DIAGNOSIS OF MENTAL ILLNESS FOR NEW

AGE RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL BELIEFS

2002

Dr Romesh Senewiratne (MD)

In 1995, the World Health Organization sponsored an Australian university (the

University of New South Wales) to compile and publish The Management of
Mental Disorders, Volume 2: Handbook for the Schizophrenic Disorders. It was
distributed to selected doctors, free of charge, by the Belgian drug company
Janssen-Cilag. This drug company markets Haldol injections, tablets and syrup
(haloperidol) in Australia, and in the book, haloperidol is recommended as a
treatment for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. In the same manual,
on page 12, a list is given of questions that should be asked by health care
workers to diagnose unusual thought content, which in turn was to be regarded
as indicative of schizophrenia

The list of questions for diagnosis of unusual thought content, taken from the
Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), which is being promoted by the World
Health Organization (WHO) is as follows:
1. Have you been receiving any special messages from people or from the way
things are arranged around you?
2. Have you seen any references to yourself on TV or in the newspapers?
3. Can anyone read your mind?
4. Do you have a special relationship with God?
5. Is anything like electricity, X-rays or radio waves affecting you?
6. Are thoughts put into your head that are not your own?
7. Have you felt that you were under the control of another person or force?

It adds, that if the individual reports any odd ideas/delusions the following
questions should be asked:
1. How often do you think about (use individuals description)?
2. Have you told anyone about these experiences? How do you explain the
things that have been happening (specify)?

Above the questions is a list of the kinds of beliefs that should be regarded as
odd/deluded/bizarre ideas requiring an increase in antipsychotic medication (of
which haloperidol is one of the most commonly prescribed):
Unusual beliefs in psychic powers, spirits, UFOs or unrealistic beliefs in
ones own abilities

The manual instructs that the rating of the severity of the delusion should be
based on the level of conviction with which the belief is held (rather than how
untrue the belief is). In other words, it instructs health care workers, including
doctors, nurses, psychologists and social workers to diagnose madness on the
basis of whether people have particular religious, scientific and political beliefs,
despite this being against several United Nations treaties, laws and covenants as
well as Australian state mental health laws.

In the 1990s there was a sudden explosion of what were called New Age beliefs,
including several organised systems of belief that could best be described as
religions, in Australian cities. In fact, the New Age religion as a whole, had a
more unified system of beliefs than that of the Christian Churches. New Agers
tended to believe in telepathy, psychic powers, animism and spiritism. They
tended to believe in reincarnation and the benefits of vegetarianism. Some New
Age writers also claimed to have expertise at channelling, sometimes from
ascended masters, sometimes from God, or from angels, and sometimes from
extraterrestrials and metaterrestrials (beings from other dimensions). Many
New Agers extolled the virtues of crystals, often ascribing them near magical
powers or frankly magical powers. New Age adherents frequently visited natural
therapists and herbalists for their medical needs, and maintained a suspicion
towards the establishment including the government and medical doctors. They

were an important part of the youth movement in the 1990s, and had their own
distinctive culture in Australian cities.

In terms of religious beliefs, the New Age religion was extremely complex and
constantly being redefined and added to in a way that other older religions have
not experienced in recent times. A plethora of magazines and popular books
exhorted the benefit of spirit guides and affirmations, meditation, chanting
and the possibility astral travel. The New Age religion can best be summarised,
however in the list of Harper-Collins Aquarian Series, published in the 1990s by
the Murdoch publishing empire:
1. An Introduction to Graphology
2. Colour Therapy
3. Dowsing
4. How to develop your ESP
5. Incense and Candle Burning
6. Invisibility
7. Levitation
8. The Power of Chi
9. Meditation: the Inner Way
10. Practical Visualisation

11. Understanding Astral Projection

12. Understanding Astrology
13. Understanding Auras
14. Understanding the Chakras
15. Understanding Crystals
16. Understanding Dreams
17. Understanding the I Ching
18. Understanding Numerology
19. Understanding Palmistry
20. Understanding Reincarnation
21. Understanding Runes
22. Understanding Tarot

If these books were read and believed, they would produce a complex belief
system that would satisfy the most careful and rigorous psychiatric evaluation
as indicative of schizophrenia, according to widely accepted textbooks, as
well as The Manual of Mental Disorders, Vol2: Handbook for the Schizophrenic
Disorders.

The ideas and philosophies espoused in the Harper-Collins Aquarian Series of

New Age paperbacks did not appear in a religious and philosophical vacuum,
nor were most the original ideas of Rupert Murdochs publishing empire. They
are a collection of ideas, crafted into a religion, derived from occult beliefs,
mysticism, spiritism and two eastern religions, in particular Hinduism
and Buddhism. They are also a series of beliefs actively proscribed by both the
Anglican and Catholic Churches. In fact, Bishop George Pell, the Archbishop of
Melbourne, warned his flock, not long ago, that reading these New Age books
could release elementals, evil forces that required secret exorcisms by
Catholic priests to get rid of them. He warned about the Tarot, Oija Board
and other occult arts as being the work of the Devil. This is fully in line with
the official doctrines of the Catholic Church.

The Protestant Church also takes a dim view of New Age religions and regards
the tarot cards, palm-reading and attempts at communication with the dead to
be dangerous, bordering on evil. Parents who find their children experimenting
with Tarot cards may well consult a priest before turning to a psychiatrist.

Belief in reincarnation is common to the Buddhist and Hindu religions but is

contrary to Christian teaching that after death one ascends to Heaven or
descends to Hell. Belief in reincarnation is, by this token, a seriously heretical
idea according to Christian orthodoxy, as is communication with spirit guides
with the possible exception of angels.

In the World Health Organisation-promoted Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale

(BPRS), some of the questions of which were given at the beginning of this
article, health care workers are encouraged to rate the delusions according
to severity on a scale from 1 to 7. Grade 7, or extremely severe is to be rated
if full delusion is present with almost total preoccupation OR most areas of
functioning disrupted by delusional thinking. Severe delusions are regarded
as more than adequate reasons for involuntary commitment to public hospital
psychiatric units and forced injection with Haldol or another
dopamine-blocking drug if the person refuses to take the drug voluntarily. This
is widely accepted as appropriate treatment for the treatment of relapses of
schizophrenia, and also for treatment of mania and even for first episode
psychosis. It is also taught, in Australia, that people with these diagnoses
are notorious for not regarding themselves as being mentally ill, let alone
being in need of drug treatment. This is termed lack of insight, which, in a
circular argument, is itself is regarded as a typical sign of psychosis.

What does this mean for transcultural psychiatry in Australia and around the
world? Haloperidol is marketed by the drug company Janssen-Cilag (then a
Belgian company, now a part of the American giant Johnson and Johnson) as
an antipsychotic medication. Doctors and nurses in Australia dutifully explain
to their reluctant patients that Haldol injections are good for their mental
health, and will help them get better or stay well. This is frankly untrue
Haldol is a crippling chemical restraint that causes permanent brain damage
when repeatedly consumed, whether by mouth or whether by depot
injection. The result of this form of permanent brain damage by dopamine
blockers has a name Tardive Dyskinesia.

Tardive dyskinesia is one of the most stigmatising and embarrassing forms of

movement disorder and does not occur naturally or as the result of anything

other than dopamine-blocking drugs. Sufferers are plagued with repeated

tongue protrusion, puffing of cheeks, facial grimaces, weird movements of
their arms and hands, and abnormal walking gaits. A person with tardive
dyskinesia is unable to run without falling. Frequently, this iatrogenic
collection of strange, involuntary movements is regarded as evidence of
madness by members of the community, family and friends and even by
victims themselves, who are rarely forewarned about the fact that these
medications have been known, for decades, to cause tardive dyskinesia.

Long before they develop tardive dyskinesia most people who are injected
with or swallow haloperidol experience other movement disorders notably
Parkinsonism and akathesia. Parkinsonism refers to dopamine-blocker
related reproduction of the symptoms of Parkinsons Disease, a
degenerative brain disease characterised by difficulty initiating movement,
tremor, muscular rigidity and psychological depression. These symptoms are
caused by all dopamine-blocking drugs in a dose-related fashion. Large doses
are more likely to cause severe Parkinsonism although there are differences in
individual and racial susceptibility to this effect. It has been reliably reported
that dark-skinned people are more susceptible to movement disorder with
dopamine-blocking drugs, due to the biochemical links between dopamine and
the skin pigment melanin.

Akathesia, another common side effect of dopamine-blocking drugs is also

liable to be seen as evidence of mental illness. When suffering from akathesia
one is unable to keep still, feeling a constant urge to pace. If provided only
with a locked room, the victim paces up and down, unable, as a direct
physiological response to the drug, to sit still for any period of time. The
combination of producing akathesia and then confining patients is commonly
practiced in Australian psychiatric hospitals, where there is an inordinate focus

by staff on preventing people from escaping treatment and forcing them to

take tranquillisers, mood stabilisers and other drugs. The fact that so many
want to escape is a reflection of how cruel the medical treatment given to
those deemed mad in Australia is.

The term schizophrenia is used by doctors and other health care workers
around the world, however, application of the label varies considerably
between nations, and has changed considerably over time. When the term
was coined in the early 20th Century (by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in
1908) he constructed the word from the Greek schizo and phren meaning
split mind. The symptomatology, or as psychiatrists call it, the
phenomenology used in diagnosing schizophrenia was not new, however
it was adopted from Emil Kraepelins criteria for the diagnosis of what the
German Father of Psychiatry called dementia praecox (derived from Latin,
rather than Greek roots, and meaning early-onset dementia). Bleuler taught
that schizophrenia/dementia praecox is characterised by the four As:
ambivalence, loosening of associations, inappropriate affect and auditory
hallucinations. In the 1950s the German psychiatry professor Kurt Schneider,
who had worked on the development of personality disorder labels in the
1920s and 30s, prior to and during the Nazi holocaust, produced what he
called the First Rank Symptoms of Schizophrenia. There were 11 criteria,
each of which Schneider claimed was pathognomonic (definitely indicative,
in themselves) of schizophrenia:
1. Auditory hallucinations in which the voices speak ones thoughts aloud
2. Auditory hallucinations with two voices arguing
3. Auditory hallucinations with the voices commenting on ones actions

4. Withdrawal of thoughts from ones mind

5. Insertion of thoughts into ones mind by others
6. Believing ones thoughts are being broadcast to others, as by radio or
television
7. Insertion by others of feelings into ones mind
8. Insertion by others of irresistible impulses into ones mind
9. Feeling that ones actions are under the control of others, like an
automaton
10. Delusions of perception, as when one is certain that a normal remark
has a secret meaning for oneself

Belief in telepathy and belief in prayer can easily be described as believing ones
thoughts are being broadcast to others, as by radio or television. These are both
common New Age beliefs. Insertion of thoughts into ones mind by others is
surely what television advertising, and programming, more generally, is designed
to do. Implanting ideas to buy products people dont at first believe they need is a
principal motive of all advertising. It is easy to see how commonly manipulation of
peoples thoughts and actions occurs through television and radio programming,
and by the media generally, yet Schneider proclaimed that insertion by others of
irresistible impulses into ones mind is indicative of incurable mental illness along
with feelings that ones actions are under the control of others, like an
automaton. The latter is even more outrageous when one considers the range of
involuntary movement disorders that are caused by the drugs routinely used in

the treatment of schizophrenia, mania and other supposedly psychotic

disorders.

Returning to the World Health Organizations more recent publication, and the
Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, it recommends that health care workers increase
the dopamine-blocking drug dose if people express a conviction that electricity,
X-Rays or radio waves affect them. Apart from the fact that they do, the political
and economic factors involved in stifling warnings about the danger of man-made
radiation are worth considering. It is obvious that the electricity and radiation
industries do not want people to worry about using electricity and radiation. They
want to sell more electricity and radiation, despite any risks posed to the public of
cancers and other health problems. Yet it was known a hundred years ago that
man-radiation is dangerous, and that, specifically, it causes cancer (especially
blood cancers). There is conclusive evidence that microwave radiation damages
the eyes, causing cataracts, and that television-watching increases violence in
communities. There is also considerable evidence that living under high-voltage
power lines increases the risk of brain tumours and possible blood cancers (such
as leukaemia) and emerging evidence has suggested a risk of brain tumours from
mobile phone radiation. Public knowledge of such scientific and medical
information could result in legal action for compensation by the public against the
radiation, telecommunication and power industries.

The New Age Religion espouses many ideas, and rather diverse ideas, about
God and gods. These range from ideas that God is an invisible spirit being to
belief that God is an inner force, ideas commonly held by Christians. Others
believe that there are many gods, an idea derived from Hinduism and Paganism.
Some believe that God is a male, female or androgynous entity that exists within
plants and animals and within the natural world. Some believe that God
communicates with them through angels, whose voices they claim to hear, see

or be otherwise influenced by. Many aspire to having a special relationship with

God, as do many Christians of all denominations.

It seems extraordinary, then, that the World Health Organization and the
University of New South Wales should suggest that people be diagnosed as
suffering from schizophrenia if they believe themselves to have a special
relationship with God. At best, this is a situation where the interviewers own
religious views are pitted against those they will surely label as deluded if they
disagree with them. It is also a blatant example of religious discrimination and
labels of madness being applied on the basis of religious beliefs and opinions. In a
similar vein, young people who suddenly convert to Hinduism or Buddhism in
Australia are liable for a diagnosis of schizophrenia on the basis of widely
accepted religious, scientific and philosophical ideas found in the religious texts
and teachings of these ancient religions.

The question can anyone read your mind? is an unequivocal attempt to label
belief in telepathy and ESP as indicative of mental illness. Regardless of whether
telepathy really exists, it is a widely held belief around the world, including in
Australia. It is especially commonly accepted as a scientific fact by most New
Agers. Claims that belief in telepathy is indicative of schizophrenia date back to
the 1950s and before, when Schneider listed as first rank symptoms of
schizophrenia belief in insertion by others of feelings into ones mind and
believing ones thoughts are being broadcast to others. Belief in telepathy can
also cause two other first rank symptoms: insertion by others of feelings into
ones mind and feeling that ones actions are under the control of others. The
latter, can be misused in other ways, too.

Feeling that ones actions are under the control of others obviously means
different things to different people, ranging from demonic possession to belief
that one is subtly, or covertly, under the control of a range of forces, including the
New World Order, media, body politic, banking corporations, oil companies or
drug companies. It is left to the health care worker to decide whether the feeling
that ones actions are under the control of others is bizarre, odd, unlikely,
held without adequate evidence or ridiculous. If judged to be so, the World
Health Organization, Janssen-Cilag and the University of New South Wales
recommend a diagnosis of schizophrenia and drug treatment with
Janssen-Cilags injectable chemical restraint, Haldol.

Romesh Senewiratne (MBBS, Qld, 1983)

20.9.02

Addendum:
The World Health Organization (WHO) is the public health branch of the United
Nations Organization. The UN also controls the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund along with a range of other organisations, including UNICEF,
UNESCO and the UNHCR.