Open house to focus on psychiatric abuses, failures

"The basic tenet of psychology is that man is just an animal. The basic tenet of psychiatry is that insanity is a physical disease. Neither has any proof that these tenets are correct. That man can be reduced to animalistic behavior does not prove that that is his true basic nature." L Ron Hubbard

“Psychiatry is the art of teaching people how to stand on their own feet while reclining on couches.” Sigmund Freud

On Saturday, Jan. 26 at 1 pm, the Church of Scientology of Buffalo, 836 Main St., will play host to a Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) “Open House” devoted to exposing psychiatric abuses and ineffectiveness.

The event comes at a time when popular skepticism about psychiatric treatments seems to be growing even as the mainstream media's devotion to using shrinks as expert analysts is increasing by leaps and bounds.

Have you or a member of your family been referred to a psychiatrist in order to cure some mental illness or “disorder” that you or a loved one is alleged to have?

If so, you might be interested to know what President Norman Sartorius of the World Psychiatric Association has said about your prospects for success: “The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone,” he admitted. “In the future the mentally ill will have to learn to live with their illness.”

Even more to the point, Dr. Rex Cowdry, the Director of the National Institute of Health has written: “We do not know the causes of (mental illness). We don't have the methods of curing these illnesses yet.”

Dr. Sander Berger, a professor of psychiatry at Michigan State, reports that when psychiatrists were asked to list their number one fantasy, the most popular choice was: “I will be able to cure the patient.”

Ok. But surely there's such a thing as “chemical imbalances” as a cause of mental maladies...After all, they are mentioned on TV all the time!

“There's no chemical imbalance,” says Dr. Ron Leifer, himself a psychiatrist. “When people come to me and say they have a chemical imbalance, I say, 'Show me your lab tests.' There are no lab tests. So what's the chemical imbalance?”

Leifer's colleague, Dr. David Kaiser adds: “No test exists to support a claim of chemical imbalance. There is no conception of what a correct chemical balance would be.”

If these things are true, why do the psychiatric profession and their mainstream media allies cling to this idea so fanatically?
“These theories are held on to because there is nothing to take their place,” explains Dr. Elliot Valenstein, author of 'Blaming the Brain.' “Also they are useful in promoting drug therapy.”

Maybe. But everybody knows there are psychiatric “disorders.” Take “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” for example, which is mentioned more on radio and television than station breaks or even the tragedy of dry skin.

The truth is that “disorders” are voted into existence at the annual psychiatric conventions, not ushered into existence through scientific testing or experimentation, according to CCHR.

“The whole business of creating psychiatric categories of disease, formalizing them through votes and ascribing diagnostic codes to them, which in turn leads to their use for insurance billing, is a racket that gives psychiatry a pseudo-scientific aura that allows psychiatry to feed at the public trough,” declares Dr. Thomas Dorman, a member of the Royal College of Physicians in both the UK and Canada.

In fact, a Harvard University study concludes that since the modern era of psychiatry began with the introduction of the drug Thorazine as a therapeutic tool, instances of mental illness and mentally disabled patients has increased six-fold.

The picture in New York State isn't much better. The New York Post reports that a Big Apple area mom won a $6 million judgment against the manufacturers of Paxil after school psychologists coerced her into putting her young son on the drug. When the Post published Mrs. Patricia Weiller's story in August of 2002, 65 other parents came forward to tell similar tales of woe.

Speaking of Paxil, a psychiatric favorite if there ever was one, former NYS Attorney General Elliot Spitzer won a $2.5 million settlement in June of 2004 against its makers after charging them with illegally hiding the harmful effects of their product.

Then there are the cruel psychiatric “experiments.” In 1999, New York City area psychiatrists forced a 16-year -old girl under their supervision to put a cube on her head and filled with carbon dioxide until she screamed with pain.

The NYS Commission on Quality Care for the Mentally Ill reported that in 2001 there were 17,521 reports of abuses in psychiatric facilities in the Empire State, with 547 deaths and 415 reports of child abuse.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights “Open House” at the Church of Scientology on Jan. 26 will include information on the toxic relationship between psychiatry and Big Pharma.

Attendees will be given a free DVD on the connection between psychiatric drugs and the epidemic of mass shootings we have seen in recent years.

For more information on CCHR, visit the group's web site at www.cchr.com.
For more information on the Church of Scientology of Buffalo, call 716-856-3910.