Healing

Mental Health is a state of the body and not necessarily the mind

by Robert Randle
03/11/17
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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
[email protected]