If We Knew What We Know Now
I never questioned the adults around me or wondered if the medications were necessary. Of course they were necessary. A doctor said so.
“Get Over It”? A Response to Empower Parents to Repair Instead of Victim Blame
An epidemic of children blaming their parents in therapy? In my 20 years as a psychologist, I've seen the opposite.
Monarch eTNS Inspires “Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children!” (SPAC!)
The FDA approval of the Monarch eTNS device is the latest form of psychiatric-inspired child abuse. If not stopped, it will afflict millions of children in unimaginably damaging ways. It has inspired us to form Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children (SPAC!) a new international advocacy organization.
Peter Breggin and Michael Cornwall – Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children
An interview with Drs. Peter Breggin and Michael Cornwall who discuss their new initiative, Stop the Psychiatric Abuse of Children (SPAC!). SPAC! was formed in response to the introduction of the Monarch eTNS, an electrical stimulation device worn on a child’s forehead at night that was fast-tracked by FDA with little testing.
Memoirs of a Dissident Psychiatrist
For years I had hoped that psychiatry would free itself from the psychoanalytic doctrine, and when my wish finally came true, my profession went from the frying pan to the fire. My main goal, currently, is to convince professionals as well as the public that most child psychiatric problems can be handled effectively without medication.
Challenging Western-Centric Child Psychology: An Interview with Nandita Chaudhary
Ayurdhi Dhar interviews Nandita Chaudhary about children’s lives across cultures, the problems with global aid agencies and their interventions, psychology’s bias in the study of children, the limits of attachment theory and more.
What I Wish I Had Known Before I Stopped Taking Antidepressants, and Before I...
From the Washington Examiner: I learned the hard way that doctors can be remarkably casual about things patients can’t afford to be when it comes to putting people on, and taking them off, antidepressants.
Lexapro for Children: Drug With No Meaningful Benefit and Increased Suicidality Gets FDA Approval
Response and remission rates were the same in the drug versus placebo groups, and Lexapro increased suicidality sixfold.
Lithium: A Survivor’s Guide for Parents
When I was a young adult, I was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and placed on lithium. I am 61 years old now, living on the edge of end-stage kidney disease. If I could undo everything, by all means, I would not have taken this drug. It is not safe for anyone at any age.
Invisible Trauma: The Children Left Behind When Parents Are Hospitalized
It would take decades before I recognized the trauma caused by repeatedly being separated from my mom when she was hospitalized. I grieved almost exactly the way children did who had lost a parent to death. Yet it was grief without closure because my mom was not dead, just... gone.
Why My Daughter Died and I Lived
To be a parent of a suicidal child is to be in a terrible position, where you hold in your hands the life most valuable to you and know that any slip of your hands may end that life. In the 1970s, my suicidality was treated nonmedically and I lived. In the 2000s, my daughter Martha’s suicidality was treated medically and she died.
Suicides Are Increasing – And So Are Antidepressant Prescriptions
Disturbingly, our study and others reveal that the black box warning is now ignored in many countries, since antidepressant prescriptions for children are on the rise again. Despite increasing certainty that antidepressants are ineffective and likely cause suicidal behavior in young people, psychiatry continues to claim that they reduce suicide risk.
Federal Judge Finds Texas Use of Psychotropic Drugs on Foster Children ‘Appalling’
From KERA News: "These children are being repeatedly raped in [DFPS's] care," said Judge Janis Jack. "They’re being drugged in your care if they complain. If their behavior is not up to snuff, they’re getting psychotropic drugs. And that is not safe."
Beyond Psychiatry: A Trauma-Centric View of Mental Health
Internal family systems therapy is a non-pathologizing method of working toward healing from trauma, a journey of returning to wholeness by reconnecting with ourselves.
My Son and the “Mental Health” System
As a father whose 27-year-old son is trapped in the mental health system, I am painfully aware that I have been unable to protect him. At age 19, my son naively told his mother and his doctor that he was hearing voices, marking the beginning of a hellish nightmare which he is still unavoidably immersed in. I would like to explain my perspective on why this is the case.
“Dad, You Were Right”: I Got Better When I Stopped Treatment
Through all the years that I was a mental patient, my parents were excellent advocates who constantly questioned what the docs were doing, even though my own faith in psychiatry was unwavering.... Amazingly, what cured me was not some type of “treatment,” but getting away from drugs and therapy.
‘We Have a Neck’: Psychiatrist James Greenblatt on The Links Between Body and Brain
James Greenblatt is an innovator and longtime authority in the fields of integrative medicine and functional psychiatry, focusing on nutrition and other natural modes...
The Scientism of Childhood and Adolescent Depression
When I was training to be a child psychiatrist in the mid-1990s, childhood depression was considered to be rare, related to adversity, and generally unresponsive to pharmaceutical treatment. Since then much has changed. The psychiatrization of the pain and struggles involved in growing up has caused considerably more harm to young people than good. I believe the science is on my side in this conclusion.
Reality According to Whom? Listening to My Wife—and The Problems with ‘Psychosis’
Sam Ruck shares an excerpt from his book "Healing Companions," which describes his life with, and love for, his wife and her “alters.”
ADHD: The Money Trail
Doctors, drug companies, and the news media have profited from skyrocketing rates of diagnosis and drugging for ADHD, and the law has created a perverse set of incentives for parents and children which favor the ADHD label.
One Pill To Disrupt: Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal and the Marital Relationship
The suicidality that accompanies akathisia is the natural human impulse to escape being tortured. To save my wife, the woman I love, I was forced to argue for her continued torture.
Conservatorship: The Racket That Ruined My Father’s Last Years
I have watched as my father’s pursuit of happiness was swept away by the court system in his senior years.
Suicidal Thoughts, Psychiatric Diagnosis, and What Really Helps: Part One
This piece is the first of a two-part essay about suicide, diagnosis, what doesn't help, and what does help. This part is about suicide, diagnosis, and some of what fails to help.
So Long, Pill Mill: A Letter to My Former Patients and Their Families
I love being a psych nurse practitioner, and I never want to feel that my only role is pushing pills. The private practice I started is my effort to move away from this dysfunctional system.
Kick Big Pharma Out of the Classroom
School-based strategies such as the “talk to your doctor” campaign about any childhood problem have been extremely effective in helping the pharmaceutical industry to marginalize traditional child-rearing practices and replace them with advice from mental health “experts” and the use of dangerous drugs. These campaigns are reminiscent of now-illegal vintage tobacco ads in which doctors endorsed cigarette smoking.
