Different venues ... same story:
Jay.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: why Nader should *not* stay silent on forced drugging
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 04:35:04 -0400 (EDT)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (*Because **NYC** Could Be BETTER!!)
Organization: WebTV Subscriber
Newsgroups:
alt.politics.greens,talk.politics.medicine,sci.med.psychobiology,carleton.psychology.general
<snip>
Famous psychiatrist L.R. Mosher resigns from the American Psychiatric
Association in disgust
This is a copy of a letter by Dr. Mosher resigning from the American
Psychiatric Association. Note that Dr. Mosher was a pioneer in
establishing programs of psychosocial community care in the field of
psychiatry (e.g., Sartoria); his publications in that regard have been
very influential (e.g.: Mosher, L., & Burti, L. (1989). "Community
mental health: Principles and practice". New York: Norton.).
______________________________________________
Loren R. Mosher M. D.
2616 Angell Ave
San Diego, CA 92122
Ph: 619 550-0312
Fx: 619 558 0854
December 4 1998
Rodrigo Munoz, M.D., President
American Psychiatric Association
1400 94 Street N. W.
Washington, D.C. 20005
Dear Rod;
After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure
and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the
American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this action is my
belief that I am actually resigning from the American
Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization's true
identity requires no change in the acronym.
Unfortunately, APA reflects, and reinforces, in word and deed, our drug
dependent society. Yet, it helps wage war on drugs. Dual Diagnosis
clients are a major problem for the field but not because of the good
drugs we prescribe.
Bad ones are those that are obtained mostly without a prescription. A
Marxist would observe that being a good capitalist organization, APA
likes only those drugs from which it can derive a profit - directly or
indirectly.
This is not a group for me. At this point in history, in my view,
psychiatry has been almost completely bought out by the drug companies.
The APA could not continue without the pharmaceutical company support of
meetings, symposia, workshops, journal advertising, grand rounds
luncheons, unrestricted educational grants etc. etc.
Psychiatrists have become the minions of drug company promotions. APA,
of course, maintains that its independence and autonomy are not
compromised in this enmeshed situation.
Anyone with the least bit of common sense attending the annual meeting
would observe how the drug company exhibits and industry sponsored
symposia draw crowds with their various enticements while the serious
scientific sessions are barely attended. Psychiatric training reflects
their influence as well; i.e., the most important part of a resident
curriculum is the art and quasi-science of dealing drugs, i.e.,
prescription writing.
These psychopharmacological limitations on our abilities to be complete
physicians also limit our intellectual horizons. No longer do we seek to
understand whole persons in their social contexts rather we are there to
realign our patients' neurotransmitters. The problem is that it is very
difficult to have a relationship with a neurotransmitter whatever its
configuration.
So, our guild organization provides a rationale, by its neurobiological
tunnel vision, for keeping our distance from the molecule conglomerates
we have come to define as patients. We condone and promote the
widespread overuse and misuse of toxic chemicals that we know have
serious long term effects: tardive dyskinesia, tardive dementia and
serious withdrawal syndromes.
So, do I want to be a drug company patsy who treats molecules with their
formulary? No, thank you very much. It saddens me that after 35 years as
a psychiatrist I look forward to being dissociated from such an
organization. In no way does it represent my interests. It is not within
my capacities to buy into the current biomedical-reductionistic model
heralded by the psychiatric leadership as once again marrying us to
somatic medicine. This is a matter of fashion, politics and, like the
pharmaceutical house connection, money.
In addition, APA has entered into an unholy alliance with NAMI (I don't
remember the members being asked if they supported such an organization)
such that the two organizations have adopted similar public belief
systems about the nature of madness. While professing itself the
champion of their clients the APA is supporting non-clients, the
parents, in their wishes to be in control, via legally enforced
dependency, of their mad/bad offspring.
NAMI, with tacit APA approval, has set out a pro-neuroleptic drug and
easy commitment-institutionalization agenda that violates the civil
rights of their offspring. For the most part we stand by and allow this
fascistic agenda to move forward. Their psychiatric god, Dr. E. Fuller
Torrey, is allowed to diagnose and recommend treatment to those in the
NAMI organization with whom he disagrees. Clearly, a violation of
medical ethics. Does APA protest? Of course not, because he is speaking
what APA agrees with but can't explicitly espouse. He is allowed to be a
foil; after all he is no longer a member of APA. (Slick work APA!)
The shortsightedness of this marriage of convenience between APA, NAMI
and the drug companies (who gleefully support both groups because of
their shared pro-drug stance) is an abomination. I want no part of a
psychiatry of oppression and social control.
Biologically based brain diseases are convenient for families and
practitioners alike. It is no fault insurance against personal
responsibility. We are just helplessly caught up in a swirl of brain
pathology for which no one, except DNA, is responsible.
Now, to begin with, anything that has an anatomically defined specific
brain pathology becomes the province of neurology (syphilis is an
excellent example). So, to be consistent with this "brain disease" view
all the major psychiatric disorders would become the territory of our
neurologic colleagues. Without having surveyed them
I believe they would eschew responsibility for these problematic
individuals.
However, consistency would demand our giving over "biologic brain
diseases" to them. The fact that there is no evidence confirming the
brain disease attribution is, at this point, irrelevant. What we are
dealing with here is fashion, politics and money. This level of
intellectual/scientific dishonesty is just too egregious for me to
continue to support by my membership.
I view with no surprise that psychiatric training is being systemically
disavowed by American medical school graduates.
This must give us cause for concern about the state of today's
psychiatry. It must mean, at least in part, that they view psychiatry as
being very limited and unchallenging. To me it seems clear that we are
headed toward a situation in which, except for academics, most
psychiatric practitioners will have no real relationships, so vital to
the healing process, with the disturbed and disturbing persons they
treat. Their sole role will be that of prescription writers, ciphers in
the guise of being "helpers".
Finally, why must the APA pretend to know more than it does? DSM IV is
the fabrication upon which psychiatry seeks acceptance by medicine in
general.
Insiders know it is more a political than scientific document. To its
credit it says so, although its brief apologia is rarely noted. DSM IV
has become a bible and a money making best seller - its major failings
notwithstanding. It confines and defines practice, some take it
seriously, others more realistically. It is the way to get paid.
Diagnostic reliability is easy to attain for research projects.
The issue is what do the categories tell us? Do they in fact accurately
represent the person with a problem? They don't, and can't, because
there are no external validating criteria for psychiatric diagnoses.
There is neither a blood test nor specific anatomic lesions for any
major psychiatric disorder. So, where are we? APA as an organization has
implicitly (sometimes explicitly as well) bought into a theoretical
hoax. Is psychiatry a hoax, as practiced today?
What do I recommend to the organization upon leaving after experiencing
three decades of its history?
1.. To begin with, let us be ourselves. Stop taking on unholy alliances
without the members' permission.
2.. Get real about science, politics and money. Label each for what it
is - that is, be honest.
3.. Get out of bed with NAMI and the drug companies. APA should align
itself, if one believes its rhetoric, with the true consumer groups, i.
e., the ex-patients, psychiatric survivors etc.
4.. Talk to the membership; I can't be alone in my views.
We seem to have forgotten a basic principle: the need to be
patient/client/consumer satisfaction oriented. I always remember Manfred
Bleuler's wisdom: "Loren, you must never forget that you are your
patient's employee." In the end they will determine whether or not
psychiatry survives in the service marketplace.
Sincerely,
Loren R. Mosher M. D.
Home Oikos
Ecology of Mind
Co-ordination page
Antipsychiatry
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