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PETER HITCHENS: Wondering how they ignored a kidnapper in Ohio? Well we're ignoring something MUCH bigger

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How easy it is for bad things to go on under our noses. How many people in Cleveland, Ohio, must have wondered if something odd was happening in the house of Ariel Castro, but did nothing about it because, well, everyone else seemed to think it was OK?

And so three women were imprisoned there for ten years, a few yards from the normal world, but ignored by all who passed by.

Well, here’s a chance for you to prove that you would not have been one of the people who failed to see that anything was wrong.

For, smack in the middle of our society sits a great and dangerous scandal, which you can help to stop by protesting against it and by refusing to be taken in by it any longer.

Happy pills: Hundreds of thousands of healthy people, many of them children, are needlessly being drugged

At present you are paying for it (at least £250 million a year) out of your taxes. Somebody you know, perhaps a close neighbour or a relative, may be the victim of it.

It involves the needless drugging of hundreds of thousands of healthy people, many of them children. It also involves one of the greatest confidence tricks ever attempted, and some of the most shocking greed.

      More from Peter Hitchens...   PETER HITCHENS: We set Syria ablaze... Now we're hurling in explosives 01/06/13   The horrific killing of a soldier in London does not deserve the attention it is still getting 25/05/13   The Great Innocence Robbery: The awful abuse of girls in Oxford is just the latest consequence 19/05/13   PETER HITCHENS: Fruitcakes and closet racists? Cameron's talking about YOU! 04/05/13   PETER HITCHENS: Fanatical fools trying to blow us all up? They're the least of our problems... 27/04/13   PETER HITCHENS: What 'decriminalise' really means is: we're giving junkies a drug den next door to you 21/04/13   PETER HITCHENS: Let's remember Maggie for what she really was... a tragic failure 14/04/13   PETER HITCHENS: Miliband shoots at a footballing fascist - and scores an own goal 06/04/13   VIEW FULL ARCHIVE

It is exposed this week in a new book that should be read by every doctor, and also by everyone in politics and the media, not to mention any concerned citizen.

The book, Cracked – Why Psychiatry Is Doing More Harm Than Good, by James Davies, published by Icon, is calmly and clearly written in straightforward layman’s English.

The author has serious academic qualifications which entitle him to take a view on the subject. He has spoken to a wide selection of experts.

And he shows that most of what we believe about modern mental health medicine is wrong.

I plan to put a much longer review on my blog, but in the end the book’s the thing. You will gasp with amazement at the sheer nerve of the medical profession, as you turn its pages. Here is what it shows:

There is no objective scientific diagnosis (and so no objective treatment) for almost all so-called mental illnesses.

They are defined every few years by a committee, which once described homosexuality as a sickness (and now doesn’t).

It is currently seriously considering creating an illness called ‘Complicated Grief Disorder’, for those who grieve over a bereavement for more than six months.

There is no scientific proof, repeat, none at all, repeat none whatever, for the idea (still believed by millions) that depression is caused by  a chemical imbalance in the brain, though this is the whole basis for most antidepressant prescriptions.

Drug companies control the research into their own products. They fail to publish results that suggest their pills don’t work. They doctor results to make their pills look better than they are.

In most cases, there is no significant difference in effect on depression between antidepressant pills and dummy sugar tablets.

But the pills do have potent side effects (often these are most radical when people stop taking them, which is why they should only be given up under medical supervision).

Government regulation of this behaviour is feeble.

Many of the medical experts who recommend these pills, in the media and to other doctors, receive large fees from the drug companies, without disclosing this.

Many of the medical experts who recommend these pills, in the media and to other doctors, receive large fees from the drug companies, without disclosing this

Many medical journals gain substantial income from large orders for reprints, which come from the drug companies. The profits from this industry are colossal.

Doctors who fail to toe the line lose valuable consultancy work, and in one case a leading psychiatrist had the offer of a major professorship withdrawn after he delivered a lecture criticising antidepressants.

There it is, going on near you, a grave disgrace that you can help to end. Will you? Or will you walk on by?

  Seeing sense - far too late

Now they tell us. The procession of retired Tory panjandrums who now say we would be better off out of the European Union grows by the day. Even Margaret Thatcher has spoken from beyond the grave, thanks to her biographer Charles Moore.

Well, good. But anyone who looks into the matter with any care quickly discovers that the disadvantages of EU membership – loss of fisheries, loss of independence, incessant regulation, vast net contributions – are hard, measurable and real.

The single alleged advantage – ‘influence’ – is difficult to discover and no substitute for power over your own destiny.

The alleged dangers (lost jobs, lost trade, damage to the City) are transparently silly scare stories that wouldn’t fool a four-year-old.

So why wouldn’t these magnificos speak out when it mattered? Why is it left to people like me to tell the truth and be derided for it as marginal maniacs?

In Lady Thatcher’s case it is said to be because ‘it would have allowed her opponents to drive her to the fringes of public life’. Well, so much for her fabled resolve if so. She had better be renamed the  Plasticine Lady.

  Don't let up on the noise yobs, Helen Helen Mirren

What a pity that Helen Mirren backed away from her original fury at a bunch of street drummers.

Ms Mirren has been showing some signs of good sense lately, and it was encouraging to see a person with real influence turning with wrath against the selfish makers of noise.

It amazes me that there isn’t more violence caused by the arrogance of the noisy. If people tried to force their tastes in food and drink on us, we’d rebel.

If they marched into our homes and told us what colour to paint our walls, we’d say get knotted.

But it’s perfectly all right to force your taste in music (or noise, as I call it) on people as much as a mile away, in the middle of the night. Why?

If Britain was decadent before, is it now degenerate?

When Kate Moss was pictured with white powder, allegedly cocaine, eight years ago, the fashion industry at least feigned shock.

But when Cara Delevingne was seen trying to hide a plastic envelope of white powder, nothing happened.

Meanwhile, on Radio 4, what are they having for breakfast? John Humphrys chortled through a Today programme ‘debate’ as two think-tank spokesmen both advocated decriminalising drugs.

I’m sure they were all quite sober. But isn’t the BBC supposed to be impartial? Aren’t lives hideously damaged by illegal drugs?

Don’t many people still want them banned? Yet the giggly item gave no space to their views. Why should we pay a licence fee to be treated like this?

  A frightening silence

It rather looks as if it’s the Syrian rebels, the ones Mr Slippery and William Hague want us to help, who have been using chemical weapons.

The UN’s Carla del Ponte isn’t sure, but she is plainly very suspicious.

This inconvenient news, funnily enough, was buried or ignored by all the media who have been trying to get us into this war.

  I see we are helping to provide extra police in Mogadishu.

Great for Somalia, but wouldn’t our Government be better occupied trying to get our own legions of coppers to go out on foot patrol in Britain?

To comment on Peter's Mail on Sunday column, please visit his blog by clicking here.



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