Profit-driven charade
PSYCHIATRISTS are attempting to further undermine the beleaguered justice system by using the wholly unscientific psychiatric charade called 'Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder' ('ADHD') to explain away the activities of criminals.
Adult offenders are supposedly going to be 'tested' for this type of so-called 'disorder'. It's being claimed that new research has revealed undiagnosed and untreated sufferers in the criminal justice system.
There is however a fundamental stumbling block: 'ADHD' and similar conditions are unscientific. There are no scientific tests to confirm the presence of such conditions.
What psychiatrists can 'test' for are whether offenders have "difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities," whether offenders don't "seem to listen when spoken to directly", whether they lose things necessary for tasks or activities, whether they may be "easily distracted by extraneous stimuli," whether they are often "forgetful in daily activities", whether they "often fidget with hands or feet or squirms in seat", whether they often have "difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly", whether they are often "on the go" and talk excessively.
These behavioural characteristics may well be present in offenders but when put together by a psychiatrist, they are unscientifically redefined as diagnostic criteria for 'ADHD'. The charade then becomes profit-driven through the fraudulent claim 'ADHD' sufferers have a 'chemical imbalance' of the brain, a 'neurobiological disease', a 'brain-based disease' or any other term they decide to use to excuse certain behaviours.
Expensive drugs, cloaked in medical legitimacy, are then introduced to chemically restrain offenders, which produce nullifying effects. These effects are then hailed as 'demonstrably effective' when in fact, all that has happened is the offender has been drugged, and is exhibiting the effects of a dangerous mind-altering drug in his or her body.
Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus, Dr Thomas Szasz says in his book, The Myth of Mental Illness, "Crimes are acts we commit. Diseases are biological processes that happen to our bodies. Mixing these two concepts by defining behaviours we disapprove of as diseases is a bottomless source of confusion and corruption."
Psychiatry's attempt to eradicate the concept of right and wrong and thereby destroy personal responsibility by inventing excuses for the most flagrant misconduct undermines the justice system and deserves the contemptuous label: junk science.
Brian Daniels, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (United Kingdom)
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Weather for Sheffield
Wednesday 08 February 2012
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