MENTAL DISORDER HOAX EXPOSED

Controversy exploded in the United States last week, when leading newspapers including the New York Times and Washington Post revealed intimate financial ties between psychiatry’s leading “authorities” who determine what constitutes a mental disorder, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Based on a study, conducted by researchers of the University of Massachusetts, the New York Times reported that more than 50% of psychiatric “experts” who worked on the 1994 edition of psychiatry’s bible, the “Diagnostic & Statistical Manual,” or DSM, have received funding from drugmakers. A staggering100% of the members on the Schizophrenia and Mood Disorder panels were found to be having financial ties with the drug industry. Funding of DSM “experts” included gifts, grants, honoraria, equity holdings in a drug company, paid advisory board membership and many others.

The DSM contains a listing of so-called mental disorders which are voted for inclusion at annual American Psychiatric Association meetings. The voting process for mental disorders does not include scientific research or examination. The recommended treatments in the DSM include in all cases psychotropic drugs. Close to half a million American mental health workers use the DSM to “diagnose” disorders in their patients, leading to a growing epidemic of drug use. According to the New York Times, “Antidepressants were the 4th and leading class of drugs in 2004 with annual global sales totally [U.S.] $20.3 billion.”

“The very vocabulary of psychiatry is now defined at all levels by the pharmaceutical industry,” Dr. Irwin Savodnik, assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told the Chicago Tribune. According to his calculations, the original 1952 DSM contained 107 mental disorders. By the fourth edition, that number had more than tripled to 365.

For more than 3 decades, Freedom has exposed psychiatric drugging and abuse of millions. For more information, go to www.freedommag.org