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by Alan Korwin

July 5, 2006

"Today, everyone is a victim, including murderers and other criminals. No one is bad—they're merely in need of some medication."

List of mental "diseases" increases 340%

Big risk for gun owners

WARNING!

The following report from the Chicago Tribune and the Associated Press contains conjecture and conclusions presented as legitimate research and science without a disclaimer. Specialists in psycho-active drugs and various types of "psycho-medicine" created the "news."

No opinions except those promoting this "newly discovered" mental disease are included, and obvious implications for human history, if such a disease does in fact exist, are ignored.

The gross ethical violation of one-sided "news" like this is universally recognized, and named in various ethical codes, but had no impact on the publication of this one-dimensional report in newspapers nationwide.

Hidden risk to gun owners:
Politicians and lobbying groups have in the past suggested banning gun possession for people diagnosed with various mental conditions. Bans have been proposed for people who voluntarily take or are compelled to take certain psycho-active drugs for treatment of these conditions -- even if the medical community has doubts about whether the conditions exist.

A compelling report that refutes these "findings" appears at the end of this Page Nine special release.

The controversial but influential field of psycho-medicine gets billions of dollars annually from the public treasury and is responsible for diagnosing millions of people with diseases that cannot be measured or for which there are no tests.

The purported condition in this report, "Intermittent Explosive Disorder" was discovered through public surveys. I am not making this up.

The specialists, from prestigious institutes, are directly and indirectly responsible for tremendous revenues at government-regulated drug makers, which have been drugging increasing numbers of children, students, the elderly, and others accused of having these unmeasureable and sometimes fanciful maladies.

The idea that a disease can be found with the use of a questionnaire is itself subject to debate, though the "news" report does not point this out.

The condition's primary diagnostic clue is "multiple outbursts that are way out of proportion." No guidelines are provided for outbursts that are "in proportion," or any sort of standard, or how many outbursts are sufficient to be labeled with the proposed disorder.

The federally funded doctors promoting the condition decided it begins at age 14. They say it is more common than schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but no one knew that until now.

Reading the report without a cautionary note (such as this) could easily lead to a mistaken belief that the report is scientific and the "disease" is real. In fact it is merely a hypothetical proposal, presented without balance, and should be viewed with healthy skepticism, something the "news" media completely failed to provide.

No historical support, scientific testing, double-blind controls, or other scientifically valid or rigorous news procedures can be found in this "news" release.

The Associated Press and Chicago Tribune published no research beyond what they were told by the study's supporters or handed them from the institutes and titled individuals who issued the report. It is a flagrant violation of core ethical principles but was run nationwide without question.

The Uninvited Ombudsman's take on this follows the report excerpts below.

The lamestream media told you:

"Road rage? It Could Be 'Intermittent Explosive Disorder'" (Associated Press, Jun. 5, 2006)

Excerpts reprinted for educational purposes.
See the whole report at the end of this file.

"People think it's bad behavior and that you just need an attitude adjustment, but what they don't know is that there's a biology and cognitive science to this," said Dr. Emil Coccaro, chairman of psychiatry at the University of Chicago's medical school...

The study was based on a national face-to-face survey of 9,282 U.S. adults who answered diagnostic questionnaires in 2001-03. It was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

About 5 percent to 7 percent of the nationally representative sample had had the disorder, which would equal up to 16 million Americans. The findings were released Monday in the June issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.

The findings show the little-studied disorder is much more common than previously thought, said lead author Ronald Kessler, a health care policy professor at Harvard Medical School.

"It is news to a lot of people even who are specialists in mental health services that such a large proportion of the population has these clinically significant anger attacks," Kessler said.

Coccaro said the disorder involves inadequate production or functioning of serotonin, a mood-regulating and behavior-inhibiting brain chemical.

Treatment with antidepressants, including those that target serotonin receptors in the brain, is often helpful, along with behavior therapy akin to anger management, Coccaro said.

"This is a well-designed, large-scale, face-to-face study with interesting and useful results," said Dr. David Fassler, a psychiatry professor at the University of Vermont.

Jennifer Hartstein, a psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, said she had just diagnosed the disorder in a 16-year-old boy.

Hartstein said the study is important because many people are not aware of the disorder.

Selected sections of the Chicago Tribune report:
See the whole report at the end of this file.

"Our new study suggests IED is really out there and that a lot of people have it," said Dr. Emil Coccaro, the University of Chicago's chief of psychiatry.

"That's the first step for the public to actually get treated for it, because if you don't think it's really a disorder, you're never going to get treated for it."

Coccaro was the first to show, through a preliminary 2004 study, that the disorder might be an unrecognized major mental-health problem.

He also pioneered therapy designed to treat the disorder involving anti-depressants, mood disorder medications like lithium and cognitive therapy.

"Given its age of onset, identifying IED early, determining its causes and providing treatment might prevent some of the associated secondary disorders, such as anxiety and alcohol abuse," said Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:
Hillary R. Clinton, who reportedly threw objects and broke things during repeated fits of rage while First Lady under President Clinton, may actually be afflicted with a newly proposed disease, a recent medical report implies.

Without a face-to-face interview with Mrs. Clinton, and a way to test the accuracy of her responses to a carefully designed battery of questions, it would not be possible to determine if she has the condition, called Intermittent Explosive Disorder, or if she just gets angry.

The likelihood that she will submit to testing prior to her expected run for the Presidency in 2008 is unknown, but not considered likely by some experts.

The acronym for the disease, IED, is the same as that for Improvised Explosive Devices used by Muslim jihadis in Iraq, and is just a coincidence.

The condition, reported in the highly regarded medical journal Archives of General Psychiatry, implies that political and business leaders throughout history may actually have suffered from the heretofore unrecognized, and untreated, condition. Frequent fits of anger are attributed to countless high-profile figures, across the globe, since the dawn of mankind.

Archives of General Psychiatry has been responsible in the past for proposing numerous new conditions doctors believe they have found. Many have turned out to be highly controversial, such as attention-deficit disorder.

"With publication in AGP, there is now a good chance Intermittent Explosive Disorder will be added to the DSM," said an observer who wishes to remain anonymous (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is the main directory of psycho medicine).

"That would make it a 'respectable' disease, eligible for huge federal research grants, and most important, would open the gates to drugging countless people who could then be diagnosed as having the condition. The financial windfall for the federally controlled drug makers and federally controlled drug distributors is hard to imagine," this expert speculates.

The whole idea of drugging people, who exhibit routine human behavior that falls into disfavor with segments of the medical community, or is the subject of a research project, has been challenged by numerous interest groups. Whether inattention, anger, prolonged bursts of enthusiasm, or keen interest in sexual activity are actually diseases remains highly controversial, though "news" reports frequently fail to mention this.

The Associated Press and Chicago Tribune reports provided no contrary view or balanced perspective whatsoever, an apparent flagrant violation of the SPJ Code of Ethics, and even AP's own ethical guidelines which state:

"The newspaper should strive for impartial treatment of issues and dispassionate handling of controversial subjects."

"The newspaper should guard against inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortion through emphasis, omission or technological manipulation."

"The newspaper should serve as a constructive critic of all segments of society."

"The newspaper has a special responsibility as surrogate of its readers to be a vigilant watchdog of their legitimate public interests."

By providing no contrary perspective, and merely running verbatim the material handed to it, the AP appears to have abjectly failed in meeting these ethical requirements, industry experts say.

A stunning counterpoint --
Summarized by The Week magazine:

This may come as something of a shock, said Irwin Savodnik in the Los Angeles Times, but you're probably mentally ill. Just ask your local psychiatrist.

The so-called science of psychiatry has expanded the definition of illness to include all sorts of commonplace human frailties, and now sees mental illness lurking under nearly every hat.

When the American Psychiatric Association first published its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1952, its 132 pages covered 107 disorders. By 1994, the DSM-IV had "exploded to 866 pages and 365 conditions"—a 340 percent increase in the number of diseases.

Nearly every eccentricity is now being treated as a disease. As a practicing psychiatrist, I find this trend deeply disturbing. The more we blame our self-destructive or anti-social behavior on diseases, the easier it becomes to duck personal responsibility.

Today, everyone is a victim, including murderers and other criminals. No one is bad—they're merely in need of some medication. Psychiatry had better take stock, before its diagnostic manual expands to 500 kinds of mental illness, or 1,000.

The last thing this country needs "is more self-indulgent, pseudo-insightful, overly-conscious babble about people who can't help themselves."

In related news:
The Uninvited Ombudsman's friends at Great Potential Press just won an award related to this report's subject --

Gifted children are being given medications they do not need, and receiving inappropriate counseling, all as a result of misdiagnoses.

The book that addresses this issue, Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults, just struck gold by winning ForeWord Magazine's 2005 Book of the Year Award in Psychology.

Six distinguished health care professionals combine their knowledge in this book to help parents and professionals recognize the difference between gifted children and children with actual disorders. Knowing the difference can prevent misdiagnoses of ADHD, Asperger's, depression, and other disorders.

"These authors have brought to light a widespread and serious problem," says Jack G. Wiggins, Ph.D., former President of the American Psychological Association.

To learn more about this problem, visit www.bookflash.com/media_room/great_potential/ Misdiagnosis/Index.cfm.

Great Potential Press, based in Scottsdale, is an award-winning company that has published books for parents and teachers of bright children for more than two decades.

Corrections and Clarifications
will appear in the next regular edition of
Page Nine.

See the official Journalist's Code of Ethics here:
http://www.gunlaws.com/NewsAccuracy.htm
Compare it to the news you see every day.