The psychiatric medical model revolution as the ultimate propagandist triumph

[cinephile]

As I approach the finish line on 15 years of utterly unnecessary and ruinous psychiatric medication, I find myself getting downright philosophical. And cynical as hell. After viewing the first half of

, I now realize just how much of an enormous propagandist victory the last 30 years of psychiatry has been. And it's very much in the grand tradition of the Soviet model.

 

Here are some highlights from the video, and my observations:

 

33:39 -- Here he speaks of how part of his job was to keep visiting intellectuals and foreign journalists “permanently intoxicated” whenever he was talking about the USSR so he could “kill the awareness or curiosity” of foreign journalists and “in no time my guests would be very happy and see everything in a kind of pink, nice color.” This has obvious parallels with the practices of pharmaceutical companies who give free food and various swag to doctors to soften them up and be more receptive to the merits of the drug. And, of course, often attractive women are the drug reps to further massage the (presumably male) doctor’s prescribing practices. Dan Carlat offers an excellent example of how he fell for this tactic in his book UNHINGED (107-111). Doctors are actually the perfect targets for this because they naturally consider themselves very smart and think they could never fall for such a sleazy tactic and that they are essentially “useful idiots” for the drug companies.

35:11 -- The Look magazine article which portrays the USSR as some kind of emerging Communist paradise to American audiences is EXACTLY like the bogus stories mainstream media journalists published during the DSM-III/medical model “revolution.” Robert Whitaker details this very well in his Anatomy of an Epidemic (specifically the “The Story Told to the Public” section on page 289). Even the photo caption of Russians on the beach -- “At long last -- an easier life and time to enjoy it” -- could be torn from any modern psych med ad or commercial! Nothing changes. Make sure to watch this whole segment: it’s absolutely EERIE how similar it is to how journalists and psychiatrists themselves were -- and continue to be! -- duped.

39:40 - The tour of a “typical” Siberian kindergarten that was, unbeknownst to the US journalists, actually one for affluent children, is no different than “exciting” studies that are actually rigged studies with cherry-picked data that we all know about in psychiatry.

41:54 -- When foreign journalists would ask about the infamous prisons in Siberia, Bezmenov says, “When they asked stupid questions we gave stupid answers. ‘No, there are no prisons in Siberia. No, most of the people you see are free citizens.” Is this really any different than pharmaceutical companies playing down ghastly side effects like protracted withdrawal or diabetes?

42:27 -- Bezmenov gives a DEAD ON explanation why the US journalists went home and wrote all the lies about how great the USSR was: they were afraid they’d lose their jobs if they wrote the truth. It’s also just pure greed: there’s just too much easy $$ in the lie. KOLs anyone? I don’t think I need to draw any parallels with this one, but I’ll just give one example: Nancy Andreason sat on her shocking antipsychotics/brain shrinkage results for a long time because (at least this is my guess) she knew full well the impact it would have on the field -- and her career. It’s also why most people don’t blow the whistle: they fear job loss and ostracization.

 

--> All of that to say this: Most people are more willing to believe than to inquire, and that’s as true today as it was in Soviet Russia. We’re bullsh*tting ourselves if we think we’re somehow smarter or more courageous today in this so-called technological/scientific wonderland than we were back in the Cold War. Let’s just get used to the fact that everyone on this board -- whether it be patients or psychiatrists -- were all the useful idiots of the psychiatric cartel. Oh and by the way: America isn’t somehow more “special” or “different” from Russia. We’re all crooks. Well, except for one thing: as Yakov Smirnoff might say, “In America, you take many pills. In Soviet Russia, pill take YOU!”

 

Kind of deep, huh? Who really IS getting taken -- the pill or you?

[Altostrata]

Yep, propaganda techniques all have a sameness, don't they?