Hardly anyone recovers from a mental illness in world. Schizophrenia and other serious disorders, we are told, are incurable and must be managed. And the only management allowed consists of psychiatrist visits and psychotropic drugs—for life. Whether the patient is labeled “bipolar with psychosis,” “bipolar,” or something else, the bottom line is that once these unfortunate individuals become ill, they are not given treatment that enables them to restore what they used to have: their mental health.
After 55 years of dealing with my family members’ mental disorders, I’ve finally learned that the real problem is not mental illness—the problem is how it is treated. Here in the U.S., patients are given care which (A) only suppresses the symptoms and (B) is designed to bring in the highest profits. While caring for my relatives with “uni-polar bipolar,” and “bipolar with psychosis,” and “ADHD” and “slight, atypical bipolar,” and “bipolar with a touch of schizophrenia,” (no joke) and all the rest, I learned the hard way that it’s the profit motive in mental health care that explains why patients don’t recover. There are billions, maybe trillions, of dollars to be made each and every year by managing these illnesses. No one makes a dime once a patient actually recovers.
Clearly, America’s model of mental health care is bad but just how bad is it? Consider this:
In October, 2000 the King County Council (where Seattle is located) passed Ordinance #13974, the purpose of which was to enable mentally ill DSHS clients to recover. The next year, still using traditional mental health care, 9,304 such patients were treated. Of these, 5 recovered, adding up to a success rate of .0005%. For emphasis, that’s point zero zero zero five percent. By any standard, that number represents a colossal failure. Since mental health care is practiced the same way in every city and town across America, I believe it’s safe to say that the recovery rate is about the same from San Diego to New York and everywhere in-between. And yet, it is the only type of mental health care DSHS pays for. And when I say “DSHS,” I mean “you.”
For a small percentage of psychiatric patients, this type of care controls the patient’s symptoms well enough that he/she can lead a fairly normal life. Of course, the fact remains that the symptoms are merely being suppressed, not cured, and he or she must remain a patient—for life.
Let’s take a closer look at the problem. Remember, whether in private offices or through DSHS, mental health care is practiced the same way across the entire country. It is a three-part model that goes like this:
Part One: The patient is given a “diagnosis,” which is, in reality, only a description of his symptoms, such as “ADHD,” “schizophrenia,” “bipolar,” “Sudden Rage Disorder,” “Oppositional-Defiant Disorder,” etc.
Part Two: The patient is given a lifetime of (expensive) appointments to talk about his symptoms.
Part Three: The patient is given synthetic, patented (expensive) drugs in an attempt to control his symptoms.
Aside from a few patients who are also given shock treatment (electro-convulsant therapy), these three parts are all there is to our mental health care system.
It’s like having pneumonia and coughing a lot, so you’re diagnosed with “Bad Cough Disorder:” Part One of your treatment would be your ridiculous diagnosis of “Bad Cough Disorder.” Part Two would be a lifetime of talking about your cough, such as how you feel about it, how your family feels about listening to you cough, how sad it is that you lost your job due to your cough, how DSHS will pay your living expenses since your cough keeps getting you fired, etc. Part Three would be patented, synthetic, (expensive) cough syrup—for life. That is how American mental health care works. It is nothing more than palliative care and that is why it doesn’t work—and never will.
So, what’s the answer? Orthomolecular Medicine
I can tell you from many, many years in talking to psychiatrists during my loved ones’ appointments that there is one topic that is virtually never addressed in American psychiatric care: the biological causes of mental disorders. Yet what could be more important?
What tens of thousands of people in more than 40 countries have learned to use to cure mental illnesses is something that does uncover and cure the biological causes of mental illnesses. It is called “Orthomolecular Medicine,” a term coined by the late Linus Pauling, PhD to describe a method of “correcting the molecules” of the body. In other words, it means rebalancing the body’s biochemistry. It is real, effective, simply awesome mental health care.
Orthomolecular medicine has been around for decades. Even though patients who have been chronically ill for many years have less chance of making a full recovery, many others have been cured of even serious psychiatric problems such as schizophrenia, paranoia, bipolar, anxiety disorders and others. How do they do it? Doctors (or even laypeople, like myself) have learned the proven causes of these illnesses as well as which lab tests detect them. Treatment means using nutritional medicine to rebalance the patient’s biochemistry.
For example, scientists have known since the 1930s that a highly elevated level of histamines can cause psychosis or schizophrenia. In traditional mental health care, the psychotic patient is given a synthetic drug—for life. Yet, a blood test, costing about $40 at most any lab, will show your (or your loved one’s) level of histamines. If the level is too high, it is Carl Pfeiffer, M.D.’s treatment of amino acids, vitamins and minerals that brings it down. As the level returns to the normal range, the psychiatric symptoms gradually disappear but only if the histamines were too high to begin with. There are several other proven, biological causes of psychosis or schizophrenia and each case must be treated according to which biochemical problem he has.
The histamine blood test showed that my relative who was psychotic and talking to demons had an extremely elevated level of histamines. I gave him the nutritional medicine which I bought at the health food store. He recovered completely and now lives a very good and normal life.
Being an “integrative” model of mental health care, orthomolecular medicine does not disallow synthetic medications. If a patient is psychotic, tranquilizers or antipsychotic meds are used. The difference is that the patient isn’t simply left on these drugs for life. The doctor takes the next step: he orders the diagnostic lab tests proven to detect the biochemical causes of mental illnesses. He then prescribes the nutritional medicine necessary to restore his patient’s biochemistry. As his biochemistry rebalances, his psychiatric symptoms disappear and he is gradually weaned off the synthetic medications (if he was taking any).
Since I didn’t know of any doctors in my area who knew how to use orthomolecular treatment, I read books about it and followed the recommendations they contained. Now my relative is 100% well and free of welfare, DSHS, psychiatrists and synthetic medications. Gone also are all the ambulances, ER visits, police officers, psychiatric hospitals, social workers, judges and lawyers.
Another relative diagnosed with “ADHD,” then “Slight, atypical bipolar disorder” is also 100% well and free of any kind of psychiatric care. While more than one school administrators thought he’d end up in jail, he’s now in college with a 3.75 GPA and is on the Dean’s List. Getting his biochemistry straightened out was a big part of his recovery from psychiatric problems, drugs and alcohol, and finding success in life.
But the point of this article is not to talk about my family—I’m just mentioning our experiences so you can see what other people are doing to cure mental disorders, and not just here in the U.S. but in over 40 countries.
The Orthomolecular Society has an annual conference in Canada where orthomolecular experts from all over the world meet to share new scientific information on the abnormal biochemistries that lead up to mental disorders. Laypeople can attend the sessions and may also be interested in attending the “Mental Health Regained” session in which recovered patients get to speak about their experiences. If Canada is too far away for you, the Society also sells a CD of the sessions. They also have the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine and a quarterly newsletter.
Except for those who profit by keeping people mentally ill, such as drug companies, America’s mental health care system is a miserable failure—and it needs to go away. Besides causing inhumane, lifelong suffering for people with a mental illness and their families, it forces you and me to pay about $2 million per patient over the course of his or her lifetime when you add up the costs of half a century of rent, utilities, food, medical and psychiatric care and, in many cases, ambulances, ER visits, and even jail or prison time, not to mention the cost of crimes they tend to commit.
Orthomolecular medicine, by contrast, might cost about $500 for all the lab work and six months’ worth of nutritional medicine. Once recovered, the patient returns to work and pays taxes, doubly benefiting the system. Over the last 60 years or so, orthomolecular medicine has proven to be sensible, effective, inexpensive, and safe. You can even use it to prevent mental illnesses in the first place. It really is awesome mental health care.
Written by Linda Santini, M.Ed. • more info at RestoreMyMind.com