psychiatric disorders are a fraud

Dr. Fred Baughman

Email: fredbaughmanmd@cox.net

Retired neurologist/child neurologist

No affiliation was given

Competing Interests: I am a retired neurologist/child neurologist, board certified, with no financial conflicts of interest, with no affiliations with orgs, institutions having such conflicts. Formerly I was a March of Dimes/National Foundation scholar and published considerably from a private practice base. I am author of a book THE ADHD FRAUD--How Psychiatry Makes "Patients" of Normal Children www.Trafford.com . I have testified widely re the absense of proof that any psychiatric disorders have been validated as objective abnormalities/diseases. It is this fraud I write and testify about. Most recently I testified at hearings at the FDA (3/22-23/06) and before the Congress of Mexico, 3/23/06.

Submitted Date: May 11, 2006

Published: May 15, 2006

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Canadian neurologists do not expose ECT

Above is a picture of Dr. Fred Baughman, a neurologist from the USA who has publicly spoken out
about the harm done by psychiatric drugs and by electroshock (ECT). Not one Canadian psychologist nor psychiatrist has publicly spoken out against any of the above. None have the courage to speak out and they should. Many people in Canada are being damaged.

From: Don Weitz

To: Fred Baughman

Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 1:04 PM

Subject: Re: PPEN # 225: The Unproven and Unprovable Brain Chemical Imbalance Hypothesis: "Fact or Pseudoscience?"

Hi Dr. Baughman-

I wish there were courageous doctors like you and Breggin in Canada -

so far NOT ONE Canadian neurologist has publicly criticized neuroleptics, antidepressants, Ritalin, ADHD - they won't even criticize the ECT oxymoron "therapeutic seizure" as medical nonsense, and refuse to acknowledge that electroshock causes any brain damage

like the psychiatrists, Canadian neurologists are a bunch of gutless wimps!

Don
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From: Fred Baughma
To: Gary Kohls
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 12:11 PM
Subject: Re: PPEN # 225: The Unproven and Unprovable Brain Chemical Imbalance Hypothesis: "Fact or Pseudoscience?"
Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter # 225

Do “Chemical Imbalances”/ Psychiatric “Diseases” Really Exist, Or-

Is “Biological” Psychiatry Pseudoscience?

By Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD

Author of “The ADHD Fraud—

---

How Psychiatry Make “Patients” of Normal Children”

http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=9628

On the June 24, 2005 Today Show, Tom Cruise charged that (1) "there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in the body," and (2) that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience.” Throughout the research and practice of psychiatry and mental health, research subjects and patients are spoken of as having “chemical imbalances” of the brain, by which is meant a “disorder”/”disease”/”abnormality” of the brain. Tom Cruise isn’t the only person saying there is no such thing as a “chemical imbalance”/”disease”--“the patients are normal!” On a follow-up Today Show, that of Monday, June 27, Harvard psychiatrist, Joseph Glenmullen affirmed that there is no such thing as a “chemical imbalance.” Nor was Steven Sharstein, MD of the American Psychiatric Association able to rebut Glenmullen.

Most convincing of all, nowhere in the medical scientific literature is there proof that depression or any other psychiatric, diagnostic entity is an actual disease, having—as it must—a gross/macroscopic, microscopic, or chemical abnormality. Instead, all psychiatric/psychological/mental entities are made up of combinations of subjective symptoms. This is what sets psychiatry/psychology/mental health apart from the rest of medicine. In regard to what is a disease and what is not, it is not important what Tom Cruise, Joseph Glenmullen, the DSM Committee, or a majority of psychiatrists think—what is important is whether or not an original case report proving a disease’s confirming, characteristic, abnormality is present in the scientific literature or not.

In 1969, I (and my colleagues) discovered and described the Glioma-Polyposis Syndrome. The reference, as for all actual diseases, is: Baughman, F. A., Jr., List, C. F., Williams, J. R., Muldoon, J. P., Segarra, J. M.: The Glioma-Polyposis Syndrome. New England Journal of Medicine, 281:1345-1346, 1969. Further, as is often required by editors of quality journals, we submitted microscopic slides for their review as requested by the editors.

Two subsequent articles appeared in WebMD challenging Tom Cruise’s Today Show charges. In the first Nada Stotland [1], MD, MPH, professor of psychiatry at Chicago's Rush University, stated: “…we can see differences between brain images of someone who is depressed and someone who is not depressed. And we if we give medications, the brain of the depressed person goes back to looking like a person not depressed."

Here, Stotland, no doubt, refers to functional brain imaging which provides pictures that correlate with the state of being depressed, in a normal person, but do not demonstrate an abnormality/disease. Asserting that such scans distinguish between “someone who is depressed and someone who is not, and going on to say that medication restores the scan to one “looking like a person not depressed,” leaves no doubt that Stotland is claiming to have diagnosed and successfully treated an objective abnormality (abnormality = disease; no abnormality = normal = disease-free) when that is not so.

Asserting that such scans distinguish between “someone who is depressed and someone who is not, and going on to say that medication restores the scan to one “looking like a person not depressed,” leaves no doubt that Stotland is claiming to have diagnosed and successfully treated an objective abnormality/disease, when that is absolutely not the case.

Stating there is no more debate than is witnessed over drugs used in other fields of medicine, Stotland, is asserting that psychiatry deals with diseases just as do other medical specialties. In fact, she is on record as saying just this. In a “special advertising feature” in the November 20, 2001, Family Circle magazine, Stotland claimed: “Depression is associated with changes in brain chemistry…” “Antidepressants are not ‘uppers’…” “They restore brain chemistry to normal.” “No woman needs to suffer from this terrible disease.” Again, no known or detectible abnormality—gross, microscopic or chemical--has been found in depression or any single, psychiatric diagnosis/disorder. With no abnormality known or demonstrable, it cannot be said there is an abnormal phenotype (abnormal phenotype = macroscopic, microscopic or chemical abnormality = disease) due to an abnormal genotype (abnormal gene or chromosome). With no chemical abnormality proven, it cannot, legitimately be said that antidepressants “…restore brain chemistry to normal.” So much for Stotland’s claims that depression is a disease. It is not Cruise who is wrong or lying, it is Stotland, a physician, responsible—as all physicians are--for distinguishing abnormality/disease from the state of being normal/disease-free.

In the second WebMD article [2] to weigh-in on the Cruise-instigated “chemical imbalance” debate, psychiatrist Darrel Regier, MD, MPH, director of research for the American Psychiatric Association--APA states: "It is clear that antidepressants which focus on altering the neurotransmission of norepinephrine and serotonin are effective in the treatment of depression.”. What Regier suggests is that because drugs that affect the norepinephrine and serotonin systems “work” on depression, there must be an abnormality of these chemical systems. Nowhere does he reference proof of a chemical, microscopic or macroscopic abnormality in depression confirming it is an actual disease, as they invariably claim.

Despite the fact that no psychiatric entity--depression included--has been proved to be an abnormality disease, it is standard practice, both in psychiatric research and practice to state or imply to research subjects and patients alike, that they are “chemically imbalanced” “abnormal”/ “diseased” thus abrogating their right to informed consent while hopelessly biasing them against non-biological interventions in favor of biological interventions such as drugs, ECT and psychosurgery. Not only are they lied to from within by psychiatric researchers, teachers, social workers, physicians and other mental health professionals, they are lied to from without through the press releases of organized psychiatry—the APA, NIMH, all of psychiatric and psychological academia, and through ads from the pharmaceutical industry (such as the Zoloft “chemical imbalance” ad that pops up incessantly throughout the pages of WebMD) countenanced by the FDA and FTC who know full-well that the “chemical imbalance” lie is nothing but a market stratagem, but who opt to allow it and continue to aid and abet the deception.

With the “chemical imbalance” lie having been made our “common knowledge,” virtually all “biological” psychiatric/psychological/mental health research is invalidated.

Psychiatrist Defends Psychiatric Drug Use—Experts Warn Patients Not to Stop Medication After Tom Cruise Comment. Daniel DeNoon, WebMD Medical News, June 28, 2005; Reviewed by Michael Smith, MD

Battle Brews Over Antidepressant Use—Researchers Say They Are Ineffective and Overused. Salynn Boyles, WebMD Medical News, July 15, 2005; Reviewed by Michael Smith, MD

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