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The vast majority of the mental health professions,
including psychiatry, psychology and social work,
coalesce into a conglomerate that can best be subsumed
under the title of Psychiatric-Pharmaceutical
Industrial Complex (PPIC). The cardinal purpose
of this 'conglomerate' is to promote profit, primarily
for the pharmaceutical industry and secondarily
for the practice of those mental health industry
people who subscribe to the allopathic doctrine
driving the system. The promotion of profit translates
into active suppression of anything in the knowledge
base that would enable a person to achieve the same
goal without resorting to a PPIC sponsored treatment.
As with most capitalist enterprises, PPIC enriches
itself by exploiting and manipulating public and
professional opinion by massive advertising campaigns
that skirt or distort the truth. The means the PPIC
employs are many and subtle e.g., covertly funding
so-called patient advocacy organizations who wind
up promoting PPIC coercive measures, providing free
lunches and dinners under the guise of Professional
Education seminars, sponsoring professional symposiums
and conferences, giving seemingly innocuous gifts,
funding PPIC-friendly political campaigns, not to
mention massive media advertising campaigns etc.
Why would an industry spend millions of dollars
per year on such functions? Certainly not for charity.
As an example, some years ago there arose a concern
regarding children's attention problems and their
ability to sit still in the classroom. A pediatrician,
out of desperation, gave one of his patients a sympathomimetic
(AKA in street lingo, "speed") preparation
and saw that it had the opposite effect on this
growing child's brain. He calmed down. The pharmaceutical
company immediately envisioned a way to profit.
Their researchers, most of whom were paid good sums,
advocated for the diagnosis of "attention deficit
disorder" to be included in the diagnostic
bible for psychiatrists. Once denoted as a mental
"disease" in this bible, they advanced,
through the FDA, proposals to define a treatment
by using this sympathomimetic substance. At this
point in our history, the diagnostic label is the
only one that was created, not from identifying
a particular disorder, but to justify the prescription
of the drug. Now, years later, not only are there
many thousands of children taking this substance
that is known to biochemically alter the nervous
system, especially in young brains, but we have
school systems demanding that parents place their
children on the drug so that they will not disturb
the teacher and other children with their restlessness,
most of which probably stems from boredom or lack
of interest in the subject being taught, problems
in their home life, including contactless significant
others. Only now are we beginning to realize the
harm as these children that were so medicated are
becoming adults with severe emotional difficulties
often related to the biochemical alteration of their
brains by the drug that was purported to address
their childhood problems.
The medical professions and psychology professions
proudly proclaim they have a built-in ethical structure
that protects the professional from manipulation
by free gifts, advancement of careers and incomes
from research stipends, etc. But the truth of the
matter is a bit removed from their proclamations,
to say the least. For example, when the PPIC sponsors
one of the numerous free luncheons in most all hospitals
and clinics, we see either none or only a few psychologists,
social workers and psychiatrists purposely avoiding
it out of ethical or professional concerns.
Most recently, we hear radio or TV snapshots of
PPIC sponsored professional folk claiming they can
attend these events without being influenced to
use or promote the drug of the companies choice.
How naive.
As with most capitalist enterprises, those without
capital e.g., the poor and underpriveleged, are
the most seriously affected by the promulgation
of so-called treatments by the PPIC. Many of these
treatments can cause seriously debilitating side
effects, including death. The poor have very little
choice when PPIC sponsored laws have been passed,
to involuntarily commit to outpatient or inpatient
status, those who do not cooperate with PPIC professional
beliefs and treatments.
There is always an alternative solution to eliminating
or taking away a human being's freedom of choice.
Yet, as we've seen in this and many other business
enterprises, the most expedient authoritarian measures
are employed to accumulate profit, under the clever
guise of 'helping' society and the "mentally
ill."
Over the past 40 years, many non-PPIC sponsored
facilities and programs have been developed, all
built upon a foundation of respect for an individual's
freedom. These programs have effectively advanced
the consciousness of folk that would be defined
by a diagnostic label by PPIC supporters. Some may
even employ pharmaceutical agents as adjunctive
therapies. However, the primary therapy in such
programs is strategic and psychological. Research
on these effective treatment programs have demonstrated
less recidivism or return of the thinking problems
than equivalent groups of patients given PPIC-sponsored
treatments. Yet, as a result of PPIC control of
the media these successes rapidly passed through
to the back page, buried under a slew of press and
media campaigns promoting PPIC profits and citing
arguments against any threat to it. The consequence
is that most medical school and graduate psychology
school curriculum support little if any mention
of non-PPIC successful programs and treatments.
Thus many emerging physicians/psychiatrists and
psychologists know little of the successes of these
non-PPIC programs.
Read Part
2 of this article
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