Suggests alternative to mental health care

Jordan Schrader’s article about the attacks at Western State Psychiatric Hospital underscores the need for the U.S. to face facts: the drug approach is a dismal failure. It is only palliative care.

Palliative care cures no one because it isn’t designed to cure anyone. It’s like giving cough syrup to a pneumonia patient. Then, when he isn’t cured, we assume pneumonia is incurable. Why don’t we at least consider the possibility that maybe mental illnesses are curable and that synthetic drugs are the real problem?

An approach that I believe does work is “orthomolecular” medicine. It is not palliative. It is alternative medical care that I believe restores one’s mental health by correcting his or her biochemistry with non-patentable biochemicals, also known as nutraceuticals. It’s even good for people who are self-medicating with street drugs. Safe, proven and effective, it has been in use for over half a century and is now practiced in some 40 countries. It is also integrative, meaning that drugs are used as a crutch if someone needs to be stabilized while lab tests are run and rebalancing the biochemistry is begun.

When a person’s mental health is restored, he is no longer committing crimes so he doesn’t need a mental hospital or jail either. Throwing buckets of money into buying chemical straightjackets is short-sighted, outdated and barbaric. We can, and must, do a whole lot better.

This story was originally published December 26, 2015 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Suggests alternative to mental health care."