Why Psychiatry Should be Abolished as a Medical Speciality

http://www.antipsychiatry.org/abolish.htm

The disadvantage to the whole of the medical profession of recognizing psychiatry as a legitimate medical specialty occurred to me when I consulted a dermatologist for diagnosis of a mole I thought looked suspiciously like a malignant melanoma. The dermatologist told me my mole did indeed look suspicious and should be removed, and he told me almost no risk was involved.

This occurred during a time I was doing research on electroshock, which I have summarized in a pamphlet titled "Psychiatry's Electroconvulsive Shock Treatment - A Crime Against Humanity".

I found overwhelming evidence that psychiatry's electric shock treatment causes brain damage, memory loss, and diminished intelligence and doesn't reduce unhappiness or so-called depression as is claimed. About the same time I did some reading about psychiatric drugs that reinforced my impression that most if not all are ineffective for their intended purposes, and I learned many of the most widely used psychiatric drugs are neurologically and psychologically harmful, causing permanent brain damage if used at supposedly therapeutic levels long enough, as they often are not only with the approval but the insistence of psychiatrists. I have explained my reasons for these conclusions in another pamphlet titled "Psychiatric Drugs - Cure or Quackery?"

Part of me tended to assume the dermatologist was an expert, be trusting, and let him do the minor skin surgery right then and there as he suggested. But then, an imaginary scene flashed through my mind: A person walks into the office of another type of recognized, board-certified medical specialist: a psychiatrist. The patient tells the psychiatrist he has been feeling depressed.

The psychiatrist, who specializes in giving outpatient electroshock, responds saying: "No problem. We can take care of that. We'll have you out of here within an hour or so feeling much better. Just lie down on this electroshock table while I use this head strap and some electrode jelly to attach these electrodes to your head..." In fact, there is no reason such a scene couldn't actually take place in a psychiatrist's office today. Some psychiatrists do give electroshock in their offices on an outpatient basis. Realizing that physicians in the other, the bona-fide, medical and surgical specialties accept biological psychiatry and all the quackery it represents as legitimate made (and makes) me wonder if physicians in the other specialties are undeserving of trust also.

I left the dermatologist's office without having the mole removed, although I returned and had him remove it later after I'd gotten opinions from other physicians and had done some reading on the subject. Physicians in the other specialties accepting biological psychiatry as legitimate calls into question the reasonableness and rationality not only of psychiatrists but of all physicians.