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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Pro Shock Book Out - OH NO!!

CAPA Press Release Oct 5, 2007

For Immediate Release - October 5,2007

A Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault Press Statement

NEW STUDY PROVES ELECTROSHOCK ("ECT") DAMAGES CONCLUSIVELY

CAPA CALLS FOR ACTION

A new and extensive study by psychiatrist and long-time shock promoter Harold Sackeim puts the lie to what psychiatrists have been claiming for decades about electroshock. The research, which was reported in Neuropsychopharmacology 2007, 32, 244-254, tracked 347 electroshock survivors for six months after treatment. This is the most extensive research ever conducted on electroshock and proves conclusively that electroshock therapy, or electroconvulsive therapy, otherwise known as ECT causes lasting memory and mental impairment. Psychiatrists have long denied such damage or claimed that problems such as memory impairment and other impairment are created by some types of electroshock but not others. The study proves statistically and conclusively, however, that memory and other cognitive impairment is caused by all forms of electroshock, including shock commonly described as new, safe, and improved. Moreover, that the impairment is lasting. It also proves statistically two other important claims long held by anti-shock activists:

1) that women are more damaged by electroshock than men.
2) that the elderly are more damaged that the younger.
"Advancing age, lower premorbid intellectual function, and female gender," concludes Sackeim, "were associated with greater cognitive deficits."

Given that shock is disproportionately given to women and to the elderly (See Burstow, Violence Against Women, 2006), these scientific findings are harrowing. It also makes the sabotage of accurate shock statistics on the part of the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care even more alarming (See Cribb, The Toronto Star, September 28, p.A8).

On the basis of these new findings, CAPA (Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault) calls on government to cease and desist shocking its citizens, to find ways to protect its citizens, and in particular, to find a way of protecting the people who, tragically, are the primary targets of ECT as well as the ones most hurt by ECT--women and the elderly.

On the basis of these findings, additionally, we demand that henceforth, medical information given to shock recipients that omits, denies, or minimizes the reality of the lasting cognitive damage be treated as instances of fraud, violations of informed consent, and prosecuted accordingly. We likewise demand that accurate, timely, and gender and age specific electroshock statistics be made readily available to the public.

The public has a right to be protected from treatment proven to impair cognitive functions.

Medical professionals should not be able to get away with giving people blatantly inaccurate information about damaging treatments. The public has a right to know.

CAPA Contacts: Dr. Bonnie Burstow (416) 538-7103; Don Weitz (416) 545-0796. For copy of article, see CAPA website: capa.oise.utoronto.ca
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The CAPA websites are: http://capa.oise.utoronto.ca
http://capacanada.wordpress.com

Above is a picture of Heather Bruce who interviewed Sue on the Sound Mind Radio Show - CKCU Ottawa on April 25, 2007

I was on the Sound Mind Radio show in Ottawa on April 25th. Heather Bruce interviewed me.
I spoke about my life and about the electroshock I had etc. Don Weitz called me after the radio
show and said he liked the way I spoke out about psychiatry. Don is very supportive of me and has been for almost 20 years now.

After the radio show, I emailed Heather for a cassette tape of the radio show and she said she would mail me a copy of the cassette tape. After a month I sent an email asking Heather for the cassette tape and she told me that the Sound Mind office was being renovated and that she would send me a copy as soon as she could.

About two months later she said she would send me a copy of the cassette. For three more months
I waited. I told her I was not impressed and would not be a guest on the radio show again.

Yesterday, after 5 months, on September 28th she told me to come in with a blank CD and copy the tape myself. I told her to forget it and I did not have time to waste going down to the radio show.
I told her I would call it a bad experience and that she did not treat me fairly and she did not.

One excuse after another and I have not yet received the tape of the radio show.

It goes to show you that some people in radio are not nice. You would expect a guest on the radio show to treated with respect. Some things in life are not fair and this one example.

KITTY DUKAKIS PROMOTES HER BOOK & SHOCK - OCT. 15
from Don Weitz (dweitz@pathcom.com)
some survivors & human rights groups shoulddemonstrate against this pro-shock event featuring Kitty Dukakis on Oct 15 at Northeastern U in Mass - info below
Don
-------------------------
Subject: Ford Hall Forum on ECT

"Shock" - Kitty Dukakis, Michael Dukakis, & Larry Tye
October 15th , 6:30-8pm, Raytheon Auditorium, Egan Research Ctr, Northeastern
University - Book signing will follow lecture and discussion.

"After suffering for decades from severe depression, substance abuse problems, and hospitalizations, Kitty Dukakis now credits her recovery to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Opponents of ECT would like to see the
treatment banned on the basis of its common side effects, such as memory loss. Many patients say these are a small price to pay for control over a disabling condition. Governor Michael Dukakis and author Larry Tye join
Kitty Dukakis for a discussion on how this medical treatment - along with the support of family and loved ones - can potentially help individualsthrough the horrors of clinical depression."

Information: 617-373-5800
HYPERLINK "mailto:info@fordhallforum.neu.edu"info@fordhallforum.-neu.edu
HYPERLINK "http://www.fordhallforum.org"www.fordhallforum.-org

The Anti-Electroshock Proclamation

Above is a picture of Dr. Bonnie Burstow

The Anti-Electroshock Proclamation
We who care,
We who are committed to decency,
We who behold with horror the disrespect for humans around us
We who shudder at the knowledge
Of women whose memory has been turned into ember and ashes,
Of families brutally torn asunder by pulse waves or sine waves
Of the elderly, whose final life reward is electrocution,
We who hold this fearful knowledge can be silent no longer.
LEGISLATORS, on this Mother's Day, we hold you directly accountable and call
On you to withdraw your authorization for electroshock
FELLOW CITIZENS who think this "practice" stopped decades ago, on this
Mother's Day
We tell you that the carnage continues and that you too are responsible.
On this Mother's Day, May 13, 2007, as survivors and allies, we come together to
Raise our voices to protest
And we vow to return
Return,
And return again
Until this abomination

Is no more.

Written and read aloud by Bonnie Burstow on May 13, 2007, Mother's Day, in Toronto during the anti-shock demonstration STOP SHOCKING OUR MOTHERS AND GRANDMOTHERS.

Bonnie Burstow co-founded with Don Weitz the Coalition Against Psychiatric Assault (CAPA). CAPA's websites:
http://capa.oise.utoronto.ca
http://capacanada.wordpress.com