There's No Such Thing as Bipolar Disorder

Let's define our terms. Here is where I am coming from:


Thing: (from Merriam-Webster online)

3 a: a separate and distinct individual quality, fact, idea, or usually entity
b: the concrete entity as distinguished from its appearances
c: a spatial entity
d: an inanimate object distinguished from a living being

In a nutshell, "thing" as defined here, is characterized by having a specific location (objective.) To illustrate, the brain has a specific location (objective.) The mind does not (subjective.)

Bipolar Disorder is a set of criteria agreed upon by a body of adequate interpretors. Bipolar Disorder is a description of a constellation of symptoms. It is not a thing. Just like a relationship is not a thing. Treat your relationships like they are things and see how well they work.

If the quality of one's life improves after the label is applied GREAT.
If the quality of one's life gets worse after the label is applied then it is not a useful label.
(Sometimes suffering is relieved and the quality of life improves by being undiagnosed.)

As a psychiatrist I have seen the label Bipolar Disorder applied to a larger and larger group of people. Now experts in the field say Bipolar Disorder is characterized by "mood swings." Is depression characterized by "mood swings?" Is one profoundly clinically depressed one minute and fine the next? Is one profoundly clinically depressed one minute and clinically manic the next? Rapid cycling Bipolar Disorder is four or more episodes of mania per year with at least a two month period of normal mood in between each episode of mania. That's rapid. Does that sound like "mood swings?"

"Mood swings" are a common presentation of the common conditions called personality disorders (at least 10% prevalence in the healthy population) and substance abuse/dependence disorders (at least 10% prevalence in the healthy population). The prevalences are much higher in patient populations, psychiatric and otherwise.

"Mood swings" are an uncommon presentation of the uncommon condition called Bipolar Disorder (about 1% prevalence in the healthy population according to the DSM-IV.)

If the broadening of the label "Bipolar Disorder" leads to healthy, happier, more productive people then it is a good use of the term. If not, it is not a good use of the term.

I wonder why modern medicine is broadening the definition of Bipolar Disorder to include more and more people?

We have the most expensive, ineffective "healthcare" system in the world. The only killers that kill more Americans than healthcare are heart disease and cancer. Healthcare in America kills more people than anything else. Does that fact make it sound like modern medicine has a sound theoretical basis? (Hmmm, lousy results...it must be based on a sound theoretical basis.)

This is the price we pay for scientific materialism. In going for certainty in science and medicine everything was reduced to matter and energy. You can study that stuff in the lab. The eye of reason yoked to the eye of flesh is all that is real to the modern world. Heart, soul, spirit are nowhere to be found in modern science and medicine. They are nothing but the result of chemical activity in the brain. The price for this certainty is high.

I think psychiatry is now casting a wider net for Bipolar Disorder patients because this condition seems so biological. It is much easier to ignore the emotional/psychological/human factors in "biological" disorders. You can put on your white coat and look at MRI's and have the Today show say, "We are getting close to a cure," and feel smug and proud and certain.

Psychiatrists are jealous of their medical colleagues who work in the more substantial areas of medicine. Psychiatrists want to run with the big dogs. They want psychiatry to be "scientific." To reduce the complex suffering of a human being to chemicals and genes. Matters that can be studied in a lab. The human mind, heart, and soul is ignored because it can't be studied in a lab. We live in a physically transfixed world where the underlying assumption is that the physical level of reality is the ultimate level of reality. It's caused by a chemical imbalance?

What caused the chemical imbalance?

Is the chemical imbalance a cause or an effect?



And how well is the system working that is founded on the unconscious assumption that the physical level of reality is the ultimate level of reality? (This is really what has a scientist assume the chemical imbalance is the cause and not the effect of the depression, bipolar, etc.)



Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge. ... Philosophy is the product of wonder. -- Alfred North Whitehead



Wake up.

You are not a machine that breaks.

Why Doesn't Modern Medicine Put 2 and 2 Together?

The epidemiology alone of back pain clearly shows that a mechanical cause for low back pain is completely untenable.

The crime is that modern medicine looks scientific and is in fact not. If one draws a conclusion and then looks at the evidence it is obviously harder to put 2 and 2 together.

If one looks at the evidence and then draws a conclusion the conclusion more closely mirrors reality (what is.)

I call modern medicine's blind, ignorant materialism (gross reductionism) a crime because an analogous situation in a forensic investigation demonstrates what a crime ignoring Dr. Sarno's cure for chronic back pain is:

A body is found.
The cause of death is determined to be a gunshot wound to the head.
A gun was found at the scene of the crime.
Ballistics matches the slug in the deceased’s head to the gun found at the scene.
Fingerprints are found on the gun.
They are determined to belong to the chief of police.
The chief of police was seen at the scene and he had a motive to kill the deceased.
But, he isn’t being investigated because everyone knows that he didn’t do it.

I spoke with one of the physicians who have trained with Dr. Sarno today. He said that most patients and the medical community don't see the truth because they don't want to see the truth.

I have to look at his point. I do believe that emotion "thinking" is far more powerful than rational thinking. And each of us is attached to our perspective...indeed, it isn't our perspective, it is "the truth." That one dies hard.

It would seem that even in the case of agonizing, disabling back pain, the painful known is preferred to the pain-free unknown.

Modern Medical "Science"

“It is really quite amazing by what margins competent but conservative scientists and engineers can miss the mark, when they start with the preconceived idea that what they are investigating is impossible. When this happens, the most well-informed men become blinded by their prejudices and are unable to see what lies directly ahead of them.”

– Arthur C. Clarke, 1963

Regarding the epidemic of back pain that began in the U.S. about 40 years ago:

Modern medicine is so arrogant and grossly biased in general and with regard to back pain in particular that the highly effective treatment of John E. Sarno, M.D., is ignored! Dr. Sarno, an NYU School of Medicine Professor of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine and NYUMC attending physician, cures 90% of his patients within a month defining a cure as: 1. little or no pain; 2. no functional limitation; 3. no fear of any physical activity, and 4. all physical treatments have been discontinued. Why is this cure ignored?

It appears to be a case of “The Earth is flat and everyone knows it’s flat. I’m not getting on the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria, Chris. Have a nice trip. We’ll take care of your wife and kids.”

If one looks at the evidence BEFORE drawing a conclusion it is clear that the epidemic of back pain has little or nothing to do with structural problems of the spine. Obviously that isn’t happening in mainstream medicine, hence my inflammatory accusation that modern medicine is arrogant and grossly biased.

If one is going to be biased BEFORE drawing a conclusion in the matter of what’s causing the epidemic of chronic regional musculoskeletal pain (of which low back pain is the most common form) then one should be biased by the EFFICACY OF THE TREATMENT! Sarno’s treatment is highly effective for a cure of back pain. Mainstream medicine’s treatment for back pain is abysmally poor at best.

Now, let’s begin looking at the evidence from the bias of treatment efficacy:

1. Back pain was uncommon prior to the onset of the epidemic about 40 years ago. Since the epidemic began it has been growing 14 times faster than the population! Has something terrible happened to the American back?

2. Imaging studies of the spine and pain are poorly correlated! This dramatically damages the cause/effect hypothesis of mainstream medicine’s spinal abnormality theory of back pain (the most cherished of which is the “herniated disc” fantasy.) If the abnormalities on MRI’s of the spine caused pain, then why little or no correlation? And why did a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994 show that only 36% of the 98 asymptomatic (pain-free) individuals have no disc abnormalities?

The Emperor has no clothes. Sorry. Nekkid is nekkid.

Clearly reality (what is) doesn’t matter. What matters is perception. Should a “scientist” be familiar with perception and how it might influence observation and subsequent reasoning?

Every age, every generation has its built-in assumptions; that the world is flat, that the world is round, etc. There are hundreds of hidden assumptions, things that we take for granted that may or may not be true. Of course, in the vast majority of cases historically, these things aren’t true. So presumably, if history is any guide, much of what we take for granted about the world simply isn’t true. But we’re locked into these precepts without even knowing it, often times. That’s a paradigm.

- John Hagelin, Ph.D.

If you have back pain QUIT LISTENING TO THE GUYS WHOSE TRACK RECORD WITH REGARD TO TREATMENT OUTCOME STINKS! Do you think it might be wise to consider listening to the guy who cures 90% of his back pain patients?

(While there may be some appeal to running with the big dogs…after a while the back pain may get old.)

John E. Sarno, M.D., author of The Divided Mind, has cured thousands of people of back pain, regardless of whether they’ve had a history of back surgeries or not. The spouse of one of my patients had four back surgeries and continued to have agonizing back pain before being cured by one of Sarno’s students, orthopedic surgeon, Dr. James Rochelle, who wrote chapter 8 of Sarno’s latest book.

Come on, wake up. I’d leave you alone but the stakes are too high.

Addiction

The top killers in the U.S. in 2002 were:
1. Diseases of heart 696,947
2. Malignant neoplasms (cancer) 557,271
MEDICAL TREATMENT 225,000 (Not listed on CDC's web site I assume because it isn't a disease.)
3. Cerebrovascular diseases 162,672
4. Chronic lower respiratory diseases 124,816
5. Unintentional injuries 106,742
6. Diabetes mellitus 73,249

For a total of 1,721,697 persons who died of lifestyle diseases. The main contributor to these illnesses is addiction. Addiction to food, cigarettes, alcohol, and other mood altering substances and activities.

Eckhart Tolle said that all addiction is caused by the inability to face and deal with pain.
Michael Brown said that all addiction is caused by inner emotional discomfort.

Therefore, inner emotional discomfort and the inability to face and deal with pain kills more people each day than anything else.

2007 update:

The Journal of the American Medical Association reported recently that the third leading cause of death in the U.S. is now medical treatment.