Psychiatric Patient Won a Forced Treatment Case Against the Norwegian State

It is very difficult to win lawsuits about psychiatry, even when gross malpractice is involved and the psychiatrists have violated basic human rights, national laws and international conventions about forced treatment.

The legal protection psychiatric patients have can best be described as a sham. I studied 30 consecutive cases in Denmark where patients had appealed forced treatment orders and found that the law had been violated in every single case.¹ All patients were forced to take antipsychotics, even though less dangerous alternatives could have been used, e.g., benzodiazepines.² The psychiatrists had no respect for the patients’ experiences and views and the harms of prior medication played no role in their decision-making, not even when they were serious.

I did a similar study of 30 consecutive petitions from Anchorage, Alaska, and found the same.³ In violation of previous Supreme Court rulings, the patients’ experiences, fears, and wishes were ignored in 26 cases, even when the patients were afraid that the pills might kill them or when they had experienced serious harms such as tardive dyskinesia. Several psychiatrists obtained court orders for administering drugs and dosages that were dangerous.

Psychiatrists operate a kangaroo court, where they are both investigators and judges, and they lie routinely about the evidence, which I experienced myself when I read the 60 consecutive cases and when I was an expert witness in court in Anchorage and in Oslo.⁴

The proceedings in the Oslo district court

I testified in a lawsuit against the Norwegian State in November 2024 in the Oslo district court on behalf of the plaintiff, Inger-Mari Eidsvik, and her lawyers.⁴ We all worked pro bono because we considered the case very important.

Like in most other countries, Norwegian law stipulates that forced drugging can only be used when, with high probability, it can lead to a cure or substantial improvement in the patient’s condition, or if the patient avoids a substantial worsening of the disease. Moreover, the beneficial effect must clearly outweigh the harms.

Former Supreme Court Attorney Ketil Lund and I explained in a long article in 2016 why forced medication with antipsychotics cannot be justified because their effect is poor while they have considerable harms,⁵ and in 2019, the Ombudsman concluded about a concrete case that it violated the Psychiatry Act.⁶ Notably, the Ombudsman mentioned our argument that it is misleading to assert that antipsychotics can prevent relapse in a quarter of the patients, because what they experience when they no longer receive the drug is very often withdrawal symptoms and not relapse.

However, Norwegian psychiatrists paid no attention to the Ombudsman’s ruling and continued their harmful practices, and the Norwegian State didn’t care either.

Lund told me that the lawyers for Eidsvik had been fighting for over three years for the right to sue the state for multiple violations of the European human rights conventions, the UN conventions, and the Norwegian Constitution. After having lost in two inferior courts, they won at the Supreme Court and were allowed to go ahead with the first case ever to challenge coercive treatment in psychiatry.

I mentioned in my verbal testimony in court that the effect of antipsychotics on psychosis is considerably smaller than the least clinically relevant effect, as reported by the psychiatrists themselves.⁷ This means that the drugs don’t work because a difference to placebo is only a difference if it makes a difference for the patients.

This research is very well known. Therefore, the argument for using forced treatment – that it is for the patients’ own good and leads to substantial improvement with high probability – falls apart.

However, professor of psychiatry Erik Johnsen, an expert witness for the State who came after me, provided seriously misleading testimony. He claimed that the effect of antipsychotics is better when used as forced treatment, which is extremely unlikely to be true and is not supported by any evidence. He also said that the worse the symptoms are, the better the effect, which is also wrong. It is a mathematical artefact, based on correlations that are inherently false, and on trials that are not adequately blinded.⁸

Johnsen said that 80% of patients who receive an antipsychotic for the first time have at least a 20% effect, while around 50% have at least a 50% effect.⁹ He pointed to documentation from over 400 individual studies of acute treatment of psychosis.

This was mendacious. And as it contrasted with my testimony, the judge asked what the 20% meant. However, even though she did not get a meaningful reply, she did not offer me an opportunity to discuss the issues.

Back in Denmark, I found out that Johnsen’s claim was invalid. It comes from the most horribly flawed meta-analysis I have ever seen.¹⁰ It analysed single treatment arms from randomised trials, all of which had at least two treatment arms. Thus, the measured improvement includes the spontaneous remission that will occur even without treatment, a method strongly recommended against because it is fatally flawed.

There were numerous other issues with this research.⁴ Stefan Leucht, the senior author, had received honoraria from 15 drug companies during the last 3 years. Only 5 of the 17 included studies reported 20% or 50% reductions from baseline, and the authors imputed the missing values, which is problematic. They also cited an old study for effects that are nowhere to be found in the cited article,¹¹ and I have explained several times since 2015 why the study they cite is totally untrustworthy.^12,13

The authors cited another meta-analysis, by Leucht and colleagues, which was also of very poor quality.¹⁴ All the included 167 placebo-controlled trials were seriously flawed because the patients were already receiving an antipsychotic before they were randomised. Thus, patients randomised to placebo were exposed to a cold turkey, which is very harmful and may elicit a withdrawal psychosis, which is not a true psychosis, as it would not have happened without the cold turkey.

Despite this flaw, the authors only found minor effects. They reported that the mean effect was only 9.7 on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) for schizophrenia that is commonly used in such trials, which is considerably smaller than the least clinically relevant effect, which Leucht himself has determined is 15.⁷ Thus, they should have concluded that the drugs didn’t work.

Both meta-analyses can best be described as garbage in, garbage out exercises. Amazingly, the latter review filled 16 pages, which is a very long article, in one of the flagship journals of psychiatry, the American Journal of Psychiatry.¹⁴

The first verdict

As I cannot find the verdict on the Internet, I have uploaded it on my website.¹⁵ Eidsvik did not win the lawsuit, which I consider appalling because:

1) The judge, Torild Margrethe Brende, referred to the article where Ketil Lund and I had explained why forced treatment with antipsychotics cannot be justified;⁵

2) I demonstrated to the court that the science shows that forced treatment with antipsychotics cannot be justified according to Norwegian law;

3) The judge mentioned that only 10-20% will benefit from treatment, which is far below “great certainty” which must be over 50% (moreover, the 10-20% is much exaggerated);

4) The judged dismissed my expert role in a most deplorable fashion on page 24 in the verdict:¹⁵ The plaintiff’s witnesses are very critical of, or opposed to, forced medication; their testimony was coloured by this; and they spoke on a general basis.

My criticism is based on very solid science and my opposition to forced medication is based on this science and is irrelevant for the case. We always need to speak on a general basis, which means based on the science and not on what a psychiatrist thinks or feels about the drugs and whether they worked or not for a concrete patient, which is usually wishful thinking and in contrast to what the patients experience.^1,3

I find it abhorrent that a judge can dismiss expert witnesses for the plaintiff this way. When I shared my frustrations with one of Eidvik’s lawyers, her reply was: This is politics. Norwegian courts are heavily brainwashed by psychiatry, unfortunately. They have so many psychiatrists working as expert witnesses in so many cases, and the judges normally follow the general political atmosphere. Currently, the government suggests making it even easier to use forced treatment.

It is usually only in dictatorship states that the judges rule against the law according to what those in power wants. But for psychiatric patients, the law is window dressing all over the world. Our most vulnerable citizens are abused and deprived from the protection of the law, and they are subjected to what many of them describe as state sanctioned torture.

The second verdict

Eidvik’s lawyers were prepared to go the whole way, to the Supreme Court and to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. But they won already at the next step.

On 30 January 2026, the Court of Appeal, which corresponds to the Superior Court in other countries, concluded that Inger-Mari Eidsvik’s human rights were violated when she was subjected to forced treatment with antipsychotics and in a case of solitary confinement.^16,17

The government’s lawyers had argued that her treatment had been in accordance with human rights because the Norwegian Mental Health Protection Act was not in conflict with these. Thus, the state believed that an examination of her rights according to the European Convention on Human Rights and the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights was not necessary.

Eidsvik’s lawyers had argued that according to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Norway has ratified, forced medication is illegal, and Norway is therefore obliged to have a practice in line with this.

The court ruled that Eidsvik’s rights were violated on several occasions in connection with the forced medication while she was subjected to compulsory mental health care, under Articles 3 (Prohibition of torture), 14 (Prohibition of discrimination), and 8 (Right to respect for private and family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights and Articles 7 and 17 of the UN Convention on Civil and Political Rights.¹⁷

One of Eikvik’s lawyers told me that the Norwegian courts are not in a position to review the science. However, the courts, also the Norwegian one, always emphasise what the psychiatrists and their guidelines say, which is based on science even though it is poor science that is in contrast with the most reliable science we have. Thus, if properly explained, a 10-year-old would be able to conclude that the emperor has no clothes. Judges should also be able to make that judgment.

Norwegian psychiatry is at a catastrophically low level

Eikvik’s victory was remarkable because the 54-page verdict mentions testimony by Erik Johnsen and various guidelines for treatment of psychosis that are full of erroneous claims about what antipsychotics can accomplish.¹⁷

Psychiatrists don’t only lie in court; they lie everywhere all the time, also to their patients, the politicians, and the media.^12,13,18-21 Moreover, they lie profusely to psychiatry students whom they indoctrinate, as if psychiatry was a religious sect. This can be seen in their textbooks that contain a litany of misleading and erroneous statements about the causes of mental health disorders, if they are genetic, if they can be detected in a brain scan, if they are caused by a chemical imbalance, if psychiatric diagnoses are reliable, and what the benefits and harms are of psychiatric drugs and electroshocks.²¹

If psychiatrists were honest, their specialty could not survive,¹⁸ and the State’s expert, professor Erik Johnsen, is no exception. Together with another professor of psychiatry, Rune Andreas Kroken, he replied in 2017 to an article, Inger-Mari Eidsvik had written.²² Eidsvik had noted – correctly^{12,19,20,23,24} – that newer research has shown that the patients have a better chance of living a good and worthy life if they are not medicated. She also described the many permanent harms in other patients she saw while incarcerated and noted that many of them died young.

The reply by Kroken and Johnsen was seriously misleading,²⁵ which I demonstrated.²⁶ Already in the subheading, they claimed that “It is of course not true that psychiatric treatment takes lives. On the contrary, people with serious psychiatric disorders who receive the right antipsychotic treatment, live longer than if they are not treated with antipsychotics.”²⁵

I replied²⁶ that medication is one of the most important reasons why patients with schizophrenia live around 20 years shorter than others, and that psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death.²⁴

Two years earlier, in 2015, Kroken and Johnsen had also misrepresented seriously what psychiatric drugs do to people, which I also commented on.²⁷

I have also debated with Professor Jan Ivar Røssberg who in 2016 claimed in Aftenposten, a major Norwegian newspaper, that drug-free treatment of psychosis lacked any scientific support. I replied²⁸ that he did not know about Open Dialogue,^12,19-21 or that randomised trials had shown an effect of psychotherapy in schizophrenia²⁹ and that patients do better in the long term the less antipsychotics they take. In a Dutch randomised trial, patients who had their dose decreased or discontinued fared much better than those who continued taking drugs: 40% versus 18% (P = 0.02) had recovered from their first episode of psychosis after seven years of follow-up.³⁰

The chair of the Norwegian Psychiatric Association, professor Ulrik Fredrik Malt, held views that were even more extreme than those of Kroken and Johnsen. In 2019, he claimed in Aftenposten that the risk of dying was six time higher if patients with schizophrenia were not treated with antipsychotics and that there were other health risks if the patients were not treated.³¹

I explained on Aftenposten’s website why his claims were wrong. Randomised trials have shown that antipsychotics double mortality,¹² which is mentioned in FDA’s package inserts, and untreated psychosis does not lead to brain damage; antipsychotics cause serious and irreversible brain damage, which can be seen on brain scans.²⁰

How do we change a harmful system?

That psychiatry is a public health disaster cannot be doubted.³³ Indeed to such an extent that I called my most recent book, “Is psychiatry a crime against humanity?”²⁰ In the UK, mental health disability has almost trebled in recent decades, and the gap in life expectancy between people with severe mental health issues and the general population has doubled.³⁴ And in all countries where this relationship has been examined, increased usage of psychiatric drugs has been accompanied by an increase in disability pensions for mental health issues.¹⁹

However, no matter how strong the science and the logical arguments are, and how egregious the malpractice, the psychiatrists always get away with being dishonest in court, in their guidelines and in scientific articles, and the plaintiffs therefore virtually always lose.

I have prepared documents for lawyers in 13 psychiatric malpractice cases in North America, Europe and Australia and have testified in several court rooms. My experiences had been uniformly disappointing until the current case.

I have written about some of these cases, e.g. a double homicide attempt likely caused by methylphenidate in Denmark,²⁰ a double homicide case definitely caused by paroxetine in Holland,²⁰ forced retention and drugging with olanzapine and other drugs in Alaska,²⁰ malpractice in Canada,³⁵ malpractice in Australia where the patient’s psychiatric “career” lasted 33 years before he finally succeeded to come off the last drug, but he still suffers from long-lasting withdrawal effects,²⁰ and a young woman killed by psychiatry in Sweden after being exposed to horrific malpractice.³⁶

The court cases in Holland and Canada were particularly heartbreaking. The Dutch patient developed a withdrawal psychosis on paroxetine, killed her two children and tried to take her own life, too. The Canadian patient took her own life when the Superior Court dismissed her case. She felt profoundly betrayed, first by the medical system and subsequently by the justice system.

In Alaska, lawyer James B. Gottstein won two Alaska Supreme Court cases ruling Alaska’s forced drugging regime unconstitutional. I have interviewed Jim, who has been incarcerated himself after a psychosis caused by stress and too little sleep.³⁷ He told me that the Supreme Court had ruled that the statute could only be constitutional if construed to mean that the drugs are in the person’s best interests and there’s no less intrusive alternative, which there always is. Antipsychotics are not needed at all because we can use benzodiazepines to calm people down,² and as they have no antipsychotic properties and are highly toxic,^12,19 they should never be used long term.

The fundamental problem is that decisions in court or by an Ombudsman are being ignored. The harmful practices just continue. As the massive use of psychiatric diagnoses and drugs so clearly make everything worse, the World Health Organisation and the United Nations have recently called for systematic mental health reform emphasising psychosocial interventions.³⁴

As such a radical reform is extremely unlikely to come from the profession itself,^18-21,23,33 lawsuits with stiff penalties for breaking the law and international conventions about forced treatment seem to be the only way to obtain much-needed changes.

We also need to be able to discuss the science in court rooms. The current practice where judges overwhelmingly base their verdicts on what psychiatrist expert witnesses tell them must stop. It is almost like asking a bank robber if he or his friends has robbed a bank and then believing what he says despite there being eyewitnesses that tell a different story who the judge dismisses as being biased against bank robberies.

 

References

1 Gøtzsche PC, Sørensen A. Systematic violations of patients’ rights and safety: Forced medication of a cohort of 30 patients. Ind J Med Ethics 2020;Oct-Dec;5(4) NS:312-8.

2 Dold M, Li C, Tardy M, Khorsand V, Gillies D, Leucht S. Benzodiazepines for schizophrenia. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2012;11:CD006391.

3 Tasch G, Gøtzsche PC. Systematic violations of patients’ rights and safety: forced medication of a cohort of 30 patients in Alaska. Psychosis 2023;15:145-54.

4 Gøtzsche PC. Seriously misleading testimony by psychiatry professor in Oslo district court about the effect of antipsychotics. Mad in America 2024;Dec 4.

5 Gøtzsche PC, Lund K. Tvangsmedisinering må forbys. Kritisk Juss 2016;2:118-57.

6 Gøtzsche PC. Forced drugging with antipsychotics is against the law: decision in Norway. Mad in America 2019;May 4.

7 Leucht S, Kane JM, Etschel E, et al. Linking the PANSS, BPRS, and CGI: clinical implications. Neuropsychopharmacology 2006;31:2318-25; Khin NA, Chen YF, Yang Y, et al. Exploratory analyses of efficacy data from schizophrenia trials in support of new drug applications submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration. J Clin Psychiatry 2012;73:856-64.

8 Gøtzsche PC. Do antidepressants work against severe depression? No, it is an illusion that comes from two mathematical artefacts. Substack 2026;Jan 24.

9 Rettssak mot staten for tvangsbruk. NRK 2024;Nov 22.

10 Zhu Y, Li C, Huhn M, et al. How well do patients with a first episode of schizophrenia respond to antipsychotics: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol 2017;27:835-44.

11 Cole JO. Phenothiazine treatment in acute schizophrenia; effectiveness: the National Institute of Mental Health Psychopharmacology Service Center Collaborative Study Group. Arch Gen Psychiatry 1964;10:246-61.

12 Gøtzsche PC. Deadly psychiatry and organised denial. Copenhagen: People’s Press; 2015, page 162.

13 Gøtzsche PC. Mental health survival kit and withdrawal from psychiatric drugs. Ann Arbor: L H Press; 2022, page 34.

14 Leucht S, Leucht C, Huhn M, et al. Sixty years of placebo-controlled antipsychotic drug trials in acute schizophrenia: systematic review, Bayesian meta-analysis, and meta-regression of efficacy predictors. Am J Psychiatry 2017;174:927-42.

15 Dom 21-123219TVI-TOSL/03. Oslo tingrett 2025;Jan 21.

16 Rekstad HM. Lagmannsretten fattet en historisk dom i saken Eidsvik mot staten. Mad in Norway 2026;Feb 19.

17 Borgarting lagmannsrett – Dom: LB-2025-42941. 2026;Jan 30.

18 Gøtzsche PC. The Only Medical Specialty That Survives on Lies. Brownstone Journal 2025;Sept 8.

19 Whitaker R. Anatomy of an epidemic. New York: Broadway Paperbacks; 2015; Whitaker R. Den psykiatriske epidemi. Copenhagen: Psykovision; 2013.

20 Gøtzsche PC. Is psychiatry a crime against humanity? Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2024 (freely available).

21 Gøtzsche PC. Critical psychiatry textbook. Copenhagen: Institute for Scientific Freedom; 2022 (freely available).

22 Eidsvik I-M. Konsekvenser av det biomedisinske hegemoniet i psykiatrien. Dagens Medisin 2017;Jan 16.

23 Gøtzsche PC. Royal College of Psychiatrists lied about psychiatric diagnoses and drugs on BBC. Substack 2026;March 2.

24 Gøtzsche PC. Prescription drugs are the leading cause of death. And psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death. Brownstone Journal 2024;April 16.

25 Kroken RA, Johnsen E. Hva er forsvarlig? 2017;Feb 12.

26 Gøtzsche PC. Psykofarmaka dreper mange. 2017;March 10.

27 Gøtzsche PC. Mer skade enn gagn. Klassekampen 2015;March 4.

28 Gøtzsche PC. Medisinfrie alternativer virker på psykose. Aftenposten 2016;June 27.

29 Morrison AP, Turkington D, Pyle M, et al. Cognitive therapy for people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders not taking antipsychotic drugs: a single-blind randomised controlled trial. Lancet 2014;383:1395-403.

30 Wunderink L, Nieboer RM, Wiersma D, et al. Recovery in remitted first-episode psychosis at 7 years of follow-up of an early dose reduction/discontinuation or maintenance treatment strategy: long-term follow-up of a 2-year randomized clinical trial. JAMA Psychiatry 2013;70:913-20.

31 Malt UF. Helsedirektoratet har rett om tvangsmedisinering. Aftenposten 2019;Juni 20.

32 Gøtzsche PC. Svar til Malt: Ubehandlet psykose øker risiko for helseskade, Aftenposten 2019;June 20.

33 Gøtzsche PC. External Article Review of: Drug development in psychiatry: 50 years of failure and how to resuscitate it. J Acad Publ Health 2025;Oct 3.

34 Shifting the balance towards social interventions: a call for an overhaul of the mental health system. Beyond Pills All-Party Parliamentary Group 2024;May.

35 Gøtzsche PC. Why Lawsuits about Psychiatric Malpractice Are Difficult to Win. Brownstone Journal 2025;Nov 6.

36 Gøtzsche PC. Psychiatry killed Tuva Andersson whose problem was anxiety. Mad in America 2023;July 8.

37 Being abused by psychiatry, lies in court, and winning lawsuits to prevent forced drugging. Interview with Jim Gottstein. Broken Medical Science 2024;Sept 19.