Great stuff, regards, Chrys

There are a lot of people out there with experience of being on these drugs, but it seems there is often some excuse, by those with vested interests, to try to explain away the downsides of these drugs, often in terms of the sufferer’s assumed mental health problems. When you are in the grip of one of these drugs it is very hard to argue the case. I believe that there is significant benefit in ensuring that someone with mental health issues should have a strong advocate of their best interest in attendance with anyone who is administering psychoactive drugs as well, because the decisions that can be made at such times can have enormous implications and the sufferer is highly unlikely to be in a suitable position to make those decisions either due to a genuine underlying mental health problem or the unpredictable effects of psychoactive drugs.

As a previous person noted – there is no proof of the serotonin hypothesis that the manufacturer’s of these drugs claim their drug can fix, yet no-one denies that these drugs are psychoactive or mind-altering and, by definition, will change your behaviour, feelings and personality thereby creating a ‘disturbed’ person in ways which, again no-one could deny, are unpredictable. My personal view, based on painful experience of depersonalisation, derealisation, inner torment, akathisia and other tortures over many years is that all psychoactive drugs should have much better, proven efficacy and only be used in situations where other therapy has failed. They should never be used as a first line in mental health. While psychological therapy may not prove effective in a given case it is, at least, a benign approach. I also maintain that personally I have found it much easier to practice psychological therapy techniques and see their benefits after ceasing psychoactive medication.

There are also significant issues in stopping taking psychoactive drugs. The experience can be so traumatic that the sufferer’s behaviour through the process can be interpreted by ‘experts’ as further evidence of underlying mental health problems and so the horrors continue. There are also reports of people with long-term physiological problems long after discontinuation. I, for example, am currently trying to deal with peripheral neuropathy which I believe is caused by my long-term use of SSRIs.

For all of the poor science done by biopsychiatry and the lack of translation of science to actual practice, many talk therapists are hostile to scientific or systematic approaches to studying effects of therapy, I believe to the detriment of patients.

Love your articles Mark.
Some folks in Ohio have been asking physicians just this question. We believe them when they tell us that they would rather NOT treatment mental illnesses since they have no training but feel “compelled” when clients bring it up during their 8-9 minute office visit. Most doc’s aren’t aware of local alternatives to meds but even if they can/want to refer the person the person may not follow thru or would prefer something more immediate (talk therapy is time consuming and difficult afterall). In short, there can be only one outcome/result of a 8-9 minute visit around treating mental illness. “Every system is perfectly designed to achieve exactly the results it gets.”

Regarding “to defeat biological psychiatry, we can’t just show its lack of integrity.”
I think you missed the con. The psychiatrist predicts the future. The prescribed drugs change the brain and then make the prediction come true ( emotionally unstable due to a brain chemical imbalance). Those psychiatrists making the error (predicting the future) can not admit to making an error , do not believe they are wrong, and no one can prove they are wrong. The Dunning–Kruger effect.

Thanks so much.
Lori

Bogus junk science DSM stigmas bought and paid for by BIG PHARMA to push its lethal drugs to give psychiatry the pretense of practicing medicine when Freudian analaysis waned have certainly BENEFITED so called biolgical psychiatrists like Dr. Steinberg beyond their wildest psychopathic dreams. Such benefits only accruing to the mental death profession by using typical NAZI tactics of bogus eugenics and other fraud theories while spreading BIG PHARMA irrational hate and fear of those they falsely stigmatize as “mentally ill,” an evil, false, linguistic impossible metaphor to degrade others as subhuman enough so that they can exploit, rob and destroy them with impunity

I think that Dr. Steinberg should be subjected to her own so called “treatments” and probably will if she ends up in a nursing home with a majority of the elderly now being assaulted with antipsychotics to silence them and make them more manageable while helping them die far more quickly. Perhaps this is karma for all those who stood by silently and/or encouraged the forced stigmatizing, involuntary commitments and poison drugging of others despite Dr. Steinburg’s and others’ atheism. Who would have thought the powerful NAZI war machine would topple with the now insane dictator Hitler hiding in a bunker. Ironically, his own personal doctor probably did more than anyone to help destroy him than his world enemies. What comes around goes around. Be careful what you wish for.

If your theory is true then perhaps our government should begin banning all forms of influential human contact, since that’s really all that talk therapy is. Perhaps we should ban self-help books as well since those are practically the same thing if you just imagine the book as a therapist.

This is confusing me. One of the points of Whitaker’s research is that people taking antidepressants don’t have nearly as good of long-term outcome as those not taking the drugs, so how can both groups be at 80% recovered at the end of 2 years? Wouldn’t that mean there is no difference in the long-term course of depression for treated and untreated groups?

Is there a body at NIMH where a request for review of findings can be submitted? If not there should be.

This stuff shouldn’t be fought out in blogs.

This really deserves a mass movement with people picketing surgeries who practice this kind of mass drugging of the population with these dangerous drugs.

The same problems are found in banking, big pharma and climate change where the basic facts, and the basic science in the case of psychiatric drugs and climate change, are denied by industry funded PR and minimised by regulators and government. Billions of pounds of profit buys a lot of publicity and a lot of lunch for regulators, politicians and practitioners.

This is why I see Occupy Wall Street and other movements that seek to limit corporate power are linked to limiting the abuses of psychiatry.

I am very happy with my life now – suffering adversity has given me an advantage in a way because I appreciate every moment of my current existence. But yes, hopefully things will continue to improve – what I would love above all is to be known as a writer (not just on the subject of mental health). So I should get on with my next book…

Thank you again for your comment. Louise.

The much quoted Santayana phrase-
“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”- can not be forgotten by us because of the revising of history that has systematically been done by psychiatry at times.

Her wonderful blog post here that shares another powerful story of hope and recovery, is a historic unveiling of a grass roots network of support and advocacy, that I believe will grow into a national movement that will help transform our tragically inadequate children, teen, family and adult mental health system of care.
Bravo Lisbeth!

“40 studies that reveal childhood or adulthood sexual or physical abuse in the history of the majority of psychiatric patients (see, also, Read’s book, Models of Madness). A review of 13 studies of schizophrenics found rates varying from 51% at the lowest to 97% at the highest.”

I can understand the sensitivity of families. After all, I have a child of my own who went through psychosis. I have also gone through psychosis. I would attribute my experience to trauma and multiple losses and theirs to cannabis, loss, and sleep deprivation.

Meantime, any parent who is a good parent is usually capable of recognizing that not all parents are. Do some family situations/environments push their family members into psychosis? Yes, I believe they do — I’ve spoken with too many people who came from very unhealthy families to not recognize that. However, I’ve also spoken with many people who came from supportive and loving (albeit, not perfect) families.

There is no need, in my estimation, to become defensive about the link between childhood trauma and psychosis. If you didn’t rape or beat or terrorize your children, let yourself off the hook. On the other hand, if you did… I think you should feel badly about that.

See also: Presumed Causes of Schizophrenia and/or Psychosis: http://spiritualrecoveries.blogspot.com/2007/02/presumed-causes-of-schizophrenia-and.html

I fully support your idea that its a way for the mind to escape from reality. My first breakdown was when I serious childhood trauma appeared.

I will put your book on my wishlist at Amazon.

Once again, I am truly grateful for Robert Whitaker’s thorough, professional, ethical, competent reasearch and reporting exposing the so called biological psychiatrists as the obvious psychopathic malignant narcissists that they are without stooping to their level.

The more such information is available on the web, the more people like Toran’s mother will have access to the information they need to avoid the mental death profession like the plague it is with plenty of evidence to explain why.

Many years ago I was able to save one of my loved ones from this evil menance thanks to the brave work of Dr. Peter Breggin in his excellent books. Although I was attacked for quoting a so called quack, the mental death “experts” involved backed off when I asked for the brain, blood, x-ray and other medical tests that proved so called bipolar while admitting the symptoms for that overlapped with abuse related trauma symptoms. They also backed off on the dangerous meds once I provided Dr. Breggin’s exposure of their lethal effects, not wanting a lawsuit once warned in writing. Of course, in recent times, Dr. Breggin and others joining his courageous campaign to expose the fraud of the medical model of psychiatry/the mental death profession in bed with BIG PHARMA have been more than vindicated.

Somebody said in comments about an article by Robert Whitaker at PSYCHOLOGY TODAY that psychiatrists writing fraudulent attacks on his work were “winning.” Anyone familiar with the mental death profession knows that anyone daring to criticize or challenge them has done so at great cost. Anyone with common sense would know that those who stand to gain financially like psychiatry in be with BIG PHARMA and corrupt politicians and government officials with revolving doors have the most to gain by keeping their fraud status quo going regardless of the cost to their victims while courageous whistle blowers have the most to lose. Yet, the fact that Senator Grassley did many eye opening investigations exposing many of the chief fraud paid shills like “Dr.” child ADHD/biolar Joseph Biederman and “Dr.” Charles Nemeroff, of the mental death profession and that many drug companies have recently been forced by governments to pay milions in damages for fraud for their off label promotion of toxic psych drugs shows that the only way these psychopaths are winning is in the sense of their usual overreaching to win at all costs for greed, profit and status over normal humans that eventually gets them exposed for the monsters they are like the NAZI DOCTORS and their cohorts in crime at their Nuremburg Trials. As courageous experts like Robert Whitaker keep hammering away at the evil and fraud perpetrated by these deranged “experts” or psychopaths by removing their “masks of sanity” (Dr. Hervey Cleckley), the more quickly they will be exposed and removed from power. In the meantime, since trust in the entire broken mainstream medicine pathocracy is at an all time low, those wise people searching for information on the web and elsewhere can save themselves from such crimes against humanity by having access to impeccable, ethical information like that of Robert Whitaker. There are now many excellent articles by experts including many psychiatrists on the web exposing the fraud of the medical model of psychiatry, the junk science DSM and their bogus research or lack therof passed off as science. The more this bogus profession gets pounded by the truth, the less anyone decent will want to be associated with it. I have prayed that this evil will be exposed and it is amazing how much it has been shown to be the usual emperors wearing no clothes even within the last ten years, so there is much hope for its eventual demise. The more that decent people learn the truth, the less they will be willing to tolerate the deadly plague of so called biological psychiatry. Even for those not so concerned about their fellows, as the staggering costs of the fraud treatments of the mental death system to tax payers, health insurance, and its resulting life long disability payments become more clear with our nation’s huge unsustainable debt, more and more people will revolt against this growing psychiatric rape.

I took it for sleep but would wake in the middle of the night and feet “lost”. I don’t know any other word to describe the feeling.

I saw a new therapist twice. She typed in a laptop the entire time, but she gave me some valuable advice when I asked her “how do most of your patients improve?” She said, “They decide they don’t want to live like this anymore.”

I was miserable while going off of anti-psychotics, and made others miserable, too. I had made a decision that I didn’t want to live like this (meaning at the mercy of doctors and drugs) anymore. I will never again have a psych hospitalization!

A funny thing happened when my insurance was gone: No more “mental health ” coverage, therefore, no more doctors. They had been giving me samples of Seroquel and it was oh so important to stay on those meds! Well, when they kicked me out for not paying the therapy bill, the samples were gone, too.

It wasn’t pleasant, but I am so glad to be off of it.

If they are only offering you more drugs, more trial and error to your brain, “just say no” It doesn’t mean you are crazy to go out on your own and be yourself.

It will not be pleasant, it will be painful, but it is worth it. Don’t give up, and don’t give in.

We work daily with individuals and families that are diagnosed with a mental illness and immedicately prescribed medications without being given alternatives or the side effects of the medications.

Again, very well done.

You are a brilliant writer.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Forty years ago designers and engineers accidentally discovered a problem with human physiology and crowded knowledge work conditions when it caused mental breaks for office workers. The cubicle was designed to block peripheral vision for a concentrating worker to deal with the vision startle reflex. Thus stopping it in offices by 1968.

Today the “special circumstances” for Subliminal Distraction exposure can be created by almost anyone, anywhere. Explained in first semester psychology the brain deals with the vision startle reflex subliminally making SD exposure impossible to consciously experience.

When it happened to my wife, I was stunned to find that this problem I had learned about as a 22 year old engineering student in 1966 is unknown in mental health services.

Connie had severe reactions to drugs I was assured harmless, began to decline, and died in January 13, 2010. There is a recent story about another death from these drugs.

In nine years of my investigation I found only one doctor who said he had seen and correctly diagnosed the psychotic-like believed to be harmless, temporary episodes when in residency.

No one has looked for other outcomes for this phenomenon. But chronic exposure would keep the psychotic episode ongoing. Intermittent repeating exposure sessions would create repeating manic episodes that would be diagnosed as Bipolar disorder.

People who respond to placebos have enough Subliminal Distraction exposure to make them hyper-suggestible,but not enough for the full mental break. This suggestibility first appeared as Jumping Frenchmen of Maine in 1880. The conditions of the bunkhouses for French Canadian lumber jacks allowed SD exposure.

An incident in Ontario, Canada elementary schools last year shows a wide range of psychosomatic symptoms from SD exposure when industrial Wi-Fi was installed so laptop computers could be used anywhere in classrooms. Parents blamed Wi-Fi transmitter EMR. See the links at the top of my Home page for pictures.

If you know some one to explain what happens in the brain from a massive number of subliminal failed attempts to execute the vision startle reflex to cause a manic episode, period of psychosis,and potentially a short coma, send them to my site. I put a ‘guess’ on the Background section of the “Letters” page. My email is coded on the “Contact Researcher” page. Connie’s case is on the “Personal Experiences” page.

There aren’t that many paid jobs now available in communities, compared to a few years ago. I think the government needs to be creative when thinking of ‘employment’. The voluntary or third sector in Scotland offers many opportunities for people to be ‘gainfully employed’. Doing work that benefits themselves and others. They can be trained and learn new skills. It helped me greatly in my recovery from mental ill health in 2004 and I eventually got paid work, then into full-time employment and further education.

Interestingly, I’m now back doing voluntary work, full-time hours, in mental health.

Regards, Chrys

No one could develop antibiotics without first being able to put bacteria into a test tube. One had to be able to kill bacteria before they decided they had a treatment for it. Yet here someone comes along with a drug to treat something and yet we have no idea at all of what it is and they are 110% convinced of the effectiveness of the drug, even when there patients are saying it doesn’t work they still say it does. Even when they watch patients die of side effects, have them report terrible side effects they still say the side effects are minor. Depression is feeling sad, psychosis is hearing voices. One cannot put feeling sad or hearing voices in a test tube. The fact that the most educated people in the world cannot work that out is beyond me!!

Unfortunately, as your work has shown, this blind faith has created a crack through which so many precious lives have fallen. A fault line so deep and long that it has created shaky ground in all developed nations.

Maria, I wish these risks were more widely known and that your son was still with you today. Thank you for trying to help other families and children move safely through suffering. You are, most certainly, a mother bear.