ForteCash

The definition of stigma suggests at once the source of the stigma -- psychiatric ?marking? -- and how it could be eliminated: Don't place the mark. The most direct way to end the stigmatization of the mentally ill would be to stop calling them mentally ill and labeling them with specious disorders. After all, there's no proof they're ill. There is no lab test that can verify the presence of any psychiatric disorder. We could just get rid of the Attention Deficits, the Major Depressives, the Social Anxieties, the Bipolars and the 370 other labels psychiatrists have invented to alienate and marginalize those who are suffering and convince those who are well that they are ill. We could tell the psychiatric prisoners that their diagnostic cells are a thin illusion, that their experience is part of the infinite variety of human experience. We could tell them they are not other than us, they are not sick, they don't have bad brains. Life is tough, for a thousand different reasons, and most of us struggle.

If we just put an end to psychiatry's fraudulent pathologizing of life, the stigma of mental illness would disappear.

Needless to say, this is not the kind of campaign SAMHSA has planned. There's too much money at stake. For several decades now psychiatrists have been manufacturing stigmas at a ridiculous rate. Psychiatry's book of stigmas, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, has expanded from 112 stigmas in 1952 to its current 374, under the guiding hand, the New York Times and others recently (April 20) reported, of ?experts? with financial ties to drug companies.

According to the Times, a study in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics found that ?56 percent of 170 experts who worked on the 1994 edition of the manual, called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or D.S.M, had at least one monetary relationship with a drug maker in the years from 1989 to 2004.? A report on the study in the Chicago Tribune noted that, ?100 percent of the experts on DSM-IV panels overseeing mood disorders and schizophrenia/psychotic disorders were financially involved with the drug industry. These are the largest categories of psychiatric drugs in the world, racking up 2004 sales of $20.3 billion and $14.4 billion, respectively. Depression is the leading mood disorder.?

It's a particularly profitable symbiosis. Psychiatrists invent the diseases; the pharmaceutical industry makes the snake oil to treat them. And as we have seen, the purpose of the NASC campaign is to help the experts and drug companies cash in on their cozy relationship, to ensure that Americans accept psychiatric branding and become good customers for the psychiatric/pharmaceutical complex.

The last thing the psychiatric industry wants is for people to have the facts about psychiatry's invented illnesses and ineffective, damaging drugs. SAMHSA's campaign will follow a different script, one with more of a ?slaves are people too? theme, one which ensures that psychiatric branding is broadly accepted.

A brochure from the ADS center asks that we ?remember? that people with mental illnesses ?do recover and lead productive lives,? they have the ?same needs as everyone else,? they ?make valuable contributions to society,? and discrimination ?keeps them from seeking help? and ?violates their rights.?

In other words, we will be educated about how people become slaves (mentally ill); that it's not their fault (it's genetic); that slavery touches all of us, and that, while slaves are different, they should be treated with dignity. Slaves can lead productive lives, they have the same needs as everyone, they make valuable contributions, and you shouldn't discriminate against them. We'll be told that psychiatric prisoners are fortunate to have kind wardens who treat them with respect and though the whip is occasionally needed, it's all in their best interests. Just don't start thinking that they are normal human beings -- they are slaves, i.e., mentally disordered with damaged brains.

SAMHSA's campaign will justify and expand the stigmatization that supports the current mental health system, while chiding us to be nice to those who are thereby victimized. It won't tell us how psychiatrists invent their diagnoses. It won't tell that psychiatry's own diagnostic manual admits that psychiatry can't distinguish one disorder from another or mental illness from mental health. It won't tell us that psychiatric diagnostic reliability is low. We won't be informed that, as Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen wrote in Prozac Backlash, ?We do not yet have proof either of the cause or the physiology for any psychiatric diagnosis. . . . In recent decades, we have had no shortage of alleged biochemical imbalances for psychiatric conditions. Diligent though these attempts have been, not one has been proven.?

The ineffectiveness of psychiatric drugs won't be mentioned -- nor the stream of warnings that have issued from the FDA and international agencies over the past several years concerning the dangerous and often lethal side effects of antidepressants, antipsychotics and stimulants.

We won't hear about last year's study of antipsychotics, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which found the newer antipsychotics to be no more effective than the older drugs. In the study 74 percent of patients quit the drugs and ?[T]he majority of patients in each group discontinued their assigned treatment owing to inefficacy or intolerable side effects or for other reasons.? (Note: They didn't quit because they ?decompensated,? ?lacked insight,? or were ?in denial.? The drugs were ineffective and intolerable.)

Instead, our government will tell us of the terrible consequence of failing to seek treatment. We'll be told to get branded -- and encourage our friends and family to do the same - as soon as possible. We'll be assured that life on the pill plantation is a wonderful thing.

The pitch will touching and benevolent, the unspoken message crystal clear: psychiatric stigmatization is a good thing. Only the ignorant and uncaring fail to embrace it. You'll be hearing a lot about the stigma of mental illness in the coming months and with good reason. A trillion dollar industry depends on it.

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