge, social skills, and communication, and keep me in touch with the creative and learning spirit.

All voices are in a sense all aspects of every human being, as we all internalise our social and interpersonal experiences to some extent, but they are also very real and definitive differences in society, and which can become internalised by the individual voice hearer to meet his or her needs and requirements.

Some of my female voices can act as a muse, who are able to both inspire, respect, and appreciate the emotional and intellectual skill and ability of a voice hearer. The very strange, but very beautiful, hypnotic and trance-like receptivity of some of my female voices, filters, transforms, and reciprocates the social and interpersonal experiences of other people into the mind, social interaction, and creative imagination.

Whether the fact that I have intellectual discussions and debates with my female voices, means that I'm not being adequately stimulated or represented intellectually in my social life is an interesting point. In some ways this is very true. From my experience, interaction, and observation, I think that a lot of psychiatrists in particular, are jealous of the knowledge and creativity of psychiatric diagnosed people, and very envious of the fact that we have a spiritual and creative realm of our personal and social experiences, which are not controlled by church and state, and which psychiatrists cannot adequately experience, accept, nor understand.

I was very interested and intrigued by what a hearing voices group facilitator said about a member of her local hearing voices group, who also had female, helpful voices, but that the voices eventually said goodbye to him when he was engaged to be married. This raises the question of whether hearing voices is caused to a great extent from love and relationship deprivation. On the one hand, I think this is true, as most members from my local hearing voices group - including myself - are single and very much need and would like relationship partners in our lives, although obviously, some people in satisfactory social relationships hear voices too.

A friend of mine who also hears voices, recently said to me that a person can still be alone in a crowd, and that maybe when he was surrounded by other people in the nineties that he was isolated after all. He added to this, agreeing with this article after reading it, by saying that he doesn't think that voices do develop through isolation at all. Whilst having a love relationship with two people in the nineties, my friend said that he heard lots of voices, and when he was very mentally unwell at the start of the nineties, he was living with friends with whom he used to party quite a lot, and he still heard voices then too. It was when he became more solitary in the last 6-7 years that his voices stopped.

I think it is a mentalism, and a very common misconception amongst a lot of mental health workers and hearing voices group facilitators, to believe that voices develop solely through emotional, intellectual, and social isolation, because whilst there is obviously a lot of truth and accuracy in this, this rather reductionist viewpoint, can also fail to understand the necessary interaction between inner and outer experiences in order to love and learn, and it can also deny and invalidate a persons inner and outer experiences of their past and present life in general.

It can also deny and invalidate the unique processes, experiences, knowledge, wisdom, and culture of psychiatric diagnosed people, and deny the healthy and creative interaction between inner and outer experience and which is required to learn, share, and exchange knowledge and love, and to function in society to our satisfactory or full potential.

It also fails to acknowledge and realise the social interaction strategies, actions, and behaviours, which are oppression, and which can be coerced and enforced upon peoples lives without our individual and general choice, agreement, consensus, or consent.

In my mental health articles, I try to write concisely and with a flow, much like a piece of music or a song, and I write in a manner that reveals glimpses of light, reveals some of my ideas and findings, but which also subtly encourages and inspires people to think for themselves. I don't by any means reveal all of my own social and interpersonal knowledge and findings, as I don't want my knowledge and findings to become elitist and institutionalised.

One difference between psychiatric diagnosed people and other people in society, is that we are often more emotionally assertive and receptive, and struggle to be more emotionally free or liberated. Because of emotionally repressive English culture though, we often have to suppress our emotional expression and receptivity with psychiatric drugs, and which reduces our imagination, creativity, emotions, desire, thinking, consciousness, and awareness.

Peter H. Donnelly

2006

***

Hearing Voices and Public Awareness

Public awareness is both a political and a mental health phrase and concept. It is also a psychological one. Whilst public awareness and social consciousness are usually described as something external to the individual mind and objective, there is also an internal and subjective experience of public awareness, and which is absorbed and exists in a dialectical relationship to the intellectual mind, feeling, and thinking.

I sometimes have discussions and debates with my positive voices, and one main function of these voices, is that they ask me questions about things that is based upon common sense and public thinking, and which I would otherwise not think of asking myself. The positive voices, critique and ask me to clarify some of the things I have written in my mental health articles, for the benefit of both subjective and objective public and intellectual understanding.

The questions the positive voices ask me, are unlike intellectual thinking, not of an individual nature, but are much more of a collective way of thinking, and when I am asked these questions by my positive voices, I am asked by a group of many positive voices, and these questions are then asked or represented individually by one, two, or three voices at different intervals.

As an intellectual, I am a lateral and not a common thinker, but I need this inner public awareness in order to think more in terms of how the actual public might or could respond to my ideas, discoveries, and writing, and to both bring knowledge to the public, and to bring some of my thinking, consciousness, and awareness more down to earth.

My positive voices often ask me very common sense but very relevant questions, and which again, I would otherwise not think of asking myself. Ideally, I need this kind of public debate in my actual social life in response to what I experience, think, and write, but I find that the actual public are usually not willing to debate intellectually at all, or not willing to debate with intellectual people.

It is sometimes assumed by medical psychiatry that hearing voices is due to low intelligence, or due to a lower form or level of consciousness. In my experience of my own voices, and my experience and understanding of other voice hearers, I think that hearing voices can be due to both a higher and lower form of consciousness and awareness - simultaneously, and at different times.

Whilst politically in mental health, we are often told about raising public awareness and social consciousness, and whilst I very much agree with doing this, I think we also need to be realistic about it, and to realise the higher process and dialectical interaction of higher and lower consciousness psychologically and socially.

I find that I have to lower my intellectual consciousness and awareness, in order to think in terms of common sense, and to debate and discuss with my positive voices, and which are like the voices of ordinary people. As a result of this interaction between my intellectual thinking and feeling and a common sense form of debate, I am able to once again raise my consciousness and awareness and come up with more intellectual thinking, discovery, and ideas.

Peter H. Donnelly

2005

***

Hearing Voices and Social Isolation

We need a new model of treatment, and a new way of thinking, with regard to social isolation and hearing voices and/or so-called schizophrenia. There’s a tendency for social workers, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals, to bully people who hear voices and/or who are diagnosed with schizophrenia, into socially interacting more with others. This stems from two major misconceptions.

Firstly, whilst it’s true that voices can be in part caused by social isolation, to simply say that voices are caused completely or mostly by social isolation, is false, ignorant, and misleading, and it leads to a lot of harm, neglect, and abuse. Voice hearers and people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia have a different way of socially interacting, and which reciprocates much more the inner and outer experiences. Non voice hearers and the non-diagnosed keep their inner and outer experiences more intact, except perhaps when they are asleep and dreaming.

Having more reciprocity between inner and outer experiences, may in fact be a much more healthier way to think, feel, and socially interact. So it is simply not true to say that people who hear voices don’t socially interact, aren’t socially interacting enough, or are disabled in this way. It may just be that voice hearers and diagnosed people need a certain amount of solitude to filter and transform their experiences of social interaction, and that the social interaction that voice hearers do have is experienced differently. This is the new model of treatment and way of thinking which is required towards hearing voices and diagnosed schizophrenia.

Secondly, it is the case that for many people, hearing voices actually counteract social isolation. Our voices befriend us and are like imaginary friends. This does not mean that we need to be bullied into socially interacting more, nor that we have a disability to socially interact, it just means that we have a different way of counteracting social interaction, but which is just as effective for us.

A friend of mine says that when he gets depression, the voices can lessen the impact of the depression because they reframe the experience into something more open ended. This opens up the possibility for new social interactions as I see it, but does not necessarily close the possibilities. The view that hearing voices can help prevent social isolation is quite a radical one, but a very valid one nonetheless. Voice hearers have a more complex model of social interaction.

My friend Luke mentioned that this also has a strong link to theater, and the voices are like a "dialogue sense" - an extra module in the mind. In the book The Master Game, the author Robet de Ropp explains a concept called "Inner Theater", and which is like a dialogue sense that enables spiritual growth by modeling others and mapping the highly complex structures of interaction. This may also have some similarities to what voice hearers are experiencing.

Peter H. Donnelly

2006

***

How I cured myself of Negative Hearing Voices

I first started hearing voices when I was 23. At least that was when I started hearing negative voices, as I have vague memories of being lonely as a child of 5 years of age, and of sitting outside and talking to a positive and friendly female voice in the sky who responded to me. If I thought hard, I could hear a positive female voice, and to me this was like a trick I could achieve with my mind. I didn’t think that the voice was God/Goddess or any supernatural force.

The voices I first heard when I was 23, were brought about and triggered by abuse, harassment, and stress, and after I had been using cannabis quite heavily, and I heard negative voices, one of which was a junior school teacher who used to pull my hair and shout at me for no reason. I took Stelazine for the hearing voices, but it didn’t do much to alleviate them. When I told my social worker that I was hearing voices, she said that I was lying. Then when I did convince her that I heard voices, she said that I was psychotic, and she told me to go onto a very high dosage of Stelazine, and which I did for a few years.

There were no hearing voices groups available at that time, although if there had of been they would have been a great help to me. Some years later, I wrote my voices down to analyse the content and structure of them. One negative voice was of another child at secondary school who used to bully me. Previous to experiencing this I’d had counselling, and the negative voice existed alongside two positive voices, and which were of the counsellors standing up for me and defending me against the child who bullied me.

After writing the voices down, I was able to separate the negative from the positive voices in my mind, and after this I only heard positive voices. I’m not sure exactly how this process worked for me, but it did work. I achieved it mostly by ignoring the negative voices, and talking with the positive ones and developing good loving and respectful relationships with them. Maybe this was my way of achieving good self esteem, or of establishing good relationships with the opposite sex, and which didn’t exist in my social life in terms of having love-relationships.

Now I only hear positive voices, and which are always one, two, or three female voices. The voices don’t have names and wish to remain anonymous to me in that respect, but they are very intimate and friendly with me. One female voice is quite assertive, although not domineering, but a bit questioning and sceptical, and another female voice is softer and more receptive and reassuring, but they all make suggestions and ask questions. The voices speak both separately, and in unison at the same time.

What is interesting to me, is that the positive voices are intelligent, but not intellectual voices, although they are more down to earth and pragmatic, and they ask me more practical questions in terms of my thoughts, writings, and articles. Maybe this is a side of me which is unconscious, or which I have suppressed with my more lateral and intellectual thinking.

I received a year of psychotherapy from two different female counsellors, and their voices became internalised and which I heard as positive voices too. This is why I am convinced that positive therapeutic relationships, with professionals or non-professionals such as family, friends, or lovers, are essential to changing voices from negative into positive. Good friendships and relationships are essential to some kind of recovery.

For a few years, I actually stopped hearing voices altogether. This was not a good thing for me though, as my voices care for me and help me to think about things more practically and clearly. Without positive voices I would be devastated. So I had to focus my mind, in order to re-create the voices. I still don’t know exactly how I did this, other than setting up a dialogue in my mind, and talking to my own thoughts, and then imagining hearing them (like thinking of a tune or music), and then I could hear them with my ears, and they became somewhat independent of my conscious thoughts. Thus, I combined my thoughts and integrated them with my imagination and senses.

I would like to know more about how the mind creates hearing voices, and more importantly teach others how to hear positive voices, because I believe that hearing positive voices is a gift, and that it is hugely beneficial to having good thinking and good mental health.

Peter H. Donnelly

2007

MORE ON THE DANGEROUS,ARBITRARY ,VICIOUS, DESTRUCTIVE AND ABUSIVE POWER INHERENT IN THE PRACTICE OF COERCIVE PSYCHIATRY
by Justice Lover

The articles below were sent to me by the author,Peter H. Donnelly, a survivor of both child abuse past and of subsequent abuse by the shrinks. One by one the author exposes and invalidates some very common practices by the shrinks, so common that not only the shrinks consider them valid and acceptable, even the public at large does the same.

Having read the articles some immediate questions beg the reader for urgent answers, such as : why have the shrinks got away so far with their horribly unjustifiable stigmatisation of their victim-patients, to the point of complete destruction of the victims' lives ? Why are psychiatry and its practitioners allowed to falsely and fraudulently claim to impose "treatment" as a "medical specialty"on their victims when the opposite is true, namely, they impose torture, destruction and death rather than healing and help ?

Even without the deadly poisons of Big Pharma, and without the electric shocks, and without the "psychosurgery", the mere psychiatric terminology can destroy any person, and turn life into hell, and it does, so why allow such terrorism to be imposed on the public ?


Here are the articles :

Reality Testing and Reality Assumption

There are many reasons why I am critical of the term and label "psychotic". Firstly, because it is a term, or similar term, sometimes referred to in an argument to invalidate or suppress another person's point of view or perspective. The term or label of "psychotic", could therefore be used simply to deny and suppress other persons' valid point of view or perspective, personally, interpersonally, socially, politically, and so on.

The label of "psychotic" is therefore a perspective controlling machine, and like a machine, it often operates mechanically, and without it’s own true or unique perspective or consciousness.

I am also in some ways critical of the meaning of the term and label "psychotic", which means, "out of touch with and not corresponding to reality".

There are many different philosophical, political, and theological interpretations of reality, but where psychiatric social and mental health is concerned, anything which differs from the professional medical psychiatric and social or mental health perspective, can therefore be deemed to be out of touch with and not corresponding to reality, and therefore "psychotic".

In fact, this mentalist labelling of "psychotic", is in itself exclusive, and is in itself out of touch with other interpretations of reality - which are just as corresponding to reality - and just as realistic. Thus, the absence of the knowledge of the mentalism of the term, process, and label "psychosis", could itself be said to be "psychotic" in some ways. It is "psychotic" in the sense that it is trying to suppress another point of view or perspective, as in this way, it is out of touch with and not corresponding to another person’s living reality.

The other main reason why I am critical of the term "psychotic", is that whilst I accept that a person can be hallucinating and having delusions of people, things, and forces which are unreal and untrue, on some deeper level of social interpretation their ideas might fit reality in a different way, and their ideas might make a lot of sense, in context to the person’s past and present social and life-experiences, and in context to the voices social and cultural meaning.

Reality testing, can also often make assumptions about another person’s grasp of reality, in order to feel superior and to feel more in touch with reality. The main assumption this makes, is to assume that just because in some part of the person’s brain, the person is hallucinating voices or whatever, then to assume that whole person’s brain and consciousness must be out of touch with reality and therefore hallucinating.

From personal experience, I know that is possible to be both hallucinating voices, and agreeing or colluding with some of the delusions of those voices, and yet to still to be in touch with reality, and still be in touch with the knowledge and awareness that the voices and their content are not real. This complex configuration is very difficult for psychiatrists to grasp and understand, partly because medical psychiatry - which is a very linear thinking - fails to grasp or understand dialectical thinking, and which can operate differently, and somewhat paradoxically, on many different levels.

In order to understand madness, it helps if you have experienced it, or experienced something similar to it. There is indeed a point which the delusions of hearing voices, can take over completely, as in the throes of a mental breakdown, but otherwise it is quite possible to experience both delusion and reality at the same time.

This dialectical thinking is in some ways much better than the exclusive reality perspective, because it can grasp reality and have a firm grip on real people and things, and yet it still has the creativity and imagination to receive other interpersonal, social, and cultural meanings of things. The voice hearer can therefore sometimes be an interpersonal, social, and cultural filter, which takes interpersonal, social, and cultural meanings, and places them together in different patterns, in order to have a much wider dialogue and understanding of society and reality.

Peter H. Donnelly

2005

***

Am I Normal?: Spirituality

In this TV programme, shown on the 28th of April, 2008, on BBC 2 at 9 p.m., as part of the documentary series Am I Normal?, Dr Tanya Byron explored what some consider the fine-line, between religious devotion and so-called psychiatric disorder. She began the programme, by asking what place does religious belief - which depends not on rational thinking and scientific proof, but simple faith - have in the modern world? She asked, are people who devote their lives to something that can never be proved, wasting their time?, and is the very idea of religious belief, evidence of flawed, or even demented, thinking?

Tanya Byron spoke to a street preaching born-again Christian, who when asked if he ever wondered that people might think he’s crazy, said that people who say this are crazy themselves, and trying to push their craziness and negativity onto others. She then spoke to a nun, who said that monastic isolation helped her to face her inner demons. The nun said that she knew her beliefs in God were true, but it was not something she knew with her head, but more similar to something a person knows with their heart.

Tanya Byron then said, that a lot of mental health professionals, say that a high percentage of people with diagnosed schizophrenia have religious beliefs, but that this helps them with their problems and life in general. A psychiatrist said that religion has had a bad press in psychiatry. Because of religious delusion, the psychiatrists tend to see spirituality as something that needs treating. The shrink continued by saying, that this prejudice about the religious beliefs, of people with mental health problems, stems from the fact that religion and science have been separated, in the history of psychiatry, and that we need to bring science and religion back together.

Former MP, and newspaper columnist, Matthew Paris said that he had no problem with many Christians, but that he got irritated with laziness of mind, using bad arguments, and finding comfort in something, that they know in some part of their brain just isn’t true.

Tanya Byron then mentioned that it has been said, that if you talk to God, then you are religious, but if God talks back to you, then you are a schizophrenic. Richard Benthal, the author of Madness Explained, said that we all have an inner voice, and that it’s well known in child development, that at age 2 we all start talking to ourselves. He said that diagnosed mad people are treated as another species, and considered that they are deluded, out-of-touch with reality, and that others have a privileged access to reality, and diagnosed mad people are seen as not responsible for their actions and need controlling.

Tanya Byron then said that, what if people who hear voices are not mad, but are just unhappy people who have had bad experiences in their lives, and that they need to be listened to, and not labelled as mad and feared. She attended the Manchester Hearing Voices group, who are working with the University of Manchester’s new research, to look at hearing voices in a new way.

Peter, from the Manchester Hearing Voices Group, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and been in a out of psychiatric hospitals, said that his negative voices, were taken over by more positive voices, of his mother and grandmother. He said that psychiatrists trying to suppress the experience of hearing voices, were not helpful, because we need to not fragment the voices, but integrate them - have a relationship with them - get to know the voices and understand them. Tanya Byron concluded the programme, by saying that we need to accept the spirituality of diagnosed mad people, and not label this as part of their diagnosed mental illness.

I thought it was a good programme, but I have one major criticism of it. It’s not a simple matter of religious belief on the one hand, and rational thinking on the other, or religion and science, and simply bringing the two together. It’s a slightly more complex matter, of the dialectical relationship between the two, and that they can be connected or related, and yet still remain very separate. As a writer, and experienced person on mental health matters and creativity, I am basically a rationalist and a scientist, but I also believe in creativity, and realise the importance of things like spirituality too, in order to further the rationalist and scientific quest.

As a voice hearer, I hear positive, educative, friendly, caring, and supportive voices, which are female. I need to have these hearing voices experiences for my own well-being, and to create and think fully and effectively, and I would be depressed and devastated without them. I often initially have to create the voices with my mind, by setting up a basic dialogue with another in my thoughts, and then the voices have some autonomy from my conscious thoughts, and engage in discussion and debate with me.

When I am not hearing the voices, I know that they are not real, and are just an extra function of my mind or brain, but whilst experiencing them as autonomous, and relating and engaging with them, I have to suspend rational thinking and belief, and believe that they are real people, otherwise I would not hear or experience them, and otherwise I would not be able to come up with new knowledge and findings, and write about them.

This means, that the rational belief aspect of the mind has to be suspended, for a different modality of thinking and feeling to take place, and in order for new rational and scientific thinking to occur. Even though this involves temporarily believing in things which do not exist, it is not laziness of mind, or bad argument, as Matthew Paris simply put it. It is often a much more complex, and more deeper way of thinking, which is a more dialectical thinking, and a different mode of consciousness.

Peter H. Donnelly

2008

***

Paranoia-Inducing, Projection, and Internalisation

To begin this article on paranoia, I first want to say something about paranoia-inducing, paranoia projection, and the internalisation or introjection of this. Some people in power and society, will try to induce paranoia in people diagnosed with mental health problems, because they get a kick out of it, it makes them feel superior in terms of power and awareness, and it makes them feel and think that they have a better grasp and understanding of reality.

For example, whilst it may be argued that the drug cannabis induces paranoia, there is also the reality of the discrimination against the drug and its use, because it is illegal, and which can also induce paranoia.

By persecuting, terrorising, and hounding individuals, this can be a way of making the victimised person feel frightened, angry, paranoid or upset, and which are all ways to control and label the person, as having symptoms of so-called mental illness. This may also be a projection of paranoia - perhaps a mass paranoia - upon individuals or small groups. This projection of paranoia, can then become internalised by the person, but could also be an awareness of what could happen, if this discrimination and abuse to induce paranoia, became extended to actual or more violence, became more extreme, and got out totally of hand.

There is also the matter of sensitivity with paranoia. Some people who are labelled as paranoid may have a sensitivity to their local surroundings, and be sensitive to some aspects of social and cultural animosity, that others cannot see or admit to about themselves, or are not as aware of. Paranoia can be a more social way of thinking, because it is connecting to others, albeit in a negative way.

One opposite of paranoia, is the denial of power abuse, repression, and oppression in society and reality. A normal person may be tolerant towards some abuse and oppression, whilst the so-called paranoid person is aware of it and protests against it.

Paranoia can also be part of a creative process, where a detail or details get enlarged or exaggerated for atmosphere and effect, whilst there is some corresponding so-called delusion thinking, although once the blocks or delusions have passed, and the person can see the whole picture, this can then be part of a personal, cultural, social, or political critique.

Paranoia labelling can simply be a denial of rights to protect persons and people from persecution, discrimination, abuse, and oppression. On the BBC TV programme The Doctor Who Hears Voices, a female member of the Manchester Hearing Voices group, said that she was frightened that aliens were going to take her away, remove her eyes, and blind her. This might mean, that she is frightened that she could be sectioned, or incarcerated, in psychiatric hospital, if she told others about the voices, and that she could become alienated, and have her perceptions and thoughts about the experiences of the voices, taken away from her by psychiatric incarceration and drugs.

What is curious and interesting, is that in my experience, paranoia can be taken as a general personal criticism by another person - particularly a parent or other family member - even though the critical aspect of the paranoia is not directly about that person. Again, this might be because the paranoia is warning people of what could happen, if things became extreme or out of control, because it highlights the so called sane person’s denial or tolerance of abusive power and repression, and because it is in a way seen as mad, irrational, and delusional. It is at the least, an extension of the so-called sane person’s intolerance against another person having a different opinion or experience.

Paranoia that exists alongside or are also delusions, can stem from the fact that harm, abuse, and bullying has been done to the person in the past, and that events are somewhat overlapping in the mind. What the person needs is to understand are that the events are separate, but that they are also somewhat interconnected and interrelated.

Paranoia can also be about the person needing love, reassurance, and protection, and about his or her way of expressing that need. Paranoia can also stem, from the way that children or young people can be threatened or told that bad things will happen to them if they misbehave. This can induce paranoia in the child or in later life.

Peter H. Donnelly

2008

***

Stream-of-consciousness

Stream-of-consciousness (SOC) is accepted as a sane, literary style, if it is written, but it is sometimes perceived as madness if it is spoken by people in everyday conversation or communication.

Some psychiatric-diagnosed people, use SOC in their speech or communication, because they see life events as being in some way very much interconnected, whether through some religious notion such as Karma, or from some more social or personal notion. SOC is used in a person's speech or communication, because it adheres, in some ways, to how people see life-events, along with their beliefs and values.

The interconnectedness and over-lapping of events, plays a big part in our influences, dreams, and subconscious, and can tell us a lot about our present experiences and behaviour. SOC can also be used because a person's life events may seem fragmented, and streaming is seen as a way of linking and reconnecting events and experiences in the mind.

In literature, SOC is used to describe a character’s actual thoughts-patterns, and their responses to external stimuli in their environment, but it is questionable whether stream-of-consciousness actually represents objective reality, as it is a more subjective approach to expression, learning, and understanding.

Another reason SOC might be used in speech or communication, is because if the mind is releasing a lot of ideas in one go, then there may be more possibility of another person connecting to these ideas, if the other person can keep up with the density or pace.

A psychiatric-diagnosed person I used to know, would talk very fast in streams, and then if you responded with a word or statement, he would then ask you what that word meant and was all about. This was his way of trying to encourage the other person to think in streams of ideas, and suspend their critical faculties, but he was also anticipating a rational approach being used against his streaming, and so he would anticipate this or assume, that the other person was going to ask him what he meant, as a way of the other person controlling his consciousness, thinking, relating, and communication.

SOC is sometimes used if a person is stressed out, and can be a form of so-called brainstorming. Brainstorming is where the mind uploads ideas on a given subject, usually within a group, so a person can get many ideas on paper in a short space of time. This can also be a way of releasing stress and anxiety. Another reason why some psychiatric-diagnosed people brainstorm, is because they may have a problem with memory and connecting their ideas and thoughts together.

A person may be half-way into a conversation, and then forget what they were going to say, but by brainstorming and releasing a stream of ideas, the person can then think associatively, and possibly reconnect to what they were trying to say beforehand. This is a way of overcoming short-term memory blocks. On the other hand, the person might just fly off into another direction, and reconnect to something completely different, suspending all rational, critical, and structuring faculties.

Peter H. Donnelly

2008

***

Abuse Survival, Speaking Out, Professionals and Society

The whole subject of child abuse is a very complex one, especially if one is to come out as an abuse survivor to social work and mental health professionals or to the public.

I am a child abuse survivor, but I have now understood and forgiven the person that abused me, because I realise that although they wasn’t abused as a child by their parent or parents, they grew up in a very emotionally hard, and a very socially and economically poor environment. Also, since being a very bad parent towards me as a child, they have been very good to me as an adult, and I am absolutely convinced that there is now mutual respect and love between us.

Most people in some ways have been oppressed or abused by the system. Whether this involves oppression and bullying by parents, teachers, or from other children, or oppressed and bullied in work, people in general have more or less suffered from some sort of abuse. However, it is still important to make a distinction between actual child abuse, and abuse by the system against people, although I make the comparison because it relates to when and how a person speaks out about being abused, and what responses they can receive from professionals or society.

Whilst there are some very good reasons to come out as a child abuse survivor, there are also some very good reasons for hiding this information until the appropriate time. From my experience and knowledge, it can be unwise to come out as a child abuse survivor, to some social work and mental health professionals, as this can make them feel guilty, because they are part of a system that should have prevented the abuse. This guilt can turn defensive and aggressive, and involve the professional insulting and attacking the abuse survivor verbally, or even justifying the child abuse as being part of tradition, discipline, or family values. Child abuse can also be justified as being seen as a form of protest, whilst the child abuse survivors protest for change gets denied and ignored.

I spoke to a fellow child abuse survivor recently, and she said that people who haven’t been abused as children don’t understand. I replied to her, that whilst it’s true that they don’t understand, it also true that they just don’t care, because they don’t know the degree of suffering of being abused as a child, and because they also believe that they too have suffered from some sort of abuse by the system, and in a way believe that they have suffered more. Unfortunately, we have no means of measuring who suffers more in society, although experience, intelligent common sense, and knowledge, tells us that abuse survivors suffer more as children from the rest of society.

There’s also a tendency amongst some abuse survivors and professionals, to believe that only men abuse children, and that all abuse is only sexual. Some women abuse children too, mentally, physically, and emotionally, and in some cases can be accomplices to child sexual abuse.

It’s important to come out as child abuse survivors at some stage, as we can start to try and change things for the better, and defend children's rights and welfare, and there is less likelihood of ourselves becoming abusers if we don’t repress our anger, hurt, conscience, and loving and caring emotions. People who indefinitely hide the fact that they’ve been bullied or abused as children, tend to become abusers in some ways, like some social workers and mental health professionals who have power over other child abuse survivors.

We need to come out about being abuse survivors at the appropriate time, when we can protest and survive together, otherwise it can be used against us by a repressed, misunderstanding, and uncaring society, and by some social work and mental health professionals.

Peter H. Donnelly

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

MORE ON THE INSANITY OF THE "MENTAL HEALTH" SYSTEM

MORE ON THE INSANITY OF THE "MENTAL HEALTH" SYSTEM

by Justice Lover

For the informed person the reality of the current "Mental Health" system is shocking enough.What the politicians have imposed on us is an arbitrary, irrational and very dangerous system under the pretext of medical "treatment", managed and perpetuated by psychiatry and its practitioners ,for the benefit of Big Pharma (in collusion with the entire ruling class, of course ).

Not less shocking is to witness the majority of the medical profession members in complicity with these ongoing crimes against humanity perpetrated by psychiatry, which is itself no more than a fascist quackery devoid of any scientific grounds whatsoever !

The following article is by Dr. Dan Edmunds (PhD in eduction), founder of The International Center for Humane Psychiatry.
However, can psychiatry ever be humane ? Can it be reformed ?
The history of psychiatry, the failed attempts to reform it , as well as its domination by Big Pharma, provide only negative answers, and emphatically !

http://danledmunds.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-we-can-do-about-system-gone-mental.html

WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT A SYSTEM GONE 'MENTAL'

A PLAN FOR TREATING THE INSANITY IN THE MENTAL HEALTH SYSTEM- WHAT WE MUST DO


First, we must stop looking through the eyes of a medical model, where we see children as broken and disordered and attempts are made to attributing their behaviors and emotions solely to a malfunctioning brain.

There is no evidence supporting the psychopathology of a number of disorders. The linkage between the pharmaceutical companies and psychiatry needs to be evaluated as well as the information that is disseminated via the research and materials provided by pharmaceutical company money.

One such example is CHADD, the 'support' group for parents of children diagnosed with ADHD that has received a great deal of his funding from the pharmceutical companies. The goal should be to examine the underlying factors of a child's behavior, looking at the child with dignity and respect, and seeing the child as one in conflict rather than a person who is disordered. Such stigmatization remains indefinitely, and labels can often become a self fulfilling prophecy and will follow our children for years to come and shape the way that they view themselves and also the way others view them, particularly the educational system.

We cannot look to solely the most cost effective solution when our children's lives are at stake. Indeed, providing a prescription may control aspects of behavior and be though to have a 'therapeutic effect' but never gets to the root cause, and whereas it is far less expensive to medicate than to provide ongoing psychotherapy, it is appropriate and compassionate counsel that will make the difference.

Second, the realm of psychotherapy must return to its orginal roots. The word psychotherapy literally means the healing of the soul. We must return the soul to therapy, encouraging therapists to instill within themselves the principles of compassion and empathy that are crucial for any therapeutic relationship to blossom forth. Therapists need to be compassionate and creative, and willing to give additional time and effort to see that a child's needs are met and to also provide community linkages and ongoing support within their environment and to encourage the least restrictive setting for our children.

The coercion of parents and families into forced 'treatments' needs to be eliminated.

Third, the educational system must be willing to accomodate to meet the various learning styles of children and not seek to place them in a box of rote learning or limit them to one particulat style. Some children may falter in a visual setting and need a hands on approach, whereas others may need other methods of encouraging their effective learning. We must return time, attention, and individuality to the classroom.

Fourth, parents need to continue to take an active role in the lives of their children, providing ongoing guidance, validating emotions and not taking a dismissive, disapproving, or hands off approach. Rather, parents must be involved in helping the children develop their own sense of being, and being able to assess themselves. Parents need to avoid nagging their children and becoming entrapped in the propaganda that their children are disordered and need drugs to function. Fifth, our society must change in it attitudes.

We are a society where we try to find our answers to ailments within a simple pill. We are a society that has unfortunately lost sight for the welfare of our children. We are a societry where we are prosperous, yet greed often blinds us. Such disorders such as ADHD can be looked upon as a social construct. 90% of Ritalin sales are in the US. This tells us that there is something to be examined within our society that needs correction. Somewhere along the line we have failed our children.

This is not to lay blame on any particular individual but to understand that our children are in crisis, and it is up to all of us to take the steps for change.

We need to rely less on psychiatry and its devices to solve our problems and more on what we can do within ourselves- to take a holistic approach, to understand the child as a whole person- physical, emotional, and spiritual, and to examine in each of these areas where there may be difficulties that can be alleviated. We need to rely less on others dictating the course of our own and our children's lives and develop workable plan within our own family structure. Nothing will ever be perfect, but even in the most serious disturbances, love and compassion can heal much.

We must realize that in some situations within society and within our own lives, we may never be able to evoke complete change. This is the cause of much distress, not problems themselves but how we respond to them. To battle those things beyond our control can lead us to emotional distress, but if we seek live as principled individuals, we can make a difference. What we model to our children and to others has a lasting impact.


Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D.
www.DrdanEdmunds.com
www.HumanePsychiatry.info

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/05/mental-illness-or-social-sickness/

Mental Illness or Social Sickness?

by Susan Rosenthal / May 19th, 2008

(Susan Rosenthal, MD, is a veteran American physician - Justice Lover)

When you are sick or injured, you want to know what’s wrong and what can be done. You want a diagnosis. A correct diagnosis reveals what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment and what is the likely outcome. For example, a diagnosis of pneumonia indicates a serious lung infection that can usually be cured with antibiotics.

While medical diagnoses are based on science, psychiatric “diagnoses” are not at all scientific. They do not reveal what is wrong, what is the preferred treatment, and what is the likely outcome. Nor are they reliable. Different psychiatrists who examine the same patient typically offer different “diagnoses.” Moreover, psychiatric “diagnoses” move in and out of favor, depending on a variety of social factors.

Psychiatric “diagnosis” is actually a labeling process, where the patient’s symptoms are matched with a grouping of symptoms listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM). As we shall see, this psychiatric “bible” was developed and is maintained by financial and political interests.¹

Sigmund Freud

Who decides what is normal or healthy and what is deviant or sick?

Before the 20th century, life stresses were generally seen as spiritual problems or physical illnesses, and people turned to religious advisors and physicians for help. Medical doctors treated “hysteria” and “nerves” as physical problems. Psychiatry was restricted to the treatment of severely disturbed people in asylums.² The first classification of psychiatric disorders in the United States appeared in 1918 and contained 22 categories. All but one referred to various forms of insanity.

In 1901, Sigmund Freud revolutionized psychiatry by breaking down the barrier between mental illness and normal behavior. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,³ Freud argued that commonplace behaviors — slips of the tongue, what people find humorous, what they forget and the mistakes they make — indicate repressed sexual feelings that lurk beneath the surface of normal behavior.

By linking everyday behavior with mental illness, Freud and his followers released psychiatry from the asylum. Between 1917 and 1970, as psychiatrists cultivated clients with a broad range of problems, the number of psychiatrists practicing outside institutions swelled from eight percent to 66 percent.⁴

The social movements of the 1960’s opposed psychiatry’s focus on inner conflict and emphasized the social sources of sickness instead. Dr. Alvin Poussaint recalls the 1969 convention of the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

“After multiple racist killings during the civil rights movement, a group of black psychiatrists sought to have murderous bigotry based on race classified as a mental disorder. The APA’s officials rejected that recommendation, arguing that since so many Americans are racist, racism in this country is normative.”⁵

Growing the industry

In 1980, the APA overhauled the DSM. The Task Force established to create the new manual declared that any disorder could be included,

“If there is general agreement among clinicians, who would be expected to encounter the condition, that there are significant number of patients who have it and that its identification is important in the clinical work it is included in the classification.”⁶

In other words, the new DSM was not based on science, but on the need to maintain existing patients and include new ones who might seek help for any number of problems. A profitable and self-perpetuating industry was born. The more people could be encouraged to seek treatment, the more conditions could be entered into the DSM, and the more people could be encouraged to seek treatment for these new conditions.

By 1994, the DSM listed 400 distinct mental disorders covering a wide variety of behaviors in adults and children. Significantly, racism, homophobia (fear of homosexuality) and misogyny (hatred of women) have never been listed as mental disorders. In 1999, the chairperson of the APA’s Council on Psychiatry and the Law confirmed that racism “is not something that is designated as an illness that can be treated by mental health professionals.”⁷ Homosexuality was listed as a mental disorder until activists campaigned to have it removed.⁸

The women’s liberation movement condemned labeling symptoms of oppression as mental illnesses. In They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal, Paula Caplan explains,

“In a culture that scorns and demeans lesbians and gay men, it is hard to be completely comfortable with one’s homosexuality, and so the DSM-III authors were treating as a mental disorder what was often simply a perfectly comprehensible reaction to being mocked and oppressed.”⁹

Caplan describes efforts to prevent “Masochistic Personality Disorder” from being included in the DSM. This disorder assumes that women stay with abusive spouses because like to suffer, not because they lack the resources to leave. Despite protest, “Masochistic Personality Disorder” was added to the 1987 edition of the DSM, although it was later dropped.

The inclusion of “Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder” (PMDD) in the DSM also raised a protest. According to Caplan,

“The problem with PMDD is not the women who report premenstrual mood problems but the diagnosis of PMDD itself. Excellent research shows that these women are significantly more likely than other women to be in upsetting life situations, such as being battered or being mistreated at work. To label them mentally disordered — to send the message that their problems are individual, psychological ones — hides the real, external sources of their trouble.”¹⁰

As soon as PMDD was listed in the DSM, Eli Lilly repackaged its best-selling drug, Prozac, in a pink-pill format, renamed it Serafem, and promoted it as a treatment for PMDD. By creating Serafem, Lilly was able to extend its patent on the Prozac formula for another seven years.

A marketing gold mine

The DSM is a marketing gold mine for the drug industry. The FDA will approve a drug to treat a mental disorder only if that disorder is listed in the DSM. Therefore, each new listing is worth millions in potential drug sales. Most of the experts who construct the DSM have financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, and every new edition of the DSM contains more conditions than the previous one.

Once the DSM lists a new mental disorder, drugs for that disorder are heavily marketed for everyone who might fit the symptom checklist. (Doctors are also encouraged to prescribe these drugs for “off-label use,” which means to anyone they think might benefit.) Not surprisingly, the numbers of people “diagnosed” with a mental condition rise rapidly after a drug is approved to treat that condition.

In 2005, a major study announced that “About half of Americans will meet the criteria for a DSM-IV disorder sometime in their life…”¹¹ How is this possible? Has it become normal to be mentally ill, or has the definition of mental illness expanded beyond reason? Both could be true.

Capitalism damages people in many ways. It’s also true that the more people can be labeled as sick, the more profits can be made from selling them treatments. In Creating Mental Illness, Alan Horowitz warns,

“…a large proportion of behaviors that are currently regarded as mental illnesses are normal consequences of stressful social arrangements or forms of social deviance. Contrary to its general definition of mental disorder, the DSM and much research that follows from it considers all symptoms, whether internal or not, expected or not, deviant or not, as signs of disorder.”¹²

Most people know the difference between normal behavior (such as grief over the death of a loved one) and abnormal behavior that could indicate an internal disorder (such as prolonged grief for no apparent reason). However, the DSM does not consider what happens in people’s lives. With one exception (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), the DSM lists and categorizes symptoms outside of any social context. As a result, DSM-based surveys artificially increase the numbers of people suffering from mental disorders and, therefore, the market for drug treatments.

DSM-inflated rates of mental illness are typically accompanied by the warning that not enough people are getting treatment.¹³ The question of whether or not they are actually sick is never raised.

Social control

Psychiatry has a long history of medicating the oppressed, including children, for social control.¹⁴

Using DSM criteria, at least six million American children have been diagnosed with serious mental disorders, triple the number in the early 1990’s. The rate of boys aged 7 to 12 diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder more than doubled between 1995 and 2000 and continues to rise.

A 2007 survey of 8- to 15-year-olds discovered that nine percent met the DSM criteria for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The survey found that fewer than half of these children had been diagnosed or treated, “suggesting that some children with clinically significant inattention and hyperactivity may not be receiving optimal attention.” Noting that poor children were least likely to receive medication, the authors of the study recommend “further investigation and possible intervention.”¹⁵

Instead of addressing the stressful social conditions that agitate children, psychiatry imposes conformity through medication. To force compliance with this oppressive system, access to insurance benefits, medical care and social services depends on “having a diagnosis.”

The psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry treats illness as strictly individual and internal — the result of faulty genes or chemical imbalances. In reality, human problems exist in a social context.

Most of the symptoms listed in the DSM describe human responses to deprivation and oppression (anxiety, agitation, aggression, depression) and the many ways that people try to manage unbearable pain (obsessions, compulsions, rage, addictions). Depression is strongly linked with poverty,¹⁶ and alleviating poverty can lift depression.¹⁷

Under capitalism, addressing the social causes of misery is politically risky and unprofitable. So psychiatry extracts the individual from society, splits the brain from the body, severs the mind from the brain and drugs the brain.¹⁸

A sick society

Capitalism is a system that requires the majority to have no control over their lives and to believe that this condition is normal. Therefore, all reactions to inequality and deprivation must be viewed as signs of personal inadequacy, biological defect, mental illness — anything other than reasonable responses to unreasonable conditions.

During slavery days, experts argued that Black people were psychologically suited for a life of slavery, so there must be something wrong with those who rebelled.¹⁹ In 1851, the diagnosis of “drapetomania”(runaway fever) was developed to explain why slaves try to escape.²⁰ Not much has changed. Today, exploitation and oppression are considered normal, and those who rebel in any way are considered to be sick or deviant and in need of medication or incarceration.

What’s the diagnosis for a sick society? We know what’s wrong. Most people are kept in sick social conditions so that a few can maintain their wealth and power. What is the treatment? Putting human needs first would eliminate most human misery. Who will deliver the medicine? The majority must organize to take collective control of society.

I don’t expect this diagnosis to appear in the DSM anytime soon.

(Emphasis by Justice Lover)

1. Kirk, S.S. & Kutchins, H. (1992). The selling of DSM: The rhetoric of science in psychiatry. New York: Aldine De Gruyter. #
2. Horowitz, A.V. (2002). Creating mental illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. #
3. Freud, S. (1901/1991). The psychopathology of everyday life. New York: Penguin #
4. Shorter, E. (1997). A history of psychiatry: From the era of the asylum to the age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley & Sons. #
5. Poussaint, A.F. & Alexander, A. (2000). Lay my burden down: Suicide and the mental health crisis among African-Americans. Boston: Beacon Press, p.125. #
6. Spitzer, R.L., Sheeney, M. & Endicott, J. (1977). DSM III: Guiding principles. In Psychiatric diagnosis, (Eds). Rakoff, V., Stancer, H. & Kedward, H. New York: Brunner Mazel. #
7. Egan, T. (1999). Racist shootings test limits of health system and laws. New York Times, August 14, p.1. #
8. “DSM and homosexuality: A cautionary tale.” in Kirk, S.A., Kutchins, H. (1992). The selling of DSM: The rhetoric of science in psychiatry. New York: Aldine De Gruyter p 81-90 #
9. Caplan, P. (1995). They say you’re crazy: How the world’s most powerful psychiatrists decide who’s normal. New York: Addison-Wesley, pp.180-181. #
10. Caplan, P.J. (2002). Expert decries diagnosis for pathologizing women. Journal of Addiction and Mental Health. September/October 2001, p.16. #
11. Kessler, R.C., Berglund, P., Demler, O., Jin, R. & Walters, E.E. (2005). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry. Vol.62, No.6, pp.593-602. #
12. Horowitz, A.V. (2002). Creating Mental Illness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p.37. #
13. Talen, J. (2005). Survey says nearly half of all Americans will be affected by a mental illness, some before adulthood. Newsday, June 7. #
14. Breggin, P.R. & Breggin, G. R. (1994). The war against children: How the drugs, programs, and theories of the psychiatric establishment are threatening America’s children with a medical ‘cure’ for violence. New York: St. Martin’s Press. #
15. Froehlich TE, et.al. (2007). Prevalence, recognition, and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in a national sample of US children. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. Vol.161, pp.857-864. #
16. Duenwald, M. (2003). “More Americans Seeking Help for Depression.” New York Times, June 18. #
17. Costello EJ, Compton SN, Keeler G, Angold A.(2003). Relationships between poverty and psychopathology: a natural experiment. JAMA. Oct 15, Vol.290, No. 15, pp.2023-9. #
18. Ross, C.A., & Pam, A., (1995). Pseudoscience in biological psychiatry: Blaming the body. New York: Wiley. #
19. Poussaint, A.F. & Alexander, A. (2000). Lay my burden down: Suicide and the mental health crisis among African Americans. Boston: Beacon Press. #
20. Cartwright, S. (1851). Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race. New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal. May, p. 707. #