Free Republic

The continuing relevance of Thomas Szasz’s assault on psychiatric pretensions The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct, 50th anniversary edition, by Thomas Szasz, Harper Perennial, 329 pages, $14.99 Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease, by Gary Greenberg, Simon & Schuster, 432 pages, $27 The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease, by Jonathan M. Metzl, Beacon Press, 246 pages, $24.95 Half a century after Thomas Szasz first declared “there is no such thing as ‘mental illness,” his radical critique of psychiatry is widely viewed as outmoded and simplistic at best, cruelly...

A special education teacher wrote to me about the abuse of Ritalin. The teacher said: “My students are on Ritalin. This is a brain shrinking, top tier heavily psychotropic drug, as you know. The authorities KNOW this is their weapon for the most intelligent boys... ” The teacher believes this is a high-level NWO plot, which is not a road I like to go down. But the teacher got me thinking... Here are the two parts I’m personally sure of: 1) The Education Establishment in this country, for 75 years, has used bogus methods (i.e., Whole Word) to teach reading....

Episode 5 of how socialized medicine and weapons bans will lead to the end of our liberty and freedom. This features footage of soviet gulags and mental hospitals used to isolate and torture dissidents and opponents of liberal policy as well as a special guest appearence by Actor and Former president Ronald Reagan, warning us on the dangers of Universal healthcare.

August 31, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Many Americans have been shocked by reports about a recent pro-pedophilia conference in Baltimore in which psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, representing institutions like Harvard and Johns Hopkins, sought to present pedophilia in a sympathetic and even positive light. But why should this surprise us? Academic articles in scholarly journals have been presenting pedophilia in a sympathetic light for years, and, as Matthew Cullinan Hoffman noted, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) released a report in 1998 “claiming that the ‘negative potential’ of adult sex with children was ‘overstated’ and that ‘the vast majority of...

A Drink a Day May Keep Alzheimer's Away Fran Lowry   August 26, 2011 — Light to moderate drinking seems to reduce the risk for dementia and cognitive decline, according to a new study published in the August issue of Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment. A meta-analysis of 143 studies on the effects of alcohol on the brain showed that moderate drinking, defined as no more than 2 drinks a day for a man and no more than 1 drink a day for a woman, reduced the risk for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia by 23%. "It doesn't seem...

When I wrote about an objectionable spread of photographs in Paris Vogue – a spread that featured 10-year-old fashion model Thylane Blondeau styled in provocative ways — I fretted that such a magazine feature might, in some way, normalize the concept of sexual attraction to minors: "It’s often said, but bears repeating, that the TV, magazine and advertising images we absorb train our minds as to what is considered attractive — and, yes, specifically sexually attractive — in our culture. So, what does a magazine feature like this say? That it’s OK, even encouraged, to look at a child in...

If your sister were among the nearly 3,000 people murdered in the World Trade Center on 9/11, how would you react to Osama Bin Laden's death? More specifically, if you were to write an opinion piece on the subject for a major newspaper, what would you most want to communicate?One would think that anyone who had lost a loved one on 9/11 would write about bin Laden's guilt, about evil and about experiencing some degree of moral and emotional satisfaction that the loved one's murderer had been killed by American forces.But not Robert Klitzman, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia...

New Zealand Are addictive medicines cures or problems? “Legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes would be the thin end of the wedge towards increasing drug use in New Zealand, according to a former detective who now manages a drug education company.” APN News and Media also reports: “Dale Kirk, managing director of MethCon, said taking a softer line on drug offenders would do more harm than good.” “I think we'd see people suddenly developing medical problems to source the drug,” asserts Kirk. The former detective is also concerned about impressionable children and vulnerable teenagers, but especially the many ways in which...

‘Evil spirits’ disrupts teaching March 3 2011 at 09:22pm By Slindile Maluleka INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS Teaching at a Durban school was disrupted yesterday and today amid a wave of hysteria as pupils claimed they were being possessed by evil spirits.Durban Girls’ Secondary School in Dartnell Crescent, Greyville, was closed again today because of further disruptions.Police, who were called to the school yesterday, cordoned off the road as some pupils were reportedly seen running wildly across it soon after 10am. Some were rolling on the pavement.The school’s governing body chairman, Sam Kikine, who arrived later, confirmed that the pupils were hysterical.“The incident...

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has gone crazy -- like a fox. There was a time when we could be more charitable about the vagaries in the APA’s Bible, the DSM. But not anymore. If you’ve never heard of the DSM, it’s the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual series the APA publishes. Psychiatrists all over the world use the DSM as a guidebook for treating people with some form of mental illness. But the APA may test credulity with its upcoming edition.I refer specifically to proposed changes in the DSM-V due out in 2013. It’s no accident these changes reflect new...

It wasn't long after news of the Tucson, Ariz., tragedy broke that the words "paranoid schizophrenic" entered the conversation. Armchair psychiatrists across the country looked at Jared Loughner -- 22, history of antisocial behavior, with a cache of rambling YouTube videos on government mind control -- and diagnosed him. But is there any truth to this? And if so, how does it help make sense of his horrific actions? To try and untangle the influences that might lead one lone gunman to fire his Glock at a political rally, we turned to Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, respected psychiatrist and one...

Why Wasn't Loughner's Mental Health Evaluated?Despite many red flags, he was never evaluated Updated: Tuesday, 11 Jan 2011, 6:50 PM MST TUCSON - As the legal case against Jared Loughner makes its way through the court system, the question is: could anything have been done to prevent the attack? Does anyone bear responsibility for failing to stop him? Pima Community College asked Jared Loughner to leave and not come back until his parents could show he was getting help with his mental health needs. That did not happen. An expert on mental health law in Arizona wishes the school had...

How many more tragedies like the Tucson shootings will we have to watch before we start facing the harsh truth? For the last three years, I’ve been trying to find a publisher for a book about the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill and the destructive effects on our society that it has caused. I keep getting told that no one is interested in the topic. The tragedy in Tucson on Saturday — like dozens of other such incidents over the last three decades involving mentally ill persons who made headlines — is the reason that people should be interested. Watching...

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (due out in 2013, and known as DSM-5) has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition. Narcissistic personality disorder is the most well-known of the five, and its absence has caused the most stir in professional circles.

Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness. As Charles Zanor reports in today’s Science Times, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — due out in 2013 and known as D.S.M.-5 — has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition. The best known of these is narcissistic personality disorder. It is a puzzle why the manual’s committee on personality disorders has decided...

(English-language translation) A psychological or psychiatric evaluation may be added to the requirements teachers have to meet in order to earn the certification that allows them to teach in the island. This is what Senate Bill 1849 under the co-sponsorship of Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz and Senate Education & Family Affairs Committee Chair Kimmey Raschke seeks. According to the exposition of motives of the bill, which was filed on October 15, the goal of the initiative is to "improve the quality of education in Puerto Rico" and to detect "any type of emotional instability among teachers who work in...

NEW YORK - No real psychiatrist has ever gotten the chance to diagnose and treat Batman, but they'd likely have as little luck as any of their fictional counterparts in Gotham City. A strong anti-psychiatry bias in the Batman comic book universe may even be why readers and moviegoers love the dark knight so much, according to a psychiatrist at New York Comic Con. Psychiatrists and cognitive neuroscientists not only fail to stem the tide of mentally unbalanced supervillains that Batman fights, but often end up becoming villains themselves. That depiction may work so well because people often do feel...

I have been away for 3-4 months from my blog and I had a lot of articles I wanted to publish. For one, The anniversary of the Mutiny on the Bounty was around that time and a friend of mine who is a historical scholar was going to help write an interesting article about mutiny and include some facts about Captain William Bligh and the bounty crew that is not generally known. He would cut away some of the fiction and non fiction that sadly has seeped in thanks to popular fiction and Hollywood influence. I was also going to...

Step into my parlor, and let me wave my diagnosticulator at you. OK, let me just consult the book. Ah! Just as I suspected. Since you yelled at that IRS agent during your audit, we know you suffer from temper dysregulation disorder with dysphoria. This is normally seen in children, and is what we used to call a temper tantrum. Actually, it is a mental disease. When seen in adults such as yourself, it requires medication, if not confinement. It’s for your own good. And speaking of children, you have some, do you not? With a guardian such as yourself...

The way psychiatrists describe childhood mood swings, gender identity, autism and dozens of mental health disorders could soon change drastically. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is in the midst of massive revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, better known as the DSM. This tome is the repository of diagnostic criteria for everything from schizophrenia to insomnia. The implications are far-reaching, from how a disorder is named and so how it's viewed by the public to whether treatment for the disorder gets covered by health insurance. For instance, the controversy over the naming and inclusion of gender-identity...