Diagnosing the Mental Health Industry – A Legacy of Manipulation, Foolishness, & Windfalls
Mental Health Reform Argument by Dr. Marcus Roe, founder of 24K Journal of Virtues Science
This paper was written as part of a lawsuit effort, please consider joining the lawsuit here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R-p1AmFOZRLWJdbo_PKwjenZAFFq7GYjylGeAC2NDkQ/edit?tab=t.0
Battle for the soul of mental health care. To win this fight, good must confront the dark heart of our nation’s history in this arena. The odyssey through this, psychiatry’s shadowy underbelly, reveals a narrative far removed from the comforting myths of scientific progress. Instead, we confront an offensive image, nearly pornographic in its immorality, where profit motives, governmental overreach, and ethical lapses have colluded to undermine true mental healing, causing untold amounts of harm along the way. The path forward demands vigilance, courage, and an unyielding commitment to the principles that place human dignity at the core of all interventions. To reclaim community mental health, we must challenge the status quo, demand transparency in everything, and advocate for holistic approaches that honor the complexity of human experience and the needs of the entire person. We stand here at this point in history with an option: continue down this dark path or forge a new one rooted in empathy, understanding, and genuine care. So it’s our option to make: victim or hero; but the battle is already here and rages on.
Psychia-Nation
I believe life is the sum of importance, so that we each are smaller than the larger plan but the whole of it in community. Bad mental health is one of the surest signs that community will be out of whack (Kirkbride et al, 2024). Community needs improvement in mental health now more than ever. The time for reclaiming true mental health is now, and so the time for reclaiming our communities is now as well. These are mutual struggles attached at the hip (Compton & Shim, 2015; Umberson & Montez, 2011).
There is a nearly century-long active war secretly raging, silenced despite growing ever louder with exposures (van Voren, 2010). It is a moneyed insurgency as parcel to larger programs of societal warfare waged against all, but in this case through the most vulnerable amongst us. The battlefield is not one of traditional conflict; rather, its theater of operations concerts through pharmaceutical interventions and diagnostic labels, where human souls are reduced to mere data points in an insatiable profit machine.
Grim Modern Psychiatry
I have walked those halls and bore witness to the machinations within, as well the contrastive ghost-like shadows lingering in empowered manipulations and pharmaceutical interests. I have since looked the barefaced avarice in the eyes, and seen the fire that drives the diabolical system. It ain’t pretty. In countless institutions across our land, lies with the sedated a cold unfeeling reality of individuals forcibly medicated not out of clinical necessity, but for the convenience of the institutional control and, controlling for any and all excuses, primarily maximizing long-term profits (Brody, 2023). The simplest most basic ethical imperative to reject such “treatments” is drowned in a sea of bureaucratic indifference. The psychiatric pharmaceutical industry now stands as this unconquerable dragon breathing the untamed fire spewing forth biochemical manipulation while protected in scales forged of societal imperatives.
This national disgrace stems from the greater societal malaise, a relentless pursuit of materialism that strips humanity of its dignity. Our collective psyche has been so thoroughly colonized by commercial interests that we have come to view mental health through the narrow lenses of neurotransmitter transactions, monetary comfort, and basic behavioral modifications. This is certainly a strange calculus that tells us something but nothing about legitimate health in psychological terms. The richness of human experience is shredded, as reduced to diagnostic shibboleths and pharmaceutical windfalls. Doctors are inundated by corporate pharmaceutical channels pushing simple solutions inline with the propaganda promoting inert consumerism, amid intelligence organizations managing their many avenues of control.
Of Diagnosis & Money
Consider the flawed premise that “mental illnesses” could be clearly delineated phenomena akin to physical maladies. No element of mental health could be described in binary states, but rather entirely fluid continuums blurring like colors on a palette. Diagnoses, too often hastily assigned, fail to capture the intricacies of individual lives. This reductionist approach leads to an epidemic of over-medication, as human beings are stripped of their autonomy and reduced to little more than pharmaceutical piggy-banks.
The over-reliance on pharmacological interventions has eclipsed holistic therapies that truly nourish the soul. The arts of empathetic listening, compassionate understanding, and introspective exploration have been relegated to the shadows, below the false sun in pharmaceutical quick fixes that promise compliance but rarely contribute to genuine improvement in mental health. True mental health treatment demands a return to these fundamental principles. Mental health must be transformed by a philosophically in-depth resurgence of human connection.
The current models of treatment often merely resemble ethical care; it is a charade, a perverse parody of philosophy. The notion that safeguarding a patient entails a regimen of medication and sanitized platitudes is both insulting and inhumane, in most cases at least. Managed compliance becomes the endgame, not authentic well-being. We see this same philosophy applied in the appeasing of patients with dysphoria through forced acceptance and affirmation upon the general population, a plainly insane proposition if there ever was one.
Chemical Straitjacket: Predatory Posture in Forcible Sedation
Psychiatry is predatory. The current state of psychiatry appalls me, and should disgust all. To divorce its practice from psychology is a grave ethical failing, transforming hence into a pharmaceutical cowboy, wrangling the population with chemical straitjackets for highest bidder. This is intense mass commandeering of humanity for profit, rather than helping heal troubled minds. It is a milking of sorrows.
Intellectual detachment and willful alienation in community especially as against reality are malignant acts. These are long since engaged now, yet conceived not as therapeutic innovations. Rather the purpose is in profiteering. The pharmaceutical industry suffocates us. The tragedy unfolds because psychiatry, bereft of psychology’s soul-searching introspection, substitutes conversation with concoctions, and genuine human connection with chemical pacifications and spiritual castrations. This pathology is founded in misguided oversimplifications of psychology.
Shackles
Children are heavily impacted by apparent over-diagnosis and pharmacological abuse in the profit-manage human services. For instance, with ADD and ADHD (Kazda et al, 2021). Boredom in children, natural human responses to disengagement, is too often pathologized under false diagnoses. Children are not given alternatives to their forceful medication of stimulants under a new life-long label of ADHD. This insidious conflation of behavioral nuance and basic institutional failures with clinical diagnoses fueled a pharmacopic ouroboros in which children are robbed of the wealth in mastering their unease through natural psychological development with natural social support. Children become habituated to chemical crutches. The acts of learning to navigate life’s inherent complexities, the cornerstone of psychological maturation, are bypassed. In full hubris, we replace this natural edifice with a manufactured sense of calm achieved through drugs, forcing the person to learn worse lessons later.
The catastrophic downstream consequences of this industrialized infantilising are manifold and undeniable. As a trained research psychologist working in therapy, it has been my sad realization that a majority of methamphetamine abusers I have treated did indeed start with legally prescribed ADHD stimulant medications in childhood. This rampant over-prescription of “uppers” to youth directly contributed to the ongoing meth epidemic (Lee et al, 2011). The neurochemical pathways primed by childhood stimulant misuse become fertile ground for the insidious embrace of street-sourced drugs. This is a travesty. It is further horrific how much the pharmaceutical industry has invested in trying to counter this truth. They are not only generally responsible loosely in manufacturing the drugs, but now shamefully culpable in the sense of blocking the discovery of abuses with lies, however this is their legacy and expected given their origins institutionally and in terms of their operating models theoretically. Pharmaceuticals and psychiatrists have indeed fully demonstrated how far they are willing to go in drugging children in any State that would allow it, such as in California where the abuses are rampant and irreversible (De Sá, 2014).
These people are abusing children with drugs for profit under the guise of institutional and educational needs. They have taken what they do to adults and applied it to children, basically, in profit-managed medicating, putting bottom-lines and institutions first. The cycle thus perpetuates itself: pharmaceutical infantilising breeds vulnerability to harder substances, and these societal-wide increases in vulnerabilities tragically manifest as full-blown mental health crises, further exacerbated by the neurotoxic fallout of prolonged drug abuse. Brain damage, psychoses, and a spectrum of debilitating mental states become the grand harvest of this profit-driven pharmacological crusade. Such people, unfortunately, often have a difficult time with taking on the role of a parent, and so yet another cycle is spun. If this looks almost like warfare against the population, there may be a very terrible historical explanation for that.
False Divisions
The decoupling of psychiatry from psychology serves a pernicious purpose: to silence dissenting voices within the healing professions. Genuine therapies, as rooted in introspection, behavioral therapies, and holistic understanding of the human psyche, pose a direct challenge to the pharmaceutical paradigm’s reductive model. By institutionalizing their intellectual separation, the forces of pharmaceutical corporations effectively silence these dissenting opinions, thus perpetuating a cycle of chemical dependency masquerading as care. Basically, before you get a say, you must join the club, but to join the club you must agree to certain paradigms requisite to the pharmacological mental health profit-manage dynamic.
The education of aspiring psychiatrists bears the indelible stain of complicity in this tragedy. So entrenched in a biomedical model, they are free to ignore the subtleness of human experience within emotion, alienation, community, responsibility, fulfillment, and environment. The nuanced art of psychotherapy, the cultivation of genuine human connection, and the exploration of lived realities through introspection are the pillars of true mental healing. In their intellectual fog from training, however, these are merely caveats and pitfalls to watch out for as they hack at people’s brains with a ballpoint, primarily for the money in it and a good retirement plan.
While psychiatric medications undoubtedly have therapeutic value (Leichsenring, 2022), over-reliance and inappropriate prescription, driven by a societal fear of mental illness rather than genuine understanding in self and in others, can lead to iatrogenic harm, which is illness induced by treatment itself, or even the perceptions of it. Common perception of psychiatric schedules is one of perpetuity, as though the drugs were meant for the correction of person in itself, instead of symptom management to enable actual treatment wherein the person can take part in actual self-correction. These underlying misunderstandings regarding the nature of mental health drive untold numbers away from healthful treatments, and toward alcoholism or drug-addictions then abuse and criminality. This feeds into the cycle of dependence on all levels, even generational, and fails to address the underlying societal stressors contributing to mental distresses.
Mouth of the Beast
Blindly pushing vulnerable individuals into institutional care without thorough examination of less invasive alternatives is unethical and counterproductive. Such situations would be bad enough alone, however that is not the full nature of the beast with which we contend. It is clear that the entire field of psychiatry has been engineered outside of psychology for the express purpose of easing this process of control through prescription and medication. At the very least, psychiatrists are typically less educated in psychology and alternative treatments than psychologists as well as less educated in general medicines than medical doctors or pharmacists. This appears to be the perfect space for exploitation, by those so disposed to profits from selling quickfixes, and it does seem to have been accomplished. However, there remain far less innocent intentions than mere profit motives at play in all of this, and players who benefit far more from the entire dynamic.
Shadows on the White Coat: Corrupt Crusade on Sanctums of Healing
In all American history, few revealing narratives are as chilling as the saga of federal intelligence agencies meddling with our nation’s mental health institutions. This is a sobering account drawn from declassified documents, congressional inquiries, and the echoing cries of victims long silenced. A legacy of abuse and ethical breaches unfolded within sterile hospital halls, where trust was betrayed, and minds were manipulated in the supposed interests of national security.
Unmasking the Hydra: Serpentine Intrusions
The beast that stalked our nation’s healing sanctums had many heads: MKUltra, COINTELPRO, Artichoke, Bluebird, et al. Conceived in the Cold War’s paranoid womb, these programs sought to push the boundaries of human ethics, undermine dignity, and exploit the fragile landscape of the mind. They left behind a trail of devastation in their wake that continues to haunt us to this very day, in many ways, some we are just beginning to learn about.
MKUltra: CIA’s Shadowy Mind Control Experiment
Let us now pull back the curtain on MKUltra, the CIA’s notorious mind control program (Noakes, 2021). This is one of the darkest chapters in American history and it revealed the chilling lengths to which people go to in pursuit of power. Officially initiated in the 1950s and officially terminated in the 1970s, MKUltra was not a singular experiment but a sprawling, multi-faceted operation involving hundreds of sub-projects, clandestine partnerships, and a network of unwitting participants across the United States and beyond its borders. These atrocities, often conducted under the guise of scientific research or national security, revealed a disturbing willingness to sacrifice human dignity for the sake of power. To comprehend its full scope is to grapple with an unsettling reality: our government deliberately targeted vulnerable populations for experiments that caused lasting harm (CIA Behavior Control, 2024).
The Allan Memorial Institute: A Laboratory of Dehumanization (1957–1964)
At the heart of MKUltra’s most egregious violations was the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal, where Dr. Ewen Cameron transformed a once-respected psychiatric facility into a site of systematic torture and psychological annihilation. Under his leadership, the institute became a testing ground for “psychic driving” and depatterning, a barbaric techniques designed to erase patients’ identities, memories, and personalities while implanting new ones. These experiments involved prolonged electroshock sessions, sleep deprivation, and the administration of hallucinogenic drugs to induce a state of mental confusion, making subjects susceptible to external manipulation. The CIA’s financial support enabled these horrors, funding studies that sought to weaponize psychiatry for covert control over individuals and populations. For many patients, the aftermath was devastating: some were left in permanent psychological disarray, while others experienced irreversible trauma, their lives irreparably fractured by the program’s grotesque ambitions.
The NIMH: LSD as a Tool of Control (Lexington, Kentucky)
In the heartland of America, the National Institute of Mental Health Addiction Research Center became another front in MKUltra’s campaign to exploit human vulnerability. Here, between 1953 and 1962, researchers conducted secret experiments involving prolonged exposure to LSD, a substance that induces hallucinations, paranoia, and a loss of awareness. The forced 77-day LSD trials on drug-addicted African-American patients is especially egregious. These individuals became unwilling subjects in a government-sanctioned effort to explore the potential of psychedelics as tools for behavioral modification. The ethical violations were staggering: participants were not only deprived of informed consent but also subjected to repeated doses that left them disoriented, emotionally destabilized, and left unable to function in their daily lives. The experiments reflect a pattern of indifference to human suffering.
The New York State Psychiatric Institute: A Death Foretold (New York City)
Perhaps no single incident encapsulates the brutality of MKUltra more than the death of Harold Blauer in 1956 at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Blauer, a patient in the institute’s psychiatric ward, succumbed to complications from an injection of MDA as part of experiments with hallucinogenic drugs for the CIA, without his knowledge or consent. His death sparked outrage and raised urgent questions about the ethical boundaries of government-sponsored research. The case was emblematic of MKUltra’s disregard for human life: participants were treated as expendable assets, their suffering deemed a necessary cost in the pursuit of mind control techniques. Blauer’s legacy became a rallying point for those demanding transparency and accountability, yet it took decades for the full extent of these experiments to be revealed.
Legacy of Exploitation
MKUltra’s legacy is one of profound ethical betrayal and lasting trauma. The program’s victims, many of whom were never compensated or even acknowledged, were subjected to violations that would now be considered crimes against humanity. Yet, even as the CIA eventually dismantled its most overt operations, the shadow of MKUltra lingered, influencing subsequent covert programs and fueling ongoing debates about government overreach. The revelations of these experiments not only exposed the moral bankruptcy of a nation’s pursuit of power but also served as a stark reminder of the dangers of unchecked authority. Today, as we reflect on this dark history, the story of MKUltra stands as a sobering testament to the need for vigilance in safeguarding human rights and ethical integrity in scientific and governmental endeavors.
COINTELPRO’s Psychological Warfare
While MKUltra probed the depths of individual minds, COINTELPRO was an FBI program with deep intelligence ties which waged war on groups perceived as threats to national security (COINTELPRO, 2019). Civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and Black Panther ranks felt its icy grip, as psychological pressure and disinformation campaigns tore at the fabric of their lives. In mental health settings, COINTELPRO operated through state hospitals and clinics. Targeted individuals were subjected to covert harassment, forced treatments, and surveillance that exacerbated their conditions. The lines between medical treatment and coercive control blurred, leaving a lasting stain on the profession.
State-Level Violations
The federal machinery of anti-intelligence operations extended its reach far beyond Washington D.C., leaving scars across state lines through clandestine experiments, surveillance campaigns, and institutional manipulation. These transgressions were not isolated incidents but part of a broader pattern in which intelligence agencies weaponized state institutions to advance their agendas, often under the guise of national security or public welfare. By embedding themselves within universities, hospitals, and local governments, these entities exploited trust and authority to conduct unethical experiments on vulnerable populations—often without consent or accountability. Let us examine some of the most harrowing examples that reveal how this federal apparatus infiltrated state-level systems.
California: The Golden State’s Hidden Experiments
California became a testing ground for some of the most controversial MKUltra subprojects, with prestigious universities like Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UCLA serving as unwitting collaborators in a web of covert experimentation. At Stanford, researchers conducted studies on sensory deprivation and psychological manipulation, often using students or staff as subjects without their knowledge. These experiments, funded by the CIA, sought to unlock methods for altering human behavior through controlled environments, blurring the line between scientific inquiry and coercion. Similarly, UC Berkeley’s campus was home to classified programs that explored the use of hallucinogens and other substances to probe the limits of consciousness, techniques later deemed unethical and abandoned due to public outcry. UCLA, meanwhile, became a hub for social engineering experiments, where researchers manipulated subjects’ perceptions of reality through targeted media exposure, raising profound questions about autonomy and consent in academic settings. These projects underscored how California’s intellectual prestige was exploited to advance clandestine agendas.
New York: COINTELPRO’s Shadow Over Mental Health
In New York, the FBI’s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) cast a long shadow over mental health institutions, using them as tools to suppress dissent and disrupt civil rights movements. Columbia University became a focal point of this surveillance, with its faculty and students, particularly those involved in radical political activism, targeted for infiltration and options for blackmail. The FBI’s tactics included spreading disinformation, planting false evidence, and monitoring communications, all under the pretense of combating ideologies deemed “subversive.” Meanwhile, Bellevue Hospital emerged as a site where psychiatric patients were subjected to experimental therapies without informed consent. Electroshock, lobotomies, and untested drug regimens were often administered to individuals deemed “dangerous” or “unstable,” frequently under the guise of treating mental illness. Black Panther members, among others, fell victim to these abuses, as their activism was framed as a threat to public order. The program’s reach extended beyond individual cases, embedding itself within institutional structures that prioritized control over care, a stark reminder of how state-sanctioned violence could masquerade as medical treatment.
Illinois & Georgia: Racial Tensions and Psychological Warfare
In Illinois and Georgia, intelligence agencies weaponized racial angst to advance their own objectives, turning mental health facilities into battlegrounds for psychological warfare. In Illinois, the FBI’s surveillance of political extremists was often conducted through collaboration with local law enforcement and psychiatric institutions, which were used to monitor and intimidate potential assets under the cover of “mental health evaluations.” These operations cynically leveraged existing distrust of institutional authority to justify invasive practices. Meanwhile, in Georgia, mental health facilities became staging grounds for broader efforts to co-option political dissent. The state’s health network was exploited to conduct targeted “experiments” under the guise of “therapeutic intervention.” These programs mirrored the broader pattern of using institutional power to neutralize perceived threats.
The Persistent Legacy
These violations reveal how federal intelligence operations transformed local institutions into instruments of repression. By embedding themselves within universities, hospitals, and law enforcement agencies, these entities exploited the very structures meant to serve the public good in order to advance clandestine agendas; practically the closest one can be to treason without crossing the actual line. In fact the only way this all fails the definition of treason is that they were doing these same things as paid for by our own government, instead of some foreign entity. The consequences of this treason were profound: a legacy of abuse and then rightful mistrust in institutions, still treated as uncalled for, and enduring psychological trauma for individuals subjected to unethical experimentation. This isn’t just a warning against unchecked powers, it’s a warning against the abuses of these specific very foundational powers underlying human experience and life, and screeching alarm bells for alternatives.
The pattern is definitional. Institutions purposed for healing were hijacked for shadowy agendas, and patients became pawns in twisted games of power and politics. The priorities of mental health research to this day have been skewed by this dark history, and the expectations in practices now set in stone. This is to say that everyone saw the problem but then almost nothing happened. Oh sure there were mediocre policy adjustments hither and thither, but there were few changes for the better, especially in finding the means of minimizing the potential number of vulnerable victims at the behest of the political and intelligence monsters who pop up every generation. Perhaps there is even more we could do to limit such psychopathy which allows for this. However the Quixotic quest for pharmacological quick-fixes continues to overshadow holistic approaches addressing social determinants and community well-being, an imbalance crucial to exploits in the intelligence organizations’ legacies of horrors seen in co-called ‘Cold War operations.’
The profit motive overriding therapeutic care is bad enough. “Psychiatry, the branch of medicine through which mental illness has been defined and treated throughout its history, is uniquely prone to information asymmetry and the exploitative influence of the ‘free’ market.” (Brody, 2023). There is more to our psychiatric problems than simply profit taking the lead however, because it appears we have stumbled upon some sort of purposeful group of iatrogenic effects on society itself, as a whole; as committed and implemented for profit by pharmaceutical corporations in an environment already primed for it.
The poisonous fruits of intelligence meddling continue to ripen within America’s mental health institutions. Policies shaped by past excesses cast long shadows over contemporary practices. The legacy of abuse has also bred a deep-seated mistrust between patients and providers, hindering therapeutic alliances and complicating care. Fearful echoes of MKUltra’s pharmacological manipulations resonate in today’s prescription practices, where powerful psychotropic drugs are doled out with alarming frequency. In an era of electronic health records, data mining, and advanced computer analysis, the ghosts of COINTELPRO and MKUltra pose an even greater threat in the hallowed halls of medicine they haunt, in raising specters of overreach and abuse.
Reclaiming Sanctum
To break these chains, we must confront the past. This entails not only continued investigation into declassified documents, and as they come available, but also honest reckoning within mental health professions. We need transparency, accountability, and a renewed commitment to patient autonomy. Moreover, we should champion decentralized and community-based care models that empower individuals and resist top-down manipulations. Nurturing the human social ecosystems cultivates resilience against future encroachments from intelligence agencies and corporate interests.
Let this chronicle serve as both warning and perhaps the most important call to action of our lives: our nation’s sanctums of healing must be vigilantly guarded, lest we again fall prey to those who would exploit vulnerability for power. They absolutely will try to do it if we allow it. In this struggle, we safeguard not just individual souls but the collective conscience of America itself. The Federal psychological warfare programs as part of COINTELPRO and MKUltra weaponized mental health institutions. They did this against American citizens using vulnerable individuals and political actors, or even simply fathers with their children implicitly threatened, fabricating evidence and exploiting mental instabilities or even basic strong emotions for strategic blackmail purposes. The Newburgh Four case exemplifies this, where individuals with pre-existing mental health and criminal histories were manipulated into a fabricated terror plot. There are too many other examples to name here, suffice that it is a depressing list of horrors, and so I put it in the addendum.
These cases are not isolated incidents. They form a systemic pattern of abuse that demonstrates a clear and dangerous nexus between state-sanctioned intelligence and the ethical violations within our mental healthcare framework. Attributing societal mental health issues to modern conditions alone is a simple misdirection. It’s a red herring designed to obscure the root cause of issues: a history of state-perpetrated trauma inflicted in the name of security and control, followed on its heels by mass psychiatric drugging and the institutionalization that supports it, as heirs to the more original abuses. What exists within the mental health industries are largely descended of this intel-org-built network. While this does not necessarily imply that all are equal, however the therapeutic imperative does require an overhaul across the board in order to shift away from this current ill-fit control and experimentation orientation.
Rotten Roots & Abyssal stares
The historical roots of mental health structures within intelligence organizations, often entwined with coercive interrogation and psychological manipulation during the Cold War era, tragically predispose them to echoing these abuses. The initial frameworks, driven by a utilitarian imperative to “neutralize” adversaries and extract information, prioritized efficacy over ethical considerations. This inherently problematic foundation normalized treating individuals as manipulable subjects rather than autonomous citizens deserving of dignity, respect, and due process. Consequently, modern iterations, despite evolving mandates and professed ethical stances, carry the intellectual baggage of their progenitors and it will take a lot of work to uproot.
Existing power imbalances and secrecy within intelligence agencies perpetuate a culture where ethical safeguards can be eroded very easily, with a few strategic phone calls. The historical precedent of exploiting vulnerabilities for interrogation purposes lingers, risking the conflation of mental health assessments with pressure tactics or biased profiling. Furthermore, the compartmentalized nature of intelligence work often hinders robust ethical oversight and accountability, allowing practices informed by a manipulative past to resurface subtly, justified under the guise of national security or tactical necessity. This cyclical pattern tragically demonstrates that dismantling these ingrained biases and ensuring genuine ethical reform within intelligence agencies as well, demands continuous vigilance, systemic restructuring, and a fundamental shift towards prioritizing human dignity over expedient control methods.
Secrets fester. The intelligence apparati, arms of shadow wars and cold hearts, have long slicked their tendril-like fingers into the spinal column of society, warping communal life at our very core. Most of our modern mental health institutions were born amidst this muck, cradled in these tendrils. It is high time to yank those tendrils out at the roots and cultivate something finer, stronger, and more just, where nutritive society can grow and prosper.
We must stare into that abyssal history, unafraid. The intelligence agencies’ past is a litany of coercion, psychological bludgeoning, and ethical compromises justified under the banner of national security. True strength stems not from secret manipulations, but rather in open and ethical conduct. The above abuses are surely only scratching the surface of this monstrosity. We simply do not have the complete picture, but we do need it, or as much of it as we can get. We begin by exposing these sordid chapters to the light of day, clearing cobwebs in those corners of intelligence history. This is not an exercise in blame but a necessary reckoning, because only by acknowledging our sins can we hope for redemption.
Community Expansive Solutions & Difficulty in Dismantling the Shadows
A radical recalibration is imperative. Psychiatry must be reintegrated with the more philosophically-fertile soil of psychology revitalized in philosophy, at least, even if this is obviously outside the apparent scope of feasibility currently. It is a worthy goal, and we can start by disempowering psychiatry by building up its alternatives. Education must evolve, nurturing critical thinkers capable of discerning the ecological interplay of human behavior and dismantling the reductive allure of pharmaceutical quick-fixes. True healing lies not in chemical pacification, but in empowering individuals to confront their cognitive complexities head-on, fostering resilience and self-awareness through genuine human connection and introspection. Let us dismantle the chemical straitjacket and usher in an era of compassionate, ecologically-grounded mental healthcare, one founded on the bedrock of true psychological understanding. The human spirit deserves nothing less.
We must deconstruct this exploitative paradigm and reconstruct mental health services on bedrock principles: respect for individual autonomy, acknowledgment of personal complexities, and a holistic pursuit of well-being. A positive social psychology ethos prioritizes community over corporate greed. Such an ethos is essential to this endeavor. Localized care, rooted in the soil of our communities, fosters environments where healing is not just medical intervention but a communal endeavor in improved lifestyle. With appropriate oversight, such communal practices, grounded in benevolence and wisdom, can safeguard against the excesses of more profit-driven systems.
The old structures, erected on utilitarian quicksand and fed with a diet of manipulation and coercion, have left us a bleak inheritance: a society atomized, community bonds frayed like an old rope, and familial ties stretched thin as a politician’s promises. Our birthrights have been sold off for corporate trinkets, leaving us a nation of disenchanted spectators of spectacle rather than engaged citizens, or perhaps spectacles ourselves at best. However we are not here on earth to wallow in the mire of lamentations. No, it is time to don our muck boots and pull up the sleeves, for there’s work to be done: glorious work. We will disabuse people of the deceitful architectures and restore natural order. We rely on firmer grounds of evidence, humanity, community, virtue, and unassailable dignity.
Masculinity Lacking
Reconstruction of models in beneficent masculine and feminine agency is a worthwhile endeavor. We must also confront the emasculated state of our institutions, and society at large. The lack of robust masculinity has left us adrift, bereft of principled leadership and collective purpose in mental health care. Not simply blustering chests-thumping machismo but the considerate, quiet, resolute strength that protects, provides, and presides with justice. This isn’t erecting new idols or resurrecting old demons but reclamation of virtues that forge strong communities and sturdy characters. It is a call to cultivate men who stand tall not by dominating others but by lifting them up. We need men who wield power not as a club but as a shield of the righteous.
Therapist Chairs & Philosopher Stones
In place of adversarial position, we install therapeutic dialectic at the core in which narrative-driven exchanges evoke understanding of self, family, life, community, responsibility, and truth. This isn’t simply touchy-feely stuff. This is literally battle-tested positive social and cognitive psychologies employed to mend broken souls and bolster resilient spirits. To guide this transformation, we establish decentralized philosopher networks as independent national masculine intelligence organizations born of the people, for the people, to which trust is lent to natural masculine organization within such philosophical boundaries. These are not to be spooks but ethicists, logicians, philosophers, philosophy-oriented scientists, and community builders united under a common banner: the flourishing of our nation. These network shall promote integrative projects blending physical activity, labor parties, and voluntary improvement. Think symposiums on competing forms of education, brigades clearing trails while discussing Aristotle, teaching the categorical imperative at an impromptu lunch gathering in the park, or communal gardens and arboretums where youth learn horticulture and humility. These aren’t mere pastimes but the communal workspace wherein character is built, nation strengthened, and community tempered.
True Progressiveness
In surveying the fractured valley of our nation’s mental health industry, we must confront the elephant stomping through it in the myth of ‘mental illness as easily recognizable conditions’ like unto physical ailments. Is it not the case that the psychological health of a perfectly functioning individual may ebb between levels of wellness to degrees unlike any other category of health? Some of this leads to great works of art and innovation. It is imperative to acknowledge that the road before us is not merely about tinkering with systems or adjusting policies. We face a challenge that goes straight to the heart of what it means to be an imperfect human in an imperfect society.
Our current mental health system, a monster birthed from material obsessions and profit-mongering, has mechanistically-reduced our fellow citizens to little more than catalogs of symptoms. It peddles drugs and empty affirmations, masquerading as care while the human spirit languishes. This system is not about health; it’s about control, compliance, and the cold, hard cash that flows from an ever expansive river of human suffering. We must call this what it is: a moral outrage of incomprehensible levels, an insult to our collective intelligence, and an affront to the very soul of our nation. The time for equivocation is past; we need reckoning. We must demand an industry that treats individuals with reverence and within social contexts, not as cogs in a profit machine but as intricate, multifaceted beings worthy of their own profound psychological explorations, as they can attain to them.
Summary
This is a corruption of our country’s founding intents, with the basic rights of citizens as enshrined in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, the various Statutes of Limitations across the nation, and even the spirit of Common Law going back possibly thousands of years. Many people are simply written off as “non-citizens,” essentially because some ‘special someone’ said so, and this isn’t correct no matter how much patience said special person had with the school system to acquire a PhD, or the mental health system to find promotion. This is a mockery of the justice system, so we are obligated to re-frame all of our approaches to bring alignment with reason, order, and basic human dignity. Imposition of medication on individuals without their full and informed consent is an unfortunate injustice, erasing autonomy and reducing people to objects, so much so that institutions always pretend to minimize it. How does a business purportedly devoted to human being reduce that being to a simplistic calculus between force, chemistry, and profit margins? If we do not learn from the past, we risk repeating its shadows, casting long over the landscape of liberty and a national future.
Our understanding of “treatment” in mental health is in need of revision. As it is now, the only “treating” is of a profit-manage dynamic between individuals and institutions. Mental health is supposed to be in ‘human services,’ not ‘human product.’ Too much is devoted to appeasing the person in the moment with a mixture of medications and lies deemed safe for the person, served up in the form of “affirming” care. Mental health “treatment” has been changed into a euphemism for whatever insanity can make the person manageable. Managed and coordinated insanity is not supposed to be the goal of mental health treatments. Profit-manage is not the right model, and we need a definite return to true mental health.
Until we recast our understanding of “treatment” as various forms in equal parts reverence, alignments, beneficial goals, and learned self-correction for the individual, rather than mere drugged compliance, we will continue to perpetuate these cycles of suffering. We must have a vision in mental health that honors dignity of the individual human mind, especially in struggle. We must set the gold standard for ethics. We must shift treatment approaches to prioritize compassion, empathy, and empowerment over coercion and control. If psychiatric management or psychological coercion and control has any place in human society, it is probably within the prison systems, and should have nothing to do with mental health nor the general public outside of best good for the nation and communities.
We have the opportunity to transform mental health programs into instruments of psychological improvement. Therapy will no longer be devoted to collections of problems covered over pharmaceutically, or swept under the rug, either institutionally or through psychotic affirmation. Let us reassert the primacy of the human, where philosophical meaning is not some distant dream but an integral part of healing. Where empathy and compassion guide treatment, and where coercion in mental health is banished to the shadows from whence it came insofar as it is possible.
We roll our sleeves higher and shove our pants into the muck boots. The road ahead is long, the climb steep, but we tread it together, united under the banner of justice, bound by love for righteousness, for community, for nation, and for ethics. We are not merely dismantling shadows; we are building commonwealth, brick by brick. Thus, we plan a new conception of mental health and wholeness, where power resides not in ivory towers or boardrooms but in the hearts and minds of engaged and agentic individuals through community (Wickramaratne, 2022).
Individuals are more than the sum of their symptoms. They are whole beings. This is not a utopian dream nor a fix for a single broken industry alone, but a moral imperative, as backed by timeless philosophical truths. The time for half-measures has passed. We must not continue down this path of dehumanization, so we will create something new and splendid based upon the sound and foundational, illuminated by the beacon of ethical integrity and actually compassionate care which attends to real needs. The choice is ours, and it will define not just our health but the very soul of our nation, and our place in history.
References
CIA Behavior Control Experiments Focus of New Scholarly Collection | National Security Archive. (2024, December 23). Gwu.edu. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/dnsa-intelligence/2024-12-23/cia-behavior-control-experiments-focus-new-scholarly
COINTELPRO. (2019). FBI. https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro
Compton, M. T., & Shim, R. S. (2015). The Social Determinants of Mental Health. Focus, 13(4), 419–425. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.focus.20150017
De Sá, K. (2014). Drugging Our Kids | Part 1: The Mercury News. Mercurynews.com. https://extras.mercurynews.com/druggedkids/
Kazda, L., Bell, K., Thomas, R., McGeechan, K., Sims, R., & Barratt, A. (2021). Overdiagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Scoping Review. JAMA network open, 4(4), e215335. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.5335
Kirkbride, J. B., Anglin, D. M., Colman, I., Dykxhoorn, J., Jones, P. B., Patalay, P., Pitman, A., Soneson, E., Steare, T., Wright, T., & Griffiths, S. L. (2024). The social determinants of mental health and disorder: evidence, prevention and recommendations. World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 23(1), 58–90. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.21160
Lee, S. S., Humphreys, K. L., Flory, K., Liu, R., & Glass, K. (2011). Prospective association of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and substance use and abuse/dependence: a meta-analytic review. Clinical psychology review, 31(3), 328–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2011.01.006
Leichsenring, F., Steinert, C., Rabung, S., & Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2022). The efficacy of psychotherapies and pharmacotherapies for mental disorders in adults: an umbrella review and meta-analytic evaluation of recent meta-analyses. World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), 21(1), 133–145. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20941
Noakes, T. (2021). Montreal MKULTRA Experiments. In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mkultra
van Voren R. (2010). Political abuse of psychiatry—an historical overview. Schizophrenia bulletin, 36(1), 33–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbp119
Wickramaratne, P. J., Yangchen, T., Lepow, L., Patra, B. G., Glicksburg, B., Talati, A., Adekkanattu, P., Ryu, E., Biernacka, J. M., Charney, A., Mann, J. J., Pathak, J., Olfson, M., & Weissman, M. M. (2022). Social connectedness as a determinant of mental health: A scoping review. PloS one, 17(10), e0275004. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0275004
Further Reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_experiments
https://www.thecollector.com/project-mk-ultra-cia-secret-experiments
https://www.history.com/mkultra-operation-midnight-climax-cia-lsd-experiments
Addendum: Additional Considerations
Additional to the preceding analysis, please find below what was unfit for the argument above, but is crucial for understanding all ramifications and the full picture.
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO, initiated by the FBI in 1956 and officially ending in 1971, targeted various domestic political organizations perceived as threats. Tactics included surveillance, infiltration, discrediting through psychological warfare, planting false media reports, harassment, wrongful imprisonment, illegal violence, and even assassination.
Analysis of COINTELPRO Involvement in Terrorist Attacks
COINTELPRO’s primary goal was to disrupt political dissent, often through extralegal means. Below are incidents linked to COINTELPRO assets:
16th Street Baptist Church Bombing (September 15, 1963): FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe’s role remains contentious.
Assassination of Fred Hampton (December 4, 1969): COINTELPRO’s involvement is documented through FBI memos, highlighting surveillance and misinformation tactics.
Assassination of Malcolm X (February 21, 1965): The FBI’s infiltration and psychological warfare may have indirectly facilitated the assassination.
Murder of Viola Liuzzo (March 25, 1965): The FBI spread false rumors about her, focusing on psychological warfare rather than direct violence.
Black Panther Party Internal Conflicts (1968-1971): Fake letters and misinformation led to internal violence and deaths among Black Panther members.
Puerto Rican Independentistas (1978): Involvement in the firebombing of Juan Mari Bras’ home and the Cerro Maravilla Episode raises questions about false flag operations.
American Indian Movement (AIM) (1973-1976): FBI tactics, including snitch jacketing, facilitated violence during the counterinsurgency war at Pine Ridge.
Greensboro Massacre (November 3, 1979): FBI informant Edward Dawson and BATF agent Butkovich’s roles suggest potential false flag operations.
Secret Army Organization (SAO) (1971-1972): The SAO was created by the FBI to conduct bombings and shootings against activists.
MKUltra
MKUltra, launched by the CIA in 1953 and halted in 1973, focused on mind control and behavioral modification. It involved over 150 known human experiments using psychedelic drugs, paralytics, electroshock procedures, often without consent. The program aimed to develop techniques for interrogation, brainwashing, and psychological torture. Nobody has a full count on the experiments which remain secret.
Analysis of MKUltra Involvement in Terrorist Attacks and False Flags
Lack of direct evidence links MKUltra to terrorist attacks or false flags. Experiments aimed at developing methods for interrogation, brainwashing, and psychological manipulation.
Speculative connections exist between individuals subjected to MKUltra experiments and later acts of terrorism, notably Ted Kaczynski. His actions from 1978 to 1995 are not directly attributable to MKUltra’s operations. It should be noted, however, that Ted was a genius as demonstrated through his mathematical prowess and innovations.
Ethical abuses within MKUltra highlight significant violations, including overseas operations avoiding U.S. legal oversight. The destruction of many records in 1973 along with the destruction of records that must have come with the mass firings in 1978 limit full understanding but fuel conspiracy theories.
Limitations of Analysis
One must acknowledge that while historical records provide a solid foundation, numerous details remain shrouded in secrecy. Classified documents, deliberately obscured or destroyed, leave vast gaps in our understanding of both COINTELPRO and MKUltra’s full scope. Conspiracy theories often fill these voids, amplifying speculations beyond credible evidence, some of which must be disinformation. Vigilant scrutiny is paramount to distinguish fact from fiction.
Ethical Implications:
– Both programs conducted experiments and operations that violated basic human rights, including consent, privacy, and bodily autonomy.
– Tactics employed, such as psychological warfare, harassment, and physical violence, inflicted lasting harm on individuals and communities.
– The use of informants in violent contexts raises questions about complicity in crimes committed by agents and the organizational chains of command themselves.
COINTELPRO Concerns:
– The program’s methods aimed to disrupt political dissent crossed legal boundaries, blurring lines between law enforcement and criminal behavior.
– Surveillance and infiltration tactics fostered an environment of mistrust and fear among targeted groups, exacerbating social divisions. This manipulation is not limited to historical events but continues to shape modern societal dynamics.
In examining COINTELPRO’s legacy:
– The violent suppression of labor movements during the 1960s and 1970s saw FBI involvement in discrediting union leaders. This often involved spreading false information and instigating internal conflicts.
– Infiltration of anti-war groups, such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), resulted in divisions within these organizations, weakening their political efficacy.
MKUltra Concerns:
– The focus on mind control and behavioral modification raised profound ethical questions about governmental overreach into individual psyches, as well as access to mental health facilities.
– Experiments conducted without informed consent subjected innocent people to psychological trauma and physical harm. While the involvement of MKUltra in many terrorist activities remain largely circumstantial, the moral implications of its methods make the program capable of all claims and this demands serious investigation.
In examining MKUltra:
– The program’s international dimensions included collaborations with foreign intelligence agencies, further complicating ethical assessments. Experiments conducted overseas exploited vulnerable populations without recourse to legal protections, just as in the United States.
Enduring Impact:
– Contemporary surveillance tactics employed by intelligence organizations echo COINTELPRO methods, raising concerns about the cyclical nature in state overreach as well as future potential for abuses.
– The persistent interest in mind control techniques suggests that while MKUltra may have officially ended, its legacy continues to influence covert research, especially as through so learned techniques.