What Effect Does Chiropractic Have on Mental Illness?

Most people associate Chiropractic with dealing with neck and back pain. This is wrong, and this is sad. Sad because Chiropractic is so much more. Going for back pain only is like going to a fine French restaurant, just to munch on the bread.

Chiropractic adjustments liberate the brain and the nerve system from the devastating effects of Vertebral Subluxation Complex. Of course, mental problems reside in the brain... mostly. (Actually the emotional part of the brain, the limbic system, extends into the spinal cord, half way down the spine. So, part of your "emotional" brain is actually in the spine.)

What parts of the spine are most important here? The upper cervical spine, the base of the skull and the first two vertebrae, are like the main switch. When subluxated, there can be torsion on the meninges (the covering over the brain and the cord, containing the cerebro-spinal fluid, the CSF), effecting the CSF, direct pressure on the cord and those spinal nerves, and interference to normal blood flow to the brain. Critical menigeal attachments are also present at the other end of the spine, at the sacrum and the coccyx, the tailbone. I have seen many cases of mental illness, many serious cases, with severe subluxation of the coccyx. And I have seen these people get well, often dramatically after adjustment to the coccyx. Very few chiropractors analyze and adjust the coccyx. Personally, I think that this is critical.

Besides these special areas of the spine, any vertebral subluxation will cause some torsion of the meninges. And any vertebral subluxation will alter the expression of life to a variety of organs. As long as these organs receive an abnormal nerve supply, they will not and cannot function properly. The health of the rest of the body, too, effects the brain, including emotional states.

In the early decades of the 20th century, there were several chiropractic sanitoriums. There, instead of the barbarism of psychiatric treatments, from drugs to ice water baths to insulin shock to various restraints, these mental patients were adjusted. The degree of success in these chiropractic institutions was far greater, no match at all, than the medical hell holes.

What of today's psychiatry? Talk therapy has been replaced by drug therapy, based upon the made-up story  that mental illness is from a "biochemical imbalance." The side effects of these drugs can be horrific. And the patients seem to be patients forever. Then, there's the problem of pathologizing every difference in human behavior, especially prominent in pediatric psychology. A colleague of mine, Dr. Chris Kent, called the DSM (the huge book that has all the billable codes for all of the psychiatric diagnoses) "Mad Magazine for psychiatrists." Is something wrong with this picture?

Every human being should be under regular, wellness chiropractic care. Certainly, everyone with a mental, emotional or behavioral problem should be under chiropractic care.

Don Harte, D.C.
Corte Madera Authentic Chiropractor
Liberator of Innate