The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP) today commended President Obama for his August 31 Executive Order which calls for improved mental health services to veterans, service members and their families and called for increased use of non-drug approaches to treating soldiers experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

“We are especially pleased that the President is calling for the hiring of 800 peer counselors to help in the treatment of veterans,” said Al Galves, ISEPP Executive Director. “We believe that peer counselors and other non-medical approaches are crucial to helping soldiers readjust to civilian life.”

Galves applauded the creation of a National Research Action Plan and the Military and Veterans Mental Health Interagency Task Force and encouraged the Action Plan to include research which compares a cohort of soldiers who are treated without the use of psychotropic drugs to a cohort that is undergoing the standard treatment which uses drugs as a primary modality of treatment. “Psychotropic drugs do not treat the causes of PTSD and do nothing more than chemically lobotomize patients.” Galves said. “We need to be using safe and effective non-drug approaches that help soldiers recover from PTSD without the damaging side-effects and high relapse rates that are associated with the drugs. Included in such approaches are cognitive-behavioral methods and trauma-informed approaches such as Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.”

Galves also called on the President to get behind Senator Patty Murray’s Mental Health ACCESS Act of 2012, which expands mental health services for veterans and service members and expands the use of peer counselors and services to the families of veterans and service members.

At its July 19, 2012 meeting the Board of Directors of the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry (ISEPP) voted unanimously to oppose prescription authority for psychologists. The Board gave the following reasons for its action:

Since psychotropic drugs impair mental and emotional functioning, address only symptoms and are very harmful, they are not good treatment for persons diagnosed with mental disorders.

Since psychotropic drugs are detrimental to effective psychotherapy and inimical to the use of psychotherapy in healthcare, their use is a threat to the profession of psychology.

The Act is designed to improve mental health treatment of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan by:

Providing enhanced oversight for Department of Defense (DOD) suicide prevention and resilience efforts;

Expanding services for the families of soldiers;
Improving the training and education of providers; Increasing peer-to-peer counseling opportunities; and Improving timely access to effective mental health services.

ISEPP has mounted an initiative to work with the DOD and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to improve the treatment of soldiers suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) by stopping the use of psychotropic drugs as the primary modality of treatment and using non-drug approaches that have been proven to be safe and effective.

ISEPP is encouraged by recent moves by the DOD and VA to use non-drug approaches to helping soldiers suffering from PTSD. Steps such as the Army Surgeon General’s recently released guidelines that discourage the use of psychotropic drugs and encourage non-drug approaches such as sensorimotor psychotherapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, cognitive processing therapy and other trauma-informed approaches, are especially important.

ISEPP strongly encourages the DOD and VA to continue to respond appropriately to the high rate of suicide and sudden cardiac arrest deaths of soldiers that have been linked to the use of psychotropic drugs. ISEPP believes the Health ACCESS Act of 2012 will be helpful in directing and supporting the DOD and the VA’s efforts.

The forthcoming DSM-V edition continues this process while attempting to deepen indoctrination of mental health providers, consumers, and third-party payers into the fallacy that problems in living result from problems in biology. Adherents of biopsychiatric explanations and pharmaceutical manufacturers are the primary benefactors of public acceptance of this myth. Beyond research and technical studies which repeatedly demonstrate the inherent lack of validity and reliability of the DSM as a nosological system, psychiatric labeling has real consequences in discriminating against and oppressing the disadvantaged, creating unnecessary obstacles to employment, housing, and social acceptance, lending false credibility to the concept of psychiatric disability, assaulting self-worth and self-efficacy, and undermining reestablishment of positive life-striving by inducing “behaviors to label” among people who have been so labeled.

In ISEPP’s view, conscientious and ethical provision of services to those suffering from mental, behavioral, and emotional disturbances is primarily a moral, social, political, and philosophical enterprise. ISEPP supports helpers who wish to eschew use of the DSM-V and its prior systems. ISEPP recommends public scrutiny and skepticism regarding the DSM as well as a constructive dismantling of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical complex through which it is continually supported and redeployed.