Mental Health Care: What is the alternative to Psychotropic Drugs?
Life is full of problems – sometimes these problems are overwhelming and can cause a variety of behavioral reactions and mental problems. Mental problems can be resolved-thankfully so. An individual should be encouraged to overcome his personal obstacles and arrive at a better understanding of himself and life.
There is abundant evidence that real physical illness with real physical evidence can seriously effect an individual’s mental state and behavior. Often times the source of this behavior are poor or incorrect nutrition, thyroid imbalance, hormonal imbalance, lack of sleep, toxins in the environment, allergies and a host of other causes.
For example, a study conducted by E Cheraskin, MD, DMD and WM Ringsford, Jr, DMD, MS and presented before a hearing of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs of the US Senate, showed that people with symptoms of schizophrenia suffered from lack of good nutrition and vitamin B.
Psychiatry is based on observing behavior and guessing at a diagnoses without substantiated physical proof behind that diagnoses. Such theories as “chemical imbalance” that we read about in the press and hear on television and radio have not been proven but are only put forth by speculation.
According to Dr Darshak Sanghavi, clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School, “Despite pseudoscientific terms like “chemical imbalance”, nobody really know what causes mental illness. There is no blood test or brain scan for major depression. No geneticist can diagnose schizophrenia.”
In other words, there is no physical lab test to determine and justify the diagnoses and labeling of “bi-polar”, “ADHD”, or “obsessive compulsive disorder”, etc. Yet, psychiatry calls these subjective “guesses” at mental illness a “disease” without a physical basis.
In any society, the accomplishment of true mental health amongst its citizens should rest on 3 basic criteria:
1. Effective mental “healing” technology and treatments which improve and strengthen the individual by restoring personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well being.
2. Highly trained, ethical practitioners who are committed primarily to the well-being of their patient and who can deliver what they promise.
3. Mental healing delivered in a calm atmosphere of tolerance, safety, security and respect for people’s rights.
A family faced with a seriously disturbed and irrational member can become desperate in their attempts to resolve the crises. Disturbed individuals deserve and need our protection from abuse. The more intense and extreme the disturbance, the gentler the treatment .
As a brief guide always:
1. Help a person with quiet, food, rest and only if necessary to achieve rest, a mild drug so that he or she can rest properly and sufficiently.
2. Never turn someone who is mentally disturbed over to people who use force, seclusion, or physically damaging practices and treatments
3. Ensure that a full and searching medical examination is conducted to determine any undiagnosed and untreated medical conditions.
4. Always find the cause of the person’s problems. Never be satisfied with a mere explanation of the symptoms.
Dr. Norman Sartorius who was president of the World Psychiatric Association stated in 1994, shortly before his appointment, “The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone.” Backed by the pharmaceutical companies, psychiatry has turned to psychotropic drugging, rejecting the above listed criteria for promoting true mental health. Alternative ways of helping those suffering from mental disturbance are buried by the drug company’s marketing hype that support more than $27 billion a year in the US and $80 billion around the world.
Psychiatry largely relies upon forcing –often under the sanction of law – unworkable and dangerous methods, in particular drugs.
Since 2003, there have been more than 60 international drug regulatory agency warnings about the risks inherent in taking psychotropic drugs. Antidepressants can cause suicide and hostility, antipsychotics can cause life-threatening diabetes; and stimulants prescribed to children may put them at risk of heart problems, stroke and even death.