One thing that you did not mention (and I think it is true) is that many drugs actually selectively destroy the body’s bacterial balance and also selectively USE nutrient elements for their metabolism – thus aggravating deficiencies and imbalances.
Even with supplementation, it may be difficult to counter the effects of continual drug administration of ANY kind. Older allopathic doctors seemed to have been aware of this. Newer ones are so deep in the ‘sell’, I think they have lost their original caution.
Thanks, Robert, for keeping us abreast of the news.
I think this is a ‘Crack in the Door’ simply because it is a government mandate issued from outside the medical community. The whole mental health boondoggle is an incredibly well funded and electorally popiular industry.
And it’s an industry that would be pretty easy to stop since the government is supporting this whole thing really. Just cease funding.
As a side note, my family, who was so anxious to get me into ‘care’ after my husband died (and off their worry list), would never have paid for the ‘treatment’ themselves. If people saw themselves as actually PAYING, there’d be a drastic reduction in the whole show.
The ‘real’ medical establishment buries its errors.
Thanks Bonnie and Julia. Some people stand up for truth. Others have standing up for truth thrust upon them.
Thanks for being both.
I have also returned Hell to a place in my religious belief as a result of my experiences with psychiatry.
Hi Bonnie,
Well, I hope that curse goes viral.
Good luck with your book also. It sounds daunting, but I will read it.
Thanks David.
Obviously modern medicine is a drug selling business (and a business for selling medical machines and medical education). Not to mention a huge employer. This is a dangerous combo we face, especially since most of us believe that our health is not primarily our own responsiblity and that science wants to save us.
I respect the right of Americans to choose a leader according to the system in place. My mother came from a Republican family – a Christian family that actually worked against slavery. But also from a Redneck family that supported the South.
The Democrats have had a great run on President Kennedy though his death probably also had its roots with him. I think it’s over. Perhaps it’s time to get out of fantasy land.
I wonder about a world where people believe more in a mystical chemical imbalance than in the biological realities of the sexual. Wake up. There are realities here.
And I think it is worth considering that anyone who attempts to really achieve anything is going to be labelled insane. Not to mention an increasingly unpopular figure – but Jesus was labelled insane by his family (as well as all the worthies mentioned by Robert Pfaff). I can’t believe anyone was mad enough to stand up to an absolutely bought off, agenda driven press and a corrupt political establishment. Why is it always Hitler and not Joan of Arc that Trump gets compared to? Can’t imagine a man in armour? Or a pure heart in Winston Churchill? It’s a hero who fights. Bernie didn’t. And neither did Michael Moore.
I am tired of the mainstream lying going on. Just my opinion. Just my position.
When you look at the authors of this new ‘Bible’, it’s easy to see why hypocrisy and greed aren’t ‘diagnosed’ in it as they were in the old one.
Hi Steve,
I think you make your case very clearly. I wish you luck with your distribution.
The link worked for me on Safari.
Is this the whole article? There doesn’t seem to be a link out.
Anyway, in reference to a prior recent comment on the FDA, I was amazed to hear that anyone would have serious doubts about the new appointment for head of the agency. Republican or Democrat, he or she could hardly be worse than the present ‘team’.
I DO think we were better off in a world before this agency. People still looked for advice before taking a drug. There were still doctors. There just wasn’t a money-seeking totalitarian partnership of business interests blocking and obfuscating the facts necessary for free choice.
Thanks Phillip. You wiped the floor with them with your first point – with what I assume was practically Psychology 101.
I hope they do literally disappear – the whole cancerous node of activity so clearly outlined as their clinic.
All the best for a New Year.
I agree, Cat.
Thanks for the update, Rob.
Three lobbyists for every member on Capital Hill…what could go wrong?
This is not ‘science’ which is keeping these psychiatrists operative. It is privilege. Thanks for keeping up the fight, Peter.
Hi Mike,
These threads are open so that someone can give a rebuttal. Feel free to give it a try.
Hi Philip,
Usually I appreciate your articles for their humour, but, this time, you have skipped that and gone straight to the centre of my horror.
Personally, I think this thing they call akathisia often is simply overdosing. (Except with Haldol. That seems to be a real part of the drug. Or maybe, in my brief encounter with haldol, they were just overdosing big time.) When you are experiencing the overdosing, the ‘health care personnel’ should back off, but don’t. That is the horror.
I had all kinds of psychiatric drug effects that I put up with for years (crippling of the hands, minor tardive kinesia), but the diffierence with akathisia is that it can’t be ignored. It is dying on the spot. Realizing how completely health care professionals would prioritize ’emergency’ prophylactic drugging over patient was the end of any remnants of relationship there for me.
Sure, the system is based on administering miracle drug treatments, so they know which side their bread is buttered on. But I think a realization of general overdrugging will creep over the whole population eventually, maybe starting with families and patients dying from cancer drugs, going blind from statins and blood pressure drugs, and so on. Mental health is really so much about sllencing the inconvenient (old, young, and dependent), it won’t probably be the first place health professionals are called on to back off.
Really, reading your article gave me chills. But thanks, as always.
A very encouraging conclusion.
Thanks, Peter.
Hi Bonnie,
Thank you for your years of tireless work, your courage, your generosity, and this great achievement…widow’s mite to follow.
Hi Robert,
I really enjoyed your article. I think it could be argued that culture is THE great cohesive force in humanity. It certainly creates a sense of belonging. My father was a person who was born in a single homogenous culture, and I think there were advantages.
One great advantage is the ‘common sense’ that a group with a common history and outlook has. Without boundless hopes for a new and better reality and with its own history as its guide, such a group sees through absurd ‘new’ claims about human beings. Our new and obviously manufactured culture is being foisted on us from all sorts of PC directions, including psychiatry. What was true last year is now not and what wasn’t now is. And people’s focus is shifted away from what is always required of them as humans. This is actually producing an increased sense of unreality and insecurity.
Liz, you seem to revel in the idea of this sort of cultural disappearance. I suspect that you, yourself, are not French. Nor really anything else. And your loss, I think, is the loss most of us do now face – to our own detriment.
Thank you for your article. I think that you are speaking of a section of life that has been brutally excised in the name of science.
I used to find, when I was a teenager and young adult, that I could relieve any minor depression by reading a book about someone with strong psychic powers – like the late Ena Twigg in England or even a book by Lobsang Rampa. My own perception of the psychic world was much more amorphous, but I found it reassuring to be reminded of what was real by someone who obviously had a clearer perception of the psychic than I did.
Originally, I supported the ideas of psycholoanalysis because it seemed to me that Freud took the spiritual realm seriously and that psychiatry might even lead to a ‘scientific’ validating of that realm. Of course, psychiatry has gone the other way with a reductionist science that is now experienced by paitents as something akin to sadism. With psychiatrists’ present power and opportunistic use of denial and force, it would be very risky business for a psychic to talk honestly to a psychiatrist.
Most of us come from a culture that once had respect for the psychic life. Great people of the sort who used to be viewed as prophets saw this situation coming. Blake is amazingly prescient when he says: “May God us keep / From single vision and Newton’s sleep.” Surely a prayer for today.
One thing about these two psychiatrists that’s certain – they have not honesty, nor humility, nor shame.
Thank you, Robert, for your dedication to the truth.
Would you buy a used car from this man?
It’s hard to believe the American government is renting one from him at 1.5 billion (US) dollars a year.
I thought YOU were mad in Canada. It’s not so reassuring to find you are speaking for your son.
Your son, it seems, is now set up to provide jobs for life to social workers, psychiatrists, mental health teams, drug companies, and whoever else can be worked into this system of ballooning mental health expenses – a system once referred to by Allen Frances (in the somewhat parallel American situation) as ‘the pie’. I believe Frances characterized it as big enough for all present and even prospective stakeholders.
I hope you manage to escape the Canadian mental health system. Unlike the US system, it’s bankrolled by the government and pretty well staffed by bureaucratic lifers.
Good luck to you.
I must say, liberalminority, that you seem to be rather a connoisseur of the ‘coup de grace’. Have you ever had the honour of accepting the forced ‘mercy of Antipsychotic medication’? Or is this all liberal speculation? Sort of euthanasia at large…
Thanks Robert for this article and for being a voice for those who have been so ‘kindly’ treated to silence by the philosophers of liberalism.
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks for the article.
Personal experience is the most persuasive truth, and I was glad to hear more of your family saga.
Thanks Merry. I loved your article. I too think there are serious physical consequences when drugs start messing with the brain (just adjusting your ‘mental health’).
I do think that you are too kind to doctors generally, however. You suggest that if they only ‘had the time’, they would of course have helped. Unfortunately, as it stands, doctors have the only real access to drugs, and they are not behaving responsibly in their relationships to drug companies. Doctors are paid for their expertise and are responsible, not for what they would do, if they had the time, but for what they are doing.
A very interesting article. Thank you for posting it.
Clear as a bell. Thanks Philip.
Never for a moment should we forget that we are not dealing with ‘psychiatry’ here. ‘Psychiatry’ is an idea. We are dealing with psychiatrists. Those psychiatrists have pushed an agenda that has been a disgrace to any concepts (and they are only concepts) of medicine – especially high profile and active psychiatrists like Allen Frances.
There is no justice or responsibility except for individuals. ‘Psychiatry’ has no feet to be put to the fire.
Wishing you the best of luck with the operation and recovery.
Thanks for your years of advocacy.
I’m sure you will continue to speak.
Thanks for the update on Garth Daniels as well as your trenchant commentary. You are certainly looking full into the face of a crime. Good luck to you both.
Thanks for writing this, Peter.
May you live forever.
Thanks for your beautiful article.
I think the title of your book actually sums up the most horrific aspect of this psychiatric hoax – organized denial.
I look forward to reading the book.
Well, we’ll certainly be thinking of you today.
Thanks for all your work on this.
Thanks, Paula, for a great piece. ‘Mental Health’ is all about arbitrary confinement and forced treatments. It’s not a discussion, by any means.
Thanks for a beautiful article, especially your moment of realization about prescribing what you would not take. The whole medical profession needs to turn around on that one. I hope the article goes mainstream.
I’d really like to hear that “Timber” among medics and the general community here.
I think that the best news to me is the new edition of “Anatomy” that has come out. This is very important. Thanks.
Hi David,
“In all of medicine, one of the greatest sources of morbidity and mortality – perhaps the greatest – now stems from the treatments patients have been put on…”
When I first realized that, not only was my psychiatric treatment harmful (like most ‘patients’ I realized this from the first incarceration), but also likely to prove deadly, I sued – mainly to get the ‘treatment’ group to back off. What I found was that I was now at odds not just with psychiatry, but the medical union as a whole, right down through nurses and ambulance workers and, of course, members of the community for whom medical care was a motherhood issue.
It was then that I assessed my actual dependence on the medical system. What had I actually gained from it in all these years? Taking out childbirth assistance (and it was very helpful, but not actually ever critical in my case – and it has never been lacking in society, medicine or not) NOTHING BUT – as you say – HARM.
For me, there was a moment’s hesitation after this realization, then I thought, “I could risk it without these people.” Medicine at this point is a sell. It is not ‘saving us’ from death. We will die. Hopefully, it won’t be thanks to medicine either way.
So…thanks for bringing that up so clearly.
Write on…
Well, Philip, I just wanted to say thanks for this article. It’s nice to see that Pies is conscious of the criticism at least.
May you live forever. Literally.
While it is nice to know, Norman, that you had the right idea about human relationships, it is probably noteworthy that, as a group, your fellow ‘humanitarians’ did not.
If anything this story illustrates that the state cannot be trusted with our lives. The many recent revelations about what happens to children in ‘care’ and the surprising number of children who are die in state custody from clearly provable neglect and battery makes me sad for the child who was ‘taken away.’ Certainly both Shelley and Pierre would have had a better chance of life with that child. And it was theirs. Human rights cannot be applied only to some.
‘Science’ ‘medicine’ ‘expertise’ are all ideas. They do not create God. What they create is a lot of players too big for human souls to fill the part. The rising tide for ‘physician assisted’ suicide should make us all very afraid.
Thank you so much for this article. This is “a very slippery serpent” indeed.
Hi Philip,
Thanks for pointing this out in the interview. It illustrates so clearly that this is a top-down social control mechanism. No one even listens to ‘differences of opinion’ – and especially psychiatrists.
These guys are paid to do what they do. And the levers are social. You can’t win a witchcraft trial once you’re in it unless the judges choose to let you go for their own reasons. You can’t get out of a psychiatric diagnosis or an involuntary hospital stay because these are decided in advance on social bases to which you are peripheral. The fact that you’re even being considered for the ‘treatment’ is an indication of your status.
Might I suggest THELONIUSMONK that the NOTHING that Robert Whittaker provides to replace psychiatry would be precisely the right option moving forward here.
Hi Bonnie,
I am just starting “Psychiatry and the Business of Madness,” but this next book (that I hope you complete) is on my reading list now.
Thanks for putting in so much effort on a good cause.
John Smith,
Yes, it is absolutely my right, and it should be.
What you may have missed here is that a lot of people are forced to take psychiatric drugs against their wishes. Drugs are risky business, and everyone should have the right to choose.
John Smith
Regarding your comment – “Indeed, immunotherapy is front and center in industrial oncology research, and it appears likely that metatstatic cancer will be routinely curable within 20 years” – I would suggest that, by simply substituting “pharmacology” for “immunotherapy,” you have a pretty simple cut and paste from the medical optimism and its promises in the 1950’s.
We’ve all heard it before as have you, I would guess, from your list of your recent medical procedures. Maybe “chemical fixes” are not the way to health. And this a conclusion reached by many “survivors” of the medical system as well as honest doctors.
I honestly don’t care what researchers are now touting. My experience leads me to suggest caution with the whole chemical approach.
Hi Registeredforthissite,
If you think it’s important to respond to such criticism, maybe you could do a response.
Just a thought.
John Smith
I am afraid I disagree with your relativist notion that making this kind of data confess a positive outcome is morally the same as making it confess a negative one.
Many people taking these medications are not left to make their own choices in the matter. All medication is a risky business, and to produce false positive results opens many people to a forced drugging of and in itself risky.
In contrast, to “make it confess a negative outcome” leaves the medical ethic to do no harm intact. Obviously this ancient medical precept was directed at the physician’s tendency to do something (for cash) no matter what and to thereby harm the patient for his own gain.
Every drug is risky and causes harm. This is not a theoretical argument. Manipulating evidence to create positive outcomes will bring harm to others.
I admire your commitment. When it comes to loving one’s neighbour as oneself, there arise a lot of blockades with the psychiatric community. These “helping professionals” are, in my experience, with few exceptions, indifferent, opportunistic individuals who enjoy “lording it over” others, and, more importantly, individuals who would and do harm others knowingly and daily. Raised in a church of no hellfire and a teaching of social justice, it was a revelation for me that, when push came to shove, these people would do evil.
Moreover they ignore all evidence to pursue their interests. As Robert Whittaker so aptly put it, “The fat lady has sung.” But it is increasingly clear that listening is more than a matter of hearing.
A person must believe that the truth is important. “… thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” I have always loved that verse.
Thanks for your work.
Hi Lauren,
Thanks for being there and for being “a witness to fraud.”
Ah yes! “…a matter about which they could only ‘speculate.'” They can only speculate because they are paid to. Conversely, and tragically, they will continue to do so as long as they are paid to – with their brains in gear or otherwise. Why do people support these pundits – and hand over their children (and other nuisances) to them?
Hi travailler-vous,
I was speaking of the psychiatrists’ criticizing the general practitioners when they, themselves, are culpable. If you feel the placement was unfortunate, I am sorry.
Well here’s the pot calling the kettle black.
The “quality of life” that’s being improved is that of the nursing home employees. Then, there are those finding their livings in the medical industry. Tagging along behind are those of the weeping relatives who have signed on to the fantasy of “doing their best” for the “loved one” – for their own “peace of mind”.
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks for your tireless work. I look forward to reading this book.
Hi Margaret,
I appreciated your article, especially the interview with the psychiatrist. There’s real life psychiatry in action: deny, deny, deny. It was also nice to see the whole quote about harm. They “must be kept from doing harm.”
Once a person has been sidelined as a valid commentator on life by being labelled “mentally ill” and treated by this group, his or her legitimacy as critic is taken away. Someone must stop them. They are in full-scale destruction mode with their holocaust of drugs.
Thanks for helping out.
Hi Philip,
I hope you have sent a copy of this to the website that published this article. I did send a cut and paste copy in my email just now and referred them to the MadinAmerica site as well. This kind of ‘research’ is an exercise in wish-fulfillment at best. I could not locate Dr. Ujkja’s email, but I hope you sent her a copy of your critique as well.
Talk about the death of the patient as a participant or medical concern! Talk about ‘guild concerns’! (I use Robert Whitaker’s term here.) Whatever works or sells for me is the mantra here.
This is a great article, Tina. I think your approach is dead-on. Thanks for your work.
Cpuusage – Actually, Cpuusage, I’ve had trouble placing where you might be coming from. I do think you are on dangerous ground when you regard a person’s tendency to show unhappiness as a criterion for diagnosing illness. It certainly explains why so many women end up in psychiatric treatment. Oddly, too, your illustration of someone who is one of the anti psychiatric mad seems to come from a personal disagreement between you and this other person.
I admire any person who puts him or herself up as an anti psychiatrist or even as publicly critical of psychiatry, but, as Slay the Dragon points out, many don’t because of fear of losing friends, family, and of reactivating a system which has drugged them into a complete loss of self. You seem to be coasting along within the system, with vague comments about how the whole realm of psychiatry is difficult to define, justifying the system’s existence because of some “serious mentally ill” contingent (in which you don’t seem to include yourself), a contingent who, on examination, seems to consist of those who disagree with you.
This is the defence of “psychiatry knows better.” The subtext is that psychiatry is such a subtle and intelligent field that no one except a psychiatrist could possibly understand it. While other doctors study the body, only the psychiatrist KNOWS the mind.
In truth, I think, psychiatry often attracts a type of person who feels superior to others, who likes to claim esoteric knowledge that others will never have access to because those others are inferior. Psychiatrists’ grandiose visions of themselves make such ridiculous defence plausible to them.
dreamflyer44: You, I think, are in more than a bit of a fog here. It’s “action” she is taking, “ground” she is treading, and the testimony you offer would be far more convincing if your clearly managed 29-year-old daughter were speaking for herself. The mental health field is one long erroneous path of testimony ABOUT patients, rather than FROM them.
I am so grateful to hear about this work at the Sunrise Centre. Thanks to Janet Foner and her associates.
On a side note, if psychiatry was ALL Scientology got right, I’d feel positive about them.
Someone Else:
Psychiatrists are the second tier of complication. They make it impossible for patients to get out. Once the psychiatrists have waded in with their “illnesses” the circle becomes self-reinforcing. Relatives pretend they weren’t even in at the first. Now they behave as though the psychiatrists were the original motive force of the “treatment.”
Meanwhile psychiatrists, who know their role and money-source, keep on with the diagnoses and more and more drugs. The one rule of the profession seems to be “never back up.” So psychiatrists insist that there are no serious side-effects to the drugs. Patients learn not to mention side-effects for fear of added “side-effect” drugs. And any damages become the product of patient “fantasy.”
All in all, the purpose is to keep you in. Relatives appreciate the control, and psychiatrists want the money. If either feels threatened, the patient suffers more because “more drugs” is the mantra throughout.
Hi Philip,
Thank you for your statement.
Not to push a point, but maybe those other medical specialists have a clientele that is generally satisfied with the services it receives, rather than a growing contingent of patients and ex-patients who feel real anger against the “voluntary” treatments they have suffered under. Few heart patients feel that overturning cardiology would be a key to restoring their civil liberties.
That said, I think Number 10 will be psychiatry’s undoing. Whether parents wake up or whether we have to wait for more and more damaged children to grow up, there is potential for a huge backlash here.
I think you have it with the phrase “warehouses of the unwanted.” The worst excesses of the psychiatric system come because somebody doesn’t want “the patient” around in his or her present state. Whether the person is a nuisance (talkative or “uncooperative” old person or child), a relative newly widowed with children, or a genuine threat to someone’s getting on with daily life in peace, the problem is not that the offending person is disturbed, but that they are disturbing.
That’s what makes the old cartoon funny: “Hey!” says a guy being hauled off in a straitjacket by determined medics. “I’m not crazy!” In his failure to recognize the motives and tolerances of others, however, he has made a really tragic mistake. And the laugh partly comes because we all know that his coming punishment far exceeds his crime of misperception or temporary self-absorption. He has underestimated the evil of his fellow man.
Thanks for the summary of Lieberman’s arguments (or lack thereof). I’m amazed that he has the temerity to call the book “Shrinks” in light of what his medications are doing to the brains of others. If heroes champion their own causes, I guess he’s a hero. But, in his claim to be a doctor, he is delusional. I’m sad too.
aendrums:
I think you are misinformed. I taught primary school. All children were there. And this is a larger question than rudeness.
My father, who was a physician saw this tsunami of drugs coming and predicted the damage they would do. For the sake of your child, become acquainted with the growing literature on pharmaceutical drugs and the lawless companies that make them. I liked Peter Gotzsche’s book “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime,” and, of course, there’s Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic.” There are many more. In fact, there is a list of 100 relevant books on this site. Become informed yourself.
aendrums:
I taught school at a time when there was no ADHD, and, believe me, there is no ADHD. This is an excuse to drug children – nothing else.
Thanks for your comment, Jeffrey. All I can say is “absolutely.”
Excederin:
I think you should read a book I just finished by Peter Gotzsche, a physician and researcher in Denmark. Its called “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime.” In the book, Gotzsche copiously documents how medical research is distorted by pharmaceutical companies who often fund the research universities and the trials as well as (in the US) pay for regulatory approval. The deception extends to medical journals as well who make money with favourable drug article reprints and, of course, advertising. It’s an eye-opening look into things in the medical industry today.
Thanks, Richard, for coming out firmly in this article. Drugging on its own is a serious health issue and represents real moral failing among medics, especially psychiatrists – who, in their audacity, go so far as to order involuntary consumption of drugs. The importance of making a strategic hit on the drugging crisis and on psychiatry as the most culpable group cannot be underestimated – even if we were to leave the civil rights issues aside.
But, it is also true that many social critics are side-lined with “mental health” diagnoses and silenced by fear and drugging. If you’re looking for overall reform, revealing this situation alone should lead anyone to deeply question the direction of our society.
Excederin: Unfortunately, your antecedent for “they” is “parents,” and I believe you are right. Parents DO drug their kids so they can function better. That leaves the kids drugged.
Michael: I’m glad to see you put up a note on the video about the rationale for most drugging labels in use today. The push to be paid by insurance companies was actually at the root of the insistence on these labels as categories of physical illness. I think the huge denialism over the validity of these labels has led to the kind of fairy-tale diabetes analogue which justifies the situation now in the minds of both parents and prescribers. Thanks for all you continue to say on what is really an unforgivable ongoing crime. I think of the millstones around the necks of those who harm children.
“What would give an anthropologist license to comment…?”
Perhaps because anthropologists are the ones who generally comment on moribund social groups, the commentary should be seen as particularly hopeful.
I can’t believe that Lieberman has resorted to appeals to the inalienable rights of psychiatry, an entity apparently subject to injury and humiliation. Surprised that anti-psychiatry has arisen? Serious lack of insight here, I’d say.
I’m afraid I don’t regard my private life as someone else’s “field” though this group seems to have no difficulty in doing so. Moreover, it’s a “field” already polarized with a truly insane amount of power granted to psychiatrists and none to the ever-patient patients. I think you’re optimistic in expecting a solution that will leave psychiatry’s or psychology’s economic preserve intact.
New product. New market. New investors hoping it’ll go through the roof.
Thanks for raising this point, Wayne. Psychiatry has been given almost sole rights to the poor, many of whom will take the medication to get financial help for their families, especially since the possibility of even getting out of the psychiatric networks is not high.
I will not even touch upon people who get the money through psychiatrizing their children. Again, however, it is psychiatry that is the worst factor of the mix.
Hi Chris,
I also was damaged by lithium. I also consider my children when “making waves.”
I just wanted to say that I don’t reply to a huge percentage of comments that I read. What I do take from them, like you, is a sense of community. I read them every day.
Thanks for posting.
With all due respect for your survivorship status, you seem to be a person looking for a job in academia – not going too far for employment here, obfuscating there. This kind of behaviour will keep you your position, but, I believe, is costing academics their critical role in society. This is the route by which liberals have become largely ineffective in today’s world.
Most people who have been involuntarily incarcerated and drugged (usually by concerned relatives) are not searching for a “big picture” discussion of utopia. Psychiatry is violating people’s civil liberties and poisoning millions daily. The situation with our children alone should make everyone fearful. The use of drugging as a means of controlling old people is beyond totalitarian. The only joke is that mainstream doctors are close behind psychiatrists, threatening everyone’s health with their arthritis killers and dangerous statins. They too are primarily interested in keeping their jobs. Doctors’ obeisance to Big Pharma and studious inclusion of all members of the “medical-industrial union” has destroyed doctors’ critical role of making medical, rather than political, decisions. A doctor’s primary role should include maintaining skepticism in prescribing medicines. Medicines are deadly. And again and again, Big Pharma is not required to answer for criminal activity. I think our focus on medication misuse is crucial, not just for MIA, but for the society at large.
They don’t receive evidence based commitment either.
Personally, I’m less interested in ANOTHER approach and more interested in a retreat.
I suppose by overreact, Breitner means possibly consider that the drug might be doing more harm than good, that one’s physician is often just an enthusiastic pharma front, and that his own job line may be overdue for evaluation.
I agree with you, B. There is no such thing as a professional “fix” in life. People who believe this are sadly lacking in insight. Others can help, but, when they make their money claiming to be authorities on human problems, they often lose their humanity in getting the paycheque.
Hi Daisy,
I am glad I read your story. You’re further along than I am. I hope you let us know when your book comes out. If you are having a book launch or appearance in Vancouver or Victoria, perhaps you could also mention that. Thanks.
Thank you, Dr. Healy. I always enjoy your articles.
Sorry, Sleves. Didn’t mean to get your moniker wrong.
Sleeves: You can get Peter C. Gotzsche’s book from the public library. I, myself, have a hold in for the next available copy. I hope you enjoy it.
Just a note. I KNOW the humility of a psychiatric patient who MUST go along with her “caretakers” because they control access to her children, so I’m sure you DO SEE a lot of humble, inoffensive, apparently thankful people. They have no out.
I agree, Philip. Psychiatrists should not be allowed to cynically scramble onto the next lucrative bandwagon without accountability for their pasts.
Thank you Philip for another great article. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you for continuing to point out the false reasonings and blatant evasions of psychiatry. Maybe psychiatrists get away with this stuff partly because they make it a rule NEVER to listen to patients.
I would like to add a related note to commenter rsrcrw, who seems to be the voice of her husband and teenage daughter here, firmly committed to THEIR psychiatric treatment. Perhaps, rsrcrw, you just prefer other family members who are too drugged to challenge you at all.
Thanks for this article. I admire this man for not speaking.
I found that it is impossible to make calm objection under the law. You can speak, but, immediately afterwards, the ‘mental health’ professionals continue in exactly the same course. You can sue, but the judge rushes to receive his or her cues from the attorneys of the ‘mental health’ group.
The only ones to even be embarrassed by the farce are the police. In their defence, I have seen them trying to bridge the gap with what is obviously a complete disregard for civil rights in the ‘mental health’ community. But, of course, even the police know that ‘doctors’ know best.
Thanks Bonnie for this heartening article. It’s no surprise that the only commentator WITH any insight was not a psychiatrist. I think that, with their swelling of patients, psychiatrists are inviting attack. Less and less people are truly outside psychiatry.
Personally I’m waiting for that “mirror crack’d from side to side” moment for this group, one precipitated by their own megalomania.
I do believe that anti-psychiatrists are the only ones walking out of here.
A great article. Thanks, Bruce.
In Hannah Arendt’s “Totalitarianism,” she says that, at the root of any totalitarian regime, there is always a camp. I thought about it a lot at the time, but I think it’s pretty fair to say that the rapidly expanding psychiatric base now fills the bill. Drugging is a camp on its own with layers of camps beneath, including the school system, prison system, and old folks homes.
With all respect Reverend, the Christian groups that I’ve been part of are no more skeptical of “science” than the commentators on MIA. Most of their members are fully supportive of getting forced chemical “help” for relatives in old folks homes or children sitting submissively in the pews beside them. The belief in the holy spirit has become a private matter in today’s world, I think.
The churches should be leading the fight against psychiatry’s minimizing of the spiritual aspects of our lives, aspects such as purpose, morality, faith in life, and courage in death. The only church that seems even sporadically to do much in the way of objection to psychiatry is the Unitarian Church, a church so far from its Christian roots as to be almost universalist.
Personally, I would chose Scientology as a last resort for help today. In practical terms they represent the only group likely to offer any protection from the mental health system as it actually operates.
You can appeal to Christians in the abstract all you wish, but, when the only church willing to fight this Satan Psychiatry is that of Scientology, I believe you Christian people have some changing of your own to do.
Thanks Phillip. I couldn’t agree with you more. The whole psychiatric thing is rotten to the core. When Allen Frances speaks about more “pie” for all the paid mental “helping” professions, he is pitching to a very greedy group. I also agree with David Walker in his ideas about the damage psychiatric reductionism does to human reality. The joke is that that wider reality wasn’t just true for Native cultures. It used to be ours as well.
I wish John Rohrer and David Kastner success from the bottom of my heart.
It seems to me, Kate, that YOU are speaking for your daughter. Perhaps she could speak for herself.
Thank you so much, Bonnie, for your comprehensive and beautifully argued piece. I hope it gets the wide audience it deserves – for your sake as well as mine.
I’m surprised that a seasoned medical person like yourself doesn’t seem to understand that all medicine is based on conjecture.
Your zesty language and breezy attitude seem to me more suggestive of an undergraduate psychology student or student psychiatrist in a hurry to complete an assignment – spouting off everything he or she has learned in class to get a potential rise.
Here’s to youth, eh? Or its appearance. It must keep you in sync with all those boxes of genes you face down every day in the great fight against autism.
As someone who is now escalating from a position of being anti-psychiatry to one of becoming anti-mainstream medicine – in the light of my continuing experience – I regard anti-psychiatry as my conservative, fall-back position. I look forward to the day when taking such a position will be considered absolutely sane and normal.
Thanks, Elizabeth. I enjoyed reading this.
One thing that you did not mention (and I think it is true) is that many drugs actually selectively destroy the body’s bacterial balance and also selectively USE nutrient elements for their metabolism – thus aggravating deficiencies and imbalances.
Even with supplementation, it may be difficult to counter the effects of continual drug administration of ANY kind. Older allopathic doctors seemed to have been aware of this. Newer ones are so deep in the ‘sell’, I think they have lost their original caution.
Thanks, Robert, for keeping us abreast of the news.
I think this is a ‘Crack in the Door’ simply because it is a government mandate issued from outside the medical community. The whole mental health boondoggle is an incredibly well funded and electorally popiular industry.
And it’s an industry that would be pretty easy to stop since the government is supporting this whole thing really. Just cease funding.
As a side note, my family, who was so anxious to get me into ‘care’ after my husband died (and off their worry list), would never have paid for the ‘treatment’ themselves. If people saw themselves as actually PAYING, there’d be a drastic reduction in the whole show.
The ‘real’ medical establishment buries its errors.
Thanks Bonnie and Julia. Some people stand up for truth. Others have standing up for truth thrust upon them.
Thanks for being both.
I have also returned Hell to a place in my religious belief as a result of my experiences with psychiatry.
Hi Bonnie,
Well, I hope that curse goes viral.
Good luck with your book also. It sounds daunting, but I will read it.
Thanks David.
Obviously modern medicine is a drug selling business (and a business for selling medical machines and medical education). Not to mention a huge employer. This is a dangerous combo we face, especially since most of us believe that our health is not primarily our own responsiblity and that science wants to save us.
I respect the right of Americans to choose a leader according to the system in place. My mother came from a Republican family – a Christian family that actually worked against slavery. But also from a Redneck family that supported the South.
The Democrats have had a great run on President Kennedy though his death probably also had its roots with him. I think it’s over. Perhaps it’s time to get out of fantasy land.
I wonder about a world where people believe more in a mystical chemical imbalance than in the biological realities of the sexual. Wake up. There are realities here.
And I think it is worth considering that anyone who attempts to really achieve anything is going to be labelled insane. Not to mention an increasingly unpopular figure – but Jesus was labelled insane by his family (as well as all the worthies mentioned by Robert Pfaff). I can’t believe anyone was mad enough to stand up to an absolutely bought off, agenda driven press and a corrupt political establishment. Why is it always Hitler and not Joan of Arc that Trump gets compared to? Can’t imagine a man in armour? Or a pure heart in Winston Churchill? It’s a hero who fights. Bernie didn’t. And neither did Michael Moore.
I am tired of the mainstream lying going on. Just my opinion. Just my position.
When you look at the authors of this new ‘Bible’, it’s easy to see why hypocrisy and greed aren’t ‘diagnosed’ in it as they were in the old one.
Hi Steve,
I think you make your case very clearly. I wish you luck with your distribution.
The link worked for me on Safari.
Is this the whole article? There doesn’t seem to be a link out.
Anyway, in reference to a prior recent comment on the FDA, I was amazed to hear that anyone would have serious doubts about the new appointment for head of the agency. Republican or Democrat, he or she could hardly be worse than the present ‘team’.
I DO think we were better off in a world before this agency. People still looked for advice before taking a drug. There were still doctors. There just wasn’t a money-seeking totalitarian partnership of business interests blocking and obfuscating the facts necessary for free choice.
Thanks Phillip. You wiped the floor with them with your first point – with what I assume was practically Psychology 101.
I hope they do literally disappear – the whole cancerous node of activity so clearly outlined as their clinic.
All the best for a New Year.
I agree, Cat.
Thanks for the update, Rob.
Three lobbyists for every member on Capital Hill…what could go wrong?
This is not ‘science’ which is keeping these psychiatrists operative. It is privilege. Thanks for keeping up the fight, Peter.
Hi Mike,
These threads are open so that someone can give a rebuttal. Feel free to give it a try.
Hi Philip,
Usually I appreciate your articles for their humour, but, this time, you have skipped that and gone straight to the centre of my horror.
Personally, I think this thing they call akathisia often is simply overdosing. (Except with Haldol. That seems to be a real part of the drug. Or maybe, in my brief encounter with haldol, they were just overdosing big time.) When you are experiencing the overdosing, the ‘health care personnel’ should back off, but don’t. That is the horror.
I had all kinds of psychiatric drug effects that I put up with for years (crippling of the hands, minor tardive kinesia), but the diffierence with akathisia is that it can’t be ignored. It is dying on the spot. Realizing how completely health care professionals would prioritize ’emergency’ prophylactic drugging over patient was the end of any remnants of relationship there for me.
Sure, the system is based on administering miracle drug treatments, so they know which side their bread is buttered on. But I think a realization of general overdrugging will creep over the whole population eventually, maybe starting with families and patients dying from cancer drugs, going blind from statins and blood pressure drugs, and so on. Mental health is really so much about sllencing the inconvenient (old, young, and dependent), it won’t probably be the first place health professionals are called on to back off.
Really, reading your article gave me chills. But thanks, as always.
A very encouraging conclusion.
Thanks, Peter.
Hi Bonnie,
Thank you for your years of tireless work, your courage, your generosity, and this great achievement…widow’s mite to follow.
Hi Robert,
I really enjoyed your article. I think it could be argued that culture is THE great cohesive force in humanity. It certainly creates a sense of belonging. My father was a person who was born in a single homogenous culture, and I think there were advantages.
One great advantage is the ‘common sense’ that a group with a common history and outlook has. Without boundless hopes for a new and better reality and with its own history as its guide, such a group sees through absurd ‘new’ claims about human beings. Our new and obviously manufactured culture is being foisted on us from all sorts of PC directions, including psychiatry. What was true last year is now not and what wasn’t now is. And people’s focus is shifted away from what is always required of them as humans. This is actually producing an increased sense of unreality and insecurity.
Liz, you seem to revel in the idea of this sort of cultural disappearance. I suspect that you, yourself, are not French. Nor really anything else. And your loss, I think, is the loss most of us do now face – to our own detriment.
Thank you for your article. I think that you are speaking of a section of life that has been brutally excised in the name of science.
I used to find, when I was a teenager and young adult, that I could relieve any minor depression by reading a book about someone with strong psychic powers – like the late Ena Twigg in England or even a book by Lobsang Rampa. My own perception of the psychic world was much more amorphous, but I found it reassuring to be reminded of what was real by someone who obviously had a clearer perception of the psychic than I did.
Originally, I supported the ideas of psycholoanalysis because it seemed to me that Freud took the spiritual realm seriously and that psychiatry might even lead to a ‘scientific’ validating of that realm. Of course, psychiatry has gone the other way with a reductionist science that is now experienced by paitents as something akin to sadism. With psychiatrists’ present power and opportunistic use of denial and force, it would be very risky business for a psychic to talk honestly to a psychiatrist.
Most of us come from a culture that once had respect for the psychic life. Great people of the sort who used to be viewed as prophets saw this situation coming. Blake is amazingly prescient when he says: “May God us keep / From single vision and Newton’s sleep.” Surely a prayer for today.
One thing about these two psychiatrists that’s certain – they have not honesty, nor humility, nor shame.
Thank you, Robert, for your dedication to the truth.
Would you buy a used car from this man?
It’s hard to believe the American government is renting one from him at 1.5 billion (US) dollars a year.
I thought YOU were mad in Canada. It’s not so reassuring to find you are speaking for your son.
Your son, it seems, is now set up to provide jobs for life to social workers, psychiatrists, mental health teams, drug companies, and whoever else can be worked into this system of ballooning mental health expenses – a system once referred to by Allen Frances (in the somewhat parallel American situation) as ‘the pie’. I believe Frances characterized it as big enough for all present and even prospective stakeholders.
I hope you manage to escape the Canadian mental health system. Unlike the US system, it’s bankrolled by the government and pretty well staffed by bureaucratic lifers.
Good luck to you.
I must say, liberalminority, that you seem to be rather a connoisseur of the ‘coup de grace’. Have you ever had the honour of accepting the forced ‘mercy of Antipsychotic medication’? Or is this all liberal speculation? Sort of euthanasia at large…
Thanks Robert for this article and for being a voice for those who have been so ‘kindly’ treated to silence by the philosophers of liberalism.
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks for the article.
Personal experience is the most persuasive truth, and I was glad to hear more of your family saga.
Thanks Merry. I loved your article. I too think there are serious physical consequences when drugs start messing with the brain (just adjusting your ‘mental health’).
I do think that you are too kind to doctors generally, however. You suggest that if they only ‘had the time’, they would of course have helped. Unfortunately, as it stands, doctors have the only real access to drugs, and they are not behaving responsibly in their relationships to drug companies. Doctors are paid for their expertise and are responsible, not for what they would do, if they had the time, but for what they are doing.
A very interesting article. Thank you for posting it.
Clear as a bell. Thanks Philip.
Never for a moment should we forget that we are not dealing with ‘psychiatry’ here. ‘Psychiatry’ is an idea. We are dealing with psychiatrists. Those psychiatrists have pushed an agenda that has been a disgrace to any concepts (and they are only concepts) of medicine – especially high profile and active psychiatrists like Allen Frances.
There is no justice or responsibility except for individuals. ‘Psychiatry’ has no feet to be put to the fire.
Wishing you the best of luck with the operation and recovery.
Thanks for your years of advocacy.
I’m sure you will continue to speak.
Thanks for the update on Garth Daniels as well as your trenchant commentary. You are certainly looking full into the face of a crime. Good luck to you both.
Thanks for writing this, Peter.
May you live forever.
Thanks for your beautiful article.
I think the title of your book actually sums up the most horrific aspect of this psychiatric hoax – organized denial.
I look forward to reading the book.
Well, we’ll certainly be thinking of you today.
Thanks for all your work on this.
Thanks, Paula, for a great piece. ‘Mental Health’ is all about arbitrary confinement and forced treatments. It’s not a discussion, by any means.
Thanks for a beautiful article, especially your moment of realization about prescribing what you would not take. The whole medical profession needs to turn around on that one. I hope the article goes mainstream.
I’d really like to hear that “Timber” among medics and the general community here.
I think that the best news to me is the new edition of “Anatomy” that has come out. This is very important. Thanks.
Hi David,
“In all of medicine, one of the greatest sources of morbidity and mortality – perhaps the greatest – now stems from the treatments patients have been put on…”
When I first realized that, not only was my psychiatric treatment harmful (like most ‘patients’ I realized this from the first incarceration), but also likely to prove deadly, I sued – mainly to get the ‘treatment’ group to back off. What I found was that I was now at odds not just with psychiatry, but the medical union as a whole, right down through nurses and ambulance workers and, of course, members of the community for whom medical care was a motherhood issue.
It was then that I assessed my actual dependence on the medical system. What had I actually gained from it in all these years? Taking out childbirth assistance (and it was very helpful, but not actually ever critical in my case – and it has never been lacking in society, medicine or not) NOTHING BUT – as you say – HARM.
For me, there was a moment’s hesitation after this realization, then I thought, “I could risk it without these people.” Medicine at this point is a sell. It is not ‘saving us’ from death. We will die. Hopefully, it won’t be thanks to medicine either way.
So…thanks for bringing that up so clearly.
Write on…
Well, Philip, I just wanted to say thanks for this article. It’s nice to see that Pies is conscious of the criticism at least.
May you live forever. Literally.
While it is nice to know, Norman, that you had the right idea about human relationships, it is probably noteworthy that, as a group, your fellow ‘humanitarians’ did not.
If anything this story illustrates that the state cannot be trusted with our lives. The many recent revelations about what happens to children in ‘care’ and the surprising number of children who are die in state custody from clearly provable neglect and battery makes me sad for the child who was ‘taken away.’ Certainly both Shelley and Pierre would have had a better chance of life with that child. And it was theirs. Human rights cannot be applied only to some.
‘Science’ ‘medicine’ ‘expertise’ are all ideas. They do not create God. What they create is a lot of players too big for human souls to fill the part. The rising tide for ‘physician assisted’ suicide should make us all very afraid.
Thank you so much for this article. This is “a very slippery serpent” indeed.
Hi Philip,
Thanks for pointing this out in the interview. It illustrates so clearly that this is a top-down social control mechanism. No one even listens to ‘differences of opinion’ – and especially psychiatrists.
These guys are paid to do what they do. And the levers are social. You can’t win a witchcraft trial once you’re in it unless the judges choose to let you go for their own reasons. You can’t get out of a psychiatric diagnosis or an involuntary hospital stay because these are decided in advance on social bases to which you are peripheral. The fact that you’re even being considered for the ‘treatment’ is an indication of your status.
Might I suggest THELONIUSMONK that the NOTHING that Robert Whittaker provides to replace psychiatry would be precisely the right option moving forward here.
Hi Bonnie,
I am just starting “Psychiatry and the Business of Madness,” but this next book (that I hope you complete) is on my reading list now.
Thanks for putting in so much effort on a good cause.
John Smith,
Yes, it is absolutely my right, and it should be.
What you may have missed here is that a lot of people are forced to take psychiatric drugs against their wishes. Drugs are risky business, and everyone should have the right to choose.
John Smith
Regarding your comment – “Indeed, immunotherapy is front and center in industrial oncology research, and it appears likely that metatstatic cancer will be routinely curable within 20 years” – I would suggest that, by simply substituting “pharmacology” for “immunotherapy,” you have a pretty simple cut and paste from the medical optimism and its promises in the 1950’s.
We’ve all heard it before as have you, I would guess, from your list of your recent medical procedures. Maybe “chemical fixes” are not the way to health. And this a conclusion reached by many “survivors” of the medical system as well as honest doctors.
I honestly don’t care what researchers are now touting. My experience leads me to suggest caution with the whole chemical approach.
Hi Registeredforthissite,
If you think it’s important to respond to such criticism, maybe you could do a response.
Just a thought.
John Smith
I am afraid I disagree with your relativist notion that making this kind of data confess a positive outcome is morally the same as making it confess a negative one.
Many people taking these medications are not left to make their own choices in the matter. All medication is a risky business, and to produce false positive results opens many people to a forced drugging of and in itself risky.
In contrast, to “make it confess a negative outcome” leaves the medical ethic to do no harm intact. Obviously this ancient medical precept was directed at the physician’s tendency to do something (for cash) no matter what and to thereby harm the patient for his own gain.
Every drug is risky and causes harm. This is not a theoretical argument. Manipulating evidence to create positive outcomes will bring harm to others.
I admire your commitment. When it comes to loving one’s neighbour as oneself, there arise a lot of blockades with the psychiatric community. These “helping professionals” are, in my experience, with few exceptions, indifferent, opportunistic individuals who enjoy “lording it over” others, and, more importantly, individuals who would and do harm others knowingly and daily. Raised in a church of no hellfire and a teaching of social justice, it was a revelation for me that, when push came to shove, these people would do evil.
Moreover they ignore all evidence to pursue their interests. As Robert Whittaker so aptly put it, “The fat lady has sung.” But it is increasingly clear that listening is more than a matter of hearing.
A person must believe that the truth is important. “… thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” I have always loved that verse.
Thanks for your work.
Hi Lauren,
Thanks for being there and for being “a witness to fraud.”
Ah yes! “…a matter about which they could only ‘speculate.'” They can only speculate because they are paid to. Conversely, and tragically, they will continue to do so as long as they are paid to – with their brains in gear or otherwise. Why do people support these pundits – and hand over their children (and other nuisances) to them?
Hi travailler-vous,
I was speaking of the psychiatrists’ criticizing the general practitioners when they, themselves, are culpable. If you feel the placement was unfortunate, I am sorry.
Well here’s the pot calling the kettle black.
The “quality of life” that’s being improved is that of the nursing home employees. Then, there are those finding their livings in the medical industry. Tagging along behind are those of the weeping relatives who have signed on to the fantasy of “doing their best” for the “loved one” – for their own “peace of mind”.
Hi Bonnie,
Thanks for your tireless work. I look forward to reading this book.
Hi Margaret,
I appreciated your article, especially the interview with the psychiatrist. There’s real life psychiatry in action: deny, deny, deny. It was also nice to see the whole quote about harm. They “must be kept from doing harm.”
Once a person has been sidelined as a valid commentator on life by being labelled “mentally ill” and treated by this group, his or her legitimacy as critic is taken away. Someone must stop them. They are in full-scale destruction mode with their holocaust of drugs.
Thanks for helping out.
Hi Philip,
I hope you have sent a copy of this to the website that published this article. I did send a cut and paste copy in my email just now and referred them to the MadinAmerica site as well. This kind of ‘research’ is an exercise in wish-fulfillment at best. I could not locate Dr. Ujkja’s email, but I hope you sent her a copy of your critique as well.
Talk about the death of the patient as a participant or medical concern! Talk about ‘guild concerns’! (I use Robert Whitaker’s term here.) Whatever works or sells for me is the mantra here.
This is a great article, Tina. I think your approach is dead-on. Thanks for your work.
Cpuusage – Actually, Cpuusage, I’ve had trouble placing where you might be coming from. I do think you are on dangerous ground when you regard a person’s tendency to show unhappiness as a criterion for diagnosing illness. It certainly explains why so many women end up in psychiatric treatment. Oddly, too, your illustration of someone who is one of the anti psychiatric mad seems to come from a personal disagreement between you and this other person.
I admire any person who puts him or herself up as an anti psychiatrist or even as publicly critical of psychiatry, but, as Slay the Dragon points out, many don’t because of fear of losing friends, family, and of reactivating a system which has drugged them into a complete loss of self. You seem to be coasting along within the system, with vague comments about how the whole realm of psychiatry is difficult to define, justifying the system’s existence because of some “serious mentally ill” contingent (in which you don’t seem to include yourself), a contingent who, on examination, seems to consist of those who disagree with you.
This is the defence of “psychiatry knows better.” The subtext is that psychiatry is such a subtle and intelligent field that no one except a psychiatrist could possibly understand it. While other doctors study the body, only the psychiatrist KNOWS the mind.
In truth, I think, psychiatry often attracts a type of person who feels superior to others, who likes to claim esoteric knowledge that others will never have access to because those others are inferior. Psychiatrists’ grandiose visions of themselves make such ridiculous defence plausible to them.
dreamflyer44: You, I think, are in more than a bit of a fog here. It’s “action” she is taking, “ground” she is treading, and the testimony you offer would be far more convincing if your clearly managed 29-year-old daughter were speaking for herself. The mental health field is one long erroneous path of testimony ABOUT patients, rather than FROM them.
I am so grateful to hear about this work at the Sunrise Centre. Thanks to Janet Foner and her associates.
On a side note, if psychiatry was ALL Scientology got right, I’d feel positive about them.
Someone Else:
Psychiatrists are the second tier of complication. They make it impossible for patients to get out. Once the psychiatrists have waded in with their “illnesses” the circle becomes self-reinforcing. Relatives pretend they weren’t even in at the first. Now they behave as though the psychiatrists were the original motive force of the “treatment.”
Meanwhile psychiatrists, who know their role and money-source, keep on with the diagnoses and more and more drugs. The one rule of the profession seems to be “never back up.” So psychiatrists insist that there are no serious side-effects to the drugs. Patients learn not to mention side-effects for fear of added “side-effect” drugs. And any damages become the product of patient “fantasy.”
All in all, the purpose is to keep you in. Relatives appreciate the control, and psychiatrists want the money. If either feels threatened, the patient suffers more because “more drugs” is the mantra throughout.
Hi Philip,
Thank you for your statement.
Not to push a point, but maybe those other medical specialists have a clientele that is generally satisfied with the services it receives, rather than a growing contingent of patients and ex-patients who feel real anger against the “voluntary” treatments they have suffered under. Few heart patients feel that overturning cardiology would be a key to restoring their civil liberties.
That said, I think Number 10 will be psychiatry’s undoing. Whether parents wake up or whether we have to wait for more and more damaged children to grow up, there is potential for a huge backlash here.
I think you have it with the phrase “warehouses of the unwanted.” The worst excesses of the psychiatric system come because somebody doesn’t want “the patient” around in his or her present state. Whether the person is a nuisance (talkative or “uncooperative” old person or child), a relative newly widowed with children, or a genuine threat to someone’s getting on with daily life in peace, the problem is not that the offending person is disturbed, but that they are disturbing.
That’s what makes the old cartoon funny: “Hey!” says a guy being hauled off in a straitjacket by determined medics. “I’m not crazy!” In his failure to recognize the motives and tolerances of others, however, he has made a really tragic mistake. And the laugh partly comes because we all know that his coming punishment far exceeds his crime of misperception or temporary self-absorption. He has underestimated the evil of his fellow man.
Thanks for the summary of Lieberman’s arguments (or lack thereof). I’m amazed that he has the temerity to call the book “Shrinks” in light of what his medications are doing to the brains of others. If heroes champion their own causes, I guess he’s a hero. But, in his claim to be a doctor, he is delusional. I’m sad too.
aendrums:
I think you are misinformed. I taught primary school. All children were there. And this is a larger question than rudeness.
My father, who was a physician saw this tsunami of drugs coming and predicted the damage they would do. For the sake of your child, become acquainted with the growing literature on pharmaceutical drugs and the lawless companies that make them. I liked Peter Gotzsche’s book “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime,” and, of course, there’s Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic.” There are many more. In fact, there is a list of 100 relevant books on this site. Become informed yourself.
aendrums:
I taught school at a time when there was no ADHD, and, believe me, there is no ADHD. This is an excuse to drug children – nothing else.
Thanks for your comment, Jeffrey. All I can say is “absolutely.”
Excederin:
I think you should read a book I just finished by Peter Gotzsche, a physician and researcher in Denmark. Its called “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime.” In the book, Gotzsche copiously documents how medical research is distorted by pharmaceutical companies who often fund the research universities and the trials as well as (in the US) pay for regulatory approval. The deception extends to medical journals as well who make money with favourable drug article reprints and, of course, advertising. It’s an eye-opening look into things in the medical industry today.
Thanks, Richard, for coming out firmly in this article. Drugging on its own is a serious health issue and represents real moral failing among medics, especially psychiatrists – who, in their audacity, go so far as to order involuntary consumption of drugs. The importance of making a strategic hit on the drugging crisis and on psychiatry as the most culpable group cannot be underestimated – even if we were to leave the civil rights issues aside.
But, it is also true that many social critics are side-lined with “mental health” diagnoses and silenced by fear and drugging. If you’re looking for overall reform, revealing this situation alone should lead anyone to deeply question the direction of our society.
Excederin: Unfortunately, your antecedent for “they” is “parents,” and I believe you are right. Parents DO drug their kids so they can function better. That leaves the kids drugged.
Michael: I’m glad to see you put up a note on the video about the rationale for most drugging labels in use today. The push to be paid by insurance companies was actually at the root of the insistence on these labels as categories of physical illness. I think the huge denialism over the validity of these labels has led to the kind of fairy-tale diabetes analogue which justifies the situation now in the minds of both parents and prescribers. Thanks for all you continue to say on what is really an unforgivable ongoing crime. I think of the millstones around the necks of those who harm children.
“What would give an anthropologist license to comment…?”
Perhaps because anthropologists are the ones who generally comment on moribund social groups, the commentary should be seen as particularly hopeful.
I can’t believe that Lieberman has resorted to appeals to the inalienable rights of psychiatry, an entity apparently subject to injury and humiliation. Surprised that anti-psychiatry has arisen? Serious lack of insight here, I’d say.
I’m afraid I don’t regard my private life as someone else’s “field” though this group seems to have no difficulty in doing so. Moreover, it’s a “field” already polarized with a truly insane amount of power granted to psychiatrists and none to the ever-patient patients. I think you’re optimistic in expecting a solution that will leave psychiatry’s or psychology’s economic preserve intact.
New product. New market. New investors hoping it’ll go through the roof.
Thanks for raising this point, Wayne. Psychiatry has been given almost sole rights to the poor, many of whom will take the medication to get financial help for their families, especially since the possibility of even getting out of the psychiatric networks is not high.
I will not even touch upon people who get the money through psychiatrizing their children. Again, however, it is psychiatry that is the worst factor of the mix.
Hi Chris,
I also was damaged by lithium. I also consider my children when “making waves.”
I just wanted to say that I don’t reply to a huge percentage of comments that I read. What I do take from them, like you, is a sense of community. I read them every day.
Thanks for posting.
With all due respect for your survivorship status, you seem to be a person looking for a job in academia – not going too far for employment here, obfuscating there. This kind of behaviour will keep you your position, but, I believe, is costing academics their critical role in society. This is the route by which liberals have become largely ineffective in today’s world.
Most people who have been involuntarily incarcerated and drugged (usually by concerned relatives) are not searching for a “big picture” discussion of utopia. Psychiatry is violating people’s civil liberties and poisoning millions daily. The situation with our children alone should make everyone fearful. The use of drugging as a means of controlling old people is beyond totalitarian. The only joke is that mainstream doctors are close behind psychiatrists, threatening everyone’s health with their arthritis killers and dangerous statins. They too are primarily interested in keeping their jobs. Doctors’ obeisance to Big Pharma and studious inclusion of all members of the “medical-industrial union” has destroyed doctors’ critical role of making medical, rather than political, decisions. A doctor’s primary role should include maintaining skepticism in prescribing medicines. Medicines are deadly. And again and again, Big Pharma is not required to answer for criminal activity. I think our focus on medication misuse is crucial, not just for MIA, but for the society at large.
They don’t receive evidence based commitment either.
Personally, I’m less interested in ANOTHER approach and more interested in a retreat.
I suppose by overreact, Breitner means possibly consider that the drug might be doing more harm than good, that one’s physician is often just an enthusiastic pharma front, and that his own job line may be overdue for evaluation.
I agree with you, B. There is no such thing as a professional “fix” in life. People who believe this are sadly lacking in insight. Others can help, but, when they make their money claiming to be authorities on human problems, they often lose their humanity in getting the paycheque.
Hi Daisy,
I am glad I read your story. You’re further along than I am. I hope you let us know when your book comes out. If you are having a book launch or appearance in Vancouver or Victoria, perhaps you could also mention that. Thanks.
Thank you, Dr. Healy. I always enjoy your articles.
Sorry, Sleves. Didn’t mean to get your moniker wrong.
Sleeves: You can get Peter C. Gotzsche’s book from the public library. I, myself, have a hold in for the next available copy. I hope you enjoy it.
Just a note. I KNOW the humility of a psychiatric patient who MUST go along with her “caretakers” because they control access to her children, so I’m sure you DO SEE a lot of humble, inoffensive, apparently thankful people. They have no out.
I agree, Philip. Psychiatrists should not be allowed to cynically scramble onto the next lucrative bandwagon without accountability for their pasts.
Thank you Philip for another great article. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you for continuing to point out the false reasonings and blatant evasions of psychiatry. Maybe psychiatrists get away with this stuff partly because they make it a rule NEVER to listen to patients.
I would like to add a related note to commenter rsrcrw, who seems to be the voice of her husband and teenage daughter here, firmly committed to THEIR psychiatric treatment. Perhaps, rsrcrw, you just prefer other family members who are too drugged to challenge you at all.
Thanks for this article. I admire this man for not speaking.
I found that it is impossible to make calm objection under the law. You can speak, but, immediately afterwards, the ‘mental health’ professionals continue in exactly the same course. You can sue, but the judge rushes to receive his or her cues from the attorneys of the ‘mental health’ group.
The only ones to even be embarrassed by the farce are the police. In their defence, I have seen them trying to bridge the gap with what is obviously a complete disregard for civil rights in the ‘mental health’ community. But, of course, even the police know that ‘doctors’ know best.
Thanks Bonnie for this heartening article. It’s no surprise that the only commentator WITH any insight was not a psychiatrist. I think that, with their swelling of patients, psychiatrists are inviting attack. Less and less people are truly outside psychiatry.
Personally I’m waiting for that “mirror crack’d from side to side” moment for this group, one precipitated by their own megalomania.
I do believe that anti-psychiatrists are the only ones walking out of here.
A great article. Thanks, Bruce.
In Hannah Arendt’s “Totalitarianism,” she says that, at the root of any totalitarian regime, there is always a camp. I thought about it a lot at the time, but I think it’s pretty fair to say that the rapidly expanding psychiatric base now fills the bill. Drugging is a camp on its own with layers of camps beneath, including the school system, prison system, and old folks homes.
With all respect Reverend, the Christian groups that I’ve been part of are no more skeptical of “science” than the commentators on MIA. Most of their members are fully supportive of getting forced chemical “help” for relatives in old folks homes or children sitting submissively in the pews beside them. The belief in the holy spirit has become a private matter in today’s world, I think.
The churches should be leading the fight against psychiatry’s minimizing of the spiritual aspects of our lives, aspects such as purpose, morality, faith in life, and courage in death. The only church that seems even sporadically to do much in the way of objection to psychiatry is the Unitarian Church, a church so far from its Christian roots as to be almost universalist.
Personally, I would chose Scientology as a last resort for help today. In practical terms they represent the only group likely to offer any protection from the mental health system as it actually operates.
You can appeal to Christians in the abstract all you wish, but, when the only church willing to fight this Satan Psychiatry is that of Scientology, I believe you Christian people have some changing of your own to do.
Thanks Phillip. I couldn’t agree with you more. The whole psychiatric thing is rotten to the core. When Allen Frances speaks about more “pie” for all the paid mental “helping” professions, he is pitching to a very greedy group. I also agree with David Walker in his ideas about the damage psychiatric reductionism does to human reality. The joke is that that wider reality wasn’t just true for Native cultures. It used to be ours as well.
I wish John Rohrer and David Kastner success from the bottom of my heart.
It seems to me, Kate, that YOU are speaking for your daughter. Perhaps she could speak for herself.
Thank you so much, Bonnie, for your comprehensive and beautifully argued piece. I hope it gets the wide audience it deserves – for your sake as well as mine.
I’m surprised that a seasoned medical person like yourself doesn’t seem to understand that all medicine is based on conjecture.
Your zesty language and breezy attitude seem to me more suggestive of an undergraduate psychology student or student psychiatrist in a hurry to complete an assignment – spouting off everything he or she has learned in class to get a potential rise.
Here’s to youth, eh? Or its appearance. It must keep you in sync with all those boxes of genes you face down every day in the great fight against autism.
As someone who is now escalating from a position of being anti-psychiatry to one of becoming anti-mainstream medicine – in the light of my continuing experience – I regard anti-psychiatry as my conservative, fall-back position. I look forward to the day when taking such a position will be considered absolutely sane and normal.