The July issue of Nursing Ethics takes on the myths of psychiatric drugs, saying that “psychiatric drugs are used only to control ‘patient’ behaviour and do not ‘treat’ any specific pathology in the sense understood by physical medicine. Evidence that people, diagnosed with ‘serious’ forms of ‘mental illness’ can ‘recover’, without psychiatric drugs, has been marginalized by drug-focused research, much of this funded by the pharmaceutical industry. The pervasive myth of psychiatric drugs dominates much of contemporary ‘mental health’ policy and practice and raises discrete ethical issues for nurses who claim to be focused on promoting or enabling the ‘mental health’ of the people in their care.”
Barker, P., Buchanan-Barker, P., “First, Do No Harm: Confronting the Myths of Psychiatric Drugs.” Nursing Ethics, July 2012 vol. 19(4) 451-463
(Thanks to Chrys Muirhead for sending this to me.)