In late September 2016, a few days after Nikolas Cruz turned 18 and became old enough to buy a gun, the Department of Children and Families sent one or more investigators to Cruz’s home. The Department had been alerted by posts on Snapchat where the young man talked crazily about cutting himself and asked for help in getting a gun.
Among the many missed opportunities widely discussed in the media, here is one on the local level where the Department of Children and Families actually went to his home to investigate. The department intended to evaluate Cruz for “possible detainment under the Baker Act, which allows authorities to hold individuals against their will for up to 72 hours.”
What did the investigator find? NBC News quotes the official report: “Mr. Cruz stated that he plans to go out and buy a gun… It is unknown what he is buying the gun for.”
Not only was Cruz planning to buy a gun while apparently refusing to say what he was planning to use it for, but his mother’s observations cast serious doubt on her son’s mental capacity to own a weapon. According to the New York Times, “She told the investigator that Mr. Cruz did not have a gun, though he did have an air gun she would take away from him when he did not follow rules about shooting only at backyard targets.”
Unbelievably, in full knowledge of Cruz’s intention to buy a gun, and his inability to take responsibility for the use of even an air gun, the department found Cruz to be a “low risk” and closed his case within two months.
Had Cruz been committed, under existing gun laws he would have become unable to legally buy a gun to carry out his murderous fantasies. Alternatively, if he had been carefully and safely removed from his psychiatric drugs while receiving good psychosocial therapy, his escalating violent impulses might have abated. Instead, he was left on his own to face the death of his mother and his expulsion from school, while his murderous impulses were fueled by drugs.
What do we know about Cruz’s psychiatric treatment?
The First Tragic Irony
According to the New York Times, the official department report that found Cruz to be “low risk” indicated that “he was regularly taking medication for A.D.H.D. It was unclear whether he was taking anything for depression, according to the report.”
In more detail, NBC News observed that Nikolas’s adoptive mother “insisted he received his necessary medication as prescribed.”
Investigators from the Department of Children and Families also contacted Cruz’s healthcare provider. NBC News quoted directly from report, “[Cruz’s] clinician from Henderson Mental Health has stated that there are no issues with [Cruz’s] medication and he has been compliant with taking his medication and keeps all his appointments.”
This is an irony of tragic proportions. Cruz was left unsupervised and free to buy a gun because he was faithfully taking psychiatric drugs that can cause or aggravate violence.
But do psychiatric drugs really cause violence?
Antidepressant-Induced Violence
In the early 1990s, a federal court appointed me to be the scientific expert for all of the combined product liability cases that were brought against Eli Lilly throughout the country concerning Prozac-induced violence, suicide and crime. Since then I have been involved in many cases in which judges and juries, and even prosecuting attorneys, have determined that psychiatric drugs have caused or substantially contributed to violence. For a lengthy list, see the Legal Section on my website.
In 2003/2004, I wrote a scientific review article about antidepressant-induced suicide, violence and mania which the FDA distributed to all its advisory committee members. This took place as the FDA Advisory Committee members prepared to review new warnings to be put in the Full Prescribing Information for all antidepressants.
In my peer-reviewed paper, I wrote:
Mania with psychosis is the extreme end of a stimulant continuum that often begins with lesser degrees of insomnia, nervousness, anxiety, hyperactivity and irritability and then progresses toward more severe agitation, aggression, and varying degrees of mania. (p. 2)
In words very close to and sometimes identical to mine, the FDA one year later required the manufacturers of every antidepressant to put the following observations in the Warnings section of the Full Prescribing Information:
All patients being treated with antidepressants for any indication should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, and unusual changes in behavior, especially during the initial few months of a course of drug therapy, or at times of dose changes, either increases or decreases. The following symptoms, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania, have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric. (Celexa 2017, p. 8, bold added)
These adverse drug effects—including agitation, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, akathisia, and impulsivity—are an obvious prescription for violence. Akathisia, which I also described in my article, is a psychomotor agitation that is strongly associated with violence.
The FDA further confirmed that antidepressants can cause violence in the FDA-approved Medication Guide for antidepressants. By law, Medication Guides must be based on science and on the drug’s Full Prescribing Information. These several-page guides are intended to be shared and discussed by the doctor with patients and their families.
The FDA Medication Guide for antidepressants warns clinicians, patients and families to be on the alert for the following:
- acting on dangerous impulses
- acting aggressive or violent
- feeling agitated, restless, angry or irritable
- other unusual changes in behavior or mood (Celexa 2017, p. 33)
This list (above) of antidepressant adverse effects from the Medication Guide should make clear that antidepressants can cause violence.
Stimulant-Induced Violence
The FDA also acknowledges the risk of both psychosis and aggression from the stimulant drugs used to treat ADHD, but waffles somewhat in the Full Prescribing Information about aggression. These excerpts are from the Dexedrine (amphetamine) Full Prescribing Information:
Psychiatric Adverse Events
Emergence of New Psychotic or Manic Symptoms: Treatment emergent psychotic or manic symptoms, e.g., hallucinations, delusional thinking, or mania in children and adolescents without a prior history of psychotic illness or mania can be caused by stimulants at usual doses.
Aggression: Aggressive behavior or hostility is often observed in children and adolescents with ADHD, and has been reported in clinical trials and the post-marketing experience of some medications indicated for the treatment of ADHD. Although there is no systematic evidence that stimulants cause aggressive behavior or hostility, patients beginning treatment for ADHD should be monitored for the appearance of, or worsening of, aggressive behavior or hostility. (Dexedrine, 2007, p. 3)
The Medication Guide for Dexedrine warns to report to the doctor “Mental (Psychiatric) Problems” that can be caused by the stimulant. The warning for stimulants echoes some of the adverse violence-related effects caused by antidepressants:
- new or worse behavior and thought problems
- new or worse bipolar illness
- new or worse aggressive behavior or hostility (Dexedrine, 2014, p. 9)
Study Shows Antidepressants and Stimulants Are Especially Likely to Cause Violence
One of the most convincing studies of medication-induced violence was based on reports of violence to the FDA over a several year period. When the number of prescriptions written for each drug was factored in, a small group of drugs accounted for almost all reports of violence.
In the study of violence reports to the FDA, any predisposition toward violence in the patients themselves was largely ruled out because some of the most violence-inducing drugs were not psychiatric drugs, and were being given to a more general population. Some of the violence-inducing drugs were antibiotics, including Lariam (Mefloquine), which Sgt. Robert Bales was taking when he slaughtered 16 helpless, innocent villagers in Afghanistan.
The amphetamines as a group (mostly used to treat ADHD) were third in order of frequency of violence reports per prescription. The amphetamines include drugs such as Adderall and Dexedrine (pure amphetamines) and amphetamine-like drugs based on methylphenidate, such as Ritalin, Focalin and Concerta. While amphetamines as a group were third in the list of most likely to induce violence, overall the antidepressants were the most common offenders, with Prozac, Paxil, and Effexor near the top.
Losing Track of the Threat
Cruz’s school counselor protested to the Department of Children and Families that they should re-examine their conclusion that he was a “low risk” for violence. Then in January 2017, two months after the agency had closed its investigation, the Broward County Public Schools disciplinary records indicate that the school referred Cruz to the Department of Children and Families for a “threat assessment” because of a long history of “fights with teachers” and “using profane language with school staff.” No other information was provided about the outcome of that referral.
What was going on? When public agencies have difficult children and young adults to deal with, they automatically turn to psychiatric diagnosing and drugging. Previously concerned adult authorities then withdraw their concern and attention because the child is getting “psychiatric treatment.” Caring, empathic and effective psychosocial treatments fall by the wayside.
Authorities do this without grasping that they are shoving the child under a suffocating chemical rug in the form of neurotoxins that blunt all emotions and stifle all behavior. Those dooming the children and youth to psychiatric oblivion probably do not know, as Bob Whitaker has shown in Anatomy of an Epidemic, that psychiatric drugs will diminish their competence and quality of life, while also raising the cost of their treatment and their disability payments. They do not foresee that the psychiatric strategy for treatment will sometimes lead to tragic outcomes like the school shootings. Nor do they realize that the overall evidence of harm from psychiatric drugs is infinitely greater than the evidence for good effects, as scientist Peter Gøtzsche has confirmed in Deadly Psychiatry and Organized Denial.
Another Tragic Irony
During Cruz’s build up to the mass murders, his Snapchat remarks about cutting himself and wanting to get a gun were not the only red flags that he was dangerous. Among many other warning signs, he declared on social media that he wanted to become a “professional school shooter” and he told an acquaintance that he had bought a gun and was planning to shoot up the school within weeks before it happened.
This was not mere bragging to bolster his ego. Cruz was intelligent enough to know that broadcasting his intention could lead to his being stopped. On some level of his disturbed mind, Cruz was begging to be stopped. Several people did in fact report him but to no avail.
The second great, tragic irony is that Cruz desperately signaled his dangerousness but agencies as high up as the FBI saw and never responded to his conscious or unconscious pleas to be stopped.
How Psychiatry Increases the Threat of Violence
Calling for more spending on mental health and on psychiatry will make matters worse, probably causing many more shootings than it prevents.
Not only do psychiatric drugs add to the risk of violence, but psychiatric treatment lulls the various authorities and the family into believing that the patient is now “under control” and “less of a risk.” Even the patient may think the drugs are helping, and continue to take them right up to the moment of violence.
The belief in drugs is so prevailing that the authorities, in my forensic experience, will continue the offending drugs or even increase them in jail. Sometimes the perpetrator of the violence may begin to suspect the drugs contributed to his violence, but more often he is still hoping that they help and wants his medications continued in jail.
Even when some of their patients signal with all their might that they are dangerous and need to be stopped, mental health providers are likely to give drugs, adding fuel to the heat of violent impulses, while assuming that their violence-inducing drugs will reduce the risk of serious aggression.
We have seen that Nikolas Cruz was probably being treated with violence-inducing stimulants and/or antidepressants by a psychiatrist who was nonetheless aware of his violent tendencies and serious underlying threats. We have seen how his blatant threats were disregarded, probably on the grounds that he was already in the mental health system and receiving drugs.
Psychiatry not only increases the risk of violence by giving violence-inducing drugs, but it lulls patients, families, professionals, schools and the public into an unrealistic and even disastrous sense of security. I have described dozens of such cases in my book, Medication Madness: the Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime.
James Holmes, the Aurora Theater shooter, is an extreme example of the dangers of sending a violent person for psychiatric treatment. Holmes was in graduate school when he asked for psychiatric help. He told his psychiatrist he had such violent feelings that he dared not tell her all about them for fear that she would lock him up.
What did Holmes’ psychiatrist do? On that same first visit where he warned about seriously violent feelings, she started him on the antidepressant Zoloft. Under the influence of the drug, he became grossly psychotic and began elaborating his plans and collecting weapons.
Did Holmes’ psychiatrist need more training or awareness? No, she was especially trained in the prevention of campus school shootings and immediately contacted campus security, while starting him on Zoloft. Increased training under the current mental health system will only lead to even more drugging, because that is what my colleagues in psychiatry do—they drug nearly everyone they can get their hands on.
To prevent or reduce school shootings, we need to stop relying on current mental health and psychiatric interventions to prevent mass violence. Psychiatric approaches do more harm than good.
What More Can We Do to Prevent or Reduce School Shootings?
School shootings have multiple causes. My focus in this report is on the role of psychiatric drugs because it receives so little attention, despite being one of the chief causes of mass violence. In keeping with my emphasis, for solutions I will focus again on my own area of knowledge: the provision of psychosocial and educational services to children, youth, and their caregivers or families.
One of the first required steps is to force public disclosure of any and all drugs prescribed to violent perpetrators. We still do not know exactly what was prescribed to Cruz other than that he was treated for ADHD and depression. Family members have reported that he was taking psychiatric medications for depression around the time he assaulted his school, but we lack documentation for this.
Authorities often avoid releasing information about the medications that mass murderers were taking. In 2012, twenty-year-old Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Six years later, the State of Connecticut has never released his medical records or reported the medications in his blood. Why? According to an assistant attorney general for the state, Lanza’s medications cannot be made public because the information “can cause a lot of people to stop taking their medications.”
It took a legal action to force the corner in the Las Vegas mass murder case to make public what if any medications were identified in the perpetrator’s body. When it was reported that he had Valium in his body at the time of his death, it did not even get a ho-hum response from the press.
Similarly, in 2013, when it was quickly discovered that the naval yard shooter had recently been started on the antidepressant trazodone at the VA, the news just as quickly disappeared from view. So it will not be enough to get the information we need; we will also have to work to draw attention to it.
Despite how often threat reports are ignored, they are a frontline deterrent. We need to make it easier to report threats by young people by providing well-advertised state-wide designated online and telephone reporting sites, and by preparing and empowering state and local agencies to respond to these threats. Federal agencies should play little or no role in this strategy, which requires immediate local responsiveness.
Offering Better Services
I have already emphasized the importance of no longer relying on the current mental health and psychiatric system to stop school shootings. However, even if school shootings were not such a huge problem, we still need to stop drugging our children and youth to control their feelings, thoughts and actions. Antidepressants, stimulants, benzodiazepines and all other brain-disabling, mind-altering drugs should not be used to control the minds or behaviors of young people. Children need more adult help, not more neurotoxic drugs. We must not let them to grow up with their brains and minds soaked in neurotoxins.
We need to revamp the services we deliver in our schools and families to place more emphasis on educational and psychosocial approaches to healing distressed individuals and their families. The Department of Children and Families was sent to the Cruz household to investigate and not to help. It assumed that going to a mental health clinic and taking psychiatric drugs was a good idea that reduced his dangerousness. Cruz was then left largely on his own to deal with his mother’s death and expulsion from school.
We need to focus services for young people on helping parents and children in conflict without resorting to demeaning psychiatric labels and toxic psychiatric drugs. A variety of relatively low-cost programs involving volunteers, coaches, and counselors provides the best model for help. To be most effective, we need a drug-free wraparound program with voluntary psychosocial interventions, including efforts to support and strengthen the family or care-taking unit.
Wraparound treatment would be provided not only to the identified child or youth but to the entire family. The treatment team at various times would involve teachers, school counselors, individual and/or family therapy, and direct aid to struggling families. I describe these programs in Reclaiming Our Children, a book I wrote in response to the Columbine shootings. These approaches are much less costly than providing chronic, futile psychiatric treatment, and have a better chance of stopping a catastrophic spiral into mass murder.
In the Cruz case, the school and its counselor, and many of the students, were alert to his dangerousness. Unfortunately, the dominance of drug-oriented psychiatry left no place to turn for effective help. Cruz was already being treated within a mental health clinic that provided individual treatment based on diagnoses and drugs. Instead we need psychosocial interventions, including empathic therapy, for individuals and their families.
Good psychosocial and educational help for our distressed and potentially violent children and young adults, and their families, will remain unavailable as long as psychiatry dominates theory and practice. Reforms will never occur as long as prescribers are enabled to sicken young brains and minds with neurotoxic psychiatric drugs. With biological psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry continuing to determine the kind of mental health services that are delivered, school shootings will continue to grow in number and ferocity.
Dr. Breggin you are a busy man, so you probably can’t answer this question. (Good article, by the way.) Maybe one of the other commenters can.
About Devin Kelley. He had a criminal record. Among other things he had almost murdered his infant son to get back at his wife.
Why wasn’t Kelley in prison for attempted murder? Google searches reveal nothing.
My guess is that instead of doing time like a real criminal should, he was sent to a psych ward. Because of his “insight” and religiously swallowing the drugs provided, the shrinks said he was safe and let him out early. Leaving him free to go on his killing rampage.
Is there any truth to my hypothesis?
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I have no clue about the specifics of this case but your hypothesis seems very likely in my mind. Especially given the article above !
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Kelley was a murderous creep. Psych drugs did not transform him into Mr. Sensitivity. Imagine that.
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I first read Dr. Breggin’s “Toxic Psychiatry” in the early 1990’s. I was already beginning to “wake up”, and Dr. Breggin helped open my eyes, and splash cold water on my face. I agree 99% with everything Dr. Breggin says here, typos and all. I have noticed in the past couple weeks, that lame-stream media will NOT touch the topics of psychiatry and it’s poison pills. PhRMA pay$ too much $ for media advertising, we can’t tell the truth about the neuro-toxins, now can we? Even 17 dead high school kids on Valentines Day, are a small price for PhRMA to pay, for $BILLION$ in profit. Thank-you, Dr. Breggin. You indeed helped save *MY* life, anyway….
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“Drink or drive, you must choose.” Why is it not the same for guns? It seems obvious that an addict, whether taking legal or illegal drugs, should not have access to a firearm until he has completely finished his withdrawal (at least 6 months after having totally stopped ).
You take alcohol, you can not drive.
You take drugs, you can not shoot.
A certain number of dangerous activities require to be in full possession of its means: this implies to withdraw the license to drive or the license of the weapon to the alcoholics and the addicts!
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I agree 100%! Violence is not associated with “mental health diagnoses,” it is associated with taking DRUGS, legal and/or illegal!
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Trying to horn in on my racket, eh?
Not gonna stand for you putting an end to my little operation, see?
Imagine the above lines delivered by a Big Pharma CEO who does a James Cagney imitation.
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Probably not too hard for them to imitate – it’s a type cast!
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Thank you for informing us of this information.
Another one who needs to have a cytochrome P450 test, to ascertain if he was becoming toxic. And please be aware that Akathisia is not just happening in young people. It is dependent on the phenotype of the individuals metbolising enzyme system, the drugs inhibiting the enzyme, drug/drug interaction and what ever common food stuffs/herbs/spices they ingest that inhibit the enzymes.
If we do not find out what he was prescribed, it will be telling.
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The enzyme testing is a start, and can eliminate many problems.
But it does not eliminate the problems of “just plain” mania, akathisia, and other effects of these drugs which are also common.
My concern with CYP450 testing is that they just use it to “find the right drug” instead of not drugging. I am familiar with cases on Surviving Antidepressants, where the CYP450 or other serotonin reactions have resulted in heavy neuroleptic cocktails for “depression” or “substance abuse.” This is not a good answer to the CYP450 problem.
And there are other problems, too – coming to light more recently is the amphetamine / SSRI major drug interactions – and yet – I can name a half dozen people I know who have been given amphetamines for “fatigue” caused by the antidepressants and benzos. One of whom found a different liver enzyme conflict from the CYP450 (sorry I don’t know the exact enzyme), and was going into serotonin shock. This took time to build up, too…
So CYP450 testing is a beginning, but has the potential for future drug abuse, and while it will eliminate some of the problems – it will not eliminate the bulk of them.
No drugs at all is the best solution, or, if there must be drugs, only after other interventions have been tried first.
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You’re dealing with the psychiatric version of the NRA, where the organization exists to enrich weapons manufacturers. In the case of organized psychiatry, the profession now exists to enrich drug manufacturers. As everyone knows, patients’ and children’s welfare take a back seat to the corporate bottom line; the patients can be crazy as bedbugs, while the kids can be permanently down range, as long as the money keeps rolling in.
That’s also why the cures for such activities involve increasing the problems that caused them in the first place- more guns in circulation with less oversight, in order to subdue wannabe shooters, and more similar drugs in order to end drug-induced craziness.
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I think you’re making a very big cognitive and logical error in your thinking, because of the emotional bias triggered by your media-enforced hatred and contempt for that “evil NRA”. You seem to be saying that the NRA & guns *cause* shooting crimes. I say that’s non-sense. That’s like saying “cars cause drunk driving crashes.” Think about it. Guns do NOT *cause* gun crimes. We could have 10x the number of guns we do now, but almost no gun crimes, if we could just figure out what is the trigger that triggers the trigger finger.
People can “worship”, and “adore”, and “fetishize” guns, and even become obsessed with shooting guns(legally). But using guns in gun crimes, and especially mass killings, must be caused by some combination of whatever innate human quality results in homicide, – and has since prehistory. That, plus drugs or alcohol, which are consumed into the body, and become *part*of* the body, in ways that guns simply can not. Guns might *allow*, or even *facilitate* mass shootings, but guns do not *cause* mass shootings, and I don’t think you get that.
And, there are lots of other gun-rights organizations, besides the NRA. The NRA has over 5 million members, and they are hardly a homogenous group. The defense of the 2nd Amendment is more important to most of them, than making a few bucks for some gun manufacturers. Besides, lately, there’s been a spike in both NRA membership, and gun sales. The lame-stream media WANTS you focused on guns & the NRA, and AWAY from psychiatry & psych drugs. I have literally seen NO mention of psychiatry and psych drugs in the last 2 weeks, in lame-stream media. Did you notice that CNN’s “Town Hall” meeting had NO PhRMA advertising? You didn’t, did you?
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Democrats & their ilk have lost their minds, or maybe they’re just more obviously pathetic lately. And yes, there is clearly a media blackout of info on psych drugs.
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Do you really think Republicans have been better? Other than a few oddballs here and there, I don’t know any Republicans OR Democrats who have taken up this issue. In fact, Republicans seem even more willing to blame “mental illness” as a means of avoiding a discussion of any changes in gun laws. So it’s not a Democrat/Republican thing in my view. It’s a rich/powerful vs. poor/powerless issue, and of course, both sides of the aisle are buddies with psychiatry, because psychiatry is on the rich/powerful side of the scale.
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Exactly, you will not find any of the criminal financial derivative devices, that destroyed many thousands of mostly poor, 10 years ago in the DSM. Yet they are the most antisocial methods used by the rich. No, Credit Default Swaps are NOT in the DSM.
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Do you really think Republicans have been better?
Better at what?
I focus on Democrats because they pretend to be progressive, when they are actually the more dangerous of the two parties, currently at least, as they draw in idealistic change-oriented people the disillusion them.
Why are you shifting the issue back to gun laws if the issue is drugs?
Again, there are two bogus “explanations” for gun madness, i.e. “mental illness” and the existence of guns. Dems tend to focus on the latter, Repugs the former. However when they start confiscating guns based on “mental illness” it will become clear that according to so-called statistics this applies to 20%-25% of the population, including many returning vets. At that point the “right” will start to see the light regarding psychiatry and its political nature. We should be prepared to jump on this and start recruiting.
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I hope you’re right, Oldhead, but I have my doubts. Both sides of the aisle appear to be sold out to their contributors, and until that changes, the priority will be making sure the big corporations make money. The rest is mostly window dressing.
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Why would it ever just change? People aren’t talking about revolutionary transformation for entertainment’s sake. The point should be to achieve critical mass and stop the system in its tracks. A good nonviolent start would be a general strike.
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But you don’t see many massacres carried out by someone wielding a knife; although sometimes someone does try to use a machete but even that is rare. All of the mass school shootings were done with semi-automatic rifles, although some shooters carried pistols as well.
Doesn’t the United States have more guns than there are individuals? I think that I saw that statistic somewhere. I think we have more guns than any other country in the world. Why is it that other western countries have been able to bring their mass shootings to zero simply by having limitations on guns?
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And I think that all of this support and supposed protection of the Second Amendment is generated by a lot of conspiracy stuff being churned out by right wing organizations over the past few years.
I can remember when the NRA was nothing, hardly anyone even gave it a second look. It’s amazing to me how it’s been able to attain such power and prominence that it has at this point in time. But with the rise of the internet and the ability for conspiracy loonies to spread their fantasy ideas about how the government is going to completely take over our lives in a socialist coup the NRA reared its head and gained dominance.
And, the NRA really came into its own when we elected our first African American president. That’s all it took to give added strength to all of this lunacy. Why are White people so damned scared of Black people? I can’t count the times that I heard White people stating that President Obama was going to confiscate our guns and drive us into submission as he proclaimed a totalitarian state that he was going to rule. I believe that was all pretty damned sick and it was perpetuated by people on the internet and social media.
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I myself had guns as a kid. I was taught to hunt at an early age. My family members were part of the NRA in its infancy. It’s changed it’s message and direction over the years from what it once was.
I was bullied at school. But I never once considered getting my rifle and taking it to school so that I could massacre my classmates and teachers. These mass school shootings cropped up after the advent of Prosac and the other SSRI’s.
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You are a wise man, Mr Gilbert, and respect you you, sir.
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And, the NRA really came into its own when we elected our first African American president.
Can you document that? The only NRA member I know of for sure is Black, and is an upstanding citizen.
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All I can say Steve is that you seem to have an unfounded, apparently naive faith in the utterances of liberals and the American Way. Certainly those who have demonstrated violent behavior associated with weapons should be sanctioned. But that’s generally just a smokescreen.
But you echo one or two of my points: Since “they say” 20%-25% of the population has a “mental illness,” shouldn’t they all be disarmed? Sounds like a pretty good strategy for disarming the populace, as that’s only in any given year. Sooner or later at this pace there will be a label for everyone, and Voila! I say bring it on — when they start taking guns away from returning veterans maybe people will start examining this whole “mental illness” thing more closely.
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That’s a hasty generalization, Steve. Like saying, “All men hate intelligent, successful, witty women.” As a woman, I disagree with that blanket statement.
“All women like bad-boy, alpha jerks,” is also silly. If that were true why do so many of us laugh at the Disney villain Gaston?
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The NRA is a total scapegoat here. Cruz was not a member. And why would you want to disarm the public, if that’s what you’re saying? So we’re totally helpless? Do you think the most violent government in history has the right to be making pronouncements on this? I’m just not sure what you’re implying.
Also, how do you see the NRA as changing its message btw? Just curious.
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The citizens of other western countries that have restricted the ownership of guns get along quite well and with no mass shootings. They don’t seem to feel totally helpless without guns. I suspect that guns are an ingrained part of United States culture, unlike other countries where individual gun ownership isn’t such a big deal to people. Our Wild West history kind of colored everything.
I’m not sure that I would characterize our government as the most violent in history. I would call it the most willing government to push its agenda above all other things, which is not always the best of things in my estimation. I would call it sneaky, underhanded, deceitful, a purveyor of deception but this means that it’s just like every other government of most other countries. No government ever allows its citizens to really know what’s going on. Our government has done many of the same things that we call other governments out on. But I would not call our government the most violent in history.
How do you see the NRA as a scapegoat? When I was a kid the NRA didn’t seem to preach its present agenda of Second Amendment stuff or if it did I just didn’t notice it. My family members belonged to the NRA and we got their magazine in my home. From what I remember they started out fairly benign before they started preaching that the government was going to strip us of our guns and make us march lockstep and saluting the dictator. But of course I might be wrong because my seventy year old brain doesn’t always remember things exactly these days.
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Maybe when it became more clear that the government wants to strip us of the right to bear arms they started to focus on this more? Anyway what’s wrong with promoting the Bill of Rights?
And why indeed wouldn’t a corporate dictatorship want the populace to be armed, especially when the 2nd Amendment was adopted as a protection against tyranny?
The U.S. is BY FAR the most violent warmongering government in history, just like it has far more prisoners per capita than any other country. In global polling people identify the U.S. as the greatest threat to the world security.
Instead of people chanting “Not my president!” they should be chanting “Not my government!”
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I am not sure why people so often say that having some level of gun control laws means “disarming the public?” I have rarely seen anyway but the most extreme radicals advocating for disarming citizens, and it can’t be done anyone, because of the second amendment. What I’m mostly hearing is making it harder for people with known violent pasts from getting their hands on weapons, while regular citizens are free to hold as many guns as they want. It’s true that banning semiautomatic assault rifles is on the table, and I see the arguments on both sides of that, but as for “disarming the public” – who is arguing for that????
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No one’s arguing for it, that wouldn’t be a wise tactical move. It’s a “boil the frog slowly” plan. It has to look like the people are demanding it. So it doesn’t matter to them that people are dying if it gives them grist for their propaganda. Couldn’t help a smile when I heard Rush L. mentioning how the most frequently interviewed student is sounding exactly like Chuck Schumer.
So are you pointing to violent people, drugs, “mental illness” or the existence of guns as the root cause of this? You seem to be all over the map, so does Stephen. Remember, Americans have had guns since day one — so why all the sudden is it an issue?
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No, it’s mad Americans that they would disarm. The idea is that the “public” needs to be protected from “them”, the ‘mad dog killers’. That they would be “disarmed” is of no concern to anyone so long as the “public” is protected.
Unfortunately, as far as I’m concerned, the “public” is completely bonkers, so there. Take that. I know, I might have difficulty defending myself, especially given laws enacted against my doing so, but you do realize, too, that those laws are unconstitutional, don’t you?
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OH: Your presumption that there is a conspiracy to disarm all Americans is unsupported by any kind of facts. Anyone can speculate, but the Constitution prevents the disarmament of the general citizenry. I am far more concerned with Frank’s point, that the “mentally ill” will be targeted for disarmament, not because it’s safer but because the “mentally ill” make a good scapegoat.
As for the causes, obviously “violent people” commit violent acts, by definition, but that’s a pretty tautological argument. I certainly am not suggesting that “the mentally ill” are to blame somehow. For one thing, there are no more “mentally ill” people here per capita than anywhere else, but a hell of a lot more mass shootings. Obviously, the possession of guns doesn’t cause it either, because the overwhelming majority of gun owners don’t commit crimes. Drug use IS associated with increasing levels of violence, but I think the causes are very complex, and as to why it happens in the USA so much, even more complex.
All that aside, my point is that once someone credibly says “I’m planning to shoot up the local school tomorrow,” I think they give up their right to own or use a gun. If someone shoots his wife (or her husband) with a gun, I think it’s reasonable to restrict their access to a gun. If someone has a history of armed robbery convictions, I think it’s reasonable to restrict their access to a gun. Would you disagree?
As I said, “Gun control” doesn’t mean disarming all citizens. It is reasonable to stop certain people from having guns if they use them to hurt or threaten people. Your choice to believe that there is some secret plot to disarm everyone doesn’t make it true, and I guarantee you there are enough Americans who would protest if such a thing were attempted. And a lot of them are armed!
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I misplaced my main response higher up in the thread but
there are no more “mentally ill” people here per capita than anywhere else
Now we’re back to talking about the “mentally ill” as though it’s a viable category?
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According to http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/57331000/gif/_57331540_gun_ownership_464.gif
The USA is not even in the top 10 for per-capita gun ownership.
What is the difference between the USA and Switzerland? Norway? (Switzerland, all of the citizens are army trained, is one possibility).
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I read that Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the States, and the highest rate of homicides. Most criminals commit crimes with illegally purchased weapons, which are clearly not hard to get hold of. So how would more restrictions help?
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Agree or disagree with the NRA. But a big difference between that group and Big Pharma is all the money comes from individual members. Some are rich. Most are not, like my Dad who uses his gun to cut his retirement grocery bill. But the NRA is grass roots–not a corporation.
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And yet they are the most effective lobbying organization: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/15/nras-big-spending-pays-off-clout-and-wins-washington/341257002/
The chart halfway down the page is telling.
I’m sure their lobbyists are professionals. As long as they are touting something that the Powers That Be agree with, they will not suffer the fate of the Unions….
I saw a video (sorry, can’t remember who) that reminded us, if we want gun laws changed, we need to do what the NRA does, and call – all of us – many times to ensure a bill passes. Most of us call just once, but the NRA is well organized with passionate people (paid?) to keep calling and calling – and so – the Congress believes that what they say is what the people want. If each of us called our congressperson and senators 10 – 20 times a year, there’s an opportunity for change.
Personally, I’m torn – my paranoid self tends to believe that this is all being set up to take away the people’s right to defend themselves against a growing military state. Already our rights to protest are curtailed under “protest zone” laws. On the other hand, children are dying – so if it is a ploy, it’s a very effective one.
I’ve studied the Port Arthur “Massacre” in Tasmania, the one which caused Australians to eagerly surrender their guns for melting. It is claimed (and widely believed) that a young man with an IQ of 68 made 23 head shots (kill shots) in less than 3 minutes, when really there are only a handful of shooters in the world with that level of skill. The kid was not offered a trial, was instead tried by media, “treated” by doctors (neuroleptics), and convinced to plead guilty. He has been locked away now for over 20 years, drugged to the gills, and his story has never been heard. There are other weirdnesses, too (like the 22 bay hearse purchased prior to the event and never used since, and 2 major conferences in Hobart that weekend – one for media, one for emergency “first responders.” Hobart is a town of 220,000, these conferences would be rare.).
I don’t put it beyond the Powers That Be to kill children to get what they want. After all, Pharma does it every day. (paranoid rant off)
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You may disagree with the NRA’s ideology but they are privately funded by individuals. Not gun manufacturers. My dad belongs; he’s a retired clergyman. Not the CEO of some rifle making company. (Can’t name one off the top of my head.)
I’m angry at the NRA president for saying “All the mentally ill are monsters and should be locked up.” This did not score him points–even with NAMI or SAHMSA. He’s pretty ignorant. Does he think locking up 20% of the population is feasible? And what if the APA declares gun ownership to be a “symptom” of various “mental illnesses” in the DSM 6?
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Dear Dr Breggin,
Thanks for the well expressed Article.
I see that Nikolas Cruz was being “treated for ADHD”:-
I saw this U Tube clip with “ADHD treated” youngsters trying out TM meditation and what I was struck with was how dreadful they looked (and how sadly they “misdiagnosed” themselves).
https://youtu.be/HOiGm-X8cak
I’ve practised TM meditation myself and it can be brilliant – but I always return to Buddhist Breathing meditation which requires more discipline.
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TM is less harmful than the drugs, but there is a cult and culture attached that can also cause them to waste decades of their lives paying for it. This could be anywhere from $360 for children to $1000 for adults – or up to $2500 (and the fees increase as “advanced courses” – which are nothing special – are added). It is a simple technique that ends up like diving down a waterfall into flat brain waves which the TM’rs call “coherence.”
This flattened brain wave is blissful and peaceful, and can leave a person susceptible to suggestion, much as a pre-hypnotic state, and can lead to poor decision making (like buying the next course, or paying a pandit to pray for your karma), or, worse, if there is trauma, an explosion of unregulated trauma reactions and no technique to deal with it. TM, like the drugs, numbs the natural response to situations.
Russell Brand, Jim Carrey, Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman and David Lynch have found it very helpful – and I would say, in the case of extreme addictions (like Brand) it is preferable to a medical approach.
But it was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself that said, “Sometimes it takes a thorn to remove a splinter,” and TM is far less harmful than drugs.
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Like all emotional therapy, TM can be abusive.
I was forced to undergo it by a novice. Finally I refused on religious grounds.
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Thanks Jan,
I found TM can have dramatic results in the short term – I’m not sure about the longterm. With Buddhist Breathing meditation I found that the longterm results were consistent.
I don’t think meditation is supposed to numb feelings like drugs do – this can be dangerous. I think meditation is supposed to help someone to react to things in a calm manner.
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As long as the public believes the psychiatric drugs are medicine , everything will continue. In God we trust. In drugs we trust.
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“More Psychiatry Means More Shootings.” Great title. This is exactly right. Spot on.
Now, imagine the converse: “Less Psychiatry Means Less Shootings.” Then imagine the following: “The Abolition of Psychiatry Ends Mass Shootings.” There will always be a few violent people out there, but psychiatry is creating hoards of abnormally violent individuals with its harmful labels, abuse, involuntary incarceration, and neurotoxic drugs. Ann Blake-Tracy tells me that she has worked with you, Dr. Breggin, and that the two of you have known about the effects of psychotropic drugs for many years. Her database SSRI stories contains over 6,000 stories of drug induced nightmares. https://ssristories.org/ Her book on Prozac (with an introduction by Dr. Breggin) was published back in 1994. https://www.amazon.com/Prozac-Panacea-Pandora-Antidepressants-Zoloft/dp/0916095592
I know from first hand experience the harm that Prozac, Paxil, and Effexor can cause. No one who has not taken these neurotoxic drugs can possibly fathom the suffering and the damage that they cause. Dr. Breggin’s book “Medication Madness” demonstrates with great clarity how these neurotoxic drugs can turn the most gentle and peace loving human beings into raving, violent lunatics.
When will the world wake up? How many more shootings do we need before Big Pharma and psychiatry are brought to justice? How much more blood must be spilt? The time has come to slay the dragon of psychiatry.
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Regarding ““Less Psychiatry Means Less Shootings.”
In the article ” He was regularly taking medication for A.D.H.D. ”
What would they do for his ADHD without medication? Would he be responsible for his inattention? Could a doctor say ” No that’s not a medical issue, sorry” No the doctors would not, the doctors HAVE to treat their patients complaint.
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Could a doctor say ” No that’s not a medical issue, sorry”
Of course not, that would require honesty and integrity.
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And no green stuff for the quack.
Priorities!
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This comment is built on the assumption that ADHD is a physical/chemical condition that can be treated physically (i.e., with drugs).
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Meanwhile in New Jersey:
“Students at Cherry Hill High School East staged a protest Monday morning in support of a beloved but controversial teacher who was suspended last week after speaking out about security issues there.
Timothy Locke, 59, said he was placed on administrative leave on Thursday after a student became upset after he discussed the Parkland shooting in his history class and expressed his fear that a similar incident could happen at the school…He was placed on administrative leave and ordered to undergo a physical and psychiatric evaluation.”
http://www.philly.com/philly/education/cherry-hill-east-school-shooting-comments-timothy-locke-teacher-suspended-protest-new-jersey-20180226.html
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OMG ! I am in shock.
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This doesn’t shock me at all. I was a high school teacher for fifteen years. This has become the way that school administrations do not deal with difficult things. They don’t want students to be taught how to think for themselves. Students are supposed to sit there and accept whatever drivel comes out of the mouths of the adult at the front of the class. They are not supposed to raise objections nor cause what the administration interprets as problems.
Teachers are not really allowed these days to carry on honest discussions with their students. I was fired from the last school I ever taught at because I would not reveal names of students to the principal of the school.
I taught Religion in Catholic schools. My weekly homework assignment was for students to write and turn in a half page Journal entry in which they could talk about anything that they wanted to write about. What ever they wrote about was confidential. I believed that there were very few attempts to help students deal with the issues they were experiencing in their lives so this was my attempt to give them a sounding board. I was known as the teacher who would listen to the weird kids, the kids that no one else wanted to have anything to do with. This was an all boys school.
Eventually, when the kids realized that I was truthful about the confidentiality business a number of them shared with me that they thought they were gay. To this day I do not know how the principal found out but he called me down to his office one afternoon and told me how he wanted to help the students in his care. Then he told me that he wanted me to tell him the names of the kids who were homosexuals because they needed help and he was going to help them. In my head I was thinking, “Oh yea….you’re going to help them all right!” This was in the ’80’s when the gay community had made many strides forward but it still was not always safe to be known as gay, especially in a Catholic school run by an religious order of brothers.
I told him I’d think on it and left. Of course I was called to his office a few days later and at that point told him that I was not going to give him any names. He then told me that I would not be teaching at his school the following year because my philosophy of education didn’t fit at all with the philosophy of the school.
I have no problems believing what was done to this teacher.
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The students walked out yesterday in support, it was national news, but so far the administration hasn’t budged. They really seem to have sticks up their asses.
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School administrators have become politicians in many respects, rather than people who are supposed to oversee the well-being and education of those in their care. The same principal that I talked about above would not allow undercover police who were searching out drug dealers to come into our school and investigate who was handing over the drugs to students who peddled them in the school. He refused the undercover officers posing as students entrance into the school. His reasoning was that if he allowed them in it would jeopardize the reputation of the school, which was in competition with two other large Catholic boys’ schools in the city. The police threatened to pull up information on teachers in the school, trying to force him to allow them in. He told them that he’d have the school’s lawyers on them if he even suspected them being within one block of the school’s campus.
And how do I know this? One of my former students who’d graduated two years before came to see me one afternoon after school. He wanted to talk about the death of one of his classmates, whose death happened because of drugs. This young man who came to talk was one of the undercover police who went into schools to find the drugs. He cried about his classmates death and then related how the principal of my school and his school wouldn’t allow the police to find the student drug pushers so that they could find the adult who was the head of the whole operation.
Oh the things that I can tell about teaching and school administrations. I am not surprised that they are acting as if they have sticks up their asses.
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I eventually got to know so much information that I could no longer stay in the system and teach. It was disheartening.
Teachers who really want to guide their students into being able to think for themselves are not allowed to do this. It might cause problems since the students will then begin asking questions, perhaps embarrassing questions or questions that seem to have no real answer at that time.
Teachers who are willing to allow students to talk about what’s bothering them, because no one else seems to want to listen to them, are not allowed to do this. It might cause problems for the administration or the school system. And consequently students never get heard and they get into problems. And then they do cause problems for the administration and the school system when it all comes out in the papers, or in the case of Cruz, leads to the deaths of students and teachers.
Teachers are supposed to spout the party line, whatever that happens to be according to the administration. And if you refuse to just stand in front of your students spouting the party line you won’t be part of the party for much longer!
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I’m not trying to advertise Grindr, but
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3720478/Trainee-Catholic-priests-hooking-using-gay-dating-app-Grindr-Ireland-s-seminary.html
https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/martin-removes-priests-from-maynooth-amid-allegations-some-seminarians-were-using-gay-dating-app-grindr-34927770.html
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Unfortunately Pharma won’t allow this view to be ever heard. It’s a trillion dollar business. They make 30.1% profit margin. They are THE number one advertising for television, online and all other media outlets. This view will be discussed and torn apart. The public is calling for either gun control or HIPPA to be public so they can identify the crazy people (NRA PR rep’s words, not mine). Neither will ever happen. Both lobbies are extremely powerful.
The only solution that I’ve heard that might work would be armed guards to protect the schools like they do in Israel to cope with terrorists.
The public likes the idea that there are mentally ill people in the society. They have someone to be superior over, if they don’t have other means to claim superiority by wealth or education. You can sling it at anyone as an insult. Can’t ever be proven wrong. It’s the perfect insult. And the rest who love their drugs, well they’re addicts by whatever means that it has happened.
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Why wouldn’t HIPAA release records of all the “mentally ill” since no one cares about them anyhow?
Unless the psychiatrists are nervous about losing perspective vic-uh-consumers, since knowing they will be publicly disgraced would serve as an effective deterrent to depressed people seeking out psychiatric abuse–I mean services.
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Exactly, the lobbyist for the AMA and the APA is going to fight this tooth and nail because it threatens future business. unless involuntary becomes the new norm. Who in their right mind is going to subject themselves to being outed for seeing a mental health professional? I personally get a kick out of the stigma articles and find them quite entertaining.
I still think you said it best though. Thanks for that.
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If we insist that they stick to their guns [sic] this means that 20%-25% of the population (“official” statistics on “mental illness”) should lose their 2nd Amendment rights. I don’t think people would stand for that.
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Especially not the veterans, many of whom (possibly most of whom) are drugged.
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I believe “Pharma” accounts for about 50% of Irish Exports.
I had suicidal reaction again and again between 1980 and 1984 in Ireland to drugs that had a strong suicidal association.
(When I recovered as a result of coming off these drugs and moved to the UK in 1986, I sent an ADR Warning Request Letter to doctors at Galway Ireland. In Response doctors sent over an account of me to the UK – with NO ADR Warning.
The ADR Warning Request Letter was at the back of my August 2012 FOI requested Irish Notes)
When I complained with evidence to the Irish Medical Council and the UK General Medical Council – Both Medical Councils “Ducked and Dived”.
I think its possible that the Medical Councils were suffering from a type of “Combined Psychopathic Mindset”:- that since doctors are “allowed” to ignore drug side effects (at times) – that they are then “allowed” to ignore Requested ADR Warning to drugs that could KILL a person at a later date.
Why The Fuss?
My GP Surgery at Newton Medical London W2 had been attempting to represent my 1980 to 1984 situation as my present day situation. And are still attempting to “doctor”.
When I presented my November 8 1986 Adverse Drug Reaction Warning Request Letter to my GP Dr Simons (again) on June 3 2016, he ReRead the Letter Out Loud to me in the consultation room…
…And, the June 3 2016 Appointment notes recorded ” ..brings me a number of letters regarding his previous admission..”.
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“When the number of prescriptions written for each drug was factored in, a small group of drugs accounted for almost all reports of violence.”
Contrast this with the widely publicized studies of the effectiveness of anti-depressants and the need for many more people to have prescriptions for them. For an excellent discussion see: http://www.talesfromthemadhouse.com/the-reaction-to-the-lancets-antidepressant-effectiveness-study-an-attempt-to-spin-a-sows-ear-into-a-silk-purse/
Then compare this promotion of anti-depressants with President Trump’s solution to school shooting to be the arming of teachers, meaning more guns curbs violence.
What do you get? “Experts” telling us we need more anti-depressants and more guns in the school systems and society at large.
I applaud Dr. Breggin’s struggles but think very few are aware or care.
Might it be possible to convict prescribing psychiatrists as accessories to murder in these cases? And class action suits against some of the pharma companies by relatives of the deceased?
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Class action is a very real possibility. But so far, no attorneys are willing to go up against Big Pharma in that kind of large scale way.
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If Psychiatrists cross the line into criminality, then they should definitely be prosecuted.
But in a country like Ireland that has a very high economic dependency on the pharmaceutical industry; and the Psychiatric systems being “corrupt” anyway – it could be difficult.
The Irish Medical Council in my own case, more or less challenged me to involve the Irish Police – and this was a strong enough hint in that direction.
Maybe as a means of covering for criminal or other claims, what I notice is an overall Official tendency to stigmatize “Mental Health” to the point of subhumanity. This is not the same in any other area ; but no other area has the same amount of Abuse, and Free Money attached to it.
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https://www.rte.ie/news/health/2018/0221/942510-irish-psychiatrist-suspended-over-death-of-teen-in-uk/
Connor Sparrohawks Clinician was suspended in England but re employed in Ireland. As a Mental Health insider this would not be too surprising.
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If folks who are commenting on this blog believe that psychiatric drugs are linked to school shootings and want to do something about the problem, not just talk in an echo chamber, here is a petition folks can sign:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/launch-federal-investigation-relationship-between-school-shootings-and-psychiatric-drugs
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Signed.
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Signed.
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Darn thing ! I figure my signature from Canada won’t be considered valid ?
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This is a great idea but it needs to be done in a much more coordinated way to be effective; otherwise it could even be counterproductive. 100,000 people is no drop in the bucket to achieve, and if there are only 1000 or so signatures it could even be used to “prove” that this is a non-issue. We would need a coalition between anti-psych and critical psych people AND all the self-professed “advocates.” It’s not impossible but would need some folks to make it their main project.
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More BS from the ‘guardian’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/27/antidepressants-pills-children
“What helped me, in addition, was the trusting relationship that I found with a psychiatrist who gave me the time, the continuity and the space to explore my feelings about the illness and its origins in the relationships buried deep in my childhood.”
And the reality:
https://www.nhs.uk/Services/hospitals/ReviewsAndRatings/DefaultView.aspx?id=2455&SortType=1#cmnt2006879
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Hmm. Thought the illness was genetic–that childhood abuse was irrelevant. “Nobody’s fault,” remember.
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What I find so frustrating is the extent of blindness of the many people surrounding medicated people. So many red flags keep “popping up” but there is such strong resistance to even notice them, and make a tentative hypothesis about the likely possibility of a causal link. Of course, the prescribers are always afraid of liability issues and fear much more not giving the magic bullet rather than “soft” treatment but still. How can they not stay objective and genuinely caring and ? Like in the old metaphor, give à hammer to the worker and suddenly, everything looks like a nail … Thanks Dr Breggin for your courageous call for a more complete set of tools.
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A gift for you Dr.Breggin and everyone else. See all her videos . Amazing truth revealed adding years of life.
The Health Industrial Complex with Dr.Jennifer Daniels
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meCDmTMzdnM
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I agree with everything except ” the cost of their treatment and their disability payments”.
Psychiatric drugs do not increase the cost of their treatment and disability payments as the pharmaceutical companies can make generic ones dirt cheap, and disability payments are fixed income.
When you say untruths like this you hurt poor people who need disability money because they are unhappy that they do not have a good paying job to be independent.
Many of the poor are too broken and crippled by the system to ever work again, please do not work to take their money away and slave them in capitalism.
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Being maimed by drugs taken long term and defamed by a phony diagnosis I am forced to live on disability too. For now.
Sman, I doubt anyone here wants to rob you of the pittance you subsist on. I only get $760 a month. No food stamps and forced to live in roach infested HUD slum where everyone knows there’s something “wrong” with me for living here.
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They will take it if you let them, many poor will depend on government money for their entire life.
We cannot lie and say they will get better in the future, if you seen some homeless people you would know their too broken to ever recover from the system.
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Some yes. There are those who break out–generally with help from individuals–not government drones.
I believe I will be off disability in a year or two. Bit by bit my strength is returning since I’m off the devil’s tic tacs now. 🙂
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Don’t get too cozy, says Ben Carson….
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/03/us/politics/ben-carson-hud-poverty-plans.html
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Excellent article, Dr Breggin!
I’ve been working with a committee to come up with a plan to get legislators to sponsor a bill that will require a thorough examination of the relationship between these neurotoxins and violence, and your letter says just about everything we’ve come up with in over two years of work! BRAVO!!!
So, maybe we can scrap our work and just use your letter to introduce ourselves to our legislators? What do you think? We’d really love to have you come on board with us, and we even extended an invitation to you to join us, but maybe our email invitation ended up in your junk folder….
In any event – I’ll reach out to Bob and see if he’ll talk to you about our invitation.
Love you for your courage and common sense and for continuing to be a voice for so many whose voices will never be heard!
Cassie
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It would be great if MIA took a stand on something like this but I don’t see it happening. Good luck though.
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What bothers me most, besides the terrible loss of life, is the way that Cruz screamed at the top of his lungs for attention and help and he got zilch, nada, nothing. He was just another “problem kid” causing trouble. It’s very easy to vilify these school shooters and make them into terrible monsters; the spokeswoman for the NRA refers to Cruz as “that crazy animal”, and of course she has to refer to him this way to whip up a frenzy against him so that people fail to look at what was happening with him in his life. How could a kid get in so much trouble, and scream out for help in so many ways, and still be allowed to fall through the cracks? I would have to say that the system has failed him in so many ways and many of us do not want to look within his life and see how he got to this point.
I do not think that children start out as bad individuals nor do they have the goal to become school shooters. Things happen to them along the way to mold and shape them so that the role of school shooter eventually appeals to them. I believe that these school shooters are some of the “canaries in the mine” who are indicating with these violent deeds that something is very badly wrong within our society. But rather than look at what needs to be looked at we turn these kids into monsters so that it’s easier to attack them. We’ve become a society that does almost anything it can rather than have to take a long, honest, searching look at what is happening in this country.
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And the supreme irony is that he was given drugs, which most likely added to his problems. Why are we drugging our “problem kids” rather than sitting down and talking with them? It’s difficult work to sit down and talk with kids, especially teenagers, but it’s the only way to help them find what they need to deal with their issues. Drugs which cause violent actions are obviously not the answer and yet he was probably stuffed to the gills, as probably Adam Lanza was stuffed to the gills with these toxic drugs.
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Among other causes of these shootings is the way our society regards human life as cheap. Especially the “severely mentally ill.” No one has any problem drugging 5% of the population into an early grave since 1 out of a hundred might commit a murder someday.
Not only do they regard the “mentally ill” as useless eaters but remorseless monsters who must be imprisoned/crippled/killed for the Public Good.
The “monsters” often have “good insight” embracing the role assigned them of Monstrous Other–in addition to the maddening drugs they are coerced into taking. Like Frankenstein’s monster they give up on love and try to inspire fear instead.
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Agreed. And unfortunately, after what happened two weeks ago people will drink the Kool-Aid and accept the fact that it’s we “mentally ill” people who are the problem and not the proliferation of guns in this country.
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If 50 people spent a week to a month full time educating all sorts of opinion leaders about psychiatric drug violence, one by one, sooner or later the dam would break.
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I wouldn’t disagree with you on this one, OldHead, but I want to point out that in the media there is this ongoing story that some people kill other people because they suffer from a “chemical imbalance” that returns when they “go off their meds”. It is this false narrative that we are going to need to spend a great deal of time doing battle with. According to news accounts it is the drugs, when they take them, that prevent them from killing people. I think, in many instances, some folk are more interested in maintaining this false narrative than they are in ascertaining the truth. You’ve got this “as if” guiding peoples’ actions. Why rock the boat when doing so is going to put your career in jeopardy? We’ve got a business here, and the only way to get it to register a skin reaction, is to lay it out in no uncertain terms. These neurotoxins are injurious and deadly, and we’ve got the studies to show that to be the case.
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Agreed.
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No one asks why the shootings have increased while more psych drugs are consumed than ever.
The way I try to explain it is mind altering drugs can cause violence. If someone in heroin withdrawal commits murders no one says, “He should have listened to his dealer and stayed on his meds.” Street drugs are “bad medicine” remember.
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Some idiot was accusing Lauren Tenney of not doing research. He knew science had proven all “mental illness” was from a chemical imbalance. I told him the president of the American Psychiatric Association thought otherwise and posted a link to Pies’s article. That shut him up.
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Each individual chosen for “reeducation” could be encouraged to express whatever false beliefs they might harbor, then these could be corrected, with documentation. Liberals can get liberal arguments, “conservatives” can get conservative arguments, though they all “intersect” 🙂 in places.
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Oldhead, I would be a good candidate to take on the religious right. Churches think they are being kind when they lock up “mentally ill” people and drug/shock them–not to mention scientific.
NRA members would be in this group.
They should be reminded that religion (The God Delusion) and a zeal for the 2nd Ammendment are both considered severe mental illnesses by many.
Also, more people receiving psychiatric “services” means more forced to live on disability–receiving expensive drugs–with tax payers footing the bill. And the drugs are really the same as you buy on the street.
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Wait. Some people claim atheists are deluded. Many claim theists are deluded. Shall the battle lines be drawn?
What would some people say if I were to say I was raised without the belief that Jesus was the Messiah? Was that also a psychosis? We had no concept of “trinity.” No concept of “son of God.” This was incomprehensible to me.
Was my dad delusional when he said we could not mention the name of Jesus in our house? Or just putting his foot down, sick of seeing his kids getting swallowed up by the dominant culture?
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No one deserves to be imprisoned or tortured for religious beliefs. It goes against the 1st Amendment.
The danger with psychiatry is that it’s in bed with our legal system, but there is nothing judicial about it. If they did their cruel, pointless experiments on convicted criminals,calling it punishment, they would be called out for their cruel and unusual punishments. Only because they put on faces of smooth-faced hypocrites–claiming to fix what’s not broken and “cure” people they disapprove of for X reason–does our society grant them immunity.
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I was a teacher in a large boy’s school at the end of the 1980’s. One week I was assigned to duty in the large room that students used for study during their off period. The restroom had a large entrance into this room and didn’t have a door on it because of the way the bathroom was constructed and I guess because it was all boys. One morning I had a very unusual and unnerving experience. I was talking quietly with a student who’d asked me a question when all of a sudden there was a humongous boom followed by a huge cloud of dust that came billowing out into the large room.
Come to find out, a ninth grader who was upset because upper classmen were bullying him went to a sophomore whom he knew, who went to his father, who gave his son a half stick of dynamite to sell to the ninth grader. I am not kidding you, you can’t make this kind of stuff up. A parent gave his son a half stick of dynamite to sell to another student!!!! The ninth grader took his half stick of dynamite and blew a commode out of the floor in the bathroom. It blew a hole down through the cement floor! There were three hundred students out in the resource room at the time and we were very lucky that the ninth grader decided to only blow a commode up. This was right before the school mass shootings began, along with the advent of this fake ADHD crap and the SSRI’s that they started giving kids. I often wonder now if that ninth grader was drugged with any of these drugs? These days the student would throw it out into the room with the 300 kids.
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Wow Stephen, what a story. You know, back in the day, what kids did, what many of us did, was graffiti, and it was relatively harmless.
I don’t know if you guys remember the absolutely beautiful Simon and Garfunkel song about graffiti. The song is only one minute long. I think it is called Poem on the Underground Wall. I believe they are referring to a location in Chicago.
The song can be found on youtube and it is about expression of a young person feeling totally disenfranchised. So many of us did, and the young person in the song was speaking for us all in that flash of a moment. The “poem,” the word written, is not said aloud in the song. It is not necessary.
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I absolutely loved Simon and Garfunkle. One of their songs pushed me towards learning about John Donne and his sonnets and writings. It’s based on Meditation 17 but I forget the name of it now.
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I contacted my MP on the subject of “Dangerous Mental Health Behaviour” (initially through Facebook) and then through redirected Electronic Trail. March 1, 2018 at 8:34 am
Dear (MP – first name removed)
Please find Attached, documentary evidence supporting the (serious) allegations that I have made, below. Please let me know if you get the Attachments:-
1. Admitting Doctor Dr Fadels impression of me “on Presentation” at Galway 17 November 1980
2. Pgs 1, 8, 9 of the 8 November 1986 Adverse Drug Reaction WARNING Request Letter
3. The 24 November 1986 Irish Record Summary (2 pgs) deliberately OMITTING Adverse Drug Reaction Warning
4. The November 18 1986 Dr Donlon Kenny False Reassurance Letter
5. A copy of my January 13, 2012 Statement Of Psychiatric Experience to Galway University
6. A September 15 1986 Employment Reference
7. A September 15 1986 Character Reference
8. A Professional Interpretation of “Akathisia”
My GP Surgery has been promoting Present Day Severe Mental Illness with me on account of the 30 + year old, 1986 Irish Record Summary; with complete confidence (and full knowledge of the issues).
Yours Sincerely, (ME)
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Dear (Me) , I am sorry that you have had difficulty getting in touch. Please email us on name [email protected] for sensitive casework enquiries. Kind regards, – (First Name – removed) Caseworker for First Name removed – MP
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Dear MP – (first name removed)
I have tried to contact you a number of times on these issues Ref C 200 3807 (but I don’t believe my messages have gotten through).
This is a copy of a comment from “Fiachra”.
I’m sorry about the content – but it is the reality.
MAD IN AMERICA
“Challenging the New Hype About Antidepressants”
By
Dr Joanna Moncrieff MD
Fiachra
February 25, 2018 at 7:56 am
Thank you for your Article Dr Moncrieff.
It seems to me that “Mental Health” is wide open to any type of “uselessness”.
I had a my first hospitalization in Ireland in 1980; and a series of further suicidal hospitalizations which ended with me in 1984 stopping strong medication to make full recovery. In 1980 the Admitting doctor at Ireland (Dr Fadel) considered me to be quite Well – but by 1984 I was considered completely “hopeless”.
In 1986 when I came to the UK I wrote to doctors at Ireland asking them to send over Adverse Drug Reaction Warning to doctors in the UK regarding the drugs that had caused the problems. In this letter I described the drug effects of:-
1. Extreme Restlessness,
2. At times Unpredictable behavior
3. The experience being the worst of my life (Akathisia).
4. My fears of drug re exposure
(This 1986 letter was at the very back of my FOI requested Irish notes, which I applied for in 2012)
At the time (1986) Irish doctors in Response sent over an Irish Record Summary to doctors in the UK deliberately OMITTING Adverse Drug Reaction Warning.
My Mental Health History between 1980 and 1984 had been changed around, to hide my main problem and to represent me in the negative. I also received a letter at the time from my MH Doctor in Ireland reassuring me that my request had been looked after.
MY PRESENT DAY PROBLEM IS:
That my GP Surgery, Newton Medical Centre, in Central London seem to think that it is their Job to :-
1. Hide the Dr Shipman Type Medical Behavior from Ireland.
2. Hide the fact that I have not suffered any Mental Illness; Mental Illness Disability, or Mental Illness Cost, in my 30 plus years in the UK.
3. Hide the fact that my Mental Health History is more than 30 years out of date and from a different country (Southern Ireland).
UK MENTAL HEALTH DEATHS
I think doctors behaving like Psychopaths in Mental Health – is what’s causing the high Death Rates in Mental Health.
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Fiachra
February 26, 2018 at 5:44 pm
I’m aware that I have made serious allegations (above):-
I have the necessary documentary evidence to support these allegations.
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https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/02/royal-college-psychiatrists-challenged-potentially-burying-inconvenient-antidepressant-data/
There are two things I wish to say about this:
1. Whether or not you have an adverse reaction coming off the drug with be dependent on a number of things: Did the drug affect your brain in the first place… Did your metabolising enzymes metabolise so quickly the drug just went straight through you like a drip of water going straight down a wide plug hole, so you would not have any adverse reaction because nothing in your brain had changed . In other words did you have an ultra rapid CYP450 phenotype. No one knows this because no one in the UK gets this gene test. How long were you on the drug, the longer the more likely you are to have an adverse reaction, if the drug is not just going through you. When you did come off, did you use a very slow method such as titration ? Which almost no one seems to know about, people do not have any specific official advice on tapering off these drugs, including common foods/herbs/spices which inhibit CYP450, which makes the possibility of adverse reactions far more likely in the first place, let alone coming off. In view of these facts any kind of percentage figure is not going to be correct nor repeatable.
2. If this is the official counterpunch to all this, it is pretty lame to say the least. My guess is that they will easily do a slam dunk reply on you. People are suffering horrifyingly and dying, this is being put down to ‘mental illness’ when most are in fact toxic on these drugs with akathisia. THE way to PROVE this is with pharamcogenetics WHY ARE YOU NOT ASKING FOR THIS TEST ? It was alluded to here on the BBC 18 or so years ago:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/704577.stm
“One day it may be considered unethical not to carry out such tests routinely to avoid exposing individuals to doses of drugs that could be ineffective or even harmful to them.”
Here is an example of great counterpunch by a GREAT English tennis player: Andy Murray…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhfcf9B3tAs
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What is going to be your answer – in the UK – to early ‘intervention’ which wil eventually be coercion and then forced treatment (ritalin) of young people deemed to have ‘ADHD’ and then SSRI’s for depression in young people. That is where this is going:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/03/screen-teenagers-annually-for-depression-say-us-doctors
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/664855/Transforming_children_and_young_people_s_mental_health_provision.pdf
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The lastest role call of death correlated to psychiatric drugs from Brian. Of-course you will not read drug induced Akathisia death in any coroners report:
http://antidepaware.co.uk/inquest-reports/inquests-2018/
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When I was a kid in high school I wanted the following:
Someone older than me that I could look up to and trust.
A few friends that I could share with.
My own room, or adequate privacy and for no one to read my diary.
A dog. A relationship with nature.
To have a future I could look forward to.
To be able to keep my thoughts to myself.
To make my own choices and to learn exciting new things.
And to ride my bicycle just about everywhere.
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Wow, sounds a lot like me!
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When I stopped taking my “medication” (with care) my suicidal hospitalizations stopped and I made full recovery. This can be demonstrated from my records.
More psychiatric drugging means more suicide and more homicide. If you look at the suicide / homicide figures in Ireland in the last 25 years the connection can be seen.
In my own case my drug induced suicidal reactions were covered up by doctors at Galway Ireland in a fairly amateurish manner (and are still being covered up – today).
INTOXICATION (AKATHISIA)
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/psychopharmacology/better-without-antipsychotic-drugs
“…. a group of patients with schizophrenia were each given 20 mg of fluphenazine, the difference between the highest and lowest blood level of the drug was 40-fold…”
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http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/psychopharmacology/better-without-antipsychotic-drugs
“..Some have even argued that the antipsychotic drugs themselves cause many of the psychotic symptoms..”
I would argue this; and a lot of Experts now accept this.
“..So yes, it has been clearly established for many years that “some patients are better off without antipsychotic drugs.” However, in recent years, advocates have interpreted this to suggest that most individuals with schizophrenia are better off without antipsychotic drugs…”
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