THE MENTAL HEALTH INDUSTRY RACKET

          Ignorance is bliss so they say and for the vast majority of this country’s population – it abounds when it comes to the mental health industry.  We have all run into indigent, homeless individuals who roam the streets of nearly every large metropolitan area in the world and although the numbers of homeless have grown tremendously over the past few years due to our deplorable economy, I am focusing this article on those who are homeless because of mental health issues – and there are thousands of them – tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousand of them.

          Like most people, I, myself, never gave much thought to the mentally ill other than to feel pity for them and, on occasion, even fear.  However, beyond that, I blissfully went through life ignorant of their plight – that is until mental illness reared its ugly head in my family.  Then I not only became acutely aware of mental illness but the industry behind it, the devastating effect it has on the families who are trying to understand and cope with what is happening with their ill loved one, and the orchestrated attack the mental health professionals level at the families, targeting them as the real “reason” behind mental illness.

          Having been deeply encrusted in the mental health industry for the past five years and counting, I have learned a great many things – most of which are quite disturbing.  Among what I have learned that no one outside is aware of includes:

          1.       First and foremost – no matter how much schooling an individual has had, how many initials come after their last name, how many plaques they have on their walls – not a single one of them knows squat about helping the mentally ill.  It’s really a guinea pig profession of – let’s try this and see what happens – or – let’s try that.  Usually this or that involves medications.  This is painfully evident in the plethora of commercials we are constantly bombarded with nearly each and every day on mental health medications for depression, anxiety and just plain basic coping skills.  Their first answer to any mental emotion is to throw a drug at it and see if it might – just might – possibly help.  The drug companies are making a financial killing at doling out new drugs and the mental health professionals are getting their kickbacks.  No one – I repeat – NO ONE – knows what the long term effects these psychotropic medications will have on individuals other than that they will fry the brain and, truthfully, this knowledge doesn’t matter to them – it’s irrelevant to the all mighty dollar they are making in the prescribing.  The fact that a person’s mental health can more than likely be addressed without medications through behavior modification isn’t even a consideration – after all, there’s no real money to be made in that route.  In fact, behavior modification is too expensive for them to give it any real consideration.

 

          2.       Secondly, mental health professionals are not interested in dealing directly with the mental health issues - more than likely because they haven’t the foggiest notion of what to do.  I do believe that there are some in the industry who truly do attempt to help but, unfortunately, they are the exception and not the rule.  Instead, most employ the tactic of ignoring the real problems and instead focus on telling the ill person just how wonderful they are.  I cannot begin to tell you how many times I have heard, “We want to focus on their good qualities.  Focusing on their negative behaviors doesn’t help them with their self-esteem.”  To use a bad cliché – “gag me with a spoon.”

          It doesn’t take a mad scientist to know that you cannot solve anything by ignoring it.  That’s a plain and simple common sense fact.  And yet, the professional health professionals do just that – ignore the real issues and fabricate a false, fairytale, wonderful world of meaningless nothing so their “clients” can feel good about themselves.  You see, the professionals won’t even refer to the mentally ill as “patients” – nope, they are “clients” which goes along with the fact that this is a business.  Businesses have clients.  True medical professionals have “patients”.  Try talking to a mental health professional about changing bad, destructive behaviors into positive behaviors and they will attack you as bashing their “client” and being “uncooperative” with their program – a program that I might add has a drastic failure rate.

          My husband and I tried to work with the professionals, requesting advice on what can be done to change the behavior of our mentally ill loved one and for that, we were shot down, accused of being the main problem and not giving enough positive feedback.  At one meeting, a therapist said to our daughter in front of us, “Don’t worry – WE at least love you.”  What the heck?  She was belittling us in front of our daughter because we wouldn’t shower her with praise (we would if there was something to shower her with but, frankly, at that time, things were bad – very bad).  Instead, we wanted to know what could be done to teach her to change her negative behaviors into positive, uplifting behaviors and for that, we were demeaned.  The results of this type of thinking have made our daughter, on many occasions, tell us that we were her only real problem – even her therapists said so.

          3.       The third biggest fact to face is that the person with mental health issues, no matter what those issues might have been at the beginning, will get progressively worse under a mental health professional’s care.  Not only will they be drugged out as stated above, then falsely praised and told that NOTHING they do is wrong – that they are the wronged parties – but they then group the mentally ill together in so-called therapy groups where, instead of learning good, positive characteristics, they learn everyone else’s bad and sometimes horrific behaviors, adopting them as their own.  What is really sad and pathetic here is that the professionals actually THINK the therapy classes are helping.  What they don’t see is that the “clients” have them buffaloed – big time.  They treat their therapists and psychiatrists like puppets.  I’ve personally heard what the “clients” say behind the professionals’ backs.  One thing I have heard repeatedly said is, “I can tell my therapist anything – and they’ll believe it.  It’s really so funny what they will believe.”

          When our daughter’s mental illness behaviors began it was a terrifying time for our family and, naively, we sought out help.  The result today is that we don’t even recognize her – physically or mentally.  And her behavior is far, far worse.  Five years of therapy has done nothing to help but done a ton to push a wedge into our relationship.  At first, we tried to cooperate with the professionals, drastically seeking help and understanding.  We were shocked to see how many others had no support.  Now, after 5 years, we understand why families fall away from giving support.  It is because they receive no real help themselves, they are vilified by the professionals and they are alienated by their loved ones who now believe that there is nothing wrong with them other than their families.  They are hooked on psychotropic drugs and if you try to take them off – the professionals will step in and replace you as a threat to their “client”.  They don’t want you to take away the drugs – the “client” and the drugs are their livelihood.

          4.       Finally, there is NO support for the families.  Oh, there are some small groups out there but for the most part, the families have little to no support.  Even when it comes to legal issues, attorneys will have nothing to do with you.  They don’t want to stand up to the profitable mental health industry and on the chance you do try to fight the industry, they’ll crush you and they know they can crush you – they have NO accountability just as they teach their “clients” that there is no accountability in their actions.

          So how does this get us back to the homeless?  Eventually even the mental health professionals give up on the “client”.  They need to make room for more clients whom they can hook into the business and drugs.  They let the old clients go – clients who have now been separated from their families through years of false accusations – on many levels not to be addressed here.  They no longer have their puppets to play and they no longer have loving families to reach out to them so – on the streets they go.  Their minds are pretty much gone from the years of drugs – they’ve had no real responsibilities – they’ve had little to no accountability – and now they’re thrust on society to care for them - care that should have been given at the beginning – care that should have entailed teaching them positive behaviors by correcting negative behaviors – care, that if addressed at the beginning, could have completely resolved the issues at hand.  Now, when I see that indigent, homeless person – I see a person who was the product of the mental health industry.  I pity them but even more so, I pity their families.

          The mental health industry will continue to get away with producing dysfunctional individuals until we, collectively, say enough is enough.  We are all accountable for our actions – the mentally ill and those who blissfully go through life ignoring them.