Psychiatric Disorders

The psychiatric and pharmaceutical industry compare psychiatric disorders such as Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, etc. to medical conditions such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. However, no scientific tests can verify the medical existence of psychiatric disorders.

The psychiatric industry claims that there are certain medical conditions that exist without verifiable tests, therefore there does not exist one for mental illnesses. While there may exist rare medical conditions without verifiable medical tests, there are no psychiatric disorders that can be verified medically as a physical abnormality or disease.

Often brain scans used to prove schizophrenia or depression have not been conducted on people not taking antipsychotic drugs. Such scans have been documented to cause brain atrophy, or shrinkage. Other brain scans have compared brains of smaller children to show smaller brains in comparison to larger and older children. The scans were used to claim that children with ADHD have smaller brains. However, none have been conclusively proven to verify mental disorders as abnormalities of the brain.

This is not to say that people don’t get depressed, troubled, or even sometimes act psychotic.  For example, can soldiers returning from war experience extreme and often debilitating stress?  Yes, but it is less likely to be a medical condition of the brain. Can mothers become distraught after a joyous occasion such as the birth of a child?  Yes, but again, it is unlikely to be a brain abnormality or mental disease.  It may not be the best decision to prescribe these people certain drugs documented by international regulatory agencies to cause mania, psychosis, worsening depression, heart attack, stroke and sudden death.  Additionally, new or nursing mothers may risk birth defects or damage to infants from prescription drugs.

Any drug taken influences behavior or mood, whether it be cocaine, marijuana or heroin. This does not mean someone who acts or feels differently on cocaine does so because they had a cocaine imbalance, with which the cocaine then corrected. It means that drugs change moods, emotions and behavior.  But while the illicit use of drugs is universally frowned upon, psychiatric drugs are conversely viewed as “good” drugs, despite the fact many are more addictive than cocaine or heroin. Drug addiction leads to the greater issues of drug abuse and withdrawal.

The larger problem is that the biological drug model prevents governments from allocating funding to actual medical solutions to people experiencing difficulty.  There are also viable, non-harmful medical treatments that do not receive government funding because the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry spends much of its budget on advertising and lobbying efforts.