Psychiatry is a hoax. Its fundamental concepts are spurious to the point of inanity. Much of its research is blatantly fraudulent. And its treatments are destructive, disempowering, and stigmatizing. Psychiatry has no coherent or logical response to the criticisms that it attracts, other than the repetition, mantra-style, of unsubstantiated assertions of safety and efficacy, coupled with unwarranted attacks on its critics.
Psychiatry would long since have gone the way of phrenology and mesmerism but for the financial support it receives from the pharmaceutical industry. This support comes in two forms. Firstly, pharma provides generous largesse to psychiatric researchers and “key opinion leaders,” to provide a continuous stream of psychiatry-favorable copy. Secondly, and more importantly, pharma uses the clout of its enormous advertising budget to effectively dissuade the mainstream media from exposing the truth about psychiatry.
But the truth has a way of trickling out. Here are five recent stories that buck the psychiatry-friendly stance that has characterized the mainstream media for at least the past 50 years.
. . . . . .
1) The Long, Sad Story of Antidepressants and Suicide. Joe and Teresa Graedon. The Roanoke Times, April 11, 2106
This is an extract from a longer article on the Graedons’ own website.
Here’s a quote from the Roanoke Times article:
“The drug company’s [Eli Lilly’s] insistence in 1990 that there was ‘no causal relationship’ between Prozac and suicide attempts is consistent with other pharmaceutical manufacturers’ responses to bad news. For the 40 years that we have been studying drug-safety issues, we have often seen initial resistance or denial of a problem that later proved serious.
In the case of antidepressants, no one could imagine that drugs prescribed to prevent suicide could actually contribute to that very outcome. Family members and patients themselves often are able to detect adverse drug reactions long before companies or regulators acknowledge them. Nonetheless, it is crucial for patients and their families to be alerted to this potentially deadly side effect.”
2. California Courts Step up Oversight of Psychotropic Medication use in Foster Care. Karen de Sá, San Jose Mercury News, April 15, 2016.
Quotes:
“California’s judicial leaders on Friday took a major step toward reversing the foster care system’s rampant use of psychiatric drugs, approving a slate of new safeguards to make juvenile courts here the country’s most careful and inquisitive monitors of psychiatric care for abused and neglected children.
Beginning as soon as July, doctors will have to make a more convincing case to receive court approval to prescribe the powerful drugs too often used to control difficult behaviors in traumatized children. And for the first time, foster children will be offered greater opportunity to speak for themselves about how the medications make them feel.”
. . . . . .
“Psychiatrists have been among the most vocal opponents, arguing that adding more paperwork to the already challenging work of serving children in the public health system will drive professionals from such service. Doctors complained to Judicial Council staff that the length of the new forms would actually reduce foster children’s access to care, because faced with the increased administrative burden, some psychiatrists and pediatricians would stop addressing the mental health needs of foster youth.'”
Note the report that psychiatrists have been “among the most vocal opponents” of the new regulations. Also note the supreme irony in their warning that the regulations will reduce foster children’s access to psychiatric care. That is the point of the legislation!
3. Too Many Pa. Foster Children are on Psychiatric Meds. Stacey Burling, Philadelphia Daily News, February 25, 2016.
Quotes:
“Following a report last summer that large numbers of Pennsylvania children on Medicaid, especially those in foster care, are taking psychiatric medications, state officials Tuesday announced steps to address the problem.”
. . . . .
“Ted Dallas, the DHS secretary, said many children in foster care have already been abused or neglected, then are taken from the only family they have known. Inappropriately prescribing them medications compounds their problems. ‘That isn’t the right thing,’ he said.”
4. Antidepressants can raise the risk of suicide, biggest ever review finds. Sarah Knapton, The Telegraph, UK.
Quotes:
“For years families have claimed that antidepressant medication drove their loved ones to commit suicide, but have been continually dismissed by medical companies and doctors who claimed a link was unproven.
The review – the biggest of its kind into the effects of the drugs – was carried out by the Nordic Cochrane Centre and analysed by University College London (UCL) who today endorse the findings in an editorial in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
After comparing clinical trial information to actual patient reports the scientists found pharmaceutical companies had regularly misclassified deaths and suicidal events in people taking anti-depressants to ‘favour their products’.
Experts said the review’s findings were ‘startling’ and said it was ‘deeply worrying’ that clinical trials appear to have been misreported.”
. . . . .
“One father whose son committed suicide after taking Citalopram has been monitoring suicides related to antidepressant medication for the last three years and has set up the anonymous campaigning website AntiDepAware.
So far this month there have been at least 35 inquests with deaths linked to antidepressants. Last year there were more than 450.
‘I can say, hand on heart, that I don’t remember reading a report of an inquest where a suicide verdict was applied to a child who had never been on any psychiatric medication,’ he said.” [Bold face added]
5. Antidepressant Paxil Is Unsafe for Teenagers, New Analysis Says. Benedict Carey, New York Times, September 16, 2015.
Quotes:
“Fourteen years ago, a leading drug maker published a study [the infamous study 329] showing that the antidepressant Paxil was safe and effective for teenagers. On Wednesday, a major medical journal posted a new analysis of the same data concluding that the opposite is true.”
. . . . .
“The dispute itself is a long-running one: Questions surrounding the 2001 study played a central role in the so-called antidepressant wars of the early 2000s, which led to strong warnings on the labels of Paxil and similar drugs citing the potential suicide risk for children, adolescents and young adults. The drugs are considered beneficial and less risky for many adults over 25 with depression.
Over the years, thousands of people taking or withdrawing from Paxil or other psychiatric drugs have committed violent acts, including suicide, experts said, though no firm statistics are available.”
. . . . .
“Prescriptions of antidepressants to young people surged in the wake of the study, increasing by 36 percent between 2002 and 2003, according to one analysis. The growth slowed after regulators ordered the black-box warnings on labels.”
. . . . .
Looking Ahead
Psychiatry is fundamentally flawed and rotten, and has been on Big Pharma’s life support system for decades. The core of this life support is the suppression of information. Ten years ago these stories would never have seen the light of day.
But the dam has been breached. So far it’s just a trickle. But pharma executives and accountants are not stupid. They know the score. They know that they are in the drug-pushing business, and they understand the dynamics of advertizing and disinformation.
If the media continue to question and challenge the pharma-psychiatry hoax, then pharma will drop psychiatry like the hot potato that it is. Indeed, it would not surprise me if pharma were already developing an exit strategy from this entire endeavor. This strategy will be activated when the cost of doing business (including the cost of negative press) begins to significantly threaten the profit potential.
There are also some psychiatrists who can see the writing on the wall, and are working to get themselves on the right side of history. But the great majority – including the APA leadership – have their heads firmly buried in the sand. They console themselves with the notion that the anti-psychiatry movement is just a band of misinformed malcontents, who refuse to acknowledge the great service that psychiatry performs for its long-suffering customers. The APA even hired Porter Novelli, a prestigious PR company, to redesign their logos, in the deluded notion that this would somehow allay the fundamentally flawed and destructive nature of their activities.
Meanwhile, the trickle is growing. We will see more articles criticizing psychiatry in the mainstream media, and more efforts on the part of legislators to curb psychiatry’s rampant drugging. As the tide of criticism rises, we will see psychiatry’s recruitment problems increase.
As the “illness-like-diabetes” hoax, which was promoted avidly by psychiatry, continues to be exposed, we will see an increase in lawsuits from customers who feel betrayed and used.
And when the spotlight turns – as it inevitably must – on the role that psychiatric drugs have played in the mass murders/suicides of recent decades, the fallout for psychiatry will be catastrophic.
On our side of the issue, all we have to do is continue speaking the truth and exposing their lies. Psychiatry will do the rest of the work for us.
A hopeful article, speaking the truth. Putting sunlight on mold to kill it.
Drugging/poisoning people to get them to function does not and can not work.
In the Bible
Luke 13:6. He also spoke this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none.
“Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’
“But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. ‘And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ ”
Psychiatry is not fixing peoples minds with their drugs (fertilizer) , and is making people worse.
The thousands not dead but still living while on poisons is proof.
A person can not do good works or bad works while being poisoned.
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Mark,
How true. But psychiatry simply refuses to accept this simple reality.
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Thanks for writing this article Dr. Hickey! I always appreciate your work!
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Rooster,
Thanks for your support.
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I always appreciate your writings too, Philip, thank you. And I do so hope you are right. It is absolutely true the antidepressants make formerly healthy people sick, suicidal, or manic. And millions, at this point, have no doubt had the common adverse effects of the antidepressants, misdiagnosed as “bipolar.” And today’s psychiatrist’s gold standard drug cocktail recommendations for “bipolar,” recommend adding an antipsychotic to the antidepressant. Despite the fact, every doctor learns in med school that combining the ‘anti’ meds can result in anticholinergic toxidrome. And the symptoms of anticholinergic toxidrome appear, to the medical community, just like the symptoms of “bipolar” or “schizophrenia,” the person is made “mad as a hatter.” And the “schizophrenia” drugs, all by themselves, can create both the negative and positive symptoms of “schizophrenia.” Psychiatry is all one big, giant iatrogenic illness creation system. The magnitude of the evil still staggers my mind, however. Today’s psychiatrists are every bit as evil, as the Nazi psychiatrists, just a bit more insideous. I pray to God their reign of terror, defamation, torture, and their unjust murdering of millions of innocents ends soon.
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You’re right, Psychiatry is a killing machine with the more experienced killers blooding their (sometimes very willing) juniors.
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The Sandcastle Crumbles…
This is the way psychiatry ends. Not with a bang but a whimper. Its a shame cause with behavior that bad the whole institution needs to be put on trial for crimes against humanity .
Crimes against humanity… Is that too strong ?
Try this Google search, do a little reading and get back to me http://www.google.com/search?q=zyprexa+scandal
Or read this one http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/miracleindustry/americas-most-admired-lawbreaker/
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Great Article Philip!
And where is the pharmaceutical industry getting it’s free funding
from? From you and me.
It’s a bit like an officially regulated money laundering scheme.
I believe that at least 50 per cent of the Nhs Mental Health Budget demand on the UK is based on the activity of white collar fraud.
The solutions are there but only outside of the medical system. I can validate this from my own experience.
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Fiachra,
That is the key. The problems that bring people into the mental health system are not medical in nature, and are simply not amenable to a medical solution.
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Outstanding Article!
Yes, it is bound up with big pharma. But I also think there is something else going on too. That is, Capitalism depends on being able to use something like Original Sin to keep people in harness. And the middle-class family exists to instill this. So both psychiatry and psychotherapy are further reinforcers. It is all driven by the need to convince people that their problems exist in their head, rather than in the unjust world that they live in, so that they won’t fight back.
So the alternative is political consciousness raising and political action. I am involved in local political actions at the sidewalk level now 7 days a week.
Most of what I’m doing involves opposing Neo-Liberalism in local government.
But I also want to start a campaign of direct action aimed to put psychotherapists and psychologists out of business. Just getting people to sign statements chronicling what goes on in their sessions should be all we need.
So long as we who are aware of injustice and abuse are in therapy and recovery, we will always be looked down on, shunned. But once we stop that and instead start fighting back and scoring some victories, then for the first time in our lives we will be able to build a place for ourselves in this world.
Nomadic
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
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I would relax a little on the psychotherapy part and focus on the drugs & coercion part. Psychotherapy can mean many things, some bad, but not always involving blaming or labeling the victim. Though I wish they would drop the term, which is misleading and medical model.
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Psychotherapy is intended to make the patient feel better, stop being angry, stop fighting back. It converts angry slaves into happy slaves.
While of course I agree that if a course of therapy leads to medications, that is worse. But you could never get people to take medication if they wanted to fight back instead of feel better. It all amounts to convincing the patient that they and what is in their head are the problem.
Nomadic
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Psychotherapy is intended to make the patient feel better, stop being angry, stop fighting back. It converts angry slaves into happy slaves.
Your error is in not prefacing this with the qualifier “some.” You are making a blanket statement about a term that has no consensual definition in the first place. Some processes labeled “psychotherapy” (substitute “talking things over with people” if you choose) lead to people becoming more self-determined and more competent at fighting oppression. Again, some.
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If only ‘some’ psychotherapy is intended to make the patient feel better, then what is the rest of it intended to do?
In particular, what are the therapists qualifications? Money obtained as redress? Direct action? Laws changed?
No, the therapist is committed to in-action, to non-conflict.
This is why Jeffrey Mason, former curator of the Sigmund Freud Archives says, “The practice of psychotherapy is wrong, because it is profiting off of another person’s misery.” And Mason never uses any qualifiers like, ‘some’.
He says that the issues being dealt with in psychotherapy should always be dealt with in some other arena. And this makes sense because psychotherapy is about non-conflict. Where as psychological distress is about being on the losing side of conflicts.
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Therapy-Emotional-Tyranny-Psychological-ebook/dp/B008KPZRDW/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461537903&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=jeffrey+mason%2C+myth+of+psychological+healing
What other astute observers have said is that psychotherapy works well when the therapist is more radical than the client. I think oldhead that this is what you are getting at. Then the therapist might have useful suggestions.
But as Mason also says, this is rarely so because the therapist has a profession and monetary interest. It is more likely the client who lives closer to the margins and who will need to do more radical things.
Nomadic
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Again, “psychotherapy” has no commonly accepted definition,
it’s a very general concept (which I agree is semantically flawed as a term no matter what it’s applied to due to the “therapy” part).
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oldhead wrote, “Again, “psychotherapy” has no commonly accepted definition”
So where I am drawing the line, or you could say, the way I am defining psychotherapy is as something predicated on the idea that action and conflict are not necessary, and that it is morally superior to do nothing, than it is to engage in conflict and try to force social change.
I mean Gandhi read the Bible and developed his doctrine of Satyagraha, applying pressure.
He could have instead seen a psychotherapist for help with his problem. But I am glad that he did not.
Nomadic
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/index.php
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Nomadic,
Good point. DSM-IV and DSM 5 both include the phrase “dysfunction in an individual” as part of their definition of a mental disorder. DSM-III uses the phase “dysfunction in a person”. Interestingly, DSM-I (1952) used the term “reaction” in the names of their “diagnoses”: “schizophrenic reaction”, “depressive reaction”, etc. This was to indicate that the problems were reactions to what was happening to people in their lives. But that notion didn’t last long. The concept was purged from DSM-II (1968).
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You’re right, interesting. I remember a pop hit in the late 60’s entitled “Psychotic Reaction” but haven’t heard the phrase since.
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That these conditions are reactions, say to things like battle fatigue, is one of the major points of Bertram Karon.
But it can also be like battle fatigue to have survived middle-class family abuse, only to find that there is zero justice. Each time one us seeks justice we are told that we just have to get over it, otherwise we are the ones with a problem.
The middle-class family is charged with instilling the Self-Reliance Ethic, something which works rather like original sin. So everyone goes along with this.
It is never going to change until people reject psychotherapy of any and all types and start obtaining justice.
Nomadic
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I agree, the sandcastle of psychiatry and its psycho-pharma SHOULD by rights be crumbling with all the factual evidence against them. The facts are all out there for anyone to see.
But a couple of behemoths stand in the way. One is the popular media, which is supported by pharma and consequently sings its tunes. Try being calmly and politely critical of psychiatry/psych drugs on the ‘New York Times’ (readers more educated than most, even) comments sections and see how far you get before you’re shouted down.
The other behemoth is the white-coated MD who introduces the patient to the psychiatrist/drugs. Nobody believes their doctors are as badly informed (or ill-educated, or corrupt, or lazy, or of average intelligence, or…) as they are, and nobody can believe that they are receiving terrible advice and dangerous drugs. Nobody. Faced with the evidence-based facts above and a white-coated MD, the vast majority of people will blindly side with the MD, just as our forebears 200 years ago believed their priests.
Liz Sydney
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Liz,
We still have a long way to go. But crumble it will!
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The Roanoke Times, April 11, 2106
Phillip, on top of everything else are you clairvoyant too?
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A good article to keep on file and circulate the link to. Short and cogent.
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Oldhead,
Oops! Thanks for pointing this out.
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Phil,
I have read – cannot remember the sources now – in multiple locations that the drug companies are having very little success developing new drugs to “treat” the supposed illnesses of anxiety, depression, and psychosis. They had the first generation, and then the second generation/atypicals, but now new research appears to be stalling.
I’m not sure why this is. But if it’s true, it would be very good news, as over the next several years, patents will start to expire. This loss of patent protected income will start to seriously undermine Big Pharma’s psychiatry drug income. And as you correctly pointed out, biological psychiatry in its current form simply cannot exist without the billions of dollars supplied by Big Pharma. Take away the massive profits and the related financial support to psychiatrists and institutions, and it opens a gaping wound that will quickly lead to the exposure and demise of psychiatric practice as currently run.
Actually now I found some data:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-psychiatric-drug-crisis
An excerpt:
“In the past few years, one pharmaceutical giant after another—GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Novartis, Pfizer, Merck, Sanofi—has shrunk or shuttered its neuroscience research facilities. Clinical trials have been halted, lines of research abandoned, and the new drug pipeline has been allowed to run dry… But the dry pipeline of new drugs bemoaned by Friedman is an indication that the drug industry has begun to lose faith in the myth it did so much to create. …
Despite the BRAIN initiative recently announced by the Obama Administration, and the N.I.M.H.’s renewed efforts to stimulate research on the neurocircuitry of mental disorder, there is nothing on the horizon with which to replace the old story. Without a new explanatory framework, drug-company scientists don’t even know where to begin, so it makes no sense for the industry to stay in the psychiatric-drug business.
And if loyalists like Hyman and Friedman continue to say out loud what they have been saying to each other for many years—that, as Friedman told Times readers, “just because an S.S.R.I. antidepressant increases serotonin in the brain and improves mood, that does not mean that serotonin deficiency is the cause of the disease”—then consumers might also lose faith in the myth of the chemical imbalance. “
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Hi BPD,
About £100 million per year is available in the UK for “SMI” Research and I promise you this money does get used for the promotion of “bio medical solutions” – even though these solutions don’t exist.
The Nhs will also bend over backwards to deny any type of non psychiatric recovery – because there’s too much money in failure.
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Fiachra,
Research into SMI biological treatments are like fusion energy research – the breakthrough is always 5 or 10 years away – so tantalizingly close, but never materializing. What they don’t want to admit is that their treatments suck and very few people want to be treated in the way they treat people.
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BPD
Drugs are for mugs!
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Be on your toes, BPD. When dope dealers feel threatened is the time the guys with the machine pistols and the lists make an appearance. Fortunately, this is where paranoia is valuable if you’re not the type to go overboard and succumb to elaborate delusions.
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I am always vigilant, don’t worry. Although I think I have little reason to fear.
The movie the Insider was a good example of what can happen when a whistleblower is publicly identified by the leaders of a legalized cartel like Big Pharma/psychiatry (or in that case, the tobacco industry).
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BPDTransformation,
Yes.
I think that is a notable development, especially since in the past, pharma has made so much money from psychiatric drugs. They are clearly seeing the writing on the wall.
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Mesmerism is closer to reality than psychiatry ever will be!
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You do have a chemical imbalance… you do have a chemical imbalance… you do need to take drugs… you do need to take drugs…
Mesmerism is at least more honest about the purpose of assuming control of your beliefs!
— Steve
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Dogma and vituperative condemnation are the true enemies of genuine understanding.
This is a quote-of yours.
Perhaps rather than proffering inaccurate baseless hypothesis-which are both inaccurate and odd, you might start by reading your own quotes.
Really-what do you ..know? Nothing. You call this the truth? Read Socrates-the first thing a scientist attempts to understand is a definition. You no clear understanding ie a way to define , of any terms you write of.
I suggest you read more, and hollar less. As I often end my comments-it is easier to burn a house down than build one. From what I have read, you have built nothing. The only thing remaining from this article is the smell of burning wood
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Thelo
Here you go again. I was wondering when you would show up again. You haven’t been around for awhile but any time Phillip does something you are Johnny on the spot to start harassing. And by the way, what have you built lately??????
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I think you’re right, Dr. Hickey. “New Anti-Drug Program Teaches Teens to Resist Psychiatry’s Constant Pressure To Use Psychiatric Drugs.” – theonion.com October 6, 2015. I wish these people had been conducting their assemblies in my schools when I was young. Our acceptance (we have never and will never embrace this institution) of psychiatry in this country is like a bad never-ending to “Life of Pi”. The American people are Pi, psychiatry is “Richard Parker”, and this “clerical error” is eating US instead of the people (abusive and neglectful parents, employers, members of the clergy, etc.) who usually are our first enemies in life. Thanks for telling it like it is, Doc.
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J,
You’re welcome. And thank you for your support.
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I know this comment will not be published, but, as much as it is directed to Dr Hickey as well as Ms Mead, just curious, let’s jump ahead a couple of years or so and see psychiatry has been ostracized to the netherworld, and now there is no medical specialty to manage mental health problems. So, how do mental health patients get treated? And don’t try to raise this dishonest, disingenuous, and disdainful rebuttal there really are no mental health problems in America, much less the world, I just want to read you have gone to someone’s home who have just endured a suicide or a family member’s psychotic break and tell the survivors their pain is short lived or not realistic to experience.
Has MIA and the most voracious of bloggers/commenters who write here think of the outcomes in zealously seeking out the demise of all of psychiatry? If you get what you want, is it going to play out so wonderfully for the rest of the public?
I keep trying to write here, yes, there are cretins and losers who have no business being able to prescribe medication, and others who have no business setting clinical policy, but, it is not ALL of the profession. But, and here is where the comment will be striken, this site has the same elements of other extremist, zealot, and rigid narratives that seem to create so much havok, pain, and disruption in the society/country/planet if global enough to be felt across continents, the agenda becomes more than a passion, but, a missive, a manifesto, a platform so devoid of variation or consideration of exceptions, well, we know what happens to those who preach “my way or no way!”
So, do with this what you will, and I have to ask again, doesn’t it get a bit mistifying at the very least almost all comments in every thread just echo the same things, there is never a healthy debate or effort to entertain alternatives or moderation? I read here that there is a desire to be a bigger part of the debate about mental health care injustices and errors, and yet, I don’t read of MIA in any article or well read moderate blog or site that is interested in discussion about mental health care problems.
Please, direct me to places that quote MIA and do so as valid opinion and perspective, not just example of extremist failure and rigid platitudes. I honestly would like to read others quote your site in a positive and respected light.
Sorry, won’t be holding my breath for the reply. Oh, and I comment at a Dr Hickey post because he is not qualified to critique psychiatric medication issues, unless finally he will document valid and appropriate credentials to get this validaton as a psychopharmacology critic at a site that now offers continuing education credit.
yeah, I didn’t forget that promotion drive, so to give credit, don’t valid credentials count to justify the accreditation credits?!
Frankly, if I were the editor here, I would post this comment, it could be an opening for honest and fair dialogue, or at least give you more hits to sell your site as so popular on the Web!
Good luck with your success in realizing your mission statement. MIA would have potential if it just would be a bit more responsible and fair minded in encouraging dialogue, not monologue.
Sincerely,
Joel Hassman, MD
(and I will be noting this comment at my blog in coming days)
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Psychiatry is not a true medical specialty. It never was until the drug companies helped psychiatry to entrench itself as if those within it are true doctors in any sense of the word. Of course they must have the basics of training so they are doctors in that sense, but they really are nothing without their drugs to back them up. And now we know that the drugs are not what they were all made out to be. In fact, the drugs are causing the problems that they’re supposed to help.
I believe that we could de fairly well without psychiatrists hanging around. When I was held in a state hospital I got more good and valuable help form my fellow “patients” than I ever did from the clinical staff. I got to see the wonderful psychiatrist twice a month, whoopee whoopee, two whole times a month for about fifteen minutes each time. My fellow “patients” actually cared about my welfare and about my reclaiming balance, health, and well-being in my life. All the psychiatrist and clinical staff did was pathologize each and every word I said and each and every thing that I did or did not do. Too bad I didn’t have the money to pay my fellow “patients” for the wonderful care that they lavished on me. They knew more about how to help me with my issues than the psychiatrist ever did.
I’ve dealt with five different psychiatrists in my case and two were absolutely off the wall horrible. Both screamed at me as they lunged at me and their spittle flew in my face. I would say that that was certainly good treatment. Two were benign but not very helpful and one was absolutely wonderful. But he was young and hadn’t been versed well enough in how you’re supposed to act when you’re an important psychiatrist.
I say thanks but no thanks to psychiatry.
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By the way, where have you been lately. You haven’t been harassing anyone as of late so I’m glad to see that you’re back at the work that you do the best at.
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Stephen
The last psychiatrist I saw was a chap by the name of Dr J. Dominion, in London in 1988.
He asked me generalised questions and at the end he told me I didn’t need to see any psychiatrist again.
I asked him about psychotherapy and he told me not to bother with this either.
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Oh, Dr. Therapy, if only psychiatry could be banished to the netherworld! Yes, let’s banish the sadistic monsters who make zombies of our intelligent children with their drug prescriptions, and are then satisfied that they have “helped”. Oh dear, the patient’s having convulsions? – we’ve got drugs for that. Having heart trouble? – there’s a drug for that. Getting fat and developing male breasts? – well isn’t that better than being psychotic? The patient’s not happy? – add a mood stabilizer. The patient doesn’t feel any better? – tweek up the dose. Involuntary muscle spasms? – quick!, change to another drug!
No one here is saying that psychotic breaks don’t happen. Those are your words.
Do I want to get rid of psychiatry? – YES!! Do we let those with mental health problems go untreated? – maybe. Here’s an idea. Instead of using people in crisis as guinea pigs to prop up big pharma, let’s try to find out what’s actually happening. How about testing for heavy metals poisoning, allergies, food sensitivities, nutritional imbalances, dehydration, methylation abnormalities, stress, lack of exercise, drug use, alcohol use, cigarette smoking. Give people enough care and compassion and real training on how to get and stay healthy.
Here’s what I would support:
For Psychosis, let’s first try Cannabidiol (CBD oil). It’s every bit as effective as Amisulpride for psychosis, judging from recent scientific studies. If that doesn’t work, as a last resort, prescribe an extremely low-dose, very short term antipsychotic for someone who is in the midst of a psychotic episode. A week or two ought to do it. In the mean time, make an effort to find out what actually caused the problem. I think the public would enthusiastically embrace this course of action – especially if it means fewer suicides and mass murders by young adults who are either starting or trying to quit their neuroleptic medication.
Sorry if that wasn’t polite enough for you.
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Sincerely,
Joel Hassman, MD
Oh, it’s you.
In the unlikely event that you have some sort of sincere interest in what anti-psychiatry is all about I suggest you check out the following “anti-psychiatry fact sheet.” It’s not perfect but it’s the best I’ve found so far.
https://coalitionagainstpsychiatricassault.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/fact-sheet1.pdf
Actually, don’t even bother. (Others may find it useful however.)
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As a psychiatrist, I congratulate you on the article. Unfortunately, the sandcastle of psychiatry as we know it may not crumble any time soon. Many more people will be hurt by psychiatry before the demolition is accomplished.
Psychiatry’s raison d’etre is the modern belief that getting away from problems of living quickly and painlessly is possible. Hence the notion of the “happy pill.” Worse still, psychiatry has become a problem-solving instrument for the state. The state welcomes the psychiatric product and employs it as a means of extra-judicial control over difficult people. And, in its quest to make money, Pharma has taken unscrupulous advantage of the demand for the psychiatric idea.
Generations of physicians have been indoctrinated in the falsehoods of psychiatry. Young medical doctors have chosen psychiatry as a specialty in the belief that it is a legitimate branch of scientific medicine. I know I did. It was my daily work that disabused me of the pseudo-scientific notions of psychiatry much later. It did not happen overnight.
Psychiatrists have been and will be among victims of psychiatry. Thomas Szasz and Peter Breggin’s stories come to mind and there are others, not publicized. It is difficult to get “on the right side of history” for the psychiatrist who has discovered mid career that his specialty is hardly scientific, that psychiatric diagnosis is a contrived label, and that drugs do all kinds of things except one – make a person well. To go public with this kind of knowledge can be a career-ending move for a psychiatrist today.
Psychiatrists with integrity nevertheless buck the trend by acknowledging the anti-therapeutic effects of most pharma-promoted ministrations. Few of them think, however, that it is practical to make oneself a target for the establishment that takes no prisoners. Those psychiatrists need encouragement to come out of the closet and speak up. It will neutralize the enemy’s fire and the sandcastle of psychiatry will come down faster.
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I like the sound of that. Are you volunteering? Not to put you on the spot, but I bet there are quite a few full-fledged psychiatrists such as yourself who could band together to stand up for one another when you are attacked for telling the truth. Formidable a task as that may seem, remember y’all will have built-in credibility among many who would dismiss near-identical analyses coming from the psychiatrized themselves. It could be a big help, and a catchy news story. Plus with the right agent and advertising scheme you could get intriguingly-titled books on some best-seller lists: “PSYCHIATRIST CLAIMS PSYCHIATRY IS BOGUS!”
Just sayin… 🙂
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I agree that psychiatry must and will fall down. My fear is that we won’t have anything to replace it that will be strong enough to resist the force of a new tyrant pouring into the vaccuum. Revolutions have a great history of tearing the oppressor down, not so much with what replaces him. Robespierre was worse than Louis, Stalin even more oppressive than the Tsars.
As Plato said “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.” That is how psychiatry got its feet in the door, how do we make sure that whatever takes its place isn’t worse?
I work hard to destroy the appalling tyrant that is the PAA (Psychiatry Pharma Alliance) but I want to build something in its place, too.
Remember, the robber barons will always exist. and will always step up to the plate.
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