One of the largest environmental disasters in history was the BP oil spill in 2010. An oil rig exploded off the Louisiana coast. Eleven workers were killed, and oil flowed for 87 days until the well was capped.
During drilling operations, high-pressure methane gas surged up, ignited, and caused a massive explosion and fire. Investigations pointed to multiple failures, including faulty cementing of the well (involving Halliburton), problems with the blowout preventer, and inadequate safety tests and decisions.
Criminal charges were filed for negligence, obstruction of justice, and related offenses, and BP paid over $69 billion in fines and settlements.
The spill contaminated over 1,000 miles of coastline and vast marine habitats. It severely affected wildlife for years.
Saving pelicans and psychiatric patients
I remember a story about a rescuer cleaning the oil-soaked feathers of a pelican. An onlooker says it makes no difference because there are thousands of pelicans that can’t be saved. The rescuer says:
One of the largest man-made disasters in history is psychiatry. I have estimated, based on placebo-controlled randomised trials and carefully conducted cohort studies with a control group, that psychiatric drugs are the third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer.
Hundreds of millions of patients are soiled in several psychiatric drugs and about half of those who are on antidepressants have difficulty coming off them again because they get intolerable withdrawal symptoms if they try.
Until recently, guidelines for withdrawal were seriously inadequate because they recommended a much too fast taper and halving the dose at each step. The psychiatrists misinterpret the withdrawal symptoms and tell the patients that their disease has returned, which is rarely the case, but the patients come back on full dose of the offending drug.
Nurses, psychologists, social workers, teachers, and other non-prescribing people have often been taught that their task is to push people to get a diagnosis and to comply with the prescribed medication. They should be taught the opposite: To help the citizens avoid psychiatric diagnoses and drugs.
We need to educate people, including the psychiatrists, about the harmful effects of psychiatric drugs, how to stop them, and how to avoid starting them. Public investment in such initiatives would lead to fewer disability pensions, far fewer deaths, much healthier citizens, and fewer serious crimes.
The main focus in psychiatry should be on helping patients who have become dependent on psychiatric drugs to withdraw from them slowly and safely. What we need the most are 24-hour national helplines, associated websites, and drug withdrawal centres that provide free advice and support.
This is why I like the story about the oil-soaked pelican. Most psychiatric patients are soiled in polypharmacy and therefore cannot ”fly” in the meaning of living a full life. We shall do our best to help them, even if we may only rescue one patient at a time.
And we should hold leading psychiatrists and their organisations accountable for the disaster they have created, just like BP was held accountable, particularly because they have lied bluntly about the causes of mental health issues and the benefits and harms of psychiatric drugs, electroshock, and forced treatment.
An email from a grateful patient
I just received an email from a patient in Europe, which enforced my hope that we can make a difference when we try to help patients avoid perishing in psychiatry.
He first wrote to me in March that he had read my book, Deadly Psychiatry and Organised Denial. He said it is one of the few books that tells some important truths about modern psychiatry.
The only significant difficulty in his life had been living in a highly dysfunctional family environment. He did not believe he had any psychiatric illness but for about 30 years, he had been prescribed various psychiatric medications, currently including lithium and clozapine, two highly toxic drugs. He had tried to reduce the medication several times, but with poor results. When he halved the lithium dose, he experienced a severe panic attack and had to return to the previous dosage.
He noted that he had been unable to find any doctor who was willing to provide support for gradual reduction and discontinuation of his psychiatric medication and that there were no clear national guidelines to help patients do this safely. He had sent complaints to the local mental health centre, the national guarantor for patients’ rights, and the civil ombudsman.
He asked if I could suggest someone who might help him safely manage a reduction of these medications, as he was completely alone in dealing with this situation.
I receive many such emails and replied briefly: “Oh no, 30 years. That is serious malpractice. Expert help for withdrawal: there is a list of people who can help you, no matter where you live. See also my freely available books and interviews.”
Three months later, he told me he had received invaluable help from psychiatrist Maria Kelly, one of the contacts I recommended, and also from Eve Keighley.
I have sometimes wondered if it is worth fighting against drug-focused psychiatry, which is heavily supported by a superpower, the pharmaceutical industry. Although biological psychiatry has been a total disaster, leading psychiatrists have succeeded to ignore all evidence-based pleas about fundamental changes, even when coming from the WHO and the United Nations.
But I get many emails from grateful patients, their relatives, and my colleagues saying that those of us who fight have saved lives with our books and articles and the help we provide on the Mad in America website and via the Critical Psychiatry Network and other networks and websites, e.g. the Psychotropic Deprescribing Council, the Inner Compass Initiative, the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal, and Missd.
So, yes, we shall continue. Maybe one day we shall even overcome.
1) I do not necessarily agree that Psychiatry was “man made.” However, if we can take responsibility for it, that would be a good thing.
2) I do not believe that the main focus of Psychiatry should be on helping patients get off their drugs. Perhaps this should be the main focus of all those “psychiatrists” who spent their careers prescribing drugs instead of helping people. I think they should all be summarily de-certified and given the choice of community service or the rest of their lifetime in a penal colony. But the focus of Psychiatry should be the healing of the psyche. That is it’s true mandate and its true meaning. There might even be one of two psychiatrists who have a clue how to do this.
3) Peter, however, may have the most realistic approach we can expect to achieve on Earth. Today, the true psyche healers are NOT psychiatrists, and might well resist ever taking up that label, as tarnished as it has become.
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Indeed, the “healing of the psyche” as opposed to healing the “collective psyche” by eliminating or whatever the “deadbeats” or “offbeats”. With Regard to P “Gotcha’s” assertion that something or other is the 3rd leading cause of death, a refined way is to state that pharmaceuticals and especially psychiatric drugs are the primary catalyst to a reduction in the quality of life (if we exclude dietary and other preferences or choices), quality of life being totally within the realm of personal taste. Being lied to about the benefits vs whatever of psychiatric drugs, now that falls into a whole other area of discussion. Which I believe is the one Larry is referring to (Larry also being the subject of a Zappa song, look it up).
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He said they were the third leading cause of death.
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My impression is that psychiatry has primarily favoured the prescription of medication and the management of symptoms, while devoting insufficient attention to understanding the underlying causes of suffering and to treating them.
I believe that the primary objective of any medical discipline should be not only the control of symptoms but also, whenever possible, the identification and resolution of the underlying causes of distress. If a treatment is limited to reducing or alleviating symptoms without addressing their origin, there is a risk that the individual will remain trapped in their condition, without a genuine path to recovery.
The history of psychiatry also includes highly controversial chapters, such as the era of psychiatric institutions, during which serious abuses and violations of human dignity took place. The reforms introduced by Franco Basaglia represented a fundamental turning point, placing the rights of the individual at the centre and overcoming the asylum-based model.
While acknowledging the progress that has been made in terms of rights and care, I believe that contemporary psychiatry still often relies excessively on medication as its predominant response to psychological suffering. In my view, long-term pharmacological treatment, when it is not strictly necessary and is not accompanied by a genuine therapeutic and human approach, may contribute to keeping a person in a state of dependence on treatment, hindering the recovery of their autonomy and, in some cases, worsening or prolonging the problem instead of resolving it.
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Well, yes. That’s what this website is all about.
Though my understanding of the original “asylums” is that they were relatively humane, they certainly did not stay that way as the planet became industrialized.
The original meaning of the word is: “A place offering protection and safety; a shelter.”
And while the emphasis here is on exposing the out-ethics and “unscientific” approaches used in “modern” Psychiatry, this tends to work at cross-purposes to our desire to find better answers. This is because those answers, having often been developed outside the academic realm, are also considered “unscientific.” It is a paradox we must contend with if we wish to understand this subject better.
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David, you’re absolutely right in saying that the primary objective of any medical discipline should be to address the underlying cause of distress rather than to control symptoms.
The crux of the matter is that psychiatry is not a genuine medical discipline but a hodgepodge of hypotheses that are culture-bound and not verifiable by recognized scientific experimentation and testing.
It’s therefore illogical and fruitless to attempt reforming a body of myths, outright falsehoods, misleading metaphors, and prejudices that lack all objective validity.
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Objective validity. Now that is a tall order. Have a Guiness instead. Mr Spock also had his problems.
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I was fortunate to learn the truth about psychiatry in 1993 after listening to an interview on the radio broadcast from the University of Washington, Seattle. Dr. Peter Breggin was talking and answering questions regarding his new book “Toxic Psychiatry”. It was after reading it I was able to discover a new path of clarity and purpose in my life. LOVE. PEACE. God Bless
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Braggin Breggin again. I thought he was gone for good. Retired or something. But then again, nobody enjoys “friggin in the riggin” much.
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Educators, teachers, school counsellors, school psychologists should be banned from labelling and or suggesting diagnoses. Unfortunately this trend is on the rise and is becoming the norm.
“Nurses, psychologists, social workers, teachers, and other non-prescribing people have often been taught that their task is to push people to get a diagnosis and to comply with the prescribed medication.”
“They should be taught the opposite: To help the citizens avoid psychiatric diagnoses and drugs.”
They, educators, teachers, should be taught that there is personal counseling available for them.
This kicking downwards business has to stop.
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Without a doubt, psychiatry is a failed “science” that has reaped countless victims. Far greater public awareness is needed to expose the truth about psychiatric drugs, diagnoses, prescriptions, and the appalling ordeals patients are forced to endure above all through medication and the harm these drugs can cause.
Today, psychiatry has simply reinvented itself. It now wears a renewed, angelic mask. But the electroshock once administered with electrodes and electric current is now inflicted through psychiatric drugs.
I agree with all of you: unfortunately, the medical approach remains centred on diagnosis and the prescription of medication. Human beings are far too complex to be reduced to labels or diagnoses. This system is rotten at its core.
The only way I believe we can truly challenge it is by making this information accessible worldwide and by bringing change from within the system itself. I am convinced that, sooner or later, this inhumane system will have to surrender.
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It might “shock” a few readers to realize that electroshock is still very much in use. They sedate the patient so as to fool themselves into believing they are doing no harm.
It is not clear to me that psychopathy (which is psychiatry in its current form) will ever give up. It must be identified, pushed out of the way and kept restrained indefinitely. Sanity and a better life includes the work required to defend it.
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It is true that electroshock therapy is still used in several countries, but today its use is far more limited than it was in the past.
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I wish. But the psychs don’t want to give us the statistics on their treatments, so who knows?
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Clandestine shocks, it may be a real thing. How would anyone know for sure.
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Sociopathy (acquired taste) is probably more correct. But one never knows for sure.
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‘The situation has become appalling’: fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point
Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals
in an international scandal that is worsening every year, scientists have warned. Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities.
Last year the annual number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for the first time. Most analysts believe the figure is only the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud.
“The situation has become appalling,” said Professor Dorothy Bishop of
Oxford University. “The level of publishing of fraudulent papers is creating serious problems for science. In many fields it is becoming difficult to build up a cumulative approach to a subject, because we lack a solid foundation of
trustworthy findings. And it’s getting worse and worse.”
The startling rise in the publication of sham science paper
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Oxfam or Oxford? Sometimes its hard to tell.
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