“As Dr. Peter Breggin describes it in his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, a deal was struck. Drug companies would bankroll psychiatry and rescue it. These companies would pour money into professional conferences, journals, research. In return, they wanted “science” that would promote mental disease as a biological/chemical fact, a gateway into scores of new drugs. Everyone would win—except the patient.”
I wrote and posted this article on October 11, 2012. What I revealed then is still happening now. I offer the article as an illustration of how far “social justice” can go in actually punishing people classified as victims—not helping them as advertised.
Buckle up:
It’s the latest thing. Psychiatrists are now giving children in poor neighborhoods Adderall, a dangerous medical stimulant, by making false diagnoses of ADHD, or no diagnoses at all.
Their aim? “Promote social justice,” to improve academic performance in school.
The rationale is, the drugged kids will now be able to compete with children from wealthier families who attend better schools.
Leading the way is Dr. Michael Anderson, a pediatrician in the Atlanta area. Incredibly, Anderson told the New York Times his diagnoses of ADHD are “made up,” “an excuse” to hand out the drugs.
“We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth… For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.” — Patrick Henry (1775)
“It would be good for humankind and bad for the fishes if all the drugs were thrown into the sea.” — Dr. William Osler
“One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine…The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease…The person who takes medicine must recover twice, once from the disease and once from the medicine.” — Dr. William Osler
“Prozac and its successor antidepressants cause sexual dysfunction in as many as 70% of people taking them.” – Dr Loren Mosher
The title of this column, The Drugs May Be The Problem is also the title of a seminar that I will be presenting starting on Saturday morning, January 21, 2017. On that date, the first in a series of seminars will be presented at the Red Herring Lounge, 208 East 1st Street, Duluth, MN. The event begins with registration at 8:30 am. The seminar will go from 9 am to noon. There is space for 50 participants and there is no charge for attendance. Donations will be accepted to defray expenses. The hope is that individuals or groups that attend the seminar will be interested enough in the topic to be motivated to offer sponsorship of or promotion for future events. More
The title of this column, The Drugs May Be The Problem is also the title of a Citizens Commission on Human Rights-sponsored seminar that I will be presenting on October 8, 2016 in St Paul, MN.
I stole the main title from Dr Peter Breggin’s ground-breakng book Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications. I, along with thousands of Big Pharma skeptics, regard Breggin as a valued mentor. I have spent many hours studying his books and they occupy a significant section in my personal library.
Peter Breggin is the giant of psychiatric whistle-blowers and a huge thorn in the flesh of the super-wealthy and super-powerful multinational psycho-pharmaceutical corporations (and much of academic psychiatry) ever since his first ground-breaking book was published in 1991.
The title of that book was Toxic Psychiatry: Why Therapy, Empathy and Love Must Replace the Drugs, Electroshock and Biochemical Theories of the ‘New Psychiatry’.
2016 happens to be the 25th anniversary of Toxic Psychiatry and I am dedicating my seminar to Breggin. Soberingly, Breggin’s books are essentially banned books in polite medical establishment circles. His titles are rarely found in mainstream book-seller’s stores. His courageous truth-telling has resulted in his being treated as a banned author. His ideas are considered heretical in mainstream psychiatry, which makes his books continue to be somewhat popular for psychiatric survivors who know they have been sickened or made worse by the drugs.
Among the approximately 2 dozen books Breggin has written in his long career as author and practicing psychiatrist (who is still actually curing his patients at age 80) is his Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry: Drugs, Electroshock and the Role of the FDA (1997, revised in 2008).
Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry exposed the corrupted pseudoscience that has enabled the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and academic psychiatry to thrive by foisting their addictive and brain-damaging synthetic psych drugs and electroshock “treatments” onto an unsuspecting and naive healthcare industry (and the brain-washed populace) despite the peer-reviewed (but obscurely) published scientific research from a number of altruistic and under-funded neuroscientists who haven’t been co-opted by the amoral multinational pharmaceutical corporations that are collectively known as Big Pharma.
The full title of Dr Breggin’s 1999 book was Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications. Dr David Cohen was co-author.
Psychiatrist William Glasser wrote the following in the forward to the first edition:
“Nowhere does the false medical thinking (that there is a drug cure for almost all common diseases) do more harm than in the modern psychiatric argument that mental illness is easily diagnosed and then cured by a side-effect-free drug. Nowhere is the correct psychiatric thinking more evident than in the books by Peter Breggin. In them he explains clearly that patients with mental illnesses are in almost all instances suffering from their inability to connect with important people in their lives and need help in making these vital connections. He supports safe, drug-free counseling as a more effective way to help people, and I enthusiastically agree with this premise.”More
“Psychoactive drugs are more dangerous than alcohol, cigarettes or smoking dope.” — Peter Breggin, MD
Before reading this article (and watching the three YouTube videos recommended below) by psychiatrist Dr Peter Breggin, first watch this 9 minute video: .
Instead of hope and enthusiasm for their futures, too many children now grow up believing they are inherently defective, and controlled by bad genes and biochemical imbalances. They are shackled by the idea that they have ADHD and then subdued by the drugs that inevitably go along with the diagnosis. Unless something intervenes, many of them will go on to pass their days on Earth in a drug-impaired, demoralized state.
I have put up a new series of three videos on YouTube about the psychiatric diagnosing and drugging of children. The first children’s video at could be titled “Stimulant Drugs Crush the Life out of Children and Causes OCD Symptoms” and is # 7 in my Simple Truths series; it describes the harmful effects and method of action of stimulant drugs. These drugs include methylphenidate and amphetamine products such as Ritalin, Concerta, Focalin, Metadate, Methylin, Quillivant, Daytrana, Vyvanse, Adderall and Dexedrine.
The second video about children ) could be titled ADHD: A Lifelong Road to Tragedy”. It is # 8 in the Simple Truths series. It describes the negative effects of diagnosing children with ADHD.
The third children’s video, could be labeled “Stop the Disastrous Psychiatric Drugging of our Children” and is # 9 of Simple Truths, describes the horrendous outcomes of merely starting a mildly “hyperactive” child on Ritalin, including follow up studies over several decades. This video calls for concerned citizens to take a stand against giving psychiatric drugs to children. I believe it is time to set our sights on a day when children will be protected by a ban against giving them any psychoactive substances, including psychiatric drugs, which are more dangerous, damaging and demoralizing than alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes.
The video series has scientific support in my book Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal, which cites and summarizes some of the most recent studies on how damaged “ADHD kids” become when reaching adulthood — including increased incarceration in jails and mental hospitals, increased suicide, increased drug addiction, increased dependence on multiple psychiatric drugs, obesity, shrinkage (atrophy) of the brain, shortened lifespan, and a general reduction in quality and length of life.
In addition, my new peer-reviewed article in the journal Children & Society presents a scientific and ethical overview of the harm done to children by stimulants and by antipsychotic drugs, such as Abilify, Seroquel, Risperdal, Invega, Zyprexa, Geodon, Latuda, Saphris, Fanapt, and Symbax. It cites many scientific studies. The antipsychotic drugs are often given to children when their behavior and mental state deteriorates as a result of being given stimulants.
The drugging of children in America and increasingly throughout the world is a tragedy. Millions upon millions of children and youth will never know their full potential because they grew up with an intoxicated brain — their neurotransmitters forever deformed by being bathed in these drugs during their formative years. Additional millions will become career consumers of psychiatric drugs with a vastly reduced quality of life and shortened lives.
It is time to say, “No more of this!” and to directly confront the need for stopping this inhumane, destructive approach to our children and youth.
“As Dr. Peter Breggin describes it in his landmark book, Toxic Psychiatry, a deal was struck. Drug companies would bankroll psychiatry and rescue it. These companies would pour money into professional conferences, journals, research. In return, they wanted “science” that would promote mental disease as a biological/chemical fact, a gateway into scores of new drugs. Everyone would win—except the patient.”
The PPJ Gazette 