Bewa 'Normal' children are often diagnosed with mental disorders

http://www.louisianaweekly.com/weekl...e.pl?20070319l

Bewa 'Normal' children are often diagnosed with mental disorders

With increasing international concern about the large number of children
labeled with so-called psychiatric disorders and prescribed mind-altering
drugs, even the pioneer of psychiatry's billing bible and "godfather of
ADHD," Dr. Robert Spitzer, recently admitted that normal children are being
inappropriately labeled by health care professionals. Spitzer, a Columbia
University psychiatrist, told BBC2 that children experiencing perfectly
normal signs of being happy and sad are being labeled as mentally ill. While
admitting this, he stopped short of informing BBC viewers that there is no
scientific evidence that any of the millions of children so diagnosed have
any physical abnormality that justifies the diagnosis. Nor that because of
this, psychiatrists cannot agree on who is sick and who is well. Yet despite
this fallible "science," worldwide sales of psychotropic drugs prescribed to
treat "mental disorders," including stimulants, antipsychotics and
antidepressants, now exceed $80 billion annually.

Spitzer arbitrarily outlined many of the psychiatric labels and their
symptoms found in psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM). Yet, unlike medical diseases, psychiatric disorders are
entirely subjective - psychiatrists at the American Psychiatric Association
literally vote on which "disorders" to include in the DSM, and the disorders
are removed if they are too much trouble. Such was the case with
homosexuality, which, while found in earlier versions of the DSM, ceased to
be called a "mental disorder" after gay activists picketed an APA conference
in 1973. There are no physical tests, such as blood tests, brain scans or
X-rays that can confirm the existence of any psychiatric disorder.

Spitzer's de facto admission that psychiatric labels are unreliable comes
more than three decades after he first began working on the DSM III. Since
then, psychiatrists have been using the DSM to fraudulently claim that
mental disorders are the same as physical disorders, thereby justifying the
prescription of powerful, psychotropic drugs, including to very young
children.

Despite FDA warnings that psychiatric drugs cause heart attack, stroke,
suicidal and homicidal behavior, diabetes, psychosis and sudden death,
Spitzer stated that psychiatric drugs "don't have serious side effects."
Last year, drug regulatory and other government agencies around the world
issued more than 24 warnings against psychiatric drugs. For more information
on the dangers of psychiatric drugs, read The Report on the Escalating
International Warnings on Psychiatric Drugs by the Citizens Commission on
Human Rights, a mental health watchdog.