Schizophrenia, Harming The Vulnerable

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http://www.cchr.org/doctors/eng/page16.htm

 

CHAPTER 4

 

SCHIZOPHRENIA, HARMING THE VULNERABLE

 

 

" Diagnosing someone as schizophrenic may appear scientific on the

surface, especially when biopsychiatry keeps claiming that a genetic

brain disease is involved. But when you step back and observe from a

distance what these researchers are really doing, you wonder how they

can justify their work.... This is not science. This is simply the

mathematical manipulation of meaningless data. " 78

 

— Ty C. Colbert,

Ph.D. Blaming Our Genes, 2001

 

While psychiatry seeps deeper into our everyday world through the

success of the DSM and psychotropic drugs, most people still consider

that psychiatry's main function is to treat patients with severe,

life-threatening mental disorders.

 

Here, however, the psychiatrist deals with the " disease " first tagged

as dementia praecox by Kraepelin in the late 1800s, then as

" schizophrenia " by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1908.

 

 

 

The term " schizophrenia " was coined by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen

Bleuler in 1908. Labeling it a " disease " with no proof of this,

psychiatry continues to leave vulnerable patients languishing in

drugged stupors with no hope of a cure.

 

 

 

Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey reports that Kraepelin " put the final

medical seal on irrational behavior by naming it and categorizing it.

Irrational behavior could now hold its head up in medical company for

it had names.... His classificatory system continues to dominate

psychiatry up to the present, not because it has proven of value...

because it has been the ticket of admission for irrational behavior

into medicine. " 79

 

Psychiatry remains committed to calling schizophrenia a mental disease

despite, after more than a century of research and investigation, the

complete absence of objective proof that schizophrenia exists as an

actual disease or physical abnormality.

 

In fact, psychiatry openly states in the DSM-II, " Even if it had

tried, the [APA] Committee could not establish agreement about what

this disorder is; it could only agree on what to call it. " 80

 

As Dr. Szasz puts it: " Schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in

actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior

of which the speaker disapproves. "

 

The treatment for schizophrenia is no different from that for other

psychiatric diagnoses: first label, then drug. The drugs are called

neuroleptics or antipsychotics. First developed by the French to " numb

the nervous system during surgery " , psychiatrists learned very early

on that neuroleptics can cause Parkinsonian and encephalitis

lethargica [brain inflammation causing lethargy] symptoms in some

mental patients.81

 

In an experiment on herself, French psychiatrist C. Quarti wrote that

one hour after taking one of the drugs, " I began to have the

impression that I was becoming weaker. That I was dying. It was very

painful and agonizing. " After another hour, " I felt incapable of being

angry about anything.... " 82

 

 

THE IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE CAUSED BY NEUROLEPTICS:

French psychiatrist C. Quarti conducted one of the first neuroleptic

drug experiments in the 1950s. Within one hour of taking the drug

herself she recalls, " I began to have the impression that I was

becoming weaker. That I was dying. It was very painful and agonizing. "

Despite this, chlorpromazine was broadly used to control schizophrenic

and other behavioral symptoms.

 

 

 

Tardive dyskinesia (Tardive meaning " late " and dyskinesia, a permanent

impairment of the power of voluntary movement of the lips, tongue,

jaw, fingers, toes, and other body parts) was found to appear in 5% of

patients within one year of neuroleptic treatment.83 More than 90,000

Americans have developed the condition.84 Neuroleptic malignant

syndrome, a potentially fatal toxic reaction where patients break into

fevers and become confused, agitated, and extremely rigid, was also a

known outcome risk. An estimated 100,000 Americans have died from it.85

 

To counter negative publicity, articles placed in medical journals

regularly exaggerated the benefits of the new drugs and obscured their

risks. Whitaker says that in the 1950s, what physicians and the

general public learned about new drugs was tailored: " This molding of

opinion, of course, played a critical role in the recasting of

neuroleptics as safe, antischizophrenic drugs for the mentally ill. "

 

However, independent research outcomes were worrisome. In a study over

eight years, the WHO found that patients in three economically

disadvantaged countries— " India, Nigeria, and Colombia—were doing

dramatically better than patients in the United States and four other

developed countries. " Indeed, after five years, " 64% of the patients

in the poor countries were asymptomatic and functioning well. " In

contrast, only 18% of the patients in the prosperous countries were

doing well.86

 

Western psychiatrists responded by arguing that people in poorer

countries simply didn't have schizophrenia at all. However, a second

follow-up study using the same diagnostic criteria reached the same

conclusion.87 Whereas only 16% of the patients were maintained on

neuroleptics in the poor countries, in prosperous countries, the

figure was 61%. Neuroleptics were clearly implicated in the

significantly inferior western result. Western experience also showed

that relapse rates were lower for non-drugged patients than drugged

patients. In 1976, researchers reported, " relapse during drug

administration is greater in severity than when no drugs are given. " 88

 

Antipsychotic Drug Sales And Forcast

(in millions)

Graph

 

The schizophrenia drug market in 1999 was worth a lucrative $5

billion, with a predicted annual 6% growth between 2000 and 2009. The

graph (above) represents USA, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy,

Japan and Spain combined, converted to U.S. dollars.

 

 

 

Not until 1985 did the APA issue a warning letter to its members, and

then only after several highly publicized lawsuits that " found

psychiatrists and their institutions negligent for failing to warn

patients of this risk, with damages in one case topping $3 million. "

 

The reason for this silence had nothing to do with the practice of

medicine. For what was an initial $350,000 investment in

chlorpromazine in 1954, by 1970, revenues from this one drug alone had

reached $116 million. Meanwhile, increasing public awareness that

neuroleptics " frequently caused irreversible brain damage threatened

to derail this whole gravy train, " Whitaker says.

 

In response, new " atypical " [not usual] drugs for schizophrenia were

introduced in the 1990s, promising fewer side effects. The old

neuroleptics were suddenly tagged as flawed drugs.89 However, one of

the atypicals had already been tested in the 1960s and found to have

caused seizures, dense sedation, marked drooling, constipation,

urinary incontinence, weight gain, respiratory arrest, heart attack,

and rare sudden death. When introduced into Europe in the 1970s, the

drug was withdrawn after it was also found to cause agranulocytosis, a

potentially fatal depletion of white blood cells, in up to 2% of

patients.90

 

As Michael McCubbin, Ph.D. reports, " It may be no coincidence that

improvement rates for persons diagnosed with schizophrenia, despite an

ever-greater rate of neuroleptic prescriptions, have declined since

the 1970s and are now closely comparable to improvement rates seen

during the first decades of the 20th century. " 91

 

 

In the Academy award-winning movie, A Beautiful Mind, about Nobel

Prize winner John Nash, the primary reason for his recovery from

" schizophrenia " was ignored—his refusal to continue taking psychiatric

drugs. Nash hadn't taken psychiatric drugs in 24 years and recovered

naturally from his disturbed state.

 

 

 

Today, psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the

standard, invariant treatment modality for schizophrenia. In 2000, the

total annual United States sales of antipsychotic medications were

more than $2.5 billion. International sales reached $6 billion the

same year.

 

In the Academy award-winning movie, A Beautiful Mind, about Nobel

Prize winner John Nash, the producers and writers altered the most

remarkable element that led to John Nash's recovery from

" schizophrenia " —his refusal to continue taking psychiatric drugs. The

image conveyed to the public is that without drugs, Nash would have

relapsed.

 

Nash disputes the film's portrayal of him taking " newer medications "

at the time of his Nobel Prize award. He hadn't taken any psychiatric

drugs in 24 years and had recovered naturally from his disturbed state.

 

In the real world too, although omitted from psychiatric sponsored

history books, it is vital to know that numerous compassionate and

workable medical programs for severely disturbed individuals have not

relied on heavy drugging. Dr. Loren Mosher's Soteria House project and

Dr. Giorgio Antonucci's program in Italy—both documented in this

site—achieved much greater success than psychiatry's dehumanization

and chronic drugging. These alternative programs also came to the

community at a much lower cost. These and a number of other similar

programs still operating constitute permanent testimony to the

existence of both genuine answers and hope for the seriously troubled.

 

 

" If schizophrenia turns out to have a biochemical cause and cure,

schizophrenia would no longer be one of the diseases for which a

person would be involuntarily committed. In fact, it would then be

treated by neurologists, and psychiatrists then have no more to do

with it.... "

 

— Thomas Szasz, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, 2002