| Enter "comorbidity" into our government's National Library of Medicine PubMed search engine, and you will bring up over 27,000 research studies, about half of which deal with mental disorder comorbidity-9
Those with major depression are also more likely to have panic attacks, develop obsessive-compulsive behaviors, have agoraphobia (fear of public places) and become hypochondriacs (those who believe they are ill or will become ill even when medical examination indicates no problems). |
| Susan Kemker, MD, psychiatrist
"The ascendant belief that 'mental illnesses are brain diseases' is due far more to the cultural belief that only biologically based illnesses are 'real' illnesses than to any empirical findings that the causes of mental disorder are brain based. The view that real illnesses must have biological causes is, paradoxically, a cultural construction. |
| They say nothing about the causes of depression or any mental disorder. Yet, the most extraordinary implications are sometimes suggested. The caption under one set of PET scan images in a psychology textbook from which I taught read, "PET scans illustrate reduced activation in a murderer's frontal cortex—a brain area that helps brake impulsive, aggressive behavior."57
This is inexcusable. |
Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
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 Says psychologist Paula Caplan, "In a nutshell, you see them taking a very common kind of experience and making that very thing into a mental disorder."39
Caplan's concern that serious problems were being trivialized comes from a different perspective than that of the folks at the FDA. She worries that a psychiatric label of PMDD can be used to cover up or mask the real sources of pain and anguish for some women at the time of their period. |
Mike Adams
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 Here's how it works: once a drug gets approved for any condition, whether it's a skin disorder, a mental disorder, or a cardiovascular problem, it can then be legally prescribed by doctors for everything. In other words, a drug approved for heart disease can be prescribed for diabetes, even though there's absolutely no testing done whatsoever with the drug on diabetes patients. |
Kelly Patricia O'Meara
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 Despite having been evaluated by a mental-health professional, Klebold had not been diagnosed as suffering from any alleged psychiatric mental disorder and by all accounts of those involved in Klebold's restitution, he was "nice," "funny," "intelligent" and "motivated." Klebold's autopsy results have never been made public, making it difficult to know with any certainty if or what drugs were in his system at the time of the murders. |
| Whether or not an alleged mental disorder is a disease is no small matter, especially when one considers that the Stein-Kaufman article is reporting that the mind-altering antidepressants actually treat the alleged diseases. Since there is no proof of an objective, confirmable abnormality of the brain for any psychiatric diagnosis, many may wonder just what are the psychiatric drugs treating? There is no known brain abnormality for depression, OCD, postpartum depression, anxiety or any of the other psychiatric diagnoses. |
| In total, nobody knows anything about what exactly is the alleged mental disorder ADHD (except opinions about individual behavior), and nobody knows with certainty how the alleged treatment works. Given that the FDA has approved all of the antidepressants on the market today without any certainty about how the drugs work on the alleged mental illness; it is not surprising that Strattera also would get the agency's stamp of approval. |
| This particular point seems to escape the diagnosis process, and millions of American children and an unknown number of adults, diagnosed with the alleged mental disorder, are prescribed mind-altering drugs such as the stimulant, Ritalin (active ingredient: methylphenidate), which they are assured will "help" make them "better" - more subjective jargon. |
| It is important to point out that in considering the rise and fall of homosexuality in the APA's mental disorder repertoire, the reader should keep in mind that science was not part of the consideration, insomuch as there is not now nor has there ever been an objective, confirmable abnormality in the brain (or anywhere else in the body) to establish homosexuality as a bona fide disease. |
Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
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| A major source for that figure was a survey of Americans conducted in the early 1990s, which claimed to have found that in any given year, 30 percent of people had a mental disorder.29 While the figure may sound so absurdly high as to be laughable, it has been widely cited around the world, in marketing and elsewhere, and it has helped build the impression of untold millions being undiagnosed and untreated.30
One of those who thought the figure sounded a little on the high side was psychiatrist Dr. |
| Yet this test was so broad, it classified 49 percent of people as having a "mental disorder"—roughly one-half of that 49 percent having what was described as a "Level I" disorder and the other half having a less serious "Level 2" disorder.45 While this is clearly good news for Bristol-Myers Squibb and other drug makers, the figures may appear to dispassionate observers as absurdly inflated estimates that would immediately raise questions about a potentially flawed test. |
| Even the industry-friendly FDA reacted, arguing that the TV ad trivialized the seriousness of this alleged new mental disorder by associating it with normal premenstrual problems. In a letter to Lilly the FDA was particularly critical of the catchy tag line, "Think it's PMS? It could be PMDD."37
The letter stated that the ad never clearly defined the difference between PMS and PMDD, and it therefore "broadens" the condition unreasonably. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 They are far less likely to ever be diagnosed with depression, Attention Deficit Disorder or any other so-called mental disorder. Children who participate in sports are all around healthier -- mentally, physically, emotionally and socially. Some of those benefits come from the training itself and the chemical changes that take place in the brain in response to such training, but other benefits are derived from simply receiving the sunlight and fresh air.
I've frequently talked about natural sunlight and the tremendous benefits of exposing your skin to sensible levels of ultraviolet radiation. |
Dr. Timothy Scott
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 Borges, PhD, sociologist
• "At the present time there is no proof that biology causes schizophrenia, bipolar mood disorder, or any other functional mental disorder."16
—Colin A. Ross, MD, psychiatrist
The Evidence
Though numerous researchers have rejected the theory that mental problems are caused by some disease or chemical imbalance, the American Psychiatric Association, most physicians and most of the American public continue to hold to this belief. |
Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
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| The push to suggest that the "cause" of this condition lies within the individual, whether for biological or psychological reasons, clearly distracts all of us from a broader understanding of the complex sources of social anxiety—whether it is defined as a mental disorder or not. While this is not the only condition where this is the case, it serves as a strong example of a much wider problem. The messages coming from the pharmaceutical industry's marketing machinery try to keep the public focus on a narrow range of chemical solutions to health problems. |
Fred A. Baughman, Jr., M.D. and Craig Hovey
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 Through these criteria, describing common, everyday behaviors of children, the rhetoric of science transforms them into what are purported to be objective symptoms of mental disorder. On closer inspection, however, there is nothing that is objective about the diagnostic criteria."
The DSM's diagnostic criteria for ADHD look like the creation of somebody who observed a group of normal children in school and tried to figure out a mechanism for making a disease out of the more irritating, yet normal, behaviors children exhibit, with an eye toward creating as many patients as possible. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Here's how it works: once a drug gets approved for any condition, whether it's a skin disorder, a mental disorder, or a cardiovascular problem, it can then be legally prescribed by doctors for everything. In other words, a drug approved for heart disease can be prescribed for diabetes, even though there's absolutely no testing done whatsoever with the drug on diabetes patients. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 You have a mental disorder.
The whole thing makes me so mad that I could slam my head into the wall. And that, of course, qualifies me as having Intermittent Explosive Disorder, a disease based on such flimsy definitions that you can be qualified as "ill" by simply having three major anger outbursts in your entire life! You read that right: Three bouts of anger, over your entire life, can get you labeled as having this so-called "disease" and put on powerful psychotropic drugs for life.
Is there anyone who hasn't experienced at least three episodes of anger in their life? Let's see... |
| You can help stop the insanity and save yourself (and your children, perhaps) from being diagnosed with yet another fictitious mental disorder. Take this article and post it on your website (with author credit and a link back, please), or forward to friends. Also, visit www.StopDrugAds.org, a grassroots campaign to end direct-to-consumer drug advertising. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Think about it: Do you want the federal government in charge of mandating what kinds of treatments your child might get for depression, a mental disorder or a learning disability? The government has no interest in prevention. We invest almost nothing in prevention in this country. The money will all go to prescription drugs. The government has no interest in teaching people how to actually prevent or reverse chronic diseases. It only has an interest in treating people who are managing their symptoms in a way that keeps the pharmaceutical industry profitable. |
Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels
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| According to Spitzer s account of the heated debates of the time, even within his committee there were disputes about whether to include this supposed new mental disorder in the DSM. Part of the concern was that so little was known about its causes, or how to treat it—criticisms acknowledged by Spitzer and his colleagues. Yet ironically, this lack of knowledge became one of the powerful reasons to create the new condition, with enthusiasts arguing that a listing in the DSM would facilitate more research on its causes and treatment. |
Fred A. Baughman, Jr., M.D. and Craig Hovey
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| As there is no such evidence for any mental disorder, the term disease is a misnomer; in fact, it is fraudulent."
What psychiatry has descended to, with physicians in plenty of other specialties following their lead, is the abandonment of their scientific concept of disease. Why? In order to make room for a much broader definition of disease which, in practice, is anything that third-party payers (insurance companies) will foot the bill for. |
Jay Joseph
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 Bipolar Disorder and Genetics
According to the authors of a 2004 APA textbook chapter, bipolar affective disorder (BPD) "may have the strongest genetic component of any mental disorder,"1 while other mainstream commentators have recognized "the vast areas of ignorance that still exist in our understanding of the causes of bipolar disorder...."2 Generally speaking, the hereditary basis of BPD (also known as "manic-depressive disorder") is rarely if ever questioned in mainstream publications. |
Jacky Law
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 As such, he had been privy to previously undisclosed research from both Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline that highlighted holes in the companies' main defence of their products, that it was not the drugs themselves that induced bizarre behaviour but the underlying mental disorder the drugs were being used to treat.
'The Pfizer archives contain healthy volunteer ttials that show people became agitated and probably suicidal on Pfizer's sertraline (Lustral) in the early 1980s,' Healy told Simon Crompton in The Times newspaper. |
Jay Joseph
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| And German psychiatric geneticist Peter Propping recalled that, in the 1980s, "We were all optimistic that this approach [linkage] would lead to the rapid detection of genes predisposing to mental disorder. No other medical phe-notype with a complex genetic background was tackled with as many genome scans as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."2
The disappointment over failing to complete the "straightforward" task of finding genes continues as I write these lines, two decades later. Of course, this does not prove that genes for psychiatric disorders do not exist. |
Elson M. Haas, M.D.
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 The American Psychiatric Association has described smoking as an "organic mental disorder." Their statistics suggest that around 50 percent of people cannot stop smoking when they try to and that of the people who do stop, about 75 percent of them begin again within one year.
Cigarette smoke is a combination of lethal gases (carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, and nitrogen and sulfur oxides) and tars (which contain an estimated four thousand chemicals). Some of these chemical agents are introduced by the actual manufacturing processes. |
Robert Whitaker
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 Cotton, he said, "appears to have brought out palpable results not attained by any previous or contemporary attack on the grave problem of mental disorder."18
However, others who tried his surgeries failed to replicate his good results, and at a 1922 meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, several critics questioned whether Cotton was being "blinded" by his own preconceived ideas. And was it ethical to remove body tissues that appeared to be functioning just fine? |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 And the truth is that anyone can be diagnosed with a mental disorder given sufficient creativity on the part of the psychiatrists. If a person is too creative and excited, they have Attention Deficit Disorder. If they're not creative enough, they have a reading disorder. And if they get nervous while being observed by the psychiatrist, they obviously have a social anxiety disorder. See? It doesn't take much to invent behavioral disorders and then come up with fraudulently marketed drugs that claim to mask symptoms of those disorders. |
Philip Yam
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 Given the rarity of the condition and the variability of the clinical picture, others who attended such patients over the years proffered different nomenclature for CJD, including "cortico-pallido-spinal degeneration," "presenile dementia with cortical blindness," and, in a sacrifice of brevity for detail, "subacute vascular encephalopathy with mental disorder, focal disturbances, and myoclonus epilepsy"10 One researcher regarded CJD as a "dumping ground for several rare cases of presenile dementia."11 New names continued to pop up as late as i960. |
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