Monday, August 28, 2006

Most of psychiatry is pseudoscience through and through

As seen here by Richard DeGrandpre, who is a past senior editor of Adbusters magazine

Most of psychiatry is pseudoscience through and through. The reason why is this: not only does the psychiatry establishment fail to distinguish between correlation and causation – a scientific must – it blatantly refuses to. And for good reason: most of the dogma in psychiatry is not scientifically proven, nor could be.

The core hoax here is psychiatry’s brain --> behavior theory. According to biological psychiatry, all behavior is caused by the brain and so any abnormal behavior is caused by an abnormal brain. According to this cartoon logic, love and hate are not reactions to the outer world, they are brain states caused by the workings of the brain. If you don’t believe this, you should also not believe the former. Depression and schizophrenia are expressed in the brain, but they are as connected to the outer world as are love and hate.

And then there’s the BRAIN --> BEHAVIOR --> DRUG theory of psychiatry. Because a drug affects the abnormal behavior, it proves that the problem was biological after all. This is as wrongheaded as saying that because Viagra helps you get an erection, you love Viagra as much as your wife. Again, research shows the absurdity of psychiatry’s so-called science.

Unfortunately for psychiatry, studies keep turning up that suggest links between environment and mental health. For instance, studies show that psychotherapy and drug therapy both alter brain chemistry in ways that alter our psychological states of mind (indeed: look at the Latest Placebo Research, bottom right).

The DRUG --> BRAIN theory of psychiatry is hugely important because it is used as justification for such things as removing people from the world (which doesn’t matter to their mental state) and forcing drugs and other radical measures upon them. This is the history of psychiatry. Such power based on such nonsense should be among the most feared things in our society, even if it is not. As with the Nazis, biology serves to justify horrible acts against people. Whether this is done with the best intentions, or the worst, doesn’t matter.

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