A Critique of an On Point Radio Show Featuring Two Academic Psychiatrists
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
Duty to Warn – A Response to a Radio Interview With Two Academic Psychiatrists
[Yesterday] morning I listened, with a lot of frustration, to the usually very informative and usually quite balanced morning radio interview program “On Point Radio with Tom Ashbrook”.
The program “revealed” supposedly new information about the high incidence of so-called “clinical depression” among American girls. The two guests on the program were actually academic psychiatrists who had recently had their research published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
The high incidence of long-lasting sadness and behavioral dysfunction among girls is actually very old news and the fact that it is getting worse should come as no surprise. 99% of our celebrity-worshipping and excessively fashion-conscious American girls are trying to survive in a junk culture while simultaneously being mal-nourished, sleep-deprived, over-stressed, over-drugged, over-vaccinated, sexually-harassed, sexually-abused, and screen time- and pornography-toxified all the while trying to pretend to be happy and not emotional distressed! Impossible!
Here is the bulk of my letter that I emailed to host Tom Ashbrook:
Tom, at the end of the radio program this morning, many of your listeners will surely have come to the mistaken conclusion that the solution to the vast problem of pervasive adolescent female sadness isn’t to logically address the obvious potentially preventable causes of mental ill health. I got the impression that the solution was to get them seen by a prescribing psychiatrist and “get them treated with drugs!”
Widget not in any sidebars
Nothing that was said from your guests put much emphasis on anything other than drug treatment. I noticed that there were no call-ins from the millions of folks who surely have experienced psychiatric drug-induced suicidality, homicidality, psychosis, worsening depression, etc, etc.
What wasn’t mentioned this morning was that a person who is sad or anxious because he or she is a victim of cyber-abuse should NOT be given dangerous psych drugs!! The guests did not mention that most psych drugs haven’t been FDA-approved for use in the under-18 age group!
Nor are potentially addictive, potentially brain-damaging drugs the cure when someone’s abnormal thinking and/or behaviors have been caused by being a victim of poverty, racism, sexism, xenophobia, psychological trauma, malnutrition, living in a war zone or just living in a junk culture that teaches junk values! The cure can only come when root causes are addressed.
The first step that all doctors are taught in med school when starting therapy with ANY patient is a PROLONGED, flexible intake history that will examine ALL aspects of the patient’s past, including details of pre-natal life, infancy, childhood, adolescence and adulthood, including psychological traumas, neglectful or abusive parenting, toxic environmental exposures, drug use, nutritional status through the life cycle, toxic interpersonal relationships, and even, in the face of the new evidence of cumulative vaccine toxicity and the fairly recently described ASIA syndrome – of which psychiatrists, pediatricians and most physicians are studiously ignorant.
Although the enormously over-looked vaccine injury issue is a huge topic that can’t be thoroughly discussed here, it is important to point out that repeated exposures to the intramuscularly injected and highly neurotoxic metals that are in most vaccines (especially mercury, aluminum and the many other metallic vaccine contaminants) are not appreciated for being the central nervous system and DNA toxins that they are, and therefore the neurological disorders that they can cause are usually mis-diagnosed and therefore mis-treated as mental illnesses.
If they have active clinical practices at all, academic psychiatrists such as your two guests usually only see tertiary patients who have already been mis-diagnosed with a mental illness of unknown etiology and therefore mis-treated with drugs and perhaps even electroshocked. Surely most of them will have been neurologically sickened by the over-drugging for years and they may even have suffered withdrawal syndromes over that time that also may have been mis-diagnosed as relapses.
By the time such potentially doomed patients come to see academic psychiatrists (or even non-academic psychiatrists) they will likely have developed psychiatric drug-induced brain disorders that can make them appear or act like they have a mental illness. But rather than being diagnosed with a mental illness “of unknown etiology”, these tertiary patients actually have an iatrogenic disorder (doctor-caused or prescription drug-caused), namely, a psychiatric drug-induced brain disorder. It is important at this point to understand that America’s large numbers of iatrogenic illnesses are not to be discussed in polite company and are therefore covered-up with another diagnosis that claims to be “of unknown etiology”.
The underlying motivation of your two guests seemed to me to be to get everybody alarmed that these girls are being inadequately diagnosed with mental illnesses and therefore are being insufficiently “treated” (read “drugged with psychiatric medications”).
Therefore, I implore you and your producers to arrange a series of interviews with a number of the authors listed in the bibliography at the end of the article below. They will convincingly refute much of the Big Pharma propaganda that your guests were able to spout without a dissenting voice.
Your guests were obviously firmly in the pro-Big Pharma camp. It is well-known that most psychiatrists reflexively prescribe cocktails of psych drugs to 99+% of their patients, and they usually do it in an alarmingly unscientific trial and error manner. And what should be truly alarming it that those cocktails have never been proven to be safe in either animal labs or in clinical trials.
It is also well known that most academic psychiatrists have heavy financial conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical industry, and, of course, most physicians have deep professional 
conflicts of interest (and thus they often blindly – and obediently – follow the community standards of care that have been set up by authorities that may also have been under the influence of corporate powers that may have undeclared conflicts of interest).
It seemed obvious to me that your guests were not-so-subtly promoting the specialty psychiatric industry (and thus indirectly promoting the increased use of Big Pharma’s lucrative brain-disabling drugs).
The publication of their research in the Journal of Pediatrics, probably means that the psychiatric industry must be trying to promote the diagnosing and drugging of more and more so-called mental illnesses by pediatricians (and therefore indirectly attracting more referrals to psychiatrists). One of the negative consequences for increased diagnosing and increased prescribing of potentially addictive psych drugs to more and more kids is that most of these kids may only have temporary symptoms that may spontaneously disappear or be cured by good psychotherapy. Starting kids on drugs almost always has seriously negative long-term consequences, including psych drug-induced dementia.
It needs to be pointed out that the first of your guests, Dr Mark Olfson, was a major player in the now-discredited TeenScreen program that, unbeknownst to most parents at the beginning of the program, was allowed into middle schools and high schools and then tried to convince very suggestible, otherwise normal kids, that they were mentally ill and should consult with a professional. TeenScreen was conceived, funded and promoted by BigPharma, and Dr Olfson was deeply involved. His bio at Columbia makes it sound like he is still proud of that effort!
Enough said. Tom, I want to say that I think that your show is one of the best on radio, but I hope, in the interest of balance, that you and your staff will study the following article about why Big Psychiatry’s pro-corporate agendas desperately need exposure. Otherwise your listeners will become accomplices to and promoters of the over-diagnosing and over-drugging of vulnerable American children. Gary G. Kohls, MD, Duluth, MN (Many of my articles that enlarge upon and provide the documentation for the statements above are archived at: http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2,)
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Duty to Warn
14 Lies That Our Psychiatry Professors in Medical School Taught Us Med Students
By Gary G. Kohls, MD
Note that the article below is abbreviated for space considerations. The full version has been posted at: https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/01/duty-to-warn-14-lies-that-our-psychiatry-professors-in-medical-school-taught-us/
Lie # 1:
“The FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) tests all new psychiatric drugs”
Lie # 2:
“FDA approval means that a psychotropic drug is effective long-term”
Lie # 3:
“FDA approval means that a psychotropic drug is safe long-term” .
Lie # 4:
“Mental ‘illnesses’ are caused by ‘brain chemistry imbalances’”
In actuality, brain chemical/neurotransmitter imbalances have never been proven to exist (except for cases of neurotransmitter depletions that can be caused by psych drugs) despite repeated examinations of lab animal or autopsied human brains and brain slices by neuroscientists. Knowing that there are over 100 known neurotransmitter systems in the human brain, proposing a theoretical chemical ”imbalance” is laughable and flies in the face of science. Not only that, but even if a theoretical imbalance between any two of the 100 potential systems did exist a drug could never be expected to re-balance it!
Such simplistic theories have been perpetrated by Big Pharma upon a gullible public and a gullible psychiatric industry….
Lie # 5:
“Antidepressant drugs work like insulin for diabetics”
Lie # 6:
“SSRI ‘discontinuation syndromes’ are different than ‘withdrawal syndromes’”
The so-called “antidepressant” drugs of the SSRI class are indeed dependency-inducing/addictive, and the neurological and psychological symptoms that occur when these drugs are stopped or tapered down are not “relapses” into a previous ”mental disorder” but are actually new drug withdrawal symptoms that are different from those that prompted the original diagnosis….
Lie # 7:
“Ritalin is safe for children (or adults)”
In actuality, methylphenidate (= Ritalin, Concerta, Daytrana, Metadate and Methylin; aka “kiddie cocaine”) is a dopamine reuptake inhibitor drug and, it works exactly like cocaine on dopamine synapses, except that orally-dosed methylphenidate reaches the brain more slowly than snortable or smoked cocaine does. Therefore the oral form has far less of an orgasmic “high” than cocaine. Cocaine addicts actually prefer Ritalin if they can get it in a relatively pure powder form. When snorted, both the synthetic Ritalin has the same onset of action as the natural cocaine, but it has a longer lasting “high” and is thus actually preferred among addicted individuals. The molecular structures of Ritalin and cocaine both have amphetamine base structures with ring-shaped side chains which, when examined side by side, are remarkably similar. The dopamine synaptic organelles in the brain (and heart, blood vessels, lungs and guts) are unlikely to sense any difference between the two drugs….
Lie # 8:
“Psychoactive drugs are totally safe for humans”
Actually all five classes of psychotropic drugs have been found to be neurotoxic (ie, known to destroy or otherwise alter the physiology, chemistry, anatomy and viability of the vital energy-producing mitochondria that is in every brain cell). They are therefore all capable of contributing to dementia when used long-term.
Any synthetic chemical that is capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier from the capillary circulation into the brain can alter the brain. Synthetic drugs are NOT capable of healing brain dysfunction or reversing brain damage. Rather than curing anything, psychiatric drugs are only capable of temporarily masking symptoms while the abnormal emotional, neurological or mal-nutritional processes that mimic “mental illnesses” continue unabated….
Lie # 9:
“Mental ‘illnesses’ have no known cause”
The root causes of my patient’s understandable emotional distress were typically multiple, but the vast majority of them had experienced acute and chronic sexual, physical, psychological, emotional and/or spiritual traumas as root causes – often accompanied by hopelessness, sleep deprivation, serious emotional/physical neglect and brain nutrient deficiencies as well….
Lie # 10:
“Psychotropic drugs have nothing to do with the huge increase in disabled and unemployable American psychiatric patients”
Many commonly-prescribed drugs are fully capable of causing brain-damage and dementia long-term, especially the anti-psychotics (aka, “major tranquilizers”) like Thorazine, Haldol, Prolixin, Clozapine, Abilify, Clozapine, Fanapt, Geodon, Invega, Risperdal, Saphris, Seroquel and Zyprexa, all of which can cause brain shrinkage….
Lie # 11:
“So-called bipolar disorder can mysteriously ‘emerge’ in patients who have been taking stimulating antidepressants like the SSRIs”
In actuality, crazy-making behaviors like mania, agitation and aggression are commonly caused by the SSRIs (Prozac [fluoxetine], Paxil [paroxetine], Zoloft [sertraline], Celexa [citalopram] and Lexapro [escitalopram).
An important point to make is that SSRI-induced mania, agitation, akathisia and aggression is NOT bipolar disorder, and SSRI-induced psychosis is NOT schizophrenia! (Google ssristories.net to read over 5000 documented stories about SSRI drug-induced aberrant behaviors, including 48 school shootings/incidents, 52 road rage tragedies, 12 air rage incidents, 44 postpartum depression cases, over 600 murders (homicides), over 180 murder-suicides and other acts of violence including workplace violence. These cases only represent a tiny fraction of the possible cases, since medication use is rarely reported in the media.)….
Lie # 12:
“Antidepressant drugs can prevent suicides”
In actuality, there is no psychiatric drug that is FDA-approved for the prevention of suicidality because these drugs, especially the so-called antidepressants, actually INCREASE the incidence of suicidal thinking, suicide attempts and completed suicides….
Lie # 13:
“America’s school shooters and other mass shooters are ‘untreated’ schizophrenics who should have been taking psych drugs”
Lie # 14:
“If your patient hears voices it means he’s a schizophrenic”
The very sobering information revealed above should cause any thinking person, patient, thought-leader or politician to wonder: “how many otherwise normal or potentially curable people over the last half century of Big Pharma propaganda have actually been mis-labeled as mentally ill (and then mis-treated as mentally ill) and sent down the convoluted path of therapeutic misadventures – heading toward oblivion?”
In my mental health care practice, I personally treated hundreds of patients who had been given a series of confusing and contradictory mental illness labels, many of which had been one of the new “diseases of the month” for which there was a new psych “drug of the month” that was being heavily marketed on TV or by the drug company sales staffs.
Many of my patients had simply been victims of unpredictable and un-forseeable drug-drug interactions (far too often drug-drug-drug-drug interactions) or simply adverse reactions to psych drugs which had been erroneously diagnosed as a new mental illness. Extrapolating from my 1200 patient experience (in my little isolated section of the world) to what surely must be happening all over America boggles my mind. There has been a massive iatrogenic (doctor- or drug-caused) epidemic going on right under our noses that has affected tens of millions of suffering victims who could have been cured if not for the drugs.
The time to act on this knowledge is long overdue.
Bibliography
(Authors and books that were used as background for the assertions in the above article)
Toxic Psychiatry; Your Drug May Be Your Problem; Talking Back to Prozac; Medication Madness: by Peter Breggin;
Prozac Backlash; and The Antidepressant Solution: A Step-by-Step Guide to Safely Overcoming Antidepressant Withdrawal, Dependence, and “Addiction”: by Joseph Glenmullen;
Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill; and Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America: by Robert Whitaker;
Soteria: Through Madness To Deliverance: by Loren Mosher and Voyce Hendrix; Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Healthcare: by Peter Goetzsche;
Rethinking Psychiatric Drugs: A Guide for Informed Consent; and Drug-Induced Dementia: A Perfect Crime: by Grace Jackson;
The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It: by Marcia Angell;
Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression; and The Antidepressant Era: by David Healy;
Blaming the Brain: The TRUTH About Drugs and Mental Health; by Elliot Valenstein;
Selling Sickness; How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients: by Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels;
Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs: by Melody Petersen;
Excitotoxins: by Russell Blaylock;
The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry is Destroying our Brains and Harming our Children: Carol Simontacchi.
Image: Pixabay
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Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. In the decade prior to his retirement, he practiced what could best be described as “holistic (non-drug) and preventive mental health care”. Since his retirement, he has written a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns mostly deal with the dangers of American imperialism, friendly fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, and the dangers of Big Pharma, psychiatric drugging, the over-vaccinating of children and other movements that threaten American democracy, civility, health and longevity and the future of the planet. Many of his columns are archived HERE or HERE.
