5. Because psychiatry is quackery, a pseudo-science which lacks independent diagnostic tests, testable hypotheses, and cures for "schizophrenia" and all other types of alleged "mental illness" or "mental disorder".

 6. Because psychiatrists can not accurately and reliably predict dangerousness, violence or any other type of human behavior, yet make such claims as "expert witnesses".

 8. Because psychiatrists manufacture hundreds of diseases or "mental disorders" classified in its bible called Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which in fact are negative moral judgments for dissident ways of coping with personal problems and alternative ways of perceiving, interpreting or being in the world.

 9. Because psychiatrists fraudulently pathologize and label people's serious life crises as "symptoms" of "mental illness" or "mental disorder" such as "schizophrenia","manic depressive/bipolar affective disorder", and "personality disorder".

 10. Because psychiatrists compound this fraud by falsely claiming, without scientific proof, that these "mental disorders" are caused by a "biochemical imbalance" in the brain, genetic factors or "genetic predispositions",despite the fact that there are no such genetic factors.

 15. Because psychiatrists routinely threaten, intimidate or coerce many patients - particularly women, children, the elderly, and prisoners - into consenting to health-threatening treatments such as the antidepressants, neuroleptics, electroconvulsive brainwashing, and hi-risk experiments.

 16. Because psychiatrists frequently fail to fully inform psychiatric inmates and prisoners about existing safe and humane, non-medical alternatives in the community such as survivor-controlled crisis centers, dropins, self-help or advocacy groups, wholistic methods, affordable supportive housing, and jobs.

 24. Because psychiatry, particularly institutional-biological psychiatry, is based on fraud,fear and force.

 (Authored by Don Weitz): [Note: Don Weitz is psychiatric survivor and antipsychiatry activist who has been involved in the survivor liberation movement for over 20 years. He is editor with Bonnie Burstow of Shrink Resistant: The Struggle Against Psychiatry in Canada (1988), host-producer of "Shrinkrap" on CKLN radio (88.1 FM) in Toronto, and currently co-editor of a book-in-progress against electroshock.

 Does Mental Illness Exist?

 Calling nonconformity or disliked behavior a "disease" or assuming it must be caused by a disease only because it is unacceptable according to currently prevailing values makes no sense. What causes us to do this is not knowing the real reasons for the thinking, emotions, or behavior we dislike. When we don't understand the real reasons, we create myths to provide an explanation. In prior centuries people used myths of evil spirit or demon possession to explain unacceptable thinking or behavior. Today most of us instead believe in the myth of mental illness.

 Diagnosis of psychiatric disorders presupposes existence of mental disease. Dis-ease. But don’t mean ALL dis-ease, since would go see psychiatrist for recessions, wars, and losing a job. Disease is what we see doctors for (what if saw doctors for wars and recessions…?). Assumption of the presense of a biological abnormality. But in cases of mental disease, often no firm evidence of underlying biological abnormality.

 In 1992 a panel of experts assembled by the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment concluded: "Many questions remain about the biology of mental disorders. In fact, research has yet to identify specific biological causes for any of these disorders. ... Mental disorders are classified on the basis of symptoms because there are as yet no biological markers or laboratory tests for them" (The Biology of Mental Disorders, U.S. Gov't Printing Office, 1992, pp. 13-14, 46-47).

It is sometimes argued that psychiatric drugs "curing" (stopping) the thinking, emotions, or behavior that is called mental illness proves the existence of biological causes of mental illness. This argument is easily refuted: Suppose someone was playing the piano and you didn't like him doing that. Suppose you forced or persuaded him to take a drug that disabled him so severely that he couldn't play the piano anymore. Would this prove his piano playing was caused by a biological abnormality that was cured by the drug? As senseless as this argument is, it is often made.

 Most if not all psychiatric drugs are neurotoxic, producing a greater or lesser degree of generalized neurological disability. So they do stop disliked behavior and may mentally disable a person enough he can no longer feel angry or unhappy or "depressed". But calling this a "cure" is absurd.

 "I am constantly amazed by how many patients who come to see me believe or want to believe that their difficulties are biologic and can be relieved by a pill. This is despite the fact that modern psychiatry has yet to convincingly prove the genetic/biologic cause of any single mental illness. However, this does not stop psychiatry from making essentially unproven claims that depression, bipolar illness, anxiety disorders, alcoholism and a host of other disorders are in fact primarily biologic and probably genetic in origin, and that it is only a matter of time until all this is proven. This kind of faith in science and progress is staggering, not to mention naïve and perhaps delusional." --David Kaiser, M.D., 1996

 Defenders of the concept of mental illness will assert that mental illness can exist and can be defined as a "disease" without there being a biological abnormality causing it. But people are thought of as mentally ill only when their thinking, emotions, or behavior is contrary to what is considered acceptable, that is, when others (or the so-called patients themselves) dislike something about them.

 Confuse morality and disease:

 "The theorists who maintain this multicultural position usually insist that the closest one can come to a definition of mental health is: conformity to cultural norms. Thus, they declare that a man is psychologically healthy to the extent that he is `well-adjusted' to his culture. ... The obvious questions that such a definition raises, are: What if the values and norms of a given society are irrational? Can mental health consist of being well-adjusted to the irrational? What about Nazi Germany, for instance? Is a cheerful servant of the Nazi state - who feels serenely and happily at home in his social environment - an exponent of mental health? "(Branden, Bantam Books, 1969, pp. 95-96, emphasis in original).

• First, he is confusing morality and rationality, saying that respect for human rights is rational when in fact it is not a question of rationality but rather of morality.

• Branden is stating some of his values. Among these values are: Respect for human rights is good; violation of human rights (like Naziism) is bad. And he is saying: Violating these values is "irrationality" or mental illness.

• THE ANSWER TO BRANDEN’S QUESTION: A person living in Nazi Germany and well-adjusted to it was "mentally healthy" judged by the values of his own society. Judged by the values of a society which respects human rights he was as sick (metaphorically speaking) as the rest of his culture. A person like myself however says that such a person is morally "sick" and recognizes that the word sick has not its literal but a metaphorical meaning. To a person like Dr. Branden who believes in the myth of mental illness, such a person is literally sick and needs a doctor.

 Evolution of disease

 The situation was aptly summed up in an article in the November 1986 Omni magazine: "Disorders come and go. Even Sigmund Freud's concept of neurosis was dropped in the original DSM-III (1980). And in 1973 APA [American Psychiatric Association] trustees voted to wipe out almost all references to homosexuality as a disorder. Before the vote, being gay was considered a psychiatric problem. After the vote the disorder was relegated to psychiatry's attic.

 One of the most telling examples is homosexuality, which was officially defined as a mental disease by the American Psychiatric Association until 1973 but hasn't been since then. Homosexuality was defined as a mental disorder on page 44 of the American Psychiatric Association's standard reference book, DSM-II: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the 2nd Edition), published in 1968. In that book, "Homosexuality" is categorized as one of the "Sexual deviations" on page 44. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from it's official diagnostic categories of mental illness. (See "An Instant Cure", Time magazine, April 1, 1974, p. 45). So when the third edition of this book was published in 1980 it said "homosexuality itself is not considered a mental disorder" (p. 282).

 If mental illness were really an illness in the same sense that physical illnesses are illnesses, the idea of deleting homosexuality or anything else from the categories of illness by having a vote would be as absurd as a group of physicians voting to delete cancer or measles from the concept of disease. But mental illness isn't "an illness like any other illness." Unlike physical disease where there are physical facts to deal with, mental "illness" is entirely a question of values, of right and wrong, of appropriate versus inappropriate.

 Children as another example. HYPERACTIVITY and ADHD:

"... all 5 million to 6 million children on these drugs [for hyperactivity] are

normal. The country's been led to believe that all painful emotions are a

mental illness and the leadership of the APA [American Psychiatric

Association] knows very well that they are representing it as a disease

when there is no scientific data to confirm any mental illness." Neurologist

Fred Baughman, quoted in Insight magazine, June 28, 1999, p. 13

(underline added).

A cross-cultural example is suicide. In many countries, such as the United States and Great Britain, a person who commits suicide or attempts to do so or even thinks about it seriously is considered mentally ill.

 Chesser (Why Suicide?) points out that "Neither Hinduism nor Buddhism have any intrinsic objections to suicide and in some forms of Buddhism self-incineration is believed to confer special merit."

 "The Celts scorned to wait for old age and enfeeblement. They believed that those who committed suicide before their powers waned went to heaven, and those who died of sickness or became senile went to hell - an interesting reversal of Christian doctrine" (Arrow Books Ltd., London, England, 1968, p. 121-122).

 Japan. Rather than thinking of suicide or "hara-kiri" as the Japanese call it as almost always caused by a mental disease or illness, the Japanese in some circumstances consider suicide the normal, socially acceptable thing to do, such as when one "loses face" or is humiliated by some sort of failure. Another example showing suicide is considered normal, not crazy, in Japanese eyes is the kamikaze pilots Japan used against the U.S. Navy in World War II. They were given enough fuel for a one-way trip, a suicide mission, to where the attacking U.S. Navy forces were located and deliberately crashed their airplanes into the enemy ships.

 Even in America, aren't virtually suicidal acts done for the sake of one's fellow soldiers or for one's country during wartime thought of not as insanity but as bravery? CONTEXT.

• Peter R. Breggin, M.D., Talking Back to Prozac (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1994)

• Lee Coleman, M.D., The Reign of Error: Psychiatry, Authority, and Law (Beacon Press, Boston, 1984)

• Nicholas N. Kittrie, The Right To Be Different: Deviance and Enforced Therapy (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore: 1971).

• Richard D. Laing, The Politics of Experience (Penguin, New York, 1967)

• Jeffrey M. Masson, Ph.D., Against Therapy (Atheneum, New York, 1988)

• Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., Law, Liberty, and Psychiatry (Syracuse Univ. Press, Syracuse, N.Y., 1989)

• Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., The Myth of Mental Illness (Dell, New York, 1961)

• Thomas S. Szasz, M.D., The Manufacture of Madness (Dell, New York, 1970)