While the American Psychiatric Association has yet to recognize the preoccupation as a separate disorder, mental health professionals usually treat it under the broader umbrella of impulse control disorders.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based organization, which won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, says psychologists “led the way” in legitimizing the Pentagon’s approval and use of the tactics. It has joined the Senate committee in calling on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate who should be held accountable.
“The US pharmaceutical industry, long one of the most profitable in the country with profits last year of close to $50 billion, has engaged in an unprecedented amount of criminal activity in the past decade, all aimed at increasing sales, often by illegally promoting drugs for diseases for which evidence that benefits outweigh harm is lacking – also known as illegal off-label promotion,” says Dr Wolfe.
Illegally buying and using prescription medications to help them study, students prefer drugs-of-choice Adderall and Ritalin, which are typically used to treat people who suffer from attention deficit disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Dr. Brian McDonough, medical editor for Philadelphia radio station KYW 1060, said this trend is growing.
As for the psychiatrists, they are a different kettle of fish completely. Any trained psychiatrist is aware that terror is as much torture as physical harm, and any psychiatrist who knows the history of his discipline also knows that terror has been used against the insane as a cock-and-bull “cure” since at least the Middle Ages. I suspect the design of torture techniques used at Guantanamo (techniques known or still unknown to us) came from psychiatrists, and if that’s true, it’s the psychiatrists who should bear the full brunt of public condemnation.
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