Chiropractic Insights. Christopher Kent D.C., Esq.

Step up to the plate and provide that leadership.

      References

      1.Jonas WB, Rakel DP. Putting Healing Into Healthcare Reform: Will Physicians and Healthcare Practitioners Lead? Alternative Therapies, 2009;15(6):8.

      2.Palmer DD. The Chiropractor's Adjustor. Portland, OR. Portland Printing House Company, 1910:359.

      3.Kilo CM, Larson EB. Exploring the harmful effects of health care. JAMA, 2009;302(1):89.

      4.Hu FA, Manson JE, Stampfer MJ, et al. Diet, lifestyle, and the risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus in women. N Engl J Med, 2001 Sep 13;345(11):790-7.

      5.A Study of the Cost Effects of Daily Multivitamins for Older Adults. The Lewin Group, Jan. 14, 2004.

      6.An Evidence-Based Study of the Role of Dietary Supplements in Helping Seniors Maintain their Independence. The Lewin Group, Jan. 20, 2006.

      7.Ford ES, Bergmann MM, Kroger J, et al. Healthy living is the best revenge: Findings from the European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition-Potsdam study. Arch Intern Med, 2009;169(15):1355-1362.

      8.Hyman MD, Ornish D, Roizen M. Lifestyle Medicine: Treating the Causes of Disease. Alternative Therapies, 2009;15(6):12.

      9.Rupert RL, Manello D, Sandefur R. Maintenance care: health promotion services administered to US chiropractic patients aged 65 or older, Part II. JMPT, 2000;23(1):10.

      10.Sarnat RL, Winterstein J, Cambron JA. Clinical utilization and cost outcomes from an integrative medicine independent physician association: an additional 3 year update. JMPT, 2007;30(4):263-9.

      11.Lipton B. Mind Over Genes: The New Biology. www.brucelipton.com

      12.Cloud J. Why DNA Isn't Your Destiny. Time, 2010;175(2):48.

      13.Ornish D, Magbauna MJM, Weidner G, et al. Changes in prostate gene expression in men undergoing an intensive nutrition and lifestyle intervention. PNAS, June 17, 2008;105(24):8369-8374.

      14.Ornish D. Changing Your Lifestyle Can Change Your Genes. Newsweek.com, June 17, 2008.

      15.Walters E. DNA Is Not Destiny. Discover, November 2006.

      Chapter Seven

      Drugs, Medicalization and Pharmacracy

      The board of trustees of the American Psychiatric Association recently approved the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as DSM-V.¹ The first edition, DSM-I, was published in 1952 and featured descriptions of 106 disorders.

      DSM-II, published in 1968, increased the number of disorders to 182. Things changed dramatically when DSM-III was published in 1980, describing 265 disorders in 494 pages. DSM-IV increased the number of disorders to over 300.^2,3 DSM-V is scheduled to be released this spring and has been fraught with controversy.

      Why the explosion in the number of mental health conditions in barely over half a century? Scientific breakthroughs? Hardly. It is the medicalization of American society. Psychiatrist Thomas S. Szasz⁴ has written extensively on the topic. Medicalization is a process or tendency whereby phenomena that originally belonged to another field, such as education, law, religion and so on, are redefined as medical phenomena.^5,6 Thus, medicalization is a process by which the medical profession asserts authority over a sphere of life previously overseen by guardians of morality.

      In 2001, Szasz⁴ described the ideologies of legitimization: theocracy (God's will); democracy (consent of the governed); socialism (economic equality); and pharmacracy (the therapeutic state). The emergence of the therapeutic state is a product of the 20th century.

      From 1776 to 1914, the federal government played no role in civilian medicine. In 1914, the first antinarcotic legislation was enacted. As the century progressed, the federal government's involvement in medicine exploded. Szasz⁴ offers the following statistics:

      

In 1950, funding for the National Institute for Mental Health was less than $1 million. In 1992, it reached $1 billion.

      

In 1965, when Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, their cost was approximately $65 billion. In 1993, it was nearly $939 billion.

      

Between 1960 and 1998, the average annual public expenditure on health care increased more than one hundred times, from $35 to $3,633.

      

In addition to these expenditures, government spending in general increased from a budget of $13.6 billion in fiscal year 1941 to $1.65 trillion in FY 1998.

      One of Szasz's greatest insights is his description of the process whereby coercion is transformed into medical therapy: 1) The subject's "condition" is diagnosed as a disease. 2) The intervention imposed is defined as a treatment. 3) Legislators and judges ratify these categorizations as "diseases" and "treatments."

      The traditional role of coercion as a public health measure dealt with the transmission of communicable diseases. Persons with communicable diseases were quarantined (as in measles) or banished (as in leprosy). Yet as a growing number of behaviors were defined as "diseases," coerced treatment was added to the armamentarium of public health and state authority.

      Examples of medicalization include such diverse conditions as gambling,⁷ smoking,⁸ gun violence⁹ and racism.^10,11 Coercion is used not merely to isolate those with communicable diseases, but also to force treatments on persons with tuberculosis, alcoholism, and a plethora of mental illnesses where the subject is deemed a threat to "self and others."

      Children are particularly susceptible to coerced medical interventions, ranging from vaccination to behavior-modifying drugs for such dubious diagnoses as ADD/ADHD. Even when parents elect alternative courses of health care, courts have ordered dangerous treatments against the wishes of both parents. Pharmacracy has led to an uncritical deference for allopathic intervention by the legislatures and the courts.

      DSM-IV is psychiatry's current code book for psychiatric disorders and "conditions or problems ... which may be a focus of clinical attention and require appropriate coding." My journey into DSM IV made me think I had fallen into Alice's rabbit hole.¹²

      Do you have difficulty sleeping after drinking coffee? The problem isn't a product of your poor judgment in guzzling java immediately before retiring. You are a victim of 292.89 - Caffeine Induced Sleep Disorder F15.8. If you reflect on your shyness while tossing and turning, the problem could be the epidemic of 300.23 - Social Phobia F40.1. Don't worry; drug treatment is available.

      Unfortunately, if you're thinking about your place in the cosmos or spiritual issues, you've got V62.89 - Religious or Spiritual Problem Z71.8, and I couldn't locate a drug for that.

      Bad parenting is about to become a thing of the past. It's not your fault or your child's fault. Besides the ubiquitous pandemic of ADHD, there are other disorders you may not be aware of. Your ill behaving child may be suffering from 313.81 - Oppositional Defiant Disorder F91.3. If your child often argues with adults, loses their temper, deliberately annoys people, etc., you're dealing with ODD. Of course, this must be differentiated from 312.8 - Conduct Disorder F91.8, and 312.9 - Disruptive Behavior Disorder Not Otherwise Specified F91.9.

      Should the problem be getting along with a brother or sister, the condition is V61.8 - Sibling Relational Problem F93.3. And should you argue with your spouse about whether