The Marketing of Madness analyzed by the marketing’s madness

Varianta in limba romana

For winning control over the mental disorders person there is a big battle and ruthless competition. Whoever manages to get this person as a client, simply gets a slave. The profit is huge, as it ever was. I am convinced that the severe mental disorder is the result of past slavery mentality inherited from past generations and passed through contemporaries. The slavery was the institution that brought the psychopathological state into the mental disordered present individual (through transgenerational inheritance) and the slavery will dominate this person's mind in the future. Slave mentality survives generations, although it somewhat diminishes. The slave is weak; it is a threatened, frustrated and fragile person that fearfully executes master’s orders. Whether it is threatened with weapons – as in the classical edges – or it is lured with the need of overconsumption, the slave resignedly accepts its situation and serves its masters. The slave brings profit and that is why the mental disorders, as descendant from the slavery state of mind, are very profitable for the occult forces of the social system. The battle for winning this contemporary slave, as trade partner for services or products, is fierce because here is room for unequal exchanges that bring profit.

I saw the documentary “The Marketing of Madness”. Lasting about 3 hours and technically unimpeachable made, this film remakes the 1970’s antipsychiatric criticism current except for some slight differences. If back then the antipsychiatrists wanted dismantling psychiatric hospitals, on the contrary, this documentary deplores the drugs usage. But there seems to me that this criticism is not just a remake of the 1970’s antipsychiatry message. I think that, beyond this already outdated topic, there are invisible but very clear objectives. In the beginning, the film message seems to be justified: it is an abuse of drugs both in psychiatry and in the rest of medicine. Unfortunately, when this general idea is particularized, when the examples are brought up and when arguments are shown, then the discourse starts creaking. At the end of this documentary the audience remains with the idea that the drugs themselves would create the mental disorder, which is a pretty big exaggeration. The viewer that is unfamiliar with the field of psychiatry is discretely being induced this idea in order to create an evil inquisitors image for psychiatrists in the eyes of the public. They are presented as lurking innocent people on the streets in order to be turned into sick people. Using such a popular conspiracy theory among ordinary people, unfamiliar about psychiatry, has yet a very perverse sense. I think that, behind this documentary, relies much more and I will show it further on, in this article.

Due to the very complex topic but also to the documentary’s length, this article came out slightly longer than usual so I decided to split it into several sections. Moreover, out of the nearly 3 hours, on this documentary I will not comment that part where studies and statistics, made for some certain drugs, were questioned. The ability to distinguish the falsified data and relative adverse effects of these substances is not related to my field. I will comment instead the numerous errors related to psychiatric analysis phenomenon as a whole. For the beginning I will start with the good parts of this documentary and after that I will continue with its errors.

The documentary is right in terms of drug abuse 


Once kidnapped by the medication trap, the patient gets into a kind of retroactive dependency which is another type of “land binding” that exist today on many levels of society. In this case, there are drug manufacturing giants involved. The patient has to get a more stressful and harder job in order to pay the prices of medicines which is actually making her/him even more ill and that involves the harder need of expensive drugs; that involves, on its turn, to having an even more stressful job for paying some more for the drugs and so on. The modern mental enslavement has, thus, a more terrifying face than the state of the chained or specific life threatened classical slavery.

The psychoses are the most severe mental disorders of all. They respond very weakly to psychotherapy. Even though the documentary denies this truth, still, the pharmacology (drugs) has the ability to resolve some of them. But they are rare compared to the rest of disorders that, on the long term, respond better to psychotherapy. The error that psychiatrists make is that that the nonpsychotic mental disorders receive also the pharmacological treatment instead of receiving psychotherapy. The psychiatrists are focused to medication by their medical training itself. That is what they are told by their teachers in college. For this reason, between pharmacology and psychotherapy, there goes a fierce rivalry. The psychotherapy has on its side a higher number of potential patients who need it. The pharmacology has on its side the treatment urgency and the social system need for protection; a psychotic can really commit terrible crimes and can irreparably ruin its life if its psychosis remains untreated. Crime implications constitute the main reason for higher authority that psychiatrists, who prescribe drugs, have compared to that of the psychotherapists. The psychiatric hospital, which psychiatrists are working in, is a more attractive place than a psychotherapy practice room, located in an ancillary space from some building. An obsessional compulsive person, scared of losing its mind, will go rather to the institution-hospital for treatment instead of stepping into a psychotherapist area that looks like a small craft business. I think here is the focal point of the pharmacology – psychotherapy dispute. But, as this competition is concerned, the psychotherapy is clearly disadvantaged. I think that the two types of therapy should receive a space inside the psychiatric hospital institution proportionally to the number of clients that benefit from each one, and not advantaging the pharmacological therapy as in current guidelines. Nonpsychotic mental disorders are less dangerous to the client itself and to others around so, in this case, there is no need for such a “rush”. The client itself should be left to choose between the two types of therapy and decide which one fits her/him best.

Moreover, the price in this case is a very deceptive issue. Basically, a psychoanalysis meeting costs more than most of the drugs. Many are discouraged by the price factor although, overall, the psychoanalysis proves cheaper. Although sometimes a cure can reach even 10 years, the client gets changed in better out of it. No happiness reached but, after such a cure, she/he is a totally different person. And not all the cures go for 10 years. The main period for a psychoanalytical cure is 4 years and there can be cures that last for only 2 years. The pharmacological medication seems cheap but it is not. Unfortunately, after entering this vicious cycle of medication drugs, the patient becomes addicted with for the rest of her/his life. Often, after a long period pharmacological cure, the drug costs exceed the final costs of a psychoanalytic cure. And, moreover, the result is that the patient’s health became weaken and mentally one step lower compared to the starting point. In other words, that person paid for nothing.

From this point of view, the excessive drug medication in psychiatry is objectionable and condemnable. But when the documentary proposes total elimination of drug medication from psychiatry, it virtually resumes the antipsychiatric views without understanding its history, its development and its limitations. I will further analyze this in detail.


Beginner errors found in this documentary


In about 3 hours, the documentary makes a lot of mistakes. I could not isolate them all for individually analysis because that would mean further lengthen this text, however rather long for this article. But I tried to make a selection of the most important ones. Since the very beginning of the film, there rises a question which reveals the author / authors’ lack of information concerning the field of psychiatry. The question “Are we all insane?”, that the documentary starts with, is rhetorical in nature and involves a common rudimentary ideas projection over the psychiatrists that are perceived as dealing with the mental disorder as insanity. But the psychiatry has given up this view along with the term “madness” or “insanity” for about 200 years, now. I don’t mean that the psychiatry is at the forefront of social emancipation, but the West has even dropped the term “mental illness” too since the very 1970s. Even serious psychopathological disorders such as Schizophrenia are considered as “mental disorder”, since then. Not “madness”, not “insanity” and not “mental illness” but “mental disorder”. It is a very big difference. There might be today psychiatrists who still use the term “insanity” (especially in some informal situations), but most of them has very opposite ideas than those that are putted in the psychiatrists minds by the author / authors of this film and condemned. Any respectable psychiatrist will tell you that “Nobody is insane”. The author / authors objection, at the minute 0. 27, that the psychiatrists are unable to distinguish between health and madness is an objection to their outdated idea about mental disorder, seen as the devil’s influence in human being. Actually nobody can make such a difference because nobody is insane in the traditional sense. Even more serious mental disorders, like Schizophrenia or Major Depressive Episode have their own normality; these disorders have their own intrinsic logic that could be revealed to the person who is willing to penetrate the mysteries of the mind. The proposal, made at the end of the documentary by author / authors, to replace the term “disease”, is really stupid since it was done long before. It is strange that the author/authors have not noticed that, inside the main book of psychiatry, “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” there is no way to find terms like “insanity”, “madness” or “mental illness”. Could it be that the author / authors have not read this treaty? The film seems to show that it has been read very carefully, though.

At the minute 0. 25, there is made a careful analysis concerning the evolution of DSM from 1952, when the first edition was published, until today when it reached the fourth revised edition (forth, when the documentary was released; meanwhile DSM V was approved to printing). The documentary very drastic deprecates the continuously number increasing of mental disorders over the decades with its editions, since its first one. Inside the first edition there were cataloged 112 mental disorders, then, inside the DSM II, there were 145 of them, and by the fourth edition their number reached 370. At first glance such criticism seems to be justified. But such an increasing the number of mental disorders (not “mental illness”) was due to the fact that today the smallest depression leads a person to a psychiatrist. In the past, the psychiatrist’ door used to be passed usually by severe disorders like Schizophrenia, Major Depression or Epilepsy. That happened also to obsessionals and hysterics that originally used to be the patients of the general medicine and only after some time the psychiatry took them into its yard. At the 0. 45 minute the author / authors note that the number of depressive disorders has recently increased from 100 to 100 000 on a sample of 1 million people. But there is no magic, there is no quackery here. As previously mentioned, in the past there came to the psychiatric hospital only severe cases of Major Depression, while now, the small depressive cases pass more often the psychiatrist cabinet. In the past people used to be brave and accept depression as a kind of divine punishment or as individual feature. If someone would have been complaining about her/his state of mind and show a sign of mentally disorder, then the society could simply exclude that person out of it with her/his children. This happens no longer today and the individual is free to seek remedy for its suffering, although such suffering is still a minor one compared to the bigger ones.

The new disorders, gradually added over the DSM editions, are part of the new peripheral area of psychopathology. The old ones and those in need of urgent treatment remained essentially the same. This is discreetly omitted by the author / authors of this documentary and that raises some question marks about its honesty. Showing a situation where the existence of a certain disorder was voted inside some IPA meeting to establish classifications in the DSM, there is a unfair intention to distort the facts and blacken the image of psychiatry in front of potential customers, as I will point out further on. Disorders like Schizophrenia, Major Depression or Epilepsy, which are the central pillar of psychiatry, were never defined by voting, as there was suggested by this documentary, but by hundreds of thousands of clinical recordings, some coming even from antiquity. Actually the psychopathology area has expanded from “disease” to normality once with increasing of treatment demands for cases of mild mental disorders. These people were not psychotic, their disorders were not severe but the psychiatrist just could not send them home, just saying: “You are OK, you are healthy. You’re a little crazy, that’s all.”

DSM was not made with psychiatrists stalking on the street for people to catch their weaknesses and turn them into a disease, but with psychiatrists who woke up at the door with a kind of scared people about their present condition and frightened of losing their minds in the future. Their presence in front of the psychiatrist’ door was caused by an intention to treat any possible “insanity” that they perceived as a gradual process of getting worse disease and hopping that it could be stopped if would be previously discovered, just like in many diseases from general medicine. As these data kept increasing, there had to be synthesized and, thus, there emerged these classification systems like DSM or ICD. The psychiatry found itself facing the issue of treating the normal person and it was surprised to see that, somehow, the normality and the psychosis have many common things. These things were not very clear seen before because our cultural barrier, used to blame and demonize the psychotic person, made them virtually invisible in history. The psychopathology’s extension to what, in the past, was considered (and even today is considered) to be normality, was not at all meant to artificially throw diseases on the healthy human mind, as the author/ authors of the documentary, accuse. On the contrary, it is the health itself that was thrown on the “mentally ill person”. Thanks to that, the “mentally ill person”, as was perceived in the past, was not anymore considered on the same level with the somatic ill patient from the rest of the medicine. The term “mental disorder” is much more human and much less medical than that of “mental illness”. That is the big problem that this documentary does not understand or pretend not understand, having, instead, the precise intention to show some past absurdities of this particular field as if they would be present.

On the other hand, the human mind is a bit more complex than the internal organs, that can get sick and can cause the very physical diseases, as we know. The mind is much more flexible. Therefore, the mental disorders do not behave like physiological diseases. For example, if there is a certain tumor inside the body there must be a certain disease connected to it. The tumor exists and so does the disease. In mental disorders’ case it is not always the same. There exists some disorders that manifest throughout entire life, such as so-called “personality disorders”. Others are temporary. They can appear and disappear and might never return again. The Major Depressive Episode is just an episode indeed so the patient will have not the specific symptoms day by day and week by week; these symptoms could be visible on a certain period, i.e. at least two weeks. The Mourning is also a depressive disorder which occurs over a larger or smaller period, but not throughout entire life. Even the most severe mental disorders like Schizophrenia or Epilepsy do not constantly show specific symptoms. The schizophrenic person may have moments of maximum lucidity, just like the epileptic episode may appear after several years of total normality. DSM must pay attention to the inconstant disorders too. The inconstant disorders just like those caused by the bad environment or like those caused by the presence of a certain physical illness, that has psychological implications, must also be taken accountable. These disorders can not be ignored just because they are temporary. The vehement attitude (at the minute 0. 48) against the premenstrual syndrome disorder, that certain women have, and questioning the need for psychiatric treatment for it, has no basis. Author / authors do not seem to understand, however, that this type of treatment is essentially different from that of an epileptic or a schizophrenic one. But even if this syndrome appears in the case of a normal person, that does not mean it would not exist or that that certain woman should not be treated just because such a disorder occurs only once a month.

From another point of view, such a mental disorders number explosion, in late edition of DSM, is somehow explained by the documentary itself but maybe it was insufficiently understood and apprehended by its author / authors. Instead of a structural description of mental disorders, as done before the DSM III, with this release there came into the light another kind of classification that consists in cataloging and classification the symptoms themselves but not necessarily the classes of symptoms as the “mental diseases” used to be in the past. There are a lot reasons about the cause of such rebate but I will not insist on showing them now. Mainly, this kind of change was due to the psychodynamicist or behaviorist orientation of psychiatrists who, at that time, could not agree each other on the limits of some certain psychiatric disorders or about the meaning of terms used. So, instead of “neurosis”, “psychosis” or “sexually perversions”, as they were called in the past, after DSM III there were created smaller classes of symptoms. It is like the splitting the cold illness into another several disorders consisting in cold symptoms such as abnormal cough, expectoration disturbances, headache, fever etc… So, this is another important reason for why the number of mental disorders in DSM IV almost tripled from that of DSM I till today, as the author / authors noticed. Yet, there are a lot of mental disorders cataloged in the latest editions of DSM, that remained almost identical to how they were cataloged 100 years ago.

Since DSM III, there it was lost the psychopathology unity indeed, thus being ignored that, metaphorically speaking, between the cough and the expectoration there must be a certain link. But, on the other hand, there was gained an enormous precision and systematization of a huge volume of clinical observations. The debate about what general category a particular symptom should be classified into was abandoned for theorists. The clinical psychiatrist is less interested in that. The psychiatrist basically wants to know what to do with the person that comes into its office asking for treatment and which may need urgent medication. DSM III came with clear criteria for such new classes and so everyone could speak the same language when, until then, each psychopathology school gave different meanings or wider or narrower usage for some terms.

The author / authors argued, further on, that this number of psychiatric disorders came up because the psychiatrists would artificial create these “diseases” in order to sell them drugs, so to make profit out of it. Such an assertion takes its model the very phenomenon of advertising that creates artificial needs so to make the consumer buy products. Apparently the author / authors know pretty well this phenomenon, since it was applied here almost unchanged. Well, if such a pattern might be suitable to describe the marketing, still it is pretty inadequate for explaining the evolution of mental disorders number described along DSM editions. The fact is that most of the DSM disorders do not necessarily need any treatment. Placebo solution confirms this situation. Some disorders are so rare that many psychiatrists have not seen them in practice. If anyone thinks that the psychiatrists are some kind of inspectors that would not allow people to live if had not taken the prescription drug, well, there must be said that the suspicion went too far.

Neither the patient buys nor do the drug companies create these substances depending on how many disorders are classified in the DSM. None of these social actors do not understand the meaning of those psychopathology’s terms and can not make a judgment on the foundation of such notions. Whether called “phobic neurosis” or “Panic Attack” for them that is the same.

At the 1.39 min, there is mentioned the way that the psychiatrist gets advantage from the patient’s need for some kind of cure when asking for prescription. Although, in some cases, the psychiatrist should send such a person to the psychotherapist / psychoanalyst, which does not actually happen, however, for simple depressive disorders there is no other solution. I know that for some companies there is probably more profitable to send the patient to shopping. But for long term it is clear that this would mean worsening the depressive symptoms.

The psychiatric prescription drugs consumers are basically the same, regardless of how many new disorders were described in DSM last editions, as the most important of these disorders also remained almost the same. Most of them are depressive disorders. Most of the drugs for mild mental disorders are some diluted psychoactive substances (like diazepam) that the social system supports and accepts, just as it does for the tobacco or the alcohol. Their usage is due to a compromise between the need for psychoactive substance and the general view that does not accept the substance abuse addiction. And here, I think, is the key to understanding this documentary; in some cases the psychiatry tends to replace with its own drug prescription the traditional alcohol and tobacco “treatment” for medium and small depressive disorders. Using them is due to a compromise between the need for psychoactive substance and the general opinion that does not see with good eyes the addiction. On the one hand, the psychoactive substances social transformation into medical drugs is a solution meant to take the burden of guilt addiction out of the addicted person’s shoulders. Psychoactive substance diluting into prescription drugs involves a drug addiction treatment itself. Some powerful psychoactive substances, like heroin for example, give an addiction so dangerous that abrupt stopping usage can lead to extreme physical and mental disorders or even sudden death. The soft psychoactive substances usage temperate such a situation and make the withdrawal effects easier to bear. Traditional soft psychoactive substances have the disadvantage of social and medical complications. A 3 grade alcoholic person (or upwards) can no longer do its job. Besides, the system costs for medical problems involved by smoking made the psychiatry’s diluted drugs more appropriate.

Actually, in this case, there is a matter of changing dependency vector. For the social system, the subjects’ severe psychoactive substances addiction is unproductive and the traditional soft psychoactive substances involve also adjacent costs. The psychiatry drug addiction is more favorable for the general social machinery. In this case, as previously stated, the documentary is right. But the accusation that the psychiatry is only interested in gaining new patients for selling drug medication, thereby increasing the number of mental disorders in DSM, looks more like an own interest projection of the traditional legal drugs companies that, I think, are behind this documentary. It must be said however that the drug medication is the most honest way of all middle term remedies against depressive disorders.

The drug companies really make the most of it with the psychiatrist participating. But the psychiatrist must do something to, somehow, calm down the patient. Unfortunately, the psychiatrist only tool is the recipe. There is no other solution for this moment. The psychotherapy does not work for depressive disorders. The new antipsychiatry hedonistic competition, which stays behind this documentary, actually leads the patient to self-destruction. And that is much worse than psychiatry drug medication. The ugly side of psychiatry is not this. If a person uses these drugs, this is not necessarily psychiatry’s fault but the social system’s that leads the addicted person in the situation of poisoning itself with these substances in order to get some mental calm. The social system perversely accepts these substances because they are easiest and mobilizes the contemporary worker to be more productive, as the same social system forbids those that bring the worker out of economy’s conveyor belt as I argued here: http://baldovin.blogspot.ro/ 2008/05/drogatii-noile-vrajitoare-ale-evului.html. This is the critical point of occurrence and long-term treatment of depressive disorders. The contemporary reward newslavery causes depressive disorders as much as classical threatening slavery. Eliminating slavery is the only long-term effectively treatment of depressive disorders.

Nevertheless, certain disorders described by DSM are really forced. But that happened not because the psychiatry wants the sale medication to those who have such disorder, but because the social system itself still has the middle ages “Ship of Fools” reflexes to criminalize and punish those who refuse to serve even without claiming reward from it. Unfortunately, the author/ authors did not know where to go in DSM and find such disorders. This is because the documentary is not at all interested about a moral and scientific issue depth, as it can be foreseen further on. For the author/ authors, the science and the morality is just a marketing tool for advertising purposes but not a goal itself. Its main interest is the demonizing the psychiatry’s competition in the eyes of potential customers. If the author/ authors would have been known something about the “Passive-Aggressive Personality Disorder” then the reasoning would have been more viable. I very virulently criticized such this shame of psychiatry, called disorder, in my book “The Picasso’s Cubism: Psychoanalysis of Destruction and Reparation” (printed and purchased here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Picassos-Cubism- Psychoanalysis-Destruction/dp/3845431806”) much tougher than this documentary itself. However my interest was the scientific goal and the ethical coherence but not some image advantages in winning the mind of mental disorder person, as this documentary tries to. Such a so-called disorder shows very clearly how the psychiatrists themselves are affected into their decisions by a kind of postindustrial newslavery mentality. Anyway, this documentary has no interests whatsoever for these issues. On the contrary, this documentary criticism comes under the positions of advertising’s goal, with the very dubious ethical coherence, as I will show below. This documentary’s goal is not the scientific fact but the distortion of it so to convince the weak ones to be enslaved to a much more cruel addiction than the pharmaceutical drug one of psychiatry.


Other statistical or quoting errors regarding the psychiatric discourse


Although, at the minute 03. 48, the author / authors use the DSM, still it is not correct used and understood. There is tendentiously stated that “the loss of a loved one (became) ... Major Depressive Episode” thus trying to undermine and caricaturize the scientific authority of DSM and particularly the notion of “Major Depressive Episode” itself. Such an interpretation of this disorder show either bad intention or a bizarre inability to understand a text.

If we take a look on the chapter “Mood Disorders" from the DSM IV TR, under “Major Depressive Episode” (on page 356), then we very clearly see the criteria for such a disorder explained for everyone. And, although it would enlarge the text some more, I have to quote directly from the DSM criteria for this disorder:

• “(1) depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report (e.g., feels sad or empty) or observation made by others (e.g., appears tearful). Note: In children and adolescents, can be irritable mood. 
• (2) markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day, nearly every day (as indicated by either subjective account or observation made by others) 
• (3) significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain (e.g., a change of more than 5% of body weight in a month), or decrease or increase in appetite nearly every day. Note: In children, consider failure to make expected weight gains. 
• (4) insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day 
• (5) psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day (observable by others, not merely subjective feelings of restlessness or being slowed down)
• (6) fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day 
• (7) feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt (which may be delusional) nearly every day (not merely self-reproach or guilt about being sick) 
• (8) diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness, nearly every day (either by subjective account or as observed by others) 
• (9) recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide”

So this is what, basically, a “Major Depressive Episode” is! Although it is quite concise in describing disorders, DSM has a more detailed summary of these criteria that can make anyone understand this disorder for more than 90% if a minimum of attention to is paid. Starting from page 354 to page 356, the unfamiliar reader can get an idea of several other mental disorders or neurological diseases that the “Major Depressive Episode” looks more or less like but from which, however, it essentially differs. It is not the place here to quote the entire text devoted to differential diagnosis (anyone can go to the library to consult this treatise) but, on page 355, there is a directly related phrase to the subject that I will quote also here:

• “After the loss of a loved one, even if depressive symptoms are of sufficient duration and number to meet criteria for a Major Depressive Episode, they should be attributed to Bereavement rather than to a Major Depressive Episode “

We can see that DSM very clearly differentiates “Major Depressive Episode” from simply mourning as the documentary has not noticed it, although, the two disorders have some symptoms similarities. Anyway, this is what the documentary fails to do.

The same can be said about “Bipolar Disorder” that is mistaken with ... “to have failures and successes ...”. I will not repeat the reasoning I did above concerning “Major Depressive Episode” in order to shorten as much as possible this text. But the reader can go to page 357 so to find the description for “Manic Episode” (which is typical to “Bipolar Disorder”) or, starting from 382, where some different forms of “Bipolar Disorder” are described, and convince oneself about it.

The experiment at the 0.28 minute, with simulated schizophrenic symptoms and the inability of doctors to detect the “normality”, is totally insignificant. If someone goes to a bank with a sheet over its hand, simulating a gun, then the police will shoot that person down. The psychiatrist is not a prosecutor to know when the patient is simulating. The doctor must be alert to symptoms and classify the disorder somewhere so to prescribe an appropriate medication and stop a possible psychosis development. Its responsibility is really big, as well as the policeman’s. If the psychiatrist prescribes antidepressants drugs to a schizophrenic patient then the symptoms worsen and that patient might commit a murder. A man’s destiny relies in the psychiatrist’s hands. There is no time for the psychiatrist to be a private detective*.

At the minute 2, there are shown irrelevant evidences about the drugs ineffectiveness in the cases of severe psychoses like Schizophrenia or “Major Depressive Episode”. Those X-rays images are totally wrongheaded and show the author’s lack of knowledge in the field. Those X-ray scans are not showing much in psychiatry; they are good enough for bones or internal organs but not so good for the incredibly fine brain tissues. Encephalogram brain data are taken involving another type of scan. They look completely different than bone radiographs and consist of a somewhat higher level of detail. Who is interested in psychosis neurophysiopathology can find books with complex data (for example “Schizophrenia: the major issues” written by Paul Bebbington and Peter McGuffin) that put these images in the shadow of being ridiculous. However, even these encephalograms are themselves not sufficiently clear, and that is why some neurophysiologists believe that “we know about the brain as much as the Middle Ages knew about the heart”.

Further on, it is said that there are no criteria to administer drug medication to a psychotic patient. From the neurophysiologic point of view, such medication might not exist because it is not well known how these substances action at the molecular level of the synapses. But, still, there are clear symptomatological criteria for medication. The higher flow mental disorders like Schizophrenia, Manic Episode (from Bipolar Disorder) or Borderline Disorder receive medication that slows down mental flow (such as barbiturates). On the contrary, the lower flow mental disorders like the depressive disorders receive drugs that increase mental flow and the adrenaline inside the body (such as antidepressants).

At the minute 0. 23, it is stated that there are not objective criteria for psychiatric diagnoses like urine or blood samples that general medicine uses. Wrong again. These criteria are the symptoms themselves. When a major depressive woman states that has killed her own children in order to save them (from the bad world) or when a schizophrenic patient attacks an unknown person on the street because the aliens have ordered that, then there must be understood that there is not much need for any blood or urine samples and something have to be done to help these people to regain charge on their lives.

At the 2:50 minute, it is presented a woman that describes how the medication drugs gave her insomnia. It is impossible to figure it up, from those few words she was spoken, what her diagnosis was. But, as previously seen, insomnia can be a preexisting symptom in many disorders. Anyway, we can not put all drugs in the same pot. There are certain drugs that involve well known side effects. There are also unfortunate prescriptions from physicians. But there are still absolutely normal side effects reactions caused by some drugs. For example, the insomnia is a perfectly normal reaction to the medication given against the “Major Depressive Episode” after the patient did not get up out of bed for weeks.

A rough inaccuracy is made at the minute 07, when it is said that Freud is an initiator of drug therapies in psychiatry. The viewer is about to remain with the mistaken impression that psychoanalysis itself is a drug therapy, after watching this film. But the author/authors should have known that, before being a psychotherapist, Freud was a physician and he used to treat patients that suffered form different physiological conditions. He became a psychoanalyst much later, after he saw some patients that could not be treated by that time medicine. Those patients had symptoms that appeared to be pure physiological illnesses but they were in fact pure psychological disorders, thus getting confused the doctors from that time. Freud smelled that and strengthened the psychoanalysis as conversation therapy rather than drug prescription one. His studies on Coca leaves were made in his youth as a young physician. If he would have been continuing the research for several years more, maybe he would have won the Nobel Prize, as it was won by those who have continued these researches from where he stopped. The result of these studies is of great importance for modern medicine. These medical applications of Coca leaves are not related to cocaine that addicted people use. That is why the idea from the documentary that Freud had brought the cocaine in Europe is a crass stupidity. Some kind of cocaine must have been used by South American natives before the arrival of Europeans there. First person that created cocaine in Europe in laboratory was the chemist Friedrich Gaedcke in 1855, one year before Freud was born.

Also, at the min 2.2 30, there is presuming that the suicides among U.S. soldiers were due to medication. In fact, before medication there the “Post-traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD) exists, in cases of some people that are positioned under extreme stress as war, kidnappings, dangerous accidents etc. It must be said that these experiences can create reactive transitory psychotic symptoms that are identical to those of Schizophrenia; the differential diagnosis is based solely on the previously existence of this kind of recent terrible traumatic experiences. “PTSD” is not at all an invention and suicides among soldiers would be much more frequent if there were no medication.

It is possible that some of these beginner mistakes would have been made simply by ignorance. But, for sure, there are some intentioned ones, specific to advertising manipulation. For example, at the 2.00. 40 minute, the documentary gives the impression that prescription drugs transform happy and healthy kids into some kind of zombies. In several seconds there is presented the case of a 7 year old boy, named Gabriel Myers, who hanged himself after taking psychiatric medication. What this documentary does not say is that the child was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder before, was neglected by parents and even had been sexually molested. The Major Depressive Episode is known for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, so there it can not be established that a certain drug used by these patients causes these symptoms since they define the disorder itself. Gabriel Myers was far from being a happy and healthy child (for more details http://gabrielmyers.wordpress.com). Medical errors and side effects of medication can exist, but such a distortion of the facts is typical to corporate advertising mentality. At a closer look, in this case there can not be claimed the lack of knowledge of the field. Anyone can understand the detail of this case and can tell it correctly if there a brief investigation is honestly made. The film simply distorted the reality and intentionally manipulated the information in a specific PR and advertising way. We can see these subtle methods of manipulation in advertising or news. Therefore, to better understand this documentary there is absolute necessary to find its author / authors and see what their real intention for producing it was. The following sections of this article will search that.


Who is the author of this documentary?


So, to find the honesty this documentary, we first need to know who made it. But, surprise: this documentary has no author. If closely look, we see that the work of making it was truly titanic. We can see its complexity of hundreds of hours of interviews, studies and surveys, ultramodern design with sophisticated animation and special effects, marketing advertising and PR. I must admit that, concerning the aspect, this documentary is among the best I’ve ever seen. Yet, it seems no one claims it. I searched on wikipedia and other different forums or social groups and there was nothing about it. This documentary looks like was made by itself alone. Who invests in such a design masterpiece without leaving its signature on it? Did somehow Jesus Christ come to save the world from wrong path to psychiatry? I would not bet on it. The artists / designers are far from such a saint attitude.

But we must not stop here. We must go on step by step by deduction. For the start it is clear that whoever is behind this documentary has in psychiatric medication a powerful competitor and its aim is the very damaging image of this rival in the eyes of a potential costumer. As familiar with the dispute drug medication / psychotherapy, we would tend, at first glance, to think that a group of psychotherapists took their courage in demanding more authority over the treatment of patients who walks into the psychiatric hospital. In fact such disputes have happened before, but the psychotherapists have never experienced so virulent attack pointed on drug medication, like these from this documentary. Nevertheless, the attack on Freud, from the beginning of the documentary, simply excludes the psychotherapists, although they seem to be the direct competitors for drugs in the treatment of mental disorders. Moreover, the psychotherapy professionals never ask for the first violin role in the treatment of psychosis but just for an accompaniment of drug medication. But, this documentary simply tears down the entire drug medication institution, including that of psychosis, irreplaceable at this time. This detail makes me move over the idea that behind it would be some psychotherapists. So, there must be something else.

The “answer” seems to be given by the documentary itself. So, here is how, after keeping the viewer more than 2 hours in suspense about who would invest such resources to demolish psychiatry, the answer seems to finally come. Just 10 minutes before the end, at the 2:46 minute, the documentary creates false path to make us believe that behind it there would stay a small alternative psychiatry community called Soteria. They separated from the official body of psychiatry and created alternative clinics that focus on compassion and understanding patient. Such green psychiatry attitude is somehow** justified. With such a current, the drug psychiatry seems to get close to client-centered Carl Rogers’s psychotherapy. In fact, in this moment of psychiatry, there are few psychiatrists with psychotherapy skills. But even if they have the talent, they do not have the time to take care of the psychotherapeutic side which can be applied for psychotic phenomena.

And yet, the vast majority of psychiatric institutions have few psychologists hired to pay more closely attention to the patient after the psychiatrist prepared the drug prescription. The remaining antipsychiatry critics of Soteria were constructively taken, in the meantime, by main psychiatry and things have changed much for the better. In the last 40 years, the psychiatric hospitals have adopted a more open attitude toward the psychosis. Outdoor treatment is one of them. In respectable Western countries, the chronic psychotic person is not any more kept like a prisoner, although it remains under observation in order not to harm yourself or entourage. In this case, the compassion therapy criticism is unnecessary for late 2000s or 2010s, when the patient’s family or even the patient himself has the possibility to choose alternative treatment packages and decide which works better. These critics were more entitled to the 1970s. Why did this documentary appear just now when the psychiatry looks more human than many other institutions?

These questions have no viable answers if we confine ourselves to accept that the Soteria stands behind this film. For naive people on the psychiatry phenomenon, this stratagem might work. But, I think that Soteria is a false path to understand the meaning of this documentary, in order to hide its real interest. Since the Soteria subject was covered in just 10 minutes only, out of the almost 3 hours, it simply does not seem very probable to me that this organization was the main cause for this documentary. It is simply not specific to this documentary professional communication style. If I would have to make a documentary about the superiority of psychotherapy to drug medication, regarding the nonpsychotic disorders, then I would put in the forefront the psychotherapies qualities and I would use most of its time with their explanation, rather than to endlessly criticize pharmacologic methods competition. On the other hand, if I would be so scrupulous and decide to go so deep into opponent disloyalty details, then why would I not be as scrupulous with describing the Soteria project methods themselves?

From another perspective, a quick internet search reveals that Soteria is a small project with poor audience led by an old man, Loren R Mosher, inexperienced in design and marketing, unlike the appearance of this documentary. The organization website looks pretty modest:

http://www.moshersoteria.com/

Could this man financially afford to make such a documentary? It does not seem likely to me. Moreover, this website has no visible internet links to the documentary. It is very strange that, although it tries to make us believe that it is a kind of advertisement for Soteria, however, the official website of the project does not promote such a film. This is like an advertising company that would not put the ads that build in its website’s archive. Is it not kind of weird? I say yes. This is why I actually think this is a false path to Soteria Project in order to disguise the true psychiatry’s competitor in gaining the patient. I will further on bring other significant clues about the author / authors of this documentary.


Knowing who is behind this documentary means knowing its honesty


What seems to me very hypocritical, in this documentary, is the matter of not entering deeper into the core of the drug medication. It is at least strange that this documentary shows the bad situation of psychiatric medication only, but still does not tell anything about the medication throughout the whole medicine that finds itself in the same situation. The general medicine uses also medication abuse, thus trying to superficially solve the disease problem and refusing to use natural or alternative treatments to chemotherapy, or to recommend a healthy lifestyle to the patient. Why is this documentary focused solely on psychiatric medication? Could it be because it has something obscure to share with psychiatry? Is it not because the patient itself is a target too for the hidden forces that lie behind it? I will show further on prove that.

Those many errors by this documentary can be interpreted different than of being made by someone with no experience in this field. These errors are rather specific to untrained common people preconceptions towards the psychiatric phenomena, such as the confusion between mental illness and mental disorder which I previously mentioned. Anyway, they seem rather negative media campaigns than professional ideas, even a film maker’ ideas. Nevertheless, the author/authors attention with the discourse details found in other parts of the documentary, such as DSM development description, methods of investigation description, unpublished adverse effects that some pharmaceutical drugs have etc., show good abilities to understand more of this field. And yet, there can be found grave errors as that of Freud would be the promoter for psychoactive substances usage or fake misunderstanding of a particular criterion for a certain disorder. This is very strange to me. These errors seem to me rather PR exercises meant to directly address to common unprofessional people for influencing their judgment. Among these ideas are found preconceptions like those of the psychiatrists perceived as treating a person as a madman as kept in chains or put on electroshocks. Another common people preconception is that the psychoanalysis would be a kind of hedonism that promotes sexual orgies. The previously mentioned term “madness” itself, as used in the very title of this documentary, instead of “mental disorder” used in the very DSM title, reveals such a common people preconception about psychiatry. It is specific for PR or advertising to “adapt” to the masses preconceptions that refer to a particular subject and promote ideas that sometimes are totally opposite than those who seem to advocate. If we look closer at the dynamic style of this documentary, with specific advertising design and animations, then we realize that, behind it, there is not a leading authority specialist in human sanity but some competitors of psychiatric medication. Narrator’s voice sounds just like those heard in the major corporations’ ads.

On the other hand, noticing how thoroughly this documentary examines the drugs marketing for nonpsychotic disorders, a key question came into my mind: why does it not enter into a deeper level of understanding and to show the advertising’s and marketing’s dirty world itself? Why is this criticism pointed to the drug manufacturers marketing only? Why does it not talk also about how the marketing simply addicts the individual human being to all sorts of junk, without causing some life improvement? Why does it not speak about the Chinese droplet manipulation made by advertising about which I wrote here: http://baldovinconcept.blogspot.ro/2010/05/advertising-as-basic-tool-of.html? The answer is very simple: behind this documentary stays actually the world trade itself, the alternative addiction to commercial items which is, in fact, much more expensive than drug medication. This vector is actually the big competitor for psychiatry in controlling and exploiting the contemporary slave/worker. So, the unilateral criticism of psychiatric drug marketing has actually a pretty filthy purpose. It is easy to see that such a documentary would not criticize the marketing in general because it is a product marketing itself; it does not oppose to those marketing values that have led some people close to losing their minds, but actually defends them. This documentary is paid thanks to the marketing because it is a marketing product that is meant to protect an economical profit pattern gained from the mental disorder person that psychiatry claims also in its own way. A middle depressive person can naturally treat its mental pain to an acceptable level with that compulsive shopping, basically practiced by women but also by weak men who want to look cool on cars, gadgets, clothes, casinos and other expensive trinkets that bring up the illusion of being the center of the universe. We must understand that the gambling industries, the alcohol producers industry, the clothes designers industry, the cars industry, the gadgets industries etc. weights hundreds and thousands times more than that of drugs manufacturers industry from psychiatry. As a psychologist, I bluntly admit that the drug medication addicted person is happier than a workaholic one that waists its life in stressful jobs to pay the loans for the fancy caprices fooling oneself that, in this way, would get rid of depressive symptoms. This is the profile of contemporary new form of slavery: trying to get rid of depression, such an unfortunate person ends up by getting caught in the grip of bigger depression like an insect caught in the spider net that entangles more when shakes, than releases itself.

I think that “Shopping Compulsive Disorder”, “Nicotine Related Disorders” and soft degrees of Alcoholism are the focal point of this documentary. Since DSM had catalogued them as mental disorders that caused some inconvenience for some markets and I am convinced that the entire documentary was developed starting from these. Being focused on the Shopping Compulsive Disorder even from beginning, the documentary should give us a clue about its intensions. At the 0.49 minute, the documentary says that the study for cataloguing it on DSM was paid by a certain antidepressants producing company thus suggesting that such a disorder would actually not exist. But there is no need for any occult way to see that this disorder really exists. No need for any study to observe it. Thousands of divorces are caused by it in the Western countries. There are men who believe that such a pretty simple disorder should actually be treated with straitjacket :) . A wife who seem not to be able stop herself from buying unneeded things, thus risking to ruin her family, totally justifies such a disorder. It does not matter much if that study would have been paid by a particular company or not. If this really happened, it does not mean that this antidepressants producing company has also invented that disorder.

This is why I think that behind this documentary there are certain stores voices with their expensive junk manufacturers. The same can be said about “Nicotine Related Disorders” registered in DSM that bothers the cigarette manufacturers. The same can be said about “Pathological Gambling”; of course, we can see that some casinos do not see with good eyes when such a patient is led to a psychologist / psychiatrist rather than to spend his/her fortune on the vice. If we see this documentary in this light, I think we can figure up what its hided interests are and what is the purpose for those exaggerations and distortions of reality.

So, at this moment, we can understand more deeply the meaning of the false complain, from the beginning of documentary, about the increasing number of mental disorders by extending the concept of “disorder” to what until recently was recognized as normality. By extending the concept of “Alcoholism” beyond what previously was set (basically the Delirium Tremens phase), the alcohol manufacturers found themselves facing a formidable opponent in front of their profit: the psychiatry. DSM recently catalogued fifth grade of alcoholism. Before this well-known stage, DSM identified four more phases of alcoholism that society used to perceive them as personal whims and not as truly alcoholism before. So, after DSM, they actually come to be accepted as mental disorders and can be associated with specific therapy. Of course, the alcohol industry earnings fell accordingly.

So, if such partier guy is lately called alcoholic, then it is obvious that things can evolve into unfavorable ways for alcohol companies. If the psychiatry says that a certain person has a mental problem with her/his “habit”, then that might convince her/him to go into a therapy in a way or the other. The idea that this person could go to a psychiatrist instead of having a drink in some restaurants or pubs, messes with the financial plans that alcohol producers have. When a pharmacological therapy or a psychotherapy manage to cure the alcoholic away from this vice, then that person usually stops putting a single drop of alcohol in the mouth ever since. The same thing happens with the smoker that quits smoking after such a therapy. The same would happen with every addicted people which unjustifiably enrich those who shamelessly exploit their vice. If everyone would do it, then certain absolutely horrendous industries would go down the drain. Well we are talking about hundred of thousand of trillion dollars. That is why such a documentary is so choleric about this issue.

Disorders as Shopping Compulsive Disorder, Pathological Gambling, Alcoholism, Video Game Addiction (DSM V refused to accept it as a disorder for this moment) or Nicotine Related Disorders that DSM has included in its classifications, kind of agitated the waters among markets that make profit out of increasingly larger number of people addiction. Rather than sink into their vices, helped by their family too, many of these addicted persons have chosen the alternatives of drug therapy or psychotherapy. And the psychiatry should be congratulated for that. Addiction to Shopping Compulsive Disorder, Pathological Gambling, alcohol, tobacco or video games has only a variant, if psychiatry does not interfere: the collapse, the ruin. Pathological gambler can lose its fortune to casinos and can end up shot by its own bullet. Compulsive shopping addicted woman can be left by her family and fall into prostitution and alcoholism. Alcoholics also may lose family, lose job, lose home and end up on the streets. Inveterate smoker may end up with throat or lungs cancer. Radical avid video gamer can destroy its social life since meeting all kind of monsters and enemies stalking on the street corner or even die from exhaustion, as happened a few years ago with an Asian person.

Any therapy, no matter if psychotherapy or pharmacological, can make the difference between failure and survival for these people. With these new names placed among the oldest disorders, the psychiatry has shown, I think, the most courageous act that has ever done. No social institution opposed more than psychiatry with such dignity and efficiency against corporatist greed. Of course, the social system encouraged and supported it to the detriment of traditionally accepted psychoactive substances producers. Obviously, by that, it has brought losses of hundreds of thousands of trillions of dollars to those who exploit with terrifying ferocity the vices of poor unfortunate people to make huge fortunes. I do not mean that pharmacology is saint and, as I said before, the documentary has reasons to criticize the excessive use of medication. But there was no pharmacology that created these disorders but some certain psychiatrists’ verticality, although this dignity was also bent sometimes. And, as concerning the credibility of these disorders, we must keep lucidity and understand the intentions of this documentary. I think, an impartial person can see for itself its filthy nature.

Here’s how, compared to these economic mammoth with turnover of thousands trillion dollars, the several millions dollars industry of pharmaceutical drugs used in psychiatry seems to be indeed a flea. From what has been said so far in this article, I think I have convinced the reader that pharmaceutical therapy has large holes and I am not trying to defend it. But it seems a real escape compared to the actual corporations marketing that lies behind this documentary. The fragile mentality of history is grotesquely stalked by these terrible industries. They constantly follow them to bind weak people into a different kind of slavery than that of their ancestors who have inherited their mentality: the consumption slavery, the reward slavery. Lacking the basic ethical manners and having the main goal to emotionally subjugate the weak people to satisfy their insatiable greed, these occult forces of civilization tried with this documentary to defend their sinister empire that created long time before.

Now we can understand its odious mechanisms. Since the soft drugs or fancy expensive markets felt the turmoil coming from psychiatry, that offered an alternative way for these pitiable people, the occult forces decided to react with this dubious documentary. We can now understand this ingenious stratagem: as being masters of advertising and manipulation par excellence, they made this documentary by demonizing the marketing, the advertising but by using the specific tools of the marketing and the advertising manipulation. That looks exactly like the wolf disguised in sheep situation that can be seen too often in our contemporary society. Supporting the increasingly popular ideas about the demonizing the marketing and advertising, this documentary’s hidden intention is actually that of promoting the false values of marketing and advertising themselves. At this point we can understand the goal of the main and the most serious omission error made in this documentary. So, mistaking the term “madness” with the “mental disorder”, that the DSM actually uses, is not actually a mistake. Its author / authors carefully choused it, for common mind manipulation reasons. With this alleged error their main interest is to use traditional preconceptions strongly embedded in the minds of ordinary people regarding the past centuries lunatic asylum in which, if someone got into, there was unlikely to come out normal again. The marketing meaning of this error is this: “if you go to a psychiatrist for your vice treatment then you are mad and deserve to be kept in chains, beaten, electroshocked and poisoned; better come and buy from us and you will be considered normal”.

Hiding the author / authors’ identity is also a marketing strategy. It is easy to see that, revealing the identity of authors and its base, as controlled by some companies that really destroy the vicious person in order to draw profit from, that would have not been well perceived and the documentary would not be so popular. If inside of it there would remain a proof left that behind such a documentary is this kind of companies, then such a vehement critic would appear into common people’s eyes just another kind of the pot that calls the kettle black. It is true that public opinion does not see with good eyes the psychiatry. But the fact is that these companies are much worse perceived. The psychiatric patient might not look like a person who radiates health, but still, this person does not sleep drunk under all kind of bridges and does not get lung cancer because medication drugs, as these companies’ clients look like. If such a documentary would look as controlled by alcohol and tobacco manufacturers then the pathetic speech about human health care would simply be perceived as what it really is: a kind of some politician electoral speech. Anyway, these two types of speeches are almost the same.



* Alternative therapies in psychiatric hospitals are desirable. Most psychiatrists do not have time for “tall tales”, they do not have time to listen, their minds are too busy with information about drugs, sheets to be completed, bureaucracy etc. They can not be blamed for this, the field is simply too vast to focus on this new area which is also very large. I think the main culpable for the lack of coordination between the psychiatrist and psychotherapist / alternative therapist lay in the politicians’ yard themselves that, instead to form people for war, they might focus them to medicine in general and psychotherapy in particular. By this there would be fewer patients and more employed staff to take care with those who suffer. But that is another debate. 

** I say “somewhat” because I am convinced that medication is connected with the urgency and the psychotherapy is connected with the maintenance. Therefore the total medication renunciation, as Soteria proposed, is a forced plan, as the famous 1970s antipsychiatric trend finally has convinced itself. Although my theoretical profile is closer to psychotherapy, I still believe that medication can do wonders in cases of acute psychosis, where the disorder can be totally remitted as a result of its action. A Major Depressive patient that waits for perfect time to implement suicidal thoughts or a violent Paranoid Schizophrenic, or an Agitated Catatonic, can hardly be helped by psychotherapy and only the medication can stabilize as much as it can. That is the lesson that the 1970s antipsychiatry trend itself have already learned. But, in those cases where the medication fails to get the patient better, it is stupid not to go for alternative therapies. I think this drug medication should not be given blind credit, though. . 

Gabriel Baldovin

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