Psychiatry is Practicing Outdated, Fake Medicine

Before psychiatrists classified mental disorders as "depression" or "schizophrenia," ancient witch doctors said crazy people were possessed by evil spirits or invaded by devils. Hippocrates, an early Greek physician, however, said a person fully engorged with black bile suffered from melancholia and was constantly grave and gloomy.

Hippocrates was the first to describe mental sicknesses as having biological roots. He noted four different liquids: phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood. If these liquids were unbalanced, a person would suffer from mental distress or health problems. These liquids were referred to as humors. This Greek idea persisted until medical research of 19th century exploded and modern psychology materialized through the work of Jean Charcot, Anton Mesmer, and Sigmund Freud. However, the idea of chemicals being out of equilibrium in the body never quite died.

In a sense, Hippocratic medicine continues to thrive. Hippocrates is the original gangster of the psychiatric medical model. If not for him, psychiatrists would not be so obsessed with chemical balances and imbalances, and checks and balances within the brain and the its electrochemical wiring. Albeit today, even with some scientific knowledge of brain chemicals and chemical-imbalance sicknesses, there are more and more melancholic people. There is more anxiety and craziness. There is more unhappiness and mental disturbance.

Mental Illness and Mental Disability are Growing Despite Claims of Cures

Mental sickness is growing despite the biological remedies being advanced, including psychiatry's pharmacological program to medicate people for their problems. This modern approach to melancholy combined with arrogance of brain circuitry, has incited a more modern sickness: the quick fix through a pill, detached human connections, and the belief the brain is broken.

For example, Robert Whitaker explored this topic in his book, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. He said there has been a 600 percent hike in the total and ongoing disabilities of millions of people taking prescription psychiatric remedies. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical industrial complex is a billion dollar industry, which is steadily increasing as more people get medicated. According to a Scientific American article, 1 in 6 people are on a psychiatric pill.

This implies the medical approach has done little, other than exacerbate the current crisis, setting the stage for more mind sicknesses, distress, and hopeless anxiety. The pills actually appear to activate symptoms that were previously nonexistent, thus causing new sicknesses as a result of the drug's effects on the brain.

For instance, antidepressants appear to cause "tardive dysphoria" when used over the long term. This means they cause the sickness they are meant to cure. Other psychiatric remedies do similar things: they cause more problems the longer a patient takes them. If they do not cause "mental illness," the drugs chemically castrate the patient and flatten their range of emotional expression. All of this is occurring while psychiatry trumpets claims of cures and other pseudo-remedies. In the literature, this is called an iatrogenic effect. This means the doctor harmed the patient.

The Psychiatric Medical Model has Failed; People Will Begin to Wake Up

Biological cures and psychiatric medical model of care has failed. Those in the psychiatric-industrial complex possess rampant egomania. They have been so proud of their war on mental illness---with their pills and powders---but modern science has not even solved the mind-body problem. They have been arrogant. Psychiatrists have little knowledge of how neurochemistry or neuroanatomy effects brain function and leads to "mental illness," yet they have manipulated people's brains with no concern of the disastrous side-effects. Now people should begin to wonder if their arrogance has paid off, or if they have acknowledged the vile nature of their Frankenstein-like experiments.

The situation is reminiscent of the man who learns to drive on an obscure dirt road, but who has never driven in a vast metropolis...someone who finds himself in a complex downtown roadway and is expected to navigate it and understand the terrain while attending speed limits and acknowledging road signs and cars, with only vague knowledge of inner-city travel and road rules.

This is an accurate portrayal of psychiatry's current state of knowledge concerning all the details of neuropathology. They are the inexperienced drivers navigating the infrastructure of the brain. It is catastrophe in the making, and it is precisely why mental illness has not declined. It is why more people get sick and why psychiatrists base their diagnoses off of behavioral checklists rather than objective lab tests or scans.

They are still toying with those early humors. They are living in the past and have not moved forward. They have done nothing except give rise hubris, pride, and more sickness. In this regard, psychiatry is about control. It has been about suppression. It has been about sedation and mental tyranny. If people do not catch on, the real reasons why people suffer will remain ignored. Their humanness will be left for dead on the roadside. Hopefully, in the future, everyone will wake up and realize the damage psychiatry has done and create new institutions that will actually make a positive difference in people's lives.

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Sterlin Luxan is a visionary thinker, cryptocurrency junkie, connoisseur of psychology, an MDMA high priest, and the Mr. Rogers of Anarchism. He writes for bitcoin.com, runs a consultancy business in the crypto space, and is a public figure. He created the doctrine of relational anarchism and contributes to many causes in the thriving liberty ecosystem.