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Q&A - Are you saying that behavior is not affected by brain chemistry?

Hi Lisa and Ryan,

I admit that I have not yet read your book nor have I ordered it....but maybe I should???  I am a Christian and I am a professional (not mental health) who works with children with various diagnosis including Autism, Asperger Syndrome, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Cerebral Palsy, Down's Syndrome,  Brain Injured, etc.  Correct me if I misunderstood,  but your website/book entitled Psychology Debunked is based on the belief that one's behavior is not affected by their brain chemisty???? That "illness of the mind" is much different than an "illness of the body" (however your brain is part of your body).  And, are you suggesting that these children I treat get off of their medicines?  One last question, have either of you or someone very close to you ever suffered from one of these so-called mental ("not physical") disorders? 

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Answer:

Thank you for your email. We can understand what a challenging job that would be to work with children diagnosed with these various disorders.

Your list includes a mixture of physical, medically-proven diseases (cerebral palsy, down's syndrome, brain injured) with mental, medically-unproven behaviors the industry calls diseases (autism, asperger's, ADHD, bipolar, dyslexia, dysgraphia). This is a very important differentiation because people are taking dangerous, mind-altering meds for diseases that have never been proven to exist. Although the chemical imbalance in the brain theory has never been proven valid after over 50 years of research, what has been discovered is that psychiatric drugs to treat the mental conditions you've listed actually CAUSE chemical imbalances that induce terrible, life-threatening side effects, permanent brain damage and even suicide and homicide.

So giving children a toxic psych drug for a condition that can't be proven with a medical test is akin to spinning the barrel and firing away. It's also no different than saying, "I feel like ____ today so I'm going to smoke marijuana or snort cocaine or speed to make myself feel better." Legal mental drugs are just like their illegal counterparts in their rationale and side effects - the legal ones are just legitimized by our society under the banner of medicine.

So for the behaviors you've listed that are mental / non-medical in nature, yes, we would highly recommend these kids get off their drugs and get their lives back so they don't spend their lives in a drug haze and miss God's best for them. We have known kids diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar and more often than not, their parents were to blame for not taking a more active and responsible role in the rearing of their children, and instead telling them to pop a pill for their "disease." Everybody wins but the poor child whose voice is rarely heard.

We cover much, much more in our book and especially our CDs and MP3s available on our web site. Also, back-issues of our newsletter go into each of these disorders more in depth, including the right way to diagnose and treat such conditions. You can subscribe for free at our web site.

We hope this helps.

In Christ,

Ryan and Lisa Bazler