Propaganda for Taxpayer Funded Psychiatry

This essay is propaganda promoting more taxpayer funded psychiatric treatment. It is misguided to rely on Treatment Advocacy Center, a lobbyist for the psychiatric industry run by E. Fuller Torrey who promotes treatment not rights of persons with disabilities. Suggesting police should treat violent criminals differently based on a psychiatric diagnosis is irrational. There is no evidence that the diagnosis causes violence and crime. 

When confronted by a violent person who threatens the safety of an officer, or another person, are the police supposed to stop, take cover and wait for a psychiatrist to talk to the suspect while the officer watches and protects the psychiatrist? Are police supposed to force drugs on the suspect? This essay promotes treatment over public safety. It is similar to the arguments of CAIR and extremist liberals who argue that Middle Eastern Muslim immigrants should not be suspected of terrorism, because it is profiling. Rational bias is ignored endangering public safety. Persons with disabilities who commit a crime should be treated the same as persons without disabilities. The initial error is calling police and expecting them to treat children as patients. That is not what police are for. The argument that psychiatric diagnoses are no different than physical illnesses is another element of psychiatric propaganda. 

Psychiatric illnesses have no pathology. They are made up by consensus, not science. Psychiatric illnesses are protected speech and behavior, which psychiatrists do not like or do not understand. Psychiatric industry lobbyists, e.g., NAMI and Treatment Advocacy Center promote false narratives, e.g., that mental illness is a chemical imbalance of the brain. When challenged the American Psychiatric Association was unable to provide evidence of any imbalance or even for a chemical balance of the brain. They promote multi color images of the brain claiming that is mental illness. Soon they will demand compulsory MRIs to force treatment on all people with colorful brain images. 



Psychiatric diagnoses are personal opinion masquerading as science. Psychiatry is a means of social control with no due process protections. This essay promotes using psychiatric diagnoses instead of the constitution and laws for taking freedom and using the legitimate state police power to control human behavior based on psychiatric diagnoses, not law. Curious that after gun violence or police shootings of civilians, liberals blame guns, and demand more gun laws; while conservatives blame psychiatric diagnoses and demand more taxpayer funded treatment. "The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind." - H. L. Mencken. "One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them." - Thomas Sowell.



[From article]
Quintonio LeGrier’s father called police after locking himself in a bedroom when his son menaced him with a baseball bat. When the police arrived, LaGrier, a 19-year-old with emotional problems, allegedly charged them with the bat. An officer shot him dead, and accidentally killed a neighbor as well.
The heart-rending case is, tragically, almost routine. Consider two other recent cases. On Dec. 29, Siolosega Velega-Nuufolau of Santa Nella, California, a 50-year-old woman with mental problems, was shot dead when allegedly charging a sheriff’s deputy with a kitchen knife. On Dec. 19, police killed Ruben Jose Herrera, a 26-year-old Los Angeles-area man suffering from bipolar disorder, when he allegedly lunged for an officer’s gun in the hospital.
[. . .]



For all the attention devoted to police-involved shootings and race, mental illness is the more salient issue. A joint report by the Treatment Advocacy Center and National Sheriffs’ Association in 2013 examined cases between 1980 and 2008, and estimated that roughly half involved people with mental illness. A Washington Post analysis of 1,000 fatal police shootings in 2015 puts it at about a quarter.
These shootings are another tragic symptom of our contemptible outsourcing of the severely mental ill to law enforcement. The police are our de facto front-line mental-health workers — “armed social workers” in the pungent phrase of one observer — and jails are our de facto psychiatric hospital system.
[. . .]



It’s a poignant lament, but why do the families of the severely mentally ill need to rely on the police for medical assistance? When someone has a heart attack or gets cancer, we don’t call the police.
[. . .]
A more rational and humane policy would give families robust treatment options before it gets to the point of calling the cops. This would mean more psychiatric hospital beds and more options for mandated care. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) has a bill to push the mental-health system in this direction.
The alternative is to continue to default to police to cope with out-of-control people, often brandishing weapons, and hope for the best — and brace for the worst.

http://nypost.com/2016/01/04/dumping-americas-mental-health-woes-on-the-cops/

Dumping America’s mental-health woes on the cops
By Rich Lowry
New York Post
January 4, 2016 | 1:46pm

* * *

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/429164/police-shootings-mental-illness-problem?target=author&tid=900170

Outsourcing the Mentally Ill to Police
by RICH LOWRY
January 1, 2016 12:00 AM
National Review

Enabling Police Abuse of Disabled Persons

[From article]
The problem was that Mr. Boyd, 38, had a history of mental illness, and so was living in a different reality, one in which he was a federal agent and not someone to be bossed around.
“Don’t attempt to give me, the Department of Defense, another directive,” he told the officers. A short while later, the police shot and killed him, saying he had pulled out two knives and threatened their lives.
[. . .]
focused attention on the growing number of people with severe mental disorders who, in the absence of adequate mental health services, are coming in contact with the criminal justice system, sometimes with deadly consequences.
[. . .]
police officers find themselves playing dual roles as law enforcers and psychiatric social workers. County jails and state prisons have become de facto mental institutions;
[. . .]
“I think that this issue hits every city, every part of the country where you have people who are walking on the street who normally would have been under some kind of treatment or institutionalized,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum,
[. . .]
Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist and the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit group in Arlington, Va., that promotes access to mental health care,
[. . .]
But officers can sometimes make a crisis worse, either out of fear or in a reflexive effort to control the situation and enforce compliance.
[. . .]
the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriff’s Association, based on informal studies and accounts, estimated that half the number of people shot and killed by the police have mental health problems.
[. . .]
According to a report by the New Mexico Public Defender Department, which offers free legal services to indigent clients, nearly 75 percent of those shot in 2010 and 2011 suffered from mental illness.
[. . .]
About 6 percent of the population, or one in 17 Americans, suffer from a serious mental illness, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Studies suggest that the mentally ill are involved in only about 4 percent of violent crimes. But when untreated, severe mental illness is associated with higher rate of violence, researchers have found.
[. . .]
“It’s like if we stopped treating heart disease until people had heart attacks,” said Ronald S. Honberg, director of policy and legal affairs at the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

After many years of institutionalized abuses of disabled persons, The New York Times quotes two persons who are economically embedded in the psychiatric industry and drug corporations. (By FERNANDA SANTOS and ERICA GOODE, "Police Confront Rising Number of Mentally Ill Suspects," New York Times, APRIL 1, 2014) Torrey promotes forced drug treatment and portrays disabled persons as dangerous and violent. NAMI gets $11 million each year from drug companies to promote drug treatment. Neither of these lobbyists speak for the rights of troubled persons who are often described by police as diseases. This article shows that disabled persons are being killed by police without accountability. It indicates that Times' editors ignore abuses of vulnerable persons and treat them as patients and prisoners, a problem for control instead of protecting their rights.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/us/police-shootings-of-mentally-ill-suspects-are-on-the-upswing.html?hp&_r=1

Police Confront Rising Number of Mentally Ill Suspects
By FERNANDA SANTOS and ERICA GOODE

APRIL 1, 2014

New York Times

Give me Your Guns So I Can Put You In A Mental Hospital

Coulter's argument conflicts with the Fourth Amendment. What part of taking liberty without due process does she support? Why is the criminal law standard of mens rea and actus reus not applicable to persons accused of mental illness? Coulter wants to imprison persons for status crimes, and for offensive protected speech. Torrey promotes forced drugging for all persons accused of mental illness. He is spokesman for the psychiatric industry. Blaming liberals for mass murders is as irrational as blaming guns. Like Torrey and many liberals too, Coulter cannot separate crime from psychiatry. She ridicules conduct and speech which she does not like. Is she unaware of what liberals think of her speech? Speech and behavior that psychiatrists do not like or do not understand is declared mental illness. Having a human emotion is mental illness. For Michael Savage liberalism is a mental disorder. For Harvard University's neurologist Allan Counter, being called a racist is a mental illness. Psychiatry is arbitrary personal opinion masquerading as science. What is it about psychiatry that makes ordinarily rational skeptics blind believers? Coulter questions everything to find the kernel of truth. Why is she so accepting of the mumbo jumbo that is psychiatry? It is like law, a system of social control, but lacking due process protections. Hitler and Stalin put undesirable people in jail or mental hospitals after taking their guns. Coulter and Torrey want to do the same but let some people keep their guns. The issue is due process and liberty. Something that Coulter supports on occasion. 

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/09/18/crazier-than-liberals/

Crazier than liberals
By: Ann Coulter
9/18/2013 06:01 PM

 

Essay Promotes Economic Benefits for Drug Companies, Not a Safer Society

Jaffe claims his think tank is "unbiased." But he lists his close association with the Alliance for Mental Illness a drug company front lobbying organization that promotes drug treatment. Drug companies provide about $3 million each year to NAMI to promote drug treatment which is a known cause of violence and suicide. Jaffe boasts of strong support for E. Fuller Torrey whose zealous love for psychiatry includes forced treatment for all persons accused of mental illness. Torrey believes all persons accused of mental illness are dangerous and need to be forceably drugged. Jaffe and his drug company thugs promote denying freedom to citizens and increased government control over humans. The criminal justice system provides enough jurisdiction, for criminals like Curtis Forteau. Jaffe calls for arbitrary abuse of police powers by misguided psychiatrists and psychologists. More psychiatry in the criminal justice system will only corrupt it further. Jaffe argues for economic benefits for drug companies, not a safer society.

Link to Jaffe's "think tank"
http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/about.html

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/ny_real_madness_udOxAK56q73bcQxvz8IJXO

NY’s real madness
Ignoring mental illness
By D.J. JAFFE
New York Post
Last Updated: 12:26 AM, July 20, 2012
Posted: 11:14 PM, July 19, 2012

Does The Heritage Foundation Distort Its Mission?

This is the mission statement of the Heritage Foundation,
http://www.heritage.org/about

"Founded in 1973, The Heritage Foundation is a research and educational institution—a think tank—whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

We believe the principles and ideas of the American Founding are worth conserving and renewing. As policy entrepreneurs, we believe the most effective solutions are consistent with those ideas and principles. Our vision is to build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish."

On July 18, 2012 the Heritage Foundation sponsored a lecture by E. Fuller Torrey, who is promoting his book, The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens, which [according to Jim Gottstein, Attorney and Founder of Psychrights.org says] advocates making it even easier to lock citizens up, label and stigmatize them without legal justification, and forcibly drug them against their will ("forced treatment"). In a prior book, Torrey explicitly advocates committing perjury to accomplish these aims, noting with approval, “It would probably be difficult to find any American psychiatrist working with the mentally ill who has not, at a minimum, exaggerated the dangerousness of a mentally ill person's behavior to obtain a judicial order for commitment.”

Torrey notoriously promotes the unverified claim that mental illness causes violence. There is no causal connection between mental illness and crime or violence. Nonetheless the psychiatric industry tries to criminalize mental illness to increase its client base and to extend psychiatry into the criminal justice system. That will further corrupt the system removing any protections from government abuses from the arbitrary opinions of psychiatrists who are not held accountable for their errors in judgment or their criminal abuses.

How is that compatible with their mission statement regarding individual freedom and limited government? Psychiatry criminalizes constitutionally protected speech and behavior, which psychiatrists do not like or do not understand. They force individuals using the police power of government to take psychiatric drugs. How is that compatible with limited government, the Fourth and the Ninth Amendments? Psychiatry is the only alleged medical discipline that requires police powers to enforce diagnoses. It is the only alleged medical discipline which can force treatment without consent.

The psychiatric industry conducted a multi year PR campaign promoting the false notion of "chemical imbalance of the brain." The goal was to give psychiatry a basis in science. They alleged that pictures of brain activity were evidence of mental illness. But there is no standard for a chemical balance of the brain to measure against. It was a fantasy. When confronted by civil rights and disability rights activists the American Psychiatric Association was unable to present any evidence of their claim of a chemical imbalance of the brain. Nonetheless among the minds of civilians there are still many who believe this psychiatric fantasy.

Psychiatry uses state and US courts to deny persons accused of mental illness the basic rights guaranteed to others under the constitution. Court rules deny to persons accused of mental illness the protections afforded other parties in court proceedings. Yet the Heritage Foundation allows this self interested and self promoting psychiatrist with a history of promoting denial of rights and restricting freedom of vulnerable citizens, a forum without any opposition. Has the Heritage Foundation like the American Civil Liberties Union become an oppressive organization in the name of freedom? How shameful that psychiatrists use scholarly organizations to promote taking freedom from individuals in the name of health. Psychiatry is a system of social control with no due process protections. Nazi doctors used psychiatry to resolve what they said were public health problems. They said Jews were vermin. Nazis medicalized social problems. There is no appeal from medical diagnoses.

Psychiatry is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. Mental illnesses are created by consensus not science. Yet judges allow their testimony in courts contrary to the requirements of case law, (KUMHO TIRE CO. V. CARMICHAEL (97-1709) 526 U.S. 137 (1999), 131 F.3d 1433, reversed.) which limits expert testimony to experts using knowledge with a high reliability factor. Personal opinion is not reliable knowledge. This is easily seen with regard to the lack of accountability of psychiatrists who err in their opinions. For every psychiatric opinion in court there is an equal and opposite opinion.

In order to maintain a rational approach to limiting psychiatric abuse The Heritage Foundation should extend an invitation to Robert Whitaker who writes about the evils of psychiatry and its irrational public policy abominations. http://robertwhitaker.org/robertwhitaker.org/Home.html

Protest Psychiatric Abuses in Washington DC

CONTACT:
Jim Gottstein
907 274-7686
jim.gottstein (at) psychrights.org

Heritage Foundation Presents Perjury Proponent

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 14, 2012

Bastille Day is here, but some organizations think locking people up on the basis of uninvestigated charges and secret trials is okay—even that our laws don’t go far enough in doing so. On Wednesday, July 18th, the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C., is hosting a talk by E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., America's most notorious proponent of violating psychiatric rights.

Torrey is promoting his book, The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens, which advocates making it even easier to lock citizens up, label and stigmatize them without legal justification, and forcibly drug them against their will ("forced treatment"). In a prior book, Torrey explicitly advocates committing perjury to accomplish these aims, noting with approval, “It would probably be difficult to find any American psychiatrist working with the mentally ill who has not, at a minimum, exaggerated the dangerousness of a mentally ill person's behavior to obtain a judicial order for commitment.”

Award winning author of Anatomy of An Epidemic, Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, Robert Whitaker, recently had occasion to expose Dr. Torrey's deliberate use of falsehoods to advance his agenda in, E. Fuller Torrey’s Review of Anatomy of an Epidemic: What Does It Reveal About the Rationale for Forced Treatment?

Occupy Psychiatry, a new joint project by the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights®) and MindFreedom, International, will be at the presentation to counter Torrey's falsehoods. See, the informational flyer for this event. James B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq., president of PsychRights, said, "The paid henchmen of the pharmaceutical companies, such as E. Fuller Torrey, must be challenged when they spin their web of lies." Mr. Gottstein is hoping to attend.

People are gathering at 11:30 a.m. at 214 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E. For more information go to the Occupy Torrey Tirade Facebook Event Page.

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights is a public interest law firm devoted to the defense of people facing the horrors of forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock. PsychRights is further dedicated to exposing the truth about psychiatric interventions and the courts being misled into ordering people subjected to these brain and body damaging drugs against their will.

Lowry's Propaganda For Drug Companies

[Edited version of this letter was published in the New York Post on Wednesday, January 19, 2011, page 32.
Online third letter at this location]
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/letters/sick_fight_over_mental_illness_xt3005uNkxCe8R16VgjVgO

Rich Lowry writes propaganda for the drug companies abandoning his regular skepticism regarding political speech and actions. He argues that a mysterious madness lobby, is preventing the psychiatric industry and the drug industry from passing more laws for forced treatment. Do these industries hide their profit motive under claims of healing?

He blames abuse victims for their own abuse. People who are demonized by ordinary citizens, politicians, lawyers, journalists, and especially psychiatrists; a group of people with no political clout or power, who are scorned and feared by society for stopping progress and making society dangerous. Lawyers funded to protect persons accused of mental illness lobby for more funding for more treatment. Few of them protect the rights, integrity and freedom of persons accused of mental illness.

Why does Lowry deny Constitutional Rights to persons accused of mental illness? Laws regarding forced treatment already exist which violate Due Process Rights for others. Why do psychiatrists get special exemptions?

Whenever there is a heinous crime the medical records of the accused are plastered across the media landscape. Why are privacy laws ignored for persons accused of mental illness? Even without records journalists make it up as Lowry did saying, "Someone displaying all the symptoms of untreated schizophrenia." Psychiatry makes symptoms, speech and behavior which they do not like or do not understand, into disease. Much of that speech and behavior is protected by the Constitution.

He cites E. Fuller Torrey the financier of forced drug treatment, who recently gave $100 million to a university to study a hoped for connection between genes and mental illness. Since mental illnesses are created by consensus it is highly unlikely. Nonetheless the research industry will thrive.

Journalists repeat FBI profiles broadcast about Loughner, "he is delusional" and "irrational." Yet he was able to obtain an efficient weapon with extra ammunition, go to the proper location and at the proper time, and complete his planned dastardly deed. How is that delusional? These negative personal attacks serve to arouse an angry mob. But what evidence does the profiler have, who never met the accused shooter?

Lowry errs saying Szasz compares psychiatry to slavery. Szasz uses the analogy with The Inquisition which applies strictly.

Lowry cites a woman who "lived with constant delusions of people persecuting her." Was her name Hillary Clinton, who discovered the vast right wing conspiracy? The same woman who imagined machine gun attacks on the tarmac?

Mental illness does not have an influential lobby devoted to not treating it. It has a group of people who demand informed consent before treatment. Why is that quaint notion denied to persons accused of mental illness? Psychiatric diagnoses are the only ones requiring police power for forced treatment. Why no forced treatment for rashes and broken legs?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/time_to_fight_the_madness_lobby_cfD5GW1DzYqQqM3mfrT8GM

Time to fight the 'madness lobby'
Rich Lowry
New York Post
Last Updated: 4:48 AM, January 15, 2011
Posted: 10:21 PM, January 14, 2011

Advocating Abusing Vulnerable Persons


The New York Post gives a forum to a major rainmaker for the psychiatric research industry -- E. Fuller Torrey. ( E. FULLER TORREY, "It's a mad, mad world," New York Post, September 13, 2009) He openly advocates denying persons with disabilities their Constitutional Rights. How do the editors of the Post justify publishing this bigotry urging the legislature to violate basic rights in the name of increasing drug corporation profits? Suggesting that unpopular non conformist persons with disabilities are not suitable neighbors of persons without disabilities Torrey shows his focus is on promoting drug treatment. Conformist psychiatrists demand compliance or want to drug vulnerable persons into submission.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/it_mad_mad_world_YJgHsnCJIPggDJuoHEo9iL

It's a mad, mad world
A crazy court ruling means thousands of mentally ill will return to the streets of NYC
By E. FULLER TORREY
New York Post
Last Updated: 4:07 AM, September 13, 2009
Posted: 1:15 AM, September 13, 2009

Psychiatric Bully Demands Forced Drug Treatment


Psychiatrist Torrey provides major funding for psychiatric research. He passed along $100 million to establish a genetic connection to mental illnesses, which are made up by consensus. How can there be any rational connection between mental illness and science?

Torrey says "we saw an increase in untreated mentally ill individuals on the streets in shelters and in prisons." Is there also an increase in persons with rashes and broken legs? Why is having a mental illness but not having a rash of concern to the "Royal We?" Torrey condones criminalizing mental illness as if persons accused of mental illness are violent and dangerous. Without due process protections Torrey and his control freak colleagues can take a person's freedom without probable cause and without having committed a crime.

The Court order to release patients from abusive group homes is the fault of the NY State Dept. of Mental Health, according to Torrey who says they failed to monitor the homes. But the homes are staffed by people who share Torrey's view of mental patients, i.e., that they need to be drugged and that they do not deserve Constitutional Rights.

Torrey believes that psychiatrists should speak for their clients because what the patients say is not reliable. That suggests that psychiatrists do not lie, are not greedy or sadistic. Psychiatrists are some of the biggest bullies among professionals second only to police.

Hypocritically Torrey accuses politicians of accepting campaign contributions from groups homes operators. As if psychiatrists and drug companies do not pay lobbyists millions to promote drug treatment. Who arranged for the laws that deny to persons accused of mental illness their Constitutional Rights to be secure in their person (Fourth Amendment)? Who wrote the laws making psychiatric diagnoses enforceable by the police power of the state?

Ignoring Constitutional Rights of persons accused of mental illness, Torrey suggests that the courts should increase mandatory psychiatric treatment and less freedom for individuals.

Torrey promotes drug treatment even if it has been shown to cause harm to persons who take the drugs. Torrey advocates for drug companies. He attacks the rights of persons accused of mental illness.

Psychiatric drugs do not cure illnesses. They hide symptoms, i.e., non conformist speech and behavior that conformist psychiatrists do not like or do not understand.

Torrey argues speciously saying, legal advocates eliminate forced treatment "in the name of civil rights;" but it is neither civil or right to leave "severely mentally ill individuals untreated and living on the street or in jail." He argues if no forced treatment then the person will end up on the street or in jail. That does not follow or make any sense. But it is good for business.

Promoting forced treatment he claims that persons who take medication make excellent neighbors. But those who don't, make bad neighbors. He ignores the fact that many people who take psychiatric drugs become violent and harm themselves and others. Torrey ignores those studies.

Torrey promotes Kendra's law which employed emotional response to an horrific crime to make forced drugging easy. Anything that increases drug usage Torrey promotes whether or not it is a violation of the Bill of Rights which is simply an inconvenience for psychiatric businessmen like Torrey.

Torre laments invoking "the mantra of civil rights" of mental patients over the civil rights of residents who are forced to live with thousands of untreated mentally ill individuals on the streets [. . .]" What about having to live with all of those persons of color and all of those women and all of those homosexuals? Why is it acceptable journalism to openly promote denying rights to persons with disabilities, but not to women, homosexuals and persons of color? Torrey shows his bigotry toward people he claims to be a protector of by forcing them to take chemicals into their bodies or else they must be denied their Constitutional Rights.

Joining his colleagues Torrey makes predictions and is never challenged or held accountable for his faulty predictions. Is this an innate ability or do they teach the future in psychiatry school?

Torrey blames the NY State Dept of Mental health for wasting money. Instead of promoting more funding for more drug treatment why doesn't the Dept. of Mental Health or Torrey urge funding for homes for the homeless and lawyers to open access to government services and public accommodations which would allow the alleged mentally ill to enjoy the same rights and privileges as normal people like Torrey.

Finally why does the New York Post publish this propaganda of the drug industry with no opposition expression to the use of humans for harmful businesses?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/it_mad_mad_world_YJgHsnCJIPggDJuoHEo9iL

It's a mad, mad world
A crazy court ruling means thousands of mentally ill will return to the streets of NYC
By E. FULLER TORREY
New York Post
Last Updated: 4:07 AM, September 13, 2009
Posted: 1:15 AM, September 13, 2009

Wasting $100 million

Wasting $100 million

Dr. Edward Scolnick says, you can "turn it [psychiatry] into a rational science." (Carey Goldberg, "$100m to bolster psychiatric research," Boston Globe, March 8, 2007) That indicates that psychiatry is now an irrational science. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science.
Psychiatry treats symptoms, behavior and speech. Psychiatry uses drugs to curb unpopular behavior and speech. When the symptoms disappear the mental health priests say the illness is under control. But at no time have psychiatrists revealed any evidence to connect the made up illnesses to anything in the brain. Psychiatric illnesses are created by consensus.
The Stanley Medical Research Institute's gift to the Broad Institute shows that researchers will take money from anyone. As Howie Carr says, "Don't kill the job." E. Fuller Torrey, the man with the most negative view of psychiatry is the founder of Stanley. Among the many depraved practices is the banking of brains at Stanley. Torrey believes that a person accused of psychiatric illness is dangerous.
"Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder," are the most arbitrarily diagnosed diseases. The description of schizophrenia sounds like the vast right wing conspiracy of anyone who says unpopular things to intolerant psychiatrists. Saying that they run in families is like saying that you can catch them from kissing. These are unsubstantiated statements that are used to promote the baseless system of psychiatry. There is no rational system as we saw with two-year-old Rebecca Riley who died after two years of abusive treatment.
How can any scientist with integrity seek to create a rational system out of an arbitrary system of personal opinion?
--
Roy Bercaw, Editor
ENOUGH ROOM
Cambridge MA USA

$100m to bolster psychiatric research Cambridge institute seeks answers in genes
By Carey Goldberg,
Boston Globe Staff
March 8, 2007

The Broad Institute, the genomics powerhouse in Cambridge, announced yesterday that it will receive what it believes is the biggest gift ever for psychiatric research to a single US institution: $100 million to decipher the genetics of severe mental illnesses. The money comes from the Stanley Medical Research Institute , a family philanthropy based in Maryland. It will be used largely to gather and analyze thousands of DNA samples from people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, in hopes of determining the complex genetics behind the diseases. Only in the last year or so has gene-scanning technology reached the point that scientists think that aim is realistic, said Dr. Edward Scolnick , who oversees the Broad's psychiatric research.
Researchers at the Broad and elsewhere are also using these genomic tools to make inroads on cancer, diabetes, and other diseases. For mental illness, it could take several years to determine the key genetic risk factors, Scolnick said. But once that is done, "You can start developing new approaches for diagnosis, new targets for treatment, new understanding of which drugs to use in which people, and turn it into a rational science. That's the Holy Grail."
It has long been clear that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which afflict more than 6 million Americans, run in families. But the specific genes involved have proven largely elusive. The symptoms tend to vary so greatly among patients that schizophrenia, for example, may actually be a handful of different diseases. Complicating matters further, these disorders are believed to stem from multiple genes that might be different from patient to patient, along with factors in a patient's environment.
Given that complexity, researchers believe they need many DNA samples to pick up the tricky genetic signals: perhaps as many as 10,000 for each disease, along with 10,000 from people without the disease for comparison, Scolnick said. That DNA then needs to be scanned in its entirety for genes correlated to the disease, which is where the Broad's expertise comes in. The institute has been developing ever-faster and cheaper methods for genomic analysis, and can now scan a patient's sample for half-a-million genetic variations at once.
In a couple of months, said Eric Lander, the Broad's director, that will be up to a million. "If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, and you can sift the whole haystack, you'll find the needle," Lander said. Other research groups have begun tackling the genomics of serious mental illnesses, and the National Institute of Mental Health maintains a huge repository of DNA from people with mental illness, said Dr. Tom Insel, the federal institute's director. But only recently has it become clear from work with other complex diseases that to crack the genetics of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, many more samples are needed than had been thought, he said.
The gift to the Broad "is exactly the right thing at the right time at the right place," Insel said. "We now have the ability to do a lot of the genetics we couldn't do two years ago, and there's probably no better place than the Broad to do that." The gene-scanning results will be posted publicly, he said, so that all researchers will have access to the data. After the initial sweeping scans of a patient's full DNA, researchers will then need to "drill down" into targeted areas of DNA to piece apart where exactly the genetic problems lie, he said. Then, researchers say, comes the really hard part: figuring out how the genes act to produce the disease.
The Broad, a joint institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be using "the full armamentarium of modern genomics," Lander said. Along with gene-scanning, that will include the rapid automated screening of hundreds of thousands of chemical compounds to see if they might prove helpful in treating the diseases, and a technique called RNA interference that can silence any particular gene so researchers can gauge the gene's effects.
The aim, he said, is to "lay bare the molecular and cellular basis of psychiatric disease." The Broad's approach has begun to bear fruit of late with other diseases, Lander said. For example, he said, up until a year ago, only two genes were known risk factors for Type 2 diabetes; now, the Broad has brought that number up to nine. There has been notable progress on the genetics of cancer, macular degeneration, and other diseases as well.
The Broad needed no hard sell to get the money. Scolnick said that last summer, he had begun discussing with the Stanley institute, which funds research on mental illness, whether it might increase the donations it had been providing to the Broad. "I'd asked for some modest increases," he said, "and they came back after my proposal and said, 'We'd really like to do more, what can you realistically use?"'
The Broad's new Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research will receive $10 million a year for 10 years, out of the Stanley institute's $40-million-a-year operating budget, said Dr. Michael Knable , the institute's executive director. Previously the Broad had been spending only about $500,000 a year on psychiatric work. The Stanley Medical Research Institute has an endowment of over $300 million, and says it is the biggest private source of philanthropic support for psychiatric research in the world. Ted Stanley, 75, founded MBI Inc., a direct marketer of books, jewelry, and collectibles; he and his wife, Vada, fund the institute. Knable, asked what results he expected, said: "I'm thinking that on the one hand, within 10 years we should be able to predict with pretty good accuracy who is at risk for schizophrenia before they get it," he said. "And number two, I think we'll have new drugs entering the marketplace that are novel," not new versions of "the same old stuff we've had since the 1950s."
Carey Goldberg can be reached at goldberg@globe.com.