Free Republic

Forget extreme plastic surgery, tattoos and piercings - a minority are taking body modification to the next level - by voluntarily cutting off their own limbs. A body modifier has exclusively revealed how his "extra" limbs feel alien, and has resorted to the drastic measure of self-mutilation - because he actually want to be disabled. Dr. Michael First, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, has led investigations into this bizarre and extremely rare psychiatric condition which he is calling body integrity identity disorder (BIID). Also known as amputee identity disorder, it gives people a fierce desire to rid themselves...

Here’s a shocking and telling statistic on the direction of American society today: suicide rates have risen sharply in every U.S. state (except Nevada, which was already alarmingly high) from 1999 to 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide rates are up more than 30 percent in half of the states over the last couple decades. There were 45,000 suicides in 2016, up from 44,193 in 2015. Suicides on average across the nation have increased by 25%. Depression, isolation, opioids, technology, and substance abuse are to blame. But more important than the causes is the fact...

Against a grim backdrop of rising suicide rates among American women, new research has revealed a blinding shaft of light: One group of women — practicing Catholics — appears to have bucked the national trend toward despair and self-harm. Compared with women who never participated in religious services, women who attended any religious service once a week or more were five times less likely to commit suicide between 1996 and 2010, says a study published by JAMA Psychiatry. [snip] Among devout Catholic women — those in the pews more than once a week — suicides were a vanishing phenomenon. Among...

I don’t wish to be unkind. But facts are facts. A victim is someone who has something bad happen to him, totally against his will and without any say or control in the matter. Suicide does not “happen” to someone. It’s something one does to oneself. Most of us are drowning in virtue-signaling and political correctness — so much so that we can’t even see it. It seems cool to mourn people who kill themselves even though you never knew them. How do we know we would have liked and admired them had we even known them personally? Consider some...

Maryland tunnel digger accused of killing pal feared North Korea missile attack By Nicole Hensley May 31, 2018 | 7:45 PM A man was charged in the death of a pal killed while digging a secret network of tunnels under his Maryland home he hoped would save him from North Korea’s budding nuclear missile program, according to his lawyer. After months of nuclear weapon tests by the isolated nation last year, 27-year-old Daniel Beckwitt began construction on an underground bunker to protect himself from a possible intercontinental ballistic missile attack at his Bethesda property. The digger’s paranoia was fueled by...

Victoria Toline needed nine months to taper off Zoloft. “I had to drop out of school,” she said. “My life’s been on hold.” Victoria Toline would hunch over the kitchen table, steady her hands and draw a bead of liquid from a vial with a small dropper. It was a delicate operation that had become a daily routine — extracting ever tinier doses of the antidepressant she had taken for three years, on and off, and was desperately trying to quit. “Basically that’s all I have been doing — dealing with the dizziness, the confusion, the fatigue, all the symptoms...

Not too long ago we talked about Ivy League psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, who had briefed members of Congress (read: pretty much entirely Democrats) on President Trump’s mental health. Despite having never even met the President, say nothing of examined him, she apparently had quite a lot to say. Dr. Lee and her colleagues who jumped on the dogpile have been getting some significant pushback since then, with not only members of the press (a few of them, anyway) objecting, but drawing a formal rebuke from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) who called for an end to “armchair psychiatry.�...

The American Psychiatric Association called out members of its profession for offering their professional opinions about public figures—namely those they haven’t personally examined. The rebuke comes after questions about President Trump’s mental fitness have surfaced in recent days. "We at the APA call for an end to psychiatrists providing professional opinions in the media about public figures whom they have not examined, whether it be on cable news appearances, books, or in social media," the group wrote. "Arm-chair psychiatry or the use of psychiatry as a political tool is the misuse of psychiatry and is unacceptable and unethical." Allegations...

Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz sounded off on claims the 25th Amendment should be used to remove President Trump over his mental capacity. Dershowitz, a Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton, said calls for removal are "very dangerous." "There’s only one thing worse than trying to criminalize political differences and that’s trying to psychiatrize them," he said. "These psychiatrists who are trying to diagnose without having even met the man. That’s what they did in Russia."

The Goldwater rule is the informal name given to Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Principles of Medical Ethics[1] that states it is unethical for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined[further explanation needed] in person, and from whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health in public statements.[2] It is named after presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.[3][4] The issue arose in 1964 when Fact published the article "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A Special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater".[3][5] The magazine polled psychiatrists about U.S. Senator Barry...

Humans love dogs more than their fellow man. Two major studies showed that mankind has more empathy for pooches in dire circumstances than suffering people, according to a report in the Times of London. A UK medical research charity staged two phony donation campaigns – one with a dog and the other featuring a man. Of course, the pooch drew more contributions. “Would you give pounds 5 to save Harrison from a slow, painful death?” the separate ads said, featuring a canine and human “Harrison.” Then a Northeastern University study showed that only a baby human could compete with man’s...

The Las Vegas gunman was allergic to certain chemicals and medications — and often wore gardening gloves around so he wouldn’t get rashes, his brother said Wednesday. (snip) It also emerged Wednesday that Paddock was prescribed 50 10-milligram tablets of diazepam — commonly called Valium — on June 21 by Dr. Steven Winkler, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Stephen Paddock, who killed at least 58 people and wounded hundreds more in Las Vegas on Sunday with high-powered rifles, was prescribed an anti-anxiety drug in June that can lead to aggressive behavior, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has learned.

Dr. Michael Welner offers insight on Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock on 'Fox & Friends.'

When Boca Raton lawyer James Herb filed legal papers last year to have President Donald Trump declared mentally unfit, he had no inkling his personal crusade would earn him a spot in a book that longtime liberal political pundit Bill Moyers said should become “an instant best-seller.” Along with more than a dozen of the nation’s top psychiatrists and mental health experts, Herb was invited to write a chapter in “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President,” a 360-page call to action that is to be released Tuesday by St. Martin’s Press....

Personally, I've never been very impressed by the, "He's mentally" excuse. It's fairly consistently trotted out as a defense for ISIS terrorists who go on rampages in Europe. The French authorities have already announced that the driver who rammed his car into a pizzeria killing a little girl is not a terrorist, but suffers from mental illness. It's unknown as of this moment if he's Muslim, but a number of past Muslim terrorists have had a history of mental illness. But the media left is fairly selective in taking that into account.

A leading psychiatry group has told its members they should not feel bound by a longstanding rule against commenting publicly on the mental state of public figures — even the president. The statement, an email this month from the executive committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association to its 3,500 members, represents the first significant crack in the profession’s decades-old united front aimed at preventing experts from discussing the psychiatric aspects of politicians’ behavior. It will likely make many of its members feel more comfortable speaking openly about President Trump’s mental health. The impetus for the email was “belief in the...

I want to share with you the tragic story of the Gregory family from Santa Barbara California. Alexander Gregory, like myself was a blogger and businessman with a family who lived in Santa Barbara. His family originally came from Long Island New York. They were also Christians and they home schooled their children, Russell, Jeffrey, Ashley and they had a baby boy named Chastin. That is where they got into trouble... First, it started with social services knocking on their door demanding to interview and "examine" their children, then it came to .the police, they forced their children to face...

Breitbart:  Trump Defense Department Delays Obama’s Transgender Push in the Military.  “The Pentagon is working to delay the July 1 deadline to fully implement the Obama-initiated policy that one year ago lifted the ban on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military.�  While the Pentagon directive to allow transgender men and women to join the military faces an indefinite delay this may be a good time to review just how America was ensnared with this Obama-era policy. The evidence is clear—the American Left succeeded in lobbying the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to eliminate some of the sexual identity disorders...

If you ever have need of the services of a psychiatrist, I would strongly recommend you select one besotted with liberal ideology. First of all, you'd save a ton of money. That's because liberal psychiatrists are blessed with the gift of being able to diagnose you without even having seen you. That means you're consultations need not last very long. I should warn you, however, that you can be sure that if you're a political conservative, you are likely to be committed to a mental institution. More than 50 years ago, a psychiatrist published an article that stated flatly GOP...