With the rapid growth of gov­ernment “Community Mental Health” programs for severely mentally disturbed individuals now costing billions of ­dollars, how is mental health faring in our communities today?

The US New Freedom Commission on Mental Health issued a report that claimed, “Effective, ­state-of-the-art treatments vital for quality care and ­recovery are now available for most serious mental illnesses and serious emotional disorders.” Emphasis added]

For those who know little about psychiatry and Community Mental Health, this appears to be great news. However, exactly what are these vital “treatments?”

They principally involve an automatic, one-for-one prescription of drugs called neuroleptics (from Greek, meaning “nerve seizing,” reflective of how the drugs act like a chemical lobotomy).

The cost of neuroleptics for the treatment of so-called schizophrenic patients across the United States at over $10 million (€8.2 million) a day. Treatment is usually lifelong.

Then again, what should we pay for quality care, for recovery, for the opportunity to bring these people back to productive lives?

According to several nonpsychiatric and independent research experiments, the answer to that question is “Not much at all.” Quality care resulting in recovery and reintegration can be very inexpensive, as well as rapid, permanent, and most significantly, drug free.

In an eight-year study, the World Health Organization found that severely mentally disturbed patients in three economically disadvantaged countries whose treatment plans do not include a heavy reliance on drugs—India, Nigeria and Colombia—found that patients did dramatically better than their counterparts in the United States and four other developed countries. A follow-up study reached a similar conclusion.

In the United States in the 1970s, the late Dr. Loren Mosher’s Soteria House experiment was based on the idea that “schizophrenia” can be overcome without drugs. Soteria clients who didn’t receive neuroleptics actually did the best, compared to hospital and drug-treated control subjects. Swiss, Swedish and Finnish researchers have replicated and validated the experiment and are still using this today.

In Italy, Dr. Georgio Antonucci dismantled some of the most oppressive psychiatric wards by treating severely disturbed patients with compassion, respect and without drugs. Within months, the most violent wards became the calmest.

What does all this mean?

As any self-respecting physical scientist will tell you, a theory is good only so long as it works. He knows that when he encounters facts that don’t fit the theory, he must continue to investigate and ­modify or discard the theory based on the actual ­evidence discovered.

For many years, psychiatry has promoted its theory that the only “treatment” for severe mental “illness” is neuroleptic drugs. However, this idea is faulty. The truth is that not only is the drugging of severely mentally disturbed patients unnecessary—and expensive—it causes brain- and life-damaging side effects.

This report exposes the faults in psychiatry’s arguments—its fraud, lies and other deceptions. Knowing this information makes it very easy to see why psychiatrists would attack any alternative and better solution to the problems of severe mental disturbance.

For the truth is, we are not just dealing with a lack of scientific skill or method, or even with a ­quasi­ science. Seemingly benign statements, such as “There is clear scientific evidence that newer classes of medications can better treat the symptoms of schizophrenia and depression with far fewer side effects,” are not backed up by evidence and constitute outright medical fraud.

Psychiatry’s approach to the treatment of the severely mentally disturbed—the “evidence-based,” “scientific” and operational backbone of community mental health and other psychiatric programs—is bad science and bad medicine but is very good business for psychiatry.

The simple truth is that there are workable alternatives to psychiatry’s mind-, brain- and body-damaging treatments. With psychiatry now calling for mandatory mental illness screening for adults and children everywhere, we urge all who have an interest in preserving the mental health, the physical health and the freedom of their families, communities and nations, to read this publication. Something must be done to establish real help for those who need it.

Sincerely,

Jan Eastgate
President, Citizens Commission
on Human Rights International