Depression in women sometimes caused by hypothyroidism. Two of my friends of about 30 were obese and depressed and had been diagnosed as having mental illness. Both recovered completely when treated for reduced thyroid function. They were given the correct medication of thyroxin. Depression can also be caused by being stopped from doing things (anything) by well meaning relatives or educators, not reaching expectations and breakdown in relationships. And pain can cause it too if the pain continues for months or years.
Anorexia can be caused by magnesium deficiency in the diet. Taking vitamin pills containing the correct dose of magnesium can cure the condition. (Sheep also suffer like this and may be cured with magnesium supplement).
Hysterical symptoms such as walking neurosis can be the result of the patient, having committed a serious offence, makes up symptoms to avoid punishment. Some patients learn to report symptoms in order to get a free lunch.
Psychosomatic Pain is sometimes mistakenly diagnosed when the patient has a trapped nerve.
Psychiatrists encourage their patients to manifest symptoms to make money.
Psychosis is sometimes caused by chemical toxins in the patients food, and by the stress of life's unpleasant events.
Psychopaths have a system missing in their brains, they cannot feel another person's pain.
Religion often makes people manifest symptoms and is a man's refuge from his knowledge of the inevitability of his death.
Hypnotism is inattention, the subject is caught not paying attention, then by operant conditioning may be made to go into that state on a signal. Operant conditioning can make a person do almost anything that they are able to do. People can be made to make up stories containing false confessions using operant conditioning. Many people have been unjustly punished as a result of these false confessions. A person not paying attention is likely to say anything when caught in this way and is in no way a certainty that the truth will be told. Essentially a random answer.
Unfortunately psychiatrists benefit from their patients and encourage them to continue their symptoms to make money. Some psychiatrists will make people ill, or diagnose incorrectly to make money. These considerations apply to other branches of the medical profession.
To medics
Always check for physical causes first and then look for logical reasons that cause the patient to manifest symptoms.
Normal people get over toxins in a few hours or days and will recover naturally from unpleasant events. Recovery is not aided by dwelling on the events and the patient should be encouraged, after administering justice, to move on.
In the case of hysterical symptoms, psychiatrists often encourage the patient to be ill in order for the medics to make money but they really need to point out the reason for the patient to manifest symptoms. In the case of criminals, prison is more appropriate the expensive medical treatment.
Chemical reasons
Although metabolic defects cause some mental conditions, usually the patient is hiding something to avoid punishment.
There are conditions caused by coffee and tea in sensitive people (itching, hallucinations, delusions) which medics misdiagnose as a mental illness and treat the patient with years of psychotherapy to find the "underlying cause" when all the patient has to do is to avoid chemical stimulants. In this case since chemical stimulants are almost universal in drinks and some foods it might be a good idea for the patient to take a tranquiliser to block the chemical stimulants effect. This is a common cause of mental conditions.
Isolation
A person who is left alone for long periods will develop abnormal behaviour patterns and have strange sensations, including hearing voices, god talking, seeing things and abnormal feelings of irritation, just because their environment is not stimulating enough. This occurs in psychiatric institutions and much of the mental conditions seen is caused by the environment of the institution. It will also occur with people of abnormal appearance as they are shunned by their fellows. And if a criminal is known then they can occur for the same reason in the criminal because the criminal is shunned by their fellows. Bed ridden patients will also manifest mental conditions caused by lack of stimulation.
Lobotomy
I understand, that in some cases, where the patient has "delusions", an operation is carried out where the frontal lobe of the patients brain is cut off or cut out. This procedure destroys the patients' mind. He may look ok and seem ok in behaviour but he has no mind of his own. He is trained prior to the operation by hypnosis to say and do things and after this execution he continues to obey orders and carry out tasks but without understanding and is probably unconscious. He may become a successful factory worker but goes through the factory routine automatically and without understanding. He shows no intuition or originality and cannot do things that require planning or the "higher mental processes". He will have no understanding of mathematics and will never be able to understand or carry out scientific investigation. Essentially the patient has been murdered. He has no delusions because he has no mind. Such remains of people have to be led by the hand otherwise they will just stare blankly.
Psychiatrists who carry out these operations are really criminals. I understand it is also carried out on socialists and communists on the ground that they "want things" after the procedure. It also is a sufficient act instead of prison or execution. Religious leaders may want it done instead of burning a heretic as the brain that is left may be trained to mouth the words required.
The operation has been known and carried out for over five thousand years. (In the story of Samson, some bibles say he was "drugged and while he slept the soft tissue behind his eyes was cut away").
Millicent: the robotised girl. A young woman I know was accused of a serious crime, she denied it, and instead of imprisoning her they hypnotised her and trained her to obey orders automatically (naked if required) and then when she was conditioned they cut away her frontal lobe (the reasoning, planning and philosophising brain component) so that the hypnosis was permanent. Now she is a beautiful, robotised slave girl. I have seen a number of people in stages of this process and fear I am being victimised too.
Myself: I made the suggestion, as a teenager, that life could exist outside the Earth, particularly on Mars. I was subjected to psychological attack and went mad. I was leucotomised in 1962 and became an idiot (they told me I had a brain tumour and I know this to be true so they took that out at the same time). It took two years to recover my power of speech and a further ten years to recover some degree of education. I still have a residual mental defect in that I forget immediate things if I am distracted (they say it keeps we "with it") Psychological assaults are still being mounted and I fear another operation.
They say their treatment was successful but I have never had a high income and have never done anything except being working class. These operations are used to contain the ambitions of working class people.
Disclaimer:
I am not medically qualified, my opinions come from my life's experience.
People without frontal lobes just sit hunched up but can be trained, damage higher up impairs mental facilities such as reasoning, memory update, scratch pad, stack faults.
Depression is also caused by sentience (our knowledge of our own death).