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Leading Psychiatrist Admits Normal Children Are Diagnosed With Mental Disorders

By David Oliver

Statement Adds to Controversy over Drugs Prescribed for Questionable Psychiatric Diagnoses

With increasing international concern about the large number of children labeled with so-called psychiatric disorders and prescribed mind-altering drugs, even the pioneer of psychiatry’s billing bible and "godfather of ADHD," Dr. Robert Spitzer, has now admitted that normal children are being labeled. Spitzer, a Columbia University psychiatrist, told BBC2 that children experiencing perfectly normal signs of being happy and sad are being labeled as mentally ill. While admitting this, he stopped short of informing BBC viewers that there is no scientific evidence that any of the millions of children so diagnosed have any physical abnormality that justifies the diagnosis. Nor that because of this, psychiatrists cannot agree on who is sick and who is well. Yet despite this fallible "science," worldwide sales of psychotropic drugs prescribed to treat "mental disorders," including stimulants antipsychotics and antidepressants, now exceed $80 billion annually.

Spitzer arbitrarily outlined many of the psychiatric labels and their symptoms found in psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Yet, unlike medical diseases, psychiatric disorders are entirely subjective—psychiatrists at the American Psychiatric Association literally vote on which "disorders" to include in the DSM, and the disorders are removed if they are too much trouble. Such was the case with homosexuality, which, while found in earlier versions of the DSM, ceased to be called a "mental disorder" after gay activists picketed an APA conference in 1973. There are no physical tests, such as blood tests, brain scans or X-Rays that can confirm the existence of any psychiatric disorder. Spitzer’s de facto admission that psychiatric labels are unreliable, comes more than three decades after he first began working on the DSM III. Since then, psychiatrists have been using the DSM to fraudulently claim that mental disorders are the same as physical disorders, and thereby justifying the prescription of powerful, psychotropic drugs, including to very young children.

Despite FDA warnings that psychiatric drugs cause heart attack, stroke, suicidal and homicidal behavior, diabetes, psychosis and sudden death, Spitzer stated that psychiatric drugs "don’t have serious side effects." Last year, drug regulatory and other government agencies around the world issued more than 24 warnings against psychiatric drugs. For more information on the dangers of psychiatric drugs, read The Report on the Escalating International Warnings on Psychiatric Drugs by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a mental health watchdog. To learn more about the DSM, read this publication, or click here to see what experts say about the issue.

Published March 16, 2007, online at: http://www.cchr.org/index.cfm/9027/19686

About the Author

David Oliver is the founder of FreeBipolarCourse.com, a one-stop source of information on how to cope and deal with bipolar disorder. Sign up for one of his FREE Mini Courses on bipolar by visiting FreeBipolarCourse.com

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