The
solution to a problem is not always how much money is spent on treatment
because if that were the case, then most of society’s ills would be cured by
now. In The Tacoma Weekly, March 3,
2017 issue, the front-page storyline was “Bill Could Help with Mental Health,
Addiction Funding.” The article mentioned about U.S. Representative Derek
Kilmer’s effort in co-sponsoring a bill to help allocate money to fund
communities to better provide mental health and drug and/or alcohol abuse
services. Part of this legislation is to provide loans to hospitals and mental
health agencies to provide psychiatric and addiction facilities and services.
On page 5, Multicare and CHI Franciscan are working on a 40 million dollar plan
to build a 120-bed facility at Allenmore Hospital that is scheduled sometime in
2018. All this sounds well and good as
far as intention, but isn’t this approach just more of the same as in the example
of ‘insanity’- doing the same thing but expecting a different result?
There
is such an urgent need to do something about combatting the spiraling trend of
mental impairment from substance abuse or a life crisis or traumatic event that
leads to homelessness and a spike in property-related crimes; not to mention
mental disability leading to anti-social behaviors and learning disabilities in
children as well as adults. This in turn causes more law enforcement resources
to be used to combat theft, vandalism, burglaries, juvenile delinquency /truancy
(??). This repetitious cycle of more beds, psychiatric therapy/counseling and
prescription drugs (Prozac, Zoloft, Ritalin [ADHD], etc.) are somewhat effective
because the side-effects may outweigh their benefits. However, back in 1987,
Carl C. Pfeiffer published an interesting book by the title, “Nutrition and Mental
Health” in which he establishes a causal link between nutritional deficiencies or
imbalances and mental behavior. Dr. Pfeiffer conducted research on patients
suffering from schizophrenia (“manic-depressive psychosis”) and found that this
condition was due to blood levels of the brain chemical ‘histamines’ (derived
from testing high “basophil” count in white blood cells).
Of
course, not all people have the same metabolism and as is the case, high
histamine levels are present in individuals with MDP and in others it is the
exact opposite. Another contributing factor is low levels of Zinc, based on the
presence of “pyrroles” found in urine, indicative of low serum immunoglobulin
A. Some of the symptoms of this condition are mental retardation, amnesia, and
having learning disabilities. It has also been found that drug addicts have
high histamine levels. I think one of the first things to do is to reclassify
mental illness as a disease of the body based upon the accumulation of
toxic substances instead of based on a function of the mind or socio-cultural
factors. This would require an “orthomolecular” approach based on knowledge of ‘integrative’
medicine that treats the whole person, and includes proper nutritional
supplementation that heals and detoxifies the body at the cellular level. This is
not a one-step cookie cutter solution, but rather part of a holistic approach
that combines exercise, proper diet, healthy living, managing stress and making
the right lifestyle choices for optimum health and happiness. The old saying, “If
it ain’t broke then don’t try to fix it” doesn’t apply in this case because the
mental health system has been broke for a long, long time-more bed space,
higher Psychiatrists’ fees and keeping people hooked on prescription drugs for
the rest of their lives is no real solution at all.
Robert
Randle
776
Commerce St Apt 701
Tacoma,
WA 98402
March
11, 2017
