If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
When I was a child in school, it was a common taunt to call someone “schiz.”
I realize now that was cruel; but I also understand that it was a byproduct of misunderstanding the condition. And I believe now that it was also one result of the fraudulent psychiatric labeling of the condition as a “mental illness.”
The German term “schizophrenie” was introduced as another term for “dementia praecox” by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1908.
Schizophrenia is commonly defined as a mental illness with delusional symptoms. As psychiatrists don’t really know what it is, definitions usually include long lists of symptoms, making its diagnosis a matter of opinion rather than fact, but usually defined so vaguely that it is often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.
[schizo from Greek schizein “to split, part, separate”; phren from Greek “mind, wits”; ia from Greek “a suffix forming feminine nouns”]
[dementia from Latin dement “mad”, from de “away” and ment “mind”; praecox from Latin “premature”]
The original definition, referring to a split mind, was in observation of a shift of identity, such that a person may appear to be multiple personalities. It can certainly be triggered by various medical or spiritual conditions. For more information about medical causes, download and read the report “Twenty-Nine Medical Causes of Diagnosis of Schizophrenia.“
There are nine separate symptomatic entries in the psychiatric billing bible DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) with some form of the term, further showing that its etiology is unknown. Psychiatrists remain committed to calling “schizophrenia” a mental disease despite, after a century of research, the complete absence of objective proof that it exists as a physical brain abnormality. So, too, is the absence of any generally effective psychiatric cure.
The Use of Antipsychotics
Psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the “treatment” for so-called “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.
11 million Americans (of which over 829,000 are aged 0-17) take antipsychotics. Tardive dyskinesia (TD), a debilitating side effect causing irreversible damage, occurs in 20%-50% of patients taking antipsychotics. Potentially between 2.23 and 5.57 million Americans can be permanently damaged by antipsychotic drugs.
“The person who walks the street having a spirited conversation with himself, his body jerking and tongue lolling about, is in the grip of TD—prescription drug-induced bodily damage,” Rev. Fred Shaw, spokesperson for CCHR International and president of the NAACP Inglewood-South Bay branch, said. He has long spoken out against the over-representation of African Americans prescribed antipsychotics and founded an educational website Task Force Against Racism and Modern-Day Eugenics.
Antipsychotics and Foster Care Children
Antipsychotic drugs are among Medicaid’s most costly and commonly prescribed drugs, particularly for foster children.
State Medicaid programs spent over $2.8 billion on antipsychotics for all ages in 2007, the single largest drug expenditure category for Medicaid. A decade later it was reported to be $3.5 billion—a 25% increase. Nationally, about 12% of all the nation’s 500,000 foster care children had received Medicaid-paid antipsychotics at some point.
In Missouri, roughly 13,000 children under age 18 are in the foster care system, with about 25% of them prescribed harmful psychiatric drugs. On December 5, 2019, United States District Court Judge Nanette Laughrey granted final approval to a Joint Settlement Agreement regarding children in Missouri foster care and the overuse of harmful psychotropic drugs.
Recommendation
No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, anxiety or panic. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well–being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.
