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There Are No "Chemical Imbalances"
Eaton T. Fores

Various sorts of brain imaging techniques are currently very much in vogue: a PET scan (positron emission tomography, which visualizes regional energy utilization in the brain) of a depressed person is different from the same scan of a "normal" person. A SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) scan is even more impressive, since it has the ability to visualize particular kinds of receptors. But this line of argument is entirely fallacious. If the argument is: mental state x can be shown to have a physiological substrate, therefore it is pathological, the response is obvious. All mental states, without exception, have neurochemical substrates. This proves exactly nothing.
No doubt there are neurochemical differences between conservatives and liberals, too.

Who, however, is to decide which state is pathological? Brain imaging techniques are currently the favorite tool used by biopsychiatrists to argue for a purported physiological cause for the various phenomena called "mental illnesses," largely because the scans yield brightly colored pictures of the brain – almost like coloring book drawings – which can be shown to the public and which appear to offer highly dramatic demonstrations of something "wrong" with the brain that has fewer bright colors in it. The public generally knows little about either scientific method or logical inference, and even less about the interpretation of brain scans, and so is likely to be mightily impressed by this "scientific evidence."

So PET and SPECT scans of people called schizophrenic, or depressed, or obsessive-compulsive, are compared to those of people called "normal", and differences between the images are taken as evidence of a biochemical original for mental illness. Do the varieties of consciousness called mental illnesses have a biochemical substrate? Of course they do, but, as noted above, this is only because every kind of mental state has such a substrate.

Famous PSYCHIATRIST L.R. MOSHER resigns from the American Psychiatric Association in disgust...

Now, to begin with, anything that has an anatomically defined specific brain pathology becomes the province of neurology (syphilis is an excellent example). So, to be consistent with this "brain disease" view all the major psychiatric disorders would become the territory of our neurologic colleagues.......

Finally, why must the APA pretend to know more than it does? DSM IV is the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in general. Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document.......

Diagnostic reliability is easy to attain for research projects. The issue is what do the categories tell us? Do they in fact accurately represent the person with a problem? They don't, and can't, because there are no external validating criteria for psychiatric diagnoses. There is neither a blood test nor specific anatomic lesions for any major psychiatric disorder. So, where are we? APA as an organization has implicitly (sometimes explicitly as well) bought into a theoretical hoax. Is psychiatry a hoax, as practiced today?...........

Washington (March 24) - Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. James Greenwood (R-PA), Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, today sent a letter to the Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Mark McClellan, requesting information on the use of antidepressants by children and the possibility of increased suicidal behavior from that usage, as well as details on the FDA's handling of this information.

FDA Responds to Barton, Greenwood Inquiry on Antidepressant Use;

"FDA's primary medical reviewer believed that the available data were sufficient to conclude an association exists between the use of antidepressants and suicidal behavior in children. He also recommended that action occur without further delay, although others at FDA disagreed with his recommendation. There are troubling questions of whether FDA supervisors inappropriately suppressed significant information that would have been of consequence to their own advisory committee, not to mention the public.

The DSM IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, volume 4) is the latest and current version of the standard handbook of "mental illnesses" as determined by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). What comes into question with this manual is the manner and method by which these supposed mental illnesses are determined and by whom.......

PAUL MCHUGH, CHAIRMAN OF PSYCHIATRY AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, SAID OF THE PROFESSION'S VAUNTED DSM:

"Diagnostic and Statistical Manual" (DSM) has "permitted groups of 'experts' with a bias to propose the existence of conditions without anything more than a definition and a checklist of symptoms. This is just how witches used to be identified." As quoted by John Cloud in Time magazine's annual 2003 health issue.

PSYCHIATRIST RON LEIFER describes the illogical, idiotic life he was forced to lead:

"Everyone is neurotic. I have no trouble giving out diagnoses. In my office I only see abnormal people. Out of my office, I see only normal people. It's up to me. It's just a joke. This is what I mean by this fraud, this arrogant fraud ... To make some kind of pretension that this is a scientific statement is ... damaging to the culture." - Ron Leifer, psychiatrist, quoted in Cloning of the American Mind, by Beverly Eakman, 1997

"Only in psychiatry is the existence of physical disease determined by APA presidential proclamations, by committee decisions, and even, by a vote of the members of APA, not to mention the courts". - PETER BREGGIN, TOXIC PSYCHIATRY

Psychiatric "disorders"
Completely lacking in scientific proof or validity...