Rom 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
Rom 1:26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;
Rom 1:27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Rom 1:28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
This is why they are suicidal (also as one person on social media noted, their psych drugs likely affected their thinking and emotions too--even withdrawals can do that), not society's unwillingness to accept their unnatural behavior and thinking.
**Update September 24, 2022**
A new article reveals more confirmation that psychotropic SSRI drugs only help 15% of the customers, with a majority of
people suffering from withdrawals from them which are worse than the original depression they sought to resolved. (update: just on X I've seen repeated accounts of this both by customers and doctors saying the same--it's not that they get worse mentally getting off the SSRIs but that they're actually going through withdrawals).
The
Newsweek article states in part:
The pharmaceutical industry used that idea to market the drugs to consumers for many years, and it remains a kind of shorthand some doctors use to explain to their patients how the drugs work. As a result, according to the study's authors, between 85 and 90 percent of the public believe that low serotonin levels cause depression. After reviewing data from previous studies involving hundreds of thousands of individuals, Horowitz and his colleagues concluded that there is little to no evidence that this is true....
Horowitz and the paper's other co-authors have been using the attention to call for a fundamental reassessment of how mental illness is treated. "We have a mistaken view of what psychiatric drugs are doing," says Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London. She is also Horowitz's boss and the lead author of the serotonin paper. "This idea that they work by targeting the underlying biological mechanisms that produce the symptoms of mental disorders is actually not supported by evidence for any type of mental disorder, whether that's depression or schizophrenia or whatever," she told Newsweek....
The crippling sadness that sometimes follows a reduction in SSRI medication is caused by the chemical dependence the drugs can cause in the brain and withdrawal effects.
"It's not helpful to think of depression as a brain disease," she says. "I think that we should be thinking of it as an emotional reaction to life circumstances and life events. And indeed, there is very strong evidence that people who suffer from adverse life events are much more likely to get depressed."
End quote.
*** UPDATE July 20, 2022 article**
No evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin levels, 2022 report:
Excerpts:
The new umbrella review – an overview of existing meta-analyses and systematic reviews – published in Molecular Psychiatry, suggests that depression is not likely caused by a chemical imbalance, and calls into question what antidepressants do. Most antidepressants are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which were originally said to work by correcting abnormally low serotonin levels. There is no other accepted pharmacological mechanism by which antidepressants affect the symptoms of depression...
Very large studies involving tens of thousands of patients looked at gene variation, including the gene for the serotonin transporter. They found no difference in these genes between people with depression and healthy controls. These studies also looked at the effects of stressful life events and found that these exerted a strong effect on people’s risk of becoming depressed – the more stressful life events a person had experienced, the more likely they were to be depressed. A famous early study found a relationship between stressful events, the type of serotonin transporter gene a person had and the chance of depression. But larger, more comprehensive studies suggest this was a false finding.
These findings together led the authors to conclude that there is “no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”
End quote.
This follows in line with the report quoted below under 8/28/15 update which said in part:
"
In the investigation, a whopping 75% of the social psychology experiments were not replicated, meaning that the originally reported findings vanished when other scientists repeated the experiments. "
**Update September 16, 2019
More studies that also conclude there is no "gay gene".
In
2019 (secular)
In
2015 (secular) (again, as years ago, the media is hyping something that the latest study does not say).
In 2009 the American Psychological Association concluded:
"There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors." - source
In 2003
What if the diagnosis of Autism is incorrect? What else could be the problem?
**Update Feburary 16,2019**
I just came across this by Dr. Breggin (secular psychiatrist):
When “mental patients” become violent, the media reaction is almost automatic—they must have stopped taking their “meds.” This myth of the violent patient controlled by psychiatric drugs is a myth. There are no scientific studies to confirm it. Indeed, the FDA has not approved any drugs as effective for controlling violence. The Pharmaceutical Empire relentlessly perpetrates the big lie because it serves a trillion dollar purpose. It keeps the public believing that psychiatric drugs are society’s last line of defense against violent individuals. It also lends all psychiatric drugs an aura of magical effectiveness that none of them possess...
Go here for the whole article.
A list of mass shootings that involved people on psych meds
here.
More articles on the connection between mass shootings and psych drugs
here (this article includes a link to an FDA studyand
here
**Update February 16, 2018**
I came across this secular article, "
Schizophrenia Is Not A Mental Illness" by a retired psychologist who also says Schizophrenia is not a mental illness, but rather a categorizing of behavior that can actually be resolved by teaching the client how to live properly (common sense and self discipline; psychology calls it "coping skills").
**UPDATE October 26,2017
Another article published in September 2017 (redirect
here):
"Having practiced psychotherapy now for nearly a decade, I continue to be amazed by the number of patients who come in and claim to have a chemical imbalance in their brain. Not only is the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorder unsubstantiated by any empirical research, but it has also been widely and publicly refuted by a number of prominent psychiatrists, like Allen Frances and Ronald Pies above. In fact, I have found that the most militant proponents of the chemical imbalance idea to be nonpsychiatrists—like social workers and clinical psychologists—who cling to the theory as a way of validating their status as "health professionals."
"Why does the chemical imbalance theory live on despite the fact that it is well-established to be a myth? The idea of a chemical imbalance is a simple and succinct way for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to communicate to patients and their families that psychiatric conditions are "real," regardless of whether they are medical or nonmedical. "Chemical imbalance" provides a seemingly scientific-sounding explanation to human problems that have historically evaded scientific inquiry. To this day, there exists not a single biological test for any mental disorder, despite claims to the contrary. To assert that a patient has a chemical imbalance is to validate and confirm the experience of the suffering person."
End quote.
Money--billions--is also at stake.
***UPDATE from January 2017***
*** UPDATE 10/23/15*** (more updates at the bottom of the article)
"Many individuals who are prescribed and use antidepressant medications may not have met criteria for mental disorders. Our data indicate that antidepressants are commonly used in the absence of clear evidence-based indications." -
Study as reported in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
Yes of course. There's no evidence for any of it. It is clearly subjective both on the one who's reporting feelings and thoughts, and the one diagnosing. But there's no object medical test b/c it's not a physical problem. It's a spiritual problem. And people don't want to deal with life as it happens--either the one going through difficulties or the therapist. It's easy for both the client and the therapist to just throw pills at the problem and call it a day (an expensive day at that!).
***UPDATE 8/28/15***
A major investigation into scores of claims made in psychology research journals has delivered a bleak verdict on the state of the science.
An international team of experts repeated 100 experiments published in top psychology journals and found that they could reproduce only 36% of original findings.
The study, which saw 270 scientists repeat experiments on five continents, was launched by psychologists in the US in response to rising concerns over the reliability of psychology research.
In the investigation, a whopping 75% of the social psychology experiments were not replicated, meaning that the originally reported findings vanished when other scientists repeated the experiments. Half of the cognitive psychology studies failed the same test. Details are published in the journal Science.
Even when scientists could replicate original findings, the sizes of the effects they found were on average half as big as reported first time around. That could be due to scientists leaving out data that undermined their hypotheses, and by journals accepting only the strongest claims for publication.
~
The Guardian reports
***UPDATE 5/13/15***
Another scientist finds that not only antidepressents to be pretty ineffective, but even deadly in over 500,000 65 year olds.
"
However, concern is mounting among doctors and scientists worldwide that psychiatric medication is doing more harm than good. In particular, they say antipsychotic drugs have been overprescribed to many dementia patients in a bid to calm agitated behavior."
Gøtzsche warns psychiatric drugs kill patients year in year out, and hold few positive benefits. He says in excess of half a million citizens across the Western world aged 65 and over die annually as a result of taking these drugs.
“Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal,” he writes.
“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm.”
Gøtzsche, who is also a clinical trials expert, says drug trials funded by big pharmaceutical companies tend to produce biased results because many patients took other medication prior to the tests.
He says patients cease taking the old drugs and then experience a phase of withdrawal prior to taking the trial pharmaceuticals, which appear highly beneficial at first.
The Danish professor also warns fatalities from suicides in clinical trials are significantly under-reported.
End quote.
Also of note, not only the bias of the studies and under-reporting of the results on these drugs which are funded by big Pharma which claim to help and solve the customers' problems, but also by a journalist who himself is a psych patient:
"
The debate on psychiatric drugs has gathered momentum in recent times. In the discussion, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Gøtzsche’s arguments are contradicted by Professor of Mood Disorders Allan Young and John Crace. Crace, himself a psychiatric patient, writes for the Guardian."
***UPDATE 4/3/15***
Nearly 70% of People Taking Anti-depressants May Not Actually Have Depression
More than two thirds of people taking antidepressants 'may NOT actually have depression': Doctors discover many do not meet the official criteria
- *Study analysed those taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
- *Found 69% did not meet the criteria for clinical depression
- *And 38% did not meet the criteria for other mental conditions like anxiety
- *Experts: 'Drugs are prescribed without an evidence-based diagnosis'
**UPDATE**
USA reports that experts in psychology are agreeing that "mental illness" is not a disease nor are there any biological markers to indicate it. Moreover the report shows that experts in the field see how the Bible of the psychology industry, the DSM, is nothing but a collection of subjective symptoms and NO science.
Voddie Bacham also says there's no such thing as a chemical imbalance, its a myth, there's no test. He's absolutely right.
There's no test: its voted in by the APA and put into the DSM. And sometimes disorders are removed. This is being proclaimed within the psychology and psychiatry fields, not by Christians but by secular experts in their own fields.
From the man who wrote the book"
The Myth of Mental Illness" in 1955,
here's an update by Thomas Szasz (
professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York.)
The chemical imbalance myth (secular perspective)
This article (PubMed article also confirms there is no evidence for a chemical imbalance of serotonin in the brains:
Contemporary neuroscience research has failed to confirm any serotonergic lesion in any mental disorder, and has in fact provided significant counterevidence to the explanation of a simple neurotransmitter deficiency. Modern neuroscience has instead shown that the brain is vastly complex and poorly understood.
While neuroscience is a rapidly advancing field, to propose that researchers can objectively identify a “chemical imbalance” at the molecular level is not compatible with the extant science. In fact, there is no scientifically established ideal “chemical balance” of serotonin, let alone an identifiable pathological imbalance. To equate the impressive recent achievements of neuroscience with support for the serotonin hypothesis is a mistake.
In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence. Far from being a radical line of thought, doubts about the serotonin hypothesis are well acknowledged by many researchers, including frank statements from prominent psychiatrists, some of whom are even enthusiastic proponents of SSRI medications (see Table 1).
However, in addition to what these authors say about serotonin, it is also important to look at what is not said in the scientific literature. To our knowledge, there is not a single peer-reviewed article that can be accurately cited to directly support claims of serotonin deficiency in any mental disorder, while there are many articles that present counterevidence. Furthermore, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is published by the American Psychiatric Association and contains the definitions of all psychiatric diagnoses, does not list serotonin as a cause of any mental disorder. The American Psychiatric Press Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry addresses serotonin deficiency as an unconfirmed hypothesis, stating, “Additional experience has not confirmed the monoamine depletion hypothesis” [25].
