The Anti-Psychotic Myth Exposed?

Psychminded.com ^ | 4/2/08 | Adam James

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

As it happens in my view, your desire to prevent the mentally ill from receiving standard medical treatments for their illnesses is a form of genocide, in this cse against the insane, who were the first target of Hitler’s genocide in the 1930’s. It is not surprising that someone who wishes to repeat Hitler’s genocide would ally themselves with the 9/11 terrorists.

[bdeaner]

significantly higher, outlandishly higher than the figures in the PDR.

I used ProQuest to search for the article in the Library. I used "akathisia" as the key word search. This was the first article that came up in the search that was available in full text. The data says what it says. You are welcome to track down the article and read it for yourself.

I can hear the bleating now, "Those are drug company numbers." Yes, with the imprimatur of the FDA whose standards you find golden when you want to use them.

You said it, not me. I was just reporting the facts, based on the evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. I don't trust the FDA either. The consultants mostly all have ties to pharmaceutical companies. See, for example, this video clip.

It appears that there is an entire Scientology influenced community like yourself in academia who grind out worthless commentary primarily as political propaganda.

This is all ad hominem and irrelevant to the facts. Even if there was a vast Scientology conspiracy in academia -- a statement which is so funny, it made my day -- the facts would remain the same.

But since you are trying to question my motivatation, I will humor your ad hominem for the moment: I don't think I've ever MET a Scientologist, let alone am I influenced by them. I'm a Roman Catholic. I see Scientologists as a cult group. If anything, their endorsement of a view repels me from accepting it. If my view dovetails with the views of the Scientologists, it is a coincidence that, if anything, validates the argument. Finally, I don't even know--and do not care to know--what Scientology has to say about psychiatry, and I suspect their views are quite different than mine on a number of levels. So, if you persist in this line of argument, it seems to me a desparate attempt to undermine my credibility rather than a rational attempt to dispute the facts I have presented.

[bdeaner]

As it happens in my view, your desire to prevent the mentally ill from receiving standard medical treatments for their illnesses is a form of genocide, in this cse against the insane, who were the first target of Hitler’s genocide in the 1930’s. It is not surprising that someone who wishes to repeat Hitler’s genocide would ally themselves with the 9/11 terrorists.

HAHAHAHA. Good try, attempting to project your endorsement of genocide onto my arguments here. That's a good one.

First of all, nothing I have said on this post or elsewhere can be reasonably interpreted as an endorsement of the view that psychiatric patients should be deprived of their medication. I've said repeatedly that psychiatric medication is sometimes the right choice of treatment for a patient. I would not endorse the view that psychiatric drugs should never be used. That would be a dumb argument. So, in your apparent anger at my pointing out your statments on Muslums amounts to genocide, I suspect you became enraged and this has distorted your perception of my statements.

Secondly, I'm glad you brought up Hitler and the Holocaust, because it will give me the opportunity to provide readers of this post with a lesson in history (I doubt you are in a state of mind to hear it). In a subsequent post to this, I will demonstrate to you that Hitler was not the first to endorse and carry out sterilization of the mentally ill. It was first conducted here in the United States, and a court case in California was cited by Hitler as a validation of his eugenic project to exterminate all people with mental illness. I will follow up with more details, but first I must address your third point, which really takes the cake.

It is not surprising that someone who wishes to repeat Hitler’s genocide would ally themselves with the 9/11 terrorists.

It really takes a twisted logic to derive anything I have said as an alignment with Hitler's genocide or the 9/11 terrorists. I am morally repulsed by the 9/11 terrorists and all terrorists. I am morally repulsed by all violence based on blind hatred. I am not aligning myself with the 9/11 terrorists against you. I am aligning myself against what YOU share with the 9/11 terrorists: A blind hatred for what you do not understand and a willingness to de-humanize and kill that those who you hate. That's what led Hitler to his demise, what will lead the terrorists to their demise, and what will lead to your demise, unless your repent in your ways. Spiritually, this is a view that leads only to darkness. I will pray for you.

[bdeaner]

post #54, totally independently of me, makes the very same point— your argument are propagandistic and bombastic, then when you’re confronted, you withdraw to the position of the wounded academic who is being pilloried for his superior knowledge.

I'll tell you what. I am going to assume from this point on, in good faith, that you are interested in the truth of the issues of concern here, and I am going to assume, in good faith, that you wish to engage in a reasonable dicussion of these issues. Irregardless of what has happened in this conversation up until this point. I ask you to do the same--that you start with the assumption that I am operating in good faith--, so that we can move forward rather than dwelling on a fruitless argument about who said what to whom. Let's try to stick to the facts. Are you with me, or not?

[bdeaner]

Here is a little lesson in psychiatric history --an excerpt from Robert Whitaker's Mad in America that should send chills up your spine:

The "insane" in the U.S. began to lose their right to marry in 1896, when Connecticut became the first state to enact such a prohibition. North Dakota quickly followed suit, as did Michigan, which threatened the insane with a $1,000 fine and five years in prison should they dare to wed. By 1914, more than 20 states had laws prohibiting the insane from marrying, and, in 1933, Popenhoe, in the book Applied Eugenics, matter-of-factly reported that there were no states left where the insane could legally tie the knot...

When this didn't work to prevent the "insane" from reproducing, a movement grew to endorse compulsory sterilization of "defectives." As early as 1882, a year before Galton coined the term "eugenics," William Goodell, a well-known gynecologist in Pennsylvania, had proposed castrating the mentally ill in order to prevent them from bearing "insane offspring." Goodell, who reported that surgical removal of a woman's ovaries could cure "ovarian insanity," predicted that in a "progressive future," it would "be deemed a measure of sound policy and of commendable statesmanship to stamp out insanity by castrating all the insane men and spaying all the insane women." His views were echoed by F.D. Daniel, editor of Texas Medical Journal, who believed that castrating insane men would also keep them from masturbating and thus "would be an advisible hygienic measure."

In 1907, Indiana became the first state to pass a compulsory sterilization law. It did so in the name of science, the bill stating that heredity had been shown to play a dominant role in the "transmission of crime, idiocy, and imbecility." Over the next two decades, thirty state legislatures approved sterilization bills, and repeatedly did so based on an argument that science had proven that defectives breed defectives. Their list of degenerate hereditary types were often long. In its 1913 bill, Iowa said that those in need of sterilization incided "criminals, rapists, idiots, feeble-minded, imbeciles, lunatics, drunkards, drug fiends, epileptics, syphilitics, moral and sexual perverts, and diseased and degenerate persons"--a catch-all description, in essence, for people viewed as social "scum" by the legislature.

Despite the enthusiasm of state legislatures for such measures, states--with the notable exception of California--did not begin sterilizing their "defectives" in any great numbers, at least not until 1927. Opponents, which naturally included Catholics and non-English immigrant groups, argued that such laws violated constitutional safeguards against cruel and unusual punishment, due process of law, and equal protection of laws--that last flaw arising because the bills regularly authorized sterilization only of institutionalized people, as opposed to all people with supposed hereditary defects. By 1923, laws in Iowa, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Michigan, Indiana, and Oregon had been declared unconstitutional in state courts. Governors in Pennsylvania, Oregon, Vermont, Idaho, and Nebraska vetoed sterilization bills, with the most stinging and wittiest rebuke coming from Pennsylvania own Samuel Pennypacker. Rising to speak at a dinner after his veto, he was roundly greeted with boos, catcalls, and sneering whistles. "Gentlemen, gentlemen," he implored, raising his arms to silence the crowd of legislators," you forget you owe me a vote of thanks. Didn't I veto the bill for the castration of idiots?"

As a nation, America was having a difficult time making up its mind about sterilization. From 1907 to 1927, about 8,000 eugenic sterilizations were performed--a significant number, yet only a tiny percentage of people [with mental illness]... Was it constitional or not? Was this a practice consistent with the governing principles of the country?

In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court--by an 8-1 majority in the case of Buck v. Bell---ruled that it was. In his written opinion, Oliver Wendell Holmes supported the decision by noting "experience has shown that heredity plays an important part in the transmission of insanity, imbecility, etc." Bad science had become the foundation for bad law....

At that moment, America stood alone as the first eugenic country. No European nation had enacted a statute for compulsory sterilization of the mentally ill and other misfits. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision, the number of eugenic sterilizations in the United States markedly increased, averaging more than 2,200 annually during the 1930's. Editorials in the New York Times and leading medical journals like the New England Journal of Medicine spoke positively about the practice. A 1937 Fortune magazine poll found that 66% of Americans favored sterilizing "defectives." By the end of 1945, 45,127 Americans had been sterilized under such laws...

Although the U.S. Supreme Court spoke of sterilization as a small "sacrifice" that the unfit should make for the national good, no society likes to perceive of itself as mean-spirited toward its misfits. Nor do physicians want to see themselves as implementers of social policy that might harm their patients. They want to provide care that is helpful. Those two needs, for society to view itself in a good light and for physicians to view themselves as healers, were revealed early on in California, where, by the end of World War II, nearly 50% of all sterilizations of the mentally ill in the United States had been performed. There, physicians came to view sterilization as providing patients with a therapeutic benefit, one that, or society society was told, evoked gratitude in most patients.

California approved its Asexualization Act in 1909, a law pushed by a physician, F.W. Hatch, who was then named superintendent of the state's mental hospitals. He promised to use the law to ensure that asylum "defectives should leave behind them no progeny to carry on the tainted and unhappy stream of heredity." Two amendments to the law, in 1913 and 1917, broadened the definition of who was to be considered defective and authorized the state to sterilize such people without their consent. By 1921, nearly 80% of the 3,233 eugenic sterilizations done in the United States had been performed in California.

As California doctors conducted such operations, they constructed various rationales to explain why sterilizations benefited the mentally ill.... [A] story of humanitarian care was being woven. [They claimed d]octors found sterilization to be therapeutic; the mentally ill [were brainwashed to desire] it. In 1929, the Human Betterment Foundation--a state eugenics organization led by wealthy banker Ezra Gosney and Popenoe--reported that 85% of the sterilized mentally ill were either thankful for the operation or at least indifferent to it...In 1935, 83% of all Californians favored eugenic sterilization of the mentally ill....

America's embrace of eugenic sterilization as a progressive health measure had consequences for the mentally ill in other countries as well. Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed it constitutional, Denmark passed a sterilization law, and over the next few years, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland did too. America's influence on Nazi Germany was particularly pronounced, and it was in that country of course that eugenics ran its full course.

Prior to World War I, eugenics was not nearly as popular in Germany as it was in the United States. Germany's parliament defeated a sterilization bill in 1914, and the country didn't pass any law prohibiting the mentally ill from marrying. However, after the war, eugenics gained a new appeal for the German population... In 1925, Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf, hailed eugenics as the science that would rebuild the nation. The state, he wrote, must "avail itself of modern medical discoveries" and sterilize those people who are "unfit for procreation."...

After Hitler came to power in 1933, Germany passed a comprehensive sterilization bill. The German eugenicists who drew up that legislation had gone to school on the U.S. experience, which American eugenecists noted with some pride. "The leaders in the German sterilization movement state repeatedly that their legislation was formulated only after careful study of the California experiments," wrote Margaret Smyth, superintendent of Stockton State Hospital, after touring Germany in 1935. "It would have been impossible they say, to undertake such a venture involving 1 million people without drawing heavily upon previous experience elsewhere."

-- From Robert Whitaker, Mad in America, pp. 56-65 (bolded text added)

This history proves that psychiatry is capable of doing just about anything and will then turn around and rationalize that the practice is in the best interests of the patient.

[gusopol3]

“closest thing to “ means the worst possible thing short of; as I had said in the previous post, I didn’t object to “living hell,” although it’s hyperbole.

[gusopol3]

desparate attempt to undermine my credibility

you do more than enough to undermine you own credibilty, including posting this schlock article, then putting out an unsolicited ping to have every one come running. When obvious lies are pointed out to you in the article, you disavow what you post as being of great urgency to read. I'd suggest a change in you tag-line " I just post 'em , I don't read 'em."

[bdeaner]

“closest thing to “ means the worst possible thing short of; as I had said in the previous post, I didn’t object to “living hell,” although it’s hyperbole.

It's not hyperbole if it is subjectively accurate based on the verbal descriptions of the people experiencing the condition, as documented in peer-reviewed case studies. In that case, you would be accusing the patients of using hyperbole, and I don't think you have grounds to make that claim.

Also, what I did say, more accurately, is: "has got to be the closest thing to living hell." You interpreted this as my saying akathisia is the worst thing on earth other than hell. Could be, might not be. There's no way of knowing. It's a figure of speech, not to be taken literally. The point is, it is a horrible experience, period. Something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

[bdeaner]

There are no lies in the article. I simply pointed out that you misattributed a statement to me rather than attributing it to the appropriate source, the author of the article. BR> Nurses, under doctors orders, often administer medication during involuntary commitment of a patient, which is why they make anti-psychotics in a form that can be injected. This can be done legally, depending on the state. It can be done, for example, in Massachusetts, Florida, and New York--if a court orders that the patient in incapable of making the decision him- or herself. These laws open the door to potentially unnecessary restriction of a patient's liberty.

So far I'm the only person on this list who has made evidence-based, factual stataments as opposed to statement of mere subjective opinion. So, I will let the readers decide who is credible.

[gusopol3]

There's no way of knowing

actually there is. Go over to the local nursing home and take a peek at somebody's who's "locked in " by a brain-stem stroke. Ask how they're doing today, of course they won't be able to say much , but the rolling of their eyeballs might tell what you need to learn. Or find somebody with a progressive malignancy and a terminal diagnosis, or severe Parkinson's Disease, who's shaking like a leaf not able to get up without falling, having to depend on an over-worked staff to lift them out their feces-packed diaper; and whose medication, by the way (dopamine active) may be causing them to hallucinate about small children in the hallway. Then ask somebody with this horrific akathisia that you speak of, how they are, and they're likely to reply, "not too bad ,Doc, do you have a smoke?" Certainly then, you should go on to ask them, why can't you sit still, or have you noticed you seem to be marching in place? But of course, you'd find the MD out to lunch with the pharmaceutical representative, because that's the kind of people that go into medicine, they're more interested in that ham sandwich than they are in the well-being of their patients.

[bdeaner]

Also, consider the fact that this article was written and published in the UK (a different version of it appears in The Guardian) -- a slightly different situation than the U.S. Patients have more rights here, for one, although I don't think informed consent is typically the case in the treatment of mental illness. There may be consent, but it is usually not very informed.

But don't believe me. Again, turn to the research literature. Brown, Billcliff, and McCabe (2001) report on informed consent in long-term psychiatric in-patients in Scotland. Here is what they say:

We wished to ascertain to what extent patients had given informed consent to their medications. Therefore, 68 long-term psychiatric in-patients were interviewed about their knowledge and attitudes towards their medications...Two-thirds of patients did not know the purpose of their medication; one-tenth knew about the side-effects. Longer length of stay, older age and voluntary status were associated with less knowledge. Despite poor knowledge, most patients accepted their treatment. However, few realised that they had any choice....The prevalence of true informed consent is low among this group and raises issues about patients' rights.

The facts speak for themselves. The article is correct.

[gusopol3]

this is from your article: As clinical psychologist Mary Boyle penned it, schizophrenia is a "scientific delusion” which drugs can never cure.

now you say there "are no lies in the article," and you say you haven't "tried to minimize the illness. " Yet you claim to have maintained your credibility. Yikes.

[bdeaner]

But of course, you'd find the MD out to lunch with the pharmaceutical representative, because that's the kind of people that go into medicine, they're more interested in that ham sandwich than they are in the well-being of their patients.

Well, then, we are in agreement on something. How about that?

But with regard to akathisia: in most cases, but not all, it has a subjective component that is often described as a feeling of inner torture -- extreme, debilitating anxiety, in addition to motor restlessness. These are the kinds of akathisia that are described as a "living hell" by the patients themselves. And for those who don't have the subjective tortore, but just the motor restlessness, they are completely non-functioning in most cases, because they can't sit down for any length of time.

All you have is anecdotal evidence presumably based on personal experience as what?... a psychiatric nurse? A patient? You won't disclose. But keep in mind, anecdotal evidence something to avoid, because it has a built-in selection bias.

[bdeaner]

now you say there "are no lies in the article," and you say you haven't "tried to minimize the illness. " Yet you claim to have maintained your credibility. Yikes.

I would not choose the rhetoric she uses -- that of "scientific delusion" -- but this is not factually inaccurate. It is one of several ways of interpreting the fact that schizophrenia has no known biochemical basis that can be consistently identified across the diagnosis, and which rules out the effects of psychiatric medication on the brain. The evidence isn't there. I wouldn't make the leap to say schizophrenia is a scientific delusion, but neither is it a lie to say this. It's an inference that would require further evidence for her to substantiate. I would suggest, in contrast to Mary Boyle, that schizophrenia is not so much a scientific delusion as much as it is not a reliable and valid categorical description.

I would say, instead, that schizophrenia is largely composed of a wide variety of disorders with a wide variety of causes, and that accurate nosology will require a new diagnostic strategy -- most likely a dimensional approach in order to identify reliable and valid dimensions that would allow us to link those dimensions to etiological factors. Some of those symptomatic dimensions will have an organic basis. Some will be psychogenic. etc.

[bdeaner]

Yet you claim to have maintained your credibility.

One more point here -- a process comment. First of all, I held out an olive branch asking that we refrain from personal attacks and to start with a sentiment of good faith. You have not responded to that appeal, and then launched in yet again to questions about my "credibility." Credibility is ad hominem. It's irrelevant; a fallacious style of argument.

But what you were raising was not in fact an issue of credibility. You actually made a decent point, which I addressed above. What you did is raise the question of whether my argument (not my credibility) was logically consistent or coherent. But that isn't an issue of credibility. It's an issue of logical consistency or coherency. That's not fallacious, and it is a valid point. I countered by saying that, no, I was not being logically inconsistent and I made my case for coherency.

Let's try to stick to these lines of argument. They will serve the facts better if we can do that, despite ourselves. So, here is a second olive branch.

[gusopol3]

But of course, you'd find the MD out to lunch with the pharmaceutical representative, because that's the kind of people that go into medicine, they're more interested in that ham sandwich than they are in the well-being of their patients.

Well, then, we are in agreement on something. How about that?

113 posts and we finally got you to own up to your motivations. It has been clear since post 1. Get some help with it, you'll be more effective in your work.

[bdeaner]

113 posts and we finally got you to own up to your motivations. It has been clear since post 1. Get some help with it, you'll be more effective in your work.

You said it, not me. It's sadly too often the case. And again you can't hold to a valid line of argument without resorting to an ad hominem attack. It's sad, really. Kind of pathetic.

[gusopol3]

But of course, you'd find the MD out to lunch with the pharmaceutical representative, because that's the kind of people that go into medicine, they're more interested in that ham sandwich than they are in the well-being of their patients. >sarc

[bdeaner]

>sarc

Obviously.

We finally agree on something. How about that? >tongue-in-cheek

[bdeaner]

By the way, I never minimized the intense suffering of those diagnosed with schizophrenia -- and never would. Just for the record.

But you have minimized those suffering with akathisia.