After my father left us, he moved frenetically from town to town, changing jobs and addresses in his attempt to escape the clutches of the mysterious “they” who were after him. He was seeking always to find a place of safety, somewhere he could live in peace, somewhere “they” could not find him.

It was through a phone call from my father’s minister that I learned of Dad’s impending death from colon cancer. The minister wanted to know whether I would consider visiting my father in the hospital, adding that it was he, not my father, who had pressed for this. He also told me that he had tracked down my brother, who had refused to have anything to do with Dad.

"Routine and comprehensive testing and screening" for early detection of "the mental health problems of children" is being recommended by President Bush’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFC).   Its stated purpose is to help sufferers from these difficulties by helping them start treatment early.   The proposal is fallacious, if not openly fraudulent, in terms of both "diagnosis" and treatment.

The American public is constantly being told that various forms of mental and emotional distress and disordered behavior are 'illnesses like any other' - depression is just like diabetes. Yet, does the public know that the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual now has 374 'mental disorders' versus 112 in 1952 and, even though we now have all these new 'diseases', that not one has given up its biological secrets? The US Surgeon General concluded in 1999 that there is no biochemical, anatomical or functional sign that reliably distinguishes between the brains of mental patients and anyone else.

The widespread practice of labeling normal behavioral deviations, including restlessness in children, as "mental illnesses" (e.g. ADHD - Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) has become a scandal.  The increasing insistence by schools and social agencies that such youngsters be placed on drugs like Ritalin, whose brain-damaging effects resemble those of cocaine, greatly aggravates this situation.

The doctor-patient relationship is important throughout medicine. In no specialty is it more important than in psychiatry, which lacks specific treatments unrelated to that relationship, such as antibiotics. In no specialty is the relationship more important than in psychiatry because of the calming, encouragement and understanding - the heart of good psychiatric treatment - which should be provided within it. And in no specialty today is it more ignored and denied than in psychiatry.

Changing Mental Health Services From Harmful To Useful

"Fragmented services and inadequate funding" plague America's mental health system, according to Dr. Michael Hogan, chairman of the new Presidential Mental Health Commission. Commenting on his group's new report on that system, which he calls an

Notes On Anti-Depressants, Patients, Attorneys, Psychiatrists And The FDA

Harm - psychosis, seizures, suicide, homicide and dependency / addiction - was the subject of a two-day international medical-legal conference, October 4 and 5, in Philadelphia on "The Adverse Effects of SSRI Medications." Mark Taylor, gravely wounded in the Columbine massacre, was present with his mother, since both youthful killers had been receiving SSRI drugs.