Mental Illness is a MYTH : Witchcraft and Power Politics in Medicine

I. Mental Illness is a MYTH

I will show this through sufficient explanations and conceptual rational and moral argumentation. Anyone who disagrees is invited to debate their point of view and then I will proceed to eviscerate it with the aim of convincing you that there is no such thing as "Mental Illness" in the general sense it is thought of today.

Psychiatry is essentially a modern form of 'witchcraft accusation', aiming to stigmatize individuals with labels as a result of behavioral deviancy from the socially accepted norm and to suppress and oppress them, often by force or through fraud and manipulation, into situations where their rights are violated, they are ostracized from various social circles, and they are poisoned by dangerous drugs or other treatments that offer very little actual medical value. Sometimes they face a life imprisonment or even die as a result of this systematic oppression.

This practice not only often leads to the destruction of individual victims, but it destabilizes society as a whole in a host of ways while putting all free peoples at risk of illegitimate victimization.

We have formal and informal 'mental illness labelling':

In the formal medical practice of psychiatry, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is utilized in order to identify, categorize, and diagnose victims with "mental illness". It is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and offers psychiatrists classifications and a standardized criteria for stigmatizing and dehumanizing any random person that comes to their attention. Along with it's alternative published by the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), this is the formal system for labeling someone with a "mental illness".

The informal method is any random person, via frustration or prejudice, labeling someone else as any one of these buzzwords like "insane, psychotic, Schizophrenic, obesssive compulsive, etc". We often informally label others with mental illness on a daily basis pejoratively.

Officially, mental illnesses are artificial constructs devised by groups of psychiatrists and essentially voted upon to decide if it ought to be included in the DSM. This is purely a result of their personal biases and opinions, and lacks any valid scientific basis. They misuse statistics and invented categories to determine what is and isn't a mental disease. For example 'Homosexuality' was considered a disease until around 1970, when they voted to remove it from their manual.

Rather than an actual illness or disease, the act of labeling someone with a 'mental illness' is the misuse of metaphor and an oversimplification, resulting in gross prejudice and illegitimate stigmatization.




II Misdiagnosis of Physical Illnesses

There are no illnesses in the mind. The mind is the abstract realm of thought, and it's claims can be either accurate or inaccurate, it's concepts can be realistic or fantastical, and it's proclivities are the result of environmental stimuli and survival mechanisms interacting with the brain via an abstract medium.

The mind abstractly relates to cognitive abilities such as thinking, judgment, perception, memory, and consciousness in general. From it comes imagination, recognition, appreciation, it processes emotions and results in attitudes. As a result, the "mind" and the physical "brain", an organ in our cranium, are not exactly equivalents - though they are closely related.

Cancer, influenza, polio, HIV, or even Alzheimer's disease is an organic physical disease or condition that can be observed and verified through scientific methods in a laboratory under controlled conditions, it can be explained in definite terms and addressed directly through physical methods.

Mental illnesses (like ADHD, Depression, Obsessive Compulsive, Drug Abuse or Dependence or Schizophrenia) uses highly ambiguous and vague terminology, replaces scientific facts with opinionated prejudices, and serves to mask a person's problems with inaccurate labels and then seeking to 'treat' those problems in highly ineffective and reckless ways. Rather than actually dealing with those underlying problems rationally, they seek to address primarily existential, philosophical, or psycho-social problems by throwing chemicals at them, violating civil rights, imprisonment, physical tortures, or obscure and obscene forms of mental conditioning.

Rather than being schizophrenic, for example, a person might actually be suffering from a brain tumor or other physical ailment. So therefore the problem is a physical diagnosis (tumor, cerebral aneurysm, stroke, etc) and the symptoms manifest as bizarre behaviors which are misinterpreted as 'mental illnesses'. However as often the case, there is no physical disorder or damage of the brain tissues at all, and the brain itself is functioning effectively.

When the brain is functioning normally, a diagnosis of 'mental illness' is actually the result of an analysis of that individuals behavior in the context of our social architecture (normal vs abnormal behavior). It is based entirely upon opinions and prejudices and stereotypes rather than upon any actual medical or scientific analysis.

So therefore a brain tumor is a real medical problem, whereas 'bipolar disorder' is a fictional contrived metaphor and does not actually exist.

III Behavioral Deviancy, Normalcy, Morality, and the Law

Throughout history, from witch hunts and public executions, to the insane asylums of the 1800s up to this very day, the accusation of a 'mental or behavioral deviancy' absent the charge of any formal criminal act (or often in addition to that criminal charge), were used as power plays for political, economic, social, or other reasons.

What might be considered deviancy to one person may not be so to another, what is considered normal by one community may not be to another, and what is considered moral by a culture may be considered immoral by another for various reasons. There are many gray areas and it is highly complicated.

Law is the codification of rules by which a society agrees to live within, and directs the government to utilize coercive force to ensure that such a society behaves within those guidelines or face punishment dictated by those laws.

One major problem with 'mental illness' accusations is that they seek to work around most formal legal systems and to dictate behavioral norms at the threat of punishment without actually having legal standing. For example someone could be locked up, tortured and drugged without having actually broken any laws.

In the last several decades there has been a merger of government with psychiatry in such a way that legislatures have codified this extrajudicial system attempting to make it legitimate, however there still remains a major problem because the civil rights of individuals are still to this day often violated by judges, lawyers, and doctors because they are not recognizing or understanding the purpose of Constitutional protections to human rights.

Holding someone against their will in a facility without criminal charge / or far longer than their established punishment would provide by law - is a massive violation of human rights and is an extrajudicial methodology to eliminate the Constitution and institute a tyranny right under everyone's noses via legalese and what amounts to little more than accusing someone of witchcraft albeit in a highly sophisticated and often times convincing manner.

This is even more disturbing when it is recognized that this method of violating citizens is conducted primarily through
opinion making, prejudices, applying stereotypes, etc - rather than through actual scientific methods like x-rays, blood tests, or other laboratory examinations and analysis methods that are actual logical-rational-mathematical approaches to physical medical diagnosis.



IV Political Power

Because psychiatry utilizes 'creative language', 'stereotypical biases', and 'behavioral prejudices of normalcy' rather than actual scientific methods to diagnose people, it is little more than petty politics. Therefore it's purpose is power rather than medical healing.

For example, there are many cases whereby one's economic fortunes were stolen via the mental illness accusations. People use these accusations to defeat others in legal battles or in other cases, to obtain 'free money and benefits' by accessing government programs designed to aid the 'mentally ill'.

People will use mental illness claims to defeat their enemies underhandedly or to garner sympathy for themselves and to utilize loopholes for some form of personal self-interest.

The government or other powerful entities can silence their dissenting opposition, attack counter-cultures, steal resources, etc, via the accusations of witchcraft/mental illness.

Therefore it is about power, money, politics, and domination far more than it has anything to do with actual legitimate medical concerns.

V Industrialist and Capitalist Bias

Because psychiatry has become a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide involving many corporate and governmental interests, because it gives great power to the government via unconstitutional means, because it is forced to protect it's own growing interests - the entire field of psychiatry and the diagnosis of 'mental illness' cannot be merely defeated by making rational arguments or revealing it's many sins.

Instead it has become 'too big to fail', there are too many interests involved, and like a consuming fire it will grow until it uses all of it's fuel (which are we the citizenry). They have too much power and control, there is too much money at stake, and so therefore psychiatry will continue even if it makes no sense or even if it is extremely dangerous and detrimental to our actual medical health.

VI Witchcraft Trials Designed to Violate Civil Rights

Any enemy of civil rights and Constitutional theory that seeks to enslave the population, poison them with mind altering or highly damaging substances and trap them into medical bondage, enslave them into perpetual debt, harm them just enough to cripple them but not enought to kill them, and be able to shut down any dissent without appearing tyrannical - will favor the current paradigm of extrajudicial mental health treatment and modern psychiatry.

Therefore today's system is little different than the Spanish Inquisition or the Salam Witch Trials.



VII The Danger of Pharmaceutical Chemicals and Various Therapies

Because of the financial prospects, those deemed mentally ill are convinced to (or sometimes forced) to take various poisonous chemical substances, often times designed recently and poorly studied, with many known shocking dangerous side effects. There are even deaths and major side effect events where the victim is either killed or left permanently crippled as a result of these poisons being pushed by the pharmaceutical corporations who are accomplices and in an unholy allegiance with the psychiatry industry and government.

In addition to chemical warfare against anyone unlucky enough to get sucked into this growing industry, there are "treatments" administered that can be described as nothing short of torture. Actual torture.

The most famous method of torturing a mentally ill patient in modern times would be so called 'electro-shock therapy', which is heinous, incredibly dangerous, and shows little to no actual medical scientific value to it's victims.

So therefore the real psychopaths here are the mental health system, it's purveyors, and it's alliances.

VIII Mental Hospitals and Insane Asylums

Far more often than many realize, so called 'mental hospitals' are actually used as extrajudicial prisons where people are kept against their will for incredibly long duration (or even their entire lives), and are tortured and poisoned by highly questionable pharmaceutical experimentation. Even when an individual is 'consenting', it is often the result of misinformation and disinformation employed by the industry establishment which exploits their ignorance and misleads them into a false consent that a well informed individual would rarely ever concede to.

It is well known that many 'patients' are victimized, mistreated, and hidden away behind barriers to live a life of suffering and agony in these 'hospitals'. This system has become incredibly corrupt, and the self-interest of those running it leads them to cover up their mistakes and misdeeds at an alarming rate, making it very difficult from those on the outside to discover the truth and become aware of the shocking Unconstitutional and illegal nature of what goes on behind those locked doors.

Rather than calling them a 'mental hospital or asylum', it appears more accurate to designate them as extrajudicial prisons where torture and medical experimentation takes place.

People trapped in these prisons are often abused, tortured, even raped, and face a constant life of suffering and agony and NO ONE CARES OR KNOWS! Their abusers go home at night and rest well knowing that their crimes will never come to light, or even worse, they don't even believe what they are doing to these people is a crime to begin with!

People need actual help via compassion, understanding and consideration - not punishment, torture or poisons!

IX Living is Challenging and Coping with Problems is Difficult!




Behavioral deviancy and abnormal thinking can be the result of many factors, primarily social pressures we face on a daily basis.

Generally many people will face overwhelming problems in their life and fail to cope effectively, and usually lack the education to know how to deal with them appropriately or effectively.

This results in behavior that many would consider abnormal or deviant, and modern psychiatry will misdiagnose this as a mental illness rather than as the result of poor education or as a failure to apply proper coping mechanisms to handle their life problems. They may also lack the proper support structure to help them cope with these pressures and stresses of life.

Other times political dissenters or economic rivals will be accused of a 'mental illness' in order to destroy them and eliminate their opposition via underhanded tactics. This loophole can be exploited to devestating effects. It is exceptionally easy to target an individual and suppress them through creative language and labels and then to abuse the power of government to detain and then imprison them into this system.

No one seems safe from such an overwhelmingly powerful institution that can essentially make up anything and frame anyone at anytime for non-existent reasons when the population will blindly believe anything they are told by the "authority". This is the essence of Tyranny.


X Poor Education and the Prevalance of Mythology (Oversimplification Bias)

Many people who work in the mental health industry, from nurses to psychiatrists to psychologists, fall into the trap of oversimplification and as a result are led down a path of mistakes that destroy individuals caught in the web of labels and prejudices that have grown around this industry.
Oversimplification results because it is easier to categorize individuals into groups and subgroups, to overgeneralize a person's problems into simplistic models and then to just throw chemicals at them or torture them.

This is far easier than actually appreciating the fact that EVERY SINGLE PERSON IS DIFFERENT in the context of their life experiences and their resulting proclivities and the reasons behind their behaviors and thoughts are unique due to their specific positions within our environment.

Rather than spend the thousands of hours necessary to council an individual and help them work out their problems rationally, providing proper economic, political, legal, and medical aid - they will simplify these people and their complex challenging problems under a label and then treat them according to a set of guidelines or policies.

The result of this is that these individuals rarely ever solve any of their problems or resolve their mental, emotional, and Spiritual baggage - and instead are obliterated and reduced to shells of their former selves, carrying even more baggage and facing stigma in society.

It could be accurately noted that many seemingly normal people are sucked into the system for silly reasons and then, if they ever come out, are never the same again. They are often much worse off due to the many violations they endure and the brutality of the system harms their health greatly.

In other words, if you weren't 'crazy' on your way in, rest assured you will be by the time you get out - though it's unlikely you'll ever escape such a system because it's designed to keep you in it as a profitable cow to be milked for financial reasons indefinitely.

Suggested reading materials from a few psychiatrists and psychoanalysts:

Thomas Szasz :
The Myth of Mental Illness (1961)
The Manufacture of Madness (1970)

Except for a few identifiable brain diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, there are "neither biological or chemical tests nor biopsy or necropsy findings for verifying or falsifying DSM diagnoses", i.e., there are no objective methods for detecting the presence or absence of mental illness.[5]

His views on special treatment followed from libertarian roots, based on the principles that each person has the right to bodily and mental self-ownership and the right to be free from violence from others

R. D. Laing:
The Divided Self - An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness (1960)
Self and Others (1961)
The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise (1967)

Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder.

And a Youtube vid to get you started on all the videos you can find out there:

Agree

Until you seeing a seemingly normal person smear poo all over the walls to mark his territory I don't think I agree with you.
.
The human mind can go wonky in many different ways for many different reasons sometimes from before birth sometimes because of traumatic injuries sometimes because of emotional injuries sometimes because of chemical influences. But to say that there's no such thing as mental illness is probably mental illness

originally posted by: dashen
Until you seeing a seemingly normal person smear poo all over the walls to mark his territory I don't think I agree with you.
.
The human mind can go wonky in many different ways for many different reasons sometimes from before birth sometimes because of traumatic injuries sometimes because of emotional injuries sometimes because of chemical influences. But to say that there's no such thing as mental illness is probably mental illness

I must say that I have seen things like that and people talking to people that aren't there, battling creatures that no one else could see or hear or that Amish guy that killed his wife in the kitchen and gutted her like a deer....
Seems to me that they might be a bit nutty.

originally posted by: dashen
Until you seeing a seemingly normal person smear poo all over the walls to mark his territory I don't think I agree with you.

Oh no...his brain is operating normally and your bias against poop just fuels this problem of discrimination against perfectly healthy rational individuals who have a preference for smearing poop on everything they own.

I think the OP may have an argument if he didn't cast such a wide net. Sure things like "depression" are over diagnosed but to claim there is no such thing as mental illness is just plain retarded. He may be confused about the difference between the mind and brain, neurology and psychiatry and psychology.

But given the HORRIBLE arguments he has put forward we are bound to see some real intellectual gems pop up here, sit back and enjoy

a reply to: muzzleflash

So if these labels were meant to stigmatize people of sound mind then what about schizophrenics? Does the "label" stigmatize them or does hacking up the wife to close the stargate do the trick?

Have you ever worked with the homeless?
Have you ever had to take care of a schizo family member that was off their meds?

a reply to: muzzleflash


Who defines what is normal to then use that as a qualifier as to what constitutes being mentally ill?

The quackery of psychiatry has basically deemed anyone whos behavior is not up to societal norms to be a mental issue. Who decides what is normal? The government? A doctor who has a different view of life and politics from you? I do believe there are people who's brain chemistry is out of whack and really do need to be on medication, but as I see it, it has become a money making scam to get people on Big Pharms dole and a means to stifle free expression in those who are not dangerous to themselves or others.

Look at the amount of people on anti depressants for instance. We all get depressed at times yet the doctors are quick to write you a scrip for those meds? Yet look at the side effects! Most depression is easily solved by just changing your thinking habits and behavior. How many people are depressed because they just can't cope because they won't face their responsibilities and instead choose to run from things they need to face? Yet that leads to depression and then they get put on meds. Why?

Wait until you meet someone with depression before and after getting help or before and after a relapse. Then you'll sing a different tune.

Mental illnesses may be over diagnosed, but that is a symptom of a lack of more nuanced mental science. If we know more, we can diagnose a lot more efficiently, but mental illnesses DEFINITELY exist.

I have ADD. I KNOW this for a fact because I've dealt with it all my life and exhibit the symptoms all the time. I don't take adderal or other ADD medicine for it, but that doesn't mean I don't have it.

No, mental illness is not a myth.

Crap like this only further stigmatises those who live with mental illness and to be quite honest with you has the potential to be dangerous for those who are venerable to suggestion due to their mental illness to read something like this.

The OP quite obviously has never worked or cared for individuals with mental illness.

As such like I say, thread like this are really quite irresponsible and in my view have the potential to be dangerous.

The OP should be ashamed of this load of pseudo-BS that he has posted.

After reading through the OP there is nothing, zero, to back up this preposterous claim that mental illness is a myth, all this thread demonstrates is how little about the topic the OP knows and how little respect he has for those who are living day by day with horrendous debilitating mental illness that the OP has just dismissed as a "myth"

Shameful.

a reply to: muzzleflash

I have never felt stigmatised by the medical industry for my mental health issues.
In fact they did everything in their power to assure me I was normal, healthy and human, that it is nothing to be ashamed of.

Juxtapose that with the fact that the people most likely to stigmatise people like me have always been the God botherers espousing that we are demonic, or influenced by the demonic.



As much as I have my own opinions on spiritual influences in some mental health cases...

Having been segregated from society many times alongside all types of people, for long enough durations to assess the situation and gain an understanding...
I can readily assure you there are people who are definitely mentally ill.

It is based entirely upon opinions and prejudices and stereotypes rather than upon any actual medical or scientific analysis.

I can’t speak for every case or diagnosis...

But brain scans have overwhelmingly linked chemical imbalances to schizophrenia and bipolar.
So your above quote is quite inaccurate.

a reply to: muzzleflash

The psychiatric hold you reference is and has been abused but it does serve a purpose. A man threatening to kill himself or someone else to stop the giants of the groundhog system from activating the 2nd DNA strain of the dolphin overlords...will hurt himself or someone else if left alone.
Yes the hold DOES have some flaws but to condemn the whole system is stupid.

shame the OP spent such a long time putting together such a load of bollocks... there might be good points to be made about the need for better oversight in prescriptions, diagnosis, and mental wards, but to jump to 'mental illness is fake!!!!1!!!!11!!!!' ain't helpin nothin.

a reply to: muzzleflash

I'll admit, I came in here because of the "witchcraft" in the title and was ready to get all defensive lol

But reading your post, as I've been around my share of "crazy makers", I appreciate how well written and thought out it is.

I'm not sure if I fully agree with you, but you do make some valid points. I've seen some diagnoses I can agree with and some that are way off base.

My only real opinion on the topic: "Normal is just a majority vote"

originally posted by: TheMZA
a reply to: muzzleflash

The psychiatric hold you reference is and has been abused but it does serve a purpose. A man threatening to kill himself or someone else to stop the giants of the groundhog system from activating the 2nd DNA strain of the dolphin overlords...will hurt himself or someone else if left alone.
Yes the hold DOES have some flaws but to condemn the whole system is stupid.

Might I correct you? It is the 3rd DNA strand actually. Hah, anybody's mistake though.



I like this Dolphin Overlords business very much. Yes, they should not have activated. Now it befalls me to call up the Shinthugger weaponry hidden away by the Warriors of the Sacred Scrotal Parchment.

This whole thing is on par with saying the flat earth theory is a load of BS so earth is obviously fake