Psychiatry? How I Became a Doubter

Updated: Sept 12

by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext

What the mainstream media is hiding

If a so-called “mental disorder” overtakes us: Are we then in the best hands with psychiatrists? The dismaying stories that hundreds of emotionally disturbed people bring to the therapy camps of my Ways Out Foundation raise doubts.

Only in the “Auswege” camps – patiently, attentively, and lovingly cared for by empathic psycho-amateurs – do most of the emotionally troubled people find what they had previously hoped for years. Sometimes decades, in vain in medical practices and clinics: effective help that is not just symptomatic carriers with “cerebral metabolic disorders” applies, but rather to whole persons with mind and soul. Why did conventional medicine essentially only offer them coupons for synthetic drugs? Because the educational building of psychiatry is based on twelve fairy tales, which it takes over from the propaganda machine of the pharmaceutical industry and passes on to those seeking help. Excessive respect for the doctor’s authority and “the science” he invokes prevents patients and their loved ones from asking the right questions. My book Unheilkunde Does It For You.

How I became a doubter

No, I am not a psychiatrist. And I’ve never used one before. That is why I showed this profession for decades a rather unemotional respect, clouded by few reservations, shaped by my psychology studies. I shared a few beliefs with the general public that seemed natural to me: “Psychiatry is that branch of medicine that deals with mental disorders on a scientific basis. She can reliably identify such diseases, explain them clearly and treat them effectively. Especially in severe cases, it is clearly superior to advisory psychology and psychotherapy, especially to any lay help. “

And so, I did not worry that in some western industrialized countries, one in ten adults and more than five percent of all children and adolescents swallow psychotropic drugs. Ascending trend. Around three and a half million Germans do it, including almost all of the 800,000 hospitalized in psychiatric facilities every year and most residents of old people’s and nursing homes. Whether against fears, depression or lack of drive, against restlessness, lack of concentration or sleep disorders, against aggressiveness or delusions: In any case, we are assured that pharmacy is the best way to help. And we believe it. Surely our doctors know their way around; we trust them.

I owe ample opportunity to rethink all of this to a foundation called “Ausege,” which I set up in 2005 and have been running ever since. Her name says it all: chronically ill, who are considered resistant to treatment from a conventional medical point of view, she tries to open up therapeutic options – in unconventional healing methods, from acupuncture and homeopathy to meditation, energetic massage, bio-resonance, and spiritual healing. To this end, she advises those seeking help, arranges selected therapists for them – and organizes several one-week therapy camps every year. 27 took place between 2007 and 2017.

Up to 20 volunteers work there voluntarily. Who are those people? Hardly anyone has a degree in psychology or medicine, let alone further training as a psychotherapist or specialist in psychiatry. They come from learned professions such as lathe operator, tax assistant, dental assistant, high school teacher, financial advisor, or industrial engineer. Half a dozen spiritual healers are included in every camp, as well as spiritual life advisors and coaches, meditation teachers, music, sound and occupational therapists, educators, and one or two alternative practitioners. A psychotherapist is only there in exceptional cases. A doctor usually also works, but from the “wrong” specialty: general medicine or radiology.

For nine days, this colorful bunch of psycho-amateurs takes care of an average of 20 patients and accompanying parents, partners, siblings; there were around 1200 by 2021, including almost 600 patients. Every fourth person seeking help has a diagnosis of mental illness: from autism, ADHD, and other behavioral disorders to depression and phobias to compulsions. Fear-plagued, burned-out, and traumatized people find it there, occasionally even presumed schizophrenics. And although the rest of the participants focus on physical complaints, they too arrive mostly mentally severely damaged, as do most of their relatives, who are depressed by the constant concern and care.

Long conversations during the “escape” camps, as well as the reports submitted, gave me deep insights into hundreds of moving, often downright harrowing life stories, characterized by significant encounters with modern psychiatry. Without exception, they were unproductive, and in many cases, devastating. Despite psychiatric counseling, despite psychotropic drugs, despite stays in the clinic for weeks and months, almost all those affected felt worse afterward than before. (Volume 10 of my series “Psycholügen” presents a small selection of patients’ fates under the title Escape from the Psycho Trap. How the mentally distressed found a way out – without professional soul helpers and chemicals (2018).)

How did the efforts of lay helpers affect such supposedly therapy-resistant cases? How much did they achieve without scientific theories and techniques, just with plenty of patience, attention, loving attention, skillful conversation, intuition, life experience, wisdom, and empathy? What I experienced on-site exceeded my wildest expectations every time: by the end of a camp week, over 90 percent of those suffering from mental health problems were better off than ever in the care of professional psychiatrists. And that even though no medication was used. The progress achieved was confirmed by the participants themselves in questionnaires and diaries, as was the respective camp doctors based on pre-and post-checks. Amazingly often, the improvements continued afterward. Is it absurd to assume that even more could have been achieved – and what had been achieved would have continued to exist in an even more stable manner – if those seeking help had not had to return home after a week or more?

With every camp like this, burning questions came to my mind. Why do scientifically trained psycho-experts treat our patients in manifestly ineffective, stressful, and harmful ways? Why do psychiatrists rely primarily on synthetic chemistry? How can it be that they disregard and slander other approaches that are undoubtedly good for you?

The explanation requires looking at our healthcare system from a perspective that is somewhat unfamiliar to patients. In their eyes, it is a supply system designed to alleviate their discomfort to restore their lost health. From the industry’s point of view, however, it is a sales market like any other. The aim is to attract as many consumers as possible, to generate the highest possible sales and profits. In this respect, medicinal products do not differ fundamentally from lipsticks and shower gels, fruit yogurts and panty liners, detergents, and cars. Which producer frankly admits that his goods are useless and cause considerable damage if he has invested huge sums in their development beforehand? He would rather sweep business-damaging facts under the carpet, shamelessly exaggerate the benefits, trivialize side effects and risks: There is a threat of drug addiction, permanent movement disorders, obesity and diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, ruined sexuality, brain atrophy, a dementia-like loss of mental abilities, emotional dulling, profound personality changes, destroyed social relationships, incapacity for work, early retirement and premature death.

To take psychiatric drugs, we have to be sick. How do you care for more sick people? By making us believe we belong and need this stuff. What if it is not freely available but only on prescription? Then it is crucial to winning over those who define what is to be considered an illness, identify and treat it: the medical profession.

How do you get doctors to use chemicals to treat mental ailments? By providing them with relevant information from sources that appear credible to them: trade journals, professional organizations, recognized opinion leaders in their profession, lecturers at training and further education events, guideline commissions.

How do you ensure that the “correct” information gushes out of these sources? Through systematic deception – and corruption. The multibillion-dollar business with psychotropic drugs thrives on lies that subservient luminaries in the medical industry take over from the monstrous marketing machine of the pharmaceutical industry and pass them on to their doctor colleagues, the media, and patients, callously mocking their ethics:

1. The fairy tale of the need for therapy: Psychiatry has never been more necessary than it is today. Because mental disorders have recently increased like epidemics.
2. The diagnosis fairy tale: Psychiatrists, and only they, can correctly identify mental disorders on a scientific basis.
3. The evidence-based fairy tale: The effectiveness of psychotropic drugs has been proven in high-quality scientific studies.
4. The fairy tale of the harmlessness: Risks and side effects of psycho pills are rare and harmless.
5. The fairy tale of benefits: psychotropic drugs are suitable for the emotionally disturbed. They reliably relieve symptoms, lead to healing and prevent relapses.
6. The fairy tale of superiority: Mental disorders can best be dealt with pharmaceutically.
7. The fairy tale of the targeted effect: Psychotropic drugs are tailored to certain mental disorders; they remedy them selectively.
8. The fairy tale of the biological basis: Mental disorders are based on a neurochemical imbalance, a pathological brain metabolism.
9. The anti-stigma fairy tale: Psychiatry protects the dysfunctional from prejudice and discrimination.
10. The research fairy tale: The pharmaceutical industry uses its astronomical profits mainly to develop innovative medicines.
11. The fairy tale of progress: The more than a sixty-year success story of Psychopharmacol has produced better and better drugs – remedies of a “new generation.”
12. The fairy tale of disaster control: The rampant psychoepidemic can only be dealt with by more psychiatrists who prescribe even more psychotropic drugs.These dozen lies, spread and enforced with the ruthlessness of organized crime, permeate the psychiatric curriculum, poisoning the minds like metastatic brain cancer. Prescribing doctors trust it, blinded or bought. And those seeking help trust such doctors. In good faith, they surrender to medicine that actually makes them sick and sicker – because there is nothing to be earned from healthy people. With the pathologization of ordinary life crises, the invention of ever new diseases, the abolition of the usual, modern psychiatry has become “probably by far the most destructive force” that has “influenced society in the last sixty years,” as the US American did Psychiatrist Thomas Szasz (1920-2012) held up.

There is plenty of money to keep the propagandistic poisonous kitchen going: Big Pharma is by far the most profitable branch of the economy on our planet, with annual sales exceeding the trillion mark and fantastic profit margins, sometimes over 40 percent. Only a fraction of this goes into researching and developing new drugs, despite all the claims made by the industry. The lion’s share ends up in the marketing pot. And this results in almost unlimited advertising, printing, and lubricating media. They have long since ensured that our health system has taken on mafia-like features. Doctors act as an extension of the pharmaceutical industry. Everyone involved benefits significantly from it. Falling by the wayside: perplexed, fooled people looking for help like those looking for a way out in the camps of my foundation. I dedicate this book to them – in the hope that it will open their eyes just as it did the work of the foundation in my case and encourage them to make a wide berth in psychiatry, confidently and steadfastly. Apart from rare exceptional cases, there are more effective, far less stressful, lower-risk alternatives. If they used them as extensively as they deserved, psychiatrists would be largely unemployed.

This text is the foreword to the book by Harald Wiesendanger: Unheilkunde. The 12 fairy tales of psychiatry – How a pseudomedicine deceives those seeking help (2017)

See also Do Psychological Professionals Really Help Better?

See original post

Support “Ways Out Charity“! With your support, we can help and move forward. > https://bit.ly/3wuNgdO