Musician and columnist Bradlee Dean, who was prescribed an antidepressant as a child, says we’ve been ignoring the rod of correction. His biography was written in comic-book form.
When I was a young man and ignorant of many things, a friend of mine was taken by her mother to the psychiatric ward of a hospital. My friend had spent an unsettling night ripping up paper into small pieces and crying. It was a sad event, but this is what her mother had to do when her daughter went off her medication. I had never heard the phrase “going off your medication” or “chemical imbalance.”
I thought, why couldn’t such a person just grit his teeth and be normal? Just snap out of it! But I could not discern the labyrinthine paths of the human mind under duress — nor can I today.
Katherine Sharp, writing recently for the Wall Street Journal, was given an antidepressant while in college to relieve anxiety. She writes about the effects of her treatment. “I wanted my feelings to mean something. The idea that my deepest emotions were actually random emanations from my malfunctioning brain didn’t uplift me; it just further demoralized me.”
Dangerous for kids
Antidepressants for children is dangerous, Sharp says, because their personalities are developing, and they don’t get a sense of their true emotions being masked by the drugs. Such drugs can blur the line between “actual” and medicated feelings.
Kids therefore never develop a healthy sense of self-identity. Sharp writes of a 28-year-old woman who began taking Prozac at age 14, and yet who wonders, “If I’d never gotten antidepressants, who would I be? What would I be like?” Sharp concludes that the expanding use of psychiatric medication over the last twenty years has led to prescriptions for patients with “less and less severe cases.”
Since 1988, Americans have increased their use of antidepressants by 400%; and 5% of children 12 to 19 take these medications. Glasgow general practitioner Dr. Des Spence says that anti-depressants are hugely over-prescribed and have become the “golden goose” of drug companies who have formed close ties with doctors to produce a “drug mindset” of how to treat mental illness.
Just plain Godlessness
It seems to me that in some cases, such medications are properly used to correct a chemical imbalance (whatever that is). However, there is a trend of over-prescribing medication while ignoring behavioral causes. Many kinds of misbehavior, such as drug and alcohol abuse, sexual licentiousness, abortion, homosexual behavior, and, let’s just say it — all-around godlessness — lead to emptiness and despair. That’s not to say that only sinful people suffer from depression. Due to man’s fallen state, suffering is a part of the human condition.
Cleaning up the immorality can often be a first step towards peace of mind. Counseling, prayer, and even spiritual direction can be used to complement antidepressant treatments and prescriptions. Even if the person is suffering from the faults of others, an approach that recognizes plain old immorality is a step in the right direction.
Massacres and meds
Preacher and columnist Bradlee Dean has drawn attention to mass shooters such as Sandy Hook’s Adam Peter Lanza, the Aurora “Batman shooter” James Holmes, and Eric Harris of the Columbine High School massacre: They were all users of anti-depressants at the time of their crimes. (Disclosure: Bradlee Dean’s You Can Run International is a client of our PR firm.) In Dean’s article, “School Shooters and Pharmaceuticals,” he points out that the controversial TeenScreen survey, administered to children as young as nine years old, finds that nearly twenty percent of students surveyed are labeled mentally ill, which of course leads to a prescription.
Dean’s article leads off with the provocative quote: “ADHD is fraud intended to justify starting children on a life of drug addiction,” made by Dr. Edward C. Hamlyn, founding member of the Royal College of General Practitioners. Dean, a drummer in a heavy-metal rock band and a preacher, himself was diagnosed as having ADHD as a child, only to be taken off of it because of adverse reactions. Dean also notes that in past generations, the “rod of correction” was sufficient to avert many kids’ behavior problems.
Personal sin
While behavior that is objectively immoral is not the only cause of mental illness, I think that school counselors, therapists, and even pastors would get more success if they pointed out to their clients that many times, this problem is due to personal sin, either on the part of the client or others around him. Thus, a lot of emotional pain could be avoided, averted, or at least properly understood.
However, public schools, since they are controlled by the government and not by parents, won’t mention morality or sin. This generally isn’t the approach of mental health professionals, either. In California, residents are hampered even further since it is now illegal for a therapist to help a homosexual go straight. You call this freedom?
Our world is broken, and suffering is part of it. Those burdened with depression deserve the necessary treatment that alleviates the problem, not merely the symptoms. As the Body of Christ on earth, Christians are united to each other in compassion for all people and share in the struggle for the spiritual — and physical — well-being of humanity.
(See Dean’s autobiography, My War Comic Book – the Testimony of Bradlee Dean.)
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I not speaking bad about parents, God Bless them. But I have seen a lot of parents that were just too busy to be parents and the easy thing to do was to give their kids some form of suppressant drug. Parenting is a full time job even with a normal kid. I think we make them abnormal by giving them drugs. Too many parents these days are way too busy trying to make a living to be parents. And it is the kid that suffers.. Planned parenthood should be taken more seriously. More than that, I agree we should be looking at what are we doing to our kids brains with drugs. In the end it’s easier to blame the results on the gun industry.
Firearms manufacturers exist to supply a multipurpose market of buyers becoming more aware of developing tyrannical government whether as perpetrators or intended victims at risk. Obvious bias exhibited by the many alphabet oversight agencies created in congress is a documented statistic. While only being symptoms of pending danger of sudden death, firearms pose no threat of harm without malicious intent of those that possess them or failure to teach the younger set both proper respect for their potential and required accidental discharge safety measures. Considering firearms as a threat is born out of fear inherent among psychotic minds bearing guilt whether real or imaginary.
History has recorded far too many governments overcome by power hungry politicians for the US public to ignore the current symptoms of tyranny showing through TV media whitewash and omission agenda currently available on every monitor and in many classrooms. Justifiable concern over rapidly expanding government overreach by it’s many corrupt agencies under the congressional, executive and judicial branches has fostered prudent preparation for application of their constitutional limitations by warrant of either respect for the limitations or attitude adjustment by other means. What greater public alarm is required when DHS, ICE, USMS and FEMA have ordered exhorbitant quantities of both firearms and ammunition with priority depleting both public outlet and local law enforcement ammo supplies?
Since neurosis can be an early stage of paranoid psychosis, treatment with psychotropic prescriptions for hormone imbalance related stress cannot be expected to cure either ADHD or PTSD related stress any more than infringement of the second amendment.can cure the growing public concern.over congressional lack of prudence in enforcement of Article II, Sections 2 and 4 qualifications and implementation of impeachment for those brazenly deserving of it’s intent Failing to honor their sworn oaths of office can fill the senate docket for 20 years once ignited in the house. First round decision is left to the elect. Any further negligence on their part is inviting even less trust than they now enjoy, armed violence or both. A call for impeachment is in the house while the public seeks retribution by whatever means necessary for survival of the republic.
To understand ADHD and ‘chemical unbalance’ you’d have to go to wall street advertizing agencies. That’s where all this BS originated. The problem in America is not just the communist in the white house, but the fact we give free rein to psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, aka ‘The Three Amigos’ and big pharma.
Fact: In the last four decades alone this unholy alliance has killed more people than all our wars combined going back to 1776. Between them they take in $2 trillion a year and yet have produced not one cure. How long are we going to let them p*** down our backs and tell us it’s raining. Go to http://www.cchr.org/ for the latest info on these criminals…Semper Fi
My opinion and my experiences won’t be popular but I’m old enough not to care so here goes.
1. Many of my generation, and the one prior, were used in government experiments and those experiments continue on still today. Today, instead of covert, classified, brainwashing experiments where they created MPD or what it now called DID and PTSD, they blatantly use subliminal messages in just about every area of media. The children of my generation and some of the military which are now castoffs created the “need” for the pharmaceutical overlords that exist today. They had to drug us and shut us up somehow and they worked long and hard to make drugs that would keep us in our places so that we wouldn’t react in outrage against what was done to us. Some of us were fortunate enough to get people to believe us and there were Congressional hearings, others were so broken and messed up… Let’s just say God provided people to help us cope and we’re living with it and knowing we aren’t alone anymore. Others have done horrible things. Most are dead or locked up in mental institutions.
I’m disabled because of it. Told over and over again I have an extremely high IQ, but too messed up to continue functioning for any length of time. And if it weren’t for the Lord God Almighty and Jesus Christ I’d be crackerjacks and they’d have me on every pill they make today.
2. Mind Control and Pharmaceuticals aren’t they only game in town. There’s a book that should shed some light on why our society is so screwed up, if anybody would bother to read it. It’s not about mind control, but how two Medical Doctors did a bunch of research (and used prisoners as lab rats) and in that research found that nutritional imbalances lead to insanity and a host of physical ailments that now have new labels. The book, “This Famishing World” should still be online and still be free of charge. If you have ANY medical problems such as diabetes, congestive heart failure, obesity, stubbing you toes on flat surfaces (caused by not being able to pick up your feet properly) and running into things all the time, depression, anxiety, chronic fatigue, acid reflux, fibromyalgia, burning urine, and a host of other health problems that are pretty much new on the horizon, then this book should tell you how to fix it and more importantly, what caused it.
This book was written way before I was born and I’m grateful that someone published it online.
3. Most people are under the impression that drugs fix problems. They do not. They mask the symptoms or cause your body to compensate in a way in which it wouldn’t normally do so. The only true cure I can think of is in the case of antibiotics.
When it comes to mental health drugs, it’s a whole different animal. Mental health drugs not only mask the symptoms but are also created to make the drugged up victims compliant. Many are hypnotics, others dull the brain so that the thinking processes and memory are so deeply affected that people can’t really function on them. It helps keep people in line and it also helps people forget that they are angry.
My husband has similar mental health issues. We both chose different courses of treatment. I never have trusted doctors so my options were to find other ways of coping and thank God I did. He, on the other hand, many times puts me in mind of an Alzheimer’s patient. The depression hasn’t gone away. The anxiety is still there. He just doesn’t respond to it in a normal way. His memory is so horrible, he can watch reruns on TV over and over and over again and vaguely remember what he has seen. Withdrawal from these drugs is hell.
If I don’t motivate him to do something over and over again, many times he just sits and sits. That includes eating.
He’s convinced that the doctors are right.
I on the other hand know they are wrong and my therapist agrees with me. After all of the drugs they’ve shoved down my throat (none of them worked) I found my own solutions with God’s help and a ton of blood, sweat, tears and prayers. I did the research. Ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened. I banged on heaven’s door and I got the answers for myself. My life isn’t perfect, but at least I’m not doped up and dummed down.
Giljones is correct. Our government commits crimes against it’s own citizens. All of the time.
The author of the article is correct as well. I learned that unforgiveness and resentment causes bitterness. Unresolved resentment causes depression and even anxiety. There are a host of human ills caused by unmet spiritual problems.
Then there is physical causation. There are more people in America suffering from malnutrition than in many 3rd world countries. The proof is the vast number of people suffering from all of these gazillion new diseases. And the same cause of these physical diseases also causes mental and emotional diseases.
On another note:
Had a friend who was so dark and violent in his thoughts and art and conversations and behavior, you’d think he was possessed of a demon. He finally found someone that would listen. He got tested and found that he was allergic to sugar!!! Take him off the sugar and he was just as bright and kind and gentle as could be.
When I was a child, a mental health patient escaped from the hospital and came knocking on the door. He said he was hungry. He looked innocent enough but you could tell he wasn’t all there. He asked for a baloney sandwich. My neighbor, which is where I was visiting at the time it occurred, said she would make him a sandwich if he sat on the front porch. She went into to make the sandwich and called the hospital.
They said, “What every you do, don’t give him a baloney sandwich or a hot dog. They food additives make him violent!!!” Thank God she called before she made him the sandwich. They came and got him in just a short while but if he had eaten that sandwich, the story could of ended up on CSI.
So, there are several reasons why people go berserk and there are many reasons why we shouldn’t trust the government with our healthcare.
$2 billion is only the DOD budget item for mistreatment of veterans with 75% increase in applicayion and 150% increase in suicide. Public consumption runs over $4 billion. Don’t expect the perpetrators to easily let go og such a plum.
Guess who pays for all their TV advertisements. Consumers pay for all such BS involving patent protected items in increased prices. Product providers double dip with a healthy “operating expense” tax write off. Just remember who it was that tried to convince you that swallowing that crap was the “right thing to do” as commonly used to prop up narcissistic proposals with a twist of sympathetic endeavor long proven wrong except in the minds of psychotics.
[[[ Mass Shootings, Meds And Mental Illness ]]]
I would call it meanness – rejection – social misfit !!
None of “what you call it” has ever been cured by patented drugs only designed to hide the described symptoms. Ignoring the cause merely compounds the problem while allowing maximum profit for perpetrators of the fraud. The AHCA was designed as icing for the hundred year old conspiracy cake now emerging from its legislated oven in undeniable violent fashion. Denial of convicting evidence can only fuel the deserved vengeance of an informed public placing all those involved by either complicity or negligence at risk of retribution. All have the options of being either part of the solution or continuing to be part of the problem. Consumers still have the purse strings that feed corporate greed so long as AHCA remains as the dream of those that would enslave and the nightmare of those enslaved and unarmed.