A Smashing Victory — And an Insidious New Threat

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Today it is no longer enough to speak of human freedom as if it were in itself a guarantee for the opportunity to live the best possible life. That is because the very right to be a human being is under assault by forces that can and do destroy the fabric of being human—the normal functioning of our brains. Increasingly, we need to speak of protecting people and their brains so that they have the mental wherewithal to enjoy freedom.

Consider this analogy: What happens to a child’s freedom if she is surrounded by the neurotoxic lead in paint and develops permanent disabilities that limit even her ability to imagine a future? What happens to a child’s freedom if he is afflicted with neurotoxic stimulant drugs like Ritalin and Adderall that shrink portions of his brain and drive him toward addiction as he grows up?

What happens to our potential for freedom when our brains are subjected to electroconvulsive shocks that drive us into unconsciousness, convulsions, coma, flatten-lining of the brain waves and delirium, and all the irreversible damage associated with repeated severe concussions leading to traumatic brain injury (TBI)?

The Inception of an Inspiring Victory

Last Saturday, I received a phone call at my home in upstate New York from an old friend, Ron Bassman, a psychotherapist and patient advocate against psychiatric oppression. Ron asked me if I would do the seemingly impossible—prepare to testify in court in Connecticut on Monday to save a 26-year-old from ongoing involuntary ECT.

Ron was embarrassed to ask me on such short notice; but I gladly accepted and asked him to have the attorney call me. Not long after he hung up, I received a call from Gina Teixeira, Staff Attorney for the Connecticut Legal Rights Project, Inc. She explained that she was seeking a temporary injunction against giving a young man involuntary shock treatment. A lower court judge had already approved the coercive treatment, the ECT treatments had begun, and she was merely seeking a temporary stoppage to present a stronger case for protecting him from psychiatry.

We worked together for a large chunk of the weekend. Based on my free ECT Resource Center (www.123ECT.com), I was able to show her online articles about brain damage from ECT that she could download, copy and bring to court with her on Monday. In addition, since she had never done an ECT case, I wrote my testimony out for her, to which she quickly began adding important new ideas to our approach.

On Monday morning Gina informed the state’s attorney and the court that she planned to have me testify by phone at the hearing when it began at 2 pm. I set aside the afternoon and waited at the phone. Gina kept me up on what was happening—which was a desperate attempt by the state’s attorney to prevent me from testifying at the hearing.

The Stunning Victory

At around 4 pm, Gina texted me: “We won!”

Never expecting the outcome Gina achieved, I texted back asking if she meant we won the temporary injunction against the ECT.

She texted back that we won “everything.” Afraid of facing me in court, even by telephone, the state gave up entirely and the young man was freed from involuntary ECT treatment, as well as involuntary medication. It was a total victory.

I asked Gina to discuss the legal implications of the case and she replied:

“Although Judge Bellis recognized the important liberty issues in this case and sustained our appeal, we still have work to do at the legislative level in Connecticut. At a minimum, the shock statute needs to provide for an automatic stay of the lower court’s decision in cases of forced treatment so that people can have a meaningful opportunity for appeal. In this case, Judge Bellis found that the ECT and the involuntary medication orders were invalid, and yet my client endured forced treatment during the litigation. Although we were happy with the result in this case because the involuntary treatment ended, the fact that my client received forced treatment pursuant to orders that were found to be legally invalid is unconscionable. We are so grateful that Dr. Breggin was ready to testify in this case and helped us to prepare because that allowed us to move forward with confidence.”

The young man’s potential to enjoy freedom has been protected. Now he will have to overcome the internal demons and the external pressures and conflicts that landed him in such a dreadful place. I hear that ex-patients from the psychiatric reform movement are rallying around him. I hope it is so and wish him the best.

An Insidious New Electrical Threat

Meanwhile, the Psychiatric Industrial Complex, led by a company called Neurosigma, with a device called Monarch, is finding more subtle ways to inflict electrical energy upon the brains of children labeled with ADHD. The FDA has approved the application of electricity by the TNS machine directly to the brains of these children throughout the night.

Writing on Mad in America on May 21, 2019, psychotherapist and lifelong patient advocate Michael Cornwall fired the first salvo at the mighty Monarch, a potential marketing avalanche which could lead to the domination of childhood by electrical contraptions for untold numbers of children.

As Michael notes in his blog titled “FDA Approves Electricity All Night Long on Children’s Brains,” I was stunned by his revelations and quickly invited him to talk about this potential tragedy on my radio talk show. He and I have now committed to a joint effort to protect children for this man-made catastrophe.

The manufacturer’s intention is to apply the treatment for months or years, but the controlled clinical trials for the FDA lasted a mere four weeks. Misleadingly promoted as trigeminal nerve stimulation, it is really a broad electrical assault on the frontal lobes of the brain through electrodes on the forehead; a genuine shotgun approach using electrical zaps instead of pellets.

Is it electroshock treatment? No, it’s more subtle and more sustained—several amps of electricity applied overnight to the front of the brain right into the critical and highly sensitive frontal lobes. There are seizures, but only when something goes wrong. They are not aiming at knocking out the children. Instead, it is a slow electrical erosion—or corrosion—of the highest functions of the brain and mind.

Is there anything specific about ADHD that makes it amenable to electrical current? No, the manufacturers of these machines have been pushing them as a cure-all for everything from ADHD to anxiety, depression, and epilepsy. Veterans with PTSD (and overmedication) have been especially targeted.

Putting an electric current to the brain doesn’t “modulate it,” it deforms the brain’s natural and normal electrical system. If a psychiatric treatment like direct electrical stimulation of the brain “works,” it works by harming the brain. My profession of psychiatry has no physical treatments that do anything other than disrupt, disable and often destroy the highest human functions of the brain. The resulting flattening of emotions and grinding down of will power and self-concern is considered an improvement.

There Is Nothing to Fix with Electricity

ADHD is not a disease or a disorder, it is a collection of behaviors that disappoint or try the patience of teachers and parents. So-called symptoms or behaviors listed in the official diagnosis include the category inattention (fails to pay close attention to details, loses things, avoids difficult tasks, forgetful) and the category hyperactivity/impulsivity (fidgets, too often leaves seat, often “on the go,” talks excessively, interrupts, doesn’t like to wait his turn). In children labeled ADHD, there are no known physical causes for the behaviors.

Often, these children are totally normal kids who are the youngest in the class or a little immature. Others may be anxious or poorly brought up. Sometimes they are victims of a very poor diet. Sometimes they are being bullied or abused. They may have fallen behind and need solid teaching to catch up. Often school feels overwhelming.

The “causes” of these behaviors are infinite, but there is nothing wrong in the brains of boys and girls labeled ADHD. In my private practice, I guarantee parents that if their child’s behavior looks like ADHD, the child will start doing much better after two weeks of a combination of improved and consistent discipline, unconditional love, better nutrition and daily fun exercise. At the same time, some of these kids are “cured” overnight by transferring to a better classroom or school.

In my experience with relatively well-off and well-meaning parents, the so-called ADHD child often has a parent or parents who are afraid to do parenting. Parenting requires a belief in one’s moral authority, a consistent program for insisting on mutual respect, and lots of unconditional love.

No, there is nothing wrong in the brains of children diagnosed ADHD—until they are given drugs or have electrodes clamped to their foreheads. The moment that happens, a great deal begins to go wrong in their brains. Drugs and electrical stimulation are alien intruders that can only disrupt brain function, while proving very harmful long-term.

I asked Michael Cornwall, who first exposed and condemned the FDA approval of the Monarch, if he would add something to this report. He wrote:

“For almost 40 years practicing as a licensed child and adolescent therapist, I’ve witnessed and fought against the human rights abuses done to children by psychiatry, that Peter has so valiantly fought against like no other. Please join us now with the SPAC project to oppose the ever more Orwellian sanctioned harming of our innocent and dependent children by psychiatry and the FDA, while we also work to expand humane and compassionate alternative care for children, teens and families in need of help.”

Join Michael Cornwall and me to stop the FDA-approved electrical erosion of our children’s brains. Start by talking to friends and colleagues. Set up your own group to take actions. Research it; write about it.

Through our nonprofit International Center for the Study of Patient-Oriented Psychiatry (ICSPP.org), we are establishing a project called “Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children” or SPAC. Michael Cornwall is the Director. There will be lots more coming from us to you!

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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24 COMMENTS

    • Dr. Breggin makes the point about diet/nutrition several times in his article. It is a huge issue (and hard to believe not in some way related) as bad diet and nutrition are being promoted to us at every turn these days, even as the “smart” people are going organic. Any doctor should look at diet and sleep before doing anything else (except maybe in severe cases, but we’re talking about ADHD), and many doctors and psychologists are. Psychiatry is way out in left field on this one, but that’s only to be expected in their case.

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  1. Regarding the electricity overnight on children’s brains.

    The electricity is DC or direct current so does not cause a seizure. At best , the treatment is an active placebo.

    At worst, chemical reactions will occur in the blood and potentially poison the child. To separate hydrogen and oxygen H2O in water you can apply a DC voltage to water that has conductors. At the positive and negative contact points gas and chemical reactions will take place.

    The odds of electricity reaching the brain is very unlikely, as proven by a cadaver study of DC electrical stimulation. Medical article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29396478

    For DC to work they have to use higher voltages/power, which then makes it too painful to use on conscious people.

    Layman article. “Buzsáki, who still hopes to use such techniques to enhance memory, is more restrained than some critics. The tDCS field is “a sea of bullshit and bad science” https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/cadaver-study-casts-doubts-how-zapping-brain-may-boost-mood-relieve-pain

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  2. “Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children,” I couldn’t agree more. It’s appalling! The school social workers even want to drug the well behaved and intelligent children, because they get 100% on their state standardized tests!!!???

    The “mental health” workers are insane. Thank you for speaking out against the harm being done to our children by the intrusive, “omnipotent moral busy body,” drunk due to their unchecked power, “mental health” workers, gentlemen.

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  3. Just look at what happens to this case with the threat of expert testimony from Dr. Peter Breggin. There, in a nutshell, you have the problem with so many court proceedings when there is nobody to come to the defense of the accused. Were somebody to step in, the case might collapse, as did the case described above. We need more people taking sides, and in particular, taking the side of the “patient” threatened with unwanted, forced, and harmful treatments. One exception can make a world of difference. Thank you, Dr. Breggin, for all you have done, and are doing, to save people from harmful treatment practices.

    As for the electricity applied to school children, I can only imagine it will make their school performance suffer, and that certainly wouldn’t be a positive outcome. Of course, if their school work does suffer, they will be failing obediently, and that, I imagine, is the real reasoning behind this damaging procedure. We need to stop, once again, and let children be children, even if they are extraordinarily bright and inquisitive children.

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  4. Good news about this ECT victory. But I am even more ecxited about the formation of the SPAC project. I feel the giving of psycho-pharm drugs, the diagnosis of pre-adolescents as psychotic, and the developing trend to have young persons selected as potentially “mentally ill” through early diagnosis by teachers and classmates is perhaps the single most important social issue in our society. I am a Canadian psychotherapist and social activist in Ottawa and want to become involved in this activist intervention. I appreciate these small victories but want so much more.

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  5. Congratulations on the “court victory”.

    I can’t see electricity and a child’s brain (or anyones brain) working well together.

    In the UK about 5% of the working population is now Mentally Disabled and surviving on Severe Mental Illness Disability Benefit. I was like this myself as a young man between the age of 20 and 24. It’s the treatments that cause the Disability.

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  6. This kind of stuff is an outrage. Thank you Dr. Breggin for your continuing work here.

    I am sure you know about this Transcranial Magnet procedure, and about the promotion of it for Asperger’s – Autism by John Elder Robison and Alex Plank.

    So often, it is the survivors of abuse, who go on to identify with the abusers and to abuse other survivors.

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  7. Thank you for defending our kids. My heart goes out to, and I’m crying for all the children’s and adults lives that these truly mad and greedy people in power and control over us have damaged, insulted and destroyed. I’m crying for all the well meaning but misguided and ignorant parents that do not know any better than to subject their kids to this type of deeply damaging tyranny. We parents must unite our forces and save our kids futures. At times it seems like it’s futile, too late, and that we’re too weak and going to lose this battle. But we must not give up on hope. Thank you for your hope giving work.

    Ruth

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  8. I very much agree with Dr. Breggin about these issues and where this whole thing is headed if we don’t succeed in changing its course.
    But my viewpoint on the mechanism being used by these treatments is that they are attacks on the mind and spirit via the body. The brain is not the ultimate residence of an individual’s personality or life. It is only a very important tool which he or she uses to interact with the physical universe. There are many people who survive well and happily with parts of their bodies damaged or missing, even their brains. But this is an unnecessary and unreasonable burden to place on people who are used to operating with their entire body intact. The problem with these treatments is the continued poisoning, damage, pain and confusion they cause. And the problem with all the theories behind these treatments is that they assign wrong cause. I think we should be careful in our own writing about these subjects to avoid the trap that the population is being pushed into, which is the dogmatic idea that the mind and personality reside in the brain. They don’t. These treatments are physical attacks on people with no real therapeutic purpose. They damage, degrade and terrify just like many other forms of physical attack do. And that is all psychiatry really wants to accomplish.

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  9. Many thanks Peter for your great open heart! You’re a constant source of inspiration for those us who believe in non-destructive medicine that honours the patient first. This is a great shared victory for all of us survivors of ECT. We need more of these to turn the tide of medical abuse that operates in the name of fake or questionable progress. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in the state attorney’s office to hear their discussions. 🙂

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  10. “Now he will have to overcome the internal demons and the external pressures and conflicts that landed him in such a dreadful place.”

    And the trauma and brain damage, even if relatively “mild”, that will possibly torment him for the rest of his life.

    Money and people having to do stuff, especially when there’s less and less things that actually need to be getting done due to technology, is the root of this evil. I can’t think of any less important things to be done than the current mental health professions.

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  11. I just watched a talk by Daniel Amen about how easy it is to induce brain injury.

    One of his SPECT images was of a boy who fell on his head at age 3, and they wondered why his behaviour at adolescence was so outrageous…embarking on a brain healing program, they were able to recover damaged brain tissue (I’m guessing through brain training, diet, neurofeedback, Amen has a lot of protocols…)

    I wonder, Dr. Breggin, if he might be an ally in this cause to stop the Monarch?

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  12. One thing about these alleged experts on ADHD is how they pay absolutely no attention to things like lead exposure, being willing to zap their patients for hours nightly and/or fill them full of speed for years. Of course it’s a lot cheaper to treat for things like toxic metals, which generates less income for the (pseudo?) provider(s) than zapping and “speed” doping.

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  13. HI Dr. Breggin, I have a friend who is involved in “daily use of a new home CES device that stimulates the brain with gentle electric waves.” This device sounds a lot like the Monarch, although through a different manufacturer. Do you know anything about this device? I am quite skeptical. Any references appreciated.

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    • There are a number of much less harmful devices out there. Dr. Bob Becker was castigated for his approach to healing with electricity. I have a Dr. Becker BioTuner, the stimulus is on the ears, and it sets up a gentle current between the ears (brain). It has settings for earth resonance, healing, calming, and energizing. It is very gentle.

      There are other devices which are more invasive, involving pads on the head more like a TENS device. I also use TENS for pain.

      But I don’t trust just anyone with my brain; the only device I would consider is one designed by Dr. Bob Becker.

      There is a discussion of these devices (as they apply to withdrawal symptoms) here: http://survivingantidepressants.org/topic/4829-alpha-stim-fisher-wallace-sota-biotuner-pons-and-similar-devices/

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  14. Dear Peter

    Have you looked at the impact of microwave radiation on the brain? Prof Curtis Bennett of Canada an electrical engineer proves that this radiation is UNINSULATED ELECTRICITY that passes through our bodies continually having the effect that we are all being slowly electrocuted. The symptoms of chronic electrocution are the same as those of survivors of Electric Shock. https://thermoguy.com/

    Dr Bennett can also show the harm using thermographic techniques that might interest you.

    Kind regards

    Verily

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  15. It’s not just children, it adults as well, I am the victim of an illegal micro-chipping program for the purpose of RMN(Remote Neural Monitoring). I was microchip when I was arrested in 2002 and was also place in a psop program call a Coercive Persuasion Program so they can manufactured my consent. The use of directed energy weapon for telepathic communication and mind control know as Silent Sound Spread Spectrum.

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