Psychiatry: Synonymous with Fraud
"Fraud" has several definitions.
Legally, it is broadly defined as "intentional deception resulting in injury to another. Fraud usually consists of a misrepresentation, concealment or nondisclosure of a material fact, or at least misleading conduct, devices or contrivance."
There are also specific types of fraud:
"Constructive fraud" is comprised of "all acts, omissions and concealments involving breach of equitable or legal duty or breach of trust [negligent or willful violation or failure to perform a duty owed to another] resulting in damage to another. It is thus fraud that is presumed from the circumstances, without the need for any actual proof of intent to defraud."
"Fraud in fact" is defined as "actual fraud; deceit; concealing something or making a false representation with an evil intent when it causes injury to another."
Keep these definitions of fraud in mind when reading the following about the field of psychiatry.
Chemical Imbalance — Diagnostic Fraud
Psychiatrists and the mental health industry claim that mental disorders, such as "ADHD," "obsessive-compulsive," and "bipolar" are medical conditions that are brain-based, due to a chemical imbalance or other physiological medical cause. This claim is used to justify the use of electroshock, psychosurgery and psychotropic drugs to treat the so-called medical condition. This claim — that psychiatric disorders are no different than medical diseases — is fraudulent.
Real diseases, such as diabetes or cancer are demonstrable by physical evidence. For example, there are tests that show the elevated glucose levels that occur in diabetes. Cancer can be proved by the existence of cancerous cells.
Psychiatrists frequently cite "chemical imbalance" as the cause. This is nothing more than another psychiatric theory that has never been proven. This popular misconception is due to nothing more than heavy public marketing; we've just been hearing it for so long that many take for granted that it is true. It is not true and has in fact been thoroughly discredited by researchers.
Psychiatry has no objective tests that prove the existence, cause or physical basis of a single psychiatric disorder. Psychiatrists merely observe a behavior or set of behaviors and give it a name. It looks like medicine and it sounds like medicine and that is where the similarities end. The American Psychiatric Association admits as much in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (or DSM, psychiatry's dictionary of behaviors): "For most of the DSM-III disorders...the etiology [cause] is unknown. A variety of theories have been advanced...not always convincing — to explain how these disorders come about."
If they don't know the cause, then asserting that it is physical, chemical, biological or brain-based is fraud.
A new study published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics (Volume 75, Issue 3, April 2006) illuminates a new aspect of this fraud: the study's authors reported that 56% of the psychiatric experts who developed the most recent edition of the DSM (published in 1994) had one or more undisclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry. It found even higher percentages for panels that developed particular sections of the manual: the schizophrenia and "mood disorders," groups consisted 100% of experts with financial ties to drug makers and more than 80% of panel members for "anxiety disorders," "eating disorders," "medication-induced movement disorders" and "premenstrual dysphonic disorder" had financial ties.
Additionally, said Lisa Cosgrove, University of Massachusetts psychologist and lead author of the study, "No blood tests exist for the disorders in the DSM. It relies on judgments from practitioners who rely on the manual."
Yet psychiatry has continued to assert that these disorders are actual medical diseases. So, the public becomes the victim of psychiatry's "misrepresentation, concealment or nondisclosure of a material fact…resulting in injury" when they accept a psychotropic drug, electroshock or psychosurgery for what they have been deceived into believing is a physically-based disease.
All patients who manifest "mental illness" are no doubt suffering. But their suffering is generally traceable to a definite physical condition that can be isolated, tested for and corrected with proper medical treatment or other non-psychiatric approaches.
Case in point: an Indiana housewife contacted CCHR in July of 2003 to report that she had gone to the hospital feeling depressed. Over months, she was given one label after another ("severe depression," "bipolar disorder," "borderline personality disorder") as the psychiatrists failed to treat her. She was finally labeled with "post-traumatic stress disorder" though neither the label nor the drugs they prescribed for it succeeded in improving her condition. She stayed on the drugs until November 2004, when she suffered a grand mal seizure. A proper medical examination revealed a tumor in her brain about the size of a tennis ball which doctors said had to have been there for at least 10 years. Her depression lifted following removal of the tumor.
CCHR receives many such reports.
Every person who has ever been given a psychiatric label such as "ADHD," "bipolar," or "obsessive-compulsive," — all based on the chemical imbalance lie — and treated with heavy psychoactive drugs or other psychiatric approaches is the victim of misdiagnosis, negligence and malpractice. Every such patient may have a valid cause of action (basis for a lawsuit) against the psychiatrist for neglecting to perform a full physical examination to detect the actual physical causes of their symptoms.
Treatment Fraud
CCHR has received thousands of psychiatric abuse reports from all over the world from people who have been put under psychiatric "care" but were not healed. In other words, they willingly engaged in psychiatric treatment (with the expectation that the psychiatrist would make them well) and in all cases, were not helped (psychiatry failing to perform a duty owed) and in most cases, were in worse condition ("resulting in damage") following treatment than when they entered.
Case in point: a New York mother contacted CCHR to file a report about how a hospital's psychiatric ward treated her daughter in 2005: The girl, then 17 years old, was depressed. She was admitted and immediately put on heavy psychiatric drugs that put her into a state of prolonged unconsciousness, during which time she was neglected by the hospital staff, all but forgotten in an unclean room, upon a bed covered in shabby linens. The mother more often than not opted to change the linens and clean the girl's bathroom rather than wait for the hospital to get around to it. The girl was admitted five times in as many months, each time the mother expecting that the hospital would help her daughter. But all they did was "warehouse" the girl and use up her insurance. Ultimately, the mother sent her to a facility in the Southwest U.S. where she was treated properly, recovered from her emotional upset and is not on psychiatric drugs.
The bottom line is that psychiatry, with their institutions, drugs, shock and restraint does not cure people, does not restore their happiness, confidence or emotional wholeness. Psychiatry, through routine treatment fraud, creates legal causes of action for which psychiatrists can be held liable.
Attorneys seeking work need look no further than their local psychiatric institution, state hospital or medical center psychiatric ward. They are also welcome to log on to www.psychcrime.org and select "Attorneys" to find out about current cases of psychiatric fraud and abuse.
Health Insurance Billing Fraud
Though only 6% of U.S. physicians are psychiatrists, the specialty is over-represented in the area of health insurance fraud.
The United States loses approximately $100 billion (€81.5 billion) to healthcare fraud each year. Up to $40 billion (€32.6 billion) of this is due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.
A study of U.S. Medicaid and Medicare insurance fraud, especially in New York, between 1977 and 1995, showed psychiatry to have the worst track record of all medical disciplines.
In 2004, the U.S. Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) issued a report stating: "The DCIS has found an increase in fraud in the delivery of mental health services, including those provided by hospitals, clinics and private practitioners. A review of recently completed and ongoing investigations suggests that psychiatric and psychological services are vulnerable to abuse, particularly in the following areas: billing for 'phantom' psychotherapy sessions; billing for excessively long hospital stays for inpatient psychiatric care; providing kickbacks to physicians; and grossly inflating the number of psychotherapy hours provided to obtain thousands of dollars in overpayments from government and private insurance programs."
Additionally, there is another aspect to psychiatry that might not at first present itself as being relative to insurance fraud. A 1998 review of U.S. medical board actions against 761 physicians disciplined for sex-related offenses from 1981 to 1996 found that psychiatry and child psychiatry were significantly over-represented. While psychiatrists accounted for only 6% of physicians in the country, they comprised 28% of physicians disciplined for sex violations.
Sex with patients is obviously not within the realm of genuine therapy. The American Psychiatric Association's Principles of Medical Ethics states, "Sexual activity with a current or former patient is unethical." Similarly, the American Psychological Association's Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code Of Conduct states, "Psychologists do not engage in sexual intimacies with current therapy clients/patients." Yet, so prevalent is this crime that as of 2004, more than 25 statutes had been enacted to address the increasing number of sex crimes against patients by psychiatrists and psychologists in the United States, Australia, Germany, Sweden and Israel; so prevalent is the psychiatrist who breaks his ethical code that such laws have become necessary.
Many of those patients sexually abused by psychiatrists have insurance which pays the psychiatrist's bills. This opens up the possibility of billing fraud. Naturally, one would think that in every case in which a psychiatrist was disciplined by a licensing board for a sex offense involving a patient, that the insurance company (or federal/state government, in the case of Medicaid/Medicare) would want to investigate to find out if they were billed for therapy sessions on days when sex took place.
Whistleblowers are encouraged to report psychiatric fraud to CCHR by logging on to www.psychcrime.org and selecting "Whistleblowers."
Victims of psychiatric sexual assault should preserve any evidence and file a police report at once. You may also contact CCHR for further assistance and to make a report in full confidentiality.
