Psychiatric Insanity

The Modern Psychiatrist

Biopsychiatry lives by the principle that its patients are so different from other humans that almost anything can be done to them, including surgical, electrical, and chemical lobotomy. By contrast, the ethical helping person assumes that those seeking help possess the same human sensitivities as anyone else, including the therapist. Many people continue to think of the psychiatrist as a wise, warm, and caring person who will help them tackle their problems. But the modern psychiatrist may have no interest in "talking therapy." His or her entire training and commitment is more likely devoted to "medical diagnosis" and physical treatment. He or she may look at you with all the empathy and understanding of a pathologist staring through a microscope at germs, and then offer you a drug. The same is true if you are seeking help for a member of your family, such as your elderly mother who's getting more difficult to care for at home, or your son, who's become supposedly hyperactive, difficult, or uncomfortable in school. You may want advice on how to be more helpful to your mother or your son, but the psychiatrist will explain that their problems are biological and treatable with drugs, electroshock, or hospitalization. You may be relieved at the prospect of having the difficulty prescribed away by an expert. But beware--you are creating effects from which your mother or your child may never recover.

The next time you go to a psychiatrist, you may find yourself in the office of someone who has never been taught how to talk with you about your problems or those of your family. Nor has he or she been trained to understand personal and family conflicts. Instead the doctor will listen, make some observations, jot down some notes, make a medicalized diagnosis, and prescribe a physical treatment. He or she may even draw blood and listen to your heart. Not your metaphorical heart; your flesh and blood heart. But attempts to substitute physical interventions for human services often are doomed to cause more harm than good. The brain-disabling principle applies to all of the most potent psychiatric treatments--neuroleptics, antidepressants, lithium, electroshock, and psychosurgery. All of the major psychiatric treatments exert their primary or intended effect by disabling normal brain function. Neuroleptic lobotomy, for example, is not a side effect, but the sought-after clinical effect. None of the major psychiatric interventions correct or improve existing brain dysfunction, such as any presumed biochemical imbalance. If the patient happens to suffer from brain dysfunction, then the psychiatric drug, electroshock, or psychosurgery will worsen or compound it. The person now has his or her original brain damage and dysfunction plus a chemical lobotomy. In biopsychiatry, it's the damage that does the trick.

Iatrogenic Helplessness

Even without the production of brain dysfunction, the giving of drugs or other physical interventions tends to reinforce the doctor's role as an authority and the patient's role as a helpless sick person. The patient learns that he or she has a "disease," that the doctor has a "treatment," and that the patient must "listen to the doctor" in order to get well again. The patient's learned helplessness and submissiveness is then vastly amplified by the brain damage. The patient becomes more dutiful to the doctor and to the demoralizing principles of biopsychiatry. Denial can become a way of life, fixed in place by brain damage. Suggestion and authoritarianism are common enough in the practice of medicine, but only in psychiatry does the physician actually damage the individual's brain in order to facilitate control over him or her. Biopsychiatry lives by the principle that its patients are so different from other humans that almost anything can be done to them, including surgical, electrical, and chemical lobotomy. By contrast, the ethical helping person assumes that those seeking help possess the same human sensitivities as anyone else, including the therapist. The psychiatrist is someone who no longer takes his or her time listening to patients' problems but who methodically asks questions to make a diagnosis, in the manner of an internist or neurologist. Psychiatrists no longer concern themselves with what Freud or Jung had to say or with the nuances of various psychological theories.

Meanwhile, the public still thinks of the psychiatrist as a psychotherapist. Never before has the public had such outdated views of what modern psychiatrists think and do. Even the most highly regarded mental hospitals are humiliating and oppressive places, even for normal volunteers masquerading as patients. Typical state hospitals, where many drug studies are conducted, are intimidating and frightfully violent. Most drug-free people would want to take flight rather than to waste away in a facility that offers nothing in the way of rehabilitation, recreation, or social life. Unfortunately, the patient may face an equally suppressive life situation after discharge from the hospital. Board-and-care homes and nursing homes are at least as boring and stifling as psychiatric hospitals. Often they offer nothing but a bed, a TV, and perhaps a local park bench.

Lobotomy

Lobotomy usually refers to the surgical cutting of nerve connections between the frontal lobes and the remainder of the brain. The frontal lobes produce the bulge in the human forehead, distinguishing our profile from that of other animals, and they represent the evolutionary flowering of the brain. The frontal lobes are the seat of higher human functions, such as love, concern for others, empathy, self-insight, creativity, initiative, autonomy, rationality, abstract reasoning, judgment, future planning, foresight, willpower, determination, and concentration. The frontal lobes allow us to be "human" in the full sense of that word; they are required for a civilized, effective, mature life. Lobotomy basically knocks the frontal lobes out of commission. Depending on the amount of damage done, the effect can be partial or relatively complete. In the extreme, the patient becomes obviously demented, with the deterioration of all higher mental function. Surgically lobotomized people often deny both their brain damage and their personal problems. They will loudly declare, "I'm fine, never been better," when they can no longer think straight.

Sometimes they deny that they have been operated on, despite the dime-size burr holes in their skulls palpable beneath their scalp. So many lobotomies were performed on inmates of state mental hospitals, because lobotomized patients become more dependent and more suitable for control in a structured institution. Deprived of their autonomy, initiative, or willpower, their performance is considered better in a structured situation. From the psychiatrists' viewpoint, the neuroleptic drugs had two advantages over surgical lobotomy and over electroshock. With the drugs, one could at least hope that the brain damaging effects would not be permanent. As an ostensibly more humane intervention, drug therapy both salved the consciences of psychiatrists and made them feel more like legitimate doctors. But in doing so, the neuroleptics opened the way to unparalleled abuses on a far more massive level involving scores of millions of patients throughout the world.

Electroshock Therapy

Electroshock in psychiatry involves the passage of an electrical current through the head and brain to produce a grand-mal or major epileptic seizure with unconsciousness. Sometimes the two electrodes are placed over both temples (bilateral shock) and sometimes over one side of the head (unilateral). The shock induces an electrical storm that obliterates the normal electrical patterns of the brain, driving the recording needle on the EEG up and down in violent, jagged swings. This period of extreme bursts of electrical energy often is followed by a briefer period of absolutely no electrical activity, called the isoelectric phase. The brain waves become temporarily flat, exactly as in brain death, and it may be that cell death takes place during this time. A shock-induced seizure is typically far more severe than those suffered during spontaneous epilepsy. In earlier times, when the shock patient's body was not paralyzed by pharmacological agents, it would undergo muscle spasms sufficiently violent at times to crack vertebrae and break limb bones. Typically, the treatment is given three times a week for a total of at least six to ten sessions. After several sessions of shock, the patient awakens in a few (or sometimes many) minutes in a state of apathy and docility. There will be some memory loss and some confusion and often a headache, stiff neck, and nausea.

The damage is caused by several factors that have been studied by direct examination of animal brains subjected to very small electrical stimulation: first, mechanical and heat trauma from the electric current; second, spasm and breakdown of blood vessel walls as the electricity travels down the vascular tree; and third, to a much lesser extent, the convulsions. As the course of shocks progresses, the patient's apathy, memory loss, and confusion increase. Judgment and general mental function become impaired. Sometimes the patient becomes temporarily giddy or artificially high. This generalized mental and emotional dysfunction is called an acute organic brain syndrome or delirium--the brain's typical response to severe stress or damage. Sometimes, extreme states of delirium develop where the patient appears grossly psychotic, with hallucinations and delusions. Even exponents of shock treatment usually admit in their professional publications that many or all shock patients develop an acute organic brain syndrome. It usually takes two to four weeks for the EEG to return to normal after ECT, however, some abnormalities may persist several months or longer and are considered to be poor prognostic signs. Some studies show that many patients never recover normal EEGs following shock treatment.

Many people mistakenly believe that shock has been outlawed. In reality, 100,000 or more Americans are being shocked each year, and the number is rising rapidly. A thorough review of the shock literature shows that there are no controlled studies indicating any "beneficial" effect beyond four weeks. Most show little or no improvement at all. Although it dated back to 1938 in Italy and came to the United States soon after, electroshock treatment remains a revered symbol of authority in modern psychiatry. Shock was widely used by psychiatrists in Nazi Germany. When shock reached its fiftieth birthday in 1988, it literally was "celebrated" in an orchestrated fashion at meetings throughout the world, including the annual conventions of the American Psychiatric Association, the Society of Biological Psychiatry, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and the International Psychiatric Congress. As if honoring a dead hero, shock's fiftieth birthday also was "celebrated" in an issue of the journal Convulsive Therapy, and "observances" were held at various hospitals that especially favor shock, such as the Friends Hospital in Philadelphia, the Oregon Health Sciences University, and Taylor Manor in Maryland. The festivities were lovingly described by Max Fink in Fifty Years of ECT in the May 1988 Psychiatric Times.

A Shocking Price

The bill for a month's stay with shock treatment at one general hospital was approximately $20,000. Most of the cost usually is covered by health insurance. A psychiatrist David Viscott observes in The Making of a Psychiatrist, "Finding that the patient has insurance seems like the most common indication for giving shock." In California, recently, individual treatments cost $1,000, with the psychiatrist who pushes the button often making between $200 and $300, although some state and federal insurance coverage may limit the payments to nearer $100. If a psychiatrist were to shock an average of only five patients a week, at a typical charge of $200 per treatment, and each patient shocked three times a week, he will earn an annual income of $150,000 just from electroshock therapy. The time invested by the shock doctor will hardly impinge on the rest of his week. Since each treatment takes only a few minutes, the doctor easily can do five in an hour, so it will take him a mere three hours per week to earn his annual income of $150,000. If the shock doctor also visits his patients on the ward, he can make much more money. Hospital consultations, sometimes lasting only a few minutes, will be covered by insurance at a higher rate than is psychotherapy in a private office. If the psychiatrist sees each of his five shock patients three times a week at $150 per consultation, he can generate an additional $112,500, for a grand total of $262,500 a year, without using up more than a few hours' time.

Easy Prey

Since data collection began a few decades ago, more than two-thirds of shock patients reported to the state each year in California have been women. In recent times there has been an escalating percentage of elderly ECT patients. Vulnerable elderly women, who live alone, many living in relative isolation, and barely making ends meet, are among the most frequent victims of shock treatment in California. These elderly women are being pushed or cajoled by their doctors into getting shock treatment. Frail, despairing, desperately needing emotional support, elderly women often have no one to defend them or to stand up for them, and they are unlikely to find the strength in themselves to defy their doctors. Sadly, those whose lives are least treasured in the society are those most likely to be afflicted with psychiatry's most destructive treatments. In defense of shocking the elderly, the psychiatrists state that antidepressants are often lethal in the elderly, requiring the alternative of ECT. The truth is that while antidepressants are especially dangerous to older people, so is electroshock. The elderly are far more sensitive to electroshock's damaging effects, including brain damage and dysfunction. This is not surprising; the older brain is more fragile. For a biopsychiatrist like Donald Hay, the elderly live in a psychosocial and spiritual vacuum, needing drugs and shock to correct their presumably abnormal brain chemistry. Hay recommends ECT for patients already suffering from severe brain disease--a certain formula for causing them even more extreme memory loss and mental dysfunction. He even wants to shock patients who are suffering from drug-induced akathisia, dystonia, parkinsonism, and tardive dyskinesia, thereby compounding their doctor-induced neurologic disease with still more of the same. The ECT-induced brain dysfunction would certainly stop the patients from complaining about their iatrogenic neurological disorders.

Brain Damage

Because shock treatment routinely causes an acute organic brain syndrome or delirium, the question is not whether shock can cause brain dysfunction. Shock treatment always causes severe brain dysfunction. The only legitimate question is, "How often is recovery complete?" As many as 50% of such patients studied, with neuropsychiatric testing, have demonstrated organic cognitive deficits. It is recognized in neurology that even mild head injury frequently results in lasting, debilitating problems, such as memory difficulties, deficiencies in focusing and maintaining concentration, and loss of problem-solving skills.

Frequently the person feels "changed" in a fundamental and catastrophic fashion. Often there is a frontal-lobe syndrome with loss of interest or emotional intensity, difficulties with abstract reasoning and planning, and so on. In their books, articles, and public statements, shock supporters, including the American Psychiatric Association, often ignore the vast literature on the damaging effects of even minor head injury. An exception is advocate Max Fink, who believes that shock treatment works by causing the typical aftermath of closed-head injury. Brain damage from shock is amply demonstrated by animal research. Research conducted on dogs, cats, and monkeys in the 1940s and 1950s was so convincing that the search for further evidence came to a halt. They used less current when those studies were conducted than that applied to humans in modern ECT. Since the patients are now sedated, and sedation makes it more difficult to convulse the patients, the shock has to be even stronger. Nevertheless, leading shock advocates claim in their reviews that the animal research showed no damage.

Cell death and widespread small, and sometimes large, hemorrhages are confirmed by human autopsy studies. Other evidence for persistent brain damage is found on EEG studies, neuropsychological testing, some brain scan studies, and many clinical reports. More often than not, brain-damaged patients tend to deny the degree of their memory loss and mental dysfunction. This is true whether the damage has resulted from medical treatment, disease, or accidental trauma. The American Psychiatric Association issued a report, The Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy (1990), and held a press conference in support of electroshock treatment. There was no hint that jolting the head with electricity might damage the brain, mind, or memory. The lengthy literature documenting brain damage from ECT, including animal and human studies, went unmentioned. Electroshock is an electrically induced closed-head injury, and an electrical lobotomy. If a woman received an accidental shock in her kitchen, perhaps from touching her forehead against a short-circuited refrigerator, and fell to the floor convulsing, she's be rushed to the local ER and treated as an acute medical emergency. If she awoke the way a shock patient does--dazed, confused, disoriented, and suffering from a headache, stiff neck, and nausea--she'd be hospitalized for careful observation and probably put on anticonvulsants for months to prevent another convulsion. But on a psychiatric ward she'd be told she was doing fine and "not to worry," while the electrical closed-head injury was inflicted again and again.

Animal tests at the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences have shown brain damage with nerve cell death from electroshock treatment. Russia has placed grave limitations on the use of shock, while in the USA, it is very widely used and has become all but a repressive measure applied even to healthy people. Teams of American researchers performed comparable animal experiments years ago, with similar findings, and then organized psychiatry immediately covered them up. Nowadays shock doctors are very sensitive to public and professional opinion, and therefore they maintain that the treatment is relatively harmless and that its method of action is unknown. But in the first couple of decades of use, many shock authorities boldly declared that the treatment works precisely by damaging the brain and that brain-cell death is the key to successful treatment. To the extent that it works at all, shock has its impact by disabling the brain. It does so by causing an organic brain syndrome, with memory loss, and confusion. The principal complications of EST are death, brain damage, memory impairment, and spontaneous seizures. These complications are similar to those seen afer head trauma, with which EST has been compared.

Electroshock and the CIA

D. Ewen Cameron of Canada, who assaulted patients with massive drug doses, bizarre forms of conditioning, and what he called depatterning treatment. Cameron was professor of psychiatry at McGill University and the Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal. As president of the American Psychiatric Association (1953) and as the first president of the World Psychiatric Association, Cameron was one of the most revered and rewarded psychiatrists on the international scene. Cameron subjected patients to twice-daily doses of six electroshocks, one after another, to maintain the individual in one prolonged stupor. Typically thirty-to-forty or more shocks were given in this blockbuster manner during his experiments on more than fifty patients in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The result of this devastating treatment was a severe delirium; patients would lose their sense of identity and sometimes become delusional. Robbed of virtually all memory, the patients became completely focused on present sensations and feelings. With much or even their entire lifetime memory bank obliterated, six months would be taken to reprogram them with new memories of themselves and a more docile personality.

Cameron's work suddenly became a major scandal. The outcry wasn't directed at the extreme treatments themselves, which were similar to numerous other regressive shock techniques, variations of which still are practiced in the United States. What made Cameron suddenly newsworthy was the disclosure in newspaper reports and books that he had been secretly financed by CIA funds. Eager to learn how to "brainwash" people and to wipe out their memories, the CIA found a willing ally in Cameron. Although Cameron was doing regressive shock on his own initiative as routine clinical practice before the CIA became interested, he accepted the CIA funds. He would have carried on his work with or without the CIA, which never gave him more than $20,000 per year. This was documented in detail in John Marks' 1979 book The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate."

The New Shock Treatment

The most highly publicized alleged improvement is called modified ECT. It involves sedation, muscle paralysis, and artificial respiration. Despite the PR, this method is not new at all. It has been done this way since the early 1960s. Furthermore, modified shock, of necessity, is more dangerous. First, the hazards of general anesthesia and muscle paralyzing agents are added to those of the shock. Second, the intensity of current must be greater to overcome the anticonvulsant effect of the short-acting sedative that is injected immediately prior to the shock. In addition, patients in modern psychiatric hospitals frequently receive other medications, such as sedatives and minor tranquilizers, which further raise the seizure threshold.

Furthermore, patients too often receive neuroleptics, antidepressants, and especially lithium, all of which can worsen the impact of shock. Modified ECT wasn't introduced to reduce brain damage, since the shock doctors used to believe that the damage was therapeutic. The purpose of the modifications was to prevent fractures from muscle spasms. The electrical current must in any case be sufficiently disruptive to produce a convulsion. Sometimes, if the patient is slow to "improve," an older machine will be brought in or the shock doctor will flip off the switch that protects the patient from especially high current intensities. While they won't admit it, many shock doctors act on the old axiom that the brain damage does the trick.

The FDA and the APA

In 1979, the FDA put shock machines into Class III, which means demonstrating "an unreasonable risk of illness or injury." Class III is the most restrictive category for medical devices and would have required manufacturers to provide premarketing data on safety and effectiveness. This probably would have necessitated renewed animal testing. Led by the American Psychiatric Association, psychiatry lobbied to have that decision reversed, and it succeeded. The FDA gave notice of its intention to reclassify shock machines into Class II, approving them as safe and efficacious and requiring no testing. It was a clear-cut illustration of psychiatry's lobbying strength at FDA. This story illustrates how psychiatry places self-interest above both scientific inquiry and the well being of its patients, as it stifled an examination of its treatment and rejected the outcry from the survivors.

Long-Term Testing Requirement For Psychiatric Drugs Abandoned Due To Big Pharma Pressure On The FDA

The bipolar medication lithium is so toxic that it often causes major kidney damage, yet most patients must use it for lifetime maintenance of manic-depressive disorder. Similarly, schizophrenics often spend lifetimes on neuroleptics with long-term side effects such as tardive dyskinesias, or uncontrollable movement of the face, tongue, lips and extremities.

The point here? Side effects almost always go hand-in-hand with taking a medication for a long duration in order to treat a chronic condition. With that in mind, it seems outrageous that on Oct. 25, 2005, a panel voted to defeat the FDA's proposal to extend pre-approval testing of psychiatric drugs from two short-term studies to six-month trials. In layman's terms, psychiatric drugs will not be tested for a long enough time to determine their safety for long-term use before they are approved. Now, they can be tested for as little as two weeks, then given the stamp of safety approval by the FDA after which they will be used for years, if not decades, on unsuspecting patients.

In a Sept. 26 memo, Dr. Thomas P. Laughren, acting director of the FDA's Division of Psychiatry Products, gave solid reasons for the FDA's desire to extend its required testing time. In fact, he begins the memo with a simple fact that makes the need for long-term testing clear: "Most psychiatric illnesses are chronic." He later goes on to explain that current short-term testing methods advocate stopping treatment of subjects who are responding to the drug after only a few weeks, something that would be considered "ethically questionable" in actual clinical treatment. In other words, real-world patients with mental disorders may have to stay on these drugs for months, years, decades and possibly even a lifetime, so why should clinical testing be limited to the short term?

The current short-term tests also present a problem for psychiatrists who are prescribing a newly-approved drug. As Dr. Laughren explains, "Since most treatment guidelines for chronic psychiatric illnesses recommend continuing patients for four to six months or longer after response during short-term treatment, clinicians have generally not had a sufficient evidence base (from pre-approval studies) to support what is the standard practice of drug treatment of psychiatric illnesses."

When a psychiatric drug first hits the market, prescribing physicians are largely left in the dark about treatment issues after a patient stays on the medication longer than the six to 12 weeks tested during approval trials. Yes, the FDA generally asks for longer-term studies to be completed after approval, but it can be years before this is done. During this time patients are put at risk for side effects that did not emerge in the short pre-approval studies.

How Big Pharma overrules the FDA

Though Dr. Laughren rightly petitioned for testing standards to change, Big Pharma once again flexed its muscles and defeated the FDA's acting director and other supporters of longer safety testing requirements. Pharmaceutical industry executives from Merck, Wyeth and Eli Lilly gathered with academic researchers and presented the 11-member Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee with 15 presentations, all against extending the duration of pre-approval trials to six months.

Their argument? According to Eli Lilly's David Michelson, executive director for neuroscience medical research, half of all patients switch psychiatric medications after three months of treatment, with the figure reaching as high as 70 percent after six months. According to this logic, conducting six-month pre-approval tests will not benefit enough psychiatric patients to warrant the policy change. In other words, Big Pharma is saying we should ignore the potential health risks posed to psychiatric patients who take these drugs on a long-term basis because they don't make up a large consumer group. This perspective is alarming in itself, but given the scandals surrounding Vioxx and other prescription drugs, it comes as no surprise.

The facts are clear: Mental illness is presently an epidemic in modern society, a result of our chronic malnutrition and ingestion of metabolic disruptors (ingredients that disrupt normal brain function, such as refined sugars, trans fatty acids, chemical sweeteners, artificial colors, etc.). According to statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health, about one in five American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental illness.

To make matters worse, our population's desire for "magic pill" solutions has made us look to chemical cures for nutritionally- and environmentally-based problems. Because of this trend, drugs that we don't fully understand are being prescribed to an ever-increasing percentage of our population. The long-term effects of this could be disastrous.

In this case, the FDA tried to take a positive step in protecting the public, but failed under the pressure from Big Pharma. It's now up to concerned consumers like you to make your voice heard. Tell the FDA that you want psychiatric medication adequately tested, no matter what Big Pharma says.

Tardive Dyskinesia, Tardive Akathesia and Tardive Dementia

Tardive dyskinesia is a movement disorder, frequently caused by neuroleptics drugs that can afflict any of the voluntary muscles, from the eyelids, tongue, larynx, and diaphragm to the neck, arms, legs, and torso. On rare occasions it can occur after a few weeks or months, but usually it strikes the individual after six months to two years of treatment. Some psychiatrists try to blame the neurological disorder on schizophrenia rather than on the drugs. It manifests as uncontrollable twitches, spasms, or writhing movements. Any of the neuroleptics can cause tardive dyskinesia. This condition makes the victims uncontrollably stick out their tongue, or blink their eyes spasmodically or crane their neck oddly, or their voice screeches a little out of control, periodically, in front of others. While some symptoms improve or even disappear after removal from the offending medications, most cases are permanent. Some experts have begun to admit that nearly all long-term patients are likely to succumb to tardive dyskinesia. There is no known treatment for tardive dyskinesia. The basal ganglia are most clearly damaged during the production of tardive dyskinesia by the neuropleptics. They influence control and coordination of the muscles. But the basal ganglia also are intimately connected to the higher mental centers, and diseases affecting the region ultimately impair the mind.

Tardive dyskinesia is caused by permanent hyperreactivity in the dopamine neurotransmitter system in this area. But dopamine is also the main neurotransmitter ascending into the emotion-regulating limbic system and frontal lobes. The lobotomy effect results from the action of the drugs on these nerve pathways. When this region also becomes permanently hyperreactive in response to the neuroleptics, as we know it does, it makes damage to the higher brain and mind inevitable. The initial studies of tardive dyskinesia showed that many and sometimes all patients also were suffering from serious mental dysfunction, including dementia. Parkinson-like signs occur in most patients treated with neuroleptics and in all patients given high doses. Many psychiatrists used to argue that the drugs could not have their maximum effect without producing some degree of parkinsonism. The muscles can become so rigid that the patient is unable to carry out vigorous, spontaneous activity. This has been called the chemical straitjacket. Children frequently are given these medications in hospitals, facilities for delinquents, and, especially, institutions for the retarded. Typically they are used for the control of unwanted behaviors. Rates of tardive dyskinesia among children are high and children tend to suffer from especially incapacitating cases of the disease, often involving control of the torso, making it hard for them to sit, stand, or walk. The risk is not limited to the retarded, but equally includes every child treated with these drugs. Children go through an especially agonizing period of withdrawal from the drugs, during which their mental anguish increases substantially.

Many patients are told they must remain on neuroleptics for the rest of their lives, without being told about the huge and "almost certain" risk of developing a serious neurological disease. Tardive dementia, a global deterioration of the mind and mental faculties caused by the drugs, remains more controversial within the profession, although evidence for its existence seems incontrovertible. Tardive akathesia--anxiety or nervousness and an uncontrollable drive to move the body, against his or her own will--is a particularly insidious problem among children treated with neuroleptics, as well as a side effect of increased electricity in the mouth and teeth from dental fillings and metal appliances. It also can induce unbearable tension and anxiety. Especially in institutions for children and among people with mental retardation, the neuroleptics are given in order to control restlessness. It's easier to drug these persons than to provide more interesting and stimulating environments to occupy their energy. When the drugs are administered for several months or more, there is increasing danger that they will produce tardive akathisia. The drugs create the very symptoms they are supposed to control, and the child ends up in a vicious circle, being given larger and larger doses in order to control the now-drug-induced disorder. They are creating hyperactive children and adults, saddled for the rest of their lives with sometimes excruciating inner turmoil and a drive to keep their bodies in motion all the time.

Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome

Psychiatry has focused increasing attention on an especially dramatic toxic reaction to the neuroleptics occurring in a small percentage of patients treated with the drugs. The result, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, is largely indistinguishable from an acute, fulminating case of lethargic encephalitis. Both are marked by lobotomy-like indifference and then progress to fever and sweating, unstable cardiovascular signs, bizarre dyskinesia, and, in severe cases, delirium, coma, and death. Not even the experienced psychiatrist can keep in mind all of the potential dangers of using these highly toxic drugs that impair the function of many organs of the body. Almost any organ can be adversely affected by the neuroleptics; eyes, nose, and throat; internal organs, such as the liver, stomach, intestines, cardiovascular system, and sexual organs; the skin; and of course, the brain. A small percentage of patients suffer disastrous consequences, such as neuroleptic malignant syndrome, sudden unexplained death, cardiovascular crises, seizures, and heat stroke in overheated institutions. These are among the most dangerous medications ever used in medicine. Don't be fooled into believing that these drugs are actually treating a disease. They are suppressing overall brain function and creating diseases.

Withdrawal

Withdrawal can cause a temporary or permanent worsening of psychotic symptoms, with anxiety and even anguish, as a result of central nervous system rebound from the drugs. This can take weeks or longer to clear or may not clear at all. Insomnia is common. Withdrawal commonly produces a very distressing flu-like syndrome, including runny nose, headache, fever, muscle and joint aches, and gastrointestinal upset. Because of the withdrawal problems, patients should try to come off the medications while receiving emotional and social support from others and with supervision by someone familiar with the process. Symptoms may encourage doctor and patient alike to resume the drug prematurely, when what the patient really needs is time to recover from the drug. Nearly everyone personally associated with the patient is likely to believe that he or she must take the drugs for a lifetime. Symptoms of possible dementia--such as silliness or shallowness, erratic moods, difficulty focusing attention, wandering speech, disconnected thoughts, talking too directly in the listener's face--will be seen as evidence of an innate mental illness. Any withdrawal symptoms, from insomnia and hyperactivity to hallucinations and delusions--also will be attributed to the patient's psychiatric problem.

As the patient recovers from some of the lobotomy effect, old resentments and conflicts may surface between the patient and others. Eventually the drug-free individual may have to deal with his or her originally overwhelming passions. People who must deal with the patient on a daily basis may find themselves minimizing the dangers of the drugs in favor of restoring the relative peace and calm enforced by the drugs. Anyone helping the patient withdraw from the drugs may need to spend time communicating with people other than the patient, encouraging them, too, to support the gradual and sometimes treacherous process. Perhaps the drug-free person won't ever again be as easy to live with, but he or she will be physically healthier and have vastly increased opportunity to get more out of life.

Anxiety

How a person deals with anxiety can determine the course of his or her life. People who will "do anything" to avoid anxiety; often become helpless avoiders of life. People who are willing to think and to act, despite anxiety, people who face anxiety as something to be understood and conquered, are likely to overcome many of life's challenges. Since anxiety is a signal of overwhelm, it is not something to be gotten rid of, but something to be understood and then overcome through personal growth and change. Various negative, self-defeating emotions--guilt, shame, and anxiety stem from childhood fear and helplessness. Shame focuses on our feelings of impotence, weakness, and worthlessness. When ashamed or humiliated, we feel victimized by powers greater than ourselves. In comparison to others, we are made to feel like "nothing," like an "utter zero." We become very sensitive and vulnerable to any slight directed toward us. Guilt focuses on our feelings of being bad--our power to do harm and even evil to others. Feelings of blame are directed toward us, rather than toward others, and anger is directed inward rather than outward. We look within for any sign that we are evil.

In anxiety we tend not to blame anyone or anything, and we have no place to direct our attention or our anger. Instead, we collapse into know-nothing helplessness, a pure overwhelm with no assigned cause for the problem. Anxiety is an overwhelming emotional turmoil, unawareness, or confusion for which we can locate no cause. We cannot act at all, because we have no idea what is going on. The anxious person must marshal every bit of willpower to regain rational control and to focus his or her attention on overcoming helplessness. It's important never to let anxiety motivate our choices or control our actions. When anxiety dictates terms to us, our lives grow narrow indeed. We should attempt, instead, to dispel and defuse anxiety with an understanding of its origins, while guiding our lives with more reliable values, such as reason and love. It's especially useful to focus attention on remaining rational and on identifying any real threats. The goal is to dispel the helpless confusion and know-nothingness and to replace it with conscious, working principles.

The Biology of Anxiety

No biological cause for anxiety has been determined. The biological basis for anxiety overwhelm is so flimsy that one recent textbook, The New Harvard Guide to Psychiatry, gives it only a paragraph and labels the exclusively biological approach "an extreme theoretical position that fails to take psychological facts into account." Textbooks devote much more space to psychological explanations. Nonetheless, biopsychiatrists have staked out a biology of anxiety in the popular press and mass market books.

Genetic Causes

Despite all the hopes for finding a genetic basis of anxiety disorders, none has been demonstrated. Some studies do show a familial pattern for certain anxiety problems, but this is not surprising. Psychotherapists typically find that anxious patients have learned their emotional reactions, in part, at least, from their parents. Anxiety sometimes can be temporarily alleviated by a variety of sedative drugs, including minor tranquilizers, barbiturates, opiates, alcohol, and perhaps antidepressants. But the effects are short-lived, with no evidence for sustained relief, and the hazards are considerable, including addiction, withdrawal reactions, rebound anxiety, mental dysfunction, and lethality.

An Ethical Journey

Life is an ethical journey in which we find our way by assuming as much responsibility for the conduct of our lives as possible. This is self-determination. When we lapse into psychological or learned helplessness and stop taking charge of our lives, we become the victims of our emotional reactions. Refusing to be guided by guilt, shame, and anxiety is a major step toward making room within oneself for reason and love. Once a person refuses to empower self-destructive feelings, they tend to wither with time.

But if we pamper them, it's like throwing steak to wild dogs; they grow in their demands and their boldness. One goal of life is to supplant guilt, shame, and anxiety with rationally chosen ethics, reason, and love. Looking at the childhood origins of painful emotions and re-experiencing their initial impact on us can help us transcend these emotions. Knowing how we were made to feel ashamed, guilty, or anxious in childhood helps us reject being guided by these emotions as adults. We learn to say to ourselves, "I'm not really feeling guilty or anxious over this immediate event; I'm reacting from those old sources in childhood" or "I don't have to panic right now; this is a terror from the past." Seeing the childhood origins of guilt, shame, and anxiety discredits them as guidelines for mature living. Once we discover that these emotional reactions slammed us around at the age of five, they no longer seem appropriate in adult deliberations. Life is complex and so are we, and we don't always experience guilt, shame, or anxiety in a pure form. Often they are mixed together and sometimes they can rear up in succession in a matter of moments. The common element in each will be the feelings of fear and helplessness, frequently of childhood origin. The common goal is not to cave-in to the emotion and instead to take charge of oneself. Self-defeating fears, such as phobias, are a natural consequence of being afraid of our own freedom to exist as a unique being or separate person. People who are chronically anxious often seem to be highly responsible, even to a fault. If we are a truly responsible person, we see clearly that we are accountable only for the foreseeable results of our own choices and actions--and not for what other people feel, think, or do. Autonomy and self-determination is key in overcoming anxiety.

Depersonalization and Derealization

Intense anxiety can cause a sense of unreality in how we feel about others, the world, or ourselves. We feel "different" or "changed" (depersonalization), or other people and our surroundings seem "far away" and "unreal" (derealization). While psychiatrists do not consider these to be psychotic reactions, individuals who suffer depersonalization and derealization often feel as if they are going mad. Their experience frequently is dominated by anxiety, but with heavy doses of guilt and shame as well. These dread reactions can result from childhood abuse, often of a physical or sexual nature, or they can follow on the heels of adult trauma, such as combat or a severe accident. Depersonalization and derealization are defenses against severe painful emotion. They also can result from overwhelming internal stresses, such as a childhood identity that cannot confront the real adult world. Depersonalization is a common experience. The New Harvard Guide To Psychiatry states that "depersonalization is not only common but should not be viewed as evidence of emotional illness," unless it is severe and persistent. Psychological and spiritual crises are better seen as opportunities, even when the opportunity seems to have been lost. As long as people remain alive, so does the hope for personal growth. Psychiatry's marketing strategy aims at people who feel anxious. It has become an axiom within modern economics that advertising actually creates consumer needs. By targeting people suffering from anxiety, psychiatry should be able to generate an unlimited demand for its drugs. Prescriptions for one class of these drugs, the benzpdiazepines, already are estimated at nearly on hundred million a year in the United States, for a cost of up to $800 million or more.

Minor Tranquilizers and Other Sedative-Hypnotics

The minor tranquilizers are highly sought after. Even without doctors pushing them, people would want them. They are actively sold illegally on the street. This is not surprising, since people often resort to taking anything that promises even temporary relief from anxiety. Millions drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes, and use marijuana, opiates, and other street drugs. Others eat excessively, exercise compulsively, work to exhaustion, watch TV endlessly, escape into books, relentlessly pursue sex, and overindulge any number of otherwise harmless habits in an attempt to escape their tensions and apprehensions. Obsessions, compulsions, and phobias also can be seen as efforts to control anxiety. Among psychiatric medications for the treatment of anxiety, the most commonly used are the minor tranquilizers, starting in 1957 with the introduction of Librium (chlordiazepoxide). In the 1970s, the minor tranquilizer Valium (diazepam) topped the charts as the most widely prescribed drug in America, to be replaced by Xanax (alprazolam), in 1986.

Most of the minor tranquilizers belong to the group called benzodiazepines and are closely related chemically to Librium, Valium, Xanax, also included are Tranxene (chlorazepate), Paxipam (halazepam), Centrax or Verstran (prazepam), Klonopin (clonazepam), Dalmane (flurazepam), Serax (oxazepam), Ativan (lorazepam), Restoril (temazepam), and Halcion (triazolam). They differ mostly in their duration of action and in the dosage required to achieve the same effect. An older minor tranquilizer is Miltown or Equanil (meprobamate). They have nearly identical clinical effects. Sleeping medications also have tranquilizing effects. These include Doriden (glutethimide), Noludar (methyprylon), Placidyl (ethchlorvynol), and Noctec, Somnos, or Beta-Chlor (chloral hydrate), and the various barbiturates, including Seconal (secobarbital), Luminal (Phenobarbital), Butibel (butabarbital), Amytal (amobarbital), Nembutal (pentobarbital), and Tuinal (amobarbital and secobarbital). All of these drugs have the potential for abuse and addiction.

Most Widely Used Psychiatric Drugs

The minor tranquilizers, now led by Xanax, remain by far the most commonly prescribed psychiatric medications. Women predominate in all psychiatric drug categories. Thirty-five percent of all patients are sixty years of age or older. The sedative attributes of minor tranquilizers differ little from those of the barbiturates, such as phenobarbital. Most biopsychiatrists raised no concerns about encouraging people to have more faith in a pill than in themselves. Even before the barbiturates, there were sedative and hypnotic drugs, many of which are still in use today. People used them, sometimes got short-term relief from them, and sometimes became addicted to them. Chloral hydrate (Notec) and paraldehyde (Paral) are among them. Earlier, the highly toxic bromides had their day. And before them, opiates were freely dispensed in private practice and in mental hospitals.

Alcohol

Doctors prescribed alcohol for generations as a sedative for anxious patients. As recently as 1943, Torald Sollmann's classic text A Manual of Psychopharmacology professed: "A certain amount of alcohol, varying for individuals, may be taken occasionally or even daily without demonstrable permanently injurious effects. The relaxation, the easing of strain, of maladjustments, of excessive self-consciousness, of excessive inhibitions, indeed the euphoria, may sometimes be beneficial" (P. 718). Many people still consider alcohol the tranquilizer of choice. These drugs possess a number of dangerous qualities, many of them similar to the properties of alcohol.

Central Nervous System Depression

All of the commonly used minor tranquilizers are central nervous system depressants very similar to alcohol and barbiturates in their clinical effects. Along with alcohol and barbiturates, they are classified as sedative-hypnotics, meaning that they produce relaxation (sedation) at lower doses and sleep (hypnosis) and eventually coma at higher ones. Minor tranquilizers are central nervous system depressants--in particular, sedative-hypnotics. All minor tranquilizers combine with each other or with other central nervous system depressants--such as barbiturates, antidepressants, neuroleptics, lithium, and alcohol--with a potentially fatal result. While they can be lethal when taken alone, they are especially dangerous in combination with these other drugs. A large percentage of drug-related emergency room visits involve minor tranquilizers. All of the minor tranquilizers impair mental alertness and physical coordination and can dangerously compromise mechanical performance, such as automobile driving. At low doses the minor tranquilizers are sufficiently potent to impact noticeably on the brain waves on routine EEGs, especially in the frontal lobe region. However, they do not typically have the lobotomizing impact epitomized by the neuroleptics.

Addiction, Tolerance, and Withdrawal Symptoms

All hypnotic-sedatives, including the minor tranquilizers, are habit-forming and addictive and can produce withdrawal symptoms or an abstinence syndrome when they are stopped. In the extreme, the abstinence syndrome can cause life-threatening neurological reactions, including fever, psychosis, and seizures. Less severe withdrawal symptoms include increased heart rate and lowered blood pressure; shakiness; loss of appetite; muscle cramps; impairment of memory; concentration, and orientation; abnormal sounds in the ears and blurred vision; and insomnia, agitation, anxiety, panic, and derealization. Obvious withdrawal symptoms typically last two to four weeks. Subtle ones last months. Studies of Xanax show that most patients develop withdrawal symptoms during routine treatment lasting only eight weeks. Tolerance, or the need for increasing doses to achieve the same psychoactive effect, is the underlying physical mechanism of addiction. Within two to four weeks, tolerance can develop to the sedative effect of minor tranquilizers taken at night for sleep. This again warns against the use of these drugs for more than a few days at a time.

The short-acting benzodiazepines can produce especially severe withdrawal symptoms, because the drug is cleared from the body at a relatively rapid rate. These include Xanax, Halcion, Ativan, Restoril, and Serax. Individuals who take only one pill daily for sleep or anxiety are not exempt from withdrawal problems and can become addicted. Xanax and other short-acting benzodiazepines can cause a reactive hyperactivity of the receptors that they block. The hyperactive receptors then require one or more doses of Xanax each day or they produce anxiety and emotional discomfort. After the patient stops taking the Xanax, it takes the brain six to eighteen months to recover. Patients addicted to minor tranquilizers and even more by those who are cross-addicted with alcohol and other drugs occupy many detoxification beds. Seriously addicted patients may show no outward signs to their family or physicians until accidentally removed from the medication. Their withdrawal symptoms may then be wholly misinterpreted as an aspect of some other disorder or as a psychological problem.

Rebound Anxiety and Insomnia

Rebound anxiety is one of the common reactions to withdrawal or to dose reduction of a minor tranquilizer. As with most psychiatric drugs, the use of the medication eventually causes an increase of the very symptoms that the drug is supposed to ameliorate, and thus rebound anxiety can lead to a false diagnosis of chronic anxiety disorder. Long-term treatment can be erroneously maintained or reinstated when drug-induced rebound anxiety occurs. Addiction is the ultimate outcome. Rebound insomnia also results from taking most sleeping medications, because the brain reacts against the central nervous system depressant effects by becoming more aroused or alert.

Paradoxical Reactions

The minor tranquilizers can produce paradoxical reactions--acute agitation, confusion, disorientation, anxiety, and aggression--especially in children, adults with brain disease, and the elderly. The Xanax report in the PDR states, "As with all benzodiazepines, paradoxical reactions such as stimulation, agitation, rage, increased muscle spasticity, sleep disturbances, hallucinations and other adverse behavioral effects may occur in rare instances and in a random fashion." In nursing homes, the medications may seem to help the insomnia of an elderly patient for a night or two, only to produce generalized brain dysfunction as the medication accumulates in the system. The agitated patient may then be mistakenly overdosed with further medication, perhaps a neuroleptic. As in response to alcohol, some people more readily lose their self-control and become violent when taking minor tranquilizers. There are frequent references to this in the literature, including cases of murder under the influence of minor tranquilizers. Halcion has been especially implicated in causing aggressive and suicidal behavior, as well as delirium, hallucinations, and seizures.

Memory Dysfunction

Halcion produces amnesia for events prior to the taking of the drug. This has long been an unheralded problem with minor tranquilizers in general. It becomes a potentially serious problem in the routine use of the minor tranquilizers for anxiety or sleep disorders and can interfere with studying, learning, or recalling previously retained memories. In addition to sedation, other "drunken" symptoms are commonly reported by patients, including ataxia (muscle incoordination), fatigue, and slurred speech. Denial of impairment is typical of people experiencing sedation. People who are sedated often do not appreciate that they are thinking more slowly, getting muddled, forgetting things, slurring their words, or losing their coordination.

Long-term Effects

Despite the obvious need for concern, few studies have attempted to measure the impact of long-term minor tranquilizer usage on overall mental function. Test results show chronic impairment in measures of visual-spatial ability and attention span. These patients are not functioning well in everyday life, while they remain unaware of their impairment. Brain-disabling treatments render patients less able to evaluate their own dysfunction. Only after withdrawal do they realize that they have been functioning below par. Although rarely mentioned in establishment books or reviews, cerebral ventricular enlargement--the equivalent of brain atrophy (shrinkage)--is found in long-term use of alcohol and the minor tranquilizers. Minor tranquilizers, like any sedative, can be harmful in the long run not only because they are habit-forming and addictive, but because they cover up anxiety by suppressing the capacity of the brain to generate feelings. The brain, as usual, tries to overcome the suppression and reacts in ways we cannot begin to predict or fully comprehend. Drug-induced rebound anxiety is one common effect. The drugged individual with a suppressed and confused anxiety signal system lives under a considerable handicap. At the least, feelings are pushed down, and with that, self-awareness is muted. As the brain reacts against the drug, natural anxiety responses are muted, but abnormal rebound anxiety reactions begin to flare up.

The doctor who offers medication is likely to reinforce the patient's feelings of helplessness. Improvement while on drugs is rarely a psychologically clean affair; the improvement almost always leaves an aftermath of persistent personal helplessness. Without drugs, severely anxious patients often can be helped rather quickly to overcome the worst of their anguish. Over a longer period they can learn new approaches to living relatively free of anxiety. Even if these drugs were more effective or safer, should physicians prescribe them for the relief of anxiety? Few psychiatrists would keep a pitcher of martinis at hand in the office to ease the anxiety of their patients; yet, most are willing to reach into the drawer for a sample of "alcohol in a pill," the minor tranquilizers. Both alcohol and minor tranquilizers accomplish the same thing--a brief escape from intense feelings by suppressing or sedating normal brain function. Physicians or psychotherapists should empower patients to trust themselves and their capacity to triumph over frightening emotions. They could overcome anxiety through self-understanding, self-control of their minds and actions, courageous attitudes, and successful principles of living.

Depression

Depression is one of the most dreadful human experiences. Too often, it ruins lives or leads to suicide, with a spread of effect that spoils the lives of others as well. Even people who do not seem depressed may be diluting their emotional pain with alcohol, drug abuse, or other self-destructive activities, such as participation in a degrading relationship or reckless behavior while driving an automobile. They may end up killing themselves or dying of self-neglect, without being recorded as a suicide.

The experience of depression is often felt as dark and cold--utterly bleak--as if subsisting in a cave or hole. Life loses its sunshine. Nothing seems enjoyable anymore. Eventually, depression can deteriorate into self-hate and loathing. Some are unable to get out of bed, and feeling intensely suicidal. Many people go through life with what might be called a "low-grade" depression. They are apathetic and life seems monotonous with nothing to look forward to. There are no highs anymore, nothing to delight the senses, the heart, or the mind. Life may not seem utterly dark, but it's gray. Lacking in energy, seemingly unable to find any brightness in life, life becomes a treadmill of boredom and bleakness. Some people have been depressed for so long that they hardly realize that their suffering is unusual. They become convinced that it's an inevitable response to life. Mired down in futility, they never change their lives. Depression is such a common human experience that almost everyone has undergone some degree of it. Many people in the northeast, for example, get the "winter blues." In hot and humid climates, the onset of summer may produce the same effect.

Others start to feel "down" with the approach of the holiday season. People often feel depressed when they get overtired or fatigued and cannot carry on with their usual energy. They can feel depressed if something much desired hasn't materialized, like a date or a promotion. Many grown men get a terrible sinking feeling that can last for days when their favorite sports team loses a championship game. The flu, exhaustion, mild head injury, and many transient physical stresses can be accompanied by depression. These feelings are usually temporary, but they give us a sense of what depression might be like if it were infinitely intensified and drawn out, as if one were never getting what one wanted; as if one were doomed always to lose. Most teenagers and young people go through moods of utter despair, often tinged with suicidal feelings, in their struggle to outgrow childhood and to find their identities. Most elderly people go through a similar struggle for a time at least as friends and family pass away or as they themselves approach death. The cycles of life include emotional cycles. Almost anyone will go through severe feelings of depression with the loss of a loved one. Religions tend to recognize this inevitability and to provide for ritualized periods of mourning in which the bereaved are given special attention. Infants and small children respond by withdrawing into depression when abandoned or rejected. A large body of research on physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in childhood confirms that it can contribute to lifelong depression.

Animals, too, go through depression. Wild animals, for example, frequently become depressed when locked up in zoos. They refuse to mate and may languish and die. Pets frequently become depressed when their owners leave them behind for a day or more. They may stop eating and act mopey or resentful when the loved one returns. The owner may even find uncharacteristic destruction--a chewed shoe or emptied wastebasket--as a sign of the pet's frustration. Infant Gorillas and chimps inevitably become depressed and die if they lose their mother within the first few years of life. Adolescent chimps that survive the loss may, at a somewhat later age, display emotional scars. They may be irritable and withdrawn, socially inept, and less able to take care of themselves or their own offspring as adults. Students of animal life credit them with qualities previously reserved for humans, including the capacity for empathy, love, loss, and depression--at the same time that psychiatrists have decided that humans are ruled by more animalistic forces of nature. Depression is a human--or animal--response to painful life circumstances, frequently in the form of losses. Depression lifts whenever a person regains hope and direction. Depression is especially responsive to changes in circumstances and relationships. Often depression is lifted by falling in love, making a new friend, adopting a pet, learning a new skill, joining a church, traveling, participating in volunteer or reform work, throwing oneself into work, or simply through the passage of time. Sometimes depression is relieved when an oppressive spouse or parent dies; or sometimes, due to guilt, it becomes worse. Time by itself--and probably the personal resources and new experiences that surface as time passes--seems to cure the vast majority of depressions.

Heavy Metals

Toxic metal exposure can result in a wide array of common mental health disorders that can mimic many psychiatric "diseases" and thus lead to psychoactive prescription drug use or other unnecessary treatments. Unfortunately, the majority of clinicians dealing with patients who have mental health issues are unlikely to suspect heavy metal toxicity as a cause of their patient's problems due to a general lack of knowledge of this subject in the medical community. Unique biochemical, genetic, and nutritional factors can make certain people more susceptible to the effects of toxic heavy metals, thus each case must be handled on an individual basis.

Lead

In addition to being a cellular toxin, lead competes with calcium in the body, which can cause various malfunctions in calcium metabolism including a decrease in neurotransmitter (chemicals that relay messages along nerve cells) release and blockade of calcium channels. The central nervous system appears to be affected to the greatest degree by lead toxicity, and this can explain the many neuropsychiatric symptoms associated with exposure to this heavy metal.

Why are some people more susceptible to heavy metal toxicity than others? One must always remember that each individual has a unique physiology, and may have an inherently strong or weak detoxification system to handle heavy metal exposure. In addition, poor nutrition, such as iron or calcium deficiency, has been shown to exacerbate the symptoms of lead exposure.

Lead can be absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract and also inhaled as small particles. Chronic exposure to lead can result in significant accumulation in the brain, soft tissue, and bones. Lead that has accumulated in the skeleton can remain there for many years, releasing lead slowly back into the bloodstream over an extended period of time.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms of chronic lead exposure include:

1. Headaches

2. Poor memory

3. Inability to concentrate

4. Attention deficit

5. Aberrant behavior

6. Irritability

7. Temper Tantrums

8. Fearfulness

9. Insomnia

10. Lowered IQ

11. Difficulty with the reading, writing, language, visual and motor skills

Mercury

Mercury is considered by many to be even more toxic than lead. Although mercury is poorly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract, mercury vapor is easily taken in through the lungs and readily passes into the brain. Once in the body, mercury also concentrates in the nerves, liver, and especially the kidneys. Mercury is a potent cellular toxin and is known to decrease neurotransmitter production, disrupt important processes within the nerve cells, and decrease important hormones such as thyroid and testosterone.

"Silver" amalgam fillings are the major source of inorganic (does not contain carbon) mercury exposure in humans, while seafood and fish constitute our largest exposure to organic mercury compounds. Amalgam fillings actually contain approximately 50% metallic mercury, and they continuously release mercury vapor during chewing, brushing, or when drinking hot beverages. Studies have shown that exhaled air of subjects with amalgam filling contains a significantly higher level of mercury than subjects without amalgams, and there appears to be a direct correlation to the number of amalgam fillings and the level of mercury found in both blood and urine.

Although the presence of higher levels of mercury in people with amalgam fillings is not in dispute, there continues to be an intense debate regarding the health effects of this finding. While groups such as the FDA and the American Dental Association steadfastly maintain that amalgam fillings are safe, a growing number of physicians and researchers are convinced that mercury from amalgam fillings poses a significant health hazard.

In addition to amalgam fillings, common sources of mercury include pesticides, laxatives, batteries, paper and pulp products manufacturing, drinking water, and paint products.

Neuropsychiatric symptoms associated with mercury toxicity include:

1. Insomnia

2. Nervousness

3. Hallucinations

4. Memory loss

5. Headache

6. Dizziness

7. Anxiety

8. Irritability

9. Drowsiness

10. Emotional instability

11. Depression

12. Poor cognitive function

Treatment

Removing all metal from the mouth, especially mercury amalgam fillings; then, metal caps and crowns, partial dentures, etc. will eliminate the cause of much hyperactivity, seizures, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and aggressive behavior is the first condition to give attention to. This poisoning is not being addressed by any branch of science. Dentistry, Medicine, Psychiatry, Toxicology nor Biochemistry, are recognizing this common practice for its physical, emotional, and mental effects. Other than detoxifying the heavy metals and drugs from the brain and nervous system, the data suggest there is no stronger medicine than dianetic or scientologic auditing for depression. If therapists can learn to tolerate the emotional suffering of depression patients and help to guide them through it with non-drug strategies, as many as 80% will respond within 8 to 12 weeks of treatment, without drugs.

Dianetics Auditing

The primary way that Scientology's principles are applied to an individual is called auditing — from the Latin word audire, meaning to listen. It is the central practice of Scientology, and is delivered by an auditor, one who listens. In an auditing session, the auditor helps another examine specific areas of their existence so they can rid themselves of unwanted spiritual conditions and increase awareness and ability.

Dianetics comes from the Greek words dia (through) and nous (soul). Dianetics could be said to be what the soul is doing to the body. It provides answers to the fundamental riddles of the mind with a thoroughly validated method that increases sanity, intelligence, confidence and well-being. It gets rid of the unwanted sensations, unpleasant emotions and psychosomatic ills that block one's life and happiness. Dianetics rests on basic principles that can be easily learned and applied by any reasonably intelligent person—as millions have. It is the route to a well, happy, high IQ human being.

Dianetics addresses the part of the mind that operates below the conscious level, exerting a hidden influence that causes you to react irrationally, say and do things that "aren't you," and have inexplicable emotions and ills that hold back intelligence and ability. It all resolves with Dianetics.

When you hear that using Dianetics can enable you to live a better, happier life, it isn't exaggeration. Asked to estimate how it had affected them, users said on a scale of 1 to 10, that Dianetics increased their personal level of happiness from an average of 3.9 on the scale to 7.7.

The mind records data using what are called mental image pictures. Such pictures are actually three-dimensional, containing color, sound and smell, as well as other perceptions. They also include the conclusions or speculations of the individual. Mental image pictures are continuously made by the mind, moment by moment. The mind has two distinct parts. One of these — the part which one consciously uses and is aware of — is the analytical mind. This is the portion of the mind which thinks, observes data, remembers it and resolves problems. It has standard memory banks which contain mental image pictures, and uses the data from these banks to make decisions that promote survival.

In moments of intense pain and unconsciousness, the analytical mind is suspended and the reactive mind takes over. It records everything that happens during unconsciousness in its own banks, unavailable to the individual's conscious recall and not under his control. It has the power to react obsessively upon him at a later time, forcing irrational "solutions" on the individual. The reactive mind can cause unknowing and unwanted fears, emotions, pains and psychosomatic illnesses that one would be much better off without. It holds a person back, getting in the way of his survival and success in life.

With Dianetics auditing, the contents of the reactive mind can be erased, freeing the person from its adverse influence. The previously hidden memories are now stored in the analytical mind, under the control of the individual. A person who no longer has his own reactive mind is called a Clear. What he is left with is all that is really him, and with his mind's potential now fully available.

The goal of Dianetics is a new state for the individual never before attainable in man's history. This state is called "Clear." A Clear possesses attributes, fundamental and inherent but not always available in an uncleared state, which have not been suspected of man and are not included in past discussions of his abilities and behavior.

The Clear is:

- Freed from active or potential psychosomatic illness or aberration

- Self-determined

- Vigorous and persistent

- Unrepressed

- Able to perceive, recall, imagine, create and compute at a level high above the norm

- Stable mentally

- Free with his emotion

- Able to enjoy life

- Freer from accidents

- Able to reason swiftly

- Able to react quickly

- Healthier

Happiness is important. The ability to arrange life and the environment so that living can be better enjoyed, the ability to tolerate the foibles of one's fellow humans, the ability to see the true factors in a situation and resolve problems of living with accuracy, the ability to accept and execute responsibility — these things are important. Life is not much worth living if it cannot be enjoyed. The Clear enjoys living to a very full extent. He can stand up to situations which, before he was cleared, would have reduced him to a shambles. The ability to live well and fully and enjoy that living is the gift of Clear.

One of the most fundamental breakthroughs of Dianetics is the concise statement of the goal of life itself. This, the dynamic principle of man's existence, was discovered by L. Ron Hubbard. From this fundamental discovery many hitherto unanswered questions about man and life were resolved. The goal of life can be considered to be infinite survival. That man seeks to survive has long been known, but that it is his primary motivation is new. Man, as a life form, can be demonstrated to obey in all his action and purposes the one command: SURVIVE!

SURVIVE! is the common denominator of all life, and from it came the critical resolution of man's ills and aberrations. Survival is not only the difference between life and death. Nor does it mean merely existing. It encompasses things like ideals, love and art as vital aspects. The better one is able to manage his life and increase his level of survival, the more he will have pleasure, abundance and satisfaction.

Pain, disappointment and failure are the result of actions which do not promote survival. Dianetics addresses these moments of pain and threat to survival, and it provides a precise technology to increase your ability to survive and live a happier, healthier life.

First published on May 9th 1950, few predicted the astonishing impact Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health would have on the lives of millions. As prominent American columnist Walter Winchell then reported: "There is something new... called Dianetics. A new science which works with the invariability of physical science in the field of the human mind. From all indications it will prove to be as revolutionary for humanity as the first caveman's discovery and utilization of fire." Today, more than half a century later, Dianetics is an international phenomenon, transcending political, cultural and ideological boundaries in 150 nations. Its popularity is based solely on one fact — results. Testimonials from users tell the story: greater intelligence, awareness, vitality, understanding of life, and the resolution of previously "unsolvable" problems.

With more than 20 million copies printed in over 50 languages, Dianetics stands as a best seller world over. It has appeared more than 100 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and in fact returned to the Number One position decades after its first publication. More Dianetics days, weeks and months have been proclaimed in tribute to it — by city and state governments — than any other book or self-help subject in history.

Dianetics at its simplest levels can be applied by virtually any two reasonably intelligent people, just by reading and using the procedure contained in the book. It's being done everywhere — from the outback in Australia to corporate empires of America; from Tibetan monasteries to Venezuelan cathedrals. In fact, every 4.8 seconds, somewhere in the world, someone picks up a copy of Dianetics and begins the adventure.

Unholy Communion

But, increasingly life is becoming a contest between pills and life itself. People are giving up on life in favor of pills. They are abandoning the struggle to embrace life for the ease of swallowing a pill. The very act of taking of a pill becomes a sacrament of helplessness, a statement that the suffering is unendurable and beyond one's own means, that less suffering is preferable to an intact brain and a drug-free mind. Once drug taking has begun, the individual is no longer likely to work his or her way out of the depression in a new and better way. At best, the drug-dulled or drug-driven individual adjusts or compulsively conforms. There is an enormous cost attached to this choice. One cost is a physical one--the effect on the brain and mind. There is a high likelihood of permanent brain dysfunction, especially when the drugs are taken for long periods of time. There is a moral or psychological cost for the individual--the cost of giving up on oneself as a being with the capacity to triumph in life. There is the cost of blunting or otherwise impairing one's mental acuity at the very moment that one most needs it, at the personal crossroads, during which, despair vies with the opportunity for a great leap forward. We almost invariably become depressed when the old ways have stopped working--when we've come to a dead end in life.

Sometimes the dead end seems caused by overwhelming tragedy, such as the breakup of a marriage or the death of a loved one. But almost always, if the despair becomes intense and unending, there's something else going on--problems restimulated from childhood, or attitudes or viewpoints that leave the person unprepared for life. At such a moment, revelations can occur, breathtaking changes can be made--life can evolve into something much better. This frequently happens in therapy, but not with drugs. Depression expresses energy. The depth of depression reflects the heat of passion burning within. The intensity of suffering reflects the intensity of life energy; imagine how fully you can live when you learn to use it creatively. To the degree that a human being is capable of suffering deeply, to that same degree the human being is capable of a full, rich, exciting, and creative life. That's why people become "manic depressive"--their enormous frustrated energies drive them first into helpless gloom and then into equally futile euphoria. If a person has the energy--the vitality--to become "manic" or "depressive," then he or she also has the energy to live an extraordinarily rich and satisfying life. It's a matter of overcoming the dreadful legacy of childhood, especially self-hate and loathing, and learning to direct this remarkable energy into more productive channels.

Suffering

We all have suffered deeply and have known despair, and the people we love most dearly and know the best have gone through the same or similar experiences. The suffering, at one time or another, has seemed unendurable. Out of suffering comes a unique understanding of life, a determination to care about self and others, and a will to live a spiritually rewarding life. It's a truth communicated by Judeo-Christian and eastern religions that the road to salvation must pass through suffering. The Buddhists say you cannot get to peace without passing through passion--passionate suffering. Anyone who has reached a moral or spiritual plateau of any consequence has done it at the cost of excruciating emotional pain. To rid ourselves of the option of suffering is to rid ourselves of ourselves. All of our personal heroes have been extremists--deeply passionate people who went through spiritual agony before finding their way and imprinting their values on the world. Yet, each and every one of them could have had their spiritual quest aborted by a psychiatric intervention. Instead of finding a new and higher road, they could have been left at the wayside as "psychiatric patients."

What Is Psychiatry?