A Beautiful Mind; 'Cinematic Glorification of Psychiatric Drugs'?

March 19, 2002 - Source: boston.com

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an international psychiatric watchdog group, says that underlying the controversy about ''A Beautiful Mind'' is an ugly agenda, one aimed at garnering billions more in drug sales and research funds.

The movie alters the most remarkable element that led to John Nash's recovery from schizophrenia -- his refusal to continue psychiatric treatment and drugs, thereby changing the entire success of what Nash was able to accomplish. The film portrays Nash as taking ''newer medications'' at the time of his Nobel Prize.

Nash, himself, says this is pure fiction; he hadn't take psychiatric drugs for 24 years and recovered naturally from his disturbed state. The fact that the screenwriter's mother is a psychiatrist may have had something to do with the film's distortion, Nash said.

Two of the ''newer medications'' that dominate the treatment of ''schizophrenia'' are a more than $5 billion a year industry. The consequences of this current cinematic glorification of psychiatric drugs will inevitably lead, as it has in the past, to escalating psychotropic drug consumption in the community.

While Hollywood has been attacked for its ''violent movies begetting violence,'' more recently the target has changed to demanding that its portrayal of ''mental illness'' fits rigidly within the psychiatric drug model.

In March, 2000, a coalition of psychiatric community groups formed as the Mental Health Coalition Against Stigma in Hollywood, calling on the White House to ''use its influence with the entertainment industry to help lead a challenge to the stigmatization of mental illness in movies and television shows.''

The coalition approached the National Mental Health Awareness Campaign, headed by Tipper Gore and liberally funded by pharmaceutical interests. Gore awarded director Ron Howard with its Awareness Award for ''A Beautiful Mind.''

Members of the Coalition group, along with NARSAD (The National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia) -- groups that have been acknowledged in relation to the story -- are heavily funded by drug interests.

Psychiatry has long refused to accept and suppressed workable non-drug treatments to overcome mental difficulties, even of the severity experienced by John Nash. In the 1970's, psychiatrist Loren Mosher, Chief of Schizophrenic Research for the National Institute of Mental Health, established a drug-free program --Soteria House -- for schizophrenic patients. ''The idea was that schizophrenia can often be overcome with the help of meaningful relationships, rather than with drugs, and such treatment would eventually lead to unquestionable healthier lives,'' Mosher said. Between 85 percent and 90 percent of the acute and long-term clients were able to return to the community without use of conventional hospital treatment.

But like ''A Beautiful Mind,'' this amazing accomplishment was buried and discredited. According to Mosher, ''By 1980, I was removed from my post altogether. All of this occurred because of my strong stand against the overuse of medication and disregard for drug-free, psychological interventions to treat psychological disorders.''

Too many psychiatrists and pharmaceutical interests were allowed input and special access to this movie. Psychiatrists and their front organizations have their own agenda in utilizing the Hollywood set as a means of financing their movement. This propaganda covers up psychiatry's created problem: the growing dependency our culture has on prescribed psychotropic drugs that can cause violent and suicidal tendencies, depression, impotence, and at least one of the ''newer antipsychotics,'' can cause a deadly blood disorder.

Nash believes that he willed his own recovery. So why invent a fictitious ending when the truth is so much more inspiring? Certainly John Nash deserves better than that.

CCHR is a social reform group established by the Church of Scientology with 33 years of exposing psychiatric abuses and reforming the field of mental health. Jan Eastgate, international president.

For more information visit http://www.cchr.org/.

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