Important Notice
for the Reader
(excerpted from the Booklets)

1. PSYCHIATRIC "DISORDERS" ARE NOT MEDICAL DISEASES. In medicine, strict criteria exist for calling a condition a disease: a predictable group of symptoms and the cause of the symptoms or an understanding of their physiology (function) must be proven and established. Chills and fever are symptoms. Malaria and typhoid are diseases. Diseases are proven to exist by objective evidence and physical tests. Yet, no mental "diseases" have ever been proven to medically exist.

2. PSYCHIATRISTS DEAL EXCLUSIVELY WITH MENTAL "DISORDERS," NOT PROVEN DISEASES. While mainstream physical medicine treats diseases, psychiatry can only deal with "disorders." In the absence of a known cause or physiology, a group of symptoms seen in many different patients is called a disorder or syndrome. Harvard Medical School's Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., says that in psychiatry, "all of its diagnoses are merely syndromes [or disorders], clusters of symptoms presumed to be related, not diseases." As Dr. Thomas Szasz, professor of psychiatry emeritus, observes, "There is no blood or other biological test to ascertain the presence or absence of a mental illness, as there is for most bodily diseases."

3. PSYCHIATRY HAS NEVER ESTABLISHED THE CAUSE OF ANY "MENTAL DISORDERS." Leading psychiatric agencies such as the World Psychiatric Association and the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health admit that psychiatrists do not know the causes or cures for any mental disorder or what their "treatments" specially do to the patient. They have only theories and conflicting opinions about their diagnoses and methods, and are lacking any scientific basis for these. As a past president of the World Psychiatric Association stated, "The time when psychiatrists considered that they could cure the mentally ill is gone. In the future, the mentally ill have to learn to live with their illness."

4. THE THEORY THAT MENTAL DISORDERS DERIVE FROM A "CHEMICAL IMBALANCE" IN THE BRAIN IS UNPROVEN OPINION, NOT FACT. One prevailing psychiatric theory (key to psychotropic drug sales) is that mental disorders result from a chemical imbalance in the brain. As with its other theories, there is no biological or other evidence to prove this. Representative of a large group of medical and biochemistry experts, Elliot Valenstein, Ph.D., author of Blaming the Brain says: "[T]here are no tests available for assessing the chemical status of a living person's brain."

5. THE BRAIN IS NOT THE REAL CAUSE OF LIFE'S PROBLEMS. People do experience problems and upsets in life that may result in mental troubles, sometimes very serious. But to represent that these troubles are caused by incurable "brain diseases" that can only be alleviated with dangerous pills is dishonest, harmful and often deadly. Such drugs are often more potent than a narcotic and capable of driving one to violence or suicide. They mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future.