This is part three in the three-part PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) series. First there was post-Vietnam syndrome, then Gulf War syndrome, now PTSD: with each successive war psychiatry moves in with a false mental illness label.
Today, hundreds of subjective mental health-screening questionnaires are marketed.
By "subjective" I mean questionnaires that, regardless of what they purport to be or how they present themselves, actually have no objective, scientifically verified diagnostic criteria and are based more or less on someone’s opinion - an opinion, I contend, that might just be slanted by the underlying purpose: to sell more drugs.
All these questionnaires are based on psychiatry’s diagnostic manual and the made-up mental illness listed therein and are often copyrighted or patented by drug companies. For example, The Signs of Suicide (SOS) screening program was introduced as a "self-assessment screening tool" provided free online. It is presented as the creation of Screening for Mental Health (SMH), a non-profit organization.
Looks innocent enough doesn’t it? Some scientific group is acting in the public interest without thought of personal gain! The trouble with the honest majority of people is that they tend to underestimate the capacity of their less-than-honest brethren for deceit. The SOS, being thus trusted, is promoted for use in high schools, colleges, the workplace, and the military.
However, what you are not told is that the development of the screening program was financed to the tune of millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry. According to tax records, from 1996 to 2008, drug companies such Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Abbot Labs, Solvay, Forest Labs, Wyeth, and GlaxoSmithKline paid it more than $6 million. Now, I cannot imagine that drug companies are going to invest millions of dollars in "research" that does not result in their advantage, can you? And certainly, the knowledge that the apparently scientifically neutral test has millions of drug company dollars behind it throws into doubt how much we can entrust to its authors our mental health.
Returning to the matter of the troops, it is not the first time that American soldiers were falsely diagnosed by psychiatry as mentally ill. In fact it is the third war in a row! How much longer, one wonders, does history have to go on repeating itself?
Do you remember "post Vietnam syndrome," the forerunner of PTSD? And after the first Gulf War, how veterans were told they were suffering from yet another made-up mental illness: "Gulf War Syndrome?"
It was years before the VA and government acknowledged the effects of the highly toxic chemical Agent Orange on the health of troops during Vietnam. And 17 years before, on November 17, 2008, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses finally issued a 452-page report confirming that, "scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans."
How many veterans received psychiatric drugging for a mental illness they did not have? And what is psychiatric drugging but the administration by prescription of more toxic chemicals on top of the toxi chemicals that are already making the person ill?
In the current Iraq conflict, just as in the first one, American and British forces fired thousands upon thousands of shells made of a highly toxic heavy metal "depleted uranium," which when it hits its target burns at a high temperature and gives off clouds of radioactive particles that contaminate a broad area. If someone breathes them in, they can lodge in lungs, organs, fatty tissues or bones, causing cancers.
Consider too that all troops are also vaccinated against anthrax. Anthrax vaccine carries its own serious health risks as evinced by the over 1,200 vaccinated personnel who developed serious illnesses, according to an Army report of May 2005.
One doctor, Meryl Nass, M.D., who was Director of the Military and Biodefense Vaccine Project (MBVP), said, "They are suffering with crippling, life-altering illnesses that are being swept under the rug. We know the anthrax vaccine is reactive and we suspect it is especially risky for those with hereditary and other risk factors that DOD [Department of Defense] refuses to investigate or acknowledge."
So here we have iatrogenic (doctor-caused) health risks that may affect thousands of military personnel. Those illnesses will have their behavioural as well as physical manifestations: fatigue, listlessness, depression, or – to quote again the Patient Health Questionnaire mentioned earlier, "little interest or pleasure in doing things, trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much, feeling tired or having little energy, poor eating or overeating, feeling bad about yourself, or if you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down, had trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television".
Expect another decade then of victims of chemical warfare being falsely labelled as suffering from a made up brain disease with a scientific-sounding name, drugged into a stupor while being denied the real medical care that they need.
Now you would think, would you not, that a government might leap to the aid of citizens who have fought for their country, not to mention citizens in general, and protect them from this money-grubbing, mass-drugging operation with its suicides and ruined lives, rather than letting this abuse go on and on without end.
In Britain and America, a large number of people are risking life and limb – and now sanity – in service of their country. Perhaps we should now ask those in government: "Whom do YOU serve?"
By "subjective" I mean questionnaires that, regardless of what they purport to be or how they present themselves, actually have no objective, scientifically verified diagnostic criteria and are based more or less on someone’s opinion - an opinion, I contend, that might just be slanted by the underlying purpose: to sell more drugs.
All these questionnaires are based on psychiatry’s diagnostic manual and the made-up mental illness listed therein and are often copyrighted or patented by drug companies. For example, The Signs of Suicide (SOS) screening program was introduced as a "self-assessment screening tool" provided free online. It is presented as the creation of Screening for Mental Health (SMH), a non-profit organization.
Looks innocent enough doesn’t it? Some scientific group is acting in the public interest without thought of personal gain! The trouble with the honest majority of people is that they tend to underestimate the capacity of their less-than-honest brethren for deceit. The SOS, being thus trusted, is promoted for use in high schools, colleges, the workplace, and the military.
However, what you are not told is that the development of the screening program was financed to the tune of millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry. According to tax records, from 1996 to 2008, drug companies such Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Abbot Labs, Solvay, Forest Labs, Wyeth, and GlaxoSmithKline paid it more than $6 million. Now, I cannot imagine that drug companies are going to invest millions of dollars in "research" that does not result in their advantage, can you? And certainly, the knowledge that the apparently scientifically neutral test has millions of drug company dollars behind it throws into doubt how much we can entrust to its authors our mental health.
Returning to the matter of the troops, it is not the first time that American soldiers were falsely diagnosed by psychiatry as mentally ill. In fact it is the third war in a row! How much longer, one wonders, does history have to go on repeating itself?
Do you remember "post Vietnam syndrome," the forerunner of PTSD? And after the first Gulf War, how veterans were told they were suffering from yet another made-up mental illness: "Gulf War Syndrome?"
It was years before the VA and government acknowledged the effects of the highly toxic chemical Agent Orange on the health of troops during Vietnam. And 17 years before, on November 17, 2008, the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses finally issued a 452-page report confirming that, "scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans."
How many veterans received psychiatric drugging for a mental illness they did not have? And what is psychiatric drugging but the administration by prescription of more toxic chemicals on top of the toxi chemicals that are already making the person ill?
In the current Iraq conflict, just as in the first one, American and British forces fired thousands upon thousands of shells made of a highly toxic heavy metal "depleted uranium," which when it hits its target burns at a high temperature and gives off clouds of radioactive particles that contaminate a broad area. If someone breathes them in, they can lodge in lungs, organs, fatty tissues or bones, causing cancers.
Consider too that all troops are also vaccinated against anthrax. Anthrax vaccine carries its own serious health risks as evinced by the over 1,200 vaccinated personnel who developed serious illnesses, according to an Army report of May 2005.
One doctor, Meryl Nass, M.D., who was Director of the Military and Biodefense Vaccine Project (MBVP), said, "They are suffering with crippling, life-altering illnesses that are being swept under the rug. We know the anthrax vaccine is reactive and we suspect it is especially risky for those with hereditary and other risk factors that DOD [Department of Defense] refuses to investigate or acknowledge."
So here we have iatrogenic (doctor-caused) health risks that may affect thousands of military personnel. Those illnesses will have their behavioural as well as physical manifestations: fatigue, listlessness, depression, or – to quote again the Patient Health Questionnaire mentioned earlier, "little interest or pleasure in doing things, trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much, feeling tired or having little energy, poor eating or overeating, feeling bad about yourself, or if you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down, had trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television".
Expect another decade then of victims of chemical warfare being falsely labelled as suffering from a made up brain disease with a scientific-sounding name, drugged into a stupor while being denied the real medical care that they need.
Now you would think, would you not, that a government might leap to the aid of citizens who have fought for their country, not to mention citizens in general, and protect them from this money-grubbing, mass-drugging operation with its suicides and ruined lives, rather than letting this abuse go on and on without end.
In Britain and America, a large number of people are risking life and limb – and now sanity – in service of their country. Perhaps we should now ask those in government: "Whom do YOU serve?"
